The American Law Institute has announced a transition in leadership. Richard L. Revesz of New York University School of Law was named Director Designate.
Revesz, who is the Lawrence King Professor of Law and Dean Emeritus at NYU, will work with ALI Director Lance Liebman until May 2014 when Liebman will complete his 15-year directorship. The Nominating Committee of the ALI Council appointed Chief Judge Diane P. Wood of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and Gerhard Casper, President Emeritus of Stanford University, to work with ALI President Roberta Cooper Ramo as a search committee. The search committee unanimously recommended Revesz, whose appointment was approved unanimously by ALI's Council.
"In more than 90 years of working toward law reform, we have had only five Directors, and each one was a giant in the law," said ALI President Roberta Ramo. "In Richard Revesz, we have found another major legal figure to carry on the essential work of clarifying, modernizing, and improving the law."
"I'm especially happy because Lance is so enthusiastic about his successor," Ramo said. "The ALI will benefit from Lance and Ricky working together as a team along with Stephanie Middleton, our Deputy Director, until May which will ensure that our 14 ongoing law-reform projects continue without interruption."
NYU Law School Dean Trevor W. Morrison, said: "Ricky has always been a highly productive and insightful scholar, even while handling the demands of running the Law School."
Morrison, who assumed NYU Law's deanship in June 2013, said Revesz's "tremendous intellectual and administrative abilities, his capacity to lead, and his unbounded energy make him a fabulous choice to oversee the ALI, whose work has been so vital to practitioners, jurists, and academics."
Revesz is one of the nation's leading voices in the fields of environmental and regulatory law and policy. He has published eight books and 60 articles in major law reviews and journals. As dean of NYU School of Law from June 2002 to May 2013, Revesz increased the size of the full-time faculty by more than 30 percent, more than doubled the number of clinics, including a new clinic in Washington D.C. on the role of government, and established 11 new centers and institutes—interdisciplinary ventures that bring together faculty members, professional researchers, and students to work in areas of legal and policy salience.
The role of the ALI Director is, with the Council, to identify subjects for the Institute's work, recruit distinguished academics to serve as Reporters on those projects, and generally oversee the intellectual output of the ALI.
Richard L. Revesz — Facts at a Glance:
- Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina
- Princeton University, B.S.E., summa cum laude, civil engineering and public affairs, 1979
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology, M.S. 1980 (environmental engineering)
- Yale Law School, J.D. 1983 ( Editor-in-Chief, Yale Law Journal)
- Judicial Clerkships
- Justice Thurgood Marshall, U.S. Supreme Court, 1984-85
- Chief Judge Wilfred Feinberg, Second Circuit, 1983-84
- New York University School of Law
- Lawrence King Professor of Law, since 2001
- Dean Emeritus, since 2013
- Faculty Director, Institute for Policy Integrity, since 2008
- Dean, 2002-2013
- Faculty Director, Program on Environmental Regulation, 1996-2008
- Faculty Director, Financial Aid Study, 1994-2002
- Professor of Law, 1990-2001
- Associate Professor of Law, 1988-90
- Assistant Professor of Law, 1985-88
- Visiting Professorships
- Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Spring 2002
- Yale Law School, Spring 2001
- Harvard University Law School, 1995-96
- Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva, Spring 1995
- University of Geneva School of Law, Spring 1995
- Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences
- Member, Council on Foreign Relations
- Married to Vicki L. Been, the Boxer Family Professor of Law at NYU Law School and Director of the Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy. (The couple met while both were clerking at the Supreme Court, she for Justice Blackmun, he for Justice Marshall.)
- His most recent book, Retaking Rationality: How Cost Benefit Analysis Can Better Protect the Environment and Our Health, which he co-authored with Michael A. Livermore, argues that the economic analysis of the law could be used by environmentalists and other progressive groups to strengthen environmental and public health policy and regulations.
- After the book was published in 2008, Revesz and Livermore co-founded the Institute for Policy Integrity, an NYU Law-affiliated advocacy organization and think tank dedicated to improving the quality of governmental decision-making.