UH Law Center Announces New Professorships, Promotions and Faculty Hires

Sept. 17, 2026 – The University of Houston Law Center kicked off the academic year with a series of major faculty honors and milestones, including the appointment of several professors to endowed chairs and professorships, three faculty promotions and the addition of new faculty members.

Endowed Professorships and Chairs

Several faculty members were appointed to endowed chairs and professorships. Endowed positions provide long-term support for faculty scholarship, teaching and academic initiatives while recognizing distinguished contributions to the field.

Among the appointments, Joseph Sanders, a nationally recognized tort law scholar who has taught at the Law Center since 1983, was named the inaugural holder of the Professor Joseph Sanders Endowed Professorship in Torts. The position was recently established through a $1.2 million gift from alumni Scott Armstrong and Jessica Armstrong, both members of the Class of 2014. Earlier this year, he received the Harry J. Kalven Jr. Prize, the Law and Society Association’s highest honor for lifetime achievement in law and society research.

Other faculty receiving endowed appointments:

Johnny Rex Buckles was named the John H. Freeman Chair. He joined the UHLC faculty in 2000, after serving as a visiting professor at Washington and Lee University School of Law and practicing in the Exempt Organizations Practice Group of Thompson & Knight LLP. A tax law expert, Buckles teaches courses in federal income tax, estate planning, trusts and wills, taxation of exempt organizations, tax policy, post-mortem estate planning, the law and theology and contracts.

Darren Bush, a member of the UHLC faculty since 2003, was appointed the Bobby Wayne Young Law Chair of Consumer Law. A nationally recognized antitrust expert, his scholarship focuses on antitrust and economic regulation, including monopoly power and merger oversight. He has testified numerous times on antitrust matters before congressional committees and federal commissions. His scholarship has helped shape national antitrust policy, from his work with his late coauthor, John J. Flynn, on the 1974 Tunney Act to Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s office citing his work in support of her new Antitrust Accountability and Transparency Act earlier this year. Bush previously served as a trial attorney in the Department of Justice Antitrust Division's Transportation, Energy, & Agriculture Section, where he investigated mergers and anticompetitive conduct in wholesale and retail energy markets and the airlines industry.

Seth J. Chandler was named the Beirne, Maynard & Parsons LLP Professor of Law. Chandler’s scholarship and teaching span constitutional law, artificial intelligence and the application of mathematics and computer science to law. He was recently named one of the Top 50 Legal Innovators in Academia for 2026 by The National Law Review and Wickard for his work integrating AI and other technologies into legal education. He also received Wolfram Research’s Technical Innovator Award in 2011. Chandler is the creator of LegalEd.ai, a free online platform focused on AI in legal education. A UH Law faculty member since 1990, Chandler previously practiced with Munger, Tolles & Olson in Los Angeles and Williams & Connolly in Washington. He has testified twice before Congress on the Affordable Care Act.

Jim Hawkins received the Leonard B. Rosenberg Professorship. He joined the University of Houston Law Center in 2008 after clerking for Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and working with the Houston office of Fulbright & Jaworski LLP. His research and teaching interests include commercial and business law, the fringe banking industry, professional responsibility, and the fertility business. His research has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other media outlets.

Professors Jessica Bregant and Aman Gebru were named George Butler Research Professors. These named professorships were funded through an endowment gift from the George and Ann Butler Foundation.

Bregant, an assistant professor of law and associated faculty in the Department of Psychology at UH, focuses her interdisciplinary scholarship on law, behavioral science, and developmental psychology, with recent work exploring the impact of technology on society. She joined UHLC in 2021. Previously, she was the Jerome Hall Postdoctoral Fellow at Indiana University Maurer School of Law and served as the Law, Behavior, and Social Science Fellow at the University of Illinois College of Law. She also clerked for Illinois Supreme Court Justice Rita B. Garman.

Gebru, an assistant professor of law, focuses on intellectual property, innovation, branding and creative expression, including frameworks for communal authorship, cultural appropriation, and truthfulness in trademarks. Before joining the UH Law Center in 2022, Gebru served as an assistant professor at Duquesne University School of Law, a visiting assistant professor at Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University, and a Global Post-Doctoral Fellow at New York University School of Law. He has also taught internationally in Ethiopia and Canada.

