FSU Law Welcomes Six New Faculty Members for Fall 2026

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Florida State University College of Law welcomed six new faculty members for the fall 2026 semester, expanding the College’s teaching and scholarship across areas including constitutional law, legal history, environmental law, psychology and law, health law, appellate practice and legal writing.

Craig Green, Megan Wright, Christian Mott, Jesse James, Randall Abate, and Adam Wilson join a faculty nationally recognized for teaching and scholarship. Since 2025, FSU Law has ranked No. 6 in the nation for best professors by The Princeton Review.

“Our new faculty members are an exciting addition to our FSU Law community,” said Erin O’Hara O’Connor, dean of the FSU College of Law. “They bring an impressive range of academic and professional experience that will strengthen our students’ educational experience and contribute to the scholarly work taking place across the College.”

Green joins FSU Law from Temple Law School as the Steven M. Goldstein Professor of Law, and he is also Editor in Chief of the Law & History Review. Green’s teaching and scholarship emphasize legal history across a variety of fields, including administrative law, federalism, Native land, civil procedure, separation of powers, constitutional rights, presidential authority, and federal courts. Before joining the academy, Green was an appellate lawyer for the U.S. Department of Justice, handling briefs and oral arguments in several courts of appeals and assisting with many cases in the Supreme Court.

Wright is the Florida Bar Health Law Professor and comes to FSU Law from Penn State, where she served as a Professor of Law and Medicine and an affiliate faculty member in the Department of Sociology, the Rock Ethics Institute, and the Bioethics Program. She teaches Torts and health law classes. Her internationally recognized scholarship is at the intersection of bioethics, health law, and disability law, with a focus on the rights of patients with cognitive impairments.

Mott is an assistant professor of law whose research explores the relationship between psychology and law, including how people learn moral and legal concepts, how they determine appropriate punishment, and how psychological research can inform legal practice. Before entering academia, Mott practiced litigation in Washington, D.C. and clerked for Judge William J. Kayatta Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and Justice Peter Rubin of the Massachusetts Appeals Court.

James joins FSU Law as a visiting assistant professor from Grinnell College. He brings an interdisciplinary background as a legal historian, lawyer and classicist, his legal research examines the behavioral aspects of normative systems such as law, while his historical research focuses on the ancient Greek and Roman worlds and their influence on the development of European and Anglo-American law. 

Abate joins FSU Law as a visiting professor of law, bringing extensive experience in environmental law, climate governance and animal law. His scholarship examines issues including the impacts of the climate crisis on underrepresented communities, strategic litigation theories against the fossil fuel and animal agriculture industries, and climate migration governance. He has taught courses and delivered lectures on environmental governance topics in more than 25 countries on six continents.

Wilson is a visiting legal writing professor who brings significant appellate practice experience to FSU Law following his time at the University of Michigan Law School. As an assistant attorney general in the Criminal Appeals Bureau of the Florida Office of the Attorney General, Wilson litigated more than 100 criminal appeals before Florida’s District Courts of Appeal and the Florida Supreme Court.

For more information about FSU Law Faculty, visit law.fsu.edu/faculty.