Matthew Diller

Matthew Diller is Dean of Fordham University School of Law and Pull Fuller Professor of Law.  A prominent scholar of social welfare law and policy, he 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. His articles have appeared in the Yale Law Journal, UCLA Law Review, Texas Law Review, and Michigan Law Review. 

Dean Diller began teaching at Fordham Law in 1993. He was the Cooper Family Professor of Law and co-director of the Louis Stein Center for Law and Ethics.  From 2003 to 2008, he served as the associate dean for academic affairs. He has received the Louis J. Lefkowitz Award for the Advancement of Urban Law from the Fordham Urban Law Journal (2000), the Eugene J. Keefe Award for outstanding contributions to the Law School (2002), and the Dean’s Medal of Achievement (2009). Prior to being appointed dean at Fordham Law, he served as dean at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law from 2009 to 2015. 

Dean Diller is a member of the New York State Permanent Commission on Access to Justice and is chair of the commission’s Committee on Law School Involvement. He serves on the board of the Legal Aid Society of New York and is a member of the executive committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York. He is co-chair of the A2J Initiative at Fordham Law School.  He is also a member of the Judicial Institute on Professionalism in the Law and a fellow of the American Bar Foundation.  He served as a member of the board of directors of Legal Services NYC from 1999 to 2009, and he was 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 a member of the board of directors of the National Center for Law and Economic Justice. He was also a member of the New York City Bar Association’s Task Force on New Lawyers in a Changing Profession. In fall 1999, he was scholar-in-residence at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. 

He received an A.B. and a J.D., both magna cum laude, from Harvard University, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. He then clerked for the Honorable Walter R. Mansfield of the U.S. 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.