Stetson Law Welcomes 4 Visiting (and 1 Returning) Professors in 2025
As Stetson Law continues to maximize its offerings to students as well as magnify its scholarly contributions to legal education, the College is thrilled to welcome four visiting professors and one returning professor emerita to campus in fall of 2025.
Stetson Law is proud of its tradition of inviting visiting faculty to engage in projects that enrich students’ learning experiences while conducting important work that elevates Stetson’s regional, national, and international reputation.
These visiting faculty members represent a broad range of specialties.
Lucian Dervan
Joining Stetson from Belmont University College of Law, where he is Director of Criminal Justice Studies, Dervan focuses on domestic and international criminal law. The award-winning scholar is also Founding Director of the prestigious Plea Bargaining Institute.
Author of five books and dozens of book chapters and articles, Dervan is also the founder and author of The Plea Bargaining Blog and a contributing editor to the White Collar Crime Prof Blog (a member of the Law Professor Blogs Network), for which Stetson Law Professor Ellen Podgor serves as editor. He also regularly lectures regarding criminal law and has appeared before the United States House of Representatives’ Judiciary Committee.
Dervan is founder and Chair of the ABA CJS’s Global White Collar Crime Institute, co-founder and co-chair of the ABA CJS’s Frankfurt International White Collar Crime Conference, and a member of the American Bar Foundation.
Sarah Gerwig
Joining Stetson Law from Mercer University, where she is a tenured Professor of Law, Gerwig will teach criminal law and feminist jurisprudence in the fall 2025 semester.
At Mercer, she has served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Director of Experiential Education. In 2006, she founded the nationally recognized Habeas Project, which provides pro bono representation in post-conviction cases across Georgia. She was awarded the 2013 Shanara Gilbert Emerging Clinician Award by the Clinical Legal Education Section of the American Association of Law Schools in recognition of her work with that clinic.
Gerwig directs Mercer’s unique Introduction to Client Counseling program, and her textbook, What Brings You Here Today? An Introduction to Client Counseling was published in 2021. Gerwig teaches and writes in the areas of criminal law, human rights, law & humanities, and professional responsibility.
James Mastracchio
An accomplished tax litigator with clientele from around the globe, Mastracchio is a partner at Winston & Strawn LLP, where he has co-led the firm’s tax controversy practice in its Washington, DC office since 2021. He will teach federal income tax and tax practice and procedure as a visiting professor at Stetson Law.
With the distinction of having been lead counsel on international criminal cases in matters involving alleged tax violations, Mastracchio has represented clients before the U.S. Department of Justice and other regulatory bodies.
Mastracchio served as an Independent Examiner in Zurich, Switzerland and for the U.S. DOJ’s Swiss Bank Program and advised overseas financial institutions as well as government agencies on the implementation of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act. He was highly influential in the interpretation of inter-governmental agreements and treaty protocols as they relate to tax investigations.
Ira Nathenson
A passionate scholar in the area of intellectual property, Nathenson joins Stetson Law as a distinguished visiting professor after retiring from St. Thomas University Law School in Miami, where he founded the school’s intellectual property certificate program. While at Stetson, he will teach civil procedure and intellectual property.
Citing his eclectic interests, Nathenson looks for unexpected but compelling connections between seemingly disconnected areas like procedure, human rights, and popular culture.
Nathenson has written extensively on copyright law and other IP matters, has served as Chair of the Section on Civil Procedure for the Association of American Law Schools, and runs a website featuring extensive civil procedure study resources as well as a companion YouTube channel.
Professor Emerita Candace Zierdt
Having recently retired from Stetson Law following nearly two decades on faculty, Law Professor Emerita Candace Zierdt returns to teach contracts in the fall 2025 semester.
Zierdt began teaching contracts and commercial law at Stetson in 2006. Prior to that, she taught at the University of North Dakota School of Law from 1990 to 2006. She has chaired the American Bar Association’s UCC committee, the Article 1 subcommittee, and the Article 2 subcommittee. She is also a member of the American Law Institute and the UCC committee for the Uniform Law Commission.
She was director of Stetson Law’s Bruce R. Jacob Visiting Professor Program from its founding in 2009 until 2019.
In January of 2025, she received the American Association of Law Schools’ (AALS) Section on Commercial and Consumer Law Mentorship Award at the AALS meeting in San Francisco.
Other new faculty members include two new full-time professors as well as two Bruce R. Jacob Visiting Professors.
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Media contact: Kate Bradshaw
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