Utah College Of law Lands Esteemed International Scholars

The S.J. Quinney College of Law at the University of Utah has just made a series of six extraordinary faculty appointments. “With expertise ranging from Middle Eastern and Islamic law to counterterrorism, from the law of water and energy to climate change, from transnational litigation and business transactions to bankruptcy law, these appointments enhance our outstanding faculty, heighten our ability to contribute to critical issues, and enrich our engaging, innovative curriculum and student programs,” announced Dean and Professor of Law, Hiram Chodosh.

Four senior, global leaders in their fields will join the Utah faculty this coming year: Professors Chibli Mallat, Amos Guiora, Ralph Mabey, and Arnold Reitze.

A native of Lebanon, Professor Mallat has held tenured positions at the University of London (School of Oriental and African Studies, 1988-1996, achieving tenure in 1991), where he directed the Middle East law center, and at Université Saint-Joseph Beirut (1996–present), where in 2001 he was appointed EU Jean Monnet Chair in European Law. Université Saint-Joseph, Beirut was designated a “Centre of Excellence” by the European Commission in 2004, and deemed “a success story” by the Jean Monnet Project in 2007. Mallat has also been a visiting professor and senior research scholar at Princeton University, the University of Virginia, Yale Law School, and the University of Lyon. Professor Mallat’s scholarship is prolific and widely influential on at least three continents. His most recent book, “Introduction to Middle Eastern Law,” has just been published by Oxford University Press. Other books published in English include “The Middle East into the 21st Century” (Garnet, 1996) and “The Renewal of Islamic Law: Muhamad Baqer as-Sadr, Najaf, and the Shi”i International" (Cambridge University Press, 1993). Altogether, he has published an extraordinary eighteen edited books, thirty-eight articles in journals or serials, thirty-seven chapters in books, eight booklets or pamphlets, six encyclopedia entries, and book reviews in nine different publications.

“Professor Chibli Mallat is a brilliant analyst of the legal development of the modern Middle East,” remarks Baber Johansen, professor of Islamic religious studies at Harvard Divinity School and director of the Center of Islamic Law at Harvard Law School. “He is a renowned professor of European Law, an attorney with domestic and international recognition, a prominent consultant for actors in international economics and politics, as well as a public intellectual and a prominent politician.”

Professor Amos Guiora served for twenty years as a leading counterterrorism expert in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). Before coming to the U.S. three years ago to develop a global security institute at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, he served as the dean of the IDF School of Military Law. In just three years, Professor Guiora has compiled an extraordinary list of twenty-two publications, including a forthcoming book at Oxford University Press on “The Limits of Coercive Interrogation,” and given over sixty national presentations at Harvard, Stanford, the U.S. Military Academy, and other venues. Gerald Korngold, former dean of the Case Western Reserve University School of Law, says Utah is fortunate to have added such an accomplished scholar to its faculty. “Professor Guiora has become one of the leading voices in the U.S. and globally on security, conflict, and related international issues” said Korngold.

Professor Ralph Mabey is one of the leading bankruptcy jurists in the country, having served as U.S. Bankruptcy Judge for the District of Utah (1979-1983) and in many significant service capacities, including as an elected member of the American Law Institute’s International Insolvency Law Project. The author of over a dozen leading publications, Professor Mabey has given nearly 100 presentations, taught extensively, and has over twenty-five years of professional experience in the field.

Professor Arnold Reitze will be joining the Utah faculty beginning January 1, 2008. He is currently the J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Professor of Environmental Law and director of the Environmental Law Program at George Washington Law School. The author of six books and over fifty research studies, with broad consulting experience in the public and private sectors, Professor Reitze is one of the leading global experts on air pollution, including global warming.

The College of Law also added two outstanding junior faculty to the tenure track: Lincoln Davies and Christopher Whytock. Professor Davies is a graduate of Michigan (B.S.) and Stanford (J.D.) where he was an associate editor on the Stanford Law Review, and the editor-in-chief of the Stanford Environmental Law Journal. He joins the university from Steptoe & Johnson in Washington D.C., where he has practiced law in the energy and environmental areas. Professor Whytock is a graduate of UCLA (B.A.), Georgetown (J.D. and M.S., Foreign Service), and Duke (Ph.D., Political Science). He practiced in corporate finance and business transactions with O’Melveny & Myers in Los Angeles for seven years before entering his Ph.D. program. They are both exceptionally talented young scholars and dynamic teachers.