Sarah Haan

Sarah Haan serves as the Sheridan Albert ’48 Professor of Law at Brooklyn Law School, joining the faculty in summer 2025 after holding the Class of 1958 Uncas and Anne McThenia Professorship at Washington & Lee University School of Law. She previously taught as a visiting professor at the University of Virginia School of Law in 2024 and maintains active bar admissions in New York State and federal district courts.

Her educational foundation includes a J.D. from Columbia Law School (where she served as articles editor of the Columbia Law Review) and a B.A. in History from Yale University. Prior to academia, she practiced litigation at Davis Polk & Wardwell in New York and taught with Teach For America in Compton, California.

Professor Haan’s research critically examines corporate law through democratic theory, focusing on corporate governance, shareholder voting rights, securities regulation, campaign finance law, and First Amendment jurisprudence. Her work uniquely bridges corporate democracy concepts with political economy, exploring how corporate structures influence and are influenced by democratic institutions. She is currently authoring a book on the history of corporate democracy.

Analysis of her 15 most recent publications reveals consistent thematic evolution: early work established foundations in shareholder activism and voting rights (2014-2016), mid-career scholarship expanded into campaign finance and corporate speech (2018-2020), and recent output intensifies focus on democratic theory within corporate governance (2022-2025). This trajectory demonstrates increasing integration of political philosophy with technical corporate law analysis.

Her scholarly impact has been recognized through:

• Two Ethan Allen Faculty Fellowships for excellence in legal scholarship at Washington & Lee University
• Selection of 'Corporate Governance and the Feminization of Capital' as a top-10 corporate/securities law article of 2022
• Selection of 'Voting Rights in Corporate Governance: History and Political Economy' as a top-10 corporate/securities law article of 2024
• Features in The New York Times, Harvard Law School Forum, and CLS Blue Sky Blog

As a professor, Haan advises law students in corporate law and related fields, with her research supported by competitive faculty fellowships. Her pre-academic litigation experience and bar admissions inform practical dimensions of her scholarship. Though no specific research teams or labs are mentioned, her collaborative work with scholars like Faith Stevelman indicates interdisciplinary engagement.