Dean Martha Minow recently announced three new appointments to the faculty: Tomiko Brown-Nagin as a tenured professor of law, Daniel Nagin as a clinical professor of law and Chief Justice Margaret Marshall as a senior research fellow and lecturer. Boston entrepreneur John Williams ’79 was named the law school’s inaugural Expert in Residence.
“Each of these appointments is exciting for the school—strengthening the connections between the law school and the world of practice,” said Minow. “Tomiko Brown-Nagin is a superb scholar of civil rights law and history, with rich knowledge of pathways for law and social change. Daniel Nagin’s deep commitment as an advocate and wisdom as a clinical teacher will advance students’ opportunities to make a difference in our community while learning how to lawyer with care and sophistication. As inaugural Expert in Residence, John Williams brings outstanding expertise as an entrepreneur and social innovator precisely as we seek to equip students to explore new ventures and innovations. Chief Justice Margaret Marshall galvanized groundbreaking reform of the Massachusetts judicial system, and her intellectual leadership on the court and in practice is legendary. How terrific it is to welcome each of them here!”
Tomiko Brown-Nagin appointed professor of law
Tomiko Brown-Nagin, a leading expert on legal history, education law and civil rights, has been appointed a professor of law.
Tomiko Brown-Nagin, a leading expert on legal history, education law and civil rights, will teach at Harvard Law School next fall, as well as serve as an affiliate of the history department in Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
She is currently the T. Munford Boyd and Justice Thurgood Marshall Distinguished Professor of Law and professor of history at the University of Virginia, where she co-directs the Legal History Colloquium and teaches courses on American social and legal history, constitutional law, education law and policy, and public interest law.
She has written widely on legal history and civil rights, including numerous law and history journal articles, book chapters, essays and book reviews. Oxford University Press recently published her book, “Courage to Dissent: Atlanta and the Long History of the Civil Rights Movement,” a work about three generations of lawyers and community-based activism during the civil rights era. Brown-Nagin is currently working on her second book, a biography of Constance Baker Motley, the civil rights lawyer, politician and federal judge.
Prior to joining the University of Virginia’s faculty in 2006, Brown-Nagin held associate professorships in law and history at Washington University in St. Louis. She also has held the Samuel I. Golieb Fellowship in Legal History at New York University School of Law.
Brown-Nagin holds a J.D. from Yale, where she served as an editor of the Yale Law Journal; received an M.A. and a Ph.D. in history from Duke University, where she held a James B. Duke Endowment Fellowship and received a Spencer Foundation Dissertation Fellowship; and earned a B.A. in history, summa cum laude, from Furman University, where she was awarded the Harry S. Truman Scholarship.
Daniel Nagin named clinical professor of law
Daniel Nagin, an advocate for low-income communities, has been appointed a clinical professor of law.
Daniel Nagin, a tireless advocate for low-income communities, will join the Harvard Law School faculty as a clinical professor of law this summer. He will direct community-based lawyering at HLS’s WilmerHale Legal Services Center.
Nagin is an associate professor on the General Faculty at the University of Virginia School of Law, where he founded and directs the Family Resource Clinic. His teaching and research interests include clinical education, social welfare law and policy, and asset accumulation for low-wealth communities.
Nagin, who joined the University of Virginia faculty in 2006 as an assistant professor and was promoted to associate professor in 2009, previously served as a lecturer in law at Washington University in St. Louis, where he was administrative director of and lectured in the Civil Justice Clinic. A frequent continuing legal education presenter on topics related to public benefits law, he has received the Virginia Statewide Legal Aid Conference’s Goldberg v. Kelly Lives Award for achievement in the area of public benefits advocacy and Washington University’s Access to Equal Justice Award for public interest advocacy work in the St. Louis community.
Prior to entering teaching, Nagin worked for nonprofit and legal aid organizations, where his advocacy work focused on the legal needs of homeless people and people living with HIV/AIDS.
Nagin holds a B.A. in history and government, Phi Beta Kappa and with distinction in all subjects, from Cornell University; an M.A. in education from Stanford University; and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School.
Chief Justice Margaret H. Marshall joins faculty
Margaret Marshall, former chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, was named a senior research fellow and lecturer.
Margaret H. Marshall, who served more than a decade as chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, joins the faculty at Harvard Law School this spring as a senior research fellow and lecturer. A national spokesperson on the importance of independent state courts, she will teach a reading group on Judicial Independence, Judicial Ethics and the First Amendment.
Appointed as chief justice in 1999 by Gov. A. Paul Cellucci, Marshall was the first woman to serve as chief justice and the second woman appointed to serve as an associate justice in the court’s long history. During her 14 years on the court before stepping down in December 2010, she wrote more than 200 opinions, including the landmark opinion in Goodrich v. Department of Public Health in 2003, which made Massachusetts the first state to legalize same-sex marriage. Marshall is credited with modernizing the Massachusetts judiciary, spearheading a plan in 2002 to revolutionize the administration of the trial courts.
Born and raised in South Africa, Marshall obtained her baccalaureate in 1966 from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. While an undergraduate, she was elected president of the National Union of South African Students, at the time a leading anti-apartheid organization. She earned a master’s degree in education at Harvard in 1969 and a J.D. from Yale in 1976.
Marshall practiced law for 16 years in Boston. In 1992, she was appointed vice president and general counsel of Harvard University, the first woman to hold that position. She has served as president of the Boston Bar Association, president of the U.S. Conference of Chief Justices and chair of the board of the National Center for State Courts. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
John Williams is Expert in Residence
John Williams, a Boston entrepreneur, was appointed an Expert in Residence as part of the university-wide innovation lab, i-lab.
John Williams ’79, a Boston entrepreneur, was appointed as the law school’s inaugural Expert in Residence. The EIR program has been created in partnership with the university-wide Harvard Innovation Lab (i-lab), in Allston, a new initiative that fosters team-based and entrepreneurial activities and deepens interactions among Harvard students, faculty, entrepreneurs, and members of the Allston and Greater Boston communities.
Williams is a partner at the Bridgespan Group, a nonprofit firm that works with organizations and philanthropists to scale their impact, enhance their effectiveness and help strengthen their leadership. He has been a strategy consultant at Bain & Co., a software marketer, a senior executive at American Express, and an early dot-com entrepreneur and CEO. He received an M.B.A. and J.D. from Harvard in 1979.
The program will invite entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, lawyers, and other experts to the HLS campus and the i-lab in Allston to mentor and advise students.