September 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,
The summer has drawn to an end and nervous first-year students are bustling past sauntering upper-year students as purposeful professors carry piles of handouts and seating charts through the College's hallways. I often marvel at where the summer went, for it seemed to go all too quickly. Michael Moore and I kicked off the summer by co-teaching a May course at Israel's University of Tel Aviv on American Law and Legal Theory. In June we took our eight-year-old twins to Spain for a conference in Grenada, after which the four of us traveled the country, crawling through the siege tunnels that honeycomb the Rock of Gibraltar and braving the bloody bull-fights in Madrid. I joined our European alumni in Brussels for their lively summer reunion, and then my almost-80-year-old father and I took the twins white-water rafting on the Colorado River through all 300 miles of the Grand Canyon. And while I must admit that there is little I love more than being at the front of a drenched raft as it plunges into another gigantic hole, I am now eager to take up the equally daunting challenges of a new academic year. And this year, there is much to inspire the spirit as we advance our ambitious agenda of excellence. In this opening letter of the year, I want to tell you about:
- Our success in recruiting a Top-15 entering class, whose credentials reflect a 3-point increase in our median LSAT score and whose diversity leads the Big Ten
- The forthcoming celebration of Professor John Cribbet's iconic role in the College's history through the investiture of Professor Larry Solum as the inaugural holder of the John E. Cribbet Professorship, newly created by Rick ('55) and Liz Heiligenstein
- The College's creation of a new Program in Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure, co-directed by Professors Andy Leipold and Richard McAdams
- The impressive honors recently bestowed upon Professors Michael Moore, Tom Ginsburg, and Matthew Finkin
- Our students' and our alumni's remarkable generosity, taking the College's fund-raising successes to record highs
- The renovation of the College's Jenner Law Library that is breathing life into a long-dated facility.
The College Recruits a Top-15 Entering J.D. Class--Boasting a 3-point Increase in the Median LSAT score and Big Ten Leadership in Diversity--and Welcomes Impressive New LL.M. and Transfer Students
In the past three years, the College of Law has succeeded in taking its J.D. class from the nation's 88th percentile to its 95th percentile while sustaining its record-holding diversity. In recruiting this year's entering J.D. class, the College accomplished a 3-point median LSAT increase, placing the College amongst the top 15 schools in the country by that measure. The Class of 2008 is comprised of 188 students from 26 states and 87 undergraduate institutions, 32% of whom are students of color and 32% of whom are women. The average age of the class is 25 (though its students range from 18 (!) to 37), and 26 (14%) of the class members have advanced degrees. 115 of its students are from Illinois, 69 are from out of state, and 4 are from countries abroad. The class boasts engineers, teachers, scientists, firefighters, artists, economists, soldiers, sailors, venture capitalists, and a retired NFL player (who was an Academic All-American here at Illinois). We are delighted by the wealth of life experiences that this impressively-credentialed class brings to our classrooms and hallways and we extend to its members a hearty welcome to the College.
We also welcome this Fall an entering LL.M. class of 37 students from 15 nations. Already well-credentialed and highly-successful lawyers in their home countries, they bring to the College community a wealth of experience in private practice, government service, the academy, and the judiciary. They are joined by 19 2L transfer students who finished at the top of their 1L classes at other law schools around the country and whose fresh energy is sure to invigorate the College's upper-year classes.
The College Celebrates Its Past and Future with the Investiture of Professor Larry Solum in the John E. Cribbet Professorship, newly created by Rick ('55) and Liz Heiligenstein
On September 7th at 4:00 pm in the Max Rowe Auditorium President Joseph White, Chancellor Richard Herman, and Provost Jesse Delia will join Emeritus Professor, Dean, and Chancellor John Cribbet and the College community for an extraordinary event. I invite all of you to be a part of this defining moment. On that date we will celebrate the extraordinary lives of four people who have brought great distinction to this University as we invest newly-arrived Professor Larry Solum in the John E. Cribbet Professorship that has been created by alumnus Rick Heiligenstein ('55) and his wife, Liz Heiligenstein.
Professor John E. Cribbet is an icon within the College and larger University community. A 1947 graduate, he was named a full Professor of Law in 1953. He became the College's seventh Dean in 1967 and in 1979 he became Chancellor of the flagship Urbana-Champaign campus. He returned to the College five years later as the Richard W. and Marie L. Corman Professor of Law, resuming his place amongst the nation's leading experts on property law. Decades of students have been charmed and delighted by such famed tales as "The Big Picture" and "Moose Turd Pie," and if we are very lucky, perhaps we will be able to persuade Professor Cribbet to regale us at the investiture with one of these beloved chestnuts.
