Torts

Jamie Cooper headshot

Jamie C. Cooper Assistant Professor of Law

Professor Cooper joins the faculty as an Assistant Professor of Law after practicing law in the areas of family law, criminal defense, and juvenile justice for 14 years.  Cooper has extensive trial experience and has successfully argued cases before the Nebraska Supreme Court and Nebraska Court of Appeals.  Prior to joining the faculty, Cooper served as an adjunct professor for the College of Law, teaching Pretrial Litigation.  She holds a J.D. from Northwestern University School of Law and a B.A. magna cum laude from the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

Outside of the classroom, you can find Professor Cooper on a yoga mat. She is a certified yoga teacher trainer and teaches community yoga classes. She enjoys international travel and gardening. Cooper sits on several boards and committees and has held a number of leadership roles in her community.

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Professor Craig Lawson

Craig M. Lawson Professor of Law Emeritus

Professor Lawson joined the faculty in 1978. Born in 1948, he received his B.A. from Yale University in 1970 (French) and his J.D. from the University of California, Hastings College of Law in 1974. At Hastings, he was Executive Editor of the Hastings Law Journal. He was admitted to the California State Bar in 1974 and practiced with a San Francisco law firm from 1974 to 1976. During the 1977-78 academic year, he was a teaching fellow at the University of Illinois College of Law at Urbana-Champaign.

Professor Lawson directs the first-year Legal Writing Program, coordinating the work in it, and lecturing. His main course is first-year Torts. He also teaches Advanced Torts, three electives in Health Law (Law and Medicine, Bioethics and the Law, the Law of Provider and Patient) and two advanced electives in legal writing (Style and Composition in Legal Writing, and Law & Literature). In 2011, Professor Lawson won the Alumni Council's Distinguished Faculty award.

Professor Lawson is an avid reader, especially in the humanities and the arts (literature - especially lyric poetry - and literary criticism, philosophy, art history and art criticism) and in medicine and the life sciences. He's a self-taught, amateur guitar picker (VERY amateur). When he has the time to couch potato, he favors movies over Monday-night football. He leads a relatively sedentary existence, although he will climb on a mountain bike, when he needs to get his blood moving. When he comes out of the closet, he admits to being an unreconstructed 1960s liberal. He is married to an actress, and has two grown children (one an actress in New York City; the other an out-of-work geologist in Southern California).

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Harvey Perlman

Harvey Perlman Harvey and Susan Perlman Alumni Professor of Law

Professor Perlman received his B.A. in History in 1963 from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and his J.D. degree from the College of Law in 1966.   He served as a Bigelow Fellow at the University of Chicago from 1966-67 before returning to the College as an Assistant Professor of Law in 1967.   He joined the law faculty at the University of Virginia Law School in 1974, until returning to the College in 1983 as Dean.   He was Acting Senior Vice Chancellor of the UNL in 1995-1996.  He returned to the College faculty in 1998, was appointed Interim Chancellor of UNL in 2000 and became the 19th Chancellor of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 2001.  He stepped down as Chancellor in 2016 and returned to his faculty position in the College of Law.  He currently is a Commissioner representing Nebraska on the Uniform Law Commission, a member of the Council of the American Law Institute, and serves as Chair, Uniform Law Commission Drafting Committee for the Collection and Use of Personally Identifiable Data Act.

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Richard Wiener

Richard L. Wiener Professor of Psychology and Courtesy Professor of Law

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