Samantha Barbas

Aliber Family Chair in Law

Samantha Barbas joined the faculty as the Aliber Family Chair in Law in August 2024. She is a prominent scholar and presenter of legal and media history with a focus on journalism, privacy, defamation, and the First Amendment. She is the award-winning author of seven books. Her most recent book, Actual Malice: Civil Rights and Freedom of the Press in New York Times v. Sullivan (University of California Press), made The New Yorker’s list of the best books of 2023. Barbas received the Public Scholar Award from the National Endowment for the Humanities in 2020. She comes to Iowa Law from the University at Buffalo School of Law, where she joined the faculty in 2011.

Bethany Berger

Alan D. Vestal Professor of Law

Bethany Berger, an expert in federal Indian law, joined the faculty in August 2024. She is co-author of American Indian Law: Cases and Commentary and co-author and editorial board member of Felix S. Cohen’s Handbook of Federal Indian Law. She has served several appointments at Harvard Law School as the visiting Oneida Indian Nation Professor. From 2005 to 2011, she served as judge for the Southwest Inter-Tribal Court of Appeals. She is co-author of Property Law: Rules, Policies, and Practices. Most recently, she was the Wallace Stevens Professor of Law at the University of Connecticut School of Law. Berger was a visiting professor at Iowa Law in 2005.

Lorraine Gaynor (11JD)

Assistant Professor of Legal Writing, Research, and Analysis

Lorraine Gaynor joined the faculty as assistant professor of legal analysis, writing, and research in August 2024. She most recently was senior staff attorney for Iowa Legal Aid. Prior to joining Iowa Legal Aid, Gaynor served from 2011 to 2013 in the U.S. Attorney General’s Honors Program as a judicial law clerk and attorney adviser in the Executive Office for Immigration Review. “Strong legal writing is critical to good lawyering and effective client advocacy,” said Gaynor. “I am honored to join the Iowa Law community and to have the opportunity to support students as they learn and practice these crucial writing and analysis skills.”

Kate Melloy Goettel (07JD)

Clinical Associate Professor

Kate Melloy Goettel, a leader in immigration law and federal court practice, joined the faculty in August 2024. She will lead a federal civil rights clinic with an immigration focus. She most recently served as senior legal director for the American Immigration Council; previously she was associate director of litigation for the National Immigrant Justice Center. She is a member of the Executive Board of the Federal Bar Association’s Immigration Law Section and was its 2022-2023 section chair. “I’m thrilled to return to the clinical program, which was instrumental in my legal education,” she said. “I’m excited to work with students as they walk through that learning process.

Megan Graham

Clinical Associate Professor

Megan Graham joined the faculty as clinical associate professor and director of the Technology Law Clinic. She is a nationally recognized expert in technology and surveillance issues as they relate to the criminal legal system. Previously, Graham was a clinical supervising attorney for the Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic at the School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. She also clerked in the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota and completed a year-long research fellowship at the University of Minnesota Human Rights Center. Graham was the Privacy, Security, and Technology Fellow and assistant managing editor for Just Security, an online forum that focuses on security, democracy, foreign policy, and rights.

Jill Wieber Lens (05JD)

Dorothy M. Willie Professor in Excellence

Jill Wieber Lens, an expert on reproductive justice, joined the faculty in August 2024. Lens’ research encompasses multiple legal facets including health law, tort law, remedies, bioethics, informed consent, criminal law, and reproductive rights; she is also a leading legal expert on stillbirth. Lens spent several years in St. Louis practicing commercial and appellate litigation before being appointed to the faculty at Baylor University School of Law. In 2018, she joined the University of Arkansas School of Law, where she served as the Robert A. Leflar Professor of Law and Associate Dean of Research and Faculty Development. Her recent work has appeared in the Michigan Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal, Vanderbilt Law Review, and UC Davis Law Review, and her popular writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, and Time.

Hope Metcalf

Clinical Associate Professor

Human rights scholar Hope R. Metcalf will join the faculty in January 2025. Metcalf comes to the University of Iowa after more than 15 years at Yale Law School. From 2014-2024 she served as executive director for the Orville H. Schell, Jr. Center for International Human Rights Law; she also co-taught in the Allard K. Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic. The Schell Center enables students, faculty, visiting scholars, and the broader institution to conduct research and engage in pressing human rights issues and discussions Prior to Metcalf’s work at the Schell Center, she was director of Yale Law’s Arthur Liman Center for Public Interest Law. She began her Yale Law career as a fellow there in 2007–2008. Before joining academia, she was an associate attorney at the firms of Debevoise & Plimpton and Wiggin and Dana.

James Toomey

Associate Professor of Law

James Toomey—an expert in health law, bioethics, elder law, and private law—joined the faculty in August 2024. Toomey’s research applies philosophical and empirical methods to essential questions in his areas of expertise. His work has been published in the Virginia Law Review, the North Carolina Law Review, the Harvard Journal on Legislation, the Elder Law Journal, the Journal of Law and the Biosciences, and the American Journal of Law and Medicine, among others. Previously an assistant professor at the Elizabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University and the Climenko Fellow and Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School, Toomey won the Harvard Distinction in Teaching Award in 2018.