Dear Students, Faculty, Staff, Alumni, Campus Administrators, and Friends,

• Leiter's Law School Reports Singles Out the University of Illinois College of Law (Again!)
• The College Makes Three New High-Profile Lateral Faculty Hires and an Exciting New Visiting Appointment
• Swanlund Professor of Native American History Accepts a Joint Appointment in Law
• "Illinois Law" Makes its Television Debut this Sunday Morning
• The College Takes On-Campus Recruiting Off-Campus to Chicago
• Come Celebrate! Join us for the 4th Annual Gala Dinner-Dance on April 21st
• The College Honors "Black History Month"
• Peter Maggs Receives the 2006 Distinguished Faculty Award for International Achievement
• The Failure of Elder Abuse Legislation: The Annual Elder Law Lecture
• 10th Year Reunion of the College's Law Clinics, March 10th
• European Alumni Reunion in Berlin, May 26th-28th
• Visiting Scholar Spotlight: Nigeria's Rosemary Adishetu Danesi
• Calling all Alumni! Please Fill Out Professor Robbennolt's survey

And at the close of this month's letter you will find the Associate Dean's Addendum, drafted for the first time in his new role by Professor Ralph Brubaker. Professor Brubaker assumed the Associate Deanship at the start of this semester after returning to his alma mater, the University of Illinois, two years ago from Emory University. During his nine-year tenure at Emory, he became nationally renowned for his scholarship in bankruptcy, bankruptcy procedure, corporate finance, business associations, and contracts. He returned to Illinois with a reputation for wise institutional leadership and it has proved a great honor already to work with him to advance the agenda of excellence that we have set for ourselves at Illinois.

Leiter's Law School Reports Singles Out the University of Illinois College of Law (Again!)

A year ago this month, Leiter's Law School Reports described the University of Illinois College of Law as very much "on the move," and ranked it #1 in the country for its success in hiring high-profile lateral faculty. Three weeks ago, Brian Leiter again singled out Illinois, profiling our sustained success in attracting lateral faculty of substantial renown and stating that he was "hard-pressed to think of a law school more completely transformed in the last few years than Illinois. From a school that had almost no presence in interdisciplinary legal scholarship,... Illinois has built up a large cohort of junior and senior scholars working in law and economics (broadly construed) and law and philosophy (broadly construed)." The Leiter Reports went on to give a listing of the ten most productive law faculties in the nation (in absolute terms, not adjusted for the size of the faculties), and I thought you would enjoy this snapshot of the College's stature.

Here is the Top 10:

1. Harvard (39,148 downloads, 93 papers, 77 average downloads)
2. Chicago (29,162 downloads, 73 papers, 89 avg.)
3. Stanford (26,818 downloads, 42 papers, 101 avg.)
4. UCLA (25,708 downloads, 75 papers, 82 avg.)
5. Geo. Wash. (24,981 downloads, 73 papers, 132 avg.)
6. Columbia (24,648 downloads, 46 papers, 103 avg.)
7. Texas (24,293 downloads, 68 papers, 121 avg.)
8. Yale (22,600 downloads, 72 papers, 92 avg.)
9. ILLINOIS (17,324 downloads, 62 papers, 78 avg.)
10. Georgetown (17,178 downloads, 46 papers, 73 avg.)

Quite remarkably, the Illinois faculty achieves its #9 ranking despite being small in comparison to the faculties of many of its Top-10 competitors. When adjusted for faculty size, Illinois ranks seventh in the nation for faculty productivity, as measured by the number of articles per faculty member posted on the Social Science Research Network (SSRN). And the impact of its faculty on the national debates and discussions of the day has become profound, with an average of nearly 13 interviews per week and 321 total in the past six months in local, regional and national media outlets, such as the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, ESPN, and National Public Radio.

The College Makes Three New High-Profile Lateral Faculty Hires and an Exciting New Visiting Appointment

As the generous review in Leiter's Law School Reports reflects, this has been another banner year for faculty hiring. In the past month, three lateral faculty members of substantial national stature have accepted tenure-track positions (and we are very hopeful that we'll have more great news about additional hires next month). Their mutual interest and expertise in the areas of corporate law and business associations, coupled with that of our existing faculty, gives Illinois one of the broadest and deepest faculties in the country in these important concentrations.

Associate Professor Amitai Aviram will join the Illinois faculty from Florida State University. Professor Aviram has built an extraordinary reputation in a very short time for his creative and provocative analyses of problems in antitrust, regulated industries, privately created and enforced legal systems, and the governance of business associations. Professor Aviram received his LL.B. from Tel-Aviv University School of Law and his LL.M. and J.S.D. from the University of Chicago Law School. Before entering the legal academy, he served with the Israeli Antitrust Authority and he was an Associate at the firm of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. He was also an officer in the Israeli Judge Advocate General (JAG) Corps, and in that capacity he was involved in the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. Professor Aviram is a member of the Israeli Bar and the Bar of the State of New York. Before joining the faculty at Florida State, Professor Aviram was on the faculty at George Mason University School of Law and he was a John M. Olin Scholar of Law and Economics at the University of Chicago.

