Georgetown Law

Announcing Newly Named Chairs and Professorships
February 17, 2023 

Dear Colleagues:

I am delighted to announce the installation of five new chairs and professorships this spring.

I am pleased to name Hope Babcock a Reynolds Family Endowed Service Professor. 

Hope Babcock, Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Institute for Public Representation (IPR), is an environmental law scholar who has helped shape environmental law policy and participated in some of the most important environmental cases of the past 25 years. Prior to joining the Georgetown Law faculty, Hope was general counsel for the National Audubon Society, practiced energy and environmental law at various Washington, D.C. law firms, and was a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Energy and Minerals in the U.S. Department of the Interior. She has served on several advisory boards and committees, including the ABA Standing Committee on Environmental Law. She has published extensively in the fields of environmental, natural resources, and Indian law, and has written articles on topics as diverse as indigenous oral history, federalism, and ocean fish ranching. Hope holds a B.A. from Smith College and LL.B. from Yale Law School.

I am pleased to name Anna Gelpern the Scott K. Ginsburg Professor of Law and International Finance.

Anna Gelpern is a Professor of Law and a former Anne Fleming Research Professor at Georgetown Law and a nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Anna writes about international finance and its governance, focusing on government debt, financial regulation, and financial crises. She has co-authored a leading law textbook on international finance, and often contributes to research and policy initiatives in the field. Anna also co-directs the Sovereign Debt Forum, a collaboration among Georgetown Law’s Institute of International Economic Law and academic institutions in other countries. Before coming to Georgetown Law, she held full-time appointments at the American University Washington College of Law, Rutgers School of Law-Newark, and Rutgers University Division of Global Affairs. Between 1996 and 2002, Anna served in legal and policy positions at the U.S. Treasury Department. Earlier she practiced with Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton in New York and London. She earned an A.B. from Princeton University, a J.D. from Harvard Law School, and a M.Sc. from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

I am pleased to name Erica Hashimoto, L’97, the Scott K. Ginsburg Professor of Law and Appellate Advocacy.

Erica Hashimoto, L’97, Professor of Law, directs the Appellate Litigation Program at the Law Center, supervising students and fellows briefing and arguing cases in the United States Courts of Appeals for the D.C., Fourth, and Eleventh Circuits. Previously, she was the Allen Post Professor of Law at the University of Georgia. While there, she started an appellate litigation clinic, was named a Josiah Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professor, and twice won the C. Ronald Ellington Award for Excellence in Teaching. Erica’s scholarship focuses on the constitutional right to counsel in criminal cases and the importance of defendants’ control of their cases. Her work has twice been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court, and she has testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee about the right to counsel in misdemeanor cases. Erica earned her J.D. from Georgetown Law, and holds an A.B. from Harvard.

I am pleased to name Robin Lenhardt, LL.M.’04, the Agnes Williams Sesquicentennial Professor of Race, Law, and Justice.

Robin Lenhardt, LL.M.’04, Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and Founding Co-Director of the Georgetown Racial Justice Institute, is a legal scholar in matters pertaining to race, family, and citizenship. Prior to joining the Georgetown Law faculty, she served as a law professor and faculty director of the Center on Race, Law and Justice at Fordham Law School. She has held teaching positions at Columbia Law School and the University of Chicago Law School. Before entering legal academia, Robin held a number of positions in the private and non-profit sectors. A former law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer and Judge Hugh Bownes of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, Robin was a member of the litigation team that defended the University of Michigan in the Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger affirmative action lawsuits. She received a Skadden Foundation Fellowship to work as a staff attorney for the National Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and was employed as an attorney advisor in the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel during the Clinton Administration. She later returned to the DOJ to review civil rights issues as part of President Barack Obama’s transition team. She holds an A.B. from Brown University, a J.D. from Harvard Law School, an MPA from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, and an LL.M. from Georgetown Law.

I am pleased to name Eloise Pasachoff the Agnes Williams Sesquicentennial Professor of Law.

Eloise Pasachoff is a Professor of Law and a former Anne Fleming Research Professor at Georgetown Law. She is a nationally recognized scholar on administrative law and public administration, with awards for her scholarship from the American Constitution Society, the American Bar Association, and the Education Law Association. She joined the Gellhorn & Byse Administrative Law casebook for the 13th edition. In 2017, Georgetown Law honored Eloise with the Frank Flegal Teaching Award. Between 2016 and 2019, she served as chair of the clerkships committee, devoting much time to helping students secure state and federal clerkships. From 2019 to 2021, she served as Associate Dean for Careers. She sits on a number of professional organizations, including the Administrative Conference of the United States and the Council of the ABA’s Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice. She has also been active in the Association of American Law Schools. She is a member of the American Law Institute, the National Academy of Social Insurance, and the American Bar Foundation, and she serves on the Academic Advisory Board of the Supreme Court Fellows program. Eloise received an A.B. summa cum laude from Harvard, an M.A. from Yale, an M.P.A. from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and a J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where she was an executive editor of the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review. After law school, she served as a law clerk to Judge Jed S. Rakoff of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Judge Robert A. Katzmann of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and Justice Sonia Sotomayor of the Supreme Court of the United States.

Please join me in congratulating these five scholars and thanking them for their contributions to Georgetown and to the legal profession.

Best,

Bill