February 2005
Dean Heidi M. Hurd
David C. Baum Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy
Co-Director of the Program in Law and Philosophy
Telephone (217) 333-9857
hhurd@law.uiuc.edu
Dear Students, Faculty, Staff, Alumni, Campus Administrators, and Friends,
Over the holidays the College of Law received a magnificent present that will have an extraordinary impact on students, faculty, and administrators in the years to come. Through his estate plans, alumnus Robert Hacker '65 has provided for an endowed fund to be used for unrestricted purposes to support the College of Law. Although Bob asks that I not announce the current value of his remarkable gift, I can tell you that his bequest is the second largest gift the College of Law has ever received!
Interim Chancellor Richard Herman sent his warm thanks to Bob and said that "by providing for this significant bequest in his estate plans, Bob Hacker has assured an invaluable legacy at a level which the University of Illinois rarely sees. Creating a named endowment fund to be used for unrestricted purposes by the College of Law will allow for flexibility in advancing the College's mission by providing support for faculty and student scholarships, as well as programs and research."
Bob Hacker has served as Of Counsel with the Washington D.C. law firm of Kirkpatrick and Lockhart since 2000. As a Partner for the firm, his primary client, and the firm's largest client, was Fidelity Investment Group. His main practice areas included securities, corporate finance, investment management, and Securities and Exchange Commission enforcement. Bob served on the College of Law's Board of Visitors from 2000 to 2003, and is a Life Member of the John E. Cribbet Society. In 1982, he was honored with the College's Distinguished Alumnus Award. Bob earned an A.B. in science and letters from the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences in 1963 and a LL.B. from the College of Law in 1965.
As state funding has dwindled to a mere 20% of the University's needed revenues, it is philanthropy of this magnitude that will ensure the continued greatness of the College of Law. You have our deepest gratitude and heartfelt thanks, Bob.
Beyond this marvelous New Year's news, I want to tell you about:
- The College's Ambitious Faculty Hiring Agenda
- The Appointment of Professor Ralph Brubaker as the Next Associate Dean for Academic Affairs
- News from the Asian Law, Politics, and Society Program
- Research Grant Support Secured by Professor Bruce Smith
- Winning Trial Work by Students in the Civil Litigation Clinic
- Visiting Professor in Residence Joon-Sung Koh
- Other Fundraising Successes
The College's Ambitious Faculty Hiring Agenda
The College had a very ambitious Fall appointments season dedicated to building the College's scholarly and teaching strengths in the areas of Constitutional Law, Employment Discrimination, Commercial Law, Torts, Alternative Dispute Resolution, and Intellectual Property. Chaired by Professor Larry Ribstein, the Faculty Appointments Committee invited 13 lateral candidates to campus for full-day interviews, including five women and eight men. Members of the Committee also interviewed 32 very promising entry-level candidates at the American Association of Law Schools' Faculty Recruitment Conference in Washington, D.C., out of approximately 1000 candidates. These included nine women, three African-Americans, and two Asian-Americans. From the candidates interviewed in D.C., in addition to exceptional entry-level candidates identified prior to the Faculty Recruitment Conference, the Committee invited 12 entry-level candidates for full-day campus interviews, of whom four were women, four were African-American, and three were Asian-American.
To date, the faculty has voted to extend offers to seven candidates four high-profile lateral faculty members and three very promising entry-level faculty members whose scholarly achievements and teaching experience would enhance the College's national reputation and curricular strengths in the areas of Constitutional Law, Property, Land Use Planning, Law and Psychology, Torts, Voting Rights, Employment Discrimination, and Criminal Law. These very talented candidates include two women, two African-Americans, one Asian-American, and one Native American.
We anticipate making additional offers this year, and we have very good reason to think that we will build on the successes of last year so as to approach our goal of having a sustained tenured/tenure-track faculty of 40-44. I want to thank all of you who met with faculty candidates for your help in communicating that this is a warm, supportive, engaging intellectual community in which ideas and friendships alike flourish.
Professor Ralph Brubaker to be the Next Associate Dean for Academic Affairs
It is my pleasure to announce that Professor Ralph Brubaker has agreed to serve as the College's next Associate Dean for Academic Affairs. Professor Brubaker will have big shoes to fill; and fortunately for him he is spared having to try them on for size until January 2006, as current Associate Dean Charles Tabb has graciously agreed to extend his term through the Fall semester of this year. We shall thus have the benefit of Associate Dean Tabb's practiced leadership through the rest of this calendar year, as well as the knowledge that when he returns to his scholarly projects, he will be succeeded by someone who shares his deep-seated commitment to advancing scholarly achievement, fostering an intellectually engaging culture, and encouraging creative pedagogy.
