By Bob Needham
Michigan Law
Three early career academics have joined Michigan Law as teaching fellows this fall, bringing a wide breadth of experience and interests to the Law School community. Alma Diamond and Austin Nelson are this year’s incoming Michigan Faculty Fellows, while Olivia Vigiletti, ’22, returns to the Law School as a clinical fellow in the Michigan Innocence Clinic.
As Michigan Faculty Fellows, Diamond and Nelson essentially work as professors-in-training, gaining experience in teaching and research while becoming embedded in the Michigan Law and broader University of Michigan communities.
“The Michigan Faculty Fellows program adds promising young scholars to our community and allows us to imbue the next generation of legal scholars with the seriousness of scholarship and intellectual generosity that makes Michigan special,” Interim Dean Kyle Logue said. “We are proud that even as a young program, it has landed professors at top-25 law schools.”
Alma Diamond
A native of South Africa, Diamond became interested in the law as a child, as her country adopted a new constitution and transitioned to democracy. “It was this deeply formative experience of law’s impact on society,” she said. “After that, I could see everything change around me as I was growing up. It gave me a sense of the power of law to make and break ways of being and living.”
She earned a bachelor’s degree in economics, followed by a graduate law degree and an LLM from Stellenbosch University in South Africa, then an LLM and a JSD from New York University Law School. She has already taught as a lecturer at four law schools, most recently the University of Chicago.
“My first interest was really in the theory and the research side, yet as soon as I started teaching, I realized there’s no replacement for teaching. It’s incredibly rewarding to take the material, share it with students, and then see how all of us grow with it.”
Her primary research is in law and philosophy, with a focus on contracts. Specifically, she focuses on “how contractual norms reflect or distort social norms and social practices…It’s an interesting approach in which we’re not really making the law, we’re taking it from everyday practices and then, in turn, shaping those practices again.”
Diamond was attracted to the fellowship at Michigan Law in part because of the community.
“Really excellent scholarship and teaching is a communal achievement,” she said. “Law schools build intellectual communities and connections between communities. I think of these fellowships as playing a crucial role in that because you get young people in with fresh ideas, and then they go to other places and build connections there.”
Michigan Law’s program, in particular, appealed to her because of the mix of opportunities.
“The fellowship combines research, teaching, and an intellectual community, and I think it’s a well-balanced program,” she said. “Also, this is an incredible place for philosophy.”
Austin Nelson
Nelson also became interested in the law at a young age.
“Coming from Little Rock, where Little Rock Central High School was integrated through the military, I always thought it was interesting how legal rules have the power to shape human behavior,” he said.
He holds a BA from Hendrix College and a master’s in public policy and administration from Baylor University, which is where he first settled on the idea of legal academia as a career goal. He went on to earn a JD and anticipates a PhD in government, both from the University of Texas. Most recently, he served as a clerk for then-Chief Judge Lavenski Smith on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.
Nelson’s primary professional interests are constitutional law, federal jurisdiction, and election law. “My recent research looks at the development of federalism in the early United States,” he said. “Federalism is not this thing that just emerges from theory. It always emerges in a specific context, usually because the society is deeply divided.
“That’s the part of federalism that I find interesting: how it’s used as a way to get people and communities with very different ideas about how to govern themselves to work together. In my recent research, I’ve been looking at the development of federalism before the Civil War through the lens of bankruptcy, which isn’t a view that most people take.”
Nelson was attracted to the Michigan Faculty Fellows Program as a stepping stone into full-time academia.
“It’s a little bit like a medical residency,” he noted. “After you go to medical school, you don’t go straight to being a doctor. It provides a transition between school and a career. The program gives me two years of opportunity to produce several publications, to strengthen my CV, before I go on the tenure-track job market.”
Olivia Vigiletti
Olivia Vigiletti returns to the Michigan Innocence Clinic this year as a clinical fellow.
A Michigan native, she earned both her BA and JD from the University; she pursued a law degree as a way to provide direct help to underserved communities.
“I was working in food access, housing, and addiction treatment—and over and over again, I saw people in our community needing legal services that they didn’t have access to,” she said. “I sort of got fed up, and I realized that I have certain capacities that could help fulfill that need.”
Already interested in criminal defense when she started law school, Vigiletti joined the Michigan Innocence Clinic as a student-attorney—partly because of a close friend who had been wrongfully convicted of a crime.
“I didn’t know that there was a movement dedicated specifically to that issue before coming here,” she said. “It was really lovely to join this clinic and no longer feel like I was alone in experiencing that story.”
Vigiletti continued on that path after graduation, working for the Georgia Innocence Project and then as a public defender. She returned to Michigan partly due to the personal dedication and resources she saw here to reduce the rate of unjust convictions.
During her two-year appointment as a clinical fellow, Vigiletti will team-teach a seminar on wrongful convictions along with the co-directors of the Innocence Clinic, Professors Imran Syed, ’11, and Jenna Cobb. She also will work directly on cases (either investigating or representing the client), help students with the clinic’s cases, and oversee the clinic’s efforts to change public policy. She also hopes to do some writing; her primary interest is the intersection of wrongful conviction and deportation.
“I’m really interested in getting law students, who might practice all across the criminal legal system, interested in and attuned to how easy it is for criminal cases to go awry,” Vigiletti said. “I’m very interested in helping future prosecutors, future defense attorneys, and future judges understand just how easy it is and how no one really has to be doing the wrong thing for a case to result in a wrongful conviction.
“Of course, our immediate goal is to get folks out of prison who shouldn’t be there,” she added, “but because we are litigating at an appellate level, the cases we win create precedent that can be useful in future cases as well.”
