This fall, Colorado Law welcomed a record eight new faculty members whose wide-ranging expertise spans constitutional and immigration law, technology law and policy, environmental law, civil rights, gender and the law, and more.
鈥淓ach of these individuals brings with them remarkable intellect, teaching prowess, and commitment to our students,鈥� said Dean Lolita Buckner Inniss. 鈥淲e are fortunate to have attracted such talented scholars and teachers, and I have no doubt that they will make significant contributions to our community.鈥�
Pictured above, left to right: Blake Reid, Sarah Matsumoto, Vivek Krishnamurthy, Dar铆a Roithmayr, Maryam Jamshidi, and Pratheepan Gulasekaram. Not pictured: Shamika Dalton and Wadie Said.
Shamika Dalton
Shamika Dalton brings her expertise in teaching, leadership, and scholarship to Colorado Law, joining the faculty as associate professor and director of the William A. Wise Law Library. Dalton most recently served as associate professor and associate director of the Katz Law Library at the University of Tennessee Knoxville College of Law, where she oversaw the daily operation of the Katz Law Library and taught legal research classes.
Dalton began her career as a reference librarian at the University of Florida Levin College of Law Legal Information Center in 2012 and rose through the ranks to become the associate director for public services and professor of legal research. She has dedicated her research and professional service to celebrating the contributions of law librarians of color, educating the profession about the importance of racial diversity, and advocating for cultural competency in legal research instruction. In July 2019, Dalton received the Joseph L. Andrews Award for her book, Celebrating Diversity: A Legacy of Minority Leadership in the American Association of Law Libraries (2nd ed.).
She holds a bachelor鈥檚 degree in social work, Master of Library Studies, and JD from North Carolina Central University.
Pratheepan Gulasekaram
Highly esteemed constitutional and immigration law scholar Pratheepan (Deep) Gulasekaram joins the Colorado Law faculty as professor of law. Gulasekaram鈥檚 research focuses on the constitutional rights of noncitizens and federalism concerns in immigration law. He co-authored the leading immigration casebook used in law schools, Immigration & Citizenship: Process and Policy (West Academic, 9th ed., 2021). His book The New Immigration Federalism (Cambridge University Press, 2015) provides an in-depth empirical and theoretical analysis of the resurgence of state and local immigration lawmaking. He has also extensively explored the relationship between the Second Amendment and immigrants as a way of understanding constitutional protections for noncitizens.
Before joining Colorado Law, Gulasekaram taught at Santa Clara University School of Law. He has also taught as a visiting professor at Stanford Law School, Berkeley Law School, and University of California Berkeley, and as acting assistant professor of lawyering at New York University School of Law. Prior to academia, he was a litigation associate with O鈥橫elveny & Myers LLP and Susman Godfrey LLP and served as a judicial clerk to Judge Jacques L. Wiener Jr. on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans. He dedicates his spare time to improvinghealthcare access for children in under-resourced communities through World Children鈥檚 Initiative, a nonprofit organization he co-founded. Gulasekaram earned a BA from Brown University and a JD from Stanford Law School.
Maryam Jamshidi
Maryam Jamshidi joins Colorado Law as associate professor of law. Previously a member of the faculty at the University of Florida Levin College of Law, she teaches and writes in the areas of national security, public international law, the law of foreign relations, and tort law. Her scholarship focuses on the relationship between the private sphere and national security law as well as the law of foreign relations. In exploring these dynamics, Jamshidi鈥檚 work draws on political and critical theory, as well as sociology.
Prior to joining the Levin College of Law, Jamshidi served as an assistant professor of lawyering at the NYU Law School. She also worked as an associate in several leading Washington, D.C., law firms, including White & Case, where she worked primarily on issues relating to national security and foreign relations law. Jamshidi clerked for the Hon. Gladys Kessler of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
Jamshidi received a bachelor鈥檚 in political science from Brown University, a Master of Science in political theory with merit at the London School of Economics, and a JD from the University of Pennsylvania Law School.
Vivek Krishnamurthy
Vivek Krishnamurthy joins Colorado Law as director of the Samuelson-Glushko Technology Law & Policy Clinic (TLPC). He previously was the Samuelson-Glushko Professor of Law at the University of Ottawa and director of CIPPIC 鈥� the Samuelson-Glushko Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic.
Krishnamurthy鈥檚 teaching, scholarship, and clinical legal practice focus on the complex regulatory and human-rights-related challenges that arise in cyberspace. He advises governments, activists, and companies on the human rights impacts of new technologies and is a frequent public commentator on emerging technology and public policy issues.