Associate Professor Christine Hurt comes to Illinois from the Marquette University Law School. Her primary teaching and research projects are in business associations, corporate finance, mergers and acquisitions, torts, and business ethics. Prior to joining the Marquette faculty in 2003, she was the Director of Legal Research and Writing at the University of Houston Law Center for four years where she also taught corporate finance, project finance, international commercial arbitration, and international business transactions. Professor Hurt is a prolific scholar and a well-known contributor to Conglomerate, a law and business blog located at http://www.theconglomerate.org/. Before entering law teaching, Professor Hurt practiced corporate law for a number of years in Houston at Baker Botts, LLP, and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP.

Professor Robert Lawless is a nationally acclaimed expert in business organizations, corporate law, and bankruptcy law and joins the Illinois faculty after serving as the Gordon & Silver, Ltd. Professor of Law at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas William S. Boyd School of Law. Professor Lawless received both his B.S. (Accounting) and J.D. from the University of Illinois, and served as Editor-in-Chief of the Illinois Law Review. After law school, Professor Lawless clerked for the Honorable Harlington Wood, Jr., of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and then practiced law in Washington, D.C., with the firm of Zuckert, Scoutt & Rasenberger. From 1993 to 2002, he was on the faculty at the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Law, and he has been a visiting faculty member at the University of Illinois, Ohio State University, and Washington University in St. Louis.

Professor Lawless teamed with Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren on a 2005 California Law Review article "The Myth of Disappearing Business Bankruptcy" that was featured in USA Today, CNN, Money, The National Law Journal and other national media outlets. The Kaufmann Foundation-funded study of more than 1,700 debtors from courts in California, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Texas reported that business bankruptcy rates are up to nine times higher than government data show and that the 2005 bankruptcy law might hinder entrepreneurship because it does not reflect the true impact of small-business failures. The study challenged a widely held perception that a 20-year rise in bankruptcies had been driven by spend-thrift consumers. Professor Lawless's Nevada Law Journal study on bankruptcy filings in Hurricane-affected states was cited in a front-page editorial in the New York Times, among numerous other publications.

Visiting Assistant Professor Paul Stancil joins the Illinois faculty after practicing with the Antitrust and Trade Regulation Practice Group in the Milwaukee office of Godfrey & Kahn. Before joining the firm in 2003, Professor Stancil was an Associate in the Antitrust Group at Baker Botts, L.L.P. in Houston, Texas. Over the past seven years, Professor Stancil has focused his practice primarily in antitrust and complex commercial litigation. He has represented clients in connection with antitrust litigation, criminal and civil investigations, and government merger review, and he has represented energy clients in private and state-initiated litigation, conducted internal corporate investigations, and represented clients before the United States Department of Justice Antitrust Division, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Professor Stancil earned his B.A. and J.D. from the University of Virginia and he has taught Antitrust Law at the University of Houston Law Center as an Adjunct Professor.

Swanlund Professor of Native American History Accepts a Joint Appointment in Law

Dr. Frederick Hoxie is a Professor of History and holds a prestigious Swanlund Campus Chair. He specializes in Native American history, and he regularly teaches a very popular two-semester survey course on the history of Native Americans as well as upper level courses in American Indian Law, Native American History, and Ethno-Historical Approaches to the Past. We are delighted that he has agreed to accept a joint appointment in the College of Law and to cross-credit his much-sought-after graduate courses.

Professor Hoxie came to Illinois in 1998 from Chicago's Newberry Library where he directed the D'Arcy McNickle Center for American Indian History and served as Vice President for Research and Education. Professor Hoxie received his B.A. from Amherst College and his Ph.D. from Brandeis University, and he has taught at Antioch College and Northwestern University. He has served as a consultant to the U. S. Department of Justice, the U. S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, the National Park Service, the Cheyenne River and Standing Rock Sioux Tribes, and Little Big Horn College. He is the General Editor of The American Indians, a 23-volume series of books published by Time-Life which has sold over two million copies, and he is the Series Editor of Cambridge Studies in American Indian History. A founding trustee of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian, Professor Hoxie has served on the boards of the Illinois Humanities Council and the Organization of American Historians, and he is the former President of the American Society for Ethnohistory.

"Illinois Law" Makes its Television Debut this Sunday Morning

The College of Law, in cooperation with WCIA-TV Channel 3, will launch a 30-minute television show, "Illinois Law," centering on legal issues in the news and featuring College of Law faculty and alumni. The show, which will debut on Sunday, March 5 at 10:00 a.m. on WCIA-TV Channel 3 (local CBS affiliate), is hosted by Amy Gajda, Professor of Law and Journalism, and is scheduled for six spring episodes, airing at 10:00 a.m. on March 5 and 19, April 2, 16, and 30 and May 14, with a full schedule of programs set to begin during the Fall 2006 semester, including statewide syndication on the 80-station Illinois Channel.

In a feature story about the new program, "Lowdown on the Law," published by the Champaign-Urbana News Gazette, Russ Hamilton, the general manager of WCIA, discussed the new program. "I was looking for a program that I thought would benefit the community, serve a need not being served, and educate people. I am interested in the Law School and what it can bring to the community."

The initial episode, entitled "Judges," features Larry Solum, the John E. Cribbet Professor of Law, Larry Ribstein, the Richard W. and Marie L. Corman Professor of Law, and Peter Nardulli, the Head of the Political Science Department and a Professor of Law at the College. It also features two Illinois College of Law graduates, U.S. Federal Magistrate Judge David Bernthal and Sixth Judicial Circuit Court Judge Jeffrey Ford. Professor Solum and Judge Bernthal will be guests on the WCIA "Morning Show" tomorrow morning (March 2) at 7 a.m. to promote the show.

