Minnesota Law Welcomes Three to Faculty
Minnesota Law this fall welcomes three new members to its faculty. Alan Z. Rozenshtein and Caleb Smith, who have been visiting professors at the Law School, have joined the permanent faculty; Professor Maria Ponomarenko comes to Minnesota Law from New York University School of Law.
Ponomarenko is co-founder of and counsel to NYU Law’s Policing Project, a non-profit that works in tandem with policing agencies and community groups to promote more effective police governance. She teaches and writes in the areas of administrative law, constitutional law, and criminal procedure. Her work focuses in particular on government agencies—such as policing agencies or other local regulatory agencies—that operate in domains that fall beyond the reach of traditional administrative law and scholarship. She was recently appointed associate reporter for the American Law Institute’s Principles of the Law: Policing project.
Ponomarenko graduated summa cum laude from NYU Law, where she won numerous prizes and fellowships, including the Furman Academic Scholarship, the Robert B. McKay Prize in constitutional law, and the Maurice Goodman Memorial Prize for overall achievement. She also served as an articles editor on the NYU Law Review. After graduating from NYU, she clerked for the Honorable Richard A. Posner on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.
Rozenshtein joined the Law School as a visiting professor in 2017. He is a member of the Scholars Strategy Network and from 2018-2019 was an affiliate with the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. Rozenshtein’s work focuses on the effects of technology on law and regulation. Courses that he has taught at Minnesota Law include: Cybercrime and Cybersecurity, Constitutional Law, Criminal Procedure, and Legislation and Regulation. Rozenshtein has appeared on or been quoted by numerous media outlets on issues ranging from cybersecurity and Internet regulation to executive power.
Prior to joining the faculty as a visiting professor, Rozenshtein served as an attorney advisor in the Office of Law and Policy in the National Security Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, where his work focused on operational, legal, and policy issues relating to cybersecurity and foreign intelligence. He also served as a special assistant U.S. attorney for the District of Maryland and taught cybersecurity at Georgetown Law.
Rozenshtein graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he was an editor on the Harvard Law Review, and he clerked for the Honorable J. Harvie Wilkinson III on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
Smith joined the faculty as visiting associate professor of clinical law and director of the Ronald M. Mankoff Tax Clinic in 2017. He also teaches Federal Tax Procedure. Smith previously worked as a clinical fellow at Harvard Law School’s Federal Tax Clinic.
Since 2008 Smith has worked with low-income taxpayer issues: prior to law school as program manager at Minnesota’s largest tax assistance nonprofit and after law school as an attorney at low-income taxpayer clinics in Minneapolis and Boston.
Smith has given several presentations at national ABA Tax Section conferences on low-income tax issues, and he co-authored a chapter on the Earned Income Tax Credit in the seventh edition of the ABA’s Effectively Representing Your Client Before the IRS. He is a vice-chair on the ABA Tax Section’s Pro Bono and Tax Clinic Committee and recently won a precedential victory for a client of the Ronald M. Mankoff Tax Clinic.
Smith graduated cum laude from the Northwestern School of Law of Lewis and Clark College, where he served as student director of his school’s Federal Tax Clinic.
