UC Davis School of Law Appoints New Associate Dean, New Endowed Chair

Two outstanding members of the UC Davis School of Law faculty, Professors Madhavi Sunder and Angela Harris, have been promoted to leadership positions at King Hall.  Sunder, an influential scholar of law and culture, is the new Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs. Harris, one of the nation's foremost critical race theory, feminist legal theory, and civil rights scholars, has been appointed as the Boochever and Bird Endowed Chair for the Study and Teaching of Freedom and Equality. 

Professor Madhavi Sunder joined UC Davis School of Law in 1999. She was named a Carnegie Scholar in 2006 and has been a Visiting Professor of Law at Yale Law School, the University of Chicago Law School, and Cornell Law School. Her work traverses numerous fields, from intellectual property to human rights law and the First Amendment. She has published in leading law journals including the Yale Law Journal, Stanford Law Review, California Law Review, and Texas Law Review, among others. Her book, From Goods to a Good Life: Intellectual Property and Global Justice, was published by Yale University Press in 2012.

Professor Angela Harris succeeds Professor Alan Brownstein, a nationally recognized Constitutional Law scholar who taught at UC Davis School of Law for more than 30 years and held the Boochever and Bird Chair prior to his retirement in December 2014.  She is the author of a number of widely reprinted and influential articles and essays in critical legal theory, a prolific co-author of casebooks, and a co-editor of Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for Women in Academia (2013). Professor Harris's "Race and Essentialism in Feminist Legal Theory" (Stanford Law Review, 1990) is one of the most-cited law review articles of all time, according to a recent study in the Michigan Law Review. She is a sought-after speaker at workshops and conferences, and she is active in promoting community among critical legal scholars, having played an active role in founding LatCrit, Inc. and ClassCrits. She is also the founding director of the Aoki Center for Critical Race and Nation Studies at King Hall.