The second episode, titled "Caring for the Aging," features Richard Kaplan, the Peer and Sarah Pedersen Professor of Law, one of the nation's leading authorities on elder law, along with financial representative and former nursing home director, Elsie Eisenmann, and Kirby Crawford, a Pharmacist at Carle Foundation Hospital, who discuss paying for long-term care, Medicare drug benefits and pension insecurity.

The College Takes On-Campus Recruiting Off-Campus to Chicago

Please join more than 80 of our students, together with dedicated staff members from the College's Career Services Office, at the first "Chicago Off-Campus Interview Program," March 21-24, 2006, in downtown Chicago. This event will allow prospective employers in the Chicago area, and those who fly in for the event from cities around the nation, to conveniently spend part or all of a day interviewing our talented students for summer or permanent positions. This novel new Interview Program will be held at the Illini Center located at 200 South Wacker (Wacker & Adams across from the Sears Tower), and we are hopeful that employers who could not join in the Champaign-based On-Campus Interviewing Program that we held in the Fall will find this an attractive venue in which to meet and get to know many of our hard-working, bright, and energetic students. Also, many of our students will be in Chicago during that week for spring break, so if you would like to host a reception one evening, we would be delighted to help with this venture. If you are an interested employer, please contact Amanda Lindemann in our Career Services Office at mailto:lindemnn@law.uiuc.edu or at 217-333-2961.

Come celebrate! Join us for the 4th Annual Gala Dinner-Dance on April 21, 2006

Please plan to don your dancing shoes and come see why the annual Spring Gala Dinner-Dance has become a much-anticipated celebration of achievement, annually attended by a sold-out crowd of 300 students, faculty, staff, alumni, and campus dignitaries. This year's fourth annual Gala Dinner-Dance (black tie optional) will be held at the elegant Champaign Country Club on Friday, April 21, and it will feature a short after-dinner address by our distinguished new Provost, Linda Katehi, who is currently the Dean of the School of Engineering at Purdue. This is an event for everyone--students and faculty, secretaries and alumni, administrators and campus friends! Individual alumni tickets are $100. But your firm or organization can sponsor a table for $1,000 (and receive up to six tickets!), or you can make a group of students extraordinarily happy by hosting a student table for $500, or you can make a tax-deductible donation in any amount to help the College provide more opportunities for financially-strapped students and hard-working staff to attend this signature event. For more information about the 2006 Gala, please call our Alumni Relations and Development Office at (217) 333-2628 or e-mail Shon Herrick, Assistant Dean for Alumni Relations & Development at herrick1@law.uiuc.edu.

The College Honors "Black History Month"

The Black Law Students Association (BLSA), in conjunction with the Student Bar Association (SBA) Diversity Committee, hosted an energetic month of events to commemorate and honor "Black History Month" at the University of Illinois College of Law. The University's student newspaper featured several of our students and programs, and highlighted the College's #1 place in the Big Ten for student diversity. The month-long celebration prompted one student reporter to ask if the College of Law was hosting all of the "Black History Month" activities on campus because of their number and consistent draw!

The many activities included, for example, a powerful presentation on "Great African-American Legal Figures" by Gutgsell Professor James D. Anderson, Head of the UI Department of Educational Policy Studies. The highly-acclaimed 1994 PBS American Experience documentary about the life of 1960's civil rights leader and Nation of Islam minister, Malcolm X, entitled "Malcolm X: Make It Plain," was shown as part of the College of Law's Social Justice Film Series. And this week, the month-long celebration culminated in a Keynote Address by Professor Leon Dash, the Pulitzer Prize winning Swanlund Chair in Journalism and Professor of Law who spent 34 years at the Washington Post, working on the City Desk, Foreign Desk, and the Investigative/Projects Desk, before joining the Colleges of Communication and Law. Professor Dash pioneered "immersion journalism" by which a reporter lives among his story subjects and gathers his material over a period of years, and he is currently at work on a book on the survival mechanisms of African Americans who settled in Mattoon, Illinois, after the Civil War.

Coming up this weekend is the annual BLSA Alumni Reunion at the College of Law, including the traditional Saturday night banquet. For more information, contact R. Scott Rochelle at (217) 351-8179 or rochelle@law.uiuc.edu.

Peter Maggs Receives the 2006 Distinguished Faculty Award for International Achievement

I am delighted to announce that this year's Distinguished Faculty Award for International Achievement has been won by Professor Peter Maggs, whose lifetime of work in Armenia, Belarus, Moldova, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Ukraine could not better capture the ideal of an award designed to honor extraordinary faculty achievement in the international arena.

Considered by many as the foremost American scholar on Soviet and post-Soviet law, Professor Maggs is a leading expert in the entire body of Russian law. Since 1994, he has served as a consultant for USAID contractors and the World Bank on numerous law reform projects in the former Soviet Union. He has also completed projects on Soviet law for the U.S. Department of State, and served as Director and Legal Reform Specialist for the Rule of Law Consortium in Washington, D.C. Professor Maggs has been a Fulbright Scholar four times, most recently as Fulbright Distinguished Chair at the University of Trento in Italy. He has also been a Guggenheim Fellow, and has co-authored more than 20 books and articles on Russian and Soviet law, including the second edition of The Civil Code of the Russian Federation, which he translated with Alexei Zhiltsov and recently published in Moscow. In addition, he has been active in international intellectual property law reform, co-authoring Intelektual'naia sobstvennost' (Intellectual Property), published by Iurist in Moscow (2001). He is a past member of the Panel of Recommended Arbitrators for the International Commercial Arbitration Court of the Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and is a former Chairman of the Committee on Soviet Law for the American Bar Association Section on International Law.

