The AALS Nominating Committee for 2018 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 5 at 4:30 p.m., the committee will present the following nominations:
Vicki Jackson, Thurgood Marshall Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School
Vicki Jackson is the Thurgood Marshall Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School. She received a B.A. from Yale College and a J.D. from Yale Law School. Jackson’s scholarship focuses on U.S. constitutional law, federal courts, and comparative constitutional law; she has written on constitutional aspects of federalism, gender equality, election law, free speech, sovereign immunity, courts and judicial independence, methodological challenges in comparative constitutional law, and other topics.
She is the author of Constitutional Engagement in a Transnational Era, and coauthor of Comparative Constitutional Law, a leading casebook in the field, among numerous other books and published articles. Her scholarly projects include normative conceptions of the role of elected representatives in a democracy, governmental standing, and proportionality in constitutional law and interpretation.
Before joining Harvard, Jackson practiced law in private practice, taught at Georgetown University Law Center, and served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel in the U.S. Department of Justice. She previously clerked for Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.
Jackson has held a number of positions within AALS including a three-year term on the AALS Executive Committee, creating and chairing the Transnational Advisory Group, and chairing the Federal Courts Section.
Professor Jackson is a member of the American Law Institute and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is a former member of the Executive Committee of the International Association of Constitutional Law, the Board of Managerial Trustees of the International Association of Women Judges, and the D.C. Bar Board of Governors
Mark Alexander, Dean and Professor of Law at Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law
Mark Alexander is Dean and Professor of Law at Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law. He received his B.A and J.D. from Yale University and Yale Law School. His areas of expertise include constitutional law, criminal procedure, election law, criminal law, and the First Amendment, with specific research interests in constitutional dimensions of election law and campaign reform.
Dean Alexander is the author of two books and numerous chapters; law review articles in journals such as Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Stanford Law & Policy Review, and NYU Review of Law & Social Change; and shorter articles in national and local media, for which he is also a sought-after political and legal commentator. He was named Professor of the Year several times in his two decades on the faculty of Seton Hall Law School.
Dean Alexander was previously a Program in Law and Public Affairs (LAPA) Fellow at Princeton University, a Fulbright scholar at Universidad Carlos III in Madrid, Spain, and a visiting scholar at Yale Law School. His involvement in national politics has spanned decades, from his time as a campaign aide for Ted Kennedy in the late 1980s to serving as General Counsel for Cory Booker’s Mayoral campaign. He also served as Policy Director and Senior Advisor to Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, as well as on the Justice & Civil Rights team on the presidential transition. Dean Alexander has been involved with AALS as a member of the Sections on Constitutional Law, Criminal Justice, and Minority Groups.
Gillian Lester, Dean and Lucy G. Moses Professor of Law at Columbia Law School
Gillian Lester is Dean and Lucy G. Moses Professor of Law at Columbia Law School. She received her B.Sc. from the University of British Columbia, her LL.B. from the University of Toronto Faculty of Law, and her J.S.D. from Stanford Law School. Dean Lester is an expert in employment law and policy with a particular emphasis on workplace intellectual property, public finance, and social insurance programs.
Dean Lester is the author or editor of five books as well as a number of chapters and articles on employment policy and labor law that have appeared in law reviews such as Tax Law Review and Comparative Law & Policy Journal. Her earlier articles published in the Harvard Journal of Law and Gender, UCLA Law Review, Indiana Law Journal, and Stanford Law Review have been excerpted and reprinted in various casebooks.
Dean Lester has previously been a faculty member at Berkeley Law, where she served as acting Dean, Alexander F. and May T. Morrison Professor of Law, and Werner and Mimi Wolfen Research Professor. She also co-directed the Berkeley Center for Health, Economic, and Family Security. Prior to her appointment at Berkeley, Lester was the Sidley Austin Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School, Sloan Fellow at Georgetown University Law Center, and a member of the faculty of UCLA Law School.
She has been a member of the Legal Aid Society of New York Board of Directors since 2014, and is on the Executive Board of the U.S. branch of the International Society for Labor and Social Security Law. She is also a member of the American Law Institute.
Dean Lester has been associated with AALS in several capacities, including serving on the planning committee for the 1999 Workshop on Work, Workers, and the Law in the 21st Century. She also served on to the Nominating Committee for 2017 AALS President-Elect and Members of the AALS Executive Committee.
