Fordham Law alumnus Benjamin Barros ’96, a national leader in legal education and property law, has been appointed dean of the University of Toledo College of Law in Ohio.
Most recently, Barros served as associate dean of academic affairs at Widener University’s School of Law in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. In that position, he worked with Fordham Law Associate Dean Nestor Davidson, Director of the Urban Law Center, to organize the Property Works in Progress conference at Fordham in spring 2012. The conference drew 45 scholars from as far away as Australia and Israel.
“Dean Barros is not only a deeply insightful and influential scholar but also one of the most creative and entrepreneurial leaders in legal education today; he has put his Fordham training to act in the service of others to work every day of his academic career and his new deanship is a wonderful recognition of that,” said Davidson.
Prior to joining Widener University, Barros worked as an attorney at New York law firms Latham & Watkins, LLP and Debevoise & Plimpton. He has also taught at Fordham Law and Catholic University.
Barros is the founding editor of the Journal of Law, Property, and Society. He was one of the youngest educators to serve on the Executive Committee of the Association of American Law Schools and has served as chair of the AALS Property Section as well as president of the Association for Law, Property, and Society. Earlier this year he published a textbook on property law with Aspen and Wolters Kluwer and has been published in leading philosophy journals including Philosophy of Science and Synthese. This spring he received Widener Law’s outstanding faculty award.
Immediately after graduating from Fordham Law, Barros clerked for Judge Milton Pollack of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. He has a bachelor’s degree from Colgate University and a master’s from the University of Maryland.