Paula Franzese, a Seton Hall University Law School professor, whose research into tenants living in deplorable conditions has been used to craft legislation to improve tenants’ rights, will be this year’s guest speaker for Rutgers Law School’s annual Allan Axelrod lecture on Thursday, March 30 at 12 p.m.

Franzese will be speaking on “"A Place to Call Home: Giving Voice to Tenants Left Behind,” in the Baker Court Room of the Center for Law and Justice at 123 Washington St. in Newark.

Her talk and a question-and-answer period will take place from 12 to 1:00 p.m. 

The event is free and open to the public, but guests must pre-register through this link.

Professor Franzese is the Peter W. Rodino Professor of Law and has served as Special Ethics Counsel to Governor Richard J. Codey, Chair of the State Ethics Commission, Vice-Chair of the Election Law Enforcement Commission, Vice-Chair of the New Jersey Supreme Court’s Special Committee on Attorney Ethics and Admissions and as ethics advisor to state and local governments, including the City of Newark, under Mayor Cory Booker. She is one of the country’s leading experts on property law as well as government ethics.

She is the author of numerous publications, including Strategies and Techniques for Teaching Property (Aspen), is a contributor to the books America's Second Gilded Age? Perspectives on Law and Class Differences (NYU Press), The Affective Assistance of Counsel: Practicing Law as a Healing Profession (Carolina Academic Press), and Reaction and Reform in New Jersey (Hall Institute). She co-authored Property Law and the Public Interest, which expansively explored the public interest dimensions of Property law. She serves on the editorial board of the Land Use and Environmental Law Review, a prestigious peer-reviewed scholarly journal.

About Allan Axelrod

Professor Allan Axelrod, the William J. Brennan Jr. Professor of Law Emeritus at Rutgers School of Law–Newark, died on August 9 at the age of 85. For 59 years, from 1948 to 2007, he taught Contracts, Property, Commercial Law and Bankruptcy, and also Antitrust, Oil and Gas, and Local Government. One of his pedagogical innovations was the creation of a seminar in the Law of Gambling, a subject he particularly enjoyed researching and teaching.

Professor Axelrod was born in Detroit in 1922. As an undergraduate he attended the University of Michigan, graduating with a B.A. in 1943. During World War II he worked for the War Labor Board. In 1946 he matriculated at Yale Law School, earning his LL.B. in 1948. Two weeks before graduating, he commenced his teaching career as an Instructor at the University of Nebraska Law School. In 1960 Professor Axelrod shifted his academic base to Rutgers Law School, where he was a beloved teacher for 47 years. In 1978 he received the Lindback Prize, Rutgers University’s highest teaching award. His prowess as a law teacher was reflected in the roster of law schools at which he was a Visiting Professor: Berkeley, University of Chicago, Georgetown, Harvard, Hastings, University of Pennsylvania, Southern California, Stanford, and Yale.

Professor Axelrod formally retired in 1988. However, he continued to teach until 2007, and could regularly be found in his office, ready to share his perspective on the wide range of subjects about which he was knowledgeable.