U.S. PROGRAM FACULTY

Mark A. Chinen

Associate Professor of Law, Seattle University School of Law

Professor Chinen teaches Contracts, Public International Law, Introduction to the American Legal System and International trade at the Seattle University School of Law.  He holds a B.A. in Asian Studies from Pomona College, an M.Div. from Yale Divinity School, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. Following graduation from law school, Prof. Chinen was an associate with the firm of Covington & Burling in Washington, D.C., where he practiced in the areas of intellectual property, international trade and finance, and corporate and securities law.  His scholarly interests include the relationship between U.S. federal law and international law, public international law theory, Japanese constitutional law, and national security law.  He also directs the Master of Laws in American Legal Studies Program at Seattle University.

Colin Crawford

Program Director, Summer Legal & Policy Study in Rio de Janeiro, and Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Center for the Comparative Study of Metropolitan Growth, Georgia State University College of Law.

Colin Crawford teaches environmental, administrative law, property and torts. He has degrees in modern history from Columbia (B.A.) and Cambridge Universities (B.A., first class honors), and received a University of Cambridge Research Studentship to support his research towards a doctoral degree in Modern History. He interrupted that study to attend Harvard Law School, from which he graduated. As a lawyer, he concentrated on environmental and land use law, first at the Wall Street firm of White & Case and later at an environmental law boutique firm in New York City with a strong public interest commitment. He left practice to research and write a book of narrative non-fiction on an environmental justice struggle in rural Mississippi, Uproar at Dancing Rabbit Creek: Battling Over Race, Class and the Environment.  This led him into research and teaching.  As a teacher and scholar, his work concentrates in the environmental area, and particularly on environmental health and justice and land use justice questions. In the spring 2006, Professor Crawford taught comparative environmental law and researched Caribbean biodiversity on a Fulbright grant in the Dominican Republic.  He also teaches an annual course on Comparative Environmental Health Law in the Law and Health post-graduate program at the National School of Public Health in Rio de Janeiro, where he is co-director of the Environmental Health Law & Policy Group.  He regularly is asked to lecture abroad, and particularly in Latin America.  Most recently, he gave classes at Brazilian and Colombian universities.

James Forman, Jr.

Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center

James Forman, Jr. was raised on civil rights, but as an adult he has taken the tradition in new directions.  Forman’s parents met in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), a major force in the civil rights movement in the 1960's.  So when as a young man Forman entered Yale Law School, it was only natural that he wanted to be a civil rights lawyer.  But his trajectory since then illustrates an important lesson about civil rights in the 21st century.   As a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, he grew increasingly troubled by the embarrassing records of inadequate legal counsel he saw in countless criminal appeals.  Abandoning the more traditional civil rights career he seemed born for, he went to work at a public defender in Washington, D.C.   But he soon began to confront the limits of his role as criminal defense lawyer.  He was able to defend them in the courtroom, but not to help them stay out of the courtroom altogether.  In 1997, he helped launch See Forever, a private, tuition-free school for kids in trouble.  A year later, See Forever opened the Maya Angelou Public Charter School -- two more campuses opened in the fall of 2007.   At Georgetown, he teaches and writes in the area of Criminal Procedure, Race and Crime, Juvenile Justice and Education Law and Policy.  Professor Forman’s interest in Brazil was ignited while an undergraduate at Brown University -- which led him to study in Salvador, Bahia.  He has returned since, examining comparative treatment of race and criminal law questions.

Carmen G. Gonzalez

Associate Professor of Law, Seattle University School of Law

Professor Gonzalez teaches environmental law, international environmental law, administrative law, torts and international trade law at Seattle University School of Law. She holds a B.A. in political science from Yale University and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. Following graduation from law school, Prof. Gonzalez clerked for Judge Thelton E. Henderson of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California and practiced law at Pillsbury, Madison & Sutro. From 1994-1998, she was assistant regional counsel at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in San Francisco, California, where she specialized in hazardous waste issues and in environmental matters involving the U.S.-Mexican border. In addition to her domestic environmental law experience, she has taught and/or worked on environmental law projects in Mexico, Chile, Argentina, Ukraine, Moldova and China. In 1998, she taught international environmental law in Buenos Aires , Argentina as a U.S. Fulbright Scholar. During 2004-2005, Professor Gonzalez served as one of four U.S. Supreme Court fellows selected by a distinguished panel of lawyers and judges appointed by the Chief Justice. In Fall 2006, Professor Gonzalez was a Visiting Scholar at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom.  In Spring 2007, Professor Gonzalez taught international environmental law in Nanjing, China, at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center, a joint academic venture between Johns Hopkins University and the University of Nanjing.  Professor Gonzalez is a frequent presenter at environmental law conferences. Her scholarship focuses on the relationship among international trade, environmental protection and economic development.

Joan MacLeod Heminway

Associate Professor of Law, The University of Tennessee College of Law, and Research Fellow, The University of Tennessee Corporate Governance Center

Professor Heminway regularly teaches Business Associations, Corporate Finance, Representing Enterprises (a transaction simulation course), and Securities Regulation in The University of Tennessee College of Law’s James L. Clayton Center for Entrepreneurial Law.  She also periodically teaches a course on Animals & the Law.  She received the University Chancellor’s Award for teaching Excellence in 2006, the College’s Marilyn V. Yarbrough Faculty Award for Writing Excellence for 2005, and the College’s Harold C. Warner Outstanding Teacher Award for 2004.  Professor Heminway’s stock merger module for the Representing Enterprises course was recognized by UT’s Innovative Technology Center in its September 2002 Best Practices@UT Showcase.  She was a Visiting Professor at Boston College Law School for the Fall 2005 semester, and at Vanderbilt University Law School in the Spring 2007 semester.  Before starting her teaching career in 2000, Professor Heminway spent 15 years practicing law in the Boston office of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, where she specialized in mergers and acquisitions and securities regulation matters.  Her interests in this area extend to feminist and gendered perspectives on corporate and securities law.  Recent writings authored by Professor Heminway have appeared in the American University Law Review, University of Cincinnati Law Review, Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law, Hastings Women's Law Journal, Journal of Business & Technology Law, Maryland Law Review, Texas Journal of Women and the Law, and Wake Forest Law Review.

