Syracuse Law welcomes seven exceptional faculty members with distinguished academic and professional backgrounds. The College’s newest colleagues are experts in appellate advocacy, constitutional law, employment law, immigration law, bankruptcy, law and religion, and special education law, among other areas.
Alia Al-Khatib is an employment law scholar with significant practice and clerkship experience who comes to Syracuse Law after directing the Civil Practice Clinic at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School.
Seanna Brown, a former partner and co-chair of BakerHostetler LLP’s New York Bankruptcy Group, joins the College of Law's Legal Writing Program.
Johanna K. P. Dennis is an experienced law professor and immigration law practitioner who holds a Ph.D. in Educational Leadership in addition to her J.D.
Patrick Marris comes to the College of Law with litigation experience at Boies Schiller Flexner LLP and Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP, after clerking in the Northern District of New York.
Gaurav Mukherjee joins Syracuse Law after a fellowship at the University of Connecticut School of Law and has published scholarly works on constitutional law, law and religion, and civil rights.
Addison O’Donnell L’18 returns to his alma mater with significant appellate litigation experience at Lois Law Firm, LLC, where he was a partner.
Blakely Simoneau joins us from the Lawyering Program at NYU School of Law, bringing deep litigation experience in education and special education law, along with a strong record of scholarship in those areas.
“These new colleagues join a vibrant academic community that continues to shape law and policy while providing our students with an outstanding legal education,” said Dean Terence Lau L’98.
They join five legal scholars and experts hired last year, bringing the total of new tenure-track faculty to six along with six Associate Teaching Professors.
Alia Al-Khatib
Associate Professor of Law
Professor Al-Khatib's research examines employment law and its intersections with the immigration and criminal justice systems. Her most recent article, "More Harm Than Good: Criminal Penalties for Wage Theft," is forthcoming in the University of Richmond Law Review. She has written on immigration topics in the Kansas Law Review and the American University Law Review.
Before joining Syracuse Law, Al-Khatib was the Clinical Supervisor and Lecturer in the Civil Practice Clinic at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School and served as the Acting Director of the Clinic for the 2025-2026 academic year. In the Clinic, Al-Khatib supervised law students who represented low-income clients in civil legal matters. She has previously held positions at Katz Banks Kumin LLP and the Southern Poverty Law Center. She clerked for the Hon. Hilda G. Tagle of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas.
Al-Khatib received a J.D. from the American University Washington College of Law and a B.A. from Vassar College.
Al-Khatib teaches Employment Discrimination, Torts, and related courses.
Seanna Brown
Associate Teaching Professor
Before joining Syracuse Law, Professor Brown was a partner at BakerHostetler LLP. She was co-chair of the New York Bankruptcy Group and led the firm’s pro bono committee. For nearly two decades, she served as principal deputy to Irving Picard, the court-appointed SIPA trustee overseeing the liquidation of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, which collapsed in 2008.
Brown also had a robust pro bono practice, representing the American Bar Association, the National Women’s Law Center, and the Fines, Fees and Justice Center before the Supreme Court and circuit courts as amicus curiae on questions of the Sixth Amendment right to counsel, the Eighth Amendment prohibition on fines, and Title IX. She has also represented two death row inmates in their post-conviction proceedings in Georgia and Alabama.
Brown earned a J.D. in 2006 from Fordham University School of Law and a B.A. in 2003 from Hunter College, City University of New York.
Brown teaches Legal Communication and Research.
Johanna K. P. Dennis
Associate Teaching Professor
Professor Dennis was a Distinguished Lecturer in the JDinteractive hybrid online program before joining Syracuse Law full-time. Dennis previously held faculty positions at Southern University Law Center, Golden Gate University School of Law, University of Arkansas at Little Rock – Bowen School of Law, and Northeastern University School of Law. As a professor, she created and supervised an immigration externship program, developed and taught immigration-focused and intellectual property-focused legal writing curricula, and supervised students in pro bono research projects.
Her professional experience includes serving as Supervising Attorney at Prisoners’ Legal Services of New York, Buffalo – Immigration Unit, Immigration Staff Attorney at the Erie County Bar Association Volunteer Lawyer Project, and Appellate Law Clerk for the Hon. William P. Gilroy of the Superior Court of New Jersey, Appellate Division.
