Professor of Law and Society

Year Joined RCNJ: 2010

Contact Information

• Phone: (201) 684-6251
• Email: mserban@ramapo.edu
• Office: G224
• Office Hours: M, R 2 - 3:30 p.m., T (Webex, by appointment)

Education:

• Ph.D., Law and Society, New York University
• S.J.D.,  LL.M., Comparative Constitutional Law, Central European University, Hungary
• Licenta in Stiinte Juridice (Licentiate in Law), University of Bucharest School of Law, Romania
• Mihaela Serban CV April 2024

Convening Groups:

• Law and Society
• Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (minor)
• Human Rights and Genocide Studies (minor) (convener)

Founding co-editor, Ramapo Journal of Law and Society

Pre-law advisor

Courses Taught:

• Comparative Legal Systems/Global Legal Order, Contemporary Issues in Law & Society/Law, Power & Inequality, Introduction to Law and Justice, Law and Society, Law and Culture, Law and Development, Transitional Justice, Global Reproductive Justice, Moot Court, Social Issues, Human Rights, Criminal Law, Constitutional Law, Sociolegal Research and Writing, Ethics in a Global Age, Field Studies, Directed Readings, Thesis Supervision

Research Interests:

Law and society in Eastern Europe, Romanian Studies, human rights, the rule of law, transitional justice

Scholarship:

Books:

• 2019, Subverting Communism in Romania: Law and Private Property 1945-1965, Lexington Books/Rowman & Littlefield.
• 2003 (ed.), Constitutionalism in Transition: Africa and Eastern Europe (International Conference on Comparative Constitutionalism, May   17-20, 2001, Warsaw), Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights. Constitutionalism in Transition Africa and Eastern Europe (pdf)

Journal special issues:

• 2020 (with Monica Ciobanu, eds.), Law, History and Justice in Romania, Special Issue of the Journal of Romanian Studies 2(2).

Recent articles and book chapters:

• 2024, “Are We There Yet? Romania’s Semi-Peripheral Rule of Law,” in Post-Communist Progress and Stagnation at 35: The Case of Romania, eds. Lavinia Stan and Diane Vancea, Palgrave Macmillan, 10.1007/978-3-031-55750-7_5.Preprint pdf
• 2024, “Law as Mnemonic Infrastructure: Archival Legal Discourses and Memory Battles in Romania,” Law, Culture and the Humanities, https://doi.org/10.1177/17438721241245616. Preprint
• 2023, “Law and Liberation: Legal Consciousness and Legal Mobilization in Post-Communist Europe,” in Research Handbook on Law, Movements and Social Change, Steven A. Boutcher, Corey S. Shdaimah, and Michael W. Yarbrough eds., Edward Elgar Publishing.
• 2021 (with Monica Ciobanu), “Legitimation Crisis, Memory, and United States Exceptionalism: Lessons from Post-Communist Eastern Europe,” Memory Studies 14(6): 1285-1300.
• 2020, “Litigating Identity in Fascist and Post-Fascist Romania, 1940-1945,” Journal of Romanian Studies 2(2): 81-108.
• 2020 (with Monica Ciobanu), “Law, History and Justice in Romania: New Directions in Law and Society Research,” Journal of Romanian Studies 2(2): 9-22.
• 2018, “Stemming the Tide of Illiberalism? Legal Mobilization and Adversarial Legalism in Central and Eastern Europe,” in Special Issue: Legal Change in Post-Communist States: Courts, Police and Public Administration, eds. Peter Solomon and Kaja Gadowska, Communist and Post-Communist Studies 51(3). Reprinted in Legal Change in Post-Communist States. Progress, Reversions, Explanations, eds. Peter Solomon and Kaja Gadowska, Ibidem, 2019.
• 2018, “Regime Change and Property Rights Consciousness in Post-Communist Romania,” Law & Social Inquiry 43(3):732-763. Early preview publication February 10, 2017.
• 2015, “Rule of Law Indicators as a Technology of Power in Romania,” in The Quiet Power of Indicators: Measuring Development, Corruption, and the Rule of Law, Sally Engle Merry, Kevin Davis, and Benedict Kingsbury eds., Cambridge University Press.
• 2015, “The Exceptionalism of Housing in the Ideology and Politics of Early Communist Romania (1945-1965)“, Europe-Asia Studies 67(3).
• 2014, “The Loss of Property Rights and the Construction of Legal Consciousness in Early Socialist Romania (1950-1965).” Law & Society Review 48(4).
• 2010, “Surviving Property: Resistance against Urban Housing Nationalization during the Transition to Communism (Romania, 1950-1965),” in Special Issue: Interdisciplinary Legal Studies: The Next Generation, Studies in Law, Politics, and Society 51: 29-66, ed. Austin Sarat.
• 2010, “Law from Below: Women’s Human Rights and Social Movements in New York City” (with Peggy Levitt, Sally Merry and Diana H. Yoon), Law & Society Review 44(1).
• 2009, “‘Bringing Coals to Newcastle’? Human Rights Discourses and Social Change in New York City” (with Diana H. Yoon), Global Networks 9(4): 507-528.

External sites:

Academia

Researchgate

Google Scholar profile