Faculty News

We've Got (Faculty) News!

In the past several years, we have welcomed over a dozen new full-time faculty members at St. John's Law. Each brings a range of gifts as teachers and scholars that makes the Law School immeasurably better. And, together, they are part of a transformation of our faculty that will propel St. John’s forward into its second century of excellence, prominence, and impact.

Here, we introduce you to our newest faculty members and to faculty members who received promotions and named professorships recently. 

Recent Hires

Ashley B. Armstrong joins the St. John's Law faculty from the University of Connecticut School of Law. She previously taught at New York University Law School and the Georgetown University Law Center. Her scholarship focuses on refugee and human rights law, legal skills pedagogy, and lawyer well-being. Prior to entering academia, Professor Armstrong served as chief operating officer at the National Whistleblower Center and the inaugural Hillary Rodham Clinton Law Fellow at the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security. She has volunteered with UNHCR’s Global Learning Center in Budapest, Amnesty International, Human Rights First, and the Human Rights Foundation.

Anna Arons came to St. John’s from NYU School of Law, where she was an Acting Assistant Professor of Lawyering and the Impact Project Director of NYU’s Family Defense Clinic. Her scholarship focuses on the government’s regulation and policing of families and the intersection of parental rights and race, gender, and poverty. Her most recent article, “The Empty Promise of the Fourth Amendment in the Family Regulation System,” appears in the Washington University Law Review. Prior to entering academia, Professor Arons was a public defender in the family defense practice of Neighborhood Defender Services of Harlem. At St. John’s, she teaches Criminal Law, Evidence, and courses related to family law.

Noa Ben-Asher joined our faculty from the Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University, where they were the James D. Hopkins Professor of Law. Professor Ben-Asher is a leading scholar of law, gender, and sexuality whose work has appeared in the Harvard Journal of Law & Gender, the Yale Journal of Law & Feminism, the Columbia Journal of Gender & the Law, the Stanford Journal of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, the Washington University Law Review, the Boston College Law Review, the Ohio State Law Journal, the Cardozo Law Review, the Notre Dame Law Review Online, the Tulane Law Review, and the Family Law Quarterly. Their forthcoming book, Secular-Christian Social Justice, will be published by NYU Press. Professor Ben-Asher will be teaching Torts, Family Law, and Law, Gender & Sexuality.

Miriam A. Cherry, a scholar of contracts, employment law, and the future of work, joined the St. John’s Law faculty from Saint Louis University School of Law, where she served as Associate Dean for Research & Engagement and as Co-Director for the William C. Wefel Center for Employment Law. A prolific scholar, Professor Cherry is the author of over 40 law review articles concerning employment, business, and contract law topics. She is also the co-editor of Invisible Labor (University of California Press) and the author of Work in the Digital Age (Aspen) and the second edition of Contracts in the Real World (West Academic). Professor Cherry is writing a book about online labor activism and a report for the United Nations-International Labor Office on the status of gig workers in the United States. At St. John’s, she teaches Contracts, Business Organizations, and Employment Law.

Tyler Rose Clemons (she/her) is an Assistant Professor of Law. She teaches evidence and constitutional law. Professor Clemons writes about the interactions between the law and the lived experiences of marginalized people. She joined the St. John’s Law faculty from NYU School of Law, where she was an Acting Assistant Professor of Lawyering. Before entering academia, Professor Clemons was a staff attorney at the Southern Poverty Law Center in New Orleans. She graduated summa cum laude from the University of Mississippi and received her J.D. magna cum laude from Georgetown University Law Center.

Elissa Germaine was the director of the Investor Rights Clinic at Elizabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University for over a decade. As one of our newest faculty members, she is the Associate Director of our in-house Securities Arbitration Clinic, teaching students lawyering skills while representing underserved investors in arbitration claims before the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA). An expert in securities arbitration, Professor Germaine is an appointed member of the SEC’s Investor Advisory Committee and FINRA’s National Arbitration and Mediation Committee. Before joining academia, she was a securities litigator at a major law firm in San Francisco and a law clerk to a federal judge in San Diego. 

Louis Jim joins the faculty as an Associate Professor of Legal Writing. Previously, he taught legal writing at Brooklyn Law School, where he served as faculty advisor to the Moot Court Honor Society and Prince Evidence Competition. He was also on the faculty of Albany Law School, where he received the Friend of the Graduating Class of 2021 Award. Professor Jim is active in the Asian American academic community. He served as Co-Chair of the Academic Committee of the Asian American Bar Association of New York; authored the hypothetical for the 2021 Thomas Tang Moot Court Competition; and moderated a panel on Amplifying Asian Voices as faculty advisor to Albany Law’s Asian Pacific American Law Students Association.

Martin J. LaFalce joined the St. John’s Law faculty in January 2022 after 14 years as a public defender with the Legal Aid Society of New York. Most recently, he worked as a policy attorney in Legal Aid’s Criminal Defense Practice, coordinating their legislative reform agenda before the New York City Council and the New York State Legislature. At. St. John’s, Professor LaFalce directs our in-house Defense and Advocacy Clinic and teaches Criminal Law.

Philip Lee came to St. John’s Law from UDC David A. Clarke School. His scholarship focuses on academic freedom, diversity and educational access, higher education law, and property law and race, and his work has appeared in a wide variety of law reviews, including Emory, Ohio State, West Virginia, Utah, and St. Louis. Professor Lee earned his doctorate at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and also served as Assistant Director of Admissions at Harvard Law School, where he led the office’s diversity outreach initiatives for four years. Before joining academia, he was a trial attorney in New York City for five years—first in the New York City Law Department and later at a white-collar criminal defense boutique. He teaches Civil Rights & Civil Liberties, Race and the Law, and Education Law.

