February 28, 2023 | Diana Nearhos - UConn School of Law

Anne Dailey and Julia Simon-Kerr Named to Professorships

Both professorships are awarded on the basis of scholarship. Dailey's work involves family law, children and the law, constitutional law, and law and psychoanalysis. Simon-Kerr is a leading scholar on evidence.

A composite image of two headshots, one of Julia Simon-Kerr and another of Anne Dailey.

School of Law professor Julia Simon-Kerr, left, and associate dean Anne Dailey recognized with new professorships.

UConn Law Dean Eboni S. Nelson has named Associate Dean Anne Dailey the Ellen Ash Peters Professor of Law and Professor Julia Simon-Kerr the Evangeline Starr Professor of Law. 

“Both Dean Dailey and Professor Simon-Kerr have significantly enriched our intellectual community through their scholarly endeavors, provided excellent instruction to our students, and advanced the School of Law through engaged and impactful service,” Nelson said. 

Dailey became associate dean for faculty development and intellectual life in January 2023, returning to a position she held twice previously. She was named to the Evangeline Starr Professorship in 2004 and has also served as associate dean for academic affairs.  

Her scholarship and teaching involve family law, children and the law, constitutional law, and law and psychoanalysis. Her book “Law and the Unconscious: A Psychoanalytic Perspective,” published by the Yale University Press, won the American Psychoanalytic Association’s Courage to Dream Book Prize, the UConn Humanities Institute Sharon Harris Book Award, and the American Board and Academy of Psychoanalysis Book Prize. 

Dailey has held visiting professorships at Harvard Law School, Yale Law School, and the University of Pennsylvania Law School.  

The Ellen Ash Peters Professorship honors the first woman to serve on the Connecticut Supreme Court and as its chief justice. Peters, who retired from the court in 1996, has also been a visiting professor at the UConn School of Law. The professorship, established by her husband, UConn Law Dean Emeritus Phillip I. Blumberg, is awarded on the basis of excellence in scholarship. 

“I’m honored to receive a chair named for Ellen Ash Peters, a remarkable person, scholar and jurist, and someone I have long admired and considered an outstanding role model in my own life,” Dailey said. 

Simon-Kerr, a leading scholar of evidence who teaches Evidence, Civil Procedure, and Law and Lying, follows Dailey in the Evangeline Starr Professorship. Her work on credibility and lying in the law, among other topics, lies at the intersection of evidence theory and critical legal perspectives, while also influencing reform. In 2021, she received the Perry Zirkel ’76 Distinguished Teaching Award. 

“I am delighted to be named Evangeline Starr Professor of Law,” Simon-Kerr said. “I hope to continue the rich tradition of excellence in legal scholarship of past holders of this professorship.” 

Simon-Kerr recently published a chapter titled “Relevance Through a Feminist Lens” in “Philosophical Foundations of Evidence Law,” as well as a paper titled “Credibility in an Age of Algorithms” in the Rutgers Law Review. Simon-Kerr has forthcoming articles in the Northwestern Law Review, Washington Law Review and Fordham Urban Law Journal. 

The Evangeline Starr Professorship honors the first women to graduate from the University of Washington School of Law. She was also the second woman to serve as a judge in Washington state and was the sister of UConn Law’s legendary Professor William F. Starr. Her bequest in 1990 created the Starr Trust in his honor. The professorship recognizes achievement and promise in scholarship.