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Our emeritus faculty includes the following individuals, all of whom served for many years on the law school's full-time faculty, impacting countless students' lives with their teaching and mentoring.

Mark Bobrowski

JD New England Law | Boston
MA University of Oregon
BA Ithaca College

Professor Emeritus Bobrowski taught Administrative Law, Land Use, Local Government, and Property. The author of the Handbook of Massachusetts Land Use and Planning Law, he has written extensively on issues affecting municipal government and has worked with communities across the region on community growth control, economic development, and resource protection. 

Ronald Chester

Dip. Crim. Cambridge University (Trinity College), England
MIA Columbia University School of International Affairs
JD Columbia University School of Law
AB Harvard University

Professor Emeritus Chester is the author of From Here to Eternity? Property and the Dead Hand (2007); Unequal Access: Women Lawyers in a Changing America (1985); the award-winning Inheritance, Wealth, and Society (1982), and has co-authored two volumes (2005) (2018) of the Bogert treatise Trusts and Trustees 3rd ed. He has published numerous scholarly articles dealing with inheritance and trust law, legal history, the law of assisted reproduction and other topics. He was a Visiting Professor of Law at Indiana University (Bloomington); Southern Methodist University; and the University of California (Davis). Professor Chester was a Fellow in Law and the Humanities at Harvard Law School and attended Cambridge University in England on a Ford Foundation Fellowship. He is a retired Fellow of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel and a current member of the American Law Institute, where he served as Adviser to the new Restatement of the Law of Nonprofit Charitable Organizations. Professor Chester taught Contracts, Wills, Estates, and Trusts, and seminars on various topics including American Legal Thought and Bioethics.

Richard B. Child

JD Harvard Law School
AB Harvard University

Professor Emeritus Child taught Contracts, The Law and Ethics of Lawyering, UCC: Sales and UCC: Secured Transactions.  Before joining the New England faculty, he was a trial attorney with the United States Food and Drug Administration and practiced law in Boston.

Davalene Cooper

JD University of Kentucky College of Law
MA Northern Illinois University
BA University of South Florida

Professor Emerita Cooper joined the New England Law faculty in 1994 after teaching legal practice skills at Suffolk University Law School. She was previously a staff attorney at the Appalachian Research and Defense Fund of Kentucky, Inc., and an attorney fellow at the National Consumer Law Center. She is co-author of Mottla’s Proof of Cases in Massachusetts (vol. 3 Evidence,1995). Professor Cooper taught Alternative Dispute Resolution, Criminal Law, Law and Ethics of Lawyering, and Restorative Justice.

Stanley E. Cox

JD University of Kentucky
H. Dip. Trinity College, Dublin
MAT Duke University
AB Harvard University

Professor Emeritus Cox taught Administrative Law, Civil Procedure, Climate Change, Conflict of Laws, Constitutional Law, Criminal Procedure, Environmental Law, International Environmental Law, International Human Rights Litigation in United States Courts, International Regulation of Trade, Land Use, and Terrorism and Individual Rights. Before joining the New England Law faculty, he was a criminal prosecutor in the Environmental Prosecutions Unit of the Kentucky attorney general's office and an associate at two Lexington, Kentucky, law firms.

Susan R. Finneran

JD University of Notre Dame Law School
BA University of Massachusetts

Professor Emerita Finneran taught Business Organizations, Contracts, and UCC: Secured Transactions. Before joining the New England Law faculty, she was an associate at Bingham, Dana & Gould in Boston and Shearman & Sterling in New York. She is a past chair of the Business Law Section Council of the Massachusetts Bar Association and has been a panelist on many legal continuing education programs.

Philip K. Hamilton

JD Harvard Law School
AB Harvard University

Professor Emeritus Hamilton taught Civil Procedure, Evidence, Legal History, and The Law and Ethics of Lawyering. He served as director of the law school’s clinical programs from 1981 to 1988 and as associate dean of New England Law | Boston from 1988 to 2004. Before joining the New England Law faculty, he was chief counsel at Cambridge and Somerville Legal Services, Inc. While at New England Law, he served on the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Advisory Committee on Massachusetts Evidence Law.

Ilene Klein

JD Cleveland State University, Cleveland Marshall School of Law
BA Queens College, City University of New York

Professor Emerita Klein supervised students in the Clinical Law Office, taught seminars in the clinical program, and taught Law and the Elderly. A faculty member at New England Law from 1988-2021, she previously worked for Legal Services for Cape Cod and Islands, Inc.; the Area Agency on Aging in Fairmont, West Virginia; and North Central West Virginia Legal Aid Society. She was an adjunct professor and lecturer at West Virginia University, teaching courses on legal issues affecting the elderly.

Gary Monserud

LLM New York University School of Law
JD University of South Dakota School of Law
BA Wartburg College

Professor Emeritus Monserud taught Contracts, Modern Remedies, UCC: Sales, and UCC: Secured Transactions. He has written extensively on current issues in sales law, the law of suretyship, and the law pertaining to special education. A former law clerk to the Honorable Andrew W. Bogue of the US District Court for the District of South Dakota, he practiced in the area of commercial litigation in Rapid City, South Dakota, before joining the New England Law faculty in 1987. He also served as a visiting professor at the University of Bucharest School of Law in Romania and at Vermont Law School.

Curtis W. Nyquist

JD Harvard Law School
BA North Park College

Professor Emeritus Nyquist taught Contracts, UCC: Negotiable Instruments, Readings in Contract Law, and UCC: Secured Transactions. He is the author of several articles, including one voted the Houston Law Review’s 1993 Article of the Year by its editorial board and two published in the Journal of Legal Education. He served for three years as executive director of the Consortium for Innovative Legal Education, Inc., of which New England Law is a founding member school.

Barbara Oro

JD Northeastern University School of Law
BA Emmanuel College

Professor Emerita Oro taught trial advocacy skills and supervised students in the Clinical Law Office. She also handled pro bono family law cases and provided monthly assistance to a law clinic for a battered women’s outreach program. Before joining the New England Law faculty, she engaged in general practice and worked as a Suffolk County Bar Advocate, representing indigent defendants.

Charles Sorenson

JD University of Nebraska College of Law
MA University of California, Riverside
BA University of Colorado, Boulder

Professor Emeritus Sorenson served as associate dean from 2004 to 2006. During that time he supervised the law school’s judicial internship programs and directed the summer abroad program in Galway, Ireland. Before joining the New England Law faculty in 1991, he was a trial attorney with the Federal Programs Branch, Civil Division, US Department of Justice. He previously served as a law clerk for the Honorable Donald R. Ross of the US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. He has written articles on civil procedure, first amendment rights, and legal ethics. 

Elizabeth K. Spahn

JD Temple University School of Law
AB Yale University

Professor Emerita Spahn taught Constitutional Law, Employment Law, First Amendment Law, International Business: Combating Bribery and Money Laundering, and International Women’s Issues. As a Fulbright professor, she taught at Peking University Law School in China from 1999 to 2000. She attended the United Nations Population Conference in Cairo, Egypt, in 1994; represented the Feminist Majority Foundation at the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China, in 1995; and served as a public expert for the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention Working Group. She is a specialist in international anti-corruption scholarship.