Paula Franzese

Professor Paula Franzese, the Peter W. Rodino Professor of Law, at Seton Hall Law School, is one of the country’s leading experts in property law as well as government ethics. She has spearheaded ethics reform initiatives on behalf of three governors, serving as Special Ethics Counsel to Governor Richard J. Codey, Chair of the State Ethics Commission, Vice-Chair of the Election Law Enforcement Commission, Vice-Chair of the New Jersey Supreme Court’s Special Committee on Attorney Ethics and Admissions and as ethics advisor to state and local governments across the country, including Mayor Cory Booker’s administration in Newark. She received the National Council on Governmental Ethics Laws Award, the highest honor conferred by the organization. She and retired Justice Daniel J. O’Hern promulgated the Uniform Ethics Code. She has published extensively on the best practices for ethics reform of state and local governments.  The author of numerous publications, her scholarship in the housing law includes critical examination of landlord tenant law, common interest communities, homeowners associations, and the dilemma of privatization, the law of servitudes, exclusionary zoning, affordable housing, adverse possession doctrine, and takings law. Professor Franzese is the author of Strategies and Techniques for Teaching Property, is a contributor to America’s Second Gilded Age? Perspectives on Law and Class Differences, The Affective Assistance of Counsel: Practicing Law as a Healing Profession, and Reaction and Reform in New Jersey. She co-authored Property Law and the Public Interest. She serves on the editorial board of the Land Use and Environmental Law Review and is the creator of the acclaimed Short and Happy Guide book series. Prof. Franzese was named a Fellow of the American College of Real Estate Lawyers and is a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation as well as the recipient of numerous accolades, including the Sir Thomas More Medal of Honor, the YWCA Woman of Influence Award, the Women Lawyers Association Trailblazer Award, tand he State Bar Foundation’s Medal of Honor. Nationally renowned for her excellence in teaching, a recent book names Professor Franzese one of only 26 “best law teachers in the United States.”  Professor Franzese is the unprecedented ten-time recipient of the Student Bar Association’s Professor of the Year Award, has been named “Exemplary Teacher” by the American Association of Higher Education. She is the past Chair of the Association of American Law Schools Section on Teaching Methods and served as Vice-Chair of the Legal Education Section of the American Bar Association.  Committed to education reform and civic engagement, Prof. Franzese serves on the Boards of Trustees of Mount St. Dominic Academy, St. Catherine of Siena School and the Community Health Law Project. She established the Leadership Fellows Program and teaches leadership, ethics, and decision-making to middle-school, undergraduate, and graduate students. Professor Franzese was a litigator with Cahill, Gordon, where she also served as a member of the New York Housing Court Reform Project and the Governor’s Task Force on Life and Law. She clerked for Justice Alan B. Handler of the New Jersey Supreme Court. She received her B.A., summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, from Barnard College, Columbia University, and her J.D. from Columbia University School of Law.