China Summer Program in Beijing

Faculty and Directors

Robin Effron

Associate Professor of Law

Brooklyn Law School, New York

B.A., Barnard College, Columbia University
J.D., New York University School of Law

Civil Procedure
Comparative Contract Law
Complex Litigation

Robin Effron teaches civil procedure and business law courses. Her articles on complex litigation have been published in several law reviews. Fluent in German, she spent an academic year in Germany as a fellow in the D.A.A.D. Program for International Lawyers and worked with attorneys in the legal department of a large investment bank to research questions of German and U.S. law.  She also edits the Civil Procedure and Federal Courts Blog for the Law Professors Blog Network.

Prior to joining Brooklyn Law School’s faculty, Professor Effron served as a Bigelow Fellow and Lecturer in Law at the University of Chicago Law School. She also served as a law clerk to Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. In law school, she was articles editor on the NYU Law Review.

Jason Mazzone

On-Site Director

Gerald Baylin Professor of Law

Brooklyn Law School, New York

B.A., Harvard University

M.A., Stanford University

J.D., Harvard Law School

LL.M., J.S.D., Yale Law School

Constitutional Law
Intellectual Property Law
Legal History

Jason Mazzone joined the faculty of Brooklyn Law School in 2003 and was named the Gerald Baylin Professor of Law in 2010. He specializes in constitutional law and history, criminal procedure, and intellectual property law, and he has published widely in these fields.

Professor Mazzone’s scholarship in constitutional law focuses on issues of federalism, separation of powers, and institutional design. He is an expert on the roles that state courts play in interpreting the federal Constitution. He is currently conducting an empirical study of all Supreme Court cases that have reviewed state court decisions on issues of federal constitutional law. Professor Mazzone is also writing a book on how societies create the cultural conditions necessary for the success of written constitutions. Professor Mazzone received his doctorate in 2004 from Yale University, where he wrote his dissertation on civic associations and constitutionalism in the early American Republic.

In intellectual property law, Professor Mazzone is a leading authority on the problem of overreaching: uses of IP law to assert rights beyond those the law actually confers. His book on this topic, Copyfraud and Other Abuses of Intellectual Property Law, will be published in 2011 by Stanford University Press.

Before entering academia, Professor Mazzone was a law clerk to Judge Robert D. Sack of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and then to Judge John G. Koeltl of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Professor Mazzone has also worked as a Research Assistant to Laurence Tribe. Professor Mazzone is a member of the American Law Institute and a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation and he serves on the Board of Trustees of the Copyright Society of the USA. His scholarship has been cited by the Supreme Court and he is a frequent media commentator on legal issues. He blogs at Balkinization.

Peter Tiersma
Professor of Law

Joseph Scott Fellow
Director of International Programs

BA, with distinction, Stanford University, Phi Beta Kappa
JD, University of California Berkeley, Order of the Coif
PhD, University of California San Diego

Peter Tiersma is Director of International Programs at Loyola Law School. He was born in the Netherlands and immigrated with his parents to the United States. Following graduation from Stanford University, he was a Fulbright Fellow to the Netherlands and later received a Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of California, San Diego. Subsequently, he obtained a J.D. from Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California in Berkeley.

He clerked for Justice Stanley Mosk of the California Supreme Court, worked in private practice for three years, and has been teaching at Loyola Law School since 1990. Tiersma is the author of the books Frisian Reference Grammar (Fryske Akademy, 1999), Legal Language (University of Chicago Press, 1999), and Speaking of Crime: The Language of Criminal Justice (co-authored with Lawrence Solan, University of Chicago Press, 2005).

He has written several articles on the relationship between language and law. Tiersma has also lectured widely on these topics, most recently in Germany and China.

Michael A. Gerber
Interim Dean and Professor of Law, Brooklyn Law School

B.A., New York University
J.D., New York University School of Law

Michael Gerber's area of expertise is bankruptcy law. He is the author of a Chapter 11 casebook used in law schools throughout the United States, and he is a contributing author of Collier on Bankruptcy, the leading treatise on bankruptcy law. He writes and lectures on corporate governance in bankruptcy, bankruptcy ethics, the treatment of intellectual property interests in bankruptcy, dot-com bankruptcies, international and comparative insolvency law, and other business bankruptcy and reorganization topics. At Brooklyn Law School, he helps lead the annual Barry Zaretsky Roundtable Discussion, which focuses on cutting-edge bankruptcy issues.  He also serves as the Associate Dean for Development.

Prior to joining the faculty, Professor Gerber practiced law at Proskauer Rose and the firm formerly known as Brown Raysman LLP. He has served on the Merit Selection Panel for a Bankruptcy Judge in the Eastern District of New York, and on the Committee on Bankruptcy and Corporate Reorganization of the New York City Bar.