News

In a highly publicized ruling last month, a panel of three U.S. District Court judges found that 34 congressional and state legislative districts in Michigan were unconstitutional because they were the products of partisan gerrymandering.

Jeff Justman ’09, a partner at Faegre Baker Daniels, was one of the attorneys who represented the plaintiffs, the League of Women Voters of Michigan and 11 individual Michigan voters. (The representation was pro bono.)

Professor Herbert Kritzer has been named one of this year’s recipients of the Law and Society Association’s Legacy Award.

This lifetime achievement award honors people whose contributions significantly helped to develop the association through sustained commitment to its mission and legacy.

In January, when the Minnesota House of Representatives convened for the first session of the new biennium, the spectacle at the front of the chamber looked a bit like a Law School reunion.

Laura Coates ’05 always knew she was a storyteller at heart. A St. Paul native, Coates always loved performing on stage with school and community theater groups and was drawn to the law because it offered a different kind of stage—the courtroom.

Data privacy has become an issue of pressing concern to virtually every technology user. Minnesota Law Professor and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs William McGeveran, who was in the vanguard of legal experts entering the field, is working both inside and outside of academia to shed light on the challenges of data privacy in the digital age.

The Law School congratulates Kelly Mitchell, executive director of the Robina Institute of Criminal Law and Criminal Justice, on being appointed chair of the Minnesota Sentencing Guidelines Commission. Ms. Mitchell was appointed by Governor Tim Walz and began her appointment in April. She replaces the Hon. Christopher Dietzen as Commission Chair.

Were there any formative experiences at Minnesota Law that helped send you on your path (a class, a clinic, a professor, etc.)?

Yes, many, but I’ll pick two. First, Professor Kristin Hickman’s administrative law class opened my eyes to the power of the administrative state and its pervasive role in our daily lives. Second, serving on the Minnesota Law Review introduced me to legal scholarship on dozens of different topics and made me a better writer and clearer thinker.

Professor and Mooty Chair in Law & Business Paul Vaaler has won a prestigious Fulbright Scholarship to study and teach in South Africa during the 2019-2020 academic year. Vaaler will join faculties at the University of Pretoria’s Gordon Institute of Business Sciences and the University of Limpopo’s School of Economics and Management.

A study of neighborhood change across America recently released by the Institute on Metropolitan Opportunity shows that poverty concentration and neighborhood decline are occurring more frequently in American cities than gentrification and displacement of low-income families. It also finds that decline is strongly associated with white flight and concentration of families of color.

The American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) has recognized the scholarship of two members of the Law Library faculty with prestigious awards.