PHILADELPHIA – At this week’s 2022 Annual Meeting, The American Law Institute’s membership elected four new members to its Council, which determines projects and activities to be undertaken by the ALI and approves the work as representing the position of the Institute.
The new Council members are Thomas A. Balmer of the Oregon Supreme Court, Richard R.W. Brooks of New York University School of Law, Michael J. Garcia of the New York Court of Appeals, and Cristina M. Rodríguez of Yale Law School.
Short biographies of ALI’s new Council members can be found below. Complete biographies are available here.
Thomas A. Balmer was appointed to the Oregon Supreme Court in 2001 and has been elected and re-elected four times. He served as Chief Justice from 2012 to 2018. Before his appointment, he was a partner in a Portland law firm, where his practice focused on business and regulatory litigation and appeals. From 1993-97, he was Oregon Deputy Attorney General, advising electing officials and agency heads on administrative and constitutional matters. Balmer has tried cases and briefed and argued appeals in Oregon and federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court.
During his term as Chief Justice, Balmer served on the Board of Directors of the Conference of Chief Justices and was Chair of the Civil Justice Improvements Committee. That committee oversaw a broad-based multi-year project that studied and made recommendations to reduce cost and delay in civil litigation—Call to Action: Achieving Civil Justice for All (2016). The report, and later implementation tools developed by the National Center for State Courts, has served as a roadmap for improvements in state courts across the country.
Richard R.W. Brooks is the Emilie M. Bullowa Professor of Law at New York University. He joined the law faculty at NYU in 2018, after holding the Leighton Homer Surbeck Professorship of Law at Yale Law School followed by the Charles Keller Beekman Professorship of Law at Columbia Law School. Brooks’ scholarly approach combines economics, game theory and legal analytical methods from private law fields—such as contract, property, fiduciary and corporate law—to study social organization more broadly.
Brooks has published numerous books and articles that analyze behavior through the lens of economics, custom, and law. His most recent book, Saving the Neighborhood: Racially Restrictive Covenants, Law, and Social Norms, (coauthored with Carol Rose) examines the history and enduring legacy of racially restrictive property agreements (or racial covenants), which the Supreme Court ruled unenforceable in 1948.
Michael J. Garcia was appointed to the New York Court of Appeals in 2016. He began his legal career as an associate at Cahill Gordon & Reindel LLP in 1989. From 1990 to 1992, he served as Law Clerk to Hon. Judith S. Kaye, then Associate Judge of the New York Court of Appeals. From 1992 to 2001, Garcia served as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York. For his work in a number of high-profile terrorism investigations and trials, he received two Attorney General’s Awards for Exceptional Service and the Attorney General’s Award for Distinguished Service.
In 2001, he became Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Export Enforcement in the Bureau of Industry and Security, and in December 2002, he became Acting Commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) at the United States Department of Justice. In that role, he led the transition of the agency into the United States Department of Homeland Security. From March 2003 to August 2005, Garcia served as Assistant Secretary for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at the Department of Homeland Security. Garcia was the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York from 2005 to 2008, when he joined Kirkland & Ellis LLP.
Cristina M. Rodríguez is the Leighton Homer Surbeck Professor of Law at Yale Law School. Her fields of research and teaching include constitutional law and theory, immigration law and policy, and administrative law and process. In 2021, she was appointed by President Biden to co-chair the Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States.
Rodríguez joined Yale Law School in 2013 after serving for two years as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice. She was on the faculty at the New York University School of Law from 2004–2012 and has been Visiting Professor of Law at Stanford, Harvard, and Columbia Law Schools. Following law school, Rodríguez clerked for Judge David S. Tatel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and Justice Sandra Day O’Connor of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Additionally, at the Annual Meeting Kim J. Askew of DLA Piper US LLP, Kenneth C. Frazier of Merck & Co., Inc, Paul L. Friedman of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, William C. Hubbard of the University of South Carolina School of Law, Jane Stapleton of Christ’s College, University of Cambridge, Larry S. Stewart of Stewart Tilghman Fox Bianchi & Cain, P.A. (Retired), Diane P. Wood of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit took emeritus status. Emeritus Council members often continue to participate in Council meetings.
About The American Law Institute
The American Law Institute is the leading independent organization in the United States producing scholarly work to clarify, modernize, and improve the law. The ALI drafts, discusses, revises, and publishes Restatements of the Law, Model Codes, and Principles of Law that are enormously influential in the courts and legislatures, as well as in legal scholarship and education.
By participating in the Institute’s work, its distinguished members have the opportunity to influence the development of the law in both existing and emerging areas, to work with other eminent lawyers, judges, and academics, to give back to a profession to which they are deeply dedicated, and to contribute to the public good.
For more information about The American Law Institute, visit www.ali.org.