Berta Esperanza Hernández-Truyol
Levin Mabie & Levin Professor of Law, University of Florida Levin College of Law

Professor Hernández-Truyol

is a noted human rights scholar whose work has historically focused on women’s rights issues, with a special focus on Latin America and issues affecting Latinas and Latinos.  She is a founding member of Latina & Latino Critical Legal Theory, Inc., where she served as Co-Chair for many years.  She joined the University of Florida faculty in 2000 but has also taught at a number of other institutions, including Brooklyn Law School, Georgetown University Law Center, the University of New Mexico School of Law, St. John’s University School of Law, and the University of Wisconsin.  Professor Hernández-Truyol is widely published in the human rights area and is a much sought-after speaker both in the U.S. and abroad.  She has a B.A. from Cornell University, a J.D. from Albany Law School of Union University (cum laude) and an LL.M. from New York University School of Law.

Charles A. Marvin

Professor of Law, Georgia State University College of Law

Professor Marvin teaches international and comparative law, administrative law, antitrust and regulated industries law at Georgia State University College of Law.  After teaching English in Iran and  finishing a B.A. degree in political science at the University of Kansas,  he was a Fulbright graduate student at the U. of Toulouse, France, following which  he completed his J.D. and M.Compar. L. degrees at the University of Chicago.  Starting his legal career, he served as an intern in competition law at the European Commission in Brussels and as lecturer at law at the University of Kent in Canterbury, England.  He then lived and worked for over a decade in Canada as a law professor and then research director of federal administrative law reform under the Minister of Justice.  Returning to the United States, he was a full professor at Villanova University before coming to Georgia State University  in that capacity in 1985.  He was a Fulbright professor in public law at the Riga Graduate School of Law in Latvia from 2000-2002, and then Fulbright Senior Specialist there in 2003.  He has taught law in Bulgaria, France, and Lithuania, been a USIA visiting lecturer in Cote d’Ivoire, and ABA-CEELI resident consultant in Kazakhstan, amending that country’s Administrative Law Code. His thematic consulting, research and publishing activities have been mostly in the areas of comparative public administration, regulatory reform, and attempting to help establish the rule of law in transitional countries.

Tanya Washington

Associate Professor, Georgia State University College of Law

Professor Tanya Washington is a graduate of the University of Maryland School of Law. After graduation, she clerked for Chief Judge Robert M. Bell on the Maryland Court of Appeals. Thereafter, she practiced toxic tort defense litigation in the Baltimore and Washington D.C. offices of Piper, Marbury, Rudnick & Wolfe. While working as an associate at Piper, Ms. Washington taught a Comparative Constitutional Law Course at her alma mater, which allowed her to draw on her experience as a third year law student working with Lawyers for Human Rights in Pretoria, South Africa.  Upon leaving Piper, she served at Harvard Law School as both the Albert M. Sacks and A. Leon Higginbotham Research Fellows before earning her LL.M.  Ms. Washington taught Civil Procedure, Contracts and Legal Research and Writing as a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland School of Law before joining the faculty at Georgia State University College of Law.  Her current teaching and research interests include processes of civil litigation, domestic relations and issues arising at the intersection of race and education.  Her publications include The Diversity Dichotomy:  The Supreme Court’s Reticence to Give Race a Capital “R” and Loving Grutter: Reinstating Race in TransRacial Adoptions. 

Ronald Wheeler

Associate Director and Public Services Librarian, Georgia State University College of Law Library

Ron Wheeler holds a B.B.A. from the University of Michigan-Dearborn, a J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School, and an M.L.I.S. from Wayne State University. He joined the College of Law Library faculty in August of 2006 as Associate Director for Public Services. As such, he assists the Library Director with planning goals, objectives, and policies for the Public Services Department, and supervises reference, faculty services, and circulation services. Ron teaches the Legal Bibliography course, provides legal reference services, and trains members of the law school community and university system on legal research and resources.  Before coming to GSU College of Law, he worked as the assistant director for faculty, research, and instructional services at the University of New Mexico School of Law Library in Albuquerque, NM. While in library school, Ron worked as the circulation supervisor at the Marygrove College Library in Detroit, MI.  He is a member of both the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) and the Southeastern Chapter of the American Association of Law Libraries (SEAALL). His participation in these professional organizations has included holding several elected offices and serving on committees. He is currently the Chair of the Social Responsibilities Special Interest Section of AALL, and he serves as Chair the AALL Diversity Committee. He is an active member of the AALL Standing Committee on Lesbian and Gay Issues, and he received their Alan Holoch Memorial Travel Grant in 2002.  His community involvements have included serving on the board of directors of Equality New Mexico, the statewide LGBT political advocacy organization in NM, and serving on the board of directors of the Equality Federation, the national federation of statewide LGBT advocacy organizations. Additionally, he served on the legal panel of the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico.