The AALS Nominating Committee for 2020 Officers and Members of the Executive Committee met in September to consider nominations from faculty members and deans at AALS member schools. The Committee received a number of nominations for the positions to be filled. The individuals they recommend are not only accomplished teacher-scholars, each has also been a highly capable volunteer for AALS. At the Meeting of the House of Representatives at the AALS Annual Meeting in Washington, DC on Saturday, January 4, 2020, the Committee will present these nominees to the House.
Vincent D. Rougeau has been the Dean of Boston College Law School since 2011. He received his AB magna cum laude from Brown University in 1985 and his JD in 1988 from Harvard Law School, where he was the articles editor of the Harvard Human Rights Journal.
Dean Rougeau practiced at Morrison & Foerster before joining Loyola University Chicago School of Law from 1991-1998. Dean Rougeau served as a professor of law at Notre Dame from 1998-2011, where he also served as Associate Dean of Academic Affairs from 1999-2002. At Boston College Law School, he has helped to reorganize leadership to improve student services and make a more diverse student body through the improvement and expansion of organizations like BC Law’s Center for Experiential Learning and the Global Practice Program.
Throughout his career, Dean Rougeau has taught first-year contracts, real estate transactions, and seminars in Catholic social teaching and immigration and multiculturalism. His current research and writing centers around the connections between religious identity and democratic citizenship in societies in increasingly multicultural societies. He has extensively studied Catholic social thought, and he has applied his research and studies in his book Christians in the American Empire: Faith and Citizenship in the New World Order, which was published by Oxford University Press.
Dean Rougeau has been involved with AALS in several capacities, including as a member of the Executive Committee from 2016-2019. He also currently serves as the chair of the AALS Deans Forum Steering Committee. Dean Rougeau also served on the Planning Committee for the 2018 Deans Forum Program at the AALS Annual Meeting.
Dean Rougeau is a member of the Council for the Boston Bar Association. He is also a member of the American Law Institute. He currently serves as a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Theology and Community (CTC) in London doing research about broad-based community organizing, immigration, and citizenship in the UK as part of the Just Communities Project, a collaboration between Boston College and the CTC.
Austen L. Parrish is the current Dean and James H. Rudy Professor of Law at Indiana University Maurer School of Law. He is a graduate of the University of Washington (BA, 1994) and Columbia University School of Law (JD, 1997), where he was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar. Prior to entering the academy, he was an attorney at O’Melveny and Myers in Los Angeles. Before joining Indiana University, he held a variety of positions at Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles, including interim dean and CEO, vice dean, and the Irwin R. Buchalter Professor of Law.
Dean Parrish has taught a wide variety of courses throughout his career, including Civil Procedure, Constitutional Law, Federal Courts, Transnational Law, International Environmental Law, and Public International Law. His research and teaching interests primarily focus on transnational law and transnational litigation. He has co-authored two books, written many scholarly articles, and been published in leading law reviews.
Dean Parrish is the current chair of the AALS Membership Review Committee and served as a member of the faculty/programming committee for the AALS 2019 New Deans Workshop. He is a member of the board of directors at AccessLex Institute and was appointed to the Study Commission on the Future of the Indiana Bar Examination in 2019. Previously, he served as a member of the Indianapolis Bar Association’s Bar Exam Improvements Task Force. Southwestern Law School’s Alumni Board awarded him with the Outstanding Friend Award in 2014, and in 2018, he was named Class of 1942 Wells Scholars Professor.
Melanie D. Wilson is the Dean and Lindsay Young Distinguished Professor of Law at University of Tennessee College of Law. Dean Wilson is a graduate of the University of Georgia with a degree in journalism (BA, magna cum laude, 1987) and University of Georgia School of Law (JD, magna cum laude, 1990), where she was a member of the Order of the Coif. Before entering the academy, Dean Wilson clerked for a federal district court judge and practiced in both the public and private sectors for 13 years. Additionally, she served as professor of law, associate dean for academic affairs, and director of diversity and inclusion at the University of Kansas School of Law. She was previously an adjunct professor at Emory University School of Law and an associate professor at Atlanta’s John Marshall Law School.
Dean Wilson has taught a variety of courses, including Criminal Procedure, Criminal Law, and the Art of Advocacy. Wilson has co-authored several books about criminal procedure, her most recent being Gilbert Law Summaries, Criminal Procedure, 19th Edition with past AALS President Paul Marcus. She has also authored numerous essays and articles about criminal law and procedure. Dean Wilson was a member of the AALS Nominating Committee in 2017-18. She also was a speaker at “Gender Disparities in the Federal Justice System,” at the AALS Workshop on “Women Rethinking Equality,” in June 2011. Dean Wilson is actively involved in the legal community of Tennessee and is a member of both the Tennessee Lawyers’ Association for Women, Marion Griffin Chapter and the East Tennessee Lawyers’ Association for Women. She received the Howard M. and Susan Immel Award for Teaching Excellence at the University of Kansas School of Law in 2011. She was also named Outstanding Woman Educator of 2015 by the University of Kansas.
