Faculty Scholarship - University of Louisville Louis D. Brandeis ...

Jim Chen
Dean and Professor of Law
Regulation, legislation, constitutional law
Jim Chen joined the University of Louisville as dean of the Louis D. Brandeis School of Law in January
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. He provides expert advice on the law of regulated industries,
particularly telecommunications. Dean Chen has also taught courses in criminal law and food
and drug law.
Dean Chen's lectures have spanned fifteen 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).
From July 1993 to January 2007, Dean Chen taught at the University of Minnesota Law School. In
his final years at Minnesota, Dean Chen served as that 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 received his B.A. degree, summa cum laude, and his M.A. degree from Emory University.
After studying as a Fulbright Scholar at Háskóli Íslands (the University of Iceland), he earned
his J.D. degree, magna cum laude, from the 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.
In addition to compiling an extensive record in traditional legal scholarship, Dean Chen has
emerged as an innovative master of online media. He maintains an official blog called The Cardinal
Lawyer and a related collaborative website called The Cardinal Lawyer II: Birds of a Feather.
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 subjects and methodological tools that
most vividly depict the law's interaction with societal and technological change. Other affiliated weblogs
include MoneyLaw, BioLaw, Agricultural Law, Commercial Law, Ratio Juris, Law and Technology
Theory, First Movers, Law Blog Central, and The Scientific Lawyer.
12