Benjamin Edwards researches and writes about business and securities law, corporate governance, arbitration, and consumer protection.

Before joining the UNLV Boyd School of Law in 2017, he taught at Barry University's Dwayne O. Andreas School of Law and at Michigan State University College of Law. Prior to teaching, Edwards practiced as a securities litigator in the New York office of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP. At Skadden, he represented clients in complex civil litigation, including securities class actions arising out of the Madoff Ponzi scheme and litigation arising out of the 2008 financial crisis.

His writing has appeared in top law reviews and journals, and news outlets including The Wall Street Journal, The Hill, and The Washington Post. 

Ian Bartrum teaches constitutional law, law and religion, and constitutional theory at the William S. Boyd School of Law at UNLV.  He has also taught at Drake Law School and Vermont Law School, and has served as the Irving Ribicoff Fellow at Yale Law School.  

His work has been published by the Northwestern University Law Review, the Washington University Law Review, the Michigan Law Review, the Virginia Law Review, the William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal, the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law, and Constitutional Commentary, among other journals. He is a graduate of Hamilton College, Vermont Law School, and Yale Law School.

M. Alexis Kennedy brings a forensic psychology perspective to studying victimization and children’s issues. Her areas of research include trauma, child abuse, sexual assault, exploitation through prostitution and domestic violence. She has published in numerous journals such as the Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma and the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry.

Alexis Kennedy won two American Psychological Association Awards (Divisions 37 and 41) and a Canadian Psychological Association Laureate for her doctoral dissertation on cross-cultural perceptions of child abuse. She has testified in court, spoken nationally and internationally, and is frequently quoted in the media on issues of exploitation and abuse.

Kennedy received a $623,600 grant from the U.S. Department of Justice in 2015 to study human trafficking and resiliency in young survivors. A fellow of the Center for Crime and Justice Policy, she completed a federally funded evaluation of a re-entry program for offenders.

Kennedy has facilitated and conducted research for a number of Clark County task forces including initiatives on human trafficking, juvenile delinquency, child abuse and sex offender management. She conducts research for specialty courts, child protective services and non-profit service agencies in Las Vegas.

Dr. Kennedy also serves as an active mentor and board member for national and local non-profits. She is a frequent trainer on child abuse human trafficking, compassion fatigue, speaking to criminal justice, mental health, medical, and community-based organizations.

David S. Tanenhaus is an internationally recognized authority on the history and practice of juvenile justice. 

He is a professor in the UNLV history department and the James E. Rogers Professor of History and Law at the William S. Boyd School of Law. From 2004 to 2012, Tanenhaus served as editor of Law and History Review. He is now general editor, with Franklin E. Zimring, of NYU Press’s Youth, Crime, and Justice Series. 

Since coming to UNLV in 1997, he has taught courses on American legal and constitutional history, the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, children and society, and introductory surveys of U.S. History.

He has written extensively about legal and constitutional history. His books include Juvenile Justice in the Making (Oxford University Press, 2004) and The Constitutional Rights of Children: In re Gault and Juvenile Justice (University Press of Kansas, 2011). He co-edited, with Margaret K. Rosenheim, Franklin E. Zimring, and Bernardine Dohrn, A Century of Juvenile Justice (University of Chicago, 2002) and, with Franklin E. Zimring, Choosing the Future for American Juvenile Justice (NYU Press, 2014). He also served as the editor-in-chief of The Encyclopedia of the Supreme Court of the United States (MacMillan Reference USA, 2008). 

A passionate believer in connecting universities to communities, he serves as a Trustee of Nevada Humanities, participates in teacher institutes sponsored by the Center for Civic Education and the American Institute for History Education, and helps coordinate both the Philip Pro Lectureship in Legal History at the Boyd School of Law and the UNLV Constitution Day Public Lectureship.

Francine J. Lipman brings to the Boyd School of Law an exceptional record as an accountant, a lawyer, a teacher, and a scholar. After working as a CPA in an international accounting firm and as the chief financial officer for a chain of retail jewelry stores, Lipman turned to law.

As a law student, she has served as the editor-in-chief of the UC Davis Law Review and was recognized as a member of the Order of the Coif. In NYU’s Graduate Tax Law Program, she was a Tax Law Review Scholar. She practiced law with the firms O’Melveny & Myers and Irell & Manella.

Lipman joined the faculties of Chapman University’s School of Business and Economics in 2001 and the William S. Boyd School of Law in 2003. She is an elected member of the American Law Institute, the American College of Tax Counsel, and the American Bar Foundation, and an editor and former committee chair for the Tax Section of the American Bar Association. She has been a visiting professor at UC Hastings College of Law and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. 

In 2016, Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval appointed Lipman to serve as a tax commissioner. The Nevada Tax Commission consists of eight Nevadans with various professional and business backgrounds. The commissioners supervise the overall administration and operations of the Nevada Department of Taxation. 

Lipman has written extensively on tax and accounting issues for legal journals, including the Wisconsin Law Review, Florida Tax Review, Virginia Tax Review, SMU Law Review, Nevada Law Journal, American University Law Review, Harvard Environmental Law Review, Harvard Latino Law Review, Harvard Journal on Legislation, The Tax Lawyer, The Practical Tax Lawyer, Taxes and Tax Notes. She is a frequent speaker on tax subjects to law and business groups.

Tiffiany Howard is an associate professor of political science who joined the University of Nevada, Las Vegas faculty in 2008. Her fields of specialization include international security; immigration and refugee policies; political violence, conflict and terrorism; and comparative analyses of race, gender, and ethnicity.

