University of California, Irvine School of Law Welcomes New Faculty, Largest First-Year Class in School's History and New LL.M. Program

09-01-16

Applications up 31 percent for new incoming class at UCI Law

IRVINE, Calif, Sept. 1, 2016 — University of California, Irvine School of Law has hired four new full-time faculty members, bringing the total number of full-time professors to 48. Two visiting faculty members will also join UCI Law during the 2016-17 academic year. All of these new faculty members are leading scholars and skilled practitioners in their respective areas of expertise.

This academic year, applications for the incoming first-year class rose 31 percent and UCI Law welcomed 140 new first-year students, the largest incoming class in the school's history since opening to students in 2009. The incoming class is made up of students from 80 undergraduate institutions, 25 states and the District of Columbia, and 5 countries outside the U.S. UCI Law's total enrollment for all three classes is 358.

UCI Law is also now accepting applications for a new degree, a Master of Laws (LL.M.) in American Law, for non-U.S. lawyers enrolling in fall 2017. In addition to the three-year J.D. degree program, the UCI Law LL.M. degree program is a one-year, full-time, 24-credit course of study open primarily to foreign lawyers, judges, government officials, and others wishing to obtain a U.S. law degree. The LL.M. in American Law is a general program of study that allows non-U.S. lawyers to select a curriculum tailored to their interests. In 2018, UCI Law will launch its LL.M. in International Taxation.

Additionally, UCI Law is starting a new Criminal Justice Clinic, a new core clinic offered to students. Every student at UCI Law must participate in one of our core clinics in order to graduate.

“I am very excited about our terrific new faculty and the continued growth of UCI Law,” said Dean Erwin Chemerinsky. “I am particularly pleased with our new programs, especially launching our LL.M. program and our Criminal Justice Clinic.”

We welcome the following new full-time professors to our outstanding faculty:

Reuven S. Avi-Yonah Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Professor of Law
Professor Avi-Yonah specializes in corporate and international taxation, international law and legal history. His scholarship focuses on defining the underlying principles of an international tax regime and what consequences follow from these principles for the allocation of tax revenues among countries and for the taxation of multinational enterprises. He will join UCI Law in fall 2017 from University of Michigan Law School, where he has been the Irwin I. Cohn Professor of Law and Director of the International Tax LL.M. program. He has served as a consultant to the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) on tax competition, and is a member of the steering group of OECD’s International Network for Tax Research. He has also worked at various law firms, including Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy and Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. He has provided expert testimony in a number of tax cases, and is a prolific writer, including 15 academic books and numerous articles for law reviews and journals. Avi-Yonah earned his B.A. from Hebrew University and an A.M., Ph.D and J.D. from Harvard University. Click here for hi-res image
Leah Litman Leah Litman, Assistant Professor of Law
Professor Litman researches and writes on constitutional law with a particular focus on federalism and federal post-conviction review. Her recent work has appeared in the Michigan Law Review, the Virginia Law Review, and the Federal Sentencing Reporter as well as several online journals including the Columbia Law Review Sidebar. A graduate of University of Michigan Law School, she clerked for Justice Anthony M. Kennedy on the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge Jeffrey S. Sutton on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Following her clerkships, she worked at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, where she specialized in appellate litigation. Prof. Litman was also a Climenko Fellow & Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School and received one of the inaugural HLS Student Government Teaching & Advising Awards. She maintains an active pro bono practice—she was on the brief on the merits in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt and an amicus brief in Welch v. United States.
Alison Mikkor Alison Mikkor, Assistant Professor of Lawyering Skills
Professor Mikkor is interested in the role of experiential learning in legal pedagogy and integrating the realities of practice into the law school curriculum. She joins the faculty after litigating for nearly a decade at an international law firm and teaching for four years in the Lawyering Program at NYU School of Law. In practice, Professor Mikkor has represented clients in a broad range of matters, including acting as counsel to one of the airlines named in In re September 11 Litigation and representing incarcerated women who had been sexually abused by corrections staff in New York State prisons in a civil rights action. Mikkor is a graduate of NYU School of Law and received her B.A. from McGill University. Click here for hi-res image
Katie Tinto Eda Katharine (Katie) Tinto, Assistant Clinical Professor of Law
Professor Tinto teaches and practices in the areas of criminal law, criminal justice, and indigent criminal defense. Her interests and experience also include federal clemency, policing reform, and the intersection of immigration law and criminal law. She will direct the new Criminal Justice Clinic at UCI Law. Before joining UCI Law, Prof. Tinto taught at Cardozo School of Law and NYU School of Law. She received her B.A. from Stanford University, and her J.D . from NYU School of Law. Upon graduation, Professor Tinto clerked for Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. She also worked for more than seven years as a public defender in Los Angeles County and was the founder of a family violence prevention program in the East Palo Alto Police Department. Her current scholarship focuses on the relationship between undercover policing tactics and offender culpability. Click here for hi-res image

