Seeking Course Variety, Law Hires 4 New Profs

Just as April showers bring May flowers, spring brings academic hires—especially at Columbia Law School, where four new professors have recently joined on as part of an ongoing initiative to broaden the faculty and course selection.

Associate clinical professor Alexandra Carter, whose hire was announced Wednesday, marks the fourth faculty addition of this spring and the 11th in the last few semesters at a school with a total of about 90 professors.

“The four [hires],” Law School Director of Public Affairs James O’Neill wrote in an e-mail, “combined with seven hired last year, bring to 11 the number of new faculty hired ... as part of Law School Dean David M. Schizer’s effort to expand faculty to increase course selections, reduce student-faculty ratio, and provide more opportunities for faculty to mentor students.”

Carter’s fellow new teachers include Theodore Shaw, president and director counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, constitutional law scholar Jamal Greene, and Trevor Morrison, who is described in a Law School press release as “an expert on separation of powers, federalism, and executive branch legal interpretation.” Carter, Shaw, and Morrison are all graduates of Columbia Law School—a pattern Morrison said is unusual.

“Columbia has been wary about hiring its own grads, the theory being that they need to go out into the world,” said Morrison, who most recently spent five years teaching at Cornell Law School. “I think it’s significant that we’re alums who’ve been out in the world a while, rather than being hired right back after graduation.”

But Morrison said he is happy to be returning to academia—as is Greene, a former sports journalist.

“I went to law school because I was interested in the world of ideas,” Greene said.
Greene explained that he hopes the teaching position—his first ever—will keep him intellectually engaged. “Staying surrounded by young people keeps the mind more active than the daily practice of law,” he said.

Carter, too, praised the cerebral culture of the school. “One of the things I was excited about when I went to Columbia as a student was the level of smarts and achievement among my peers,” she said.

She said she was similarly impressed by a conversation she had with a group of Law School students as part of her interview process, which evolved into an hour of “grappling” with serious points of law.

“I found myself really excited about being part of that intellectual community again,” she said.

While Morrison, Carter, and Greene all said that large-scale faculty expansion was not specifically discussed with them during their interviews, each looks forward to the outcome of the school’s goals.

“I’m excited about all of it,” Morrison said. “I think the dean is leading the Law School at a very exciting time in its history.”

mary.kohlmann@columbiaspectator.com