New Faculty Join King Hall
UC Davis School of Law will welcome two new additions to its faculty in the fall of 2016: Irene Oritseweyinmi Joe, most recently a Visiting Assistant Professor and Binder Teaching Fellow at UCLA School of Law, and Aaron Tang, previously an associate at Jones Day in Washington, D.C., and a former clerk for both Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor of the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
Born in Sapele, Nigeria, Joe has a B.A. from the University of Texas at Austin and a J.D. from Stanford Law School, where she was president of the Black Law Students Association and Lead Article Editor of the Stanford Journal of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, as well as a recipient of the State Bar of California's Imelda Rosenthal Scholarship. After law school, she served as a fellow for the Equal Justice Initiative of Alabama, then clerked with Judge Napoleon Jones of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California. Joe went on to serve as Assistant Special Litigation Counsel at the Orleans Public Defenders in New Orleans and Assistant Training Director with the Louisiana Public Defender Board before accepting her fellowship at UCLA. Her interests as a legal scholar include the development of theoretical frameworks for reshaping under-resourced criminal justice institutions. Her article "Systematizing Public Defender Resources" is forthcoming in the Denver University Law Review, and another, "Rethinking Misdemeanor Neglect" is forthcoming from the UCLA Law Review.
Tang earned his bachelor's degree in Political Science, summa cum laude, from Yale University and his J.D. from Stanford Law School. After clerking with the U.S. Supreme Court and Fourth Circuit, he joined Jones Day in 2014. As part of the firm's Issues & Appeals group, Tang's practice focused on appellate advocacy and critical motions. He has drafted petitions for certiorari and merits briefs to the U.S. Supreme Court in cases involving civil rights, criminal law, and family law. In addition, he has also worked as a middle school teacher and youth organizer in St. Louis, Missouri. His teaching and research focus on constitutional law, education law, and the intersections among civil litigation, the political process, and public policy. He has published articles in leading law journals including Stanford Law Review, New York University Law Review, Virginia Law Review, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, George Washington Law Review, and Marquette Law Review.
"We are pleased and excited to welcome Professors Joe and Tang to King Hall," said Dean Kevin R. Johnson. "Our faculty is already one of the most highly regarded, diverse, and productive of any law school, and the addition of these outstanding new scholar-educators will be of great benefit to our students, our King Hall community, and the community at large."