The AALS Nominating Committee for 2017 Officers and Members of the Executive Committee met at the AALS Office in Washington, D.C. in September to consider nominations from faculty members and deans at AALS member schools. The committee is proud to recommend three individuals whose careers exemplify dedication to teaching, scholarship, and service to AALS and to legal education. At the second meeting of the AALS House of Representatives on Friday, January 6 at 4 p.m., the committee will present the following nominations:
Wendy Collins Perdue
Wendy Collins Perdue is Dean of the University of Richmond School of Law. She received a B.A. from Wellesley College and a J.D. from Duke University School of Law. Her scholarship spans several areas including civil procedure, conflict of laws, land use, and public health, and her publications include two case books as well as book chapters and numerous articles that have appeared in the Virginia Law Review, Northwestern Law Review, Washington Law Review, and the Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics, among other journals.
Before joining the University of Richmond as Dean in 2011, she served as Associate Dean and Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center.
Dean Perdue has held a number of positions within AALS, including Chair of its Membership Review Committee, Chair of the Sections on Civil Procedure and Conflict of Laws, and membership on a prior Nominating Committee. Most recently, from 2013-15, Dean Perdue served a three-year term on the AALS Executive Committee.
Dean Perdue is a former Vice President of the Order of the Coif. She has also served on the Duke Law School Board of Visitors, the Editorial Board of the Journal of Legal Education, and the Board of Governors of the Virginia Bar Association.
Camille A. Nelson
Camille A. Nelson is the Dean of the American University Washington College of Law. She received a B.A. from the University of Toronto, an LL.B. from the University of Ottawa, and an LL.M. from Columbia University. Nelson is an expert on the intersection of critical race theory and cultural studies with particular emphasis on criminal law and procedure, health law, and comparative law.
Dean Nelson has worked to augment discussions of equality and justice in academic areas of culture and race through articles in a variety of publications such as the Journal of Politics and Law, Berkeley Journal of Criminal Law, and Yale Journal of Law & Feminism. During her time at Suffolk University Law School, Dean Nelson was awarded the Trailblazer award by the Black Law Students’ Association and the Malcolm Donahue Award, and the law school’s annual diversity award has been named The Dean Camille A. Nelson Award in honor of her work. In 2013, Dean Nelson was honored as one of the “Top Women of Law” by Lawyers Weekly, and was named to the Power 100 most influential Black attorneys by On Being a Black Lawyer from 2012-2015. She has also received the Ida B. Wells Award from Massachusetts Black Women Lawyers as well as a Faculty Excellence Award during her time at Washington University in St. Louis.
Dean Nelson has previously been appointed to the Senator Elizabeth Warren and Senator Ed Markey Advisory Committee on Massachusetts Judicial Nominations (2013-2015) and was a Boston Bar Association (BBA) Board Member (2012-2014).
Dean Nelson has served AALS in a number of capacities, including as a member of a prior Nominating Committee and the Steering Committee of the Deans Forum, and as co-chair of Section on the Law School Dean.
Erwin Chemerinsky
Dean Chemerinsky is the founding Dean, Distinguished Professor of Law, and Raymond Pryke Professor of First Amendment Law, at the University of California, Irvine School of Law, with a joint appointment in Political Science. He received a Bachelor’s of Science from Northwestern University and a JD from Harvard Law School. His areas of expertise are constitutional law, federal practice, civil rights and civil liberties, and appellate litigation.
Dean Chemerinsky is the author of eight books and more than 200 law review articles. He frequently argues cases before the nation’s highest courts, including the United States Supreme Court, and also serves as a commentator on legal issues for national and local media. He writes a regular column for the Orange County Register, monthly columns for the ABA Journal and the Daily Journal, and frequent op-eds in newspapers across the country.
In January 2014, National Jurist magazine named Dean Chemerinsky as the most influential person in legal education in the United States.
Previously, he taught at Duke Law School for four years, during which he won the Duke University Scholar-Teacher of the Year Award in 2006. Before that, he taught for 21 years at the University of Southern California School of Law. Dean Chemerinsky also taught at UCLA School of Law and DePaul University College of Law.
Dean Chemerinsky’s association with AALS spans decades. He has moderated and spoken at a number of Annual Meeting sessions over the course of nearly 30 years. He has chaired the Section on Federal Courts, and sat on the Planning Committee for the 1990 Annual Meeting Mini-Workshop On Teaching the Law and Ethics of Lawyering Throughout the Curriculum and the Committee to Review Scholarly Papers for the 2007 Annual Meeting. In 2009, he authored “Why Not Clinical Education,” published in the AALS joint publication Clinical Law Review.
