Faculty whose expertise includes constitutional and immigration law, environmental law, technology law and policy, civil rights, and gender and the law will join the University of Colorado Law School this August.

Colorado Law continues its historic hiring streak! Lolita Buckner Inniss, Dean and Provost’s Professor of Law, announced the appointment of three professors to Colorado Law’s full-time faculty: Maryam Jamshidi, Sarah Matsumoto, and Daria Roithmayr. Professors Jamshidi, Matsumoto, and Roithmayr join Pratheepan Gulasekaram and Blake Reid '10 as Colorado Law's newest faculty. Stay tuned for more exciting hiring news coming soon!

“These individuals bring a wealth of knowledge and experience to our institution, and will undoubtedly enrich the educational experience of our students,” said Dean Inniss. “We are fortunate to have attracted such talented scholars and teachers, and I have no doubt that they will make significant contributions to our community!”

Meet Colorado Law’s newest professors:

Maryam Jamshidi

Currently serving as faculty at the University of Florida Levin College of Law, Maryam Jamshidi will join the Colorado Law faculty as associate professor of law in August. Professor Jamshidi teaches and writes in the areas of national security, public international law, the law of foreign relations, and tort law. 

In particular, her scholarship focuses on the relationship between the private sphere and national security law as well as the law of foreign relations. In exploring these dynamics, Professor Jamshidi’s work draws on political and critical theory, as well as sociology. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Washington University Law Review, Cornell Law Review, the Southern California Law Review, the University of Chicago Law Review, the University of Colorado Law Review, and Hastings Law Journal. She also regularly publishes in popular media outlets.

Prior to joining the Levin College of Law, Professor Jamshidi served as an Assistant Professor of Lawyering at the NYU Law School. She also worked as an associate in several leading Washington D.C. law firms, including White & Case, where she worked primarily on issues relating to national security and foreign relations law. Professor Jamshidi clerked for the Honorable Judge Gladys Kessler of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.She focuses her research on political and critical theory, as well as sociology.

Professor Jamshidi earned her bachelor of arts in Political Science at Brown University, then went to earn her Master of Science in Political Theory with merit at the London School of Economics. She holds a Juris Doctor degree from University of Pennsylvania Law School.

Sarah Matsumoto

Esteemed practitioner and clinical educator in the field of environmental law, Sarah Matsumoto will join the Colorado Law faculty as Clinical Associate Professor in August.
 
Professor Matsumoto joined the Willamette University College of Law as an Assistant Professor of Clinical Education in 2021. She previously served as a Clinical Fellow at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law where she taught in the Environmental Law Clinic for three years. In that role, she supervised teams of students working on oil and gas-oriented permit challenges, water management, and concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO) issues, and oversaw other advocacy efforts aimed at improving water and air quality in Colorado and the Rocky Mountain region. Matsumoto also co-taught the clinic seminar, and was a member of DU’s Rocky Mountain Collective on Race, Place, and Law.
 
Before joining the DU clinic, Matsumoto represented plaintiffs in environmental citizen suits at a firm in Eugene, Oregon. During her time in Eugene, Matsumoto successfully litigated against several large CAFOs, and was part of the legal team that brought the first successful RCRA citizen suit against a CAFO for polluting groundwater through its improper management of waste. Prior to attending law school, Matsumoto worked in research and development for an international coffee company.
 
Matsumoto recently published Environmental Justice for Food System Workers: Heat-Illness Prevention Standards as One Step Toward Just Transition, 40 PACE ENVTL. L. REV. 88 (2023) and Heat Waves and a Public-Private Partnership in Alaska (with Karen Sandrik), 39 ALASKA LAW REVIEW 202 (2023). She has spoken about environmental justice at conferences and symposia hosted by the University of Michigan Law School, Thurgood Marshall School of Law at Texas Southern University, Pace Environmental Law Review, Alaska Law Review, Howard Law Journal, and University of Detroit-Mercy Law Review, and has spoken at the Public Interest Environmental Law Conference held annually in Eugene, OR.
 
Matsumoto is a graduate of the University of Washington and Seattle University School of Law.

Daria Roithmayr

In August, Professor Daria Roithmayr will join the Colorado Law faculty as Professor of Law. Professor Roithmayr teaches and writes about persistent structural racism and racial exploitation. Her 2014 book, Reproducing Racism: How Everyday Choices Lock In White Advantage (NYU), explored the self-reinforcing dynamics of persistent racial inequality. She is currently at work on a new book, Racism Pays, which explores the way that recent innovations in the digital economy have relied on racial exploitation to get off the ground.

Roithmayr has taught at the University of Illinois College of Law, and has been a visiting researcher at Harvard University and a visiting law professor at the University of Michigan, University of Chicago, Georgetown, and Yale.