Profile

David Simson joined New York Law School as an Associate Professor of Law in 2022. He teaches courses on constitutional law, race and the law, and civil rights law.

Professor Simson’s scholarship analyzes the role of law in the production, maintenance, and dismantling of social hierarchies, with a focus on race and racial hierarchy. His work relies on both social science research as well as critical race approaches to law. His scholarship has been published or is forthcoming in the UCLA Law Review, Houston Law Review, Denver Law Review, William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal, Michigan Law Review, and the edited book volume, Critical Race Judgments. His article, “Whiteness as Innocence,” was selected as the Denver Law Review’s 2018 Emerging Scholar Award winner.

Professor Simson joins NYLS after three years as an Acting Associate Professor at New York University School of Law. At NYU, he taught Lawyering, a full-year simulation-based course introducing first-year students to legal analysis, research, writing, client counseling, negotiation, and oral advocacy. Before joining NYU, he was the Greenberg Law Review Fellow at UCLA School of Law where he taught employment discrimination law and a self-designed seminar titled “Race, Social Psychology, and the Legal Process.” After law school and before entering academia, he was a litigation associate in the Los Angeles and London offices of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP.

Professor Simson graduated from UCLA School of Law with a specialization in Critical Race Studies and received a B.S.B.A. in International Business from the University of Denver, where he was also a four-year letter winner and captain of the university’s Men’s Tennis Team.