Michigan Law
Three early career academics have joined Michigan Law as teaching fellows this fall, bringing a wide breadth of experience and interests to the Law School community. Alma Diamond and Austin Nelson are this year’s incoming Michigan Faculty Fellows, while Olivia Vigiletti, ’22, returns to the Law School as a clinical fellow in the Michigan Innocence Clinic.
As Michigan Faculty Fellows, Diamond and Nelson essentially work as professors-in-training, gaining experience in teaching and research while becoming embedded in the Michigan Law and broader University of Michigan communities.
“The Michigan Faculty Fellows program adds promising young scholars to our community and allows us to imbue the next generation of legal scholars with the seriousness of scholarship and intellectual generosity that makes Michigan special,” Interim Dean Kyle Logue said. “We are proud that even as a young program, it has landed professors at top-25 law schools.”
Alma Diamond
A native of South Africa, Diamond became interested in the law as a child, as her country adopted a new constitution and transitioned to democracy. “It was this deeply formative experience of law’s impact on society,” she said. “After that, I could see everything change around me as I was growing up. It gave me a sense of the power of law to make and break ways of being and living.”
She earned a bachelor’s degree in economics, followed by a graduate law degree and an LLM from Stellenbosch University in South Africa, then an LLM and a JSD from New York University Law School. She has already taught as a lecturer at four law schools, most recently the University of Chicago.
“My first interest was really in the theory and the research side, yet as soon as I started teaching, I realized there’s no replacement for teaching. It’s incredibly rewarding to take the material, share it with students, and then see how all of us grow with it.”
Her primary research is in law and philosophy, with a focus on contracts. Specifically, she focuses on “how contractual norms reflect or distort social norms and social practices…It’s an interesting approach in which we’re not really making the law, we’re taking it from everyday practices and then, in turn, shaping those practices again.”
Diamond was attracted to the fellowship at Michigan Law in part because of the community.
“Really excellent scholarship and teaching is a communal achievement,” she said. “Law schools build intellectual communities and connections between communities. I think of these fellowships as playing a crucial role in that because you get young people in with fresh ideas, and then they go to other places and build connections there.”
Michigan Law’s program, in particular, appealed to her because of the mix of opportunities.
“The fellowship combines research, teaching, and an intellectual community, and I think it’s a well-balanced program,” she said. “Also, this is an incredible place for philosophy.”
Austin Nelson
Nelson also became interested in the law at a young age.
“Coming from Little Rock, where Little Rock Central High School was integrated through the military, I always thought it was interesting how legal rules have the power to shape human behavior,” he said.
He holds a BA from Hendrix College and a master’s in public policy and administration from Baylor University, which is where he first settled on the idea of legal academia as a career goal. He went on to earn a JD and anticipates a PhD in government, both from the University of Texas. Most recently, he served as a clerk for then-Chief Judge Lavenski Smith on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.
Nelson’s primary professional interests are constitutional law, federal jurisdiction, and election law. “My recent research looks at the development of federalism in the early United States,” he said. “Federalism is not this thing that just emerges from theory. It always emerges in a specific context, usually because the society is deeply divided.
“That’s the part of federalism that I find interesting: how it’s used as a way to get people and communities with very different ideas about how to govern themselves to work together. In my recent research, I’ve been looking at the development of federalism before the Civil War through the lens of bankruptcy, which isn’t a view that most people take.”
Nelson was attracted to the Michigan Faculty Fellows Program as a stepping stone into full-time academia.
“It’s a little bit like a medical residency,” he noted. “After you go to medical school, you don’t go straight to being a doctor. It provides a transition between school and a career. The program gives me two years of opportunity to produce several publications, to strengthen my CV, before I go on the tenure-track job market.”
Olivia Vigiletti
Olivia Vigiletti returns to the Michigan Innocence Clinic this year as a clinical fellow.
A Michigan native, she earned both her BA and JD from the University; she pursued a law degree as a way to provide direct help to underserved communities.
“I was working in food access, housing, and addiction treatment—and over and over again, I saw people in our community needing legal services that they didn’t have access to,” she said. “I sort of got fed up, and I realized that I have certain capacities that could help fulfill that need.”
Already interested in criminal defense when she started law school, Vigiletti joined the Michigan Innocence Clinic as a student-attorney—partly because of a close friend who had been wrongfully convicted of a crime.
“I didn’t know that there was a movement dedicated specifically to that issue before coming here,” she said. “It was really lovely to join this clinic and no longer feel like I was alone in experiencing that story.”
Vigiletti continued on that path after graduation, working for the Georgia Innocence Project and then as a public defender. She returned to Michigan partly due to the personal dedication and resources she saw here to reduce the rate of unjust convictions.
During her two-year appointment as a clinical fellow, Vigiletti will team-teach a seminar on wrongful convictions along with the co-directors of the Innocence Clinic, Professors Imran Syed, ’11, and Jenna Cobb. She also will work directly on cases (either investigating or representing the client), help students with the clinic’s cases, and oversee the clinic’s efforts to change public policy. She also hopes to do some writing; her primary interest is the intersection of wrongful conviction and deportation.
“I’m really interested in getting law students, who might practice all across the criminal legal system, interested in and attuned to how easy it is for criminal cases to go awry,” Vigiletti said. “I’m very interested in helping future prosecutors, future defense attorneys, and future judges understand just how easy it is and how no one really has to be doing the wrong thing for a case to result in a wrongful conviction.
“Of course, our immediate goal is to get folks out of prison who shouldn’t be there,” she added, “but because we are litigating at an appellate level, the cases we win create precedent that can be useful in future cases as well.”
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