Professor Cummings holds the Robert Henigson Chair in Legal Ethics at UCLA School of Law, where he has taught since 2002 and conducts research on the legal profession, legal ethics, access to justice, and local government law. He is a recipient of the UCLA Distinguished Teaching Award and serves as Faculty Director of the UCLA Program on Legal Ethics and the Profession, which supports empirical research and innovative programs addressing the challenges lawyers face in the 21st century. He is also a longtime faculty member in the UCLA David J. Epstein Program in Public Interest Law and Policy.

In 2021, Professor Cummings was selected as the Fulbright Distinguished Chair at the European University Institute in Florence and as a fellow at the Stanford Center for the Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, where he explored the role of lawyers in strengthening the rule of law. In 2023, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship for his research on the role of lawyers in democratic decline.

His recent books examine how innovative forms of legal mobilization contribute to transformative social change. Notable publications include:

• Lawyers and Movements: Legal Mobilization in Transformative Times (Oxford, forthcoming)
• An Equal Place: Lawyers in the Struggle for Los Angeles (Oxford University Press, 2021)
• Global Pro Bono: Causes, Consequences and Contestation (Cambridge University Press, 2021, with Fabio de Sa e Silva and Louise Trubek)
• Blue and Green: The Drive for Justice at America’s Port (MIT Press, 2018)

Before joining the UCLA faculty, Professor Cummings clerked for Judge A. Wallace Tashima on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and Judge James Moran in the Northern District of Illinois. He began his legal career in Los Angeles, working with community groups to promote economic opportunity and political empowerment. In 1998, he received a Skadden Fellowship to work at the Community Development Project at Public Counsel, providing legal support to nonprofits and small businesses advancing social and economic development. He has also contributed to groundbreaking policy reports on legal barriers to street vending and the need for rent control.

Read the recent interview with Professor Cummings on the role of lawyers in contemporary American democracy: Where are the lawyers as Trump attacks democratic institutions?

We look forward to welcoming Professor Cummings to the Amsterdam Law School and to integrating his broad expertise and international experience into ACLPA’s teaching and research.