New Faculty
President and Dean Geoffrey B. Shields is pleased to welcome seven exceptional faculty members to Vermont Law School. These professors have chosen to join a faculty dedicated to rigorous legal education, innovative programs, and a collaborative, engaged learning environment:
- James Gustave "Gus" Speth
- Johanna Dennis
- John D. Echeverria
- Michele Martinez Campbell
- Siu Tip Lam
- Pamela Vesilind
- Hilary C. Robinson
James Gustave "Gus" Speth
BA Yale College
MLitt Oxford University
JD Yale Law School
James Gustave "Gus" Speth will join Vermont Law School in July 2010 as a professor of law. He retired as dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies in 2009 after a decade in that post. Before that, he served as administrator of the United Nations Development Programme and chair of the U.N. Development Group. Earlier, he was founder and president of the World Resources Institute; professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center; chairman of the U.S. Council on Environmental Quality; and senior attorney and co-founder of the Natural Resources Defense Council. He was a law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black. Among his awards are the National Wildlife Federation's Resources Defense Award; the Natural Resources Council of America's Barbara Swain Award of Honor; a Special Recognition Award from the Society for International Development; the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Environmental Law Institute; and the Blue Planet Prize.
Johanna K.P. Dennis
MS Johns Hopkins
JD Temple University
BA Rutgers University
Professor Dennis is a member of the Pennsylvania bar and a Registered Patent Attorney with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Prior to joining the faculty at VLS, Professor Dennis was a member of the faculty at Touro College, Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law Center and Florida A&M University College of Law, where she taught in the first-year legal writing programs and an upper-level course in Law and Medicine. At Touro, Dennis was a faculty advisor for the International Law Review, and she has served as moot court judge for the American Bar Association, National Appellate Advocacy Competition. Dennis also clerked for the Honorable William P. Gilroy in the Superior Court of New Jersey, Appellate Division, and she worked on civil service employment appeals with the State of New Jersey, Department of Personnel, Division of Merit System Practices and Labor Relations.. More...
John D. Echeverria
JD Yale Law School
MFS Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies
BA Yale College
John Echeverria will come to Vermont Law School in 2009 as professor of law. He has been the executive director of the Georgetown Environmental Law and Policy Institute at Georgetown University Law Center since 1997 and played a pivotal role in the Supreme Court’s adoption of a reasoned approach to takings jurisprudence. Prior to joining Georgetown, he served as general counsel at the National Audubon Society, as general counsel and conservation director at American Rivers, Inc., and as an associate at Hughes, Hubbard & Reed. He was a law clerk to the Honorable Gerhard A. Gesell of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. In 2007 Professor Echeverria was awarded the Jefferson Fordham Advocacy Award from the American Bar Association. He has produced several books and numerous articles on the private property rights issue, land use management, and natural resource management. More...
Michele Martinez Campbell
JD Stanford Law School
AB Harvard College
Professor Michele Martinez Campbell specializes in criminal law and criminal procedure law, and also has expertise in trial and appellate advocacy, Title III wiretap law, and international extradition law. At Vermont Law School, she teaches Constitutional Criminal Procedure, Criminal Procedure and Practice, Criminal Law, and an Advanced Criminal Law Seminar. More...
Siu Tip Lam
JD Northeastern University Law School
BA Harvard Radcliffe
Siu Tip Lam comes to Vermont Law School from the Massachusetts Attorney General Office, where she was an Assistant Attorney General in the Environmental Protection Division for 11 years. During her tenure there, she enforced state environmental laws and litigated throughout the Massachusetts court system, including the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. Prior to that, she also practiced law with the Boston firm of Brown, Rudnick, Freed & Gesmer as a litigation associate. She graduated from Harvard-Radcliffe College with a Bachelors East Asian Studies and her JD from Northeastern University Law School. She speaks Mandarin Chinese and Cantonese and came to the U.S. from Hong Kong as a child.
Pamela Vesilind
JD Vermont Law School
BA Guilford College
Professor Vesilind received her JD, cum laude, from Vermont Law School. She first began teaching and mentoring first-year students as a Constitutional Law teaching assistant and a Deans Fellow legal writing instructor. She was a member of the Vermont Law Review and the National Moot Court team. She served as a judicial extern to the Honorable Colleen Kollar-Kotelly in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, and upon receiving her JD, clerked for the Honorable Dennis R. Pearson of the Chittenden Superior Court. She is a member of the bar in Vermont and North Carolina. More...
Hilary Catherine Robinson
JD Harvard Law School
AB Harvard University
Professor Robinson's broad research interest involves the role of law in the transformation of norms by scientific innovation. In teaching, she aims to bring a multidisciplinary approach to those aspects of the law curriculum that intersect most closely with scientific innovation. During the upcoming academic year, Professor Robinson—both in her research, and with students in a spring seminar—will explore the interaction of intellectual property law with civil society at the site of agricultural biotechnology. In this domain, environmental objectives and local interests often fail to track with the interests of multinational corporations that hold patent rights to specific crop technologies in which they have invested years of research and development. More...
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