School Notes: Yale Law School
July/August 2023

Professor elected to Academy of Arts and Sciences

J. Skelly Wright Professor of Law James Forman Jr. ’92JD was elected to the 2023 class of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Forman teaches and writes in the areas of criminal procedure and criminal law policy, juvenile justice, and education law and policy. He is faculty director of the Law and Racial Justice Center, which brings together New Haveners, Yale students, staff, and faculty, local government officials, and local and national experts to imagine and implement projects that advance racial justice. Forman also founded Access to Law School, a program serving first-generation and underrepresented minority students from New Haven who wish to pursue a legal career.

Contract theorist joins faculty

Sarath Sanga ’14JD has joined the faculty as professor of law, effective July 1. Sanga was previously professor of law at the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, with a secondary appointment as associate professor in the strategy department at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern. Professor Sanga’s research focuses on corporate law and contract theory. His work bridges theory and empirics, and he cofounded SCALES, an interdisciplinary collaboration that includes legal scholars, computer scientists, journalists, and policy experts.

Mourning a longtime professor

J. L. Pottenger Jr. ’75JD, the Nathan Baker Clinical Professor of Law, died on February 23 at the age of 73. Pottengerdevoted his career to Yale Law School’s clinical program, where he accepted a full-time teaching position in 1980. He began by supervising students in litigation and transactional clinics, externships, and trial practice; his work “made an extraordinary difference in the New Haven community,” said Dean Heather K. Gerken. In 2022, Pottenger received the Tapping Reeve Legal Educator Award, which recognizes a member of the Connecticut Bar Association whose career has “made significant contributions to the cause of legal education in the state.” Pottenger was posthumously awarded the 2023 William Pincus Award from the American Association of Law Schools, the most prestigious honor in the field of clinical legal education.