Professor Brubaker, who is an '89 alumnus of the College of Law and who was a Visiting Professor at his alma mater in '94-'95, returned to the University of Illinois last Fall after spending nine years on the faculty of the Emory University School of Law. He brought with him a reputation for dedicated institutional citizenship, and I am confident that his unique ability to bring a fresh external perspective to an institution with which he has had long familiarity is sure to guarantee that we will continue to press the agenda of excellence that we have set for ourselves.
Please join me in thanking Associate Dean Tabb for agreeing to extend his term through the Fall of 2005. And please help me convey to Professor Brubaker the gratitude that he is owed for his willingness to set aside his own projects in order to take up those of the larger institution.
News From the Asian Law, Politics and Society Program
It was a busy Fall semester for the Asian Law, Politics and Society (ALPS) Program. There was a good deal of Japan-related activity, building on Professor Tom Ginsburg's summer visit to Japan where, among other things, he taught at the first summer session of the new University of Tokyo Law School. The College of Law hosted Professor Luke Nottage of Sydney University, who spent two weeks at Illinois working on a new project on commercial law reform in Japan; Dean Emeritus Kazuo Sugeno of Tokyo University Faculty of Law, who provided an insider's view of legal education reform; and J. Mark Ramseyer, Mitsubishi Professor at Harvard Law School, who held a reading group discussion on his book, Measuring Judicial Independence. In addition, the College of Law welcomed alumni Shunpei Tanaka, Kozo Yabe, and Glenn Newman, who gave generously of their time to teach the Doing Business in Japan course.
Another ALPS highlight was the October visit of noted Thai social activist Sulak Sivaraksa, who gave a lecture to a packed house on "Buddhist Concepts of Law." The very next week, Kyu Ho Youm of the University of Oregon spoke to faculty on Press Freedom in Korea. And Professor Tom Ginsburg traveled to Mongolia and Beijing to address a reunion of the campus Freeman Fellows Program, as well as to visit law schools in China and Mongolia.
This Spring the Program plans to host a delegation from Keio University Law School to sign an agreement to exchange students and faculty. In addition, the Program is arranging two panels at a campus-wide conference on "Asia in a Globalizing World," organized by the Center for East Asian Studies, to be held April 7-9, 2005. Six professors from Japan, Europe and North America will speak about legal reform in China and Japan, and former Prosecutor General Akio Harada will deliver the keynote address. Mr. Harada is a friend of the College who has played a key role in sending young Japanese prosecutors to Illinois for the last several years, and we are continuing the tradition by hosting two such prosecutors here this year.
Many thanks to Professor Ginsburg for his hard work as Director of the ALPS Program!
Professor Bruce Smith Awarded Two Important Research Grants
As state funding for higher education has dwindled, I have challenged the faculty to seek ways to bring in funds to support their research. And have they responded! Following on the significant accomplishments of Professor Jay Kesan in securing outside funding for his work in intellectual property law, Professor Bruce Smith, the Richard W. and Marie L. Corman Fellow, has recently received two grants to support his scholarship on "Cautions and Confessions Before Miranda: Pre-Trial Interrogation in London and New York City, 1780-1860." An award from the William Nelson Cromwell Foundation, an organization that supports research and related projects in the field of legal history, will permit Professor Smith to examine pre-trial examinations and related criminal court records in London and New York City. A grant from the William and Flora Hewlett International Travel Fund, which supports international research by tenure-line faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, will support additional study in England.
Professor Smith's project engages one of the most controversial issues in modern-day American criminal procedure: the desirability and impact of pre-trial cautions issued to criminal suspects. In the four decades since the United States Supreme Court's decision in Miranda v. Arizona, legal commentators have bitterly disputed the case's legacy: some consider the warnings required by Miranda to be desirable protections against potential overreaching by the police; some view the warnings as having created undesirable barriers to securing convictions; and still others believe that the warnings have had little practical impact because skilled police officers can so readily induce suspects to speak. Preliminary research suggests that English criminal suspects in the nineteenth century -- like their modern-day American counterparts -- frequently chose to speak, whether spurred by hopes of leniency or the tactics of skilled interrogators. Paradoxically, findings suggest that pre-trial cautions may have actually benefited criminal justice administrators, by insulating confessions secured in pre-trial proceedings from evidentiary challenges at trial.
We tip our hats to Professor Smith's entrepreneurial spirit in securing funding to continue research on these very significant issues, and we look forward to discussing the results of his research.
Civil Litigation Clinic Students Win Trial
The Civil Litigation Clinic recently "spread its wings" both geographically and substantively when two third-year law students, Scott Kording and Brian Lampier, collaborated on all aspects of a highly-contested trial in Effingham County.
