PUBLISHED:August 20, 2010

Meet the 2010-2011 visiting faculty

Aug. 20, 2010 — Visiting faculty in the 2010-2011 academic year include a Supreme Court justice, deputy U.S. solicitor general, and leading scholars and practitioners from a range of disciplines.

Evelyn B. Higginbotham, the Victor S. Thomas Professor of History and of African and African American Studies and chair of African and African American Studies at Harvard University is the inaugural holder of the John Hope Franklin Chair in American Legal History. Higginbotham is holding the chair on a visiting basis while teaching Race, Law and Civil Rights History and a seminar exploring, through a study of biographies and autobiographies, how personal life experiences might influence the actions and works of lawyers and judges.

Major General Charles J. Dunlap Jr., the former deputy judge advocate general of the United States Air Force, joined the faculty July 1 as a visiting professor of the practice of law, following his retirement from the service. He is co-teaching National Security Law and is teaching a seminar titled Use of Force in International Law. Read more here.

Associate Justice Samuel A. Alito, Supreme Court of the United States
Justice Alito returns in September to teach Current Issues in Constitutional Interpretation. Highly popular when it was first offered in Sept. 2009, the course guides upper-year students through an examination of important constitutional issues that have arisen in recent Supreme Court cases and uses the cases to consider as a vehicle for considering broader questions of constitutional interpretation and Supreme Court practice, such as theories of interpretation and the role of stare decisis.

Daphne Barak-Erez, Tel Aviv University
Professor Barak-Erez is teaching Comparative Constitutional Law as a fast-track, five-week course in the fall 2010 semester. The Stewart and Judy Colton Professor of Law and the chair of Law and Security at Tel Aviv University, Barak-Erez also serves as director of the Cegla Center for Interdisciplinary Research of the Law and a member of the Council of Higher Education in Israel. Her main research and teaching areas are administrative and constitutional law.

Charles L. Becton ’69
A leading trial lawyer and former judge on the North Carolina Court of Appeals, Professor Becton will teach Rhetoric and Advocacy and Trial Practice in the spring 2011 semester. A longtime principal in Becton, Slifkin & Bell in Raleigh, he is a fellow in the American College of Trial Lawyers, the American Board of Trial Attorneys, and the International Society of Barristers. He also is the John Scott Cansler Lecturer at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill School of Law. He currently holds the Charles Hamilton Houston Chair at the North Carolina Central University School of Law.

Laura Beny, University of Michigan Law School
Professor Beny is teaching International Development Law as a short course in the fall semester. The course explores the goals of economic development and the role of legal rules in facilitating or hindering that process. Beny’s research interests include law and economics, finance political economy, development, and the Sudan; in 2007 and 2008 she advised the government of Southern Sudan on corporate governance and transparency in the private sector.

John M. Conley ’77, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
Professor Conley is teaching Civil Procedure in the fall 2010 semester. The William Rand Kenan Jr. Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Conley focuses his teaching and research in civil litigation, intellectual property law, e-commerce and technology issues, and law and social science. Conley’s recent publications explore issues related to genomics and gene patents; he also has studied diversity on corporate boards; corporate social responsibility; and narrative and language associated with the law.

Ben Depoorter, University of California Hastings College of Law
Professor Depoorter is teaching Property at Duke Law this fall. He previously was a Santander Research Fellow at the University of California at Berkeley, a John M. Olin Fellow in Law, Economics, and Public Policy, and the recipient of Fulbright and British American Educational Foundation (BAEF) scholarships.

Michael R. Dreeben ’81, U.S. Department of Justice
Taking a leave of absence from the U.S. Department of Justice, Deputy Solicitor General Michael R. Dreeben is teaching Appellate Practice and a new seminar on Constitutional Litigation and Criminal Law that will explore the relationship between various theories of constitutional interpretation and the practical application of those theories in litigation.

Koichiro Fujikura, Doshisha University
Recently retired from Doshisha University in Japan where he was professor and dean, Professor Fujikura is a preeminent scholar on law and the environment, among other fields of study. He is teaching Environmental Disaster in Japan: The Minimata Tragedy.

Michael J. Gerhardt, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill School of Law
Professor Gergardt teaches First Amendment law. The Samuel Ashe Distinguished Professor in Constitutional Law at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Gerhardt also directs the Center for Law and Government. An expert in constitutional law and theory, federal jurisdiction, and the legislative process, his scholarly interests include Congress and the presidency, church and state issues, law and politics, media law, race discrimination, and the Supreme Court.

Ehud Guttel, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Professor Guttel is teaching Introduction to Law and Economics in the fall 2010 semester and Advanced Torts and a seminar titled Law and Rationality in the spring 2011 semester. A prolific scholar whose interests include tort law, law enforcement, economic analysis of law, and behavioral law and economics, Guttel is the Cardinal Cody Associate Professor of Law at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Cally Jordan, University of Melbourne
Professor Jordan is teaching International Securities Regulation in the fall 2010 semester. A professor of law at Melbourne Law School in Australia, Jordan has also served on the faculty at the University of Florida and McGill University, among others. She has practiced international finance at Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton in New York and spent more than a decade working in many capacities with the World Bank both as a consultant and full-time advisor on commercial law, financial law, corporate governance and corporate law

Myles V. Lynk, Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, Arizona State University
Professor Lynk is teaching Civil Procedure in the fall 2010 semester. Lynk is the Peter Kiewit Foundation Professor of Law and the Legal Profession and a Faculty Fellow at the Center for the Study of Law, Science, and Innovation at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law. He also is an affiliated faculty member in Justice Studies in the School of Social Transformation, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Arizona State. His research and teaching are in the areas of civil procedure, legal ethics and bioethics, corporate governance and law and literature.