For Immediate Release
September 16, 2009


Media Contact:

Kara Tershel, (202) 662-9500

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Two more members of the Georgetown Law faculty have joined the Obama administration, and earlier this week, President Obama announced the nomination of Professor Chai Feldblum to serve as Commissioner at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.  Professor David Koplow has become special counsel for arms control to the general counsel of the Department of Defense, and Professor Howard Shelanski is serving as deputy director for antitrust of the Federal Trade Commission's Bureau of Economics.  Feldblum's EEOC nomination requires confirmation by the U.S. Senate.

 

"Georgetown Law has a long history of public service," said Georgetown Law Dean T. Alexander Aleinikoff.  "We are delighted that Professors Feldblum, Koplow and Shelanski have been invited to serve our nation in these important roles."

 

 

Feldblum has been a professor at Georgetown Law since 1991.  She is the founder and director of the Georgetown Law Federal Legislation and Administrative Clinic, a program designed to train law students to become legislative lawyers, and co-director of Workplace Flexibility 2010, a campaign to support the development of a comprehensive national policy on workplace flexibility. She has been a strong advocate and scholar in the areas of disability rights, health and welfare rights, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights, and workplace issues.  She also played a leading role in the drafting and negotiating of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and the ADA Amendments Act of 2008.  A graduate of Barnard College and Harvard Law School, she served as law clerk to 1st Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Frank M. Coffin and to Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun. 

 

 

 

Koplow, who came to Georgetown Law in 1981, has written and taught courses in the areas of international law, national security, arms control, nonproliferation, terrorism, treaty negotiation and implementation, and political asylum.  He has also directed the Center for Applied Legal Studies, a Georgetown Law clinical program which represents refugees seeking political asylum in the U.S. because of threatened persecution in their home countries.  He served as attorney adviser and as special assistant to the director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency from 1978 to 1981, and as deputy general counsel for international affairs at the U.S. Department of Defense from 1997 to 1999.  He is a graduate of Harvard College, Queen's College in Oxford, England, and Yale Law School.

 

 

 

Shelanski joins the Georgetown Law full-time faculty this fall after serving as a visiting professor. He comes to the Law Center from the University of California at Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall), where he has been professor and co-director of the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology since 1997.  Shelanski has twice before served in government.  In 1999-2000, he was chief economist at the Federal Communications Commission, and in 1998-1999, he was a senior economist for the President’s Council of Economic Advisers.  He received a B.A. in history from Haverford College, a J.D. from Berkeley (Boalt Hall), and a Ph.D. in economics from Berkeley.  After law school, Shelanski clerked for Judge Stephen F. Williams of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, Judge Louis H. Pollak of the U.S. District Court in Philadelphia and Justice Antonin Scalia of the U.S. Supreme Court.  His areas of teaching include antitrust, telecommunications and contracts.

 

 

Earlier this year, Georgetown Law Professor Lisa Heinzerling was named associate administrator for the Office of Policy, Economics, and Innovation at the Environmental Protection Agency, Professor Neal Katyal became principal deputy solicitor general, Professor Martin Lederman returned to the Department of Justice as deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel, Professor Rosa Brooks was named senior adviser to the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy at the Department of Defense and Professor David Vladeck became director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection of the Federal Trade Commission. 

 

These appointments followed the December nomination of Georgetown Law Professor Daniel Tarullo to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.  Tarullo was sworn in on January 28.

 

For a list of Georgetown Law Obama administration appointments and nominations, see our Web site at: http://www.law.georgetown.edu/news/appointees.html.

 

About Georgetown University Law Center 

Georgetown University Law Center is one of the world's premier law schools. It has the largest full-time faculty in the nation and is pre-eminent in several areas, including constitutional, international, tax and clinical law. Drawing on its Jesuit heritage, it has a strong tradition of public service and is dedicated to the principle that law is but a means, justice is the end. With this principle in mind, Georgetown Law has built an environment that cultivates an exchange of ideas and the pursuit of academic excellence. It brings together an extraordinarily varied group of teachers, scholars and practitioners, as well as an outstanding student body representing more than 60 countries.