To honor Professor Cribbet and to thank him for his many years of friendship and mentorship, alumnus Christian "Rick" Heiligenstein, Class of '55, and his wife, Lisolette "Liz" Heiligenstein, created the John E. Cribbet Professorship in 2004. Rick is retired from a very successful legal career as a trial attorney in Belleville, Illinois. Rick's success earned him the prestigious Distinguished Alumnus Award from the College of Law in 1982, and he served on the College's Board of Visitors from 2000 to 2003. In addition to this professorship, Rick and Liz have also established the John E. Cribbet Chair in Law and the C.E. Heiligenstein Chair in Law.
As testament to the power and importance of creating new faculty chairs and professorships, the new John E. Cribbet Professorship enabled the College to recruit to Illinois Professor Larry Solum, who is an internationally renowned legal theorist in the areas of Civil Procedure, Constitutional Law, and Intellectual Property Law. Professor Solum was nominated in 2004 as one of the country's Top 20 most influential and important legal thinkers by Legal Affairs Magazine, and his working papers are among the Top 10 most frequently downloaded from the Social Science Research Network. Professor Solum's articles have appeared in the nation's most prestigious journals; his contributions to Moore's Federal Practice have been cited by the United States Supreme Court and by every Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals; and his acclaimed Legal Theory Blog [http://lsolum.blogspot.com] reaches an average of 3,000 visitors per day.
Please join us for this room-packing, heart-warming, institution-defining celebration of Illini Spirit that is captured by these remarkable people.
The College Announces the Creation of the New Program in Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure, Co-Directed by Professors Andy Leipold and Richard McAdams
For decades the College of Law has enjoyed renown in the areas of criminal law and criminal procedure. Today, twelve faculty members--almost a quarter of the faculty!--write about or teach domestic and international criminal law and criminal procedure. As a means of fostering synergies amongst this group, Professors Andy Leipold and Richard McAdams have launched a new Program in Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure with an ambitious agenda that extends from faculty enrichment to curricular innovation. Partnering with Professors Margareth Etienne and Patrick Keenan, who initiated a lively criminal law discussion group two years ago, Professors Leipold and McAdams intend to sponsor public lectures, conferences, and debates about the use of the criminal law to address society's most pressing social problems. They are contemplating the development of new courses and seminars and an expansion of the College's clinical and experiential opportunities that would supplement the innovative live-client Prisoners's Rights Research Project that is supervised by Professor Kit Kinports and the popular Appellate Defender course taught by Daniel Yuhas.
The Program is off to a tremendous start, with a slate of impressive scholars scheduled to speak at the College in the coming weeks: Professors Bill Stuntz (Harvard), Leo Katz (Penn), Ron Allen (Northwestern), Sara Beale (Duke), Jeannine Bell (Indiana), Anne Coughlin (Virginia), Tino Cuellar (Stanford), John Donohue (Yale), Sam Gross (Michigan), Susan Klein (Texas), Tracey Meares (Chicago), Paul Robinson (Penn), and Jim Whitman (Yale).
Three Faculty Members are Nominated to Positions of Extraordinary Distinction: Congratulations to Professors Michael Moore, Matthew Finkin, and Tom Ginsburg!
It is a great honor to tell you that Professor Michael Moore has
been elected to a Professorship in the University's Center for Advanced Study.
This appointment constitutes the highest form of academic recognition
that the University bestows upon a member of its faculty. Professor Moore's
appointment brings the faculty of the Center to twenty-four--an elite group
comprised, in significant part, of faculty who have won such awards as the
Nobel Prize, the Crafoord Prize, and the National Medal of Technology. Professor
Moore
represents only the second faculty member from the College of Law ever to be
elected to membership in this prestigious Center (the other being Professor
Wayne LaFave). In his letter of appointment to Professor Moore, the Center's
Director, Dr. William Greenough, wrote that the appointment "is made in
recognition of your many significant scholarly contributions" and reflects
the University's "highest regard for your achievements as a distinguished
teacher and as a highly respected scholar." Congratulations to Professor
Moore!
It is also a matter of great pride to tell you that Professor Matthew
Finkin was recently made a Fellow of the College of Labor and Employment
Lawyers. His induction into this elite society is a tremendous honor, as the
College's membership is reserved for those who have achieved unparalleled
distinction in the field of labor and employment law. As his letter of appointment
attests, Professor Finkin was elected a Fellow because his long and distinguished
career demonstrates the highest professional qualifications and ethical standards;
the highest level of character, integrity, professional expertise and leadership;
sustained, exceptionally high-quality services to clients, the bar, the bench
and the public; and invaluable scholarship, teaching, and lecturing. Our heartiest
appreciation for this singular and much-deserved, honor, Professor Finkin!
