UC Irvine School of Law Hires Seven New Faculty Members

06-18-2009

IRVINE, Calif., June 18, 2009—UC Irvine School of Law has hired seven new faculty members, bringing its total number of tenure-track professors to 22.

Accepting law faculty positions at UCI are Mario Barnes, Alejandro Camacho, Jennifer Chacon, Stephen Lee, Christopher Leslie, R. Anthony Reese and Christopher Tomlins.

The fields of expertise of this impressive group include intellectual property, antitrust, national security, legal history, environmental law, immigration law and criminal law. They have taught at a number of top law schools, including University of Texas School of Law, Stanford Law School, University of Notre Dame School of Law, UC Davis School of Law, Northwestern University School of Law and New York University School of Law.

"These faculty members are tremendously impressive both as teachers and as scholars," said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the law school. "And they further cement our having a faculty in the top 20 of American law schools."

The addition of these faculty members means that when the law school opens its doors in August, the student-faculty ratio will be about 3 to 1, which is easily the best in the country. University of Chicago Law Professor Brian Leiter said several months ago on his influential blog that UCI’s law faculty would rank in the top 10 in terms of scholarly impact.

Mario Barnes

Prof. Barnes writes and teaches in the areas of criminal law, constitutional law, national security law, and race and the law. He received an A.B. in Psychology from UC Berkeley (1990), a J.D. from U.C. Berkeley (1995), and an LL.M. from the University of Wisconsin (2004). He was Managing Editor and Co-Editor-in-Chief of the African-American Law & Policy Report (now Berkeley Journal of African-American Law and Policy).
Prof. Barnes has taught at the University of Miami School of Law since 2005, and in the Spring of 2009 was a Visiting Professor at the University of Connecticut School of Law. Before that, he was a William H. Hastie Fellow at the University of Wisconsin School of Law (2002-2004), and a member of the U.S. Navy (1990-2002).

Alejandro Camacho

Prof. Camacho began teaching at Notre Dame School of Law in 2005. Before that, he was a Fellow and Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center (2003-2005), and he lectured in environmental law at Boston College’s Department of Political Science (1997-1998). Prof. Camacho’s research interests focus on regulatory innovation and the design of environmental and land use decision-making processes. In addition to his scholarship, Prof. Camacho has five years of litigation experience in the Environment, Land and Resources Department at Latham & Watkins in Los Angeles (1998-2003).
He earned a bachelor’s degree in Political Science and a bachelor’s degree in Criminology, Law, and Society, both summa cum laude, from the University of California, Irvine. In 1998, Prof. Camacho received his J.D. cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he served as submissions editor and article editor for the Harvard Environmental Law Review. He also received an LL.M. from Georgetown University Law Center in 2005.

Jennifer Chacon

Prof. Chacon is a rising star in the field of immigration law. As a teacher of both criminal procedure and immigration law and policy, she is particularly interested in questions arising at the intersection of these two fields. Prof. Chacon also enjoys an outstanding reputation as a teacher. She was nominated for UC Davis’ Distinguished Teaching Award three times (2005-2006, 2006-2007, 2007-2008), and won the award in 2008-2009.
Prof. Chacon received an A.B. with distinction in International Relations from Stanford in 1994, and a J.D. from Yale Law School in 1998. She clerked for Judge Sidney Thomas on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (1998-1999).

Stephen Lee

Prof. Lee works on the intersection of administrative law and immigration law. His research examines the growing phenomenon of private decision-making within our immigration regime, particularly the role of private actors, notably employers, who play an important role in immigration policy. Prof. Lee clerked for then-Chief Judge Mary Schroeder of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and then joined Stanford Law School as a Law Fellow and Instructor (2007-2008).
He received his B.A. in Social and Cultural Anthropology from Stanford (1998), an M.A. in Asian American Studies from UCLA (2001), and a J.D. from UC Berkeley School of Law (2005). He was awarded a Fulbright as a Teaching Fellow in Korea following graduation from Stanford.

Christopher Leslie

Prof. Leslie is a nationally recognized expert on antitrust law and intellectual property, and he has also written on and taught sexual orientation discrimination law. Prof. Leslie comes from Chicago-Kent College of Law, where he won the teacher of the year award this year. He has also been a visiting professor at New York University School of Law, the University of Texas School of Law and Stanford Law School.
He earned a M.A. in Public Policy from the Kennedy School of Government with a concentration in Science and Technology Public Policy, and a J.D. from the UC Berkeley School of Law, where he was a member of the Order of the Coif. He received his B.A. in Economics and Political Science from UCLA with Departmental Honors.

R. Anthony Reese

Prof. Reese writes primarily in the area of copyright, with particular focus on the complexity and nuance of copyright doctrine. He is exceedingly prolific and widely regarded as one of the nation’s premier scholars in the field of copyright. Prof. Reese is currently the Arnold, White & Durkee Centennial Professor of Law at the University of Texas, Austin. He has taught as a visiting professor at New York University School of Law and and Stanford Law School, and guest lectured extensively throughout the United States.
Prof. Reese received his J.D. with Distinction from Stanford Law School, his B.A. summa cum laude from Yale University. He clerked for the Hon. Betty Fletcher of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Christopher Tomlins

Prof. Tomlins is widely regarded as one of the leading American legal historians in the United States, and one of the most highly regarded scholars working at the intersection of Law & Society, and Law & Humanities. He is a prolific author on the history of American law: he has written two books and dozens of scholarly articles, and has edited five books, including the magisterial new three-volume Cambridge History of Law in America. For the past 18 years, Prof. Tomlins has been a Research Professor at the American Bar Foundation.
He has taught at Tel Aviv University, Northwestern University School of Law, La Trobe University (Australia), and the Marshall-Wythe School of Law, College of William & Mary. He earned his Ph.D. and M.A. degrees from Johns Hopkins University in History; an M.A. and B.A. in Politics, Philosophy, Economics from Oxford University; and an M.A. in American Studies from the University of Sussex.

Contact: Rex Bossert, assistant dean for communications, 949-824-3063, rbossert@law.uci.edu

About UCI School of Law

UCI School of Law seeks to create the ideal law school for the 21st century by doing the best job in the country of training lawyers for the practice of law at the highest levels of the profession. UCI's Inaugural Class will arrive in August supported by a three-year, full-tuition scholarship and a 3 to 1 student-to-faculty ratio. The Law School's innovative curriculum stresses hands-on, interdisciplinary study and public service. About 75 law firms and legal employers have already signed on to interview law students on campus.