School of Law Welcomes New Faculty for 2009-10 Academic Year
Washington and Lee University School of Law will welcome five new teachers to the permanent faculty for the upcoming academic year.
James E. Moliterno will join W&L as Vincent Bradford Professor of Law. One of the nation’s leading educators in experiential learning and legal professionalism, Moliterno was the architect of William and Mary law school’s award winning ethics, skills and professionalism program, which won the 1991 American Bar Association Gambrell Professionalism Award, as the best law school or bar association program for the teaching of ethics and professionalism.
Moliterno is the author of numerous works examining legal education and professional responsibility, including The Law of Professional Responsibility, Cases and Materials on the Law Governing Lawyers and Ethics of the Lawyers Work. Among his recent projects, Professor Moliterno has worked with USAID Rule of Law project in Serbia to establish legal skills training programs. At W&L, Moliterno will teach all sections of professional responsibility and a third-year practicum course. He will also have a leadership role in guiding the school through the implementation of its new third-year curriculum.
Several of the incoming professors served as visiting professors at the School of Law this year. Erik Luna, Hugh B. Brown Professor of Law and Co-director of the Utah Criminal Justice Center at the S.J. Quinney College of Law at the University of Utah, will join W&L as professor of law. An expert in the U.S. criminal justice system and comparative criminal justice, Luna’s varied experience includes service as a Fulbright Scholar teaching restorative justice in New Zealand and as a visiting scholar in Germany at the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law, the world’s foremost center for the comparative study of criminal law and procedure.
Christopher Bruner, who visited at the School of Law last semester and is currently conducting research in the area of comparative corporate law as a visitor to the faculty of law at Cambridge University, will join W&L as an associate professor of law. Bruner is a corporate law specialist and will teach courses in securities regulation, business entities, and business ethics, among other courses. Prior to entering academic life, he practiced with Ropes & Gray LLP in Boston, where he worked with private and public companies on a range of corporate, transactional, and securities matters.
The School of Law will also add two tax specialists to the permanent faculty. Jeffrey Kahn, currently at Penn State Dickinson School of Law, will join W&L as professor of law. Kahn teaches and researches in the area of federal taxation. He has taught personal income tax, corporate tax, partnership tax and international tax courses and has published articles in many law reviews including pieces on tax policy and horizontal equity, the taxation of gifts, the charitable contribution deduction, and the tax consequences to a reality television candidate.
The final addition to the faculty, Michelle Drumbl, is a familiar face and already a great asset to the law school and the W&L community. Drumbl has served W&L as a visiting professor of law and special assistant to the provost. She joins the permanent faculty as assistant clinical professor of law and director of the Tax Clinic. Her dedication to growing the clinic has already lead to back-to-back annual grants from the IRS to help offset operating costs for this important community service.
Prior to joining Washington and Lee, Drumbl worked at the Internal Revenue Service Office of Chief Counsel, where she focused on legal interpretation of bilateral income tax treaties and other cross-border taxation issues.
