Columbia Law School Faculty Tenured in 2023
Three legal scholars joined Columbia's tenured faculty in 2023. Tenure is a distinction that recognizes scholarly excellence, demonstrated capacity for imaginative, original work, and great promise for continued contributions at the leading edge of one's field.
Kellen Funk
Kellen Funk, Professor of Law, is a leading scholar of legal history and civil procedure who focuses on nineteenth-century American legal institutions, practice, and theory.
Funk’s scholarship covers an array of topics including the history of civil procedure, bail, equity, and the jurisprudence of churches and religious groups. His first monograph, Law’s Machinery: Reforming the Craft of Lawyering in America’s Industrial Age, sheds light on the politics and ambitions behind the codification movement of the nineteenth century that eventually led to the adoption of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure in 1938.
His forthcoming book, American Bail: A History of Wealth and Pretrial Detention in the United States, examines the regulation of criminal bail and jail practices from America’s colonial era to the present. Funk earned his JD from Yale University and his PhD from Princeton University before joining the Columbia faculty in 2018, earning tenure in 2023.
Clare Huntington
Clare Huntington, Professor of Law, is a leading scholar of family law and poverty law who studies the law’s approach to intimate relationships.
In her research, Huntington explores how nonmarital families face particular challenges because of the law’s narrow focus on marriage as the basis of policy making. Her legal work is informed by her experience before law school, serving as a caseworker in the New York City foster care system. Her work is noted for a focus on the pragmatic, or concrete aspects of family well-being, and how decision-makers in the legal realm are increasingly using pragmatism to guide them.
Huntington earned her JD at Columbia University. Before entering academia, she served as Attorney Advisor in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, clerked for Justice Harry A. Blackmun and Justice Stephen Breyer on the U.S. Supreme Court, for Judge Merrick B. Garland of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and for Judge Denise Cote of the Southern District of New York. She held appointments at the University of Colorado and Fordham University before joining Columbia’s faculty with tenure in 2023.
Clare Huntington’s Faculty Profile
Dorothy Lund
Dorothy Lund, Professor of Law, is a leading legal scholar who studies corporate power and how it influences society’s ability to address pressing global issues. To examine the many facets of corporate power, her research spans corporate law, corporate governance, securities regulation, contracts, and mergers and acquisitions.
One of Lund’s more influential articles examines how asset managers influence corporate policy and how the “Big Three”–Vanguard, State Street and BlackRock– could play a role when the government fails to regulate in critical arenas such as the reduction of carbon emission.
Lund earned her JD from Harvard Law School. Before entering academia, she clerked for Chief Justice Leo E. Strine Jr. of the Delaware Supreme Court, Judge Joel M. Flaum of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, and practiced corporate law. She taught at the University of Southern California before joining the Columbia faculty with tenure in 2023.
Dorothy Lund’s Faculty Profile