Four Fordham Law professors have been awarded named chairs in recognition of their outstanding scholarship in the fields of contract law theory, race and law, immigration and employment, and constitutional law. The new chair holders are Professors Aditi Bagchi, Bennett Capers, Jennifer Gordon, and Andrew Kent.
“These four distinguished professors are at the forefront of legal scholarship, constantly pushing the boundaries of our understanding of the law and influencing legal discourse. We take immense pride in acknowledging their exceptional accomplishments,” said Dean Matthew Diller.
Three of the chairs—the Ignatius M. Wilkinson Chair, the John D. Feerick Research Chair, and the Joseph M. McLaughlin Chair—honor outstanding deans of Fordham Law. The Stanley D. and Nikki Waxberg Chair was established through a testamentary gift from Stanley and Nikki Waxberg.
The accomplishments of Professors Bagchi, Capers, Gordon and Kent are part of the increasing prominence and impact of Fordham Law faculty on legal scholarship. Fordham Law has risen 20 places over the past decade in the leading study of law faculty citation counts—from 43rd in 2012 to 23rd in 2021.
Professor Aditi Bagchi, Ignatius M. Wilkinson Chair
Bagchi joined Fordham Law in 2012 and works primarily on contract law, with a particular focus on contract interpretation and issues of political and moral philosophy as they arise in contracts. She also has an interest in comparative political economy and legal philosophy across private law. She is best known as one among a handful of leading contract scholars who explore the relations between contractual obligations in the law and promissory obligations from various parts of our moral life. Prior to coming to Fordham Law, Bagchi taught at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and was a visiting professor at Yale Law School and Columbia Law School. Before she began her teaching career, she was an associate at Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP.
Professor Bennett Capers, Stanley D. and Nikki Waxberg Chair
Capers, who serves as the director of the Center on Race, Law and Justice, is the second professor to be named the Waxberg Chair, following the inaugural holder, the late Joel Reidenberg. His academic interests focus on the relationship between race, gender, technology, and criminal justice. His scholarship has shaped conversation on a number of significant issues, from the use of rape shields at trial, to whether prosecutors should have a monopoly on criminal justice, to the police use of technology to investigate crime. Capers spent nearly 10 years as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York and also practiced with the firms of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton LLP and Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP. Before joining Fordham in 2020, Capers taught at Brooklyn Law School and Hofstra University School of Law and was a visiting professor at the University of Texas Law School, Boston University Law School, and Yale Law School. He has also served for several years as a commissioner on the NYC Civilian Complaint Review Board.
Professor Jennifer Gordon, John D. Feerick Research Chair
Gordon teaches courses on immigration, legislation, and labor issues. Her scholarship focuses on workers’ rights, transnational labor migration, and the relationship between law and social change. For more than two decades, she has been a leading voice, nationally and internationally, concerning migration and labor. Her work on migrant worker rights, and challenges to those rights in a global supply chain setting, has been pathbreaking in both academic and policymaking circles. Before joining Fordham Law in 2003, she was the J. Skelly Wright Fellow and visiting faculty lecturer at Yale Law School, and an independent scholar and consultant. Previously, she was the founder and executive director of The Workplace Project, which she founded in 1992 to help immigrant workers in the underground suburban economy of Long Island. Gordon’s groundbreaking 1995 article “We Make the Road by Walking: Immigrant Workers and the Struggle for Social Change” grew out of her experience and has been influential in developing programs and approaches to enable immigrants to come together to advocate on their own behalf.. She was previously a MacArthur Prize Fellow, an Open Society Foundations Fellow, and winner of the National Law Journal “Outstanding Woman Lawyer” award.
Professor Andrew Kent, Joseph M. McLaughlin Chair
Kent’s work explores issues around presidential power, U.S colonial governance, the legal history of the Civil War, and remedies for constitutional torts. His groundbreaking article in the Harvard Law Review (co-authored with Ethan Leib and Jed Shugerman) argued that the Article II provision that the President “take care that the laws be faithfully executed” was a longstanding command that government officials, including the very highest officials, bear fiduciary obligations to act in good faith, avoid self-dealing, and are mindful of the limitations on their powers of office. Kent is a fellow at Fordham Law’s Stein Center on Law and Ethics, a contributing editor at Lawfare, and has served for a number of years on the New York City Bar’s Committee on Professional Responsibility. Before joining Fordham, he was a Climenko Fellow at Harvard Law School. Kent was also an attorney at Sullivan & Cromwell LLP and Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP, and served as senior counsel to the solicitor general for the state of New York in the Office of the Attorney General.
