Current CSLS Visiting Scholars

Lisa Hahn Photo

Lisa Hahn is a Ph.D. Candidate at the Faculty of Law, Humboldt University Berlin (Germany). Her dissertation explores conditions of social change through strategic litigation in Germany. In this project she develops the idea of ‘litigation collectives’ as key factor for the success of strategic claims. During her research stay at the Center for the Study of Law & Society, Lisa will be working on a comparative chapter that juxtaposes the expansion of strategic litigation as a particular mode of legal mobilization in the US, Germany and on the transnational level. Besides her primary focus on courts, litigation and social movements, she is further interested in feminist legal studies, migration studies and socio-legal research methods. Lisa is a lawyer by training but was familiarized with research methods in social sciences through her work in an ethnographic research project on migration and German administrative law between 2016 and 2017. In 2018, she co-founded the graduate network Socio-Legal Lab. Through workshops, summer schools, film screenings and informal get-togethers, the Socio-Legal Lab provides a space to discuss the challenges of interdisciplinary research on law and society. Moreover, she is a member of the project group of the Integrated Research Institute “Law & Society” at Humboldt University Berlin. (1/6/20 – 4/30/20)  lisa.hahn@rewi.hu-berlin.de

Mel Greenlee received her PhD in Linguistics and her J.D. from the University of California-Berkeley. Subsequently, she conducted research on language acquisition, bilingualism and other sociolinguistic topics at CUNY’s Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños, UCLA and Stanford, before returning to academia as a law student, where she focused on criminal defense and immigration law. Later, as a senior staff attorney at the California Appellate Project (CAP) in San Francisco, her defense work of over two decades centered on legal assistance to California capital appeals and in habeas corpus matters, aiding the ever-growing number of prisoners sentenced to death in challenging their convictions and sentences at the post-conviction stage. For many years, she has also conducted trainings and workshops on the role of language in capital trials and presented linguistic analysis of courtroom language to U.S. and international fora, addressing, for example, interpreter error, implications of prosecutors’ arguments, defense objections, and the role of language in determining a defendant’s competence to stand trial or for self-representation. Her work has appeared in such diverse journals as Language & Law/Linguagem e DireitoApplied Psycholinguistics, and the Journal of Pragmatics. Currently, having retired from her CAP attorney role, she continues her research and publication on sociolinguistic aspects of criminal cases, particularly as these affect capital proceedings.  (1/6/20 – 5/31/20) mel.greenlee@gmail.com

Anil Kalhan is a Professor of Law at the Drexel University Kline School of Law. His scholarly and teaching interests lie in the areas of immigration law, U.S. and comparative constitutional law, international human rights law, privacy and surveillance, criminal law, and law and South Asian studies. From 2015 to 2018, he served as chair of the New York City Bar Association’s International Human Rights Committee. Professor Kalhan is an Affiliated Faculty Member at the University of Pennsylvania South Asia Center and a Faculty Advisory Board member for the Drexel University Center for Mobilities Research and Policy, and he previously has held appointments as a Visiting Professor of Law at Washington University School of Law in St. Louis, an Adjunct Professor of Law at New York University School of Law, a Visiting Scholar at the Center for the Study of Law and Society at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, a Visiting Assistant Professor of Law at the Fordham University School of Law, and an Associate in Law at Columbia Law School. He also previously worked as a litigation associate at Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton, where he also served as co-coordinator of the firm’s immigration and international human rights pro bono practice group, and with the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project. Before attending law school, he worked for Cable News Network, PBS’s MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, and the New York City Department of Transportation. (1/6/2020-8/31/2020) anil.kalhan@drexel.edu; Website: http://kalhan.com; Twitter: @kalhan

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Yasuhiro Murayama is an Associate Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Rissho University in Tokyo, Japan. He received his Ph.D. from Ryukoku University in 2010. He was a post doctoral researcher in the Ryukoku Corrections and Rehabilitation Center, the only private academic research center specializing in criminal justice and criminology in Japan. His research interests are Criminology and Criminal Justice. More specifically, the issues of drug crime punishments through the lens of “Penal Welfarism” as rehabilitation versus traditionally punitive measures. His current projects also include a focus on both the Death Penalty and Life Imprisonment in Japan. His book, “Keiji-shihou ni okeru Drug Addiction-Programs: Kaihuku wo meguru kenri to gimu [Treatment Programs for Drug Abusers in the Criminal Justice System: Are these a Responsibility of Clients?]” (Nihon-Hyoron-Sha, 2015), received the Academic Encouragement Prize of the Education and Research Center for Criminal Justice and Juvenile Justice. (8/1/18-3/31/20) maruyama@ris.ac.jp

