University of Wisconsin Law School welcomed Nina Varsava to its faculty in August. She will be teaching courses on professional responsibility and civil procedure, among other subjects.

  Professor Nina Varsava

Professor Varsava’s research focuses on legal interpretation, the case law system, the intersection of law and ethics, and bioethics and health law. Her scholarship has appeared in law reviews as well as humanities and social sciences journals, and has been covered by media outlets such as The New York Times and the American Bar Association Journal. She has also published articles in non-academic venues, such as Slate and Colorado Lawyer.

“Even though my work is sometimes technical or abstract, I think it’s important for academics to make their research accessible, so that the broader community knows what we’re up to,” Varsava says.

Varsava earned her law degree in 2018 from Yale Law School. At Yale, she served as an editor of the Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law and Ethics, as a fellow with the Global Health Justice Partnership, and as a member of the Ethics Bureau clinic.

In addition to her J.D., Varsava has a Ph.D. in Modern Thought and Literature from Stanford University. “My dissertation is all about legal precedent — how judges rely on past cases to decide new ones — and explores the topic using both philosophical and empirical methodologies,” she says.

Most recently, she lived in Colorado, where she served as a judicial clerk on the Colorado Supreme Court.

Varsava looks forward to exchanging ideas and forming collaborations with her new UW Law colleagues. “I’m honored and overjoyed to have the opportunity to develop my courses and research alongside scholars who are not only engaged in some of the most ambitious and exciting research in the world, but also committed to serving society beyond academia,” she says.

Submitted by Law School News on August 14, 2019

This article appears in the categories: Faculty, Features, UW Women in Law

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