And finally, I am delighted to announce that Professor Tom Ginsburg has been selected as a University Scholar for the coming year--a distinction designed to honor and reward outstanding scholars and teachers at the University of Illinois. In his letter to Tom congratulating him on this award, President Joseph White commends Tom for his impressive record of achievement to date and for having been selected from a pool of extremely talented nominees. As a University Scholar, Tom will be working on a major data-set of written constitutions, covering every constitution since the American founding fathers wrote the first constitution in 1789. He will also continue his research on the increasingly prominent role of law in Northeast Asia, and will be leading a group of College faculty to China during year for a series of conferences with Chinese universities on the role of law in East Asian economic development.
Our Students, Faculty, Staff, and Alumni Take Fund-Raising to New Highs
During the last fiscal year, which closed June 30th, 1,757 students, faculty, staff, alumni, and friends contributed to the College of Law. Their generous commitments (including current-use, endowment, and estate gifts) totaled $7,482,632--making FY05 a record fund-raising year at the College of Law. Gifts included the second largest undesignated gift ever given to the College of Law, as well as a substantial gift to name a fund in support of the College's new Loan Repayment Assistance Program, a very generous gift to name the College's Health Care Law and Policy Program, and several large gifts establishing named scholarships. Contributions to the Law School Annual Fund totaled $579,406, reflecting a 3.2% increase from the previous year. Our newest alumni, comprising the Class of 2005, made an outstanding commitment to the College as 60% of the J.D. class and 100% of the LL.M. class pledged future financial support. Many thanks to all those who are making manifest their understanding of the long-term implications of the State now providing only 21% of the University's funding.
The Renovation of the Law Library Yields Much-Needed New Faculty Offices
and Much-Improved Student Study Spaces
It is no news to those in the building that the College is under construction--and
most especially, the Jenner Law Library. Cribbet Field is a massive construction
zone, with back-hoes and excavators poised to knock more gaping holes in the
West side of the building that has long been the rather bleak outside wall of
the Jenner Law Library. Jack-hammers are creating a steady drone, and students
must now study between walls of dusty plastic that drape the interior space
to cordon off the areas of the Library that are undergoing very substantial
changes.
Why the work, and how long will it continue? Well, if there is one thing I have learned it is that efforts to answer the latter question are fraught with peril. Every time we think we have a firm schedule that will guarantee the completion of a renovation project in the building we bump into something that derails it--miles of surprising asbestos, a maze of puzzling duct work, load-bearing pillars no one knew existed, bureaucratic bidding systems that force piecemeal progress, etc. But the first question is easy. The Library is being renovated so as to carve out new office and group study space for faculty and students. At the completion of the project, the West wall of the Library will have extensive windows that let natural light into a row of small conference rooms that groups of students can use for study group meetings and group projects. It will have a second-floor wing of new faculty offices that will provide crucial space for newly-hired tenured and tenure-track faculty, thereby rescuing us from the unhappy alternative of moving emeritus faculty, short-term and adjunct faculty, and staff to less desirable offices than they now enjoy. It will provide a suite for the newly-hired Library faculty who have come aboard this fall to teach our now-expanded legal research curriculum. And it will have a new computer learning center at which students can learn the fundamentals of electronic research under the watchful eye of expert information scientists.
And there will be many other general benefits for those who simply seek a quiet work space: extensive new table lighting, readily accessible and plentiful computer power outlets, a new, well-lit central staircase to the second floor, comfortable new furniture, new carpeting, and fresh paint. By no means will we achieve our full wish list, or even the most important things that would be on a wish list if we could write on a blank slate: the facility will still lack restrooms and an elevator; it will still lack the kind of natural light we would hope for in the main reading room; and it will still have cavernous areas that make one feel like a troll if one spends any amount of time in them. But given the very limited budget that we have for the project, I am hopeful that students and faculty will find the changes welcome and their effects substantial.
The renovation of the Library (and the substantial changes made to the College's classrooms and public areas that were largely, but not completely, accomplished over the past summer) does not substitute for the long-term need to secure a physical facility that is much larger in size and much different in configuration. We are beyond being out of space, and this fact has become the principle obstacle to innovation and improvement. The goal of the building's current construction projects is to harvest any residual pockets of space and refurbish now-dated public areas so as to buy the building five to ten more years during which we can develop and implement a plan to achieve a building that guarantees that the College will still be one of the nation's premier law schools 50 and 100 years from now.
