Professor Dana Brakman Reiser Named Centennial Professor of Law

Brooklyn Law School has named Professor Dana Brakman Reiser the Centennial Professor of Law. A member of the faculty since 2001, Brakman Reiser is a widely recognized authority on law and finance for both philanthropic organizations and businesses that pursue a social mission. She is the author (with Professor Steven Dean) of Social Enterprise Law: Trust, Public Benefit, and Capital Markets (Oxford University Press 2017). Her forthcoming book with Dean, tentatively titled For-Profit Philanthropy, traces the ways that players, practices, and norms native to the business world have migrated into philanthropy, and how this shift strains the law’s ability to regulate and channel the immense power that philanthropists wield. The book will be published by Oxford University Press in 2022. Her scholarship on philanthropy, social enterprise, and environmental social governance investing also has appeared in Boston College Law Review, Cardozo Law Review, Emory Law Journal, Indiana Law Journal, and Notre Dame Law Review, among others.

At the Law School, Brakman Reiser teaches courses in Corporations, Social Enterprise, Nonprofit Law, Property, and Trusts and Estates. She is affiliated with the Dennis J. Block Center for the Study of International Business Law, the Center for the Study of Business Law & Regulation, the Center for Health, Science & Public Policy, and the Center for Urban Business Entrepreneurship.

“Dana Brakman Reiser has not only contributed, but excelled, in every aspect of an academic’s role,” said Dean Michael T. Cahill, who announced the chair. “She has been an outstanding, and exceedingly popular, teacher since her arrival; she has served and helped govern the school in various ways, including as vice dean; and she has risen to the top in her intellectual community as one of the most well-regarded and influential scholars in her field and on our faculty.”

Brakman Reiser is a member of the American Law Institute and was an Associate Reporter for its project on the Principles of the Law of Nonprofit Organizations. She is a member and past-Chair of the Section on Nonprofit and Philanthropy Law of the American Association of Law Schools, and an active member of the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action. She also has been a visiting professor at Fordham University School of Law.

“I am thrilled to accept my appointment as the Centennial Professor of Law and profoundly appreciate this recognition of my scholarly impact,” said Brakman Reiser. “It has been a privilege to develop my academic career within the rigorous and inspiring Brooklyn Law School community, surrounded by supportive colleagues and administrators and passionate students and alumni. Thank you so much to Dean Cahill and our Board of Trustees.”

Before joining the faculty, Brakman Reiser was a legal fellow in the Office of the General Counsel of Partners HealthCare System and served as a law clerk to Judge Bruce Selya of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. She received her J.D. from Harvard Law School, where she was a note editor of the Harvard Law Review, and her B.A. from University of Pennsylvania.