By Mary A. Dempsey
EVEN BEFORE IT CONFERRED ITS FIRST law degrees, the George Washington University was a trailblazer in adapting and applying legal principles to issues shaping the future. We took the lead in patent law in the early years of the nation, carved out a nationally ranked reputation for international, comparative, and foreign relations law, and pushed to the forefront in intellectual property law. More recently, we set down pillars on the frontlines of health law and national security law.
“When our society began to grapple with wealth inequality, with individual rights, GW Law was there. When it came to environmental protection, energy, and sustainability, GW Law was there,” said Dean Dayna Bowen Matthew. “Our law school has always been engaged in evolving and emerging areas of the law and we continue that legacy of educating with an eye on the future.”
Today, GW Law is extending that tradition through faculty who are advancing scholarship, learning, and advocacy into areas as diverse as artificial intelligence, data privacy, reproductive technology, genome mapping, and a business arena that is bumping heads with global security.
In addition to repositioning its classes and academic programs, the school also continues to offer exceptional experiential learning opportunities. Its first clinic in appellate advocacy is differentiating itself—and leveraging GW Law’s location—by preparing students to address the most fundamental constitutional issues before the nation’s highest court.
“Our faculty is not only teaching and writing, but they are helping to shape the way our country and the world think about new frontiers of science, how our transnational economies operate, what questions are being asked about the present challenges of our society and the fields in which answers are needed,” the dean said.
The faculty’s powerful impact—inside and outside the classroom—has continued to provide a platform that distinguishes the university. GW Law magazine looks at four faculty members who are preparing students for the legal needs of an evolving society.
Teaching International Business Law in a Disrupted World
WILLIAM DODGE, THE LOBINGIER PROFESSOR OF Comparative Law and Jurisprudence, is closely watching the case in which the state of Missouri secured a $24 billion default judgment against nine Chinese defendants, including the government of China, for hoarding personal protection equipment during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Missouri maintained China had violated U.S. and state antitrust laws. The Foreign Immunity Sovereignty Act was raised. At issue now is whether Missouri will ever see payment.
The case is an outgrowth of the hyper-speed recalibration underway at the intersection of international business and law. That is the arena where Dodge’s preeminent expertise in international litigation, international business transactions, and international arbitration is deepening GW Law’s frontrunner reputation in business law education.
“We’re in a time of unbelievable change right now. We have moved from an era of laissez faire and free trade, which you can date to WTO negotiations in early ’90s, to government taking a much more active role in regulating international business in the interest of national security,” said Dodge. “Everything is being viewed though a lens of national security.”
He pointed to the Biden administration’s controls on exports of computer chips made in Asia, largely to slow China’s development of artificial intelligence and advanced computing. And he noted that the Trump administration, by “tearing up the traditional rules of international trade,” is sparking a geopolitical realignment that could exclude the United States.
Where there is disruption, broken business contracts and international business disputes follow. Dodge noted that the Missouri case has also conjured up references to “lawfare,” or the use of legal systems as an instrument of war.
"A U.S. state using the U.S. legal system to try to go after another system, in this case China, is a new phenomenon. I think it’s a drastic overstatement to call it lawfare, but legal actions can be used to obtain some kind of political or diplomatic advantage internationally,” Dodge said. “There will be further attempts like this. The question is whether they will be shut down by the Supreme Court.”
In a global society where the engine is business, Dodge writes about international litigation for top law journals—including the Columbia Law Review, the Duke Law Journal, the Harvard Law Review, the Michigan Law Review, and the Yale Law Journal—and he is the founding editor and a contributor to the Transnational Litigation blog. He is also co-author of the casebook Transnational Business Problems, co-author of Transnational Litigation in a Nutshell, and co-editor of International Law in the U.S. Supreme Court: Continuity and Change.
His recruitment to GW Law last year, after nearly three decades teaching at the UC Davis School of Law and UC Law San Francisco, puts Dodge at the very pulse point where business law is being reframed.
“Regulation has become much more central for people who do international transactions, and in DC you really feel the regulatory environment. It’s exciting to be teaching blocks away from where these decisions are being made or to be on panels with or have conversations with the people who are making them,” he said.