Noboru Yanase is a Professor at the College of Law, Nihon University, Japan. He received his L.L.M. and Ph.D. from Keio University. He is an author of many articles and books, including two single-authored books on the Japanese saiban-in (lay judge) system and the theory of deliberative democracy. His main area of research and teaching is constitutional law. Recently, he has actively advanced the international community’s understanding of Japanese constitutional theory, through publishing peer-reviewed articles in both Japanese and English. He has primarily focused his research on public participation in justice, and on this topic he was selected as a presenter at the Annual Meeting in 2016 by one of the most prestigious academic societies in Japan. He is also one of the few active researchers on the impeachment system in Japan, conducting comparative studies with the federal impeachment system in the U.S. As one of the leading experts in deliberative polling in Japan, he has managed most of the authorized deliberative polls in Japan, and his work in this regard has garnered him awards from the Japanese Association of Comparative Constitutional Law. (3/27/19-3/25/21) yanase.noboru@nihon-u.ac.jp

Dana Hayward is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology at Yale University. Her research explores the culture-shifting potential of the law – in other words, the power of the law to alter social norms and values. However, it can be difficult to study the cultural impact of legislation empirically, as laws both shape and are shaped by their cultural contexts. In her work, Dana suggests that a comparative analysis of close votes offers a promising solution to this dilemma. Drawing on insights from quasi-experimental research design, she argues that legislative decisions that pass or fail by narrow margins allow for comparisons in which levels of cultural support for law reform are held constant. While in residence at the Center, Dana will be working on her dissertation, which asks: How does legislative change affect the framing of moral issues? She conducts a qualitative comparative-historical analysis of four narrowly approved or defeated citizens’ initiatives that appeared on the ballot in the Western United States between 1990 and 1998. In each case, she compares how the issue was framed before, during, and after the approval or defeat of the measure, focusing particularly on media, political, and social movement discourses. She looks specifically at legislation in the issue areas of physician-assisted death and parental notification of abortion, as these issues raise similar sociological and ethical questions about bodily autonomy, informed consent, and the power of the state to regulate life and death. Dana holds an M.A. in Sociology from Yale, as well as an M.A. in Political Science and a B.Soc.Sc. (summa cum laude) in International Development and Globalization from the University of Ottawa. More information about Dana’s research can be found at www.danahayward.com. (8/12/19-8/11/20) dana.hayward@yale.edu


Gwendolyn Leachman 
is an Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Wisconsin Law School and a Faculty Affiliate with the Sociology Department at the University of Wisconsin. Gwyn’s research examines how the interaction between law and social movements affects patterns of inequality and social change. Her recent work investigates how impact litigation has affected the LGBT movement, including the power dynamics among LGBT movement organizations, and the compatibility of the mainstream movement’s goals with the more underrepresented segments of the LGBT community. She is currently working on a book, Litigation and the Shaping of the LGBT Movement (1985-2015), which highlights a series of mechanisms that have enabled litigation to dominate the agendas of LGBT and queer activists working outside the courtroom. Gwyn received her J.D. and a Ph.D. in Jurisprudence & Social Policy from UC Berkeley. Prior to joining the UW faculty, Professor Leachman was a fellow at the Williams Institute at UCLA. (8/12/19-8/11/20) gleachman@wisc.edu 


John Philipsborn is a practicing criminal defense lawyer with offices in San Francisco.  He obtained his law degree and a master’s degree in Criminology, Law, and Society in the University of California system.  His undergraduate degree and a Master’s in Education are from Bowdoin and Antioch Colleges, respectively.  During the course of his practice, the emphasis of his legal work has been on the defense of serious cases often involving questions about the reliability of scientific evidence.  He has defended numerous persons accused of capital offenses, homicides, and other felony offenses throughout various parts of the United States, in both Federal and State courts.  While primarily a trial lawyer, in part because of his lengthy tenure as Chair, Co-Chair, or Vice Chair of the Amicus Curiae Committee of California Attorneys for Criminal Justice (CACJ), in addition to having tried many cases he has been involved in litigations before the United States Supreme Court and numerous other reviewing tribunals around the United States, resulting in more than 100 published decisions.  He has been a lawyer with the Mexican Capital Legal Assistance Program since 2004 and has represented both Mexico and the Philippines in litigations in courts of the United States.  He has qualified as an expert witness on a number of aspects of the defense of cases, and has testified on the subject of the competence of individuals to be subject to trial in courts in the United States.  In addition, throughout his career, John has been involved in teaching, research and writing aimed primarily at persons practicing in the legal system.  He is a regular author or coauthor of book chapters specific to California criminal procedure and has published more than 80 times in journals and periodicals on a wide array of subjects, including forensic mental health and practice recommendations for lawyers.  He has often lectured to audiences of practicing lawyers and practicing forensic mental health practitioners.  A two-time Fulbright Scholar, he was a law school faculty member for more than 10 years, and has often presented to lawyers and students outside the United States. He was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award by CACJ in 2106, the 2016 Rosoff Distinguished Research Award from the Department of Criminology, Law, and Society at UC Irvine, and in 2014, he was recognized for his contributions to forensic mental health practice by the Forensic Mental Health Association of California.  In the Spring of 2019, he was named Visiting Scholar at the Center for Neuroscience and Society at the University of Pennsylvania, thereby continuing his focus on the intersection between mental health assessment and criminal law, with recent attention on the assessment of future violence. His visit to UC Berkeley allows continuation of that focus. (8/14/19-12/31/19)      jphilipsbo@aol.com

