The AALS Nominating Committee for 2027 Officers and Members of the Executive Committee recommends the following accomplished teacher-scholars and highly capable volunteers for positions on the AALS Executive Committee. The Committee will present these nominees to the AALS House of Representatives for election this fall. The candidates will be confirmed at the yearly meeting of the House of Representatives, which takes place during the AALS Annual Meeting in January.
Nominee for President-Elect
Anthony W. Crowell is Dean and President of New York Law School (NYLS), a position he has held for nearly fifteen years. Dean Crowell is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania’s Urban Studies Program (BA, magna cum laude, 1992) and the American University, Washington College of Law (JD, cum laude,1997). Prior to entering the academy full-time, he served in New York City government for almost fifteen years, with more than a decade in City Hall, where he served as Counselor to Mayor Michael Bloomberg. During those years, he taught part-time at Brooklyn Law School and NYLS.
Dean Crowell is Director of the NYLS Center for New York City and State Law, which brings together the legal, policymaking, and civic communities. His teaching and academic work focuses broadly on State and Local Government Law, including governance and public integrity, state constitutions and local charters, land use and economic development, civics education and participation, and leadership.
Dean Crowell was a member of the AALS Executive Committee, on a three-year term that ended in January 2026. He has served as a member of the AALS Deans Steering Committee and as Chair of its Nominating Committee. He is the Chair of the Program Committee for the 2027 AALS Annual Meeting, Chair of the AALS Audit and Investment Policy Committee, and was Co-Chair of the Planning Committee for the 2025 AALS/ABA Deans’ Week, held at NYLS. Dean Crowell has served as an AALS/ABA law school site reviewer since 2017. He routinely plans and facilitates sessions at the AALS Annual Meeting and at the AALS Deans Forum. NYLS proudly serves as a co-editor school of the Journal of Legal Education with the UC Irvine School of Law. NYLS also hosts annually the AALS Pathways to Law Teaching Workshop for the Northeast Region.
Dean Crowell is a champion for legal education, educational access, and institution-building through broad coalitions and government partnerships. He is the Founding President of the National Association of Standalone Graduate Schools, the umbrella advocacy organization for the nation’s independent law schools. He sits on the ABA Council’s Special Advisory Committee on Standards for Approval of Law Schools. He is an active member of the New York law deans’ community. He serves as a member of the Executive Committee of the Commission on Independent Colleges and Universities in New York, and Chair of the Affordability and Finances Working Group of the New York City Bar Association’s Higher Education Task Force. While in practice, he was awarded the Bar Association’s Outstanding Municipal Attorney Award.
Dean Crowell is a highly visible leader in New York’s legal and civic community. He is a member of the New York City Planning Commission, and the Co-Chair of the Legal Subcommittee of the New York State Exploratory Committee for the 2042 Lake Placid – NYC Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games. He is a member of the Brooklyn Public Library Board of Trustees, where he previously served as Chair. He chairs the New York State Independent Review Committee for Nominations to the Commission on Ethics and Lobbying in Government, which comprises New York’s fifteen law deans. He previously served on the New York City Conflicts of Interest (Ethics) Board.
Dean Crowell is a first-generation college student. He attended law school part-time in the evening program while working full-time at the International City/County Management Association in Washington, D.C. He managed government affairs and policy, and served as a law clerk at its then affiliated State and Local Legal Center, which filed amicus briefs in the U.S. Supreme Court.
Nominees for Executive Committee
Melanie Leslie has served as Dean of the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law since 2015 and is the first woman and the first Cardozo graduate to hold the position. She has chaired the AALS Section for Law School Deans, served on the AALS Steering Committee for Law School Deans, and co-founded the Dean’s Leadership Academy, which helps prepare prospective law school deans for institutional leadership.
During her deanship, Leslie has expanded support for student success and overseen substantial improvements in bar passage and employment outcomes. She launched the Gates Scholarship program for students who are first-generation, come from underrepresented backgrounds, or have overcome significant obstacles. She also established the Harold Stevens Visiting Assistant Professorship to broaden pathways into legal academia and spearheaded two online degree programs to extend access to legal education.
Dean Leslie has advanced Cardozo’s commitment to public service through initiatives, including the Perlmutter Center for Legal Justice, established with a $15 million philanthropic gift to represent incarcerated people serving unjust sentences, and the Center for Rights and Justice, which supports lawyers engaged in pro bono representation. She has created programs at the intersection of law, technology, intellectual property and business, including the FAME Center for fashion, art, media and entertainment law, as well as the Cardozo Patent Diversity Project.
A scholar of trusts and estates and nonprofit governance, Leslie has published in numerous law reviews and coauthored Estates and Trusts: Cases and Materials and Concepts and Insights: Trusts and Estates. She is a Legal Fellow of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel and has taught property, trusts and estates, nonprofit governance and evidence. She earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Oregon and her J.D., magna cum laude, from Cardozo in 1991. She joined Cardozo’s faculty in 1995.
Christiana Ochoa is Dean and the Class of 1950 Herman B. Wells Endowed Professor of Law at Indiana University Maurer School of Law. She became dean in November 2022, after nearly two decades on the Maurer faculty and extensive academic leadership service at both the law school and university levels. She previously served as Interim Dean, Executive Associate Dean, Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Affairs, and Indiana University’s Associate Vice Provost for Faculty and Academic Affairs. She was also the founding Academic Director of Indiana University’s Mexico Gateway, an initiative that advances the university’s academic and institutional relationships in Latin America.
Dean Ochoa’s scholarship examines the human and environmental consequences of economic activity, the role of law in development, and the ways legal institutions shape the distribution of power and opportunity. Her recent scholarship also considers the responsibilities of legal education in sustaining constitutional democracy and the rule of law. She teaches Contracts, International Law, International Business Transactions, Human Rights, and Law and Development.
Before joining the legal academy, Dean Ochoa practiced law with Clifford Chance in London and New York and worked with human rights and humanitarian organizations in Latin America. Dean Ochoa received her undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan, where she studied History and American Culture, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School.
Dean Ochoa has a longstanding commitment to the Association of American Law Schools. She currently serves on the AALS Deans Steering Committee and the Executive Committee of the Deans Working Group on Rural Access to Justice. She served on the Program Committee for the 2026 AALS Annual Meeting and co-chaired the 2025 New Deans’ Workshop. Her earlier AALS leadership includes service as Chair of the Sections on International Law and International Human Rights, as well as a leadership role in the Section on Law and Film. Beyond AALS, she has served on the Indiana Supreme Court’s Commission on Indiana’s Legal Future, addressing challenges in access to legal services, particularly in the state’s underserved communities and legal deserts. She has been named to the Indiana 250, recognizing the state’s most influential business leaders, for four consecutive years.