Ronald
D. Rotunda is the Doy & Dee Henley Chair and
Distinguished Professor of Jurisprudence, at Chapman University. He joined
the faculty in 2008. Before that, he was
University
Professor and Professor of Law at George Mason University School of Law. From 2002 to 2006, he
was the George Mason University
Foundation Professor of Law. Before
that, he was the Albert E. Jenner, Jr. Professor of Law, at the
University of Illinois. He is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College and a magna cum laude graduate
of Harvard Law School,
where he was a member of Harvard Law Review. He joined the University of Illinois
faculty in 1974 after clerking for Judge Walter R. Mansfield of the United
States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, practicing law in Washington, D.C.,
and serving as assistant majority counsel for the Watergate Committee. He has
co-authored the most widely used course book on legal ethics, Problems and Materials on Professional
Responsibility (Foundation Press, 11th ed. 2011) and is the author of a
leading course book on constitutional law, Modern Constitutional Law (West
Publishing Co., 10th ed. 2012). He is the coauthor of, Legal Ethics: The Lawyer's Deskbook on Professional
Responsibility (ABA-West Group, St. Paul, Minnesota, 7th ed., 2009)
(jointly published by the ABA and West Group, a division of Thompson Publishing)
(with John Dzienkowski). Rotunda is also the co-author (with John Nowak) of the
seven-volume Treatise on
Constitutional Law (West Publishing Co., 5th ed. 2012), and a one volume Treatise on Constitutional Law
(West Publishing Co., 8th ed. 2010). He is also the author of several
other books and more than 300
articles in various law reviews, journals, newspapers, and books in this
country and in Europe. His works have been translated into French, German, Romanian, Czech,
Russian, Japanese, and Korean. These books and articles have been cited
more than 2000 times law reviews and by state and federal courts at every
level, from trial courts to the U.S. Supreme Court. He has been interviewed on
radio and television on legal issues, both in this country
and abroad. In 1993 he was the Constitutional Law Adviser to the Supreme
National Council of Cambodia and assisted that country in writing its first
democratic constitution. He has consulted with various new democracies in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet
Union, including Moldova,
Romania,
and Ukraine,
on their proposed constitutions and judicial codes. He chaired the subcommittee
that drafted the American Bar Association's Model Rules for Lawyer Disciplinary
Enforcement; is a member of the Publications Board of the A.B.A. Center for
Professional Responsibility since 1994; was a member of the A.B.A. Standing
Committee on Professional Discipline (1991-1997); and was Liaison to the A.B.A.
Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility (1994-1997). He was a Fulbright Professor in Venezuela in
1986 and a Fulbright Research Scholar in Italy in 1981. In 1996 he assisted the Czech Republic in
drafting the first Rules of Ethics for lawyers in that country. During
the Spring, 1999 semester, he was Visiting Professor at the University of
Alabama School of Law, holding the John S. Stone Endowed Chair of Law. During the summer and fall of 2000, he was
the Visiting Senior Fellow in Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute, in Washington, DC. In the fall of 2001, he was visiting
professor at George Mason University School of Law. During November-December, 2002, he was
Visiting Scholar, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Faculty of Law, Leuven,
Belgium. In May, 2004, and December,
2005, he was visiting lecturer at the Institute of Law and Economics, Institut
für Recht und Ökonomik, at the University of Hamburg. From early June,
2004 to May, 2005, he was the Special Counsel to the Department of
Defense. He was on the Panel of
Contributing Editors that produced, Black's
Law Dictionary (Thompson-West, 8th ed. 2004). From 2005-2006, he was a member of the Task
Force on Judicial Functions of the Commission
on Virginia Courts in the 21st Century: To Benefit All, to Exclude
None. In May, 2000, American Law
Media, publisher of The American Lawyer, the National Law Journal,
and the Legal Times picked Professor Rotunda as one of the ten most
influential Illinois Lawyers. Also in
2000, a lengthy study that the
University of Chicago Press published, which sought to determine the influence,
productivity, and reputations of law professors over the last several decades,
listed Professor Rotunda as the 17th highest in the nation. The 2002-2003 New Educational Quality
Ranking of U.S. Law Schools (EQR) [the last year for which such records are
available] ranks Professor Rotunda as the eleventh most cited of all law
faculty in the United States. See http://www.leiterrankings.com/faculty/2002faculty_impact_cites.shtml
. In July, 2007, he was one of the main speakers at the
International Judicial Conference hosted by the United States Embassy, the
Supreme Court of Latvia, and the Latvian Ministry of Justice. The other main
speakers were Justice Samuel Alito, the President of Latvia, the Prime Minister
of Latvia, the Chief Justice of Latvia, and the Minister of Justice of
Latvia. On February 27, 2008, President
George W. Bush nominated Ronald Rotunda to become a member of the Privacy
and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) for an initial four-year term and
sent his nomination to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and
Governmental Affairs for confirmation hearings on the nominees. He was
selected the Best Lawyer in Washington, DC, in 2009 in Ethics and Professional
Responsibility Law, as published in November 2008 in the Washington Post
in association with the Legal Times. He was also selected as one of the
Best Lawyers in Southern California, in 2010 in Ethics and Professional
Responsibility Law, and yet again in 2011, as published in the Los Angeles
Times, in association with American Law Media. Again, he was the only
academic on this list. On June 17, 2009, he became a Commissioner of the Fair Political Practices Commission,
a state regulatory agency and California’s independent political
watchdog. He will serve until January 31, 2013. In 2012, he became a
Distinguished International Research Fellow at the World Engagement Institute,
a non-profit, multidisciplinary and academically-based
non-governmental organization with the mission to facilitate professional
global engagement for international development and poverty reduction http://www.weinstitute.org/fellows.html. In 2012, Chapman University honored him with The Chapman University Excellence In
Scholarly/Creative Work Award, 2011-2012
.
