Southwestern Law School, Los Angeles, California, Nov. 01, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Kenneth & Harle Montgomery Foundation joins Southwestern Law School in naming five Montgomery Scholars for the 2022–2023 academic year. Each scholar receives a generous award from the Foundation that provides critical support and allows them to continue producing high-quality scholarship that will impact the legal profession and the world.

The 2022–2023 Montgomery Scholars are Professors Mira Deo, Warren Grimes, Hila Keren, John Tehranian, and Rachel VanLandingham. Professors Keren and Tehranian were named Montgomery Scholars for the inaugural 2021–2022 academic year.

“I am delighted that our family foundation is in a position to make this gift and contribute to Southwestern’sstrong trajectory of scholarship. As a former Southwestern dean, I know Southwestern has many outstanding faculty scholars.”~Bryant G. Garth, President, Kenneth & Harle Montgomery Foundation; Dean Emeritus, Southwestern Law School; Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus, UC Irvine Law; Interim Director, American Bar Foundation

“Each year’s awardees are building and sharing knowledge and concepts that will impact their areas of expertise and help improve the law and our society. Recognizing and supporting scholarship is essential to Southwestern’s ongoing success.” ~Darby Dickerson, President & Dean, Southwestern Law School

Professor Meera Deo, Southwestern’s Honorable Vaino Spencer Chair, is a national expert on legal education, racial representation, and diversity, equity, and inclusion. She uses empirical methods and interdisciplinary scholarship to investigate vulnerable populations in legal education, drawing from her Ph.D. in Sociology and J.D. Professor Deo’s scholarship has been published in numerous peer review and law-review journals. She is also Director of the Law School Survey of Student Engagement (LSSSE), which houses the nation’s largest repository of law student data and is based at Indiana University-Bloomington.

Professor Deo's book, Unequal Profession: Race and Gender in Legal Academia, draws from her innovative Diversity in Legal Academia project, the first national empirical study of law faculty using an intersectional framework. The book examines how race and gender affect interactions between faculty and students, tenure and promotion, work/life balance, institutional support, and other aspects of law professors' personal and professional lives. Her current research examines challenges law faculty have faced during the COVID era, affirmative action alternatives, and antiracism efforts. Professor Deo’s scholarship has been the subject of many symposia, conferences, workshops, and panel discussions. She is in high demand as a keynote speaker, pundit, and consultant on the student experience, faculty equity, race and gender, DEI, and other important issues in higher education.

With the Montgomery Award, Professor Deo will build on her Pandemic Pressures on Faculty essay in the University of Pennsylvania LaReviewew—Online by analyzing how the pandemic has affected parents and parenting for law faculty. Her prior data reveal heightened challenges during COVID for caregivers, women of color faculty, and untenured professors. Her objective is a study with recommendations that will guide administrators, institutions, and faculty to better support one another and manage the lingering effects of COVID.

 Among her many accomplishments, Professor Deo was a 2019 Scholar-in-Residence at Berkeley Law’s Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice, is an elected member of the American Law Institute, and served as the 2020–2021 William H. Neukom Fellows Research Chair in Diversity and Law at the American Bar Foundation.

Professor Warren Grimes, Southwestern's Irving D. and Florence Rosenberg Professor of Law, focuses his scholarly efforts on antitrust, Supreme Court Jurisprudence, and the interaction among the branches of the federal government. His work has been published in journals including the Harvard Law Review, UCLA Law Review, Antitrust Law Journal, California Law Review, and Utah Law Review. Professor Grimes co-authored The Law of Antitrust: An Integrated Handbook with the late Professor Lawrence Sullivan.

 Professor Grimes is writing an article titled Antitrust Legislation during the Reagan Presidency: Lessons and Insights. In this piece, he seeks to develop and document how well public choice theory—the theory that special economic interests tend to control legislative and regulatory developments—describes competition law outcomes. He will also explore theories of statutory interpretation from the standpoint of how courts have interpreted and applied competition laws. Professor Grimes hopes to show that legislative committee staff have a substantial role in shaping antitrust legislation, that this role often blunts the pressure from special interests, and that legislative history analysis can occasionally help support a public-interest interpretation of an ambiguous statute. 

 Professor Grimes has chaired the Los Angeles County Bar Association Antitrust and Trade Regulation Section and serves on the Advisory Board of the American Antitrust Institute. He was one of a small number of American professors appointed to the Expert Advisory Board of the Max Planck Institute for Intellectual Property, Competition, and Innovation in Munich, Germany. 

