- About
About USC Gould
USC Gould is a top-ranked law school with a 120-year history and reputation for academic excellence. We are located on the beautiful 228-acre USC University Park Campus, just south of downtown Los Angeles.
- Academics
Academics
Learn about our interdisciplinary curriculum, experiential learning opportunities and specialized areas.
Student Quick Links:
- Admissions
Admissions
USC Gould helps prepare you for a stellar legal career. You can pursue a JD degree, one of our numerous graduate and international offerings, or an online degree or certificate.
- Students
Students
Participate in an unparalleled learning experience with diversity of people and thought. Get involved in the law school community and participate in activities that enhance your studies.
Student Quick Links:
- Careers
Careers
We work closely with students, graduates and employers to support successful career goals and outcomes. Our overall placement rate is consistently strong, with 94 percent of our JD class employed within 10 months after graduation.
- Faculty
Faculty
Our faculty is distinguished for its scholarship, as well as for its commitment to teaching. Our 12:1 student-to-faculty ratio creates an intimate and collegial learning environment.
- Alumni and Giving
- Admissions

A win for ’slow scholarship’
USC Gould School of Law
- ABOUT USC GOULD
- A MESSAGE FROM THE DEAN
- + HISTORY OF USC GOULD
- LAW, RACE AND EQUITY
- + NEWS
- + EVENTS
- BOARD OF COUNCILORS
- CONSUMER INFORMATION (ABA REQUIRED DISCLOSURES)
- VISIT US
- SOCIAL MEDIA
- + CONTACT US
Thursday, February 9, 2023
Ten years in the making, Nomi Stolzenberg’s book honored with National Jewish Book Award
By Leslie Ridgeway
![]() |
Prof. Nomi Stolzenberg (Photo by Scarlett Freund) |
The award, given by the National Jewish Book Council, was presented to Stolzenberg and co-author David Myers, Stolzenberg’s husband and a professor of history at UCLA. The awards will be celebrated at an in-person ceremony March 1 in New York City.
Stolzenberg, a multidisciplinary academician whose research spans religious law and property law, and Myers devoted more than 10 years to researching and writing American Shtetl. To Stolzenberg, the award validates the book’s popular appeal, bolstered by numerous positive notices in publications like The New Yorker and Los Angeles Review of Books, as well being included in The New Yorker’s Best Books of 2022 So Far.
“This was a book that we really hoped would be read by non-academics, by people who were already were interested in the subject or would be, if they learned about it,” Stolzenberg said. “To share this [award] with likes of Philip Roth is amazing and reflects a non-academic reading public that is personally important to me.”
American Shtetl examines a unique enclave of Satmar Jews – a subset of the Hasidic community – that has used the law to establish itself as a separatist society. The book arrived in the midst of increasing interest in the Hasidic community in America – the winner in last year’s National Jewish Book Awards in the American Jewish Studies category was A Fortress in Brooklyn: Race, Real Estate and the Making of Hasidic Williamsburg by Nathaniel Deutsch and Michael Casper. An investigation by The New York Times in late 2022 reported that several state funded Hasidic schools in Brooklyn had failed to provide a basic education to their students.
“It is a marginal community that has become highly visible and controversial,” Stolzenberg said.
![]() |
'American Shtetl' wins National Jewish Book Award |
Stolzenberg called the award “a vindication of slow scholarship” that recognizes the years she and Myers labored to discern the different types of law needed to understand the community – Constitutional law, local government law, family law, education law and more.
“There’s so much pressure to turn things around quickly, and there’s a time and a place for that,” she said. “But if you really want to understand a community that is very alien and different from your own and the mainstream, and you really want to understand the role of American law, vis-à-vis a community that has set itself apart, it requires that much time to avoid overly simplistic, overly stereotypical ideas about this culturally foreign community and frankly, about what American law is.”
Stolzenberg is hard at work on her next project, developing a theory of what discrimination on the basis of religion or belief means, as a research fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies. She is also a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School.
“I call it ‘A Theory of Faith-Based Discrimination,’” she said. “It’s very connected to my longstanding interest in the place of religion in American society, and how our legal system should respond to people with divergent beliefs, especially when the beliefs conflict with law and regulations adopted by state actors in form of legislation or executive orders, and in other cases by private actors like employers.”
Read More
- Next Article: Eye on DEI
- Previous Article: In the business of shaping entertainment: Jon Hicks
RECENT NEWS

Public Interest Career Fair facilitates lasting connections
March 27, 2023
More than 40 public interest organizations took part in the annual fall event

Without water, Native American tribes hit hard by the pandemic
March 27, 2023
Robin Craig's new research underscores need for U.S. to honor legally recognized, but never delivered on, tribal water r...

Elyn Saks honored for efforts to lessen stigma of mental illness
March 20, 2023
Prof. Saks earns 2023 President’s Award from Schizophrenia International Research Society