We are happy to welcome Jim Chen to the University of Pennsylvania Law School as our lunch keynote speaker.

Jim Chen

Dean, Louis D. Brandeis School of Law

Jim Chen joined the University of Louisville as dean of the Louis D. Brandeis School of Law in 2007. Dean Chen is a prolific and influential scholar whose works span subjects such as administrative law, agricultural law, constitutional law, economic regulation, environmental law, industrial policy, legislation, and natural resources law. He is the coauthor of Disasters and the Law: Katrina and Beyond (Aspen Publishers, 2006), the first book to provide comprehensive coverage of the legal issues surrounding natural disasters. Dean Chen has also taught courses in criminal law and food and drug law.

From July 1993 to January 2007, Dean Chen served as a member of the faculty of the of Minnesota Law School. In his final years at Minnesota, Dean Chen served as that law school's Associate Dean. He was an editor of Constitutional Commentary and the faculty editor-in-chief of the Minnesota Journal of Law, Science & Technology. He also served as faculty advisor to the Minnesota Law Review and Law & Inequality. Within the University of Minnesota's Conservation Biology Program, Dean Chen served as a member of the graduate faculty.

Dean Chen's lectures have spanned fourteen countries, four continents, and three languages. In 1995, he held a chaire départementale in the Faculté de Droit et des Sciences Politiques of the Université de Nantes. In 1999, he became the first American to teach law as a visiting professor at Heinrich-Heine Universität in Düsseldorf. He taught in 2000 at Slovenská Pol'nohospodárska Univerzita v Nitre (the Slovak Agricultural University in Nitra).

In addition to compiling an extensive record in traditional legal scholarship, Dean Chen has emerged as an innovative master of online media. As the founder and administrator of the Jurisdynamics Network, Dean Chen presides over one of the most intellectually stimulating and visually striking families of law-related websites. The network's flagship weblog, Jurisdynamics, is dedicated to the methodological tools and subjects that most vividly depict the law's interaction with societal and technological change. Other affiliated weblogs include Money Law, BioLaw, Agricultural Law, Ratio Juris, Law and Technology Theory, First Movers, Law Blog Central, and the Scientific Lawyer.

Dean Chen received his B.A. degree, summa cum laude, and his M.A. degree from Emory University. After studying as a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Iceland, he earned his J.D. degree, magna cum laude, from Harvard Law School, where he served as an Executive Editor of the Harvard Law Review. He clerked for Judge J. Michael Luttig of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and for Justice Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court of the United States.