UCI Law welcomes the following visiting faculty members:

Joan Biskupic Joan Biskupic joins UCI Law as Visiting Professor of Law for the 2016-2017 academic year. She also recently joined CNN as legal analyst and Supreme Court biographer. She is on a one-year sabbatical from her position at Reuters as an editor in charge for Legal Affairs. She has covered the Supreme Court for 25 years and has written several books on the judiciary, including Breaking In: The Rise of Sonia Sotomayor and the Politics of Justice (2014) and American Original: The Life and Constitution of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia (2009). She is also the author of Sandra Day O’Connor: How the First Woman on the Supreme Court Became Its Most Influential Justice (2005). She currently is working on a biography of Chief Justice John Roberts. Before joining Reuters in 2012, she was the Supreme Court reporter for The Washington Post and for USA Today. She is a regular panelist on PBS’s Washington Week with Gwen Ifill. A graduate of Georgetown University Law Center, Biskupic was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2015.
Burt Neuborne Burt Neuborne is visiting UCI Law in Spring 2017 from NYU School of Law, where he is the Norman Dorsen Professor of Civil Liberties and founding Legal Director of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law. Burt Neuborne is one of the nation’s foremost civil liberties lawyers, teachers, and scholars. Neuborne has served as national legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, special counsel to the National Organization for Women Legal Defense and Education Fund, and member of the New York City Human Rights Commission. He challenged the constitutionality of the Vietnam War, worked on the Pentagon Papers case, worked with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg when she headed the ACLU Women’s Rights Project, and anchored the ACLU’s legal program during the Reagan years. At the Brennan Center, he has concentrated on campaign finance reform and efforts to reform the democratic process. In recent years, Neuborne has served as principal counsel in cases that have resulted in the payment of $7.5 billion to Holocaust victims. He has received the university-wide Distinguished Teaching Award and been elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Among his best-known scholarly works is the two-volume Political and Civil Rights in the United States, which he co-authored with NYU Law colleagues Norman Dorsen and Sylvia Law, and Paul Bender. In 1996, Neuborne appeared as Jerry Falwell’s lawyer in the Milos Forman movie “The People vs. Larry Flynt.” His most recent book is Madison’s Music: On Reading the First Amendment (2015). Click here for hi-res image

About UC Irvine School of Law

UCI Law is a collegial environment, and our faculty comprises accomplished, nationally ranked thought leaders from around the country with a broad range of expertise. In the 2015 study by University of St. Thomas School of Law, the UCI Law faculty ranked No. 6 in the nation in scholarly impact. Ranked No. 4 overall in the National Jurist 2016 list of Best Schools for Practical Training, and No. 2, behind Yale, for the ratio of clinic positions, UCI Law is a visionary law school focused on training talented and passionate lawyers and driven by professional excellence, intellectual rigor, and a commitment to enrich our communities through public service. More about the Law School is available at law.uci.edu.

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