The distinguished campus award will be presented to Professor Maggs at a large dinner in his honor at the Krannert Center this month, and the College community will rejoice in this much-deserved celebration of his many remarkable achievements.

The Failure of Elder Abuse Legislation: The Annual Elder Law Lecture

The recently endowed Ann F. Baum Memorial Lecture on Elder Law will be held next Monday, March 6, at 12:30 p.m. in the Max L. Rowe Auditorium. This year's lecture, "Parallel Systems, Second-Class Citizens: The Failure of Elder Abuse Legislation," will be presented by Laura Watts, Program Director of the Canadian Centre for Elder Law Studies at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Ms. Watts will argue that elder abuse legislation actually makes older people more vulnerable because its provisions are essentially unenforceable and their underlying assumptions are ageist, sexist, paternalistic, and inconsistent with principles of a liberal legal theory. The lecture will focus on criminal code provisions as well as on fiduciary laws and their enforcement mechanisms in Canada and the United States, and it will consider the proper locus of these responsibilities in a federal legal system.

Prior to joining the Canadian Centre for Elder Law Studies, Ms. Watts handled sexual abuse and fiduciary-related cases with the Vancouver law firm of Dives, Grauer & Harper. A barrister and solicitor, she previously clerked in the Criminal Justice Division, Provincial Crown Counsel, and was in practice at the firm of Bull, Houser & Tupper.

10th Year Reunion of the College's Law Clinics, March 10th

More than 50 former students are expected to gather in celebration of the 10th anniversary of the University of Illinois Law Clinics on March 10th at the Knickerbocker Hotel in Chicago. During the past decade, the Law Clinics, conceived and taught by Professors George Bell, Cynthea Geerdes, Patrick Keenan, and Nina Tarr, have provided valuable live-client learning experiences to hundreds of students who have been eager to put theory to practice under the careful supervision of experienced attorneys. And they have provided important legal services to over a thousand citizens in Champaign-Urbana and the surrounding areas who would not otherwise have had the benefit of effective legal counsel. At the reception and dinner to be held on March 10th, faculty, alumni, and students will honor the ways in which the Clinics have transformed the educational experience at the College of Law and shaped the fates of many in the community. For more information about the Reunion, please contact Brenda Brinkerhoff at (217) 244-9505 or bsbrinke@law.uiuc.edu.

European Alumni Reunion in Berlin, May 26th-28th

Our many European alumni have established a wonderfully loyal tradition of gathering for annual reunions in special locations throughout Europe. This year's reunion will be held May 26-28 in Berlin and its organizers invite College graduates (both J.D. and LL.M.) who make their homes in Europe, as well as current students, faculty, and American alumni who might find reason to be in Europe at the time of their annual get-together, to join them.

Hans-Eric Rasmussen-Bonne (LLM '91) is the organizer of this year's gathering and he has put together a tremendous week-end of events that is sure to be great fun for all. We are also very pleased that College of Law Professor Jacqueline Ross (who fluently speaks numerous languages, including German, Italian, and French), will deliver the Keynote Lecture during the General Assembly on the topic of "Dilemmas of Undercover Policing in Germany." Further activities include a tour of Berlin Mitte and reminiscing about law school days over dinner at a riverside beer-garden situated with a view of the Kanzleramt, the Office of the Federal Chancellor. Also planned is a tour of Potsdam, capped off by a traditional dinner at the historic brewery of Krongut Bornstedt near Sanssouci Palace. Please join us for this memorable weekend. If you have questions, please contact Sherry Cibelli at scibelli@law.uiuc.edu. For information and to register, please visit: http://www.law.uiuc.edu/alumni/pdf/intl06.pdf.

Visiting Scholar Spotlight: Nigeria's Rosemary Adishetu Danesi

The College of Law is proud to host visiting scholars from around the globe each year and this month I want to tell you about a guest of distinguished stature and international expertise who has enriched our community for several months as a visiting Fulbright Researcher. Rosemary A. Danesi is from The University of Lagos in Nigeria and is working with Professor Matthew Finkin to investigate Nigerian labor law, especially as it relates to casual labor. She is comparing the casual labor practices in Nigeria with those of other countries and examining the International Labor Organization Convention's declarations to determine if Nigeria's casual labor practices conform to international labor standards. Ms. Danesi has degrees in Sociology, Industrial Relations and Personnel Management, Law, and she is now a Barrister at Law in Nigeria and a Lecturer at the University of Lagos.

Calling all Alumni! Please Fill Out Professor Robbennolt's Survey

It is only fitting to close this summary of scholarly endeavors at the College of Law by urging you to join in such an endeavor--to become an active participant in the intellectual life of the school, rather than a mere passive consumer of its results! If you are a graduate of the College or a friend in the profession, please participate in a new online study conducted by Professor Jennifer Robbennolt that is designed to explore how attorneys advise clients in settlement negotiations. As a practicing legal professional, your perspective is invaluable in understanding how disputes are resolved. Attorneys from all areas of practice are asked to participate, and survey responses will be confidential. After completing the survey, you will be given the opportunity to sign-up to receive a brief report of the results of the study. The study is conducted online and will take no more than 15 minutes. It would be a great favor to the College and to our much valued colleague, Professor Robbennolt, if you would take the time to complete this study at: http://survey.law.uiuc.edu.

