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Deborah R. Hensler
Judge John W. Ford Professor of Dispute Resolution and Associate Dean for Graduate Studies

Biography 

Deborah R. Hensler's empirical research on dispute resolution, complex litigation, class actions and mass tort liability has won international recognition. A political scientist and public policy analyst who was the director of the RAND Corporation's Institute for Civil Justice before joining the Stanford Law School faculty, she has testified before state and federal legislatures on issues ranging from alternative dispute resolution to asbestos litigation and mass torts and consulted with judges and lawyers outside of the United States on the design of class action regimes. Professor Hensler is the organizer of the Stanford Globalization of Class Actions Exchange, which is spearheading international research on class actions and mass litigation, and the co-editor of the recently published volume The Globalization of Class Actions. She co-authored RAND's comprehensive 2002 report on the status of asbestos litigation in the United States and is the lead author of Class Action Dilemmas: Pursuing Public Goals For Private Gain. At Stanford she teaches seminars on complex litigation, the legal profession, and the use of policy analysis in the law and serves as associate dean of graduate studies. Professor Hensler is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Academy of Political and Social Science. She was the director of the Stanford Center on Conflict and Negotiation from 1998 to 2003. Before joining the Stanford Law School faculty in 1998, she was a professor at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law and held a variety of high-level positions at RAND where she was employed from 1973 to 2001. Professor Hensler is an associate research fellow of the Oxford Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, has taught at the University of Melbourne (Australia) and has been awarded a visiting professorship to Tilburg University by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.

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