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Faculty

The Law School’s core land use, real estate, housing and environmental law faculty are widely recognized as among the most distinguished academics of their respective generations. The core law faculty is augmented by equally talented faculty from the Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service and the Stern School of Business, as well as other University departments, who offer courses and research opportunities in real estate finance, urban policy and urban economics. The full-time faculty is also supported by a stellar group of adjunct professors -- distinguished public and private sector practitioners and academics from other leading universities who teach a range of specialized courses that enrich the curriculum and who serve as a valuable resource for students interested in careers in land use, real estate and housing law.

Vicki Been:

Elihu Root Professor of Law; Director, Program on Land Use Law; Director, Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy; Faculty Director, Root-Tilden-Kern Scholarship Program

Vicki Been (’83) has long been a leading scholar on the intersection of land use and environmental law. She currently is examining the implications of the increasing convergence of land use and environmental law for judicial review of environmental regulations. She also is exploring how local land use “impact fees” can be used to promote cost-internalization of environmental harms. She has written extensively about the Takings Clause of the U.S. Constitution and similar expropriation requirements in the North American Free Trade Agreement and other bilateral and multilateral investment agreements. Been also is a leading authority on environmental justice. She is the co-author of one of the nation’s leading land use casebooks, Land Use Controls: Cases and Materials (with Robert Ellickson). Been teaches Property; Land Use Regulation; State and Local Government; and seminars on topics ranging from environmental justice to the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause. She co-teaches a Colloquium on the Law, Economics, and Politics of Urban Affairs.

Sarah Chasis

Adjunct Professor of Law

Sarah Chasis, who co-teaches the Environmental Law Clinic, is a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and director of its Water and Coastal Program. She works on NRDC’s recently launched Ocean Initiative, which focuses on promoting responsible management of ocean resources through the elimination of destructive fishing practices and the protection of valuable ocean habitats.

Ingrid Gould Ellen

Associate Professor of Public Policy and Urban Planning, Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service; Deputy Director, Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy

Ingrid Gould Ellen co-teaches the Colloquium on the Law, Economics, and Politics of Urban Affairs, and teaches courses in microeconomics, urban economics, and housing policy at NYU’s Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. Ellen’s research interests center on housing policy, neighborhood change, and urban economics. She is the author of Sharing America’s Neighborhoods: The Prospects for Stable Racial Integration (Harvard University Press, 2002).

Sarah Sheon Gerecke

Adjunct Assistant Professor of Planning, Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service

Sarah Sheon Gerecke co-teaches a seminar on Land Use, Housing, and Community Development in New York City. Gerecke has more than 20 years’ experience in the field of affordable housing and community development. She is currently the Chief Executive Officer of Neighborhood Housing Services of New York City, a nonprofit, community-based organization that promotes affordable homeownership.

Clay Gillette

Vice Dean
Max E. Greenberg Professor of Contract Law

Professor Clayton Gillette is one of the nation’s pre-eminent experts on state and local government law. He has authored scores of articles on such topics as regionalization and interlocal bargains, the exercise of trumps by decentralized governments, and business incentives, interstate competition and the Commerce Clause. He also is the co-author of one of the nation’s leading textbooks on state and local government. Professor Gillette joined the NYU School of Law faculty in 2000, after serving for eight years as the Perre Bowen Professor of Law at the University of Virginia School of Law. Professor Gillette began his teaching career at Boston University where he served as the Warren Scholar in Municipal Law and Associate Dean, and has been a visiting professor at the University of Michigan and the University of Virginia as well as at NYU.

Eric A. Goldstein

Adjunct Professor of Law

Eric Goldstein, a senior attorney and co-director of the Urban Program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, co-teaches the Environmental Law Clinic. He recently completed an analysis of the environmental impacts of the World Trade Center attacks and prepared a new plan for land acquisition and smart-growth programs throughout the one-million-acre New York City watershed. Goldstein represents the local community group West Harlem Environmental Action in addressing continuing problems at New York City’s 170 million gallon-a-day North River Sewage Treatment Plant.