Professor Hila Keren, Southwestern's Associate Dean for Research and the Paul E. Treusch Professor of Law, produces scholarship focused on contract law, feminist jurisprudence, critical race theory, and the emerging field of law and emotions. Her scholarship has been published in scholarly journals including the UC Irvine Law Review, California Law Review, Florida Law Review, Florida State Law Review, Minnesota Law Review, Wake Forest Law Review, Columbia Journal of Gender & the Law, and Harvard Law Review Forum.

In 2005, she published her first book, Contract Law from a Feminist Perspective (in Hebrew). She has also produced many book chapters and blog essays. She is frequently an invited presenter on contracts and emotions, antiracism, and gender issues. Her op-eds have appeared in USA Today, Bloomberg Law, and the L.A. Times. She is currently working on a law review article on emotions and the law, examining what she has coined as "market humiliation."

Dean Keren has received the Birk Foundation Outstanding Young Research Award, the Polonsky Prize for Creativity and Originality in the Humanistic Disciplines, Hebrew University of Jerusalem's Golda Meir Fellowship, and a post-doctoral scholarship to conduct research at UC Berkeley's Center for the Study of Law and Society.


Professor John Tehranian, Southwestern's Paul W. Wildman Chair, explores the impact of the emerging intellectual property and cyberlaw regimes on technological innovation and artistic creation, the growing tension between knowledge ownership and expressive rights, the link between cultural formation and intellectual property law, and the relationship between legal systems and racial identity.

He has published two books, Infringement Nation: Copyright 2.0 and You (Oxford University Press 2011) and Whitewashed: American's Invisible Middle-Eastern Minority (NYU Press 2009), and his articles have appeared in journals including the William & Mary Law Review, Houston Law Review, University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law, Harvard Journal of Law & Gender, Hastings Law Journal, Iowa Law Review, Northwestern University Law Review, University of Colorado Law Review, George Washington Law Review, and Yale Law Journal. He has also contributed chapters to eleven books.

Professor Tehranian is currently working on his third book, tentatively titled Seeing Color: Toward a New Racial Consciousness in the Law, which will present a timely examination of race, public policy, and the law by challenging the widespread view that colorblindness is the best path toward racial equality. The book calls for a new racial consciousness that affirmatively and actively sees, rather than denies, color. He is also preparing an article to address the surprising gap in U.S. copyright and trademark regimes in protecting authorial credit, one of the most significant motivators of creative activity.

Professor Tehranian has been named one of the top music lawyers by Billboard Magazine and one of Variety's top 50 entertainment lawyers in the world. He is an in-demand speaker and commentator on entertainment law, intellectual property, racial identity, and transracialism.

Professor VanLandingham was recently appointed as Southwestern’s Irwin R. Buchalter Professor of Law. As a national security law expert and former judge advocate in the U.S. Air Force, VanLandingham’s award-winning scholarship explores the procedural and normative elements of decision-making and the development of norms in national security law, military criminal law, and international law. Her work has appeared in many law reviews, and she co-authored the book U.S. Military Operations: Law, Policy, and Practice.

Professor VanLandingham’s scholarly research was hastened due to Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. Her multi-part project consists of two law review articles—War Speech: Freedom of Expression When the Bombs Fall and Lawfare: The 21st Century Weapon of Choice—that address freedom of expression during armed conflict. These articles build on her prior scholarship and pro-bono consulting work at the intersection of freedom of speech and national security concerns.

 Professor VanLandingham is a frequent commentator in the national media regarding military justice and law of war issues; she also has provided expert advice and testimony to policymakers on issues related to sexual assault in the military and international humanitarian law. She has published op-eds in the Washington Post, USA Today, and other media outlets and has been interviewed on CNN, MSNBC, NPR, and Democracy Now. This summer and fall, she has been called on frequently to explain the implications of Dobbs on female service members.

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The Kenneth & Harle Montgomery Foundation was founded in 1993 and supports numerous educational and other charitable activities.

Southwestern Law School has been at the forefront of legal education for 111 years. Founded in 1911, Southwestern Law School is the only ABA-approved law school offering five J.D. courses of study differing in scheduling and instructional approach, including traditional full- and part-time programs. Its two-year accelerated program (SCALE) is the best-attended and longest-running program of its kind. Home to the Biederman Entertainment and Media Law Institute, Southwestern is recognized as one of the country's top ten entertainment law schools. Its urban campus includes the landmark art deco Bullocks Wilshire building and platinum LEED-certified student residences. Southwestern graduates are well-rounded, entrepreneurial, community-minded, and prepared for practice. Take the virtual tour at www.SWLaw.edu.

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• 2022/2023 Montgomery Scholars

Hillary Kane
Southwestern Law School
210.605.6438
HKane@swlaw.edu