Jane Aiken

Jane Aiken

University Distinguished Professor

Jane Aiken, who served as dean of Wake Forest University School of Law from 2019 - 2022, came to Wake Forest Law from Georgetown where she was the Blume Professor of Law. At Georgetown she served in many administrative roles including Vice Dean, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, and Associate Dean for Experiential Education and Public Service. Aiken taught both doctrinally and clinically. In 2010 she founded the Community Justice Project to enable students to represent both organizations and individuals in cases involving questions of justice where remedies are often transactional, policy-based or require extraordinary measures for adjudication. Her … Read more »

Jane Aiken, who served as dean of Wake Forest University School of Law from 2019 - 2022, came to Wake Forest Law from Georgetown where she was the Blume Professor of Law. At Georgetown she served in many administrative roles including Vice Dean, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, and Associate Dean for Experiential Education and Public Service. Aiken taught both doctrinally and clinically. In 2010 she founded the Community Justice Project to enable students to represent both organizations and individuals in cases involving questions of justice where remedies are often transactional, policy-based or require extraordinary measures for adjudication. Her doctrinal courses were primarily Evidence and Torts. Other courses included Motherhood and the Law and the Law of International Extradition for the Week One program. She was a fellow in the Ignatian Colleagues Program and chaired the University Task Force on Gender Equity.

Before joining the faculty at Georgetown, Aiken was the William Van Cleve Professor of Law at Washington University in St. Louis. While at Washington University, she was selected as a Fulbright Scholar to teach law at Tribhuvan University in Kathmandu, Nepal. She has also taught in law schools at the University of South Carolina and Arizona State University. While a student at NYU, she was a Root-Tilden Scholar.

Aiken has directed a wide array of clinics involving prisoner's rights, domestic violence against women and children, HIV, homelessness, police brutality and international human rights. She has been a Carnegie Scholar for Teaching and Learning and was a member of the ABA Council on Legal Education from 2011 to 2017. She is a member of ALI and the American Bar Foundation. She received the Frank Flegal Award for Excellent Teaching at Georgetown in 2010 and the Faculty Member of the Year Award in 2013.

Aiken's scholarship focuses on three primary areas: legal education, women's rights, and evidence. In 2014, she co-authored The Clinic Seminar and Teaching the Clinical Seminar. Aiken is currently in the process of finishing her book, Motherhood and the Law: Enforcing Selflessness. Aiken's articles on teaching justice have been translated into seven languages and have been a basis for much of her work on legal education in international settings, including Georgia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Turkey, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, and Viet Nam. Her writing on women and the law concentrates on domestic violence, contested ideas about consent, and specialized evidence rules on sexual character evidence.


Education

  • LLM, Georgetown University
  • JD, New York University
  • BA, Hollins College

Publications

Books

Book Chapters

Articles

Other

Media

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Jane Aiken
Contact Information
 336.758.4366

Expertise
  • Civil Rights/Anti-Discrimination Laws
  • Clinical Legal Education
  • Evidence
  • Family Law
  • Public Interest Law & Policy
  • Sex Discrimination
  • Sexual Orientation & Gender Identity Law