Two Rutgers Law Professors Honored with National Awards for Legal Scholarship and Leadership
Rutgers Law Professor Kimberly Mutcherson and Assistant Professor Adam Crews have been recognized with major national awards for their exceptional contributions to legal education and scholarship. Both awards were presented at the American Association of Law Schools (AALS) Awards Ceremony on January 9 at the 2026 AALS Annual Meeting in New Orleans.
Professor Mutcherson, former Co-Dean of Rutgers Law School in Camden, received the 2026 AALS Deborah L. Rhode Award, a prestigious honor given for contributions, service, and leadership of current or new trailblazers in legal education and the legal profession. It is presented to a legal academic or lawyer who exemplifies the groundbreaking work, imagination, and inspired action of Deborah Rhode during her career. The award is given annually by four AALS Sections in which Rhode made an indelible impact: Leadership, Pro Bono & Service Opportunities, Professional Responsibility, and Women in Legal Education.
Professor Crews was honored with the 2026 Emerging Scholars Award for Outstanding Scholarly Publication for his groundbreaking article, Visions of Vermont Yankee, in the Stanford Law Review. This award recognizes rising academics whose scholarship demonstrates exceptional insight and impact in the legal field.
He said, “I’m very honored that the selection committee chose to recognize me with this award, and I’m grateful to the many mentors I’ve had—both at Rutgers and previously through the ABA’s Prospective Administrative Law Scholars fellowship—who helped me get to this point.”
AALS is a nonprofit association with member schools enrolling most of the nation’s law students and producing the majority of the country’s lawyers, judges, and lawmakers.
About Professor Mutcherson
A nationally recognized reproductive justice scholar, Professor Mutcherson’s expertise spans medicine and law, family law, and bioethics. She has broken several barriers throughout her career, becoming the first woman, first Black person, and first member of the LGBTQ community to serve as dean at Rutgers Law School. Her leadership and scholarship have earned numerous accolades, including the Trailblazer Award from the New Jersey Women Lawyers Association (2023), the M. Shanara Gilbert Human Rights Award (2021), and the inaugural AALS Impact Award (2020) for co-creating the Law Deans Antiracist Clearinghouse Project. Before entering academia, Professor Mutcherson was a consulting attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights and a staff attorney at the HIV Law Project.
About Professor Crews
Professor Crews specializes in administrative law, federal courts, statutory interpretation, civil procedure, and communications law. His research has appeared in leading journals, including the Northwestern University Law Review and Washington & Lee Law Review. Before joining Rutgers Law in 2023, Professor Crews served as appellate counsel at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), where he defended agency rules and orders in appellate courts nationwide. He previously practiced at Covington & Burling LLP, representing major financial institutions in complex litigation and enforcement matters. His legal experience includes work on landmark cases such as FCC v. Consumers' Research (2025) and Cantero v. Bank of America (2024).