So since March came in like a lamb, does that mean that it is destined to go out like a lion? Or does this meteorological conclusion not follow? Somehow I suspect that the answer will commit me to a position in the blood-stirring debate about whether one would see one's headlights if one turned them on at the speed of light. So I shall simply wish you all a month as sunny as its first day, urge you all to attend the many public events listed in the March Calendar at the end, and pass the electronic baton to Associate Dean Ralph Brubaker, whose Addendum below will update you on the amazingly prolific and engaging activities of the College's many faculty.

Sincerely,

Heidi M. Hurd
Dean and David C. Baum Professor of Law and Philosophy
Co-Director of the College of Law Program in Law and Philosophy

Associate Dean's Addendum

Professor Linda Beale was quoted extensively on National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" program on December 24 as part of a lengthy news story "Katrina Tax Breaks a Boon to Charities" on year-end tax breaks as part of Hurricane Katrina relief.

Professor J. Steven Beckett was quoted in a January Associated Press story, entitled "Trial venue changes bring counties high costs" regarding jury trials moving to different venues that was carried on WBBM-TV in Chicago and in statewide newspapers.

Professor Francis Boyle is currently representing the country of Bosnia as it joins Herzegovina in presenting charges of war crimes and genocide against the countries of Serbia and Montenegro before the International Court of Justice in The Hague. In December, Professor Boyle attended the Perdana Global Peace Forum 2005 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, presenting a lecture and conducting a workshop on "Iraq and the Laws of War." He also presented a lecture on "The Right of Civil Resistance to Prevent State Crimes" and helped to draft the Kuala Lumpur Initiative to Criminalize War.

Professor John Colombo, the Thomas M. Mengler Faculty Scholar, was quoted extensively in a Feb. 19 Champaign-Urbana News Gazette front-page article, entitled "Caught in the middle," regarding the proposed Illinois legislation requiring tax-exempt hospitals to provide charity care equal to 8 percent of their operating costs. The proposal was put forward to the Illinois legislature last month by State of Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan.

Professor Colombo, who is frequently quoted in national publications on the topic of non-profit organizations, sees both sides responding to Madigan's proposal, citing that hospitals would do a better job of identifying charity cases at admission but questions just how many uncompensated expenses can be piled on hospitals from a financial standpoint. He was also quoted in the Nov. 27 story "Ruling presents new challenge to hospitals' tax-exempt status" in the Cleveland Plain Dealer on the topic of a recent ruling by the Ohio Tax Commissioner revoking property tax exemption for a portion of the Cleveland Clinic. On March 31, he will lecture on tax exemption policy and medical debt at the annual St. Louis University Health Law Symposium.

Professor Margareth Etienne was profiled in the January, 2006 edition of Chicago Lawyer magazine in the cover story, "Head of the Class: 10 of the Best Law Professors in Illinois." Professor Etienne, who specializes in criminal law, criminal procedure, children and law, and sentencing, traveled on a Fulbright grant to Senegal in 2004 to train judges on white-collar crime issues.

Professor Eric Freyfogle, one of the nation's leading authorities on Environmental Law, discussed landowner responsibilities in conservation and land preservation efforts at the Nebraska Environmental Trust Open Space Conservation Conference February 20, pointing out that "too many landowners use their lands in ways that undercut the collective good, and their property rights shield them from accountability." He also discussed different points within the complaints that the government owns too much land in the Western states. The event was covered by the North Platte (Neb.) Telegraph.

Professor Freyfogle gave a presentation to the Agrarian Studies Program at Yale University on February 24 and later this month, Yale University Press will be releasing his book, Why Conservation is Failing and How it Can Regain Ground. An excerpt from the book is being published in the May-June issue of Orion magazine. Professor Freyfogle recently completed work on his next book, tentatively entitled, The Culture We Need to Take Care of Land, due out in early 2007 with the University Press of Kentucky.

Just this week, the Lewis and Clark Law School in Portland, Oregon, released its special issue of the journal, Environmental Law, addressing the hottest property law issue in the country at the moment--the constitutionality of Oregon Measure 37, requiring compensation to landowners for all drops in land value that they experience due to regulatory changes. Leading off the special issue is an essay by Professor Freyfogle, probing the institution of private property and urging reconsideration of the presumed divide between private land and publicly owned land.

Professor Tom Ginsburg was named one of six University Scholars, a program that recognizes excellence in teaching and research. Professor Ginsburg was honored at a dinner on February 13 at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts. The University Scholar program provides $ 10,000 to each scholar to use to enhance his or her academic career. Professor Ginsburg recently published, "The Unreluctant Litigant? Japan's Turn toward Litigation" in 35 Journal of Legal Studies 31-62 (2006) with UI Business Professor Glenn Hoetker) and "International Judicial Lawmaking" 45 Virginia Journal of International Law 631-73 (2005). He presented lectures in February on "The Unreluctant Litigant? An Empirical Analysis of Litigation in Japan" at Duke Law School and "Locking in Democracy: Constitutions, Commitments and International Law" at the University of Chicago International Law Workshop.

