A special symposium celebrated Professor Gómez's retirement and honored her groundbreaking career and tremendous impact on Critical Race Studies, UCLA School of Law, and legal and academic communities at large.
Symposium Agenda
View video of the symposium here.
3 p.m. — Welcome
Remarks from
- Michael Waterstone, Dean of UCLA School of Law
- Cheryl I. Harris, Vice Dean for Community, Equality and Justice; Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Professor in Civil Rights and Civil Liberties
- Uriel Saldivar Esteban, J.D. Candidate '25 & Community Service Chair, UCLA Latinx Law Students Association
3:30 p.m. — Manifest Destinies: The Making of the Mexican American Race
Panelists will discuss Professor Gómez's groundbreaking 2007 text, which has been established as an essential resource for understanding the complex history of Mexican Americans and racial classification in the United States.
- Moderator: Jerry Kang, Distinguished Professor of Law; Founding Vice Chancellor for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (2015-20), UCLA School of Law
- Genevieve Carpio, Associate Professor, César E. Chávez Department of Chicana/o Studies, UCLA
- Nicholas Espíritu (Law '04), Deputy Director, Legal, National Immigration Law Center
- Casandra Salgado (Ph.D. Sociology '19), Assistant Professor, Sociology, Arizona State University
4:30 p.m. — Break
4:45 p.m. — Inventing Latinos: A New Story of American Racism
Panelists will discuss Professor Gómez's most recent book exploring the impact of Latinos’ new collective racial identity on the way Americans understand race.
- Moderator: Aslı Ü. Bâli, Professor of Law, Yale Law School
- Walter Allen, Distinguished Professor of Education, Sociology, and African American Studies; Allan Murray Cartter Chair in Higher Education, UCLA School of Education & Information Studies
- Sherene H. Razack, Chair and Distinguished Professor, Gender Studies; Penny Kanner Endowed Chair in Women's Studies, UCLA
- Saúl Sarabia (Law '96), Founder and Director, Solidarity Consulting
5:45 p.m. — Keynote by Laura E. Gómez, Rachel F. Moran Endowed Chair in Law
Introduction by Devon W. Carbado, The Honorable Harry Pregerson Professor of Law, UCLA School of Law (Read by Executive Director of the Critical Race Studies Program Jasleen Kohli, with additional remarks.)
6:30 p.m. — Reception and Dinner in Shapiro Courtyard
Remarks from
- LaToya Baldwin Clark, Professor of Law; Faculty Director, Critical Race Studies Program, UCLA School of Law
- Jasleen Kohli, Executive Director, Critical Race Studies Program, UCLA School of Law
CO-SPONSORS
As the interdependency of human well-being and the wider environment becomes ever more clear, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has turned his attention to the role he can play in ensuring accountability for grave environmental harm under the terms of the Court’s statute. The Promise Europe, its students and faculty partnered with ICC Special Adviser Kevin Jon Heller and the Office of the Prosecutor to support and contribute to the consultation phase of this important process.
Outstanding new members boost law school faculty and administration in 2023–24.
New Tenure-Track Faculty
ARIELA GROSS
Distinguished Professor of Law
New Senior Leaders
TIMOTHY CASEY
Director of Curricular Administration and Professor from Practice
Tim Casey will teach Professional Responsibility and provide support for the non-senate law faculty. He started his teaching career at Columbia Law School, where he established a Criminal Practice Clinic and received the Presidential Award for teaching. He also held an appointment as a professor of law at Case Western Reserve University. And he received a Fulbright award for research and teaching in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Most recently, Casey served as the director of the STEPPS Program and professor in residence at California Western School of Law, where he oversaw an innovative program in legal ethics and lawyering skills. He also was a visiting professor at the University of San Diego School of Law. Before entering legal academia, he practiced law as a public defender in New York City.
Casey is an internationally recognized expert in experiential legal education. His research interests include legal ethics, surveillance and civil liberties, problem-solving courts and experiential pedagogy. He is a co-author of Legal Ethics in the Practice of Law (Carolina Academic Press, Fifth Edition, 2019), and his scholarship has appeared in law reviews including UC Davis Law Review and SMU Law Review. He serves as chair of the Legal Ethics Committee of the San Diego County Bar Association, a board member for local and international non-profit organizations, and a member of the editorial board for the peer-reviewed Clinical Law Review.
He received his B.A. from Boston College, J.D. from UC Law San Francisco and LL.M. from Columbia Law School.
HANNAH GARRY
Executive Director of the Promise Institute and Professor from Practice
Hannah Garry joins UCLA Law as executive director of the Promise Institute for Human Rights and professor from practice. Garry has devoted her legal career to seeking justice and accountability for human rights abuses and atrocity situations across the globe, while making the U.S. a destination for the study and practice of human rights law.
