Rutgers Law Welcomes Four New Faculty Members
Four new faculty members join the ranks at Rutgers Law School this fall, bringing with them extensive teaching expertise and diverse research interests ranging from immigration law to artificial intelligence. Here, learn more about them and their plans for the classroom, clinic, and beyond—in their own words.
Jessica Frisina arrives on Rutgers Law School’s Camden campus as assistant professor of law and director of the Criminal Defense and Advocacy Clinic. Frisina has a decade of criminal defense experience, most notably as assistant deputy public defender in the Newark branch of the New Jersey Office of the Public Defender. Her research and writing center on police-citizen encounters, the treatment of youth in the criminal legal system, and the ethics of criminal practice.
What do you like most about teaching?
The best part of teaching is helping students identify their passion and cultivating in them the confidence they need to pursue it. Students come into law school with contagious optimism and enormous potential for making the world a better place. As their professor, I believe my job is to help them harness that energy, acquire the concrete skills they need, and establish themselves on a path to making a difference.
How would you describe your teaching philosophy?
I believe strongly that students must be able to navigate the text of the law, engage with the scholarship around it, and understand the history behind it. Only then can they begin to think creatively about how to shape the law and how to push at its borders to make room for people who are traditionally excluded from its protection.
At the same time, it’s important that students leave my classes able to apply what they have learned to true sets of facts under real world constraints. I consider teaching to be an opportunity to provide a structured and supportive setting where students can practice, make mistakes, try out new techniques, and stretch their advocacy skills without jeopardizing the quality of the services any real-life client receives.
Camilla Hrdy, associate professor of law, arrives on Rutgers Law’s Camden campus from University of Akron School of Law, where she served as professor of intellectual property law. Her primary teaching areas include civil procedure and contract, IP, trade secret, trademark, and patent law. Her research expands on these topics to also touch on artificial intelligence, innovation clusters, federalism, science fiction and future studies, and the social and economic impacts of new technology.
What do you hope to accomplish at Rutgers?
I am extremely passionate about teaching. My overarching goal in the classroom is to engage and activate students on the subject matter. I feel strongly that students learn best when they are excited about what they are learning and when they find the classroom a fun and supportive place to be. I come to every class with a love of the law and a love of learning, and my greatest desire in the classroom is to share this with students and create that same spark in them.
What is the most important thing every law student should know to successfully complete law school? My advice is to always attend class, figure out which topics your professor cares most about, and do as many practice problems and past exams as you can find. Also, read as much and as deeply as possible. You might not have time for deep reading when you're in practice, so do it now.
Tal Kastner, associate professor of law, joins Rutgers Law in Newark from Touro Law Center, where she was assistant professor of law. Her teaching and research interests include contracts, property, law and literature, and the operation of legal language in social and historical contexts. She is currently working on an open source contract casebook as well as a scholarly book project on boilerplate in American law and literature, and the role of standard contract language in shaping the idea and experience of freedom in the United States.
What do you like most about teaching?
If I succeed in helping students learn a new concept or see the world in a new way, that’s gratifying. And, teaching law, I have a chance to help students think critically and develop the tools to make positive change in the world.
How would you describe your teaching philosophy?
Drawing on my experience in practice, I think about the class as a respectful and collaborative community where we can elevate each other to do our best work and hopefully have some fun. There are three types of skills that I hope students develop through any course: legal analysis (how to think like a lawyer and apply rules to facts); practice tools, including the ability to mobilize legal analysis to serve a client’s goals and maintain the highest level of professionalism and integrity; and critical thinking about how law structures our world and how we might all work to mitigate the biases and inequities that get baked in because of the history of this country.
Jessica Rofé, assistant professor of law and director of the Constitutional Rights Clinic on the Newark campus, arrives from New York University School of Law, where she was deputy director and supervising attorney at the Immigrant Rights Clinic. Rofé was also an Immigrant Justice Corps Fellow at Brooklyn Defender Services and an associate at Cleary Gottlieb in the firm’s Latin America practice. Her litigation, research, and teaching focus on the intersection of criminal and immigration law, deportation, detention, and the rights of individuals incarcerated across systems.
What do you like most about teaching?
For me, the best part about teaching, and particularly clinical teaching, is the exchange of ideas among teachers, students, clients, and community partners. The classroom and the community are fora for creativity, critical thinking, and visioning a better present and a better tomorrow, and I find so much joy and hope in that.
What is the most important thing every law student should know to successfully complete law school? Law school and the law generally is a place of ongoing exploration, discovery, and growth. Engage the doctrine, your peers, and your professors; ask questions; confront the challenges; and know that there is a space and place for you in the legal profession and beyond it.