Boston University School of Law at the 2026 AALS Annual Meeting
A number of BU Law faculty and staff will head to New Orleans, Louisiana, from January 6 to 9 for the 2026 Association of American Law Schools Annual Meeting. BU Law will be prominently represented across the conference, with our scholars and leaders featured as commentators, speakers, moderators, and panelists on a number of sessions, as well as both presenters and recipients of awards. Their contributions span an impressive range of fields—from labor relations and employment law to institutional advancement, education law to evidence, internet and computer law to international human rights, and more—showcasing the breadth and impact of their expertise.
Explore the full scope of BU Law’s presence at the 2026 AALS Annual Meeting below.
Aziza Ahmed
- January 9 from 8:00-9:15am
- Commentator
- Hilton New Orleans Riverside, Royal, Third Floor
- The Section on Critical Theories grows from the fertile ideas of a succession of movements of critical outsider jurisprudence that trace their roots to the legal realism of the early 20th century but have been influenced, rhizomatically, by myriad efforts to comprehend the contradictions of law and society and realize the critical challenge posed by the idea of “equal justice under law.”
- January 9 from 11:00 am-12:30 pm
- Presentation of Scholarly Paper Competition Awards
- Hilton New Orleans Riverside, St. Charles Ballroom, Third Floor
- Join us for the sixth annual AALS Awards Ceremony honoring our colleagues and celebrating excellence in legal education. AALS President, Austen Parrish, Dean of University of California, Irvine School of Law, and Executive Director & CEO Kellye Testy will serve as masters of ceremonies.
Shira Diner
- January 8 from 1:00-2:15 pm
- Discussion Group Participant
- Hilton New Orleans Riverside, Churchill A2, Second Floor
- This discussion group will explore resilience as an integral practice and virtue for disaster lawyers and how others may use these strategies in crisis contexts.
Andrew Elmore
Labor Relations and Employment Law, Sponsored by Employment Discrimination Law
- January 8 from 4:10-5:25 pm
- Moderator
- Hilton New Orleans Riverside, Grand Salon Section 18, First floor
- Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and Trump v. Wilcox mark a historic reorientation of the regulatory state toward greater scrutiny of federal agencies, accompanied by reduced independence. This panel will explore how law faculty, in particular those teaching labor law, employment law, and employment discrimination law, frame the new reality in the classroom.
Jonathan Feingold
Education Law, Sponsored by Children and the Law and Critical Theories
- January 6 from 4:10-5:25 pm
- Speaker
- Hilton New Orleans Riverside, Grand Salon Section 15, First Floor
- Public education has long been considered a cornerstone of American democracy. In Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court recognized it as “the very foundation” of good citizenship. Panelists will address the current state of the privatization of public education, including expansion of private religious education.
- January 8 from 2:35-5:25 pm
- Speaker
- Hilton New Orleans Riverside, Grand Salon Section 24, First Floor
- In 2025, the U.S. President and his billionaire backers are accelerating their prior attacks on the rule of law and the legacies of the New Deal, Warren Court, Great Society, and related developments in law and society. Beyond our typical pedagogies regarding rights, remedies, doctrines, procedures, and constitutionality, the times call on law professors to educate ourselves, our students, and the public about the sociolegal struggles that transformed U.S. democracy by birthing formal equality in the late nineteenth century and the rights revolution of the twentieth century. This panel will feature an array of scholarly voices regarding the pasts, presents, and possible futures of legal education with 2050 as a point of reference and imagination.
- January 9 from 8:00-9:15 am
- Speaker
- Hilton New Orleans Riverside, Grand Salon Section 21, First Floor
- This session examines whether the so-called “Palestine exception” to free speech—long understood as the marginalization of discourse on Palestinian rights—has become a broader rule governing campus speech.
Erika George
Comparative Law, Sponsored by East Asian Law
- January 8 from 2:35-3:50 pm
- Speaker
- Hilton New Orleans Riverside, Grand Salon Section 12, First Floor
- This panel offers a rich exploration of the crucial role that the rule of law plays in legal education and the broader legal profession through comparative perspectives.
Meghan O’Keefe
Institutional Advancement, Sponsored by Student Services
- January 8 from 1:00-2:15 pm
- Speaker
- Hilton New Orleans Riverside, Churchill D, Second Floor
- Designed for professionals in both Advancement and Student Services, this session explores strategic approaches to student group fundraising and event sponsorships, with a focus on optimizing law firm engagement.
Ngozi Okidegbe
Evidence, Sponsored by Immigration Law
- January 7 from 1:00-2:15 pm
- Speaker from a Call for Papers
- Hilton New Orleans Riverside, Commerce, Third Floor
- This panel seeks to interrogate the evolving standards, forms, and thresholds of evidentiary proof used to justify detention, deportation, and surveillance of criminal defendants as well as non-citizens targeted for immigration enforcement and to reflect on how these mechanisms intersect with broader critiques of carceral power.