Professor C.K. Gunsalus hosted "The Illinois White Paper Conference" November 17 at the College of Law, entitled "Improving the System for Protecting Human Subjects: Counteracting IRB 'Mission Creep. Professor Gunsalus was one of the keynote speakers on two years' work by a group convened by the Center for Advanced Study at the University of Illinois. The principal speakers were Professor Gunsalus, Dr. Steven Breckler, Executive Director for Science, American Psychological Association, and members of the steering committee from the 2003 Human Subject Policy Conference. Professor Matthew Finkin also served on the steering committee.

In February, Professor Gunsalus presented seminars on conflict resolution and research ethics at Provena Covenant Medical Center, "Survival Skills for Administrators" at the AEJMC Leadership Seminar in Chicago and at the Georgia Tech University Leadership Seminar in Atlanta, "Central Dilemmas for Department Heads: Conflict Resolution and Bully proofing" at the Big Ten Conference Headquarters in Chicago, and a seminar on research ethics entitled, "How to have a dispute professionally" at the UI Mechanical Engineering Department.

In March and April, she will be a guest lecturer on research ethics in the UI Colleges of Engineering and Business and presenting "Survival Skills for Administrators" at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington.

University of Illinois College of Law Dean and David C. Baum Professor of Law and Philosophy Heidi M. Hurd addressed a large audience of judges and legal professionals at the Illinois Judicial Conference February 1 at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Chicago, delivering the plenary session lecture entitled "When the Spirit of the Law Collides with the Letter of the Law." Dean Hurd also gave large public lectures and faculty workshops in February on hate crime legislation, theories of statutory interpretation, and the obligation to keep promises at the University of Virginia and the William Mitchell School of Law.

Dean Hurd also published two articles in the past month, entitled "Expressing Doubts About Expressivism" (University of Chicago Legal Forum, 2005) and "Tolerating Wickedness: Moral Reasons for Lawmakers to Permit Immorality" (Annual Review of Law and Ethics 2005). She is featured in the Beckman Institute's 2006 calendar, "Big Brains on Campus," which displays artistically enhanced brain scans of campus leaders, faculty, students, and staff, as a means of providing information about the brain regions and functions each person uses in his or her work. Dean Hurd was also the featured guest of host Jim Turpin on the popular local radio call-in program, "Penny for Your Thoughts" on WDWS-AM 1400 on Thursday, January 10 from 10-11 a.m.

Professor David Hyman, the Galowich-Huizenga Faculty Scholar, recently released the book, Improving Healthcare: A Dose of Competition, from Springer Press.

Peer and Sarah Pedersen Professor Richard Kaplan was featured in the new "A Minute With..." segment highlighting University of Illinois faculty members on the main UI webpage. Professor Kaplan was interviewed on corporate pension changes. Professor Kaplan was the focus of an article about pension security entitled "A Sound Decision: Examining Plans Now Should Avert Headaches Later" that appeared in the annual Money Matters special supplement of Champaign-Urbana News-Gazette on Jan. 21. Professor Kaplan, one of the most-downloaded tax professors on the Social Science Research Network (SSRN), is also a leading expert on elder law. He was quoted in an article about the Medicare prescription drug benefit that appeared in The Arlington Heights Daily Herald on January 1 entitled "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered: Medicare Part D." Professor Kaplan was quoted in more than a dozen publications in the United States and Europe on the Medicare Part D plan.

His article entitled "Federal Tax Policy and Family-Provided Care for Older Adults" is in the recently-published 25 Virginia Tax Review 509 (2005). This article is the first examination of how federal tax policy affects the informal family caregivers who provide most of the long-term care for older Americans. His article on the new Medicare prescription drug benefit entitled "The Medicare Drug Benefit: A Prescription for Confusion" appeared at 1 NAELA [National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys] Journal 167 (2005), which is distributed to 5,000 practicing elder law attorneys around the country. His review of the book, Death by a Thousand Cuts: The Fight over Taxing Inherited Wealth by Yale Law professor Michael J. Graetz and Yale political science professor Ian Shapiro has just appeared at 58 National Tax Journal 831 (2005).

Professor Jay Kesan is serving as co-organizer, along with DePaul Associate Professor of Law Katherine Strandburg, for an intellectual property symposium entitled "The Age of Networks: Social, Cultural and Technological Connections Law in the Age of Networks: Implications of Network Science for Legal Analysis" on Friday, March 10 at the College of Law.

Professor Michael LeRoy wrote extensively on how far the government can go in forcing civilians to perform potentially life-threatening jobs during a national emergency, raising legal questions regarding compulsory work during a man-made or natural catastrophe in an extensive February, 2006 article in the Illinois News Bureau.

Professor Peter Maggs, the Clifford M. & Bette A. Carney Chair, released the book (with John Soma and James Sprowl), "Internet and Computer Law: Cases, Comments and Questions, 2nd ed." (St. Paul: West Group, 2005) and published three articles, "Dietrich Andre Loeber," Sudebnik, Vol. 9 (2004), No. 2, p. 265; "Public Land Ownership in the Russian Federation," in Public Policy and Law in Russia: In Search of a Unified Legal and Political Space, Essays in Honor of Donald D. Barry, Law in Eastern Europe 55, edited by Robert Sharlet and Ferdinand Feldbrugge (Leiden: Brill, 2005), pp. 199-211; and, "Russia's Writing Requirement under the Convention on Contracts for International Sale of Goods," in Balancing of Interests Liber Amicorum Professor Peter Hay zum 70. Geburtstag (Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Recht und Wirtschaft GmbH, 2005), pp. 279-283.