A calendar of community-wide events for the month of September follows below, and I urge all of you to participate in as many of these occasions as your schedule permits. To those new to the College of Law (and all of its temporary dusty plastic!), I wish you a warm welcome. Please do not hesitate to contact me if I can be of any assistance with your transition to the law school community. And to those returning to the College of Law for another academic year, my thanks to you all for the many things you have done, and will do, to ensure that this is a warm and welcoming community.
Sincerely,
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
September 2005
September 2, 12:00-1:00 p.m., Room C: Phi Alpha Delta General Meeting: For students interested in joining Phi Alpha Delta. For more information contact PAD@law.uiuc.edu.
September 6, 10:00-11:00 a.m., Room D: Talk: Retired Judge DeLaMar will talk about what CASA is and how students can participate, sponsored by the Legal Externship Program. For more information contact dshumard@law.uiuc.edu.
September 6, 12:00-12:50 p.m., Room A: Career Services presents Caterpillar: Program for students to learn about non-traditional employment opportunities, featuring Caterpillar, Inc. For more information contact Kelly Griffith at 217-244-8663 or kgriff@law.uiuc.edu.
September 7, 1:00-5:00 p.m., Room K: Financial Aid Counseling: Julie Griffin from OFSA will be on-site at the College of Law to assist students with their financial aid questions.
September 7, 4:00-5:30 p.m., Max L. Rowe Auditorium: Investiture of Lawrence B. Solum as John E. Cribbet Professor of Law; reception to follow in the Pedersen Pavilion.
September 8, 12:00-1:00 p.m., Max L. Rowe Auditorium: USA PATRIOT Act Debate: Bob Barr (former congressman from Georgia) vs. Jan Paul Miller, sponsored by The Federalist Society. For more information contact federal@law.uiuc.edu.
September 8, 12:00-12:50 p.m., Room A: Career Services presents Deloitte & Touche: Program for law students to learn about practice at Deloitte & Touche. For more information contact Kelly Griffith at 217-244-8663 or kgriff@law.uiuc.edu.
September 13, 10:00-2:00 p.m., Pedersen Pavilion: PILF Bake Sale.
September 14, 12:00-1:30 p.m., Max L. Rowe Auditorium: John Roberts: Supreme Court Panel Discussion. Professors from the University of Illinois will discuss the United States Supreme Court nomination process. Dean Heidi M. Hurd will serve as moderator. Sponsored by the American Constitution Society and the Federalist Society. For more information contact federal@law.uiuc.edu.
September 14, 1:30-2:30 p.m., Room J: Deans' Open Forum: Students are invited to join Dean Hurd and Assistant Dean Virginia Vermillion for an open discussion of College matters.
September 14, 1:00-5:00 p.m., Room K: Financial Aid Counseling: Julie Griffin from OFSA will be on-site at the College of Law to assist students with their financial aid questions.
September 15, 7:00-9:00 p.m., Wesley United Methodist Church (at the corner of Goodwin and Green - on campus): Separation of Church and State Discussion Panel, featuring Governor Jim Edgar, Professor Andrew DeVooght, and Reverend Paul Unger (Pastor of Wesley Methodist Church). Everyone is welcome to attend.
September 19, 12:00-1:00 p.m., Room A: "Offer & Acceptance", sponsored by Career Services. For more information contact Kelly Griffith at 217-244-8663 or kgriff@law.uiuc.edu.
September 21, 1:00-5:00 p.m., Room K: Financial Aid Counseling: Julie Griffin from OFSA will be on-site at the College of Law to assist students with their financial aid questions.
September 22, 12:00-1:00 p.m., Max L. Rowe Auditorium: Federalist Society Lecture: Judge Michael Kanne: 7th Circuit Court of Appeals. The Honorable Michael Kanne, Circuit Judge, Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, will address the College of Law community. Sponsored by the Federalist Society. For more information contact federal@law.uiuc.edu.
September 26, 12:00-1:00 p.m., Room A: Navigating Out-of-State Job Search, presented by Career Services. For more information contact Kelly Griffith at 217-244-8663 or kgriff@law.uiuc.edu.
September 27, 10:00-2:00 p.m., Pedersen Pavilion: PILF Bake Sale.
September 28, 12:15-1:15 p.m., Room 202D: Lunch with the Dean: Students are welcome to stop by Room 202E to sign-up to have lunch with Dean Hurd.
September 28, 1:00-5:00 p.m., Room K: Financial Aid Counseling: Julie Griffin from OFSA will be on-site at the College of Law to assist students with their financial aid questions.
September 28, 4:15-6:00 p.m., Courtroom: US Army JAG presentation for students, sponsored by Career Services. For more information contact Kelly Griffith at 217-244-8663 or kgriff@law.uiuc.edu.
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