On the Cutting Edge of Science
PROFESSOR OF LAW SONIA SUTER, THE KAHAN Family Research Professor, is engaged in work on the cutting-edge of scientific discovery. Her focus? The revolution in the way humans reproduce—and the social and legal implications.
Suter follows existing reproductive technologies, including those for which new uses are being advanced. One example is genetic testing on embryos before they are implanted in uteruses. She also tracks emerging developments that are technically possible but not yet used in clinical settings, such as gene editing of human embryos. And she watches scientific developments on the precipice, practices that sound like science fiction, most notably in vitro gametogenesis (IVG) in which human eggs and sperm can be created in a lab with any one person’s genes.
“We don’t have a whole lot of regulation in the United States of reproductive technology, which is ironic given the heavy regulation of reproductive rights,” said Suter, who is co-director of the Health Law Program. “These are technologies that raise ethical and legal questions. Should we be regulating in this space and, if so, how should we? What should this regulation look like?”
In her classroom, she sees growing interest in this area of the law, noting that “some of my students are IVF babies, so they are thinking about these issues in personal ways.”
She said it is not just about whether and how regulation is applied but also which entities have authority—and how that dovetails with existing rules and laws touching reproductive health. At play are federal and state laws, the tort system, contractual law, and even selfregulation by the industry and its professionals. Privacy and equity are also concerns.
Suter, who also holds the title of Henry St. George Tucker III Dean’s Research Professor of Law, acknowledges that it is difficult to get ahead of the science and create a prescient legal framework on a fast-evolving landscape.
IVG is one of the most striking—and controversial—technologies under discussion. She has been writing about it for nearly a decade, parsing the legal questions around its astonishing capabilities. Technically, IVG enables the creation of eggs or sperm from a person’s non-reproductive cell, such as a skin cell. The technology could enable same sex couples to reproduce together. It could make in vitro fertilization easier.
“You could even use IVG to reproduce alone,” Suter said. “It wouldn’t be cloning if I produce a sperm and egg from myself. It would be like incest on steroids. Of course, the big question is whether this can actually be done. Just because there is evidence it works for mice doesn’t mean it can work for humans.”
One of the biggest legal struggles in Suter’s area concerns the status of embryos and the so-called personhood movement. In a case involving frozen embryos destroyed in an accident at a fertility clinic, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled last year that the embryos can be considered children under state law.
“The Alabama case involved people planning to get pregnant whose embryos were destroyed. They were harmed in some way. I think they are entitled to some compensation, but I don’t think it’s a child,” Suter said. “The law doesn’t have a good set of rules or even language to address issues like this.”
While it can be difficult to weigh the myriad legal questions swirling around reproductive technologies, Suter said there is also a sense that legal scholarship in this arena is “going to be important down the road.”
“Do we want to be leaders in the technology and offer a careful way of pursuing it, or do we want it to develop in other countries that may not do it so ethically?” she said.
At the Forefront of AI, Data Privacy, and the Law
PROFESSOR ALICIA SOLOW-NIEDERMAN WORKS IN uncharted territory. When she talks about privacy rights, the associate professor may be discussing information collected through fitness wearables, cochlear implants, or other innovations that captures neural and cognitive data. Or she may be addressing privacy protection in an age marked by ChatGPT, open-source AI models, and generative AI. Or, if you ask the right questions, you may even get to pick her brain about robot judges.
The multidisciplinary terrain where Solow-Niederman teaches encompasses artificial intelligence and the law, information privacy law, and regulation of emerging technologies. It may be one of the most exciting and challenging legal frontiers today, and her expertise—and that of other faculty members—is putting GW Law at its vanguard.
“If we have a chip that can be embedded in your brain so you can hear for the first time, this is an amazing medical advance. But who owns that data? How do we ensure that your thoughts wouldn’t be sold and used?” she asked. “How do we tap into tremendous scientific and health advances, but do so in a way that is privacy protective and guarantees individual autonomy?”
Solow-Niederman’s scholarship explores the regulation of technologies in a way that considers social, economic, and political power. In looking at algorithmic accountability, data governance, and information privacy, she evaluates how digital technologies challenge existing regulatory approaches and the underlying law.
In developing her AI Law and Policy class, she wanted a course that did not require any technical background but would, rather, help students build technology literacy. She highlights GW Law’s Privacy, Data Security, and Technology Law JD concentration, noting that there is a growing need for legal expertise in the area.
