Professor De Barbieri Receives Fulbright Specialist Award

Albany Law School Professor Ted De Barbieri has received the prestigious Fulbright Specialist Award. De Barbieri is one of 400 U.S. citizens who will share their expertise with host institutions each year.

De Barbieri will complete a project at the Judicial General Council of Mongolia (the judicial branch of Mongolia’s government) that aims to exchange knowledge and establish partnerships benefiting participants, institutions, and communities both in the U.S. and overseas through a variety of educational and training activities within Computer Science, Information Technology, and Law and the Court System. 

Specifically, he will travel to Ulaanbaataar to meet with government officials involved in implementing a national Court digitalization policy, a process to link all 116 courts in the country from first instance, appellate, and supreme levels. The goal of the project is to achieve cooperation among government agencies involved to cooperate in the use of a new electronic court system.

At Albany Law School, De Barbieri teaches courses in property, housing law, state and local government, and community economic development law and directs the Community Economic Development Clinic within the Edward P. Swyer Justice Center. His scholarship examines ways the public can engage in land use approvals and economic development activities and how that engagement can lead to reforms in economic and social systems. He also oversees much of the pro bono programming at the law school which has a deep and abiding commitment to providing thousands of hours of pro bono service annually.

The Fulbright Program is the flagship international educational exchange program funded through an annual appropriation made by the U.S. Congress to the U.S. Department of State. The program operates in more than 160 countries worldwide and is designed to build connections between the people of the United States and people of other countries. 

”I am grateful to Albany Law School, our Deans Carlarne, Queenan, and Brescia, and our board, for granting me sabbatical leave to pursue my research and participate in the Fulbright Specialist Program in Mongolia. I am thrilled to contribute to the implementation of the Court digitalization policy with the Judicial General Council,” De Barbieri said. “Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, Mongolia has been on a path towards growth and democratic participation. Still comprising a large population of nomadic communities, access to justice is a key issue among Mongolian litigants. Ensuring all have access to court filings is a key goal for me for this project.”

Prior to joining the Albany Law School faculty in 2016, De Barbieri directed a community economic development clinic at Brooklyn Law School, and was previously an Adjunct Professor of Clinical Law at New York University School of Law. His background also includes work as a legal services attorney at the Community Development Project of the Urban Justice Center, including as an Equal Justice Works fellow. He spent his final year of law school conducting research in Ireland as a Fulbright fellow, and is a graduate of Yale Divinity School, where he concentrated in  religious ethics and participated in the Community and Economic Development clinic at Yale Law School.

Last year, De Barbieri was named a Bellow Scholar. The Association of American Law Schools (AALS) Section on Clinical Legal Education’s Committee on Lawyering in the Public Interest (aka the Bellow Scholars Program) selects a new cohort of law professors every two years to recognize and support innovative research proposals designed to improve the quality of justice in communities, enhance the delivery of legal services, and promote economic and social justice.

In late 2022, he was named an inaugural member of Association of American Law Schools’ (AALS) Pro Bono Honor Roll.

Since its establishment in 1946, the Fulbright Program has given more than 400,000 students, scholars, teachers, artists, and scientists the opportunity to study, teach and conduct research, exchange ideas, and contribute to finding solutions to shared international concerns.  Notable Fulbright scholars include Amar Gopal Bose, Dale Chihuly, Lee Evans, John Hope Franklin, Milton Glaser, John Lithgow, Sylvia Plath, and John Steinbeck.

Fulbrighters address critical global issues in all disciplines, while building relationships, knowledge, and leadership in support of the long-term interests of the United States. Fulbright alumni have achieved distinction in many fields, including 60 who have been awarded the Nobel Prize, 88 who have received Pulitzer Prizes, and 39 who have served as a head of state or government.