Linda Fisher

Professor Linda Fisher

Professor of Law

  • Degrees:

  • LL.M., Northwestern University School of Law | J.D., University of Chicago Law School | B.A., Macalester College

  • Contact:

  • [email protected]
  • Tel: 973-642-8700
  • SSRN Site link
  • Curriculum Vitae

  • Courses:

  • Civil Litigation Clinic, Civil Procedure, Professional Responsibility, Gender & The Law, Land Finance

Linda E. Fisher's professional and academic interests link theory and practice. Professor Fisher’s current concentration is in the areas of foreclosure and mortgage fraud, and, more broadly, consumer fraud. Through her clinical work in the Center for Social Justice, she defends borrowers and pursues a variety of consumer and civil rights claims against lenders and various scammers. Professor Fisher also integrates broader advocacy efforts into her practice and engages in legislative and policy advocacy on behalf of consumer and civil rights groups. She testified before the House Financial Services Committee at a hearing on Robo-signing, Chain of Title and Loss Mitigation Issues and presented at a Federal Trade Commission conference on mortgage fraud.

Professor Fisher currently teaches Professional Responsibility in addition to the Civil Litigation and Practice Clinic. From 1995 to 2006, she was the Director of the Center for Social Justice. Prof. Fisher has published in the areas of subprime lending and mortgage fraud, civil rights, and public interest litigation, as well as on issues pertaining to the recent financial crisis. In 2019, her book (coauthored by Judith Fox of Notre Dame) Foreclosure Echo: How the Hardest Hit have been Left Out of the Economic Recovery, was published by Cambridge University Press. In 2014-15, Prof. Fisher was a Network Fellow at the Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard, researching financial institution dysfunction in negotiating mortgage modifications. She was also named a Bellow Scholar by the American Association of Law Schools for her research project studying the relationship between vacant urban properties and banks’ abandonment of foreclosures. She is currently co-chair of the Subcommittee on Legislation, New Jersey Supreme Court Committee on the Residential Foreclosure Process, and a member of the Subcommittee on Judicial Reforms. She has also been a member of the New Jersey Supreme Court Committee on Minority Concerns and is frequently consulted by the media on related issues.

Before coming to Seton Hall in 1995, Professor Fisher was an Assistant Professor at Penn State-Dickinson Law School. Prior to that, she was a constitutional civil rights lawyer in Chicago and taught at Northwestern Law School. She received an LL.M. from Northwestern, a J.D. from the University of Chicago and her B.A., magna cum laude, from Macalester College.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

LAW REVIEW ARTICLES

Shadowing the Shadow Inventory, Blog Post, CLS Blue Sky Blog:  Columbia Law School’s Blog on Corporations and the Capital Markets (July 10, 2015)

Shadowed by the Shadow Inventory: A Newark, New Jersey Case Study of Stalled Foreclosures & Their Consequences, 4 U.C. Irvine L. Rev. 1265 (2014)

Reverse Redlining, Racialized Consumer Fraud and Target Marketing of Subprime Loans, 18 Brooklyn J. of L. & Pol'y 101 (2009)

Guilt By Expressive Association: Political Profiling, Surveillance, and the Privacy of Groups, 46 Ariz. L. Rev. 621 (2004)

I Know It When I See It, or What Makes Scholarship Feminist: A Cautionary Tale, 12 Colum. J. Gender & L. 439 (2003)

Pragmatism Is As Pragmatism Does: Of Posner, Public Policy, and Empirical Reality, 31 U.N.M. L. J. Rev. 455 (2001)

Anatomy of an Affirmative Duty to Protect: 42 U.S.C. Section 1986, 56 Washington & Lee L. Rev. 461 (1999) (Reprinted in: 16 Civil Rights Litigation and Attorney Fees Annual Handbook 5-1 (2000); Excerpted in: Martha R. Mahoney, John O. Calmore, Stephanie M. Wildman, Social Justice: Professionals, Communities and Law 676-67 (2003).)

A Communitarian Compromise on Speech Codes: Restraining the Hostile Environment Concept, 44 Cath. U. L. Rev. 97 (1994)

Caging Lyons: The Availability of Injunctive Relief in Section 1983 Actions, 18 Loy. U. Chi. L.J. 1085 (1987)

The Proportionality Test in Section 1988 Fee Awards, 14 Loy. U. Chi. L.J. 1 (1982) (with Edward T. Stein)

Moral Hazard, The Meltdown & Meaningful Mortgage Modification, (current research project for the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard)

BOOKS

The Foreclosure Echo: How The Hardest Hit Have Been Left Out of the Economic Recovery, Cambridge University Press (2019) (with Judith Fox)

BOOK CHAPTERS

OTHER JOURNAL ARTICLES

Truth as a Double-Edged Sword: Deception, Moral Paradox and the Ethics of Advocacy, 14 J. of  the Legal Prof. 89 (1989)

OTHER PUBLICATIONS

Attacking Foreclosure Rescue Scams, 2010 Emerging Issues 5309, Lexis Nexis Matthew Bender Research Solutions (2010) (with Leena Khandwala)

BOOK REVIEWS

Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms: Autonomy, the Common Good, and the Courts, 18 Yale Law & Policy Review 351 (2000)

PRESENTATIONS

Full list of presentations available in Curriculum Vitae

Ethics in Consumer Law, Practicing Law Institute Live National Webinar (March 26, 2019) (Speaker)

Housing Issues, Association for Law, Property and Society Annual Meeting (June 1, 2018) (Panelist)

Turning Toxic Liabilities into Community Assets, Rutgers Sen. Walter Rand Institute for Public Policy (October 22, 2018) (Panelist)

Closing the Housing Doors on Some, Association for Law, Property and Society 8th Annual Meeting (May 20, 2017) (Panelist)

Discussion Group: Commercial and Consumer Law, Southeastern Association of Law Schools Annual Meeting (August 3, 2017) (Discussant)