Alexandra Lahav, a nationally recognized expert on the civil justice system, complex litigation, and tort law, joined the Cornell Law School faculty on July 1, 2022. Previously the Ellen Ash Peters Chair at the University of Connecticut School of Law, Lahav is the author of the award-winning book In Praise of Litigation (Oxford 2017), as well a co-author of the Wright & Miller Federal Practice and Procedure treatise, and co-author of a popular casebook on civil procedure.

“Professor Lahav’s research continues our prior leadership in the area of civil procedure, but also elevates it for the future,” says Jens Ohlin, the Allan R. Tessler Dean and Professor of Law. “Her work has been a much-needed corrective to under-examined assumptions about our supposedly litigious society. Lahav has excavated the justice in our civil justice system, and will continue to do so in the greatest of Cornell traditions.”

Lahav studies doctrine from an institutional approach and is particularly interested in methods for analyzing litigation risk and products liability litigation. She has written over thirty articles on class actions, multidistrict litigation, and tort law, many of which have been cited by courts and in treatises.

“I’m thrilled to join the Cornell community,” says Lahav. “I’m especially excited to be a part of the stellar group of civil procedure scholars at the law school and to work with—and learn from —its remarkable faculty, students, and staff.”

Lahav is a member of the American Law Institute and in 2019–2020 was a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She has also been a visiting professor at Columbia, Harvard, Tel Aviv, and Yale Law schools. Before joining the legal academy, she was a litigator at a small civil rights firm in New York City and law clerk to Justice Alan Handler of the New Jersey Supreme Court.