John Sexton

John Sexton is President Emeritus, the Benjamin Butler Professor of Law and NYU Law School's Dean Emeritus, having served as Dean for 14 years. He joined the Law School's faculty in 1981, and was named the School's Dean in 1988. He was named the University's President in 2001, and served from 2002 until January 1, 2016. President Emeritus Sexton received a B.A. in History (1963) from Fordham College; an M.A. in Comparative Religion (1965) and a Ph.D. in History of American Religion (1978) from Fordham University; and a J.D. magna cum laude (1979) from Harvard Law School.

He is an author of a leading casebook on Civil Procedure. He also is the author of Redefining the Supreme Court's Role: A Theory of Managing the Federal Court System (a treatment of the Supreme Court's case selection process) in addition to several other books, numerous chapters, articles and Supreme Court briefs. His latest book, Baseball as a Road to God: Seeing Beyond the Game, published in March 2013, was a New York Times best seller and is based on an undergraduate seminar he teaches at NYU each spring.

He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is past Chair of the American Council on Education, of the New York Academy of Sciences, and of the Commission on Independent Colleges and Universities of New York. He has served as the Chairman of the Board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (2003-2006) and Chair of the Federal Reserve Systems Council of Chairs (2006). He served as a Board Member for the National Association of Securities Dealers (1996-1998) and was Founding Chair of the Board of NASD Dispute Resolution (2000-2002). He serves on the Board of the Institute of International Education and on the Board of the College Advising Corps. While Dean of the Law School, he was President of the Association of American Law Schools. He was Chair of the Study Group on Higher Education for UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and served as a member of the Institute for Public Policy Research's Commission on the Future of Higher Education (UK), which issued its report in June 2013. And, he is a member of the Global Citizenship Commission which issued its report on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights at the United Nations in Spring 2016. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. President Sexton holds 18 honorary degrees. The student editors of NYU's Annual Survey of American Law dedicated their Volume 60 in his honor.

In Spring 2016 he was awarded the President’s Medal of the Black, Latino, Asian Pacific American Association of NYU Law. He has been honored at the Harvard Law Review Annual Banquet, and has been named "Alumnus of the Year" both at Fordham and at his high school, Brooklyn Prep. In July 2008 he was named a Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur, the national order of the Legion of Honor of France. In 2012, he received the NASPA President’s Award, which is given annually to a college or university leader who has, over a sustained period of time, advanced the quality of student life on campus by supporting student affairs staff and programs.

In March 2015, he received the TIAA-CREF Hesburgh Award for Leadership Excellence, recognizing outstanding leadership on the part of a college or university president or chancellor. In 2016 he received the Keough Award for Outstanding Public Service. And, in 2000 he was named by Emory University "Outstanding High School Debate Coach of the Last 50 Years" for work he did from 1960-1975. Before coming to NYU, President Sexton served as Law Clerk to Chief Justice Warren Burger of the United States Supreme Court (1980-1981), and to Judges David Bazelon and Harold Leventhal of the United States Court of Appeals (1979-1980).

For ten years (1983-1993), he served as Special Master Supervising Pretrial Proceedings in the Love Canal Litigation. From 1966 - 1975, he was a Professor of Religion at Saint Francis College in Brooklyn, where he was Department Chair from 1970-1975.