Alexandra D. LahavView profile
Professor
Alexandra D. Lahav is the Anthony W. and Lulu C. Wang Professor of Law at Cornell Law School, where she teaches civil procedure, torts, and complex litigation. She is a nationally recognized expert on the civil justice system with particular expertise in complex litigation and tort law. Professor Lahav has held visiting positions at Columbia, Harvard, Tel Aviv, and Yale Law schools, and was a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study during 2019-2020. Professor Lahav's research focuses on the institutional aspects of litigation, with special attention to methods for analyzing litigation risk and the historical development of products liability. Her work demonstrates how litigation serves democratic values by promoting accountability, transparency, and equality. She approaches doctrine from an institutional perspective, examining how legal rules shape behavior and social outcomes beyond individual cases. Her influential scholarship includes over thirty articles on class actions, multidistrict litigation, and tort law, many of which have been cited by courts and legal treatises. Her award-winning book In Praise of Litigation (Oxford 2017) offers a powerful defense of litigation's role in a healthy democracy, challenging common misconceptions about the American legal system. She is also the author of volume 11A of the Wright & Miller Federal Practice and Procedure treatise and co-author of a widely used civil procedure casebook. Perry A. Zirkel Distinguished Teaching Award (2019) Member of the American Law Institute Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study Fellowship (2019-2020) Before joining Cornell, Professor Lahav held the Ellen Ash Peters Chair at the University of Connecticut School of Law. Her professional experience includes work as a litigator at a small civil rights firm in New York City and clerkship with Justice Alan Handler of the New Jersey Supreme Court. She received her legal education at Cornell Law School.
