Pace University Appoints Bridget J. Crawford as University Distinguished Professor
Bridget J. Crawford, a member of the Elisabeth Haub School of Law faculty, has been named as a Distinguished Professor. The title of Distinguished Professor is the highest honor the University can bestow upon a faculty member.
This honor comes in recognition of a sustained record of extensive, extraordinary research and scholarship, outstanding teaching, and exemplary service to the University, community, and the faculty member’s professional field. Professor Crawford’s pathbreaking interdisciplinary scholarship explores how seemingly neutral legal rules and systems can reflect, exacerbate and sustain inequality. Her work draws on jurisprudence, statutory analysis, behavioral economics, critical tax theory and feminist legal theory to demonstrate how an equitable legal system can better serve human needs by taking gender, race and other identity factors into account.
Pace University’s Trustees appointed Professor Crawford as Distinguished Professor after endorsements from Haub Law School’s Dean, Horace Anderson; several Pace colleagues; a panel of external scholars who evaluated Crawford’s scholarly work and professional service; the University Distinguished Professor Advisory Committee; Provost Vanya Quiñones and President Marvin Krislov.
“I have known Bridget Crawford well for more than two decades, and ‘distinguished’ is a description that fits her well,” said Law School Dean Horace Anderson. “At Pace, we have worked together in just about every capacity—as co-teachers, sounding boards for each other’s scholarship, as Associate Deans when Michelle Simon was Dean, as faculty colleagues, and as members of the larger Haub Law community,” Anderson reflected. “Bridget Crawford is an impressive legal polymath who brings incredible dedication and enthusiasm to all parts of her job. She is a beloved classroom teacher who inspires students and colleagues alike. We are so pleased that the University’s has recognized her with its highest faculty honor.”
Crawford is a graduate of Yale College (BA), the University of Pennsylvania School of Law (JD), and Griffith University (PhD) in Brisbane, Australia. Prior to joining the Haub Law faculty in 2003, she was a practicing attorney at Milbank LLP, where she specialized in taxation and estate planning. At Haub Law, Crawford teaches Federal Income Taxation; Estate and Gift Taxation; Wills, Trusts and Estates; Tax Policy; Corporations & Partnerships; and Feminist Legal Theory.
Crawford’s published work includes three casebooks, three books, and more than 100 scholarly articles and essays. Her next book, Menstruation Matters: Making Law and Society Responsive to Human Needs, co-authored with Haub Law Professor Emily Gold Waldman, will be published by NYU Press in 2022. Her following book, Talking About Black Lives Matter and #MeToo (with Lolita Buckner Inniss), will be published by the University of California Press in 2023. Together, Professor Crawford and Professor Waldman developed the doctrinal and theoretical foundations for a state-by-state litigation campaign challenging state sales taxes on menstrual products in their article The Unconstitutional Tampon Tax, 53 U. Rich. L. Rev. 439 (2019). Professor Crawford highly values scholarly collaboration; she recently published a dialogic essay with thirty-eight current Haub Law students and alumni co-contributors: Reflections on Feminism, Law & Culture: Law Students' Perspectives, 41 Pace L. Rev. 105 (2020).
As a leading authority on taxation, as well as feminist legal theory, and menstrual equity, Crawford is frequently called upon by the news media for her expertise. She routinely presents on and serves as a panelist for programs focused on these topics. Recently, Crawford was a faculty co-convener of the symposium hosted by the Columbia Journal of Gender & Law, “Are You There, Law? It’s Me, Menstruation.” This pioneering program will result in publications by more than fifty authors working at the intersection of menstruation and law. Internationally, Crawford is known for both her critical tax scholarship and as one of the co-conveners of the U.S. Feminist Judgments Project, part of a global collaboration of hundreds of law professors who reimagine and rewrite key judicial decisions from a feminist perspective, using only the facts and legal precedents in existence at the time of the original opinion. Crawford’s work on Feminist Judgments has informed similar projects in Scotland, India, Pakistan, Brazil, Mexico, as well as a multi-national Sub-Saharan Africa initiative.
In recognition of her effectiveness in the law school classroom, Crawford is one of 26 law professors profiled in the book by Michael Hunter Schwartz et al., What the Best Law Teachers Do, published by Harvard University Press. She has been honored multiple times by graduating students at Haub Law as Outstanding Professor of the Year. She also is a prior recipient of Haub Law’s Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching, the Goettel Prize for faculty scholarship, and the Ottinger Prize for Faculty Achievement.
“I am honored to be designated as a Distinguished Professor by Pace University. Every day, my colleagues and I have one goal, and that is to provide our students with the best legal education possible. The learning that takes place at Haub Law is extraordinary and I am proud to be part of it,” said Crawford. She is the third Haub Law faculty member to be named as Distinguished Professor, following the appointments of John R. Nolon and Bennett L. Gershman.
About Elisabeth Haub School of Law
Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University offers JD and Masters of Law degrees in both Environmental and International Law, as well as a Doctor of Juridical Science (SJD) in Environmental Law. The school, housed on the University’s campus in White Plains, N.Y., opened its doors in 1976 and has more than 9,000 alumni around the world. The school maintains a unique philosophy and approach to legal education that strikes an important balance between practice and theory. Haub Law launched its Environmental Law Program in 1978, and it has long been ranked among the world’s leading university programs, with a current #1 ranking by U.S. World and News Report. Pace’s doctoral graduates teach environmental law at universities around the world. Pace’s JD alumni are prominent in environmental law firms, agencies and non-profit organizations across the U.S. and abroad. In 2016, the Law School received a transformational gift from the family of Elisabeth Haub, in recognition of its outstanding environmental law programs. For more information about Haub Law, visit http://law.pace.edu