Promotions

Peter N. Salib was promoted to associate professor of law with tenure and named the inaugural holder of the W. Ronald Robins Endowed Professorship of Law, established to attract and retain distinguished faculty, advance scholarship and enhance UH Law’s reputation. Salib, who joined the faculty in 2021, is founder and Executive Co-Director of the Center for Law & AI Risk, a Law and Policy Advisor to the Center for AI Safety, a Visiting Senior Fellow at the Institute for Law & AI, and a Contributing Editor at Lawfare. His research focuses on artificial intelligence, emerging technologies and the legal frameworks governing technological risk. Before becoming a law professor, Salib practiced at Sidley Austin and clerked for Judge Frank H. Easterbrook, U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit.

Other faculty promotions:

Daniel I. Morales, who joined UHLC in 2019, was promoted to full professor of law and holds the Dwight Olds Chair. A nationally recognized scholar, Morales' research examines immigration, citizenship and constitutional governance. He was a William H. Hastie Fellow and taught at the University of Wisconsin Law School, subsequently clerking for both the Judge R. Guy Cole Jr., U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, and Judge Joan B. Gottschall, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. Earlier, Morales practiced law at Jenner and Block LLP and Kirkland and Ellis LLP.

Kellen Zale, a member of the faculty since 2012, was also promoted to full professor and currently holds the Baker Botts LLP Professorship of Law. Her scholarship explores the intersections of property, family and succession law, with a particular focus on wealth transfer and family relationships. She previously taught at Loyola University New Orleans College of Law as a Westerfield Fellow and worked as an associate in the Los Angeles office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, where her practice focused on commercial real estate transactions and land use.

New Hires

The new faculty members joining UHLC are:

Anna Archer (J.D. ’06), a clinical assistant professor with the Lawyering Skills and Strategies Program, brings more than two decades of experience in legal research, analysis, and writing. She spent fifteen years as a permanent law clerk for the Judge Gray H. Miller, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas and one year as a term clerk with Judge Samuel B. Kent of the same court. She also served as a litigation associate with Baker Botts LLP.

Catherine Campbell has been with the Law Center since 2023 as a full-time lecturer with the Academic Initiatives/Bar Prep Program and is now taking on the role of a clinical assistant professor with LSS. Previously, she served as counsel with Proove Biosciences Inc. and as a law clerk to Judge Stuart G. Nash of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia.

Jessica Feinstein, a clinical assistant professor with the LSS Program, served as federal prosecutor in Manhattan and Houston for 11 years. She served as co-chief of the Money Laundering & Transnational Criminal Enterprises Unit in the Southern District of New York and as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of Texas, where she led fraud and white-collar criminal prosecutions. Earlier, she practiced at Lankler, Siffert & Wohl LLP and Williams & Connolly LLP and clerked for Judge Debra Ann Livingston of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and Judge Victor Marrero of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Prior to joining as a clinical assistant professor with LSS, Harve Truskett (J.D. ’08) taught “Professional Writing Strategies” at UHLC as an adjunct professor. His scholarship focuses on transactional law practice, legal pedagogy, and legal research and writing. He practiced law for fourteen years at Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP in Houston, where he served as a corporate energy associate and then partner and co-head of the firm’s oil and gas section.

Gabriel Weil, assistant professor of law, is a UH Presidential Frontier Faculty in Artificial Intelligence. He is also a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Institute for Law & AI and a co-founder of the Stanford Judicial Institute on AI, which educates state and federal judges on artificial intelligence

The Law Center’s Clinical Programs also added three new legal experts to expand experiential learning opportunities for students.

These appointments, which became effective Sept. 1, reflect the Law Center's commitment to teaching and research across multiple disciplines while giving students’ access to a well-rounded legal education.

"The strength of any great law school begins with its faculty," said UH Law Dean Leonard M. Baynes. "Our faculty members are leading important conversations through their scholarship, preparing future lawyers through exceptional teaching, and making meaningful contributions to their communities. Together, our faculty and students broadly impact the legal profession."