Senior Associate Dean Shestowsky Elected to American Law Institute
Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Donna Shestowsky has been elected to the American Law Institute. The nation’s premier nongovernmental law reform organization, the ALI consists of eminent judges, lawyers, and law professors who have been selected, as the organization states, “on the basis of professional achievement and demonstrated interest in improving the law.”
King Hall now counts 21 faculty members – one of the highest percentages among law faculties – in the ALI, which caps elected membership at 3,000. In addition, eight UC Davis Law emeriti faculty belong to the ALI.
A Martin Luther King Jr. Professor of Law and nationally recognized authority on alternative dispute resolution, Shestowsky arrived at UC Davis in 2004 and received the law school’s Distinguished Teaching Award in 2007. In 2018, she was named inaugural director of the Lawyering Skills Education Program. She served in that capacity until being named Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in 2024.
Shestowsky holds a J.D. and a Ph.D. in psychology from Stanford, a B.A. and M.S. in psychology from Yale, and serves on the faculty of UC Davis’ Psychology Graduate Group. Her research examines basic assumptions underlying the structure of the legal system and explores ways in which the legal system might be improved using the methodological and analytic tools of psychological theory and research. In recognition of her scholarly contributions, Shestowsky received the Association of American Law Schools’ Section on Litigation’s Scholar Award in 2024.
She was the sole principal investigator of a multi-year research project, funded by the National Science Foundation and the American Bar Association, that examined how litigants evaluate legal procedures. One article based on this work was awarded the 2016 Mangano Dispute Resolution Advancement Award; another was named best article of 2018 by the AALS Section on ADR. Shestowsky advises courts on the development of court-connected ADR programs and provides negotiation education services to corporations, law firms, and national organizations.
Her research has appeared in top journals including the Stanford Law Review, Law and Human Behavior, and the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Dedicated to helping legal practitioners make use of empirical research, Shestowsky also publishes in journals with broader audiences, such as Court Review and Dispute Resolution Magazine, and has commented for national media including CNN, NPR and the New York Times.
Shestowsky co-founded the King Hall Negotiations Team in 2007 and served as faculty advisor until 2024. She also coaches external competition teams, which consistently excel in regional and national ABA negotiation and client counseling competitions, including securing the top spot in the International Law Student Negotiations Competition in 2009.
Shestowsky was elected as an American Bar Foundation fellow in 2021 and in 2023 served as chair of the AALS Section on Alternative Dispute Resolution. Under her leadership, the section earned the AALS' Section of the Year Award.