Johanna Bond Named Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at W&L Law School
Johanna Bond, professor of law and Ethan Allen Faculty Fellow at Washington and Lee University School of Law, has been appointed associate dean for academic affairs by Dean Nora Demleitner.
Bond succeeds Robert Danforth, who served as associate dean for five years and will return to the faculty following a sabbatical leave.
“Professor Bond’s commitment to this law school and its forward-looking curriculum, her insights into legal education, and her respected position amongst her colleagues make her an obvious choice for the academic dean position,” said Demleitner. “I am excited about her vision for the position and the next phase of curricular planning as we continue on our path as a cutting-edge law school that educates students to be first-rate legal professionals.”
“I am also deeply grateful to Bob Danforth who has served so admirably for many years, been instrumental in the implementation of our path-breaking third year and now is a wonderful resource in this transition,” Demleitner added.
A distinguished scholar in the area of international human rights law and gender and the law, Bond is a member of the Law Center Committee, the Faculty Appointments Committee, and also served on the Dean’s Search Committee. Bond was recently awarded with the Ethan Allen Faculty Fellowship for Scholarship in recognition of her important contributions to feminist legal theory and international human rights. In 2009, she received the Professor of the Year award from the Women Law Students Organization.
In 2001, Bond was selected as a Senior Fulbright Scholar and traveled to Uganda and Tanzania to conduct research that later resulted in her edited book, Voices of African Women: Women’s Rights in Ghana, Uganda, and Tanzania. Her recent publications include “Honor as Property” in the Columbia Journal of Gender & Law, “Victimization & the Complexity of Gender in Armed Conflict” in the Santa Clara Journal of International Law, and “A Decade After Abu Ghraib: Lessons in ‘Softening Up The Enemy’ and Sex-based Humiliation” in the Journal of Law and Inequality.
“I look forward to serving Washington and Lee in this new capacity,” said Bond. “It is an exciting and challenging time for legal education, and Washington and Lee has established itself as a leader in thinking about how best to meet the changing needs of the profession. I look forward to working with our new dean to continue our commitment to cutting edge and high quality legal education.”
In addition to teaching Torts in the first year, Bond leads an international human rights practicum in W&L’s innovative third-year curriculum. During the class, students learn to apply the primary international and regional human rights treaties to real-world human rights problems. The class, which includes international travel to investigate possible human rights abuses, results in an official human rights report that foreign governments and organizations can use to address the problems.
Prior to joining the faculty of W&L in 2008, Bond was an associate professor of law at the University of Wyoming and before that a visiting associate professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center for several years. She also served as the executive director of the Women’s Law and Public Policy Fellowship Program, a non-profit organization housed at Georgetown.
Before beginning her teaching career, Bond was a law clerk for the Honorable Ann D. Montgomery, United States District Court, District of Minnesota from 1997 to 1998. She holds a B.A. from Colorado College, a J.D. from the University of Minnesota Law School and an LL.M from Georgetown University Law Center.
