Sheila Foster

Sheila Foster is the Vice Dean and the Albert A. Walsh Professor of Real Estate, Land Use and Property Law at Fordham University. She is also a co-director of the Stein Center for Law and Ethics. Professor Foster teaches courses in Environmental Law, Land Use Law and Antidiscrimination Law. Prior to joining Fordham, she was a Professor of Law at the Rutgers University in Camden, New Jersey from 1994-2001.

Professor Foster received her B.A. in English, with honors, from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor and her J.D. in from Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California-Berkeley. After law school, she worked for two years as an Associate Attorney in the San Francisco office of Morrison and Foerster. She then served for four years as a lecturer and coordinator of academic support at Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California-Berkeley.

Professor Foster is the author of numerous publications on land use, environmental law, and antidiscrimination law. Much of her early work was dedicated to environmental justice. She has consulted with many community-based groups in New Jersey and New York on environmental justice issues. She has also received two Ford Foundation grants for projects related to her work on environmental justice and urban development. Her most recent work explores and challenges the legal and theoretical frameworks in which land use decisions are made, particularly in the urban context.