Matthew Diller
Dean and Professor of Law

A.B., 1981, J.D., 1985, Harvard University

SSRN

Specialty: Social welfare law and policy, Administrative Law, Public Interest Law    

Matthew Diller, a prominent scholar of social welfare law and policy, was named dean of Cardozo in 2009. Prior to the appointment, he was the Cooper Family Professor of Law and co-director of the Louis Stein Center for Law and Ethics at Fordham Law School, where he had taught since 1993. He served also as associate dean for academic affairs at Fordham from 2003 to 2008.

Diller has lectured and written extensively on the legal dimensions of social welfare policy, including public assistance, Social Security, and disability programs and on disability law and policy, with articles in the Yale Law Journal, UCLA Law Review, Texas Law Review, and Michigan Law Review. He received an A.B. in 1981 and a  J.D. in 1985, both magna cum laude, from Harvard University, where he was editor of the Harvard Law Review. He then clerked for the late Honorable Walter R. Mansfield of the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. He worked for the Legal Aid Society in New York, where he was a staff attorney in the civil appeals and law reform unit.

Since 1999, Diller has been a member of the board of directors of Legal Services NYC, serving as vice chair from 2003 to 2007. He was a member of the executive committee of the poverty law section of the Association of American Law Schools and was chair in 1999-2000. From 2000 to 2008, he was also a member of the board of directors of The National Center for Law and Economic Justice. In the fall of 1999, he was scholar in residence at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law.

At Fordham, Diller was honored in 2009 with the Dean's Medal of Achievement, received the Eugene Keefe Award for outstanding contributions to the school in 2002, and 2000 received the Louis J. Lefkowitz Award for the Advancement of Urban Law from the Fordham Urban Law Journal. In 1991, the Association of the Bar of the City of New York honored him with a legal services award.