Professors Expand UVA Law Expertise as Visiting Faculty

Michele Bratcher Goodwin, a biotechnology and health policy expert, and Kimberly J. Robinson, an expert in education law, will serve as visiting professors at the University of Virginia School of Law this fall.

“We’re excited to welcome fresh perspectives from two highly regarded scholars,” Dean Risa Goluboff said. “Michele and Kimberly are both leaders in their fields as well as exceptional teachers who will enhance our fall curriculum.”

Goodwin is Chancellor’s Professor of Law, and director and founder of the Center for Biotechnology and Global Health Policy at the University of California, Irvine School of Law. She is one of the world’s leading authorities on the regulation of medicine, science and biotechnology.

She will teach Biotechnology and the Law.

Her publications include five books and more than 80 articles and book chapters on the law’s regulation of the human body, including civil and criminal regulation of pregnancy and reproduction, reproductive technologies, human trafficking (for organs, sex and marriage), and tissue and organ transplantation.

Goodwin serves on the National Board and Executive Committee of the American Civil Liberties Union and is an elected member of the American Law Institute and fellow of the American Bar Foundation. She is also founder of the Institute for Global Child Advocacy and former Everett Fraser Professor in Law at the University of Minnesota.

She has a J.D. from Boston College Law School, and an LL.M. and bachelor’s from the University of Wisconsin.

Robinson is the Austin E. Owen Research Scholar and professor of law at the University of Richmond School of Law. She speaks domestically and internationally about educational equity, equal educational opportunity, civil rights and the federal role in education.

She will teach Education Law and Policy, and Education Law Survey.

In 2019, New York University Press will publish her second edited book, tentatively titled “Thoughts on a Federal Right to Education,” which gathers leading constitutional and education law scholars to consider the challenging questions raised by recognizing a federal right to education in the United States. In 2015, Harvard Education Press published her book that was co-edited with Professor Charles Ogletree Jr. of Harvard Law School titled “The Enduring Legacy of Rodriguez: Creating New Pathways to Equal Educational Opportunity.” Robinson published “Fisher’s Cautionary Tale and the Urgent Need for Equal Access to an Excellent Education” in the November 2016 issue of the Harvard Law Review, which analyzes the legal and policy issues regarding the challenge to the affirmative action policy at the University of Texas in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin.

Robinson’s article, titled “Disrupting Education Federalism,” in the Washington University Law Review, won the 2016 Steven S. Goldberg Award for Distinguished Scholarship in Education Law from the Education Law Association, of which she is a member. In 2012, she served as chair of the Education Law Section of the Association of American Law Schools.

Prior to joining the Richmond Law faculty in 2010, Robinson was an associate professor at Emory University School of Law and a visiting fellow at George Washington University Law School. She also served in the General Counsel’s Office of the U.S. Department of Education, where she helped draft federal policy on issues of race, sex and disability discrimination.

Robinson has a J.D. from Harvard Law School and a bachelor’s from UVA.