Erdem Demirtas is a PhD candidate in Political Science at Bogazici University, Istanbul. He received his M.A degree in Political Science from Yıldız Technical University. His main research interests involve comparative judicial politics, political economy of development and authoritarianism. His PhD dissertation focuses on judicial transformation in Turkey with an eye to Turkish Constitutional Court and the Council of Judges and Prosecutors. His research involves analysis of the Constitutional Court decisions and in depth interviews with judges and prosecutors. He is also looking for ways to use computational techniques for data collection and visualization. He published a book in 2014 entitled ‘State and Power in the Middle East: An Inquiry on Authoritarian Regimes’, Metis (in Turkish). Erdem Demirtaş was granted with Fulbright PhD Dissertation Research Scholarship for 2019-2020 academic year. (8/21/19-5/21/20) erdemirtas1903@gmail.com  

Fang Wang is an instructor in the Law School of Southwest Petroleum University, Chengdu, P.R.China. Her current research focuses on (1) The limits of law and the role of reputation mechanism; (2) The technical path of private financial supervision under the conditions of big data; (3) The impact of the disclosure of referee documents on the judicial system. (9/1/19-8/31/20) wangfang_law@163.com   

David Skarbek is Associate Professor of Political Science at Brown University. His research examines how extralegal governance institutions form, operate, and evolve. He has published extensively on the informal institutions that govern life in prisons in California and around the globe. His work has appeared in leading journals in political science, economics, and criminology, including in the American Political Science Review, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Journal of Law, Economics & Organization, and Journal of Criminal Justice. His book, The Social Order of the Underworld: How Prison Gangs Govern the American Penal System (Oxford University Press), received the American Political Science Association’s 2016 William H. Riker Award for the best book in political economy in the previous three years. It was also awarded the 2014 Best Publication Award from the International Association for the Study of Organized Crime and was shortlisted for the British Sociological Association’s 2014 Ethnography Award. His work has been featured widely in national and international media outlets, such as the Atlantic, BBC, Business Insider, the Economist, Forbes, the Independent, and the Times. (9/1/19-4/30/20) david_skarbek@brown.edu    


Gwendolyn Gordon 
was appointed to the department of Legal Studies and Business Ethics in 2013 at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Her research is an ethnographically-informed comparative corporate law, focusing specifically on the intersection of indigenous peoples’ cultural norms with issues of corporate governance and social responsibility. She has done long-term ethnographic fieldwork in New Zealand with an indigenously owned corporation. She received a B.A. in 2002 from Cornell University and her J.D. in 2006 from Harvard Law School, where she focused upon social and economic human rights for indigenous groups. She received a Ph.D. in anthropology from Princeton University in 2014; prior to this she worked as a corporate attorney in the London and New York offices of Shearman and Sterling LLP. (9/10/19-8/11/20) gwgordon@wharton.upenn.edu     


Yi You 
is a faculty member of the School of Policing Studies, Shanghai University of Political Science and Law. His researches mainly deal with the topics of prisons, comparative penal systems and social theoretical understandings of penality. He received his PhD in Law from Edinburgh University, MSc in Criminology and Criminal Justice from Oxford University, LLM from Kyushu University and LLB from Peking University. His academic output includes his PhD thesis “Imprisonment in the Contemporary Imaginaries in the UK: Nihilism, Innovation and the Performance of Introspective Normativity” and a number of papers published in Chinese which explored in the field of penal ideology and incarceration practices in mainland China. (9/30/19-9/29/20) youyi217@gmail.com