She joins UCLA Law from USC Gould School of Law, where she was clinical professor of law and founding director of the International Human Rights Clinic for 12 years. Her areas of teaching and scholarship include international criminal law, transitional justice, international human rights law and international refugee law. She has supervised student attorneys in the clinic on cases and projects nationally and internationally that address atrocity crimes, refugee rights, fair trial rights, gender justice, human trafficking and systemic racism.
Garry’s career as an international human rights advocate, scholar and teacher took root when she was a graduate student at Oxford University’s Refugee Studies Centre. After graduation, she was hired by Oxford as a field researcher visiting refugee camps throughout Uganda and Kenya for two years where she witnessed and documented first-hand the abuses refugees endure in exile while under the protection of the international community.
Garry has held many other academic and expert legal advisor positions, including in international criminal courts and leading human rights organizations, and she has been quoted widely in major media outlets. Last year, she was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Oslo Law’s PluriCourts Centre in Norway.
Garry earned her J.D. from UC Berkeley and master’s in international affairs from Columbia University.
MELISSA GOODMAN
Executive Director of the Center on Reproductive Health, Law, and Policy
Melissa Goodman joins UCLA Law as the inaugural executive director of the Center on Reproductive Health, Law, and Policy after a five-year tenure as the legal and advocacy director for the ACLU of Southern California. There, Goodman led 60 attorneys across Southern California and oversaw the department’s visioning and strategy, strategic planning, intersectional issue and cross-team collaboration and resource allocation. In doing so, she helped lead statewide legislative, electoral and organizing strategy. She also co- chaired the national ACLU’s Gender Justice Task Force.
Goodman previously spent a decade as the ACLU SoCal’s Audrey Irmas Director of the LGBTQ Gender and Reproductive Justice Project, and as a senior litigation and policy counsel for reproductive and LGBTQ rights at the New York Civil Liberties Union. In those roles, she led and participated in reproductive justice, LGBTQ and gender equity litigation, as well as policy advocacy campaigns. Along the way, Goodman led or co-counseled an array of high-profile cases, including those involving pregnant unaccompanied immigrant minors; gay, bisexual and transgender prisoners; and same-gender couples.
Goodman clerked for Judge Frederic Block of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York. She earned her B.A., magna cum laude, from New York University and her J.D. from NYU School of Law.
New Lecturers
EMILY CHURG
Lecturer in Law
Emily Churg teaches Legal Research and Writing. She previously practiced complex commercial litigation at WilmerHale and ran her own bar exam preparation company. She has also taught legal writing at USC Gould School of Law and undergraduate writing at Arizona State University.
She earned her B.A., with honors, from UC Santa Cruz; her Ph.D. in rhetoric, composition and linguistics from Arizona State; and her J.D., Order of the Coif, from UC Davis School of Law. After law school, she clerked for Judge S. James Otero of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.
THOMAS WANEBO
Lecturer in Law
Thomas Wanebo teaches Legal Analysis, Writing, and Research for LL.M. students. He currently works as a trial attorney at Neighborhood Legal Services of Los Angeles County, defending low-income families against eviction. He began his career as a litigation associate at Irell & Manella in Los Angeles.
Wanebo earned his B.A. from Colorado State University and his J.D. from UCLA Law, where he was a senior editor of the UCLA Law Review. His publications include the article “Remote Killing and the Fourth Amendment: Updating Constitutional Law to Address Expanded Police Lethality in the Robotic Age,” which appeared in the UCLA Law Review.
New Fellows
MELODI DINCER
UCLA Institute for Technology, Law and Policy Fellow
Melodi Dincer will join UCLA Law in January 2024 as a fellow with the UCLA Institute for Technology, Law and Policy. Her work focuses on helping social movements fight algorithmic violence and build transformative futures.
She was previously an appellate advocacy fellow with the Electronic Privacy Information Center and has been a legal research fellow and clinical supervising attorney at NYU School of Law, where she earned her J.D. She earned her B.A. from Brown University.
RUTHIE LAZENBY
Shapiro Fellow in Environmental Law and Policy
As the Shapiro Fellow in Environmental Law and Policy for 2023–25, Ruthie Lazenby will be focusing on energy law and regulation. She was previously a staff attorney in the Environmental Justice Clinic at Vermont Law School and a legal fellow in the environmental justice program at New York Lawyers for the Public Interest.
She earned her B.A. from Wesleyan University and her J.D. from Yale Law School, where she was an editor of the Law and Political Economy Blog.
UCLA Law faculty members publish award-winning books on a wide range of topics. See our faculty's most recent books below.
RICHARD ABEL