Professor Margot Pollans delivered the James D. Hopkins Memorial Lecture on Monday, April 21, on "Inundations: Pain, Bodies, and the Law." Dean Horace Anderson appointed Professor Pollans as the James D. Hopkins Professor of Law for the 2023–2025 term. During the holder's term, the James D. Hopkins Professor delivers a lecture that is open to the entire law school community and members of the public.

Professor Pollans opened her lecture outlining the different contexts in which people experience physical inundation such as toxic exposure, gun violence, radiation, and noise. “How well legal regimes responds to this condition is, to me, a really important metric of good governance,” she explained. “Here in the United States, inundation management does not paint a picture of good governance, and it has not for a very long time. Instead, for decades, it has been priming us to become fascists subjects.”

Professor Pollans defined inundation and made the case that it is an essential unit of analysis. She offered a taxonomy of regulatory approaches to inundation, explaining that little current law prevents inundation. Instead, it facilitates individuals who want to protect themselves. And, finally, she explored the consequences of these approaches for both individuals and regulators. Throughout her lecture, Professor Pollans offered specific examples of inundation, many of which translate into our everyday life. She observed that, “[i]nundation includes a broad range of harms, but what they all have in common is that they all flow from the permeability of the human body.”

Professor Pollans concluded her remarks with the following words: “For as long as bodies remain permeable, physical inundation remains a critical unit of analysis for human experience. Permeability creates mutual dependence. Self-shielding serves primarily to drive us further apart. We have only to look at the long-term effects of covid lockdown to see a society-wide experiment with this phenomenon. Resisting fascism will require profound collective action. Shield and cleanup regimes did not cause fascism, but I do think that they have weakened our capacity for collective action. I invite you to prove me wrong.”

Professor Margot Pollans joined Haub Law’s faculty in 2015. She is the Faculty Director of the Pace Food Law Center and, during her time at Haub Law, Professor Pollans has been a leader in building the national reputation of the Pace Food Law Center. She is currently the Joseph P. D’Alessandro Faculty Scholar and previously, she served as the Shamik and Adrienne Trivedi Faculty Scholar from 2020–2022. She teaches several classes including Agriculture Law and the Environment, Food Systems & the Environment, and Administrative Law.

Professor Pollans is an accomplished scholar whose primary research interests lie in the areas of food and agriculture law, administrative law and social justice. Her academic work has appeared in a variety of journals including in the California Law Review, Michigan Law Review, the Ohio State Law Journal, the Columbia Journal of Gender and Law, and the Harvard Environmental Law Review. She is also the co-author of a casebook, Food Law: Cases & Materials. In 2022, she was named the recipient of Haub Law’s distinguished Goettel Prize for Faculty Scholarship for her article, "Eaters, Powerless by Design" published by Michigan Law Review (120 Mich. L. Rev. 643 (2022)).

The title of James D. Hopkins Professor of Law is awarded to a member of the faculty for a two-year term in recognition of outstanding scholarship and teaching. The designation is among the Law School’s most significant faculty honors. The Hopkins Professor is selected by the Dean in consultation with the former holders of the Hopkins Chair. The prior James D. Hopkins Professor of Law for the 2021–2023 term was Professor Noa Ben-Asher.

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Meet Jacob Cherry, a 1L at Haub Law whose path to legal education is anything but typical. As a child actor, Jacob shared the screen with stars like Ben Stiller in Night at the Museum—but today, he’s traded in his SAG card for his Pace Library Card where you’ll find him studying for his Contracts, Civil Procedure, and Torts classes.

Originally from New Jersey, Jacob spent much of his youth traveling between New York and Los Angeles for acting. But when he started thinking differently about his future, it was his visit to Haub Law’s Accepted Students Day that sparked a new passion.

“Based on the energy and attitude of the faculty and students, I was immediately drawn to Haub Law,” shared Jacob. “The focus on camaraderie here really spoke to me—it set the school apart.”

Since starting law school, Jacob has fully embraced the Haub Law community. He joined SEALS (the Sports, Entertainment, and Arts Law Society) and was elected as a 1L representative. He regularly connects with classmates through study groups and even launched a Dungeons & Dragons campaign, creating a fun and collaborative space for students to unwind and bond outside of class.

Jacob has also found meaningful mentorship by taking advantage of office hours with his professors, who are always willing to discuss course materials or provide advice on his career goals. Those conversations, he says, have been instrumental in shaping his early experience at Haub Law.

Looking ahead, Jacob is interested in litigation and trial advocacy, and excited to be taking Entertainment Law next semester—all skills that align with his previous experience as an actor and will provide a chance to blend his past and present in meaningful ways.

Jacob was recently featured in People magazine about his journey from film sets to the halls of law school, written by another Haub Law student, 1L Flex student Tereza Shkurtaj.