Gerald P. López

Professor of Clinical Law; Director, Center for the Practice and Study of Community Problem Solving

Gerald López teaches the Community Outreach, Education, and Organizing Clinic, which trains lawyers to work with low-income, of color, and immigrant communities to develop unconventional strategies to attack pervasive social problems. He also teaches the Community Economic Development Clinic, which trains lawyers to work with these communities to foster and equitably channel economic growth and opportunity. López is the author of Rebellious Lawyering, perhaps the most influential book ever written about progressive law practice and community problem solving. In 2003, López founded the Center for the Practice and Study of Community Problem Solving at NYU School of Law.

Richard Revesz

Dean, NYU School of Law; Lawrence King Professor of Law; Director, Program on Environmental Regulation

Richard Revesz has published more than 50 articles and books on environmental and administrative law. His work on issues of federalism and environmental regulation, the valuation of human life and the use of cost/benefit analysis, and the design of liability rules for environmental protection has set the agenda for environmental law scholars for the past decade. He has been active in a variety of public policy and law reform efforts, including serving as a member of the Environmental Economics Advisory Committee of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Science Advisory Board, and authoring amicus briefs filed in environmental and administrative law cases pending before the U.S. Supreme Court. Revesz teaches Environmental Law, Advanced Environmental Law, Administrative Law, and a variety of seminars on environmental law topics.

Jerry Salama

Adjunct Professor of Law

Jerry Salama co-teaches a seminar on Land Use, Housing, and Community Development in New York City. Salama manages and develops low- and middle-income housing in Harlem. In 1997, he was awarded a fellowship from the Open Society Institute to evaluate the redevelopment of troubled public housing in three cities across the United States.

Amy Ellen Schwartz

Professor of Public Policy, Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service

Professor Schwartz teaches public economics, finance, and policy, and co-teaches the Colloquium on the Law, Economics and Politics of Urban Affairs. Her research is primarily in applied econometrics, focusing on state and local governments and urban policy, particularly education policy and finance. Ongoing projects in K12 education focus on the education of immigrant children in New York City; the disparities in test scores across racial and ethnic groups; and the measurement of school performance and the distinction between ‘good schools’ and ‘good students. A current project in housing research investigates the impact of subsidized housing on property values and economic development. Her work in higher education focuses on the cost of college, including both four year and two year colleges in the U.S. Previous research has evaluated the role of public infrastructure in determining state output, growth, and employment, and other issues in public finance. In addition, Professor Schwartz has consulted on various issues of economic and tax policy for non-profit organizations and governments

Richard Stewart

University Professor; John Edward Sexton Professor of Law; Director, Center on Environmental and Land Use Law

Recognized as one of the world’s leading scholars in environmental and administrative law, Richard Stewart has published nine books and more than 70 articles in this area. His current research centers on the international regulatory and trade issues raised by the genetic modification of crops and other organisms, and the use of economic incentives to address climate change. Stewart has led a major law reform project on environmental legislation for China’s National People’s Congress. Before joining NYU School of Law, Stewart served as the Byrne Professor of Administrative Law at Harvard Law School, then as assistant attorney general in charge of the Environment and Natural Resource Division of the U.S. Department of Justice (with responsibility for prosecuting the Exxon Valdez case against Exxon). He also has served as chairman of Environmental Defense. Stewart teaches the International Environmental Law Clinic, the Administrative and Regulatory State course, Law and Globalization, and a seminar on Law, New Technologies, and Risk. He co-teaches the Colloquium on Globalization and Its Discontents.

Kerwin Tesdell

Adjunct Professor of Law

Kerwin Tesdell teaches a seminar on Community Development Law. He is the president of Community Development Venture Capital Alliance (CDVCA), an organization that promotes the use of the tools of venture capital to create jobs, entrepreneurial capacity, and wealth for low-income people in distressed neighborhoods.

Darren Walker

Adjunct Professor of Law

Darren Walker, who teaches Housing and Urban Development: Law and Policy, is currently the director of the Rockefeller Foundation’s Working Communities Division, which funds innovative work on housing, community development, public education, employment, and civil rights. Prior to joining Working Communities, Walker served for six years as the chief operating officer of Abyssinian Development Corporation, one of the nation’s leading community development corporations.

Katrina Wyman

Assistant Professor of Law; Director, Program on Common Property Resources

Katrina Wyman teaches in the areas of environmental and property law. Her research interests include environmental and natural resources law and policy, the regulatory process, and comparative environmental regulation. Wyman is currently working on a series of case studies about why government regulators choose to use or not use property rights and markets for environmental protection and natural resource management systems.