Discussion Description:
This session helps prepare individuals for interviews and give you an opportunity to ask questions and seek personalized advice from experienced faculty in the Section on Women in Legal Education.
*Registration is required
Anna Offit, Assistant Professor of Law, SMU Dedman School of LawAnna Offit is a legal scholar and cultural anthropologist with broad interests in prosecutorial ethics, the U.S. jury system, comparative law, and law and society. Her current research is on lay participation in the U.S. legal system. She teaches criminal law, evidence, and a research seminar on criminal jury reform.
Offit’s work has been published or is forthcoming in the Minnesota Law Review, the North Carolina Law Review, the Northwestern University Law Review, the Fordham Law Review, the Washington Law Review, the Ohio State Law Journal, the UC Irvine Law Review, and the Political and Legal Anthropology Review among other law review and peer-reviewed journals. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, U.S.-Norway Fulbright Foundation, the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, and the Lois Roth Foundation.
Offit is a graduate of Princeton University’s Anthropology PhD program, and received her JD from the Georgetown University Law Center where she served as Editor-in-Chief of the Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics and as a law clerk at the Department of Justice’s Office for Civil Rights.
Prior to joining the faculty at SMU Dedman School of Law, Offit served as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at NYU Law School’s Civil Jury Project. She was also the recipient of a Fulbright grant to study the abolition of Norway’s jury system, and a Graduate Prize Fellowship from the Princeton University Center for Human Values.
Offit is an active member of the Law & Society Association and the Association for Political and Legal Anthropology.
Franciska Coleman, Assistant Professor of Law; Associate Director, East Asian Legal Studies Center, University of Wisconsin Law SchoolFranciska Coleman is an Assistant Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Wisconsin Law School and the Associate Director of the East Asian Legal Studies Center. She is an interdisciplinary scholar, whose work draws upon political theory, critical discourse analysis, and constitutional law.
Professor Coleman is deeply interested in the social justice implications of race and class hegemony in constitutional interpretation and in the effects of institutionalized oppression on the self-governing capability of vulnerable groups. Professor Coleman’s current research projects focus on 1) understanding the anatomy of cancel culture and its effects on marginalized groups as speakers and 2) understanding the relationship between equal protection and political power.
Prior to joining the faculty of UW Law School, Professor Coleman was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Washington University in St. Louis and also held a Visiting Scholar appointment at Harvard Law School.
Professor Coleman previously taught American Constitutional Law I and II at Yonsei Law School in Seoul, South Korea. During that time, she worked closely with the Korean government on several initiatives, such as international roundtables on offensive speech held by the Korean Communication Standards Commission and efforts by the Korean Legislation Research Institute to make Korean statutes more accessible to foreign communities.
Prior to her time in Korea, Professor Coleman worked as an associate in the litigation and appellate practice groups at Covington & Burling in Washington, DC. She received her JD from Harvard Law School and her PhD in Literacy, Culture and International Education from the University of Pennsylvania. While studying at these institutions, she was awarded the AAUW Selected Professions Fellowship and the Fontaine Fellowship.
Sudha Setty, Dean, Professor of Law, City University of New York School of LawSudha Setty joined the City University of New York School of Law as dean and professor of law on July 1, 2022. Previously, she served as dean of Western New England University School of Law, where she focused on enhancing social justice lawyering and increasing institutional commitments to racial justice and diversity, equity, and inclusion. She led the creation of its Center for Social Justice in 2019 and led the faculty in adopting a graduation requirement for racial justice coursework, adopted in April 2021.
Dean Setty is the first woman of South Asian descent to serve as dean of an ABA-accredited law school. In 2021, Dean Setty co-hosted the inaugural Workshop for Asian-American Women in Legal Academia, drawing over 100 participants to engage in professional development, scholarship support, and building community.
She currently serves on the Deans Steering Committee of the Association of American Law Schools and on the editorial board of the Journal of National Security Law and Policy. She has previously served on the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Standing Committee on Alternative Pathways to the Bar (co-chairing one subcommittee), on the Bipartisan Advisory Committee on Massachusetts Judicial Nominations to the U.S. District Court, on the Advisory Committee for the ABA Legal Education Police Practices Consortium, and on the board of Community Legal Aid, Inc.
Dean Setty is the recipient of the National Conference for Community and Justice 2021 Human Relations Award. She was WNE Law’s Professor of Year in 2009, 2016, and 2018; on the Lawyers of Color Power List in 2020; recognized as a Top Woman in the Law by the Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly in 2019; named a Trailblazer by the South Asian Bar Association of Connecticut in 2015; and received the 2017 Tapping Reeve Legal Educator Award from the Connecticut Bar Association. In 2018, Dean Setty was elected to membership in the American Law Institute and as a fellow of the American Bar Foundation.
Dean Setty earned her J.D. with honors from Columbia Law School and her A.B. in History (concentration in comparative civil rights movements) with honors from Stanford University.
Lolita Buckner Inniss, Dean, Provost’s Professor of Law, Chair of AALS Section on Women in Legal Education, University of Colorado Law SchoolLolita Buckner Inniss is the 17th dean, the second woman dean, and the first Black dean of the University of Colorado Law School, where she is also Provost’s Professor of Law and an affiliate of the Center for African & African American Studies. As Dean she has worked to broaden access and equity for students, has led the largest faculty hiring process in the history of Colorado Law, has shepherded one of the largest clinical gifts in the history of the school, and has given heightened attention to faculty status issues. She received her A.B. from Princeton University, her J.D. from UCLA, and earned an LL.M. with Distinction and a Ph.D. in law from Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, in Canada. Her current areas of research are legal history and property law. A highly regarded leader and scholar with a prominent national and international voice in her fields, Dean Inniss is an elected member of the American Law Institute, Chair-elect of the AALS Women in Legal Education section, a member of the AALS Deans’ Steering Committee and is the United States Special Rapporteur to the International Academy of Comparative Law on the topic of contemporary slavery. She is the author of scores articles and essays, and of the prize-winning legal history book The Princeton Fugitive Slave: The Trials of James Collins Johnson (Fordham University Press, 2019, 2020). She is also the co-author of a book in progress, Talking About Black Lives Matter and #MeToo (with Bridget Crawford) (University of California Press, forthcoming 2024).