Evelyn Malavé joins the St. John’s Law faculty from the Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University, where she was an Associate Professor. Her research focuses on under-scrutinized levers of decision-making and power in state criminal courts, with an emphasis on problem-solving courts. Her article, "Distorted Narratives in the Treatment Program Complex," is forthcoming in the Fordham Law Review. Prior to entering academia, she was a public defender at the Legal Aid Society of New York in Brooklyn and Queens. At St. John’s, she teaches Torts and Criminal Law. 

Mark C. Niles joined the faculty in January 2023, teaching Civil Procedure, Administrative Law, and Constitutional Law. A former dean of Seattle University School of Law, Professor Niles was a longtime faculty member and Associate Dean at American University School of Law. Most recently, he has been on the faculty at the Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University. He is the author of a popular Administrative Law casebook, as well as numerous law review articles on administrative law, civil procedure, civil rights, and race. His recent article, “A New Balance of Evils: Prosecutorial Misconduct, Iqbal and the End of Absolute Immunity,” appears in the Stanford Journal of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.

Colleen Parker '03 serves on the Law School’s full-time faculty as an Assistant Professor of Legal Writing. Already well known to our students, she has taught a variety of courses as an adjunct professor, including Legal Writing I, Legal Writing II, Public Interest Drafting, and the Externship Seminar. She was also an Assistant Director in our Office of Career Development for several years. Before starting her teaching career, Professor Parker spent seven years as a litigator at a major New York law firm, an additional seven years as an education attorney representing children with disabilities, and five years as an impartial hearing officer with the New York City Department of Education.

Abel Rodríguez, an expert on sanctuary and asylum as well as the intersection of criminal and immigration law, came to St. John’s from Villanova, where he directed the Clinic for Asylum, Refugee, and Emigrant Services. He was also a Lecturer-in-Law at Penn and an Associate Professor of Religion, Law, and Social Justice at Cabrini University. Before becoming a full-time academic, Professor Rodriguez served as a staff attorney at Nationalities Service Center and an immigration specialist at the Defender Association of Philadelphia. He was also the Langer, Grogan, and Diver Fellow in Social Justice at Esperanza Immigration Legal Services. At St. John’s, Professor Rodriguez teaches Criminal Law, Immigration Law, and Crimmigration.

Benjamin Sundholm joins St. John’s Law from Tulane Law School, where he was a Forrester Fellow. Prior to his role at Tulane, he was a Fellow of Medical Ethics at the Medical College of Cornell University. His scholarship focuses on the revisions to traditional tort doctrines that are needed in response to the use of increasingly sophisticated artificial intelligence technologies in a variety of contexts, including healthcare. He is also interested in questions about the nature of law. His most recent article, “Navigating the Frontiers of MedTech,” will appear in the Arizona State Law Journal. At St. John’s, he teaches torts, bioethics, and courses related to AI & the law.

Recently Promoted Faculty

Reneé Nicole Allen, who joined the St. John’s Law faculty in 2019, has been promoted to Associate Professor of Legal Writing. She has also been named the inaugural director of the St. John’s Law Center for Race and Law. Professor Allen’s scholarship, which focuses on race, social justice, and legal education, has appeared in the UCLA Law Review, the Rutgers Law Review, and the William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice. In addition to Legal Writing, she teaches Public Interest Drafting, Music and the Movement, and Race & the Law.

Kate Klonick, one of the nation’s leading scholars of online speech governance and content moderation in social media, has been tenured and promoted to Associate Professor of Law. Her law review articles have appeared in the Harvard Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, the Southern California Law Review, and the Maryland Law Review. A frequent commenter in the media, Professor Klonick’s own journalism has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, The Atlantic, The Guardian, Lawfare, Slate, Vox, and numerous other publications. At St. John’s, she teaches Property, Internet Law, and a seminar on information privacy.

Courtney Selby, the Associate Dean for Library Services at St. John’s Law, has been promoted to Professor of Legal Research. She joined our faculty in 2019 after serving on the faculty and as library director at the Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University. At St. John’s, in addition to her work in our Rittenberg Law Library, Dean Selby teaches advanced legal research courses, with an emphasis on helping a new generation of legal professionals build strategy-based and practice-ready research skills. She also developed and teaches our required second-year Legal Research course.

New Named Professorships

John Q. Barrett has been appointed the Benjamin N. Cardozo Professor of Law. The biographer of U.S. Supreme Court Justice and Nuremberg prosecutor Robert H. Jackson, Professor Barrett also serves as the Elizabeth S. Lenna Fellow and a Director at the Robert H. Jackson Center in Jamestown, NY. A frequent lecturer on the U.S. Supreme Court, Justice Jackson, Nuremberg, FDR, and other legal and historical topics, Professor Barrett is the editor of Justice Jackson’s previously unknown manuscript, That Man: An Insider’s Portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt, as well as the author of articles in the Journal of Supreme Court History, the Journal of Law, The Green Bag, and many law reviews. He also writes The Jackson List, which reaches many thousands of subscribers around the world. Professor Barrett teaches Constitutional Law, Criminal Procedure, and Legal History at the Law School.

Rachel H. Smith, the Vice Dean for Student Success at St. John’s Law, has been appointed the Mary C. Daly Professor of Legal Writing. Dean Smith, who served on the faculty at the University of Miami School of Law and Santa Clara University School of Law previously, is the author of two legal writing books: The Handbook for the New Legal Writer (with Jill Barton) and The Legal Writing Survival Guide. At St. John’s, she teaches Legal Writing, Introduction to Law, Legal Research, Professional Responsibility, and Law & Literature.