Professor Wetlaufer took emeritus status in 2014.  He joined the Iowa law faculty in 1985 after thirteen years of private practice and seven years as a partner with the Washington, DC, law firm of Wald, Harkrader & Ross. As a student at Yale Law School, he served as research and teaching assistant to Professor Alexander M. Bickel.

Areas of Expertise:

While in private practice, Professor Wetlaufer specialized in antitrust law and economics, including antitrust litigation attendant to numerous contested tender offers; plaintiffs' Title VII class actions seeking to desegregate the construction industries in Washington, DC; other forms of complex federal litigation and administrative representation; and complex negotiations.

Practice and Teaching:

Professor Wetlaufer's research and writings deal with the law of executive privilege; the various and often incompatible theoretical perspectives at work in contemporary American law (e.g., formalism, legal realism, legal process, the positivist/analytic tradition, law and economics, contemporary critical theory); the forms of legal argument; the rhetorics of negotiations; and the ethics of strategic behavior both in civil litigation and in negotiations. His courses included Civil Procedure, Theories of Law in Twentieth-Century America, The Rhetorics and Ethics of Negotiations, Legal Realism & Critical Legal Studies, and Law & Economics.

Publications:

Rhetoric and Its Denial in Legal Discourse, 76 Virginia Law Rev. 1545-98 (1990)

The Ethics of Lying in Negotiations, 75 Iowa Law Rev. 1219-74 (1990)

The Limits of Integrative Bargaining, 85 Georgetown Law Rev. 369-94 (1996)

Systems of Belief in American Law, 49 American Univ. Law Rev. 1-80 (1999)

Education:

BA, Princeton University, 1967

JD, Yale Law School, 1972