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MEET OUR FACULTY
MICHAEL A. SIMONS Dean and John V. Brennan Professor of Law and Ethics
Criminal Law and Evidence
Dean Simons is the longest-tenured dean in New York State. As Dean of the Law School and the John V. Brennan Professor of Law and Ethics, Dean Simons teaches in the areas of criminal law and evidence and has been recognized multiple times by students as Professor of the Year. He has been a frequent lecturer to the bench and bar on both topics. In addition to his work at St. John’s Law, he currently serves on the New York City Mayor’s Advisory Committee on the Judiciary and the New York State Commission on Prosecutorial Conduct.
RENÉE NICOLE ALLEN Race and Social Justice
As a first-generation attorney, Professor Allen is deeply committed to improving access to legal education for historically minoritized groups. She teaches a variety of legal writing courses as well as upper divisions electives such as The Music & The Movement: Race, Rhythm, and Social Justice and Comparative Social Justice: Civil Rights in Italy and the United States. Her most recent law review article, “Get Out: Structural Racism and Academic Terror,” explores racism in the legal academy, and she is currently working on a paper titled “White Gazes in White Spaces: Teaching, Scholarship, and Service While Black.”
ADRIÁN E. ALVAREZ Disability, Immigration, and Family Law
Prior to teaching, Professor Alvarez litigated special education, housing, and health care access cases on behalf of patient families at community health clinics in Washington, D.C. Professor Alvarez was also the Goldberg-Robb Attorney at Public Justice, P.C., a public interest law firm, and a federal law clerk to Hon. David Briones in the Western District of Texas (El Paso Division). Prior to working as an attorney, Professor Alvarez was a humanitarian aid work with Catholic Relief Services in Freetown, Sierra Leone, after the country’s civil war, and in Batticaloa, Sri Lanka, in the year and a half following the 2004 Tsunami. Professor Alvarez focuses his scholarship on disability and its intersection with immigration and family law.
JOHN Q. BARRETT Constitutional Law
Professor Barrett has taught Criminal Procedure: Investigations, Constitutional Law, and a seminar on Nuremberg & Its Legacies in Law & History. He is the Elizabeth S. Lenna Fellow and a Director at the Robert H. Jackson Center in Jamestown, New York. Before joining the the faculty, he was Counselor to Inspector General Michael R. Bromwich at the U.S. Department of Justice and was Associate Counsel in the Office of Independent Counsel Lawrence E. Walsh (Iran/Contra). Professor Barrett speaks regularly about the U.S. Supreme Court, Justice Jackson, Nuremberg, FDR, and other legal and historical topics in public venues and to community, campus, religious, corporate, legal profession, and other audiences and groups throughout the United States and abroad. He is also a national media commentator on legal and historical issues.
CHRISTOPHER BORGEN Space Law and International Law
Professor Borgen teaches, or has taught, International Law, National Security and the Law, International Finance, the International Law Colloquium, the Law of the European Union, the Seminar on States and Sovereignty, Contracts, and Space Law, among other courses. He is the co-founder of Opinio Juris, a blog devoted to discussion, debate, and reports concerning international law. Professor Borgen was named a core expert for the Manual on the International Law of Military Space Operations, colloquially known as The Woomera Manual. Following on previous multinational manual projects concerning the laws applicable to naval warfare, air and missile warfare, and cyber-operations, this project brings together international lawyers and technical experts from around the world to develop a model manual that will objectively articulate and clarify existing international law applicable to military space operations. Professor Borgen received the Order of Civic Merit, the highest honor awarded to a civilian by the Republic of Moldova, for his work on the ongoing separatist conflict there.
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MIRIAM CHERRY Labor and Employment
A prolific scholar, Professor Cherry is the author of over 40 law review articles concerning employment, business, and contract law. She has published several books on labor and work, and is also the author of a contracts casebook, Contracts in the Real World. Professor Cherry has served as a visiting researcher with the United Nations – International Labor Office in Geneva, Switzerland, and is currently writing a report on the employment status of gig workers in the United States. Prior to academia, she clerked for the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts and the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals. As our newest faculty memeber, Professor Cherry is excited to teach students about labor and employment law issues within an institution guided by social justice principles.
CATHERINE BAYLIN DURYEA Human Rights
Professor Duryea is a legal historian who researches human rights, comparative constitutional development, and administrative law. She is particularly interested in institutional constraints on executive power during emergencies, including specialized courts and non-governmental actors. Her work has appeared in leading law journals and the popular press. Professor Duryea teaches Administrative Law, Legal History, and Introduction to Law. She clerked for Hon. Edwin Cameron of the Constitutional Court of South Africa. Before law school, she designed international service-learning programs in Cairo in coordination with refugee services organizations and Egyptian community-based networks.
SHELDON EVANS Criminal Law and Immigration
Prior to teaching, Professor Evans devoted a significant portion of his time in private practice to pro bono advocacy for clients seeking immigration relief and served as a federal law clerk for Hon. Lavenski R. Smith on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. He focuses his scholarship on criminal sentencing and its intersection with immigration policies. His work also follows emerging trends in technology and art, and their intersection with criminal and immigration law. Professor Evans’ scholarship has appeared in the Columbia Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, the California Law Review, the George Washington Law Review, and the Federal Sentencing Reporter, among other academic journals. With Professor Cheryl Wade, he co-hosts the Black Author’s Book Club, which furthers his commitment to antiracism by promoting and discussing books written by Black authors that highlight the Black experience in America and across the African diaspora.
KATE KLONICK Law and Technology
Professor Klonick’s scholarly work on internet law and information privacy has appeared in the Yale Law Journal, Harvard Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal, peer-reviewed Copyright Journal of the U.S.A., Maryland Law Review, and Southern California Law Review. Her popular press writing has appeared in the New Yorker, New York Times, The Atlantic, The Guardian, Lawfare, Slate, Vox and numerous other publications. She is an affiliated fellow at the Yale Law School Information Society Project and a non-resident fellow at the Brookings Institution.
RACHEL SMITH Experiental Education and Legal Writing
Professor Smith is the Associate Dean for Experiential & Skills-Based Education and Professor of Legal Writing. She is the author of two legal writing books: The Handbook for the New Legal Writer (with Jill Barton) and The Legal Writing Survival Guide. Both books aim to demystify the process of legal writing and serve as a source of encouragement for beginning and more experienced legal writers. Professor Smith has presented at national and regional legal writing conferences on topics including teaching with positivity, using popular non-fiction in the legal writing classroom, and the pedagogy of using examples. In addition to Legal Writing, she teaches Legal Research and Civil Rights Advocacy: Critical Reading & Persuasive Writing, among other courses.
CHERYL L. WADE Race and Business
As the Law School’s Dean Harold F. McNiece Professor of Law, Cheryl Wade teaches Issues of Race, Gender and Law, Business Organizations, Corporate Governance and Accountability, and Race and Business. She also co-teaches a highly sought-after, upper-level elective, Lynching: Legal & Dispute Resolution Responses to Violence and co-authored the book Predatory Lending and The Destruction of the African American Dream. Before attending law school, Professor Wade was a teacher of Spanish and bilingual education for the Board of Education of the City of New York. She is a member of the American Law Institute, a national organization of prominent judges, lawyers, and academics who work to clarify, modernize, and reform the law. With Professor Sheldon Evans, she co-hosts the Black Author’s Book Club, which discusses books written by Black authors that highlight the Black experience in America and across the African diaspora.
