Thomas Jefferson School of Law

Susan W. Tiefenbrun is a Professor of Law at Thomas Jefferson School of Law. Professor Tiefenbrun has a J.D. degree from New York University School of Law, a Ph.D in French from Columbia University summa cum laude, a Master of Science from Wisconsin University, and a Bachelor of Arts from Wisconsin University (Phi Beta Kappa as a junior) where she majored in French, Russian, and Education. Professor Tiefenbrun taught French language and literature for many years in Columbia University and Sarah Lawrence College. She now teaches international law in Thomas Jefferson School of Law where she is the Director of the Center for Global Legal Studies and the former Director of the LL.M. Programs in International Trade and in American Legal Studies. She practiced law and worked on international business transactions at Coudert Brothers in New York for many years. At Thomas Jefferson School of Law, she continues to direct and teach in the study abroad program in France (which she founded twenty years ago) and in China (which she founded seven years ago). For her efforts at fostering educational and cultural cooperation between France and the United States, she was awarded the French Legion of Honor medal by President Jacques Chirac in 2003. Her special interests are international law, corporate law, securities law, international intellectual property, women and international human rights law, and law and literature. She is the President of the Law and Humanities Institute West Coast Branch. She has written extensively on human trafficking as a form of contemporary slavery. She speaks ten foreign languages including Mandarin, Chinese. Among her numerous written works are a book-length study of Chinese, Russian and Eastern European joint venture laws and numerous articles on international intellectual property, international law issues, and human trafficking. She has edited three books on law and the arts, war crimes, and legal ethics. Her most recent books are Decoding International Law: Semiotics and the Humanities (Oxford Press, 2010), Women’s International and Comparative Human Rights (Carolina Academic Press, 2012) and Tax-Free-Trade Zones of the World and in the United States (Edward Elgar Press, 2012).

The Honorable Richard Goldstone was a judge in South Africa for 23 years, the last nine as a Justice of the Constitutional Court. Since retiring from the bench he has taught as a visiting professor in a number of United States Law Schools. He is presently a senior fellow at Yale’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs. From August 1994 to September 1996 he was the chief prosecutor of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. He was a member of the committee, chaired by Paul Volcker, appointed by the Secretary-General of the United Nations to investigate allegations regarding the Iraq Oil for Food Program. In 2009 he led the UN Fact Finding Mission on Gaza. In May 2009, he received the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Award for International Justice. He is the honorary member of the Association of Bar of New York and a foreign member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is an honorary Bencher of the Inner Temple, London, and an honorary fellow of St. John’s College, Cambridge. He is an honorary life member of the International Bar Association and Honorary President of its Human Rights Institute.

Alex Kreit is an Associate Professor of Law at Thomas Jefferson School of Law. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania Law School, Professor Kreit clerked for the Honorable M. Blane Michael on the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. He then worked as an associate at Morrison & Foerster in San Francisco where his practice focused on securities and appellate litigation. Professor Kreit's articles have appeared in journals including the American University Law Review, the University of Chicago Legal Forum, the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, and the William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal. He is author of a forthcoming casebook on drug abuse and the law, Controlled Substances: Crime, Regulation, and Policy (Carolina Academic Press, forthcoming 2012).

Professor Kreit is actively involved in the community. He is currently President of the San Diego Lawyer Chapter of the American Constitution Society. From 2009 to 2010 he served as Chair of the City of San Diego’s Medical Marijuana Task Force, a position appointed by the San Diego City Council. He has been recognized as one San Diego’s Top Attorneys in the Academic Field by the San Diego Daily Transcript (2009, 2011, 2012) and one of “35 under 35” community leaders by the San Diego News Network (2010).

Ben Templin is a Professor of Law at Thomas Jefferson School of Law. Professor Templin’s research interests include Social Security reform, retirement planning and investment trends. Prior to joining the faculty in 2003, Professor Templin was a corporate attorney at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati where his practice focused on general corporate law for early stage technology companies. Following graduation from the University of California, Boalt Hall School of Law, Professor Templin taught Legal Methods to undergraduates at the University of California, Berkeley. His web site (www.LawNerds.com) provides instruction in exam writing techniques to first-year law students. Before going to law school, Professor Templin worked in computer magazine publishing.

Richard Winchester is an Associate Professor of Law at Thomas Jefferson School of Law. He has anchored the school’s tax program since 2003, when he joined the faculty. A leading authority on federal employment taxes, he is the only legal scholar whose reform proposals have been considered as a policy option by Congress. His expertise also extends to the field of corporate tax history.

He spent a decade working as a corporate tax planner, helping privately owned and publicly traded companies structure their business operations and financial transactions. His experience includes multi-state taxation, structured finance, and the taxation of insurance companies. He spent his final years in practice as an international tax attorney in the national tax office of PricewaterhouseCoopers, advising both U.S. firms investing abroad and foreign firms investing in the U.S.

Professor Winchester is a graduate of Yale Law School, where he was Editor-in-Chief of the Yale Law & Policy Review. He later clerked Chief Justice Robert N.C. Nix, Jr. of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. He completed his undergraduate studies at Princeton University, majoring in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

Consistently active in civic matters, he has led grassroots political organizations in Pennsylvania and also helped rewrite the charter for the city of Bowie, Maryland. He now serves on the Executive Board of the San Diego Lawyer Chapter of the American Constitution Society. His work on employment tax policy earned him admission into the National Academy of Social Insurance in 2010. He spent the spring of 2012 as a Fulbright Scholar in Tunisia, where he taught Financing International Trade at the University of Carthage.