Law School Welcomes New Faculty Members

Prominent legal scholars and practitioners Frank Pasquale, Wilfred U. Codrington III, and Vijay Raghavan bring a wealth of expertise in law and policy

Brooklyn Law School welcomed three new full-time faculty members this fall: Professors Frank Pasquale, Wilfred U. Codrington III, and Vijay Raghavan. They join a faculty that is already nationally recognized for scholarly and teaching excellence.

“Our new faculty members bring a wealth of expertise, experience, and new ideas to the Law School,” said Dean Michael T. Cahill. “As our curriculum evolves to keep pace with the latest developments in technology, law, and policy, their contributions will be invaluable. We also look forward to their collaboration with our stellar existing group of scholars.”

Frank Pasquale

Pasquale previously was the Piper & Marbury Professor of Law at the University of Maryland. He is a noted expert on the law of artificial intelligence (AI), algorithms, and machine learning. He was a visiting professor at Brooklyn Law School in fall 2019.

Pasquale is a prolific and nationally regarded scholar, whose work focuses on how information is used across a number of areas, including health law, commerce, and tech. His wide-ranging expertise encompasses the study of the rapidity of technological advances and the unintended consequences of the interaction of privacy law, intellectual property, and antitrust laws, as well as the power of private sector intermediaries to influence healthcare and education finance policy.

His book, The Black Box Society: The Secret Algorithms That Control Money and Information (Harvard University Press 2015), has been recognized internationally as a landmark study on how “Big Data” affects our lives. The Black Box Society develops a social theory of reputation, search, and finance, while promoting pragmatic reforms to improve the information economy. His forthcoming book, New Laws of Robotics (Harvard University Press 2020), and a volume on AI he co-edited, The Oxford Handbook of Ethics of AI (Oxford University Press 2020), will both be released this year.

“Having spent the fall with Brooklyn Law’s outstanding students and faculty, I am thrilled to join a law school with such a strong commitment to research and community service,” said Pasquale. “As AI becomes an increasingly important concern of lawyers, I look forward to being part of the policy conversation in New York City, where some of the leading work is now being done.”

Pasquale has advised business and government leaders in the health care, internet, and finance industries, including the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the U.S. House Judiciary and Energy & Commerce Committees, the Senate Banking Committee, the Federal Trade Commission, and directorates-general of the European Commission. He also has advised officials in Canada and the United Kingdom on law and technology policy. He presently chairs the Subcommittee on Privacy, Confidentiality, and Security, part of the National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics, where he is serving a four-year term.

He is one of the leaders of a global movement for “algorithmic accountability.” In media and communication studies, he has developed a comprehensive legal analysis of barriers to, and opportunities for, regulation of internet platforms. In privacy law and surveillance, his work is among the leading research on regulation of algorithmic ranking, scoring, and sorting systems, including credit scoring and threat scoring.

Pasquale is an Affiliate Fellow at Yale University's Information Society Project and a member of the American Law Institute. He holds a J.D. from Yale Law School, an M.Phil. from Oxford University, and a B.A., summa cum laude, from Harvard University.

Pasquale’s move was noted by Brian Leiter’s Law School Reports as one of the top 10 lateral moves of the year. It is the fourth year Brooklyn Law School’s lateral hires have been on the list.

Wilfred U. Codrington III

Codrington comes to Brooklyn Law School from NYU School of Law, where he was the Bernard and Anne Spitzer Fellow and Counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice. At the Center, he focused on voting and election security, constitutional reform, and the rule of law. He taught graduate and undergraduate courses at NYU Wagner School of Public Service on topics of law, public policy, and politics. He also had served as a Fieldwork Supervisor for the Brennan Center Advocacy Clinic, a clinic devoted to teaching students public policy through real world legal reform campaigns that impact the laws of democracy and the regulation of election contests. At Brooklyn Law School, Codrington teaches Constitutional Law and Election Law.

He is the co-author of the forthcoming book, The People’s Constitution: 200 Years, 27 Amendments, and the Promise of a More Perfect Union (The New Press 2021), that examines the history of constitutional amendments and the tension between the overall progressive arc of constitutional change and the conservative grip on the broader conversation about the Constitution. Among his recent articles are “So Goes the Nation: What the American West is Telling us about How We’ll Choose the President in 2020,” Columbia Law Review Online (forthcoming 2020); and “The Benefits of Equity in the Constitutional Quest for Equality,” 43 N.Y.U. Review of Law & Social Change 105 (2019).

“I felt immediately at home at Brooklyn Law School,” Codrington said. “The faculty are dynamic and intellectually curious people who really want to do good for the world. The student body is a great group of diverse, public-interest-minded individuals. In addition to teaching at the Law School, I hope to continue working with the Brennan Center in some capacity, to influence the public debate on election laws, civil rights, and constitutional matters.”

Previously, Codrington was an associate at DLA Piper in the litigation, government investigations, and regulatory practices, where he participated in a variety of pro bono projects on behalf of individual clients, minority communities, and nonprofit organizations. He also clerked for Hon. Deborah Anne Batts, U.S. District Judge for the Southern District of New York, and served as a staffer for U.S. Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton.

Codrington holds a J.D. from Stanford Law School, an M.P.A. from University of Pennsylvania, and an A.B. with honors from Brown University.

Vijay Raghavan

Raghavan joined the Law School after a decade in the public sector, recently serving as Deputy Director of the Division of Financial Institutions with the Illinois Department of Financial & Professional Regulation. His scholarship focuses on consumer finance. His current research interests include regulatory design in consumer finance, defending interventions in consumer financial markets on distributional grounds, measuring risk in consumer financial markets, and emerging doctrinal issues in consumer law. He also explores in his work whether large debt write-offs in the emerging recession may be justified on efficiency grounds, in addition to moral grounds.

Raghavan previously served as an Assistant Attorney General with the Consumer Fraud Bureau of the Illinois Attorney General’s Office, where he investigated and litigated violations of state and federal consumer protection laws. Before that, he completed a two-year public service fellowship with Prairie State Legal Services, where he created a clinic to provide legal assistance for low-income individuals with tax problems. Raghavan began his career as a tax associate at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom.

“I was drawn to Brooklyn Law School by its stellar and kind faculty,” said Raghavan. “I am eager to engage with the faculty and students, and hope to lean on my public sector experience in scholarship as well as in the classroom.”

He holds a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School and B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Southern California.