Nine Faculty Members Retire After Storied Careers

After decades of service to the Law School, nine faculty members have announced their retirement. Locke Bowman, Clinical Professor of Law; Robert Burns, William W. Gurley Memorial Professor of Law; David Cameron, Professor of Practice; Thomas Geraghty, Class of 1967 James B. Haddad Professor of Law; James Lindgren, Professor of Law; Nancy Loeb, Clinical Professor of Law; Steven Lubet, Edna B. & Ednyfed H. Williams Memorial Professor of Law; Stephen Sawyer, Clinical Associate Professor of Law; and Matthew Spitzer, Howard and Elizabeth Chapman Professor of Law, all stepped down at the end of the 2021-2022 academic year. The retirees collectively dedicated more than a century to legal education and the legal profession, shaping student experiences, serving clients in the Bluhm Legal Clinic, and contributing to the mission and the future of the Law School.

All nine faculty members were honored in a celebration in May. In her remarks, Dean Osofsky thanked all the retired faculty “for their tremendous contributions to our Law School, scholarship, the profession, and to society. Though this moment of transition means that the role these individuals play in our community will shift, they are still a part of our community.”

Locke Bowman

Clinical Professor of Law

Roderick and Solange MacArthur Justice Center Senior Legal Director

Bowman joined the MacArthur Justice Center in 1992 and served as the executive director for 29 years, overseeing the center’s operations at Northwestern and three other locations. He is one of the nation’s most prominent civil rights attorneys with a long record of success in a wide variety of police misconduct and other criminal justice-related cases. His work has made a critical impact in protecting civil rights and advancing criminal justice.

Thomas Geraghty

Class of 1967 James B. Haddad Professor of Law

Geraghty was vital in developing the clinical legal education program at Northwestern Pritzker Law. In 1967, he was one of a small group of students who spearheaded the creation of an in-house legal clinic. In his practice in the Clinic, Geraghty focused on supervising students in the representation of clients in hearings and trials in Cook County’s juvenile and criminal courts. He was also involved in various criminal justice reform projects. Most recently he has served as interim director of the Law School’s Center for International Human Rights. His work abroad has included support for legal education and the training of clinical teachers in Ethiopia.

James Lindgren

Professor of Law

Lindgren has been a member of the Law School faculty since 1996. He is a cofounder of the Section on Scholarship of the Association of American Law Schools and a former chair of its Section on Social Science and the Law. His work includes “Fall from Grace: Arming America and the Bellesiles Scandal” (Yale Law Journal, 2002) and “Term Limits for the Supreme Court: Life Tenure Reconsidered” (Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, 2006). His impactful scholarship is not only among the most cited by other scholars, but has influenced the Supreme Court. In Evans v. United States in 1992, the SCOTUS adopted Lindgren’s view of the overlap of bribery and federal extortion. He blogs at the Washington Post, and received his PhD in quantitative sociology from the University of Chicago.

Steven Lubet

Edna B. & Ednyfed H. Williams Memorial Professor of Law

Director, Fred Bartlit Center for Trial Advocacy

Lubet has served as the director of the award-winning Fred Bartlit Center for Trial Advocacy, which he founded, for over 30 years. He is the author of 17 books and has written over 500 scholarly and popular articles and essays on legal and judicial ethics, legal history, legal education, and litigation. He wrote the textbook, “Modern Trial Advocacy: Analysis and Practice,” which has been used by more than 90 law schools, and co-authored “Judicial Conduct and Ethics,” the nation’s leading text on the subject. His most recent books include “The Trials of Rasmea Odeh,” “Interrogating Ethnography,” and “The ‘Colored Hero’ of Harper’s Ferry.” In addition to his scholarly writing, Lubet’s humor and opinion pieces have appeared frequently on online platforms including Slate, Salon, the Daily Beast, CNN.com, Politico, The Conversation, The Forward, andNBCNews.com. His op-eds have appeared in the pages of newspapers such as the Chicago Tribune, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and many others.

Stephen Sawyer

Clinical Associate Professor of Law

Sawyer joined the Northwestern Pritzker Law faculty in 2004. During his time at the Law Schoool, he specialized in public international law, teaching a survey course in international human rights law and seminars in comparative international human rights law and the law of war. In addition, Sawyer secured, and now manages, consultative status with the UN’s ECOSOC, which affords NU students and faculty privileged access to UN events worldwide. Prior to coming to Northwestern, Sawyer engaged in a broad practice of law, including service as a prosecutor in the Manhattan Office of the District Attorney and as assistant general counsel at a large multinational corporation where he managed litigation worldwide for the company and acted as its antitrust compliance officer.

Matthew Spitzer

Howard and Elizabeth Chapman Professor of Law

Director, Northwestern University Center on Law, Business, and Economics

Spitzer started his career at Northwestern Pritzker Law as an assistant professor from 1979 to 1981. After spending some time at other law schools around the country, he returned to the Law School in 2013. His scholarly contributions include co-founding the discipline of experimental law and economics, founding the field of social choice theory and law, and advancing the thinking about administrative law and the regulation of telecommunications. Prior to rejoining Northwestern, Spitzer was on both the faculties of Law and Business at the University of Texas. At the University of Texas he served as Director of the Massey Prize in Law, Innovation and Capital Markets and also as the Director of the Center for Law, Business and Economics.

Robert Burns

William W. Gurley Memorial Professor of Law

During his time at Northwestern Pritzker Law, Burns has taught evidence and professional responsibility in the Bartlit Center for Trial Advocacy, and courses in civil, criminal, and administrative procedure. He was voted the Robert Childres Memorial Award for Teaching Excellence three times, received the Dean’s Teaching Award twice, and has been voted the Outstanding Professor of a Small Class. He is author of A Theory of the Trial (Princeton University Press),Kafka’s Law: The Trial and American Criminal Justice (University of Chicago Press), and The Death of the American Trial (University of Chicago Press). The latter received a Choice Outstanding Academic Title Award in the Social and Behavioral Sciences.

David Cameron

Professor of Practice

Associate Director, Tax Program

Cameron has been on the Law School faculty since 2002, working with Philip Postlewaite to establish Northwestern’s LLM in Tax Program. He has been the associate director of the Tax Program since that time. He specializes in the taxation of property transactions and real estate development. He has taught courses at the LLM level including the Taxation of Property Transactions, Advanced Taxation of Property Transactions, Tax Treaties, and Transfer Pricing. He has also taught at the JD level including Federal Income Tax and Property. He is the author and co-author of a number of tax articles and a co-author of a leading treatise on the taxation of intellectual property. For the past four years, he has been the faculty editor of The Tax Lawyer, the academic journal of the ABA’s Section of Taxation.

Nancy Loeb

Clinical Professor of Law

Director, Environmental Advocacy Center

Loeb joined the Law School faculty in 2009. She has expertise in energy law, economics and the environment, regulatory communications and strategy, and antitrust. She is also the founding director of the Environmental Advocacy Clinic. Over the span of her career, she has served as a member of the board of directors of the Environmental Law & Policy Center (Chair), the National Women’s Law Center, and the Chicago Bar Foundation (Chair, Advocacy Committee). She is also a former member of the Illinois Supreme Court Committee on Character and Fitness and the Illinois Supreme Court Planning and Oversight Committee on Judicial Evaluation. She is a member of the Bar in Illinois, New York and Washington, D.C.