“There’s going to be continued demand. There’s no shortage of opportunities in this field,” she said. “Because it’s so new, there are great opportunities for junior practitioners.”
The scholarship of Solow-Niederman and other GW faculty members anchors the GW Bernard Center for Law and Technology, launched in October 2024, which puts forward education, scholarship, events, and dialogue on intellectual property, privacy, data security, and technology law.
“There are just a handful of law schools in the country thinking systemically about this area,” said Solow-Niederman. “I think we’re on the cutting edge for launching a center of excellence for law and technology.”
Her goal is to empower students to better understand what AI and emerging technology do and to look through the lens of the law and regulation in envisioning the high-stakes impact of these advancements.
“The key theme is trying to get students to realize that technology isn’t something we have to accept uncritically,” she said. “We should think about how we want technology to be in the world and how we want to regulate it. This means thinking about who is helped and who is hurt.
“Law can allow us to move toward the world we want, using technology for good,” she added.
New Appellate Clinic Offers Supreme Opportunities
GW LAW STUDENTS IN THE 2024-25 ACADEMIC YEAR not only authored amicus briefs for two important federal courts of appeals cases, but they represented clients in filing two amicus briefs before the U.S. Supreme Court. The briefs came out of the students’ work in the law school’s newest clinic, the Administrative Law, Issues, and Appeals Clinic.
“I designed and established a traditional appellate clinic that specializes in administrative law and public law issues on nationally significant questions,” said Associate Dean Aram Gavoor, who directs the new clinic. “These are issues in the domain of public law, focusing on the power of the president, Congress, or the federal courts. We also file comments in the federal rulemaking process directly with agencies.”
The school’s newest clinic may be small, with only six students each term in its initial run, but its ambitious aim, combined with GW’s geographic location, offers students an extraordinary learning opportunity.
“If a student has experience working on a U.S. Supreme Court matter or a federal appeals court matter, it will professionally advantage that student in perpetuity,” Gavoor said.
In carrying GW Law to the next level, Dean Dayna Matthew said Gavoor builds on the strength of the school’s faculty in appellate law. “Through the clinic, we are educating students in the way they can pursue the most fundamental constitutional rights, the very rights that are at the center of the most heated and essential debates of our time,” the dean said.
In Boniface v. Viliena, 12-1411 (1st Cir.), the clinic’s brief and its proposition were discussed in oral argument before Justice Stephen Breyer, who was sitting on designation to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. The case was initiated by Haitian victims of torture and extrajudicial killing who seek justice in U.S. federal court against their perpetrator, a former mayor in Haiti. The case involves interpretation of the Torture Victim Protection Act.
In the second case, Grand Trunk v. Transportation Security Administration, 24-2109 (7th Cir.), the students’ amicus brief supports the railroad industries’ challenge to the emergency guidance process that the TSA took in mandating cybersecurity regulations.
“The students’ names are on these briefs. This is an example of GW Law, based in DC, projecting out its appellate capabilities nationally in the federal courts of appeal on issues of national significance,” said Gavoor, whose expertise lies in constitutional law, administrative law, federal courts, and constitutional theory. “Some other law schools have appellate and Supreme Court clinics, but what makes our clinic unique is the public law and procedure issues that we can engage on before any federal appellate court, the U.S. Supreme Court, or any federal agency.
“We can reach out and touch any case nationally that is on appeal before a federal court.”
Students in the clinic have also been involved in two U.S. Supreme Court cases, one involving the certification of a class in a class action lawsuit, Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings v. Davis, 24-304 (Sup. Ct.), representing the National Federation of Independent Business, and the other addressing obstacles per se prisoners face in meeting deadlines for appeals documents that must be sent via mail. In that case, Parrish v. United States, 24-275 (Sup. Ct.), the students were representing the Roderick and Solange MacArthur Justice Center.
The reason GW Law has the technical ability for this type of experiential learning? Gavoor brings 15 years of experience from the U.S. Department of Justice, and he is admitted to and has argued before a majority of the federal appeals courts and approximately one-third of the 94 federal district courts. Gavoor described his relationship with the law school as “contributing to a learning community that helps to shape the law.”
“My work is future oriented, where the law is heading as a country, the direction that we are going,” he said.