Five Northwestern Pritzker School of Law Faculty Members Appointed to Endowed Professorships

On November 5, 2025, Northwestern Pritzker School of Law hosted an installation ceremony in Lincoln Hall celebrating five faculty members’ scholarly accomplishments and their recent appointments to endowed professorships: Zachary D. Clopton as the Daniel Hale Williams Professor of Law, Myriam Gilles as Catherine Waugh McCulloch Professor of Law, Paul A. Gowder as Frederic P. Vose Professor of Law, Jill R. Horwitz as the Trobman Innovation Professor of Law, and Alex Lee as the Howard Friedman ’64 JD Professor of Law.

Established professorships recognize senior faculty members for their significant scholarly work and serve as a lasting commemoration of the benefactor who creates them. Northwestern University Provost Kathleen Hagerty led the proceedings, with each honoree introduced by a faculty colleague.

The ceremony highlighted the major scholarly contributions of Dean Clopton and Professors Gilles, Gowder, Horwitz, and Lee. The five professors shared the impact of the honor as they officially accepted their chairs.

More information on the Law School’s faculty chairs can be found on our website. Read the descriptions of the endowed professorships and the honorees’ full biographies below:

Zachary Clopton
Daniel Hale Williams Professorship
This professorship was established at Northwestern University to honor Daniel Hale Williams (1856-1931), the first African-American to receive an MD degree from the Chicago Medical College, which became Northwestern Medical School. A pathbreaker in his efforts to train and develop Black physicians and nurses, Williams founded Chicago’s Provident Hospital, the first nonsegregated hospital in the United States. He is also credited with performing the first successful open-heart surgery.

On July 22, Zachary D. Clopton became Interim Dean and Daniel Hale Williams Professor at Northwestern Pritzker Law. He is a nationally recognized scholar of civil procedure, complex litigation, and international litigation. In 2023, Chief Justice John Roberts appointed Clopton to the Advisory Committee on Civil Rules. He is also an elected member of the American Law Institute. Clopton joined the Law School as a Professor of Law in 2019. He has served in various roles at the Law School including Associate Dean of Academic Programs and Associate Dean of Research and Intellectual Life. Clopton earned a BA from Yale University, an MPhil in International Relations from Cambridge University, where he was a Gates Foundation Scholar, and a JD from Harvard Law School.

Myriam Gilles
Catherine McCullough Professorship

This professorship was established to recognize Catherine McCulloch (1862-1945), a lawyer and suffragist from Evanston. The first woman elected Justice of the Peace in Illinois, she also advocated for changing in guardianship, age of consent, and divorce laws to benefit women.

Myriam Gilles joins the faculty of the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law as the Catharine Waugh McCulloch Professor of Law, after serving on the faculty of the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law since 1997, where she held the Paul R. Verkuil Research Chair in Public Law. Professor Gilles teaches and writes in the areas of civil procedure, complex litigation and torts, and is currently the fifth most-cited civil procedure scholar in the country. Her work has appeared in the nation’s leading law reviews, and she has testified before Congress multiple times as an expert on forced arbitration and consumer protection. Gilles scholarship has been supported by the Robert L. Habush Endowment Fund of the American Association for Justice, and she has received various honors, including the Pound Civil Justice Institute’s Award for Best Article (2018) and the Berkeley Civil Justice Research Initiative’s Best Publication Prize (2025). Professor Gilles has held visiting appointments at the University of Virginia School of Law and at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School. She began her career as a litigation associate at Kirkland & Ellis.

Paul Gowder 
Frederic P. Vose Professorship

The Vose Chair was established in 1966 through a bequest from Lucy Mason Vose in memory of her husband, a Chicago attorney and member of the class of 1894.

Paul Gowder’s research interests and teaching portfolio include the rule of law, democratic theory, torts, constitutional law, and classical Athenian law and political thought. Professor Gowder has authored three books, including The Networked Leviathan: For Democratic Platforms published in 2023, and dozens of peer-reviewed and law review articles. Recognition of his scholarship includes his receipt of the Dorothy Ann and Clarence L. Ver Steeg Distinguished Research Fellowship Award in 2022 and his election to the American Law Institute in 2020. Professor Gowder joined the faculty at Northwestern Pritzker Law in 2020 after serving on the faculty of the University of Iowa College of Law as Professor of Law and O.K. Patton Fellow in Law. He practiced law at the Oregon Law Center and Victor M. Glasberg and Associates before beginning his career in academia. Professor Gowder earned his JD from Harvard Law School and his PhD in Political Science from Stanford University.

Jill Horwitz
Trobman Innovation Professorship

Established in 2023 through the generosity of Richard M. Trobman (JD ’91) and Sandra Trobman to provide support for a professorship at Northwestern Pritzker Law, the Trobman Professorship is to be held by an interdisciplinary scholar whose work bridges the law-STEM interface and/or helps to advance needed innovation in the law.

Jill Horwitz joined Northwestern Pritzker Law as the Trobman Innovation Professor with a joint appointment as a Professor of Emergency Medicine at the Feinberg School of Medicine, after serving as the Jack N. Pritzker Visiting Professor of Law at Northwestern Pritzker Law. Her research and teaching portfolio includes Health Law and Policy, Nonprofit Law, and Torts. She is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and was the Reporter on the American Law Institute’s Restatement First of Charitable Nonprofit Organizations. She joined UCLA in 2012, where she was the David Sanders Professor in Law and Medicine, founded the Lowel Milken Center for Philanthropy and Nonprofits, and was Professor of Public Affairs (by courtesy) at the Luskin School of Public Affairs. She was previously Professor of Law at the University of Michigan. Horwitz was a law clerk to the Honorable Norman Stahl of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. She earned her JD, MPP, and PhD from Harvard University, and she earned her BA in History at Northwestern.

Alex Lee

Howard Friedman ’64 JD Professorship
Established in 2022 by Linda Friedman Meadow (BS ’89, JD ’92) and Cary Meadow in honor of Linda’s father, Howard Friedman, a 1964 Law School graduate. The Friedman Professor has a focus on transactional law in the areas of real estate, tax, and/or corporate law.

Alex Lee is a Professor of Law and the Director of the Center on Law, Business, and Economics. His research interests and teaching portfolio include securities regulation, business associations, administrative law, and law and economics. He has authored and co-authored dozens of scholarly articles and book chapters, in publications including the Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Journal of Legal Studies, American Law & Economics Review, Journal of Law, Finance, and Accounting, and Journal of Accounting & Economics. Professor Lee joined the faculty at Northwestern Pritzker Law in 2017 after serving on the faculty of the University of Southern California Gould School of Law. He served as Senior Counsel for the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission before entering academia and returned to the SEC as a Visiting Academic Scholar in 2022. Professor Lee clerked for the Honorable Thomas B. Griffith of the DC Circuit and served as an Economic Fellow in the Office of Economic Analysis for the SEC. Professor Lee earned his JD from Yale Law School and PhD in Economics from Yale Graduate School.