John Edward Sexton is President of New York University and Dean Emeritus and Benjamin Butler Professor of Law at New York University School of Law. Before coming to NYU Law School, President Sexton served as Law Clerk to Chief Justice Warren E. Burger (1980-1981), United States Supreme Court; the Honorable David L. Bazelon (1979-1980), United States Court of Appeals (DC); and the Honorable Harold Leventhal, United States Court of Appeals (DC). For ten years, he served as Special Master Supervising Pretrial Proceedings in the Love Canal Litigation and is Past President of the Association of American Law Schools.

President Sexton received a B.A. in History (1963) from Fordham College; an M.A. in Comparative Religion (1965) and a Ph.D. in History of American Religion (1978) from Fordham University; and a J.D. magna cum laude (1979) from Harvard Law School.

He has authored a textbook on Civil Procedure which is used by two-thirds of the law students in the country. Indeed, it is the most widely used legal textbook on any subject. He also is the author of Redefining the Supreme Court's Role: A Theory of Managing the Federal Court System (Yale University Press); A Non-Lawyer's Guide to the Constitution (Evans 1986); and Modern Federal Jury Instructions - Civil (2 volumes) (Matthew Bender). His dissertation was titled Charles W. Eliot: Unitarian Exponent of Tolerance in Religion (1978).

He also has written numerous chapters, articles, testimonies, and Supreme Court briefs.