Ira Mark Ellman

Charles J. Merriam Distinguished Professor of Law and Affiliate Professor of Psychology, Emeritus, Arizona State University

Distinguished Affiliated Scholar, Center for the Study of Law and Society, University of California, Berkeley

 

 
 
E-mail: ira@asu.edu
ira.ellman@berkeley.edu
 
       
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Biographical Sketch
 

B.A., Reed College (1967)

M.A., Psychology, University of Illinois (1969)

J.D., University of California, Berkeley (1973)

Professor Ellman’s spent the largest part of his career studying Family Law. He served as Chief Reporter and the Justice Ammi Cutter Reporter of the Principles of the Law of Family Dissolution, published in 2002 by the American Law Institute, and is the senior author of a leading text on family law. His most recent work in family law focused on an empirical investigation into people's judgments about the obligations the law should require of famiily members to one another,done in collabotation with social psychologists, work that was extended to the United Kingdom in collaborations established while Professor Ellman was a Visiting Fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge in 2013. Professor Ellman is an affiliate faculty member of the Center for Child and Youth Policy at the University of California at Berkeley.

His current research, also interdicplinary, has shifted to the legal policy applied to sex offenders, and especially to those convicted of possession of erotic images of minors. In addition to articles in academic journals on this subject, he has also authored amicus briefs, on behalf of social science experts in the field, in the U.S Supreme Court, and the state supreme courts of California, Pennsylvania, and Oregon.

Following graduation from law school, Professor Ellman served as a law clerk for Justice William O. Douglas of the United States Supreme Court, a legislative aide to Senator Adlai Stevenson III, and a consultant to the California legislature. He also practiced law in San Francisco. He joined the faculty at Arizona State University Law School in 1978. He was a visiting professor for a semester or more at the Hastings College of Law, Brooklyn Law School, the Institute for Social and Policy Studies at Yale University, and both the Earl Warren Institute, and the Center for the Study of Law and Society, at U.C. Berkeley, and Trinity College at the University of Cambridge.

In addition to his principal interests, Professor Ellman has also written on Nonprofit Corporations, Bioethics, and Health Care Financing. He was a founding member of the Bioethics Committee of the Good Samaritan Medical Center in Phoenix. He has served on a variety of statewide committees dealing with various aspects of family law and policy, including most recently the Arizona Child Support Guidelines Committee..

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