Dennis’s research examines the intersection of higher education and immigration policies, and the impact of intellectual property on access to health care and medicine. Her works have been published in the Florida International University Law Review, Computer Law & Security Review, and John Marshall Law Review.
Dennis holds a B.A. in French from Rutgers University, an M.S. in Biotechnology from Johns Hopkins University Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, an M.A. in Education from Trident University College of Education, a J.D. from Temple University James E. Beasley School of Law, and a Ph.D. in Educational Leadership from Trident University College of Education.
Professor Dennis teaches Civil Procedure, Contracts, and Property.
Patrick Marris
Visiting Teaching Professor
Prior to joining Syracuse Law, Professor Marris practiced as a litigation associate at Boies Schiller Flexner LLP and Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP, and clerked for the Hon. Brenda K. Sannes of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York.
Marris received a J.D. from Columbia Law School, where he was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar and an editor of the Columbia Law Review, and a B.A. in mathematics from Hamilton College.
Marris teaches Legal Communication and Research and Contracts.
Gaurav Mukherjee
Associate Professor of Law
Professor Mukherjee’s scholarship focuses on the intersection of constitutional law, law and religion, remedies, education law, and comparative constitutionalism. His most recent article, forthcoming in the Brigham Young University Law Review, examines whether public funds should support religious schools. His California Law Review article on homelessness was cited in an amicus curiae brief in support of the petitioner in the Supreme Court case City of Grants Pass v. Johnson.
Prior to joining Syracuse Law, Mukherjee was a Visiting Assistant Professor of Law and Stuart F. Smith Teaching Fellow at the University of Connecticut School of Law. He was previously a Hauser Global Postdoctoral Fellow at New York University School of Law and a Visiting Research Fellow at the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights at the University of Oxford Faculty of Law.
He co-authored "The Right to Education: Reconciling Liberty & Equality," published in the Oxford Handbook on Economic and Social Rights, which won the Association of American Law Schools Section on Law and South Asian Studies Scholarship Award.
Mukherjee earned an S.J.D. and an LL.M. from Central European University in Vienna, and a B.A. LL.B. from NALSAR University of Law in India.
Mukherjee teaches Constitutional Law and courses in Public Law, Education Law, and Legal Theory.
Addison O'Donnell L'18
Associate Teaching Professor
Professor O’Donnell previously taught Advanced Appellate Advocacy, Drafting: General Principles, and Legal Practice II at New York Law School, where he also served as a Senior Fellow and Writing Fellow for the Moot Court Association.
Prior to academia, he was a Partner at Lois Law Firm, LLC, where he was the appellate counsel for several appeals in New Jersey and New York state appellate courts.
His research is focused on the First Amendment (particularly the freedom of the press), legal writing, appellate advocacy, and administrative law. He has been published in the UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal and in Administration & Society.
O'Donnell received a J.D. from Syracuse University College of Law and a B.B.A. from Pace University.
O'Donnell teaches Civil Procedure, Professional Responsibility, Legal Applications, and Legal Communication and Research I & II.
Blakely Simoneau
Associate Professor of Law
Professor Simoneau researches issues at the intersection of education law, constitutional law, criminal law, and civil rights. Her recent articles examining student speech, disability rights in schools, and the constitutional implications of school-based discipline have appeared or are forthcoming in the Missouri Law Review, the Stanford Journal of Civil Rights & Civil Liberties, and the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Law and Social Change, among others.
She is also co-authoring Understanding: Special Education Law, a forthcoming treatise with Carolina Academic Press. She also provides national training on special education law, including for the Practicing Law Institute’s School Law Institute, the National Academy for IDEA Administrative Law Judges and Impartial Hearing Officers, and statewide continuing legal education programs for impartial hearing officers.
She joins the College of Law from New York University School of Law, where she was a faculty member in the Lawyering Program. Previously, she held positions at Clark, Hunt, Ahern & Embry and Markham & Reid and at nonprofits Achievement First, Inc. and Success Academy Charter School, focusing on education and special education law.
Simoneau received a J.D. from Boston University School of Law and a B.A. from the University of Colorado.
Professor Simoneau teaches Education Law and Constitutional Criminal Procedure.