Professor Maggs gave an invited talk on Feb. 28 to a group of Northwestern University law students who are preparing for a Russian-law study tour to Russia. Coming up on March 6, Professor Maggs will be one of three panelists on a 15- minute listener call-in show dealing with issues regarding relations between Russia and the United States. The show will be entirely in Russian and will be broadcast live on the Voice of America's Russian service.

Professor Richard McAdams, the Guy Raymond Jones Professor of Law, recently received an advance contract from Harvard University Press for the publication of a book titled "The Expressive Power of Law." He recently published "The Expressive Power of Adjudication," 2005 Univ. Illinois Law Review 1043, completed the editing of "The Political Economy of Entrapment," which is immediately forthcoming in 96 Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology (2006), and completed a comment, "Guilt and Crime," for 2 Carceral Notebooks (forthcoming 2006). Professor McAdams presented, "The Just World Bias and Hate Crime Statutes," at the University of Chicago Crime & Punishment workshop in December, "The Political Economy of Entrapment," at the University of Chicago Faculty workshop in November, "The Expressive Power of Adjudication," annual meeting of the International Society for New Institutional Economics at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, Spain in September and presented "The Political Economy of Entrapment," at the Comparative Law & Economics Forum in Chicago in September.

Professor David Meyer, the Mildred Van Voorhis Jones Faculty Scholar, was featured on the "Justice Talking" program on National Public Radio in January on the topic, "The Tug of War Over Children."

In January, Walgreen University Chair and Center for Advanced Study Professor of Law and Philosophy Michael Moore's work in metaphysical approaches to law and to jurisprudence was the subject of the Jurisprudence Section panel discussion at the annual meeting of the American Association of Law Schools in Washington, D.C., with Moore summarizing his work. Also in January, Professor Moore organized and attended a conference on Intentions and Responsibility, co-sponsored by several universities (Penn, Rutgers, San Diego) as well as by the University of Illinois Program in Law and Philosophy. In February, Professor Moore gave a talk to the Faculty Workshop of the Michigan State School of Law in Lansing. In March, he will give the keynote address at a conference of Law and Morality at William and Mary University in Virginia, and later this month he will present a lead paper at the Inland Northwest Philosophy Conference at Pullman, Washington.

Two of Professor Moore's papers were recently published, "Causal Relata", in the Annual Review of Law and Ethics, Vol. 13 (2005), pp. 589-641, and "Freedom," in the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, Vol.29 (2005), pp. 9-26. The first deals with what sorts of entities can be causes and effects in both law and science, and the second explores why liberty is valuable and whether there can be a general right to liberty.

Visiting Professor David A. Myers recently co-authored Cases and Materials on Copyright and Other Aspects of Entertainment Litigation including Unfair Competition, Defamation, Privacy (7th ed; LexisNexis). He has authored an upcoming article, "Defamation and the Quiescent Anarchy of the Internet: A Case Study of Cyber Targeting" for the Penn State Law Review.

Richard W. and Marie L. Corman Professor Larry Ribstein has been among the most frequently downloaded law professors over the last year on the Social Science Research Network (SSRN). Professor Ribstein ranked 10th with a total of 5,302 downloads in the last year. He also ranked 13th in total number of submitted papers all-time with 35, including 10 in the last year.

Professor Ribstein wrote an op-ed piece that was posted in the January 14 edition of Forbes.com on Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito and his popular blog site, Ideoblog, was cited in the January 6 Wall Street Journal Online Law Blog. Professor Ribstein, an expert in business law, limited partnerships and contracts, was cited for his comments on the Securities and Exchange Commission's new financial penalties policy. Professor Ribstein was also quoted in the November 23 edition of the Washington Post in a story entitled, "U.S. Ends Prosecution of Arthur Andersen" and the front page of the Business section of the Nov. 26 final edition of the New York Times in a story entitled, "Maybe Let This Big Fish Off the Hook."

Professor Ribstein presented, "Teaching Wall Street," on using film to teach corporate law, at the AALS annual meeting, business associations section on January 4. The presentation was based on his previous articles "Imagining Wall Street," and "Wall Street and Vine." He also presented the paper "Choice of Form and Network Externalities" as the initial lecture in the law and economics program, Center for Development Studies, Trivandrum, India on December 12, 2005. Professor Ribstein also gave an interview for the Centre on December 23 on the concerns of law and economics that will be published in the Centre's newsletter. Professor Ribstein's lecture was previewed in The Hindu, the national newspaper of India, on December 11. Professor Ribstein will be speaking on the Sarbanes-Oxley Act March 13 at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research in Washington, D.C. and at the Berkeley Center for Law, Business and the Economy at the Boalt Hall School of Law on March 17.

At the recent 2006 American Association of Law Schools Convention, Professor Jennifer Robbennolt, a professor of law and psychology, was elected as chair-elect of the AALS Section on Law and the Social Sciences.

