UNLV Boyd School of Law Professor Frank Rudy Cooper was awarded the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) Minority Section's C. Clyde Ferguson, Jr. Award at the 2024 AALS Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C.
The award honors a legal educator who has provided support, encouragement, and mentoring to colleagues, students, and aspiring educators, and has achieved excellence in the areas of public service, teaching, and scholarship.
“I’m delighted to see the AALS Minority Section recognize professor Cooper with this great honor,” said Dean and Richard J. Morgan Professor of Law Leah Chan Grinvald. “His profound dedication to our students and junior faculty is inspiring and they are fortunate to learn from an esteemed professor who takes a deep interest in their success.”
Past awardees include University of Washington Dean Tamara Lawson, UCLA Vice Provost Jerry Kang and Boston University School of Law Dean Angela Onwuachi-Willig.
“It inspires me to keep doing the things I do well,” said Cooper of his award. “The key thing I’m interested in is developing junior faculty particularly faculty of color, and this fuels me to keep doing that work.”
Professor Cooper is a William S. Boyd Professor of Law and director of the Program on Race, Gender & Policing at Boyd Law. Before teaching law, he clerked for Judge Solomon Oliver, Jr. of the U.S. Federal District Court for the Northern District of Ohio and won teaching awards as a teaching assistant at Harvard University.
His numerous books include the edited collections: Fight the Power!: Law and Policy Through Hip-hop Songs (with Gregory Parks, 2022) and Masculinities and the Law: A Multidimensional Approach (with Ann C. McGinley, 2012).
His articles include “Who’s the Man?: Masculinities Studies, Terry Stops, and Police Training," 18 Columbia J. Gender & L. 671 (2009) and "Dicta, Pretext, and Excessive Force: Toward Criminal Procedure Futurism," 112 Cal. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2024).
Professor Cooper is the co-founder of the Latina/o Critical Legal Theory, Inc./Society of American Law Teachers Faculty Development Workshop (LAtCrit-SALT FDW) and the John Mercer Langston Writing Workshop.
Professor Cooper and the Boyd Law Program on Race, Gender & Policing will host a conference on Black Legal Futurism on April 5-6, 2024. For more information on the conference, visit the Boyd Law website.
About the William S. Boyd School of Law at UNLV
Established in 1998, the William S. Boyd School of Law at UNLV has over 400 students and offers three juris doctor degree programs: a full-time day program, a part-time day program, and a part-time evening program.
The school also offers a Master of Laws (LL.M.) in Gaming Law and Regulation and three dual degree programs: the J.D./MBA, J.D./M.S.W., and J.D./Ph.D. It is fully accredited by the American Bar Association and is a member of the Association of American Law Schools.
For more information about Boyd Law, please visit law.unlv.edu and stay connected on Facebook, Instagram, and X.