She has been awarded notable nationally recognized visiting scholar and research fellow positions, including the Council on Foreign Relations-International Affairs Fellowship (2019-2020); the Geneva Center for Security Policy-Associate Fellowship (2020); the Asser Institute-Visiting Fellowship (2020); the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation-Senior Research Fellowship (2019); the Black Mountain Institute Faculty Fellowship (Spring 2015); the Ford Foundation-Postdoctoral Scholar Fellowship (2013-2014, In Residence at UCLA); and the Department of Defense-DARPA Research Fellow (2008).

Through her research, Howard has had the privilege of working at and with the United Nations, International Criminal Court, Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security,  House Committee on Homeland Security, and Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department.

Howard is the author of The Tragedy of Failure (Praeger Security International/ABC-CLIO, 2010) and Failed States and the Origins of Violence (Ashgate, 2014), the co-author of Sex, Power and Politics: Exploring Gender Roles, Identities and Influence throughout History (Palgrave: Forthcoming 2016), and series co-editor of  Migration, Demography and Environmental Change: Global Challenges (University of Nevada Press).  Other notable peer reviewed publications appear in Civil Wars, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, the International Journal of Terrorism and Political Hot Spots, and Immigrants and Minorities.

Stephen Bates is a professor in the Hank Greenspun School of Journalism and Media Studies at UNLV. He teaches classes on free speech, censorship, privacy, and media politics.

His research focuses on the First Amendment. He is the author of An Aristocracy of Critics: Luce, Hutchins, Niebuhr, and the Committee That Redefined Freedom of the Press (Yale University Press), as well as books on the history of journalism, political advertising, and religious freedom. His articles have appeared in Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, Communication Law and Policy, American Journalism, Journalism History, and the International Journal of Communication, as well as the Washington Post Magazine, American Heritage, the Wall Street Journal, and the Wilson Quarterly, where he spent nine years as literary editor. He holds an A.B. and a J.D. from Harvard University.

A former board member of the ACLU of Nevada, Bates is a member of the advisory board of the Black Mountain Institute at UNLV. He has been a fellow of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the Annenberg Washington Program in Communications Policy Studies, and the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy [photo by Martha Stewart Photography].

Addie Rolnick joined UNLV from UCLA School of Law, where she was the inaugural Critical Race Studies Fellow. Her scholarship focuses on bridging gaps between civil rights, critical race theory, federal Indian law, and indigenous rights.

Rolnick's research has investigated the relationships between sovereign power and minority rights, including: the role of race and gender in the administration of criminal and juvenile justice; equal protection-based attacks on indigenous rights; the relationship between private and state violence; and the role of tribal justice systems. She is a nationally recognized expert on Native youth and juvenile justice.

Prior to joining the academy, she represented tribal governments as an attorney with a top Native rights firm in Washington, D.C., where she was a leading advocate on law enforcement and juvenile justice issues. She has also assisted tribes with institution building in the areas of juvenile justice, child welfare, constitution drafting, and justice system development.

Rebecca Gill brings a decidedly interdisciplinary and collaborative approach to understanding important social issues involving law, courts, and social norms. Gill is an expert on judges, judicial selection, and race and gender bias. She is an engaging speaker with experience presenting to a wide range of audiences, including via radio and television. As the former director of the Women's Research Institute of Nevada (2017-2019), she is particularly excited to talk about the wide range of research about gender, women, and girls. Gill's story about her own experience with sexual harassment in academia has gained national media attention, so she has both professional and personal experience with the #MeToo movement.

Gill is the recipient of a multi-year National Science Foundation grant to investigate implicit bias in judicial performance evaluations. She is also working on other research involving gender, courts, and politics, including the role of masculinity and social norms on the selection and behavior of judges American courts.

Gill's research has appeared in the Law & Society Review, the Georgetown Law Journal, the Ohio State Law Journal, State Politics & Policy Quarterly, the Journal of Women, Politics, and Policy, Politics, Groups, & Identities, and a number of other high profile scholarly journals. Gill is the co-author of Judicialization of Politics: The Interplay of Institutional Structure, Legal Doctrine, and Politics on the High Court of Australia. Her work has also been featured in popular outlets like the Washington Post, the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the Wall Street Journal Law Blog, and the Empirical Legal Studies Blog.

Jean Sternlight is the Michael and Sonja Saltman Professor of Law at the UNLV Boyd School of Law, where she also directs the Saltman Center for Conflict Resolution. A member of the Boyd faculty since 2003, Sternlight is internationally recognized for her scholarship and law reform activities in the field of dispute resolution, specifically both litigation and alternatives to litigation including arbitration, mediation and negotiation.   

In particular, Sternlight is frequently cited by courts and the press as an expert with respect to "mandatory" arbitration, the practice whereby companies require employees and consumers to resolve disputes through private arbitration rather than in public courts. She has criticized this practice on both legal and policy grounds in numerous books and articles and in Congressional testimony. She argues that companies are using mandatory arbitration to deprive consumers and employees of access to attorneys and access to court, for example by preventing them from joining together in class actions.

Sternlight also focuses on improving legal education. She argues that it is important to blend both theory and practice. Her most recent book, Psychology for Lawyers: Understanding the Human Factors in Negotiation, Litigation and Decision Making (American Bar Association, 2012), argues that lawyers who know about psychology can be more effective in interviewing, counseling, negotiation, writing, and courtroom performance.