Under the supervision of Clinical Professor George Bell, the students represented a car buyer who had been induced to purchase an extended five-year warranty by the car dealer's written promise to refund the purchase price if the warranty was never used. Although the warranty had not been used by the end of the warranty term, the dealer refused to refund the purchase price because the client had not retained ownership of the car for the entire five years.
The students were able to win their first real-life trial by reminding the court of "black letter law" which they learned in their first-year Contracts course, that any ambiguity should be resolved against the drafter of the contract. The students learned a lot about the practice of law through their experience with drafting, research, discovery, negotiations, opening and closing statements, direct and cross examination, laying foundation, introduction of exhibits, and making objections. And of course, their client was thrilled to get a refund of the entire purchase price for the warranty!
Visiting Professor in Residence -- Joon-Sung Koh
As I have enjoyed doing every month this year, I take great pleasure this month in telling you about one of the College's visiting professors in residence, Dr. Joon-Sung Koh. Dr. Koh is a Research Fellow at the Korea Institute for Industrial Economics & Trade (KIET), a leading government think-tank in Korea. As Director of the Trade & Investment Studies Team, he is in charge of the trade and investment legal studies area. He also is an Adjunct Professor at Konkuk University in Seoul and lectures on international trade law. Dr. Koh received his J.D., magna cum laude, and LL.M., summa cum laude, both from Korea University Law School. Prior to joining KIET, he served for eight years as an international legal specialist at the Office of the Legal Adviser in the Korean Ministry of Justice.
During his stay at the College of Law, Dr. Koh is collaborating with Professor Bill Davey and is exploring the various articles in free trade agreements to gain an understanding of their implications for Korea's FTA Negotiations. Dr. Koh believes that it is imperative for Korea, which is heavily dependent on foreign trade, continuously to expand trade opportunities for economic growth and development.
Dr. Koh arrived in Champaign last summer and was joined by his wife, Hye-Jeong Kim, his son, Younsuk Koh, and his daughter, Younju Koh. The family will be here through the spring semester.
Other Fundraising Successes
I close this first newsletter of the year with the marvelous news that the Law School Fund, under the leadership of co-chairs Greg C. Read '67 and Lynn H. Murray '85 , has been very successful in the first half of the 2004-05 campaign. As of mid-January, the Law School Fund had raised $449,343; a 17% increase over the same period last year! This year's campaign goal is not only to raise $600,000, but to increase alumni participation in the Fund to 20%. To date, 15% of our alumni have made a gift to the Law School Fund. If you haven't made a gift in the past or have not yet offered support to your alma mater this year, please consider making a contribution at any level to help us reach our goal of 20% alumni participation. Remember that every gift matters, and every gift is very much appreciated!
As I look out the window of my home study to the snow-covered stubble of Illinois'
endless cornfields, I am reminded of how much I have come to love the heartland
of America, and this thriving little community with very big ambitions
that captures its tremendous spirit. I know that as this semester goes
on, we will celebrate many new achievements by students, faculty, staff,
and alumni, and I thank you all in advance for the pleasure it gives me
to pass them on to those who enjoy news of the College's many points of
pride.
With all the best,
Heidi
M. Hurd
Dean, College of Law
David C. Baum Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy
Co-Director of the Program in Law and Philosophy
Calendar of College of Law Events
February 2005
February 3-5, Max L. Rowe Auditorium: Asian Americans and the Law Conference including keynote speakers: Angela Oh, "Solving Tough Problems--The Intersection of Law, Society, and Spirit;" Roger Daniels, "The Japanese American Cases: A Social History, 1942-2004;" and Frank Wu, "Asian Americans at a Crossroads: The Future of Race." Sponsored by the College of Law and the Asian American Studies Program. For more information see www.law.uiuc.edu/conferences/aalaw.
February 10, 5:30-7:30 pm, Room D: Ronald Reagan Movie Screening, "In the Face of Evil." Sponsored by the Federalist Society. The Liberty Film Festival names this film as the Best Documentary of 2004, saying "In the Face of Evil is a film of unusual scope and richness that clarifies the present struggle against terrorism as a continuation of the last century's war against totalitarianism."
February 11-12: Class of 2008 Open House. For more information contact Kelly Griffith at 217-244-6415 or kgriff@law.uiuc.edu.
February 22, 3:00-4:00 pm, Room J: Deans' Open Forum. Students are invited to join Dean Hurd and Assistant Dean Vermillion for an open discussion of College matters.
February 25, 4:00-9:00 pm, Max L. Rowe Auditorium: Women's Law Society Symposium will address the topic of women's rights and religious agendas.
