About Me
I am currently the Heck Faust Memorial Chair in Constitutional Law at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. Before that, for over a decade, I was the Isadore and Ida Topper Professor of Law.
After graduating from the University of Michigan’s law school, I clerked for Judge Alice Batchelder on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and then worked at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft in NYC.
I left that gig to become a Reginald F. Lewis Fellow for Law Teaching at Harvard Law School, and from there I went back to teach as a Visiting Instructor at Michigan Law. That led to a two-year stint as a Greenwall Fellow in Bioethics and Health Policy at Georgetown University and Johns Hopkins University. During that time, I adjuncted at Georgetown’s law school and taught as a faculty associate at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. I also served as a research fellow at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research.
Since joining the faculty at the Moritz College of Law, I have also been a visiting professor of law at the Georgetown University Law Center, Michigan Law School, and Northwestern’s Pritzker School of Law.
My Writing
My writing focuses largely on questions of inequality as they intersect with law and culture, with a particular eye on sex, gender, sexuality, intimacy, reproduction, death, and love. In addition to current and recent work focused on constitutional developments, I am the co-author of a leading casebook in Family Law and have published numerous articles. More information and links to all of my writing can be found under the writing tab above.
I have also been regularly consulted by domestic and international press on a range of subjects, including constitutional law, family law, LGBTQIA+ rights, and the law and ethics of death and dying. Visit the media tab above to see some of my recent press appearances.
My Teaching
In my teaching I strive to create an inclusive and intellectually stimulating space in which students do not only learn the law, but also critically examine their roles as students and future lawyers, while growing as people.
I regularly teach both traditional doctrinal courses, including Constitutional Law and Family Law, and advanced courses in Constitutional Law Theory and Family Law Theory. I also regularly teach other discussion-based seminars, including Critical Theory/Critical Lawyering, Sexual Violence and the Law, and Social Justice and the Law, a special seminar for first-year law students.
Other courses I have taught in recent years include The Lawyer in the Community, and an innovative course called The Rule of Law in the Age of Legal Change. In years past, I taught Bioethics (including specially dedicated courses on assisted suicide and the right to die), Health Ethics, Critical Perspectives on Health Ethics, and Health Law. I have also taught legal writing.