David Fontana, George Washington Law School
George Washington Law School
Professor Fontana joined the GW Law faculty in the fall of 2006. His research is focused on the areas of constitutional law, comparative constitutional law, comparative law, administrative law, judicial behavior, and public policy, and he is currently completing a doctoral degree in socio–legal studies at Oxford University. Before coming to GW, he clerked for Judge Dorothy W. Nelson on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He has published articles in legal journals including the UCLA Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal, Virginia Law Review (with Bruce Ackerman), Connecticut Law Review, and Fordham Law Review. Professor Fontana also has written for The New Republic Online, Legal Affairs, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Atlantic Monthly (with Bruce Ackerman), The Los Angeles Times, and Findlaw. He has advised congressional and presidential campaigns on legal and foreign policy issues and also has advised governments on the process of constitution-drafting in newly emerging democracies. He teaches Criminal Law and Comparative Constitutional Law. Professor Fontana received a B.A. from the University of Virginia and a J.D. from Yale.
Sanford Levinson, University of Texas Law School
University of Texas Law School
Sanford Levinson, who holds the W. St. John Garwood and W. St. John Garwood, Jr. Centennial Chair in Law, joined the University of Texas Law School in 1980. Previously a member of the Department of Politics at Princeton University, he is also a Professor in the Department of Government at the University of Texas. The author of over 250 articles and book reviews in professional and popular journals, Levinson is also the author of four books: Constitutional Faith (1988, winner of the Scribes Award); Written in Stone: Public Monuments in Changing Societies (1998); Wrestling With Diversity (2003); and, most recently, Our Undemocratic Constitution: Where the Constitution Goes Wrong (and How We the People Can Correct It) (2006). His edited or co-edited books include a leading constitutional law casebook, Processes of Constitutional Decisionmaking (5th ed. 2006, with Paul Brest, Jack Balkin, Akhil Amar, and Reva Siegel); Reading Law and Literature: A Hermeneutic Reader (1988, with Steven Mallioux); Responding to Imperfection: The Theory and Practice of Constitutional Amendment (1995); Constitutional Stupidities, Constitutional Tragedies (1998, with William Eskridge); Legal Canons (2000, with Jack Balkin); The Louisiana Purchase and American Expansion (2005, with Batholomew Sparrow); and Torture: A Collection (2004, revised paperback edition, 2006), which includes reflections on the morality, law, and politics of torture from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. He has taught a course on “Torture, Law, and Lawyers” at the Harvard Law School. He is also a regular participant on the popular blog, Balkinization.
He has visited at the Harvard, Yale, New York University, and Boston University law schools, as well as the law faculties at the University of Paris II, Central European University in Budapest, and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He is also affiliated with the Shalom Hartman Institute of Jewish Philosophy in Jerusalem. A member of the American Law Institute, Levinson was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2001. Professor Levinson received an A.B. from Duke, a Ph.D. from Harvard, and a J.D. from Stanford.
William Marshall, University of North Carolina Law School
University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill
William Marshall is the William Rand Kenan, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill. Professor
Marshall joined the UNC-Chapel Hill Faculty in the spring of 2001. He received his law degree from the University of Chicago and his undergraduate degree at the University of Pennsylvania. Professor Marshall served as Deputy White House Counsel and Deputy Assistant to the President of the United States during the Clinton Administration where he worked on issues ranging from freedom of religion to separation of powers. He has published extensively on constitutional law issues and is a nationally recognized first amendment scholar. He is also a leading expert on federal judicial selection matters and on the interrelationship between media, law and politics. He teaches media law, civil procedure, constitutional law, first amendment, federal courts, and the law of the presidency.
Lorraine Weinrib, University of Toronto Law School
University of Toronto Law School
Lorraine E. Weinrib was appointed to the Faculty of Law and the Department of Political Science in 1988. Previously, she worked in the Crown Law Office – Civil, Ministry of the Attorney General (Ontario), holding the position of Deputy Director of Constitutional Law and Policy at the time of her departure. Her work included legal advice and policy development on constitutional issues, as well as extensive litigation, frequently in the Supreme Court of Canada. In 1993, Professor Weinrib was Visiting Professor (Fulbright Fellowship) at the University of Michigan Law School; in 1994 at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem (Halbert Academic Exchange); and in 2001 and 2002 at the Tel Aviv Faculty of Law. She also spent a month at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg in 1994, a visit that included the opportunity to deliver the Oliver Schreiner Memorial Lecture. She holds law degrees from Yale and Toronto, and an undergraduate degree from York University.
Professor Weinrib teaches the first year constitutional law course as well as advanced courses on the Charter, constitutional litigation, and comparative constitutional law. Her writing, in which she advocates the institutional coherence of the Charter, includes articles on the interpretation of sections 1 and 33, the theoretical dimension of the Supreme Court of Canada’s Charter jurisprudence, the process leading up to the 1982 amendments to the Constitution, and studies of leading cases, e.g., Morgentaler (abortion), Ford (override), Keegstra (hate promotion) and Rodriguez (assisted suicide). She has also written on the topic of women in the legal profession. Her current work focusses on the legitimacy of the post-WWII model of judicially enforced rights-protection, of which Canada’s Charter is both an example and a model for other countries’ constitutional development. In addition, Professor Weinrib has published essays on the special contribution that the Canadian Jewish Community has made to the protection of rights in the lead up to the adoption of the Charter as well as in public engagement and the support of test cases in the past 20 years.
Professor Weinrib is currently at work on a monograph entitled The Supreme Court of Canada in the Age of Rights.
Professor Weinrib writes a monthly column on constitutional issues in Law Times. Her first article, entitled “Charter precludes unequal regimes”, appeared in the October 3rd issue. Future columns will consider leading cases as well as constitutional issues in the news and coverage of conferences and publications pertaining to constitutional issues.
In 2006, Professor Weinrib was featured in a special exhibit as one of the Law School’s Women Trailblazers.
