This semester, four highly accomplished scholars will join the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School’s distinguished faculty, bringing with them a wealth of knowledge that crosses disciplinary boundaries and boldly pushes the boundaries of contemporary legal academia.
University President M. Elizabeth “Liz” Magill
In addition to her role as the University of Pennsylvania’s newest President, M. Elizabeth “Liz” Magill will also serve as a Professor of Law at Penn Carey Law.
Magill’s scholarship in administrative and constitutional law has been published in some of the country’s top law journals including Yale Law Journal, University of Chicago Law Review, and University of Pennsylvania Law Review. Moreover, she holds memberships at several prestigious legal organizations. Magill is currently a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the American Law Institute; she has previously been a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, a Fellow in the Law and Public Affairs Program at Princeton University, and the Thomas Jefferson visiting professor at Downing College, Cambridge University. Magill has clerked for Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Magill brings with her a wealth of experience in higher education leadership and dynamics. Most recently, Magill served as the Provost at the University of Virginia, wherein she was responsible for directing the academic administration of the University’s 12 schools, in addition to its library, art museums, public service activities, institutes and centers, and foreign study programs. Notably, Magill’s tenure with the University of Virginia involved leading the University through the incredibly complex and unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic. Throughout that process, Magill prioritized both the health and safety of the University and surrounding Charlottesville communities and strived to ensure regular, transparent communication to staff, faculty, students, parents, alumni, and other community members. Prior to that role, Magill served as the dean of Stanford Law School, where she expanded and redesigned student life initiatives, with a strong emphasis on diversity and inclusion, and oversaw the expansion of Stanford Law’s public service commitments.
Magill holds a BA in History from Yale University and a JD from University of Virginia School of Law.
Paul Heaton
Heaton’s work transcends disciplinary boundaries and encompasses many crucial issues in criminal justice including policing, courts, and drug offence policy. He is an expert in economics, tort law, and insurance law, and much of his scholarship incorporates empirical analysis.
As the Academic Director at the Quattrone Center, Heaton led researchers and affiliated faculty in pursuit of fulfilling the Center’s bold mission to conduct pathbreaking research that carefully studies the cracks in America’s criminal justice system and offers solutions-based analysis geared toward creating more fair administration of justice throughout the country. Housed within the Law School, the Quattrone Center strives to be explicitly interdisciplinary; the scholarship it produces spans Business, Communications, Criminology, Engineering, Medicine and Public Health, and Social Sciences, among other disciplines.
Prior to joining Penn Carey Law, Heaton served as the Director of the RAND Institute for Civil Justice and Professor at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. Heaton holds a BA in Economics from Brigham Young University and a PhD in Economics from the University of Chicago.
Cara McClellan GSE’12
Under McClellan’s leadership, the ARC Justice Clinic will offer Penn Carey Law students the exciting chance to apply their legal skills toward the furtherance of racial justice, both locally and at the national level. Additionally, the ARC Justice Clinic will be the first of the Gittis Legal Clinics to focus on complex federal litigation.
Prior to joining Penn Carey Law, McClellan’s career as a civil rights litigator demonstrates her strong dedication to civil and racial justice. As Assistant Counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc., McClellan served as lead counsel on many cases, including I.S. et al. v. Binghamton School District, a case challenging a school’s discriminatory strip search of four Black and Latina middle school girls. McClellan has also represented students and families in school desegregation cases, such as Sheff v. O’Neill, and students and alumni as amici in SFFA v. Harvard, defending Harvard’s affirmative action admissions policy.
A Philadelphia native, McClellan graduated from Central High School. She earned an undergraduate degree from Yale and an MSEd from Penn’s Graduate School of Education, then returned to Yale to earn her JD, where she served both as an editor of the Yale Law & Policy Review and as the President of the Black Law Students Association. Following law school, she clerked for the Honorable Gregory M. Sleet, Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court, and the Honorable Andre M. Davis, Senior Judge for the Fourth Circuit.
Shelley Welton
Welton’s cutting-edge and widely published scholarship focuses on the increasingly urgent intersections between climate change, energy law, environmental regulations, and environmental policy. Prior to joining Penn Carey Law, Welton was a faculty member at University of South Carolina School of Law and worked as the deputy director of Columbia Law School’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. She holds a BA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a Master of Public Administration in environmental science and policy from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, a JD from NYU School of Law, and a PhD in law from Yale Law School.
Though her official appointment begins this fall, Welton served as a Kleinman Center visiting scholar this past spring. During the 2022-2023 school year, Welton will teach a number of energy law and climate change-related courses, including “Climate Change,” an upper-level seminar encouraging students to delve deeply into emerging questions of law related to the world’s rapidly changing climate.