Krishnamurthy was previously the assistant director of Harvard Law School鈥檚 Cyberlaw Clinic and counsel in the global business and human rights practice at Foley Hoag LLP. He is a Rhodes Scholar and clerked for the Hon. Morris J. Fish of the Supreme Court of Canada upon his graduation from Yale Law School. He is a faculty associate of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, senior associate of the Human Rights Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and an alternate member of the Global Network Initiative鈥檚 Board of Directors.
Sarah Matsumoto
Sarah Matsumoto joins Colorado Law as a clinical associate professor of law, where she will lead the Getches-Green Natural Resources, Energy, and Environmental Law Clinic. She previously taught at the Willamette University College of Law, where she served as an assistant professor of clinical education.
Matsumoto was for three years a clinical fellow at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law, where she taught in the Environmental Law Clinic. In that role, she supervised student teams working on oil- and gas-oriented permit challenges, water management, and concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO) issues, and oversaw other advocacy efforts aimed at improving water and air quality in Colorado and the Rocky Mountain region. Matsumoto also co-taught the clinic seminar and was a member of DU鈥檚 Rocky Mountain Collective on Race, Place, and Law.
Before joining the DU clinic, Matsumoto represented plaintiffs in environmental citizen suits at a firm in Eugene, Oregon, where she was part of the legal team that brought the first successful Resource Conservation and Recovery Act citizen suit against a CAFO for polluting groundwater through its improper management of waste. Prior to attending law school, Matsumoto worked in research and development for an international coffee company.
Matsumoto is a graduate of the University of Washington and Seattle University School of Law.
Blake E. Reid '10
Already a valued and highly respected member of the Colorado Law community, Professor Blake E. Reid '10 transitioned from his role as clinical professor and director of the Samuelson-Glushko Technology Law & Policy Clinic to associate professor of law on the research faculty. Reid will continue to serve as a faculty director of the Telecom and Platforms Initiative at Silicon Flatirons.
Reid studies, teaches, and practices in the intersection of law, policy, and technology. In his new role, he will continue to teach Telecom Law and Policy, Introduction to Intellectual Property, and other courses in Colorado Law鈥檚 technology and intellectual property curriculum.
Prior to joining Colorado Law, Reid was a staff attorney and graduate fellow in First Amendment and media law at the Institute for Public Representation at Georgetown Law. He also served as a law clerk for Justice Nancy E. Rice on the Colorado Supreme Court.
Reid holds a BS in computer science from the University of Colorado Boulder, a JD from Colorado Law, and a Master of Laws from Georgetown University.
Dar铆a Roithmayr
Dar铆a Roithmayr joins the Colorado Law faculty as a professor of law. She teaches and writes about persistent structural racism and racial exploitation. Her 2014 book, Reproducing Racism: How Everyday Choices Lock in White Advantage (NYU Press), explores the self-reinforcing dynamics of persistent racial inequality. She is working on a new book, Racism Pays, which explores the way that recent innovations in the digital economy have relied on racial exploitation to get off the ground.
Before joining Colorado Law, Roithmayr taught for 17 years at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law and nine years at the University of Illinois College of Law. She has also been a visiting researcher at Harvard University and a visiting law professor at the University of Michigan, Georgetown, and Yale.
Roithmayr received her BS from UCLA, and her JD, magna cum laude, from the Georgetown University Law Center, where she was a member of Order of the Coif and served as an editor of the Georgetown Law Journal. She clerked for the Hon. Marvin J. Garbis, judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland.
Wadie Said
A widely respected voice in criminal law, human rights, and national security law, Wadie Said joins the Colorado Law faculty as a professor of law.
Previously a faculty member at the University of South Carolina School of Law, Said's scholarship analyzes the challenges and human rights implications of criminal prosecution and immigration enforcement. His book Crimes of Terror: The Legal and Political Implications of Federal Terrorism Prosecutions, the first comprehensive legal analysis of the criminal terrorist prosecution in the U.S., was published by Oxford University Press in 2015. He teaches courses in criminal law, criminal procedure, immigration law, and seminars on international human rights law and counterterrorism.
Said served as law clerk to Chief Judge Charles P. Sifton of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York and as a litigation associate in the New York office of Debevoise and Plimpton. There, he helped coordinate the firm's pro bono political asylum program. He is an elected member of the American Law Institute and serves on the board of editors of Amerasia Journal.
Said is a graduate of Princeton University and the Columbia University School of Law, where he served as an articles editor of the Columbia Human Rights Law Review.