News UMass Law: Contracts and criminal law professors to join UMass Law faculty in fall 2024

They will teach in the areas of consumer protection and criminal law and procedure

UMass Law Dean Sam Panarella has announced that two new faculty members will join UMass Law in fall 2024 as assistant professors.

"I am thrilled to welcome Professor Tabor and Professor DeFalco to our law school," said Dean Panarella. “They each bring expertise and experience in areas of law that are crucial to our academic program, including contracts and business law, criminal law and procedure, civil rights, and international law, and to our mission to Pursue Justice.  In addition to being excellent teachers, Professors Tabor and DeFalco are world-class scholars whose cutting-edge legal scholarship is gaining notice throughout the United States and the world. We are fortunate to add these two outstanding teachers and scholars to our already excellent faculty."

Assistant Professor Anna-Marie Tabor, JD 

A graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, Assistant Professor Anna-Marie Tabor, JD has spent the past year at UMass Law as a visiting professor of law, teaching Contracts and Lending & Racial Discrimination. Her research interests include employee benefits, consumer financial protection, and civil rights. 

"I'm awed by the passion and drive that our students bring to this community and to their legal studies," said Tabor. The school's motto is 'Pursue Justice,' and that mission permeates all that we do here at UMass Law. I'm very honored to join the faculty."

As a practicing attorney, Professor Tabor worked to prevent unfair and discriminatory practices in financial services, assuming leadership roles in both the government and nonprofit sectors. 

She joined the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau soon after its inception and, as a Deputy Fair Lending Director, helped develop a regulatory supervision program to prevent illegal discrimination in lending. From 2018-2023 she served as the director of the Pension Action Center, a free legal services program at UMass Boston that secures retirement benefits for workers and their families. During her time with the center, the initiative recovered benefits for clients worth $7 million.  

Last September, Tabor testified before the ERISA Advisory Council, which advises the Department of Labor on matters affecting employee benefit plans. The topic was "Recordkeeping in the Digital Age." Tabor described how former employers turn away her clients claiming they are not listed in the official plan records, even when the clients share extensive documentation from their personal files. 

Earlier in her career, Tabor served as an assistant attorney general in the Civil Rights Division of the Office of the Massachusetts Attorney General, where she litigated numerous housing discrimination cases. She also worked on one of the first cases brought by a state attorney general to allege racial discrimination against a national subprime lender in connection with conduct leading up to the Great Recession and the foreclosure crisis. 

She began her legal career as a litigation associate at Goodwin Procter LLP in Boston. Before attending law school, Tabor worked as a special assistant at the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Legislative Affairs and Public Liaison. 

Tabor also holds a master of science degree in economics from the London School of Economics. She clerked for the Honorable Bruce W. Kauffman of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. 

Assistant Professor Randle DeFalco, JD/SJD 

Randle DeFalco, JD/SJD, is currently an assistant professor of law at the University of Hawai'i William S. Richardson School of Law where he teaches criminal law, criminal procedure, international criminal law, and legal writing. He will teach criminal and international law courses at UMass Law. 

His research interests include criminal law and procedure, transitional justice, aesthetics, race and racism, and the carceral state. 

"As a strong proponent of quality public education, public interest lawyering, and broadening access to legal practice, I am thrilled to join the UMass Law community. I really appreciate the close-knit feel of the school, and look forward to working with colleagues and students to help continue UMass Law's impressive upward trajectory under the leadership of Dean Panarella." 

Professor DeFalco holds a BA from the New Jersey Institute of Technology, a law degree (JD) from Rutgers Law School, and master of laws (LLM) and doctor of juridical science (SJD) degrees from the University of Toronto Faculty of Law in Canada, where he was a Strauss International Law Fellow and Vanier Scholar, and received the faculty's annual most outstanding thesis prize, the Alan Marks Medal, for his doctoral dissertation.  

DeFalco has extensive experience in international law. He currently serves as a research partner in the Making Atrocity Prevention a Reality Project at New York University (NYU) School of Law’s Center for Human Rights and Global Justice and, from 2015-2020, was a member of the editorial board of Genocide Studies and Prevention, a peer-reviewed journal. His international law scholarship has appeared in a variety of publications, such as the University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Law, International Criminal Law Review, Fordham International Law Journal, and London Review of International Law. 

DeFalco’s first book, Invisible Atrocities, was published in 2022 with Cambridge University Press. The book was selected as a 2023 Honorable Mention for the Law and Society Association's premier book award, the Herbert Jacob Book Prize, and is the subject of a forthcoming book symposium issue. 

Prior to pursuing a career in academia, DeFalco researched international justice issues and assisted with transitional justice outreach activities in Cambodia as a Fulbright Fellow and was a legal advisor to the Documentation Center of Cambodia. He also spent time working at the Hamilton Crown Attorney's Office, part of the public criminal prosecution service of Canada, as part of the Canadian legal licensing process. Prior to joining Richardson Law, he was a Banting Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Liverpool School of Law and Social Justice in the United Kingdom and held fellowships at Rutgers Law School and Just Security, an online forum for the analysis of security, democracy, foreign policy, and rights based at NYU's School of Law. 

"In addition to being excellent teachers, Professors Tabor and DeFalco are world-class scholars whose cutting-edge legal scholarship is gaining notice throughout the United States and the world. We are fortunate to add these two outstanding teachers and scholars to our already excellent faculty.”