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Faculty
OUR EXCEPTIONAL FACULTY
At RWU Law, students benefit from professors with national reputations for excellent scholarship, as well as adjuncts at the top of their fields. Here’s the latest on a few of our full-time faculty members.
This year, Professor Jared Goldstein completed a book, Real Americans: National Identity, Violence, and the Constitution, published in December 2021 by the University Press of Kansas. In the book, Goldstein lays out “the well-established pattern of movements devoted to defending the power of dominant racial, ethnic, and religious groups that deploy the rhetoric of constitutional devotion to express their national visions and justify their violence.”
“My book is about the role of the Constitution in American nationalism,” Goldstein explained. “That is, the way that devotion to the Constitution is often seen as the embodiment of what it means to be American.” One review noted, “Goldstein’s seminal study is essential reading for anyone hoping to understand some of the most disturbing currents of contemporary American politics.”
Goldstein also made headlines in 2020 representing ICE detainees at the Wyatt Detention Center in Central Falls R.I., together with RWU Law’s Professor Deborah Gonzalez and the Rhode Island ACLU. On campus, he was deeply involved in the law school’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the ABA reaccreditation site visit, and helping RWU Law carry out its Strategic Planning for Diversity & Inclusion.
MONESTIER TAKES ON AMAZON
“Did you know that if the goods you purchase on Amazon turn out to be defective and cause serious personal injury, Amazon is probably not liable for them?” Professor Tanya Monestier asks in one of her latest articles, forthcoming in Cornell Law Review.
Amazon, she explains in the article, seeks to avoid liability for dangerous and defective third-party goods sold on its platform, claiming that it does not hold title to the goods in question. Pushing back, Monestier argues that “Amazon looks like a seller, acts like a seller, and convinces buyers it is a seller. Amazon probably is a seller and should be estopped from arguing otherwise.”
Monestier is a productive scholar and popular faculty member—she has been Professor of the Year (2018), Distinguished Teaching Professor of Law (2018-2019), and Distinguished Research Professor of Law (2018-2020). Monestier also has a book in the works: Sh*t No One Tells You About Law School is scheduled to be published by Carolina Academic Press in 2022. Geared in large part to first-generation students, it takes a direct, no-nonsense approach to doing well in law school.
HEYMAN AT THE INTERSECTION OF CON LAW AND CORPORATE LAW
Professor Jonathan Gutoff is RWU Law’s nationally recognized go-to expert on all things Admiralty and Marine Law related.
“Lately,” he said, “I’ve been devoting a substantial amount of time to a grant from the National Science Foundation through the University of Washington.” Gutoff provides risk-management advice to the University-National Oceanographic Laboratory System (UNOLS), a consortium of institutions that run research vessels, and other institutions that do oceanographic research but do not own research vessels. “My advice covers a range of subjects, including regulation of shipping, international law, personal injury, and labor issues,” Gutoff said. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Gutoff often found himself “writing memos and discussing issues around mandating testing and vaccines on research vessels” and related concerns.
In addition to his teaching duties, Gutoff—along with Adjunct Professor Robert Falvey—spends “a good bit of time coaching our Admiralty Moot Court teams, which have been very successful.” In 2019, a team of RWU Law 3Ls swept the premier admiralty law tournament in the United States.
Upon joining RWU Law, Professor Susan Schwab Heyman brought her extensive experience as a transactional lawyer with Debevoise & Plimpton LLP, where she focused on mergers and acquisitions and securities offerings.
“My scholarship focuses on the intersectionality of constitutional law and corporate law,” Heyman explained. She recently published articles considering how several securities regulations—including Regulation Fair Disclosure and the Quiet Period Rules—hinder corporate free speech. “I demonstrated that, since these regulations restrict the transmission of truthful information by corporations, they are problematic from a First Amendment perspective,” Heyman said.
Currently she is working on a piece that raises normative and policy considerations for extending the right against self-incrimination to corporations. Heyman was recently named RWU Law’s Director of Business Law Programs, in which capacity she advises students interested in pursuing careers in business law and organizes speakers to present on transactional lawyering.
LOGAN CHALLENGES NEW YORK TIMES V. SULLIVAN
Professor and former RWU Law Dean David A. Logan enjoyed a rock-star moment last summer, on the final day of the U.S. Supreme Court’s term.
In an 11-page dissent to the Court’s denial of certiorari in Berisha v. Lawson, Justice Neil Gorsuch argued that the court should have heard a challenge to its landmark 1964 holding in New York Times v. Sullivan. His argument relied on a recent law review article by Logan, citing it no fewer than 16 times. opinion that so closely tracks a law review article.” The story spread nationally and internationally, picked up by The Economist, the Boston Globe, NPR’s On Point and Morning Edition, and many others.
Logan also played a central role in organizing RWU Law’s extraordinary online presentation, “Incitement, Insurrection, and Impeachment: Inside the Second Trump Impeachment Trial,” featuring Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Representative David Cicilline, and Professor Michael Gerhardt, which drew more than 500 attendees.