Professor Jacqueline Ross (University of Illinois College of Law) and Professor Mathias Reimann (University of Michigan Law School) are organizing a comparative law workshop to discuss work in progress, scheduled for April 21-23, 2006 at the University of Michigan Law School. The venue will alternate between the University of Michigan Law School in Ann Arbor and the University of Illinois College of Law. This workshop will be established jointly by the University of Illinois College of Law and the University of Michigan Law School and will be co-sponsored by the American Society of Comparative Law.

Professor Stephen Ross testified before the Antitrust Modernization Commission on December 1 at the Federal Trade Commission Conference Center in Washington, D.C. on the subject of Statutory Immunities and Exemptions. The Antitrust Modernization Commission was created in 2002 and is charged to examine whether the need exists to modernize the antitrust laws and to identify and study related issues; to solicit views of all parties concerned with the operation of the antitrust laws; to evaluate the advisability of proposals and current arrangements with respect to any issues so identified; and to prepare and submit to Congress and the President a report containing a detailed statement of the findings and conclusions of the Commission, together with recommendation for legislative or administrative action the Commission considers to be appropriate.

Professor Ross was quoted in the December 30 edition of the New Orleans Times-Picayune on the brewing legal fight between New Orleans Saints owner Tom Benson and the National Football League as Benson proposes moving the team to San Antonio, Texas. Professor Ross is quoted, "If Benson sued the NFL, he would have to prove the competition is reduced by having the team stay in New Orleans. That's a stretch . . . I am extremely confident if the league tries to keep the team in New Orleans that the league would ultimately prevail."

John E. Cribbet Professor Lawrence Solum will give the 2006 Natural Law Lecture at the University of Notre Dame Law School next month. The Lecture is the annual showcase presentation of the Natural Law Institute, and the text of the talk is featured in the Institute's scholarly publication, The American Journal of Jurisprudence. He presented, "Pivotal Politics, Appointments Gridlock, and the Nuclear Option" at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association and at faculty workshops at Lewis and Clark School of Law in Portland, Oregon, and at the Villanova University School of Law in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Professor Solum has recently signed a contract with Oxford University Press for a book on the theory of civil procedure.

Justice Clarence Thomas relied on the American Bankruptcy Institute Law Review in his opinion January 23, 2006 in Central Virginia Community College v. Katz, No. 04-885. He quotes University of Illinois Alice Curtis Campbell Professor Charles Tabb's seminal article, "The History of the Bankruptcy Laws in the United States," published in the American Bankruptcy Institute Law Review in 1995. See 3 Am. Bankr. Inst. L. Rev. 5 (1995), cited in Justice Thomas' dissent at pp. 7-8.

Professor Tabb also published an article, "The Brave New World of Bankruptcy Preferences," at 13 American Bankruptcy Institute Law Review 225-256 (2005), as part of a symposium on the 2005 Bankruptcy Act. A second article, "Lessons from the Globalization of Consumer Bankruptcy," was published in 30 Law & Social Inquiry 762-783 (2005). Another article, "Consumer Bankruptcy After the Fall: U.S. Law Under S. 256," is in press in the Canadian Business Law Journal. This paper was an invited presentation at the 35th Annual Workshop on Commercial and Consumer Law at the University of Toronto in October 2005. Professor Tabb's article, "Courting Controversy," is in press in the Buffalo Law Review, as part of a symposium held at the University of Wisconsin in September 2005.

Professor Tabb spoke at the 79th Annual Meeting of the National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges in November and presented his paper, "The Top Twenty Issues in the History of Consumer Bankruptcy." This article will be published in the University of Illinois Law Review.

Professor Tabb, Visiting Professor Natalie DeVooght and I are hosting a major bankruptcy conference in Chicago on April 7 titled "Consumer Bankruptcy and Credit in the Wake of the 2005 Act." The conference, featuring some of the leading bankruptcy scholars in the United States and Canada, will be held at the Millennium Knickerbocker Hotel in downtown Chicago. Conference fees are $250 for legal practitioners and $125 for judges, professors and students. To register, visit us online at http://www.law.uiuc.edu/conferences/bankruptcy/index.asp.

Calendar of College of Law Events

March 2006

March 2, 6:15-8:15 pm, Room D: "Global Perspectives on Counter-Terrorism," presented by Amos N. Guiora, Professor of Law and Director Institute for Global Security Law and Policy Case Western Reserve University School of Law. For more information contact jlsa@law.uiuc.edu.

March 2, 6:30-9:00 p.m., Room B: Social Justice Film Festival: "This Revolution Will Not Be Televised." All are invited to join the College of Law community to view a film and discuss various social justice issues. Professor Linda Beale to facilitate the discussion.

March 3: Class of 2009 Open House. For more information contact Rebecca Warsinsky at 217-333-8010 or rnw@law.uiuc.edu.

March 6, 12:30-2:30 pm, Max L. Rowe Auditorium: The Ann F. Baum Memorial Lecture in Elder Law. This year's Elder Law Lecture features Laura Watts of the Canadian Centre for Elder Law Studies. For more information contact Professor Richard Kaplan at mailto:rkaplan@law.uiuc.edu.

March 15, 12:00-1:00 pm, Room A: Jenner & Block Presentation on Career Development. Charlotte Wager, hiring partner from Jenner & Block, will be speaking about career development in the practice of law. For more information contact Amanda Lindemann in Career Services at 217-333-8951 or lindemnn@law.uiuc.edu.

March 16, 6