UC Law SF Welcomes New Visiting Professors

An accomplished group of center-affiliated visiting scholars and professors will join UC Law SF this fall, teaching and researching in the areas of criminal law, health law, Indigenous Law, tax law, and racial and economic justice.

UC Law SF welcomes U.S. Tax Court Judge Maurice Foley, who will serve as the UC Law SF Center on Tax Law Affiliated Scholar and Adjunct Professor; University of Oklahoma Law Professor Lindsay Robertson, who will serve as the Indigenous Law Center Visiting Professor; and St. Louis University School of Law Professor Elizabeth Pendo, who serves this year as UCSF/UC Law SF Consortium on Law, Science & Health Policy Senior Scholar and Visiting Professor.

Additionally, in affiliation with the Center for Racial and Economic Justice at UC Law SF (CREJ), UCLA Law Professor Scott Cummings will serve as the Wiley Manuel Visiting Scholar and Professor, and Prithika Balakrishnan starts a two-year stint as the C. Keith Wingate Visiting Assistant Professor.

“We are delighted to welcome this distinguished cohort of visiting scholars and professors, who will share their knowledge and expertise with our student across a wide range of substantive domains,” said UC Law SF Provost Morris Ratner. “Due in part to our location in vibrant San Francisco and the breadth and richness of our center programming, we are fortunate to be able to attract wonderful visiting colleagues to our community each year.”

Visiting Professor Maurice Foley

Foley, who has worked at Hastings as an adjunct professor, is the first Black judge appointed to the nation’s tax court based in Washington D.C. He previously taught as the inaugural Affiliated Scholar at the Hastings Center on Tax Law.

Foley said there are many things he enjoys about teaching at the law school, “Hastings has a brilliant innovative cadre of tax professors, a center on tax law, and an approach to teaching tax law that is ahead of the curve.” He added, “I love the students at Hastings. They are engaged, intrigued by tax, and fun to teach.”

Robertson is an internationally recognized expert in Indigenous Peoples Law and serves as faculty director for the Study of American Indian Law and Policy at the University of Oklahoma College of Law. He also is a justice on the Supreme Court of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes and a senior legal advisor to the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous People.

Visiting Professor Lindsay Robertson

Robertson is teaching Constitutional Law 1 and 2, and Indigenous Law courses. He said he’s excited to interact with Hastings’ students, “Domestically, Indigenous Peoples Law is a growing field . . . Students are coming from multiple perspectives.” Robertson added that he wants to offer students a broader picture of how Native rights work in U.S. law, including in other states, and how tribes relate to each other politically and legally.

An expert in health law, policy, bioethics, and disability law, Pendo will be a senior scholar in the UCSF/UC Law SF Consortium and work with colleagues on health law and policy programs. “I am looking forward to working with the exceptional faculty, students and community partners and collaborating on initiatives that promote health equity and health justice,” she said.

Visiting Professor Elizabeth Pendo

Pendo has studied how health care and antidiscrimination laws affect people with disabilities and to what extent they promote equity and inclusion in health care systems, workplaces, and communities. She will teach a course on Healthcare Providers, Patients and the Law, and another class on U.S. Healthcare System and the Law in the UCSF-UC Law SF Master of Science, Health Policy and Law program this fall.

Visiting Professor Prithika Balakrishnan

Balakrishnan joins UC Law SF this year as a visiting assistant professor for a two-year term. She has taught Criminal Law, Ethics, and Advanced Criminal Trial Practice and also worked as a public defender, trial attorney and advocate. She served as a San Francisco Deputy Public Defender for over 12 years and managed several of the city’s mental health collaborative courts. Her position is named in honor of C. Keith Wingate, a beloved and impactful former Associate Dean and Professor of Law who passed away in 2021 and who was the first Black tenured faculty member at UC Law SF.

Visiting Professor Scott Cummings

Cummings — whose areas of expertise include legal ethics and the legal profession, labor, local government, and economic development — has studied the role of lawyers in social change, including economic justice at the local level. As the CREJ Wiley Manuel Visiting Scholar and Visiting Professor, he will teach a seminar on Law, Race, and Economic Justice in the City, which will focus on understanding how law has shaped structural economic and racial inequality at the local level – and how city residents mobilize law as a tool to challenge this inequality.

Cummings recently was a Fellow at the Stanford Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and the Fulbright Distinguished Chair at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. He’s been working on a book titled “Lawyers and Movements: Legal Mobilization in Transformative Times.”