For Immediate Release
December 23, 2009

Media Contact:

Kara Tershel, (202) 662-9500

 

Professor Areen

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Georgetown University President John J. DeGioia is pleased to announce that Judith Areen, Paul Regis Dean Professor of Law and Dean Emerita of Georgetown University Law Center, will serve as interim dean of the Law Center, effective January 30.

Areen succeeds T. Alexander Aleinikoff, who was recently appointed United Nations Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees. Areen will serve as interim dean while a search is conducted for a permanent dean. Georgetown Law Professor Patricia King, Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Law, Medicine, Ethics, and Public Policy, has agreed to chair the search committee for a new dean.

"I know Judy will provide invaluable leadership during this time of transition for the Law Center, and I am deeply grateful to her for taking on this important role," said DeGioia. "I very much look forward to working with her again."

Areen has served on the Georgetown Law faculty since 1972. From 1989-2004, she served as executive vice president and dean of the Law Center. Her casebook Higher Education and the Law was published by Foundation Press in 2009. She is the author of numerous other books and articles, including Government as Educator: A New Understanding of First Amendment Protection of Academic Freedom and Governance, 97 GEO. L. J. 945 (2009). A graduate of Cornell University and Yale Law School, she has worked in the private sector and in government at the local and federal levels.

 

Areen is a member of the Bar of the District of Columbia, a member of the American Law Institute, and a director of the Pro Bono Institute. In 2006, she served as president of the Association of American Law Schools, the learned society of the profession. She has also served as a member of the board of trustees of Cornell University, as a governor of the District of Columbia Bar, and as a member of the Council of the Section on Legal Education of the American Bar Association. Areen’s professional contributions have been recognized by many awards, including the 2007 Janet Reno Torchbearer Award of the Women’s Bar Association of the District of Columbia, her selection as Dean of the Year in 2003 by Equal Justice Works, and her selection in 1991 and again in 1994 by the National Law Journal as one of the hundred leading lawyers in the United States.

 

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.