Angela Onwuachi-Willig
Joint Awards Ceremony, Sponsored by Race and Private Law and Women in Legal Education Sections
- January 7 from 11:10-12:30 pm
- Chair and Speaker
- Hilton New Orleans Riverside, Grand Salon Section 9, First Floor
AALS Hot Topic with Author Professor Brian Soucek
- January 7 from 1:00-2:15 pm
- Speaker
- Hilton New Orleans Riverside, Canal, Third Floor
- This panel will use the forthcoming book by Professor Brian Soucek, The Opinionated University: Academic Freedom, Diversity, and the Myth of Neutrality in American Higher Education (University of Chicago Press, January 2026) as a springboard for exploring current issues of academic freedom and free speech across the US.
- January 8 from 9:35-10:50 am
- Moderator
- Hilton New Orleans Riverside, Grand Salon Section 3, First Floor
- Women remain underrepresented in influential positions in the legal academy. Visible and invisible status lines and distinctions within and outside of the academy have historically been defined by and through prisms of both discrimination and harassment. This panel will explore harassment and bullying and the wide range of behaviors that constitute them, ranging from more readily recognizable forms of unwelcome conduct such as unwanted sexual advances, comments, gestures, and physical contact, and actions or statements that are obviously threatening, to more subtle or insidious forms of harassment and bullying, such as instances where a staff member’s helpfulness are mistakenly interpreted as interest or where a faculty member engages in alleged consensual sexual relationships with students.
Women in Legal Education Section – Celebration Honoring Section Members and the Co-Recipients of the Ruth Bader Ginsburg Lifetime Achievement Award Ceremony (honoring Peggy Cooper Davis (NYU School of Law) and Patricia Williams (Northeastern University Law))
- January 8 at 7:00-9:30 pm (dinner and program)
- Speaker and Host
- Tulane Law School @ 6329 Freret St., Weinmann Hall, Marian Mayer Berkett Room
- The Ruth Bader Ginsburg Lifetime Achievement Award honors individuals who have had a distinguished career of teaching, service, and scholarship for at least 20 years and who have impacted women, the legal community, the academy, and the issues that affect women through mentoring, writing, speaking, activism, and by providing opportunities to others. The Award was inaugurated in 2013, with Justice Ginsburg as the first recipient of the honor.
- January 9 from 11:00 am-12:30 pm
- Presentation of Deborah L. Rhode Award Recipients as Committee Chair Awards
- Hilton New Orleans Riverside, St. Charles Ballroom, Third Floor
- Join us for the sixth annual AALS Awards Ceremony honoring our colleagues and celebrating excellence in legal education. AALS President, Austen Parrish, Dean of University of California, Irvine School of Law, and Executive Director & CEO Kellye Testy will serve as masters of ceremonies.
Christopher Robertson
Exhibit Hall Presentation by Aspen Publishing
- January 8 from 2:35-3:50 pm
- Speaker
- Hilton New Orleans Riverside, Grand Ballroom, First Floor
- The goal of this session is to help law schools identify proven, research-based strategies that increase student readiness and bar passage outcomes.
- January 9 from 9:35-10:50 am
- Commentator
- Hilton New Orleans Riverside, Churchill C1, Second Floor
- For the third year in a row, the Internet and Computer Law Section of AALS is partnering with the Law and Technology Workshop (https://thelawtechworkshop.org) to host an in-person meeting of the Workshop during the annual meeting. The Law & Technology Workshop is a monthly virtual series that serves as an intellectual home for scholars working at the intersection of law and technology.
Victoria S. Sahani
International Human Rights and International Law Joint Program
- January 8 from 2:35-3:50 pm
- Commentator
- Hilton New Orleans Riverside, Churchill B1, Second Floor
- The Sections issued a call for papers soliciting unpublished papers and works-in-progress on any aspect of human rights or international law, including interdisciplinary work, co-authored works, and papers using innovative research methods. The CFP was open to full-time faculty members from AALS member schools who have not previously presented a human rights or international law paper at the AALS Annual Meeting, with a preference given to junior scholars.
Rephael Stern
- January 8 from 11:10 am-12:00 pm
- AALS Section Annual Award Winner
- Hilton New Orleans Riverside, Grand Salon Section 16, First Floor
International Human Rights and International Law Joint Program
- January 8 from 2:35-3:50 pm
- Speaker from a Call for Papers
- Hilton New Orleans Riverside, Churchill B1, Second Floor
- The Sections issued a call for papers soliciting unpublished papers and works-in-progress on any aspect of human rights or international law, including interdisciplinary work, co-authored works, and papers using innovative research methods. The CFP was open to full-time faculty members from AALS member schools who have not previously presented a human rights or international law paper at the AALS Annual Meeting, with a preference given to junior scholars.