For Immediate Release
May 14, 2003

Contact:
David Todd, (202) 662-9694

        Dean Judy Areen today announced that Viet D. Dinh will return to the Georgetown University Law Center as Professor of Law on May 31, 2003. He has been on a two-year leave of absence to serve as Assistant Attorney General for Legal Policy at the United States Department of Justice.

        "Professor Dinh is a distinguished legal scholar, an inspiring teacher, a valued colleague, and now, a respected public official," said Areen. "We were honored to lend him to the President and the American people, but we are glad that he will again walk our halls."

        "Georgetown is my home, and I look forward to coming home," said Dinh. "I am grateful to Dean Areen for giving me the opportunity to serve the President and to repay, in small measure, the debt that my family and I owe to America and her people."

        Dinh led the Justice Department's Office of Legal Policy since May 31, 2001, and in that time, he contributed to a number of key Administration policy initiatives most notably in the drafting and implementing of the USA PATRIOT Act. He also spearheaded the revision of the Attorney General's Guidelines, which govern the conduct of federal law enforcement activities and national security investigations. In addition, Dinh represented the Department of Justice in the process of selecting and confirming judges to the federal bench, securing the confirmation of 23 United States Court of Appeals and 100 District Court judges in the past two years.

        Prior to his service in the Justice Department, Dinh joined the faculty of Georgetown in 1996, where he also served as Deputy Director of Asian Law and Policy Studies. He specializes in constitutional law, corporations law, and the law and economics of development. He was a law clerk to Judge Laurence H. Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. His representative publications include Reassessing the Law of Preemption in the Georgetown Law Journal; Codetermination and Corporate Governance in a Multinational Business Enterprise, in the Journal of Corporations Law; and Races, Crime, and the Law in the Harvard Law Review.