The AALS Nominating Committee for 2025 Officers and Members of the Executive Committee recommends the following accomplished teacher-scholars and highly capable volunteers for positions on the AALS Executive Committee. The Committee will present these nominees to the AALS House of Representatives for election this fall. The candidates will be confirmed at the yearly meeting of the House of Representatives, which takes place during the AALS Annual Meeting in January.
Nominee for President-Elect
Danielle M. Conway is the Dean and Donald J. Farage Professor of Law at Penn State Dickinson Law. An expert in procurement law, entrepreneurship, intellectual property law, and licensing intellectual property, she is a graduate of New York University (BS), Howard University School of Law (JD, cum laude), and George Washington University Law School (LLM). Before joining Dickinson Law, she served for four years as dean of the University of Maine School of Law and for 14 years on the faculty of the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa, William S. Richardson School of Law. Prior to that, Dean Conway was a faculty member at the Georgetown University Law Center and the University of Memphis Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law. She also served as a Fulbright Senior Scholar in Australia and later as Chair in Law at LaTrobe University in Australia.
In 2016, Dean Conway retired from the US Army after 27 years of combined active, reserve, and national guard service.
Dean Conway has taught subjects including Torts, Internet Law and Policy, Advanced Copyright Law, Government Contracts Law, Intellectual Property Law, Indigenous Intellectual Property Law, and Black Women’s Suffrage and the Nineteenth Amendment, among others. She has published six books and numerous chapters, articles, and essays. Dean Conway’s most recent publications focus on different aspects of building an antiracist law school, legal academy, and legal profession.
A strong advocate for public education and for the rights of marginalized groups, Dean Conway was appointed to the Select Penn State Presidential Commission on Racism, Bias, and Community Safety in 2020. She received the 2020 Belva Ann Lockwood Award from the GW Law Association for Women and was also honored as part of the Lawyers of Color Power List 2020. Dean Conway is an elected member of the American Law Institute ALI and an elected member of the board of directors of AccessLex Institute.
Also in 2021, she was the co-recipient of the inaugural AALS Impact Award, honoring individuals who have had a significant, positive impact on legal education or the legal profession, for her work in establishing the Law Deans Antiracist Clearinghouse Project. In 2022, she was the co-recipient of the Shanara Gilbert Human Rights Award for the Clearinghouse Project. Dean Conway has been a panelist and speaker at AALS Annual Meetings for many years. She became a member of the AALS Membership Review Committee in 2018 and was appointed to a three-year term on the AALS Executive Committee in 2021. She also served as a member of the Deans Steering Committee.
Nominee for the Executive Committee
Leonard M. Baynes is the Dean, Hugh Roy and Lillie Cranz Cullen Distinguished Chair, and Professor of Law at the University of Houston Law Center. He has served at the helm of UHLC since 2014. A renowned communications law scholar, he is a graduate of New York University (BS) and Columbia University (MBA, JD). Before joining UH Law Center, he served for 13 years as Professor of Law and the inaugural director of the Ronald H. Brown Center for Civil Rights and Economic Development at St. John’s University School of Law, and for 12 years on the faculty of Western New England University School of Law.
Dean Baynes has taught subjects including Business Organizations, Communications Law, Land Use Planning, Perspectives on Justice, Property, Race and the Law, and Regulated Industries. He has written many chapters and articles on these and related topics, and co-authored the 2020 casebook Communication Law in the Public Interest. While at Western New England law, he served as scholar-in-residence at the Federal Communications Commission.
Dean Baynes has previously served as Chair of the AALS Standing Committee on Minority Faculty Recruitment and Retention, as Chair of the AALS Section on Minority Groups, on the Planning Committee for the Workshop for New Law Teachers, and as chair and member of several AALS site visit teams.
Dean Baynes has been recognized as one of the top 100 most influential lawyers of color in the nation and was inducted into the Minority Media & Telecommunications Council Hall of Fame. His many awards include the Diversity Trailblazer Award from the New York State Bar Association in 2010; the National Bar Association’s Presidential Leadership Award in 2014; a Council on Legal Education Opportunity EDGE award in 2019; the AALS Section on Minority Groups Clyde Ferguson Award in 2022; and the Columbia Law School Paul Robeson Award in 2022 among others.
Nominee for the Executive Committee
Stacy Leeds is the Willard H. Pedrick Dean, Regents Professor, and Foundation Professor of Law and Leadership at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, Arizona State University. A scholar of Indigenous law and policy and an experienced leader in law, higher education, economic development, and conflict resolution, she is a graduate of Washington University in St. Louis (BA), University of Tulsa College of Law (JD), University of Tennessee Haslam College of Business (MBA), and University of Wisconsin School of Law (LLM). She was the first Indigenous woman to serve as a law school dean when she joined the University of Arkansas School of Law (2011-2018), where she also served as the inaugural Vice Chancellor for Economic Development (2017-2020). Previously, Dean Leeds was an administrator and professor at Universities of Kansas and North Dakota, and a William H. Hastie Fellow at University of Wisconsin.
Dean Leeds has taught a variety of law school courses on Indian and tribal law as well as Property and Remedies. She has also taught graduate school and executive education courses on ethics, intellectual property and trial advocacy and undergraduate courses in tribal sovereignty and Cherokee legal history, among others. She is a co-author of the text Mastering Native American Law and regularly publishes articles, chapters, op-eds, and essays.
Dean Leeds is a former Cherokee Nation Supreme Court Justice. She is a founding board member and treasurer of the US Department of the Interior’s Foundation for America’s Public Lands and is the current President of the Native American Agriculture Fund, a private, charitable trust serving Native farmers and ranchers created from the historic Keepseagle v. Vilsack settlement.
Dean Leeds received the American Bar Association’s Spirit of Excellence Award in 2013 and the AALS Section on Minority Groups Clyde Ferguson, Jr. Award in 2006. She is an elected member of the American Law Institute and the American Philosophical Society. Her previous experience with AALS includes serving on the Program Committee for the 2025 Annual Meeting, and as Chair of the Section on Indian Nations and Indigenous Peoples.