Fordham Law is pleased to announce that Professor Bennett Capers, an authority on issues at the intersection of race, gender, technology, and criminal justice, has been named the John D. Feerick Research Chair.
The Feerick Research Chair is a rotating chair awarded to a Fordham Law faculty member who has attained a high level of scholarly distinction, as demonstrated by their scholarly publications over the course of their career and the impact of their work on their respective fields. The chairholder is also expected to be a strong teacher and mentor to students, an important contributor to Fordham Law’s intellectual community, and demonstrate a strong record of service to the Law School.
“Being named a research chair is already amazing, but holding a chair named after Dean Emeritus John Feerick ’61 takes this to a whole other level,” Capers said. “It’s not just that John made Fordham Law School what it is today—a nationally recognized law school known for its scholarly excellence and commitment to students. It’s also that John, in many ways, represents the lawyerly ideal of someone who has used the law as a tool for effecting real change that makes the world a better place.”
“I am honored and humbled to hold a chair named after him,” Capers continued. “My hope now is to make him proud.”
Capers joined the faculty in 2020 after teaching at Brooklyn Law School for several years, where he held the Stanley A. August Chair. Prior to that, he was a federal prosecutor for a decade.
Capers currently serves as the faculty director of the Law School’s Center on Race, Justice, and Law. He was also tapped to co-chair the Law School’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion strategic planning process in the fall of 2020, alongside Professor Elizabeth Cooper, and helped analyze the findings from the community-wide racial climate study undertaken in the spring of 2021. As both a participant and moderator of numerous panels at the Law School, Capers has led cutting edge conversations shaping legal and political discourse.
Capers’ work has been published in leading journals, including the California Law Review, Columbia Law Review, Cornell Law Review, Michigan Law Review, New York University Law Review, and UCLA Law Review, among others, and the California Law Review Online is publishing a symposium of essays about his work. Capers’ commentary and op-eds have also appeared in nationally acclaimed publications, including the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Guardian. He is an elected member of the American Law Institute.
Earlier this year, Capers published Critical Race Judgments: Rewritten U.S. Court Opinions on Race and Law (Cambridge University Press, April 2022), in which he and other critical race theory (CRT) scholars rewrite seminal court opinions through a CRT lens. The purpose of the book, as he explains, is to demonstrate why CRT should be deployed in various areas of the law to uphold and advance principles that are foundational to American democracy. He also has a forthcoming book, The Prosecutor’s Turn, to be published by Metropolitan Books.
The Feerick Research Chair was established in honor of Fordham Law Dean Emeritus and Norris Professor of Law John D. Feerick ’61 and his role in the scholarly transformation of Fordham Law. Under Dean Feerick’s leadership, the Law School became a nationally and internationally known hub for superb legal scholarship across a wide variety of fields. Dean Feerick recruited top scholars to the faculty, nurtured the development of young scholars, procured financial support for research and publication, created new student journals, and supported an exponential increase in academic lectures and symposia featuring external speakers. In sum, he built a culture that valued both creativity and careful analysis, rooted in the premise that ideas and values shape our legal system and society.
Capers will succeed Professor Andrew Kent, a scholar of constitutional law, national security law and foreign relations law, as the recipient of this honor.