Profile

Jethro K. Lieberman joined the faculty in 1985 and taught at New York Law School for 30 years, retiring in 2015 as Martin Professor of Law Emeritus. His primary courses were Constitutional Law I and II and a seminar, Advanced Writing Skills. Over the years, he taught more than a dozen other courses, including Law and Society and Military Law. During his tenure he also spent seven years as associate dean for academic affairs (2000–2007), reprising the role in 2012. For nearly a quarter century, he was director of the writing program, and for several years director of academic publishing.

After graduating from law school, Professor Lieberman served three years on active duty as a Lieutenant in the Navy Judge Advocate General’s Corps (1968–1971). He then practiced law at a Washington, D.C., law firm and as general counsel of a New York publishing house. Thereafter, he spent nearly 10 years as the first Legal Affairs Editor of Business Week Magazine. He began his teaching career in 1982 at Fordham University School of Law, while simultaneously serving as vice president of a nonprofit,now known as the CPR International Institute for Con­flict Prevention & Resolution, where he founded and edited its monthly newsletter, Alternatives to the High Cost of Litigation.

He is the author, co-author, or editor of more than 30 books, the first of which was published while a third-year law student. Two of his books, The Litigious Society and The Endur­ing Constitution were awarded the Silver Gavel, the American Bar Association’s top literary prize. Among his other titles are Crisis at the Bar: Lawyers’ Unethical Ethics and What to Do About It; A Practical Companion to the Constitution: How the Supreme Court Has Ruled on Issues From Abortion to Zoning; and Liberalism Undressed. In 2021, he published his first mystery novel, Everything Is Jake.

In his younger years, Professor Lieberman was a hobby letterpress printer and for more than a decade was the owner and custodian of the Kelmscott-Goudy Press, the famous iron handpress used in England by William Morris to produce his monumental Kelmscott Chaucer in 1896. Professor Lieberman and his wife, Jo Shifrin, live in Bethesda, Maryland, where he is now a full-time writer and working on his next books.