Atinuke Adediran
Associate Professor of Law
Professor Adediran uses empirical sociological methods to study the relationship between business, law, and society. Her work spans a range of ideas with reputational, financial, social, and political consequences for the private sector and society, including environmental and social issues, stakeholder welfare, diversity and inclusion, race relations, philanthropy, corporate social responsibility, and pro bono legal services. Within this framework, Professor Adediran has studied a range of legal institutions, including corporations, law firms, and nonprofit organizations.
Professor Adediran has published articles and essays in leading law reviews and peer-reviewed journals, including the California Law Review, Columbia Law Review, Law and Social Inquiry, Northwestern Law Review, Virginia Law Review, and UCLA Law Review. Her work has also been featured in popular outlets like Bloomberg Law, Fortune, and the Wall Street Journal.
Her book, Disclosureland: How Corporate Words Constrain Racial Progress, forthcoming in Cambridge University Press, examines how corporate rhetoric on race benefits corporations while limiting the role of the corporation in achieving real racial progress.
Professor Adediran’s work has won many awards, including from the Center for Racial Justice at the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, the Ford Foundation, and the Russell Sage Foundation. In 2023, Professor Adediran received the university-wide Distinguished Research Award for Interdisciplinary Studies at Fordham University.
Before joining Fordham, Professor Adediran was the David and Pamela Donohue Assistant Professor of Business Law at Boston College Law School, and an Earl B. Dickerson Fellow & Lecturer in Law at the University of Chicago. Prior to entering academia, she was an Associate in the New York office of Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP, where she represented clients in complex commercial business disputes with a focus on securities litigation and maintained active pro bono practice.
Professor Adediran holds Ph.D. and MA degrees in Sociology from Northwestern University and received her JD degree from Columbia Law School.
Education
- Ph.D., M.A. Northwestern University
- J.D. Columbia University School of Law
- B.S. Long Island University
Representative Publications
Racial Targets, 118 Northwestern Law Review 1455 (2024).
Disclosing Corporate Diversity, 109 Virginia Law Review 101 (2023).
When Donor Meets Purpose, 70 Ucla Law Review Discourse 376 (2023) (invited symposium essay).
Disclosures for Equity, 122 Columbia Law Review 865 (2022).
Corporate Accountability and Worker Empowerment, 69 Ucla Law Review Discourse 178 (2022) (invited review of Scott Cummings’s, An Equal Place: Lawyers in the Struggle for Los Angeles (Oxford 2021)).
Nonprofit Board Composition, 89 Ohio State Law Journal 357 (2022).
Racial Allies, 90 Fordham Law Review 2151 (2022).
Negotiating Status: Pro Bono Partners and Counsels in Large Law Firms, 47 Law and Social Inquiry 635 (2022).
The Racial Reckoning of Public Interest Law, 21 California Law Review Online 1 (2021) (with Shaun Ossei-Owusu) (invited symposium essay).
The Relational Costs of Free Legal Services, 55 Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review 357 (2020).
Solving the Pro Bono Mismatch, 91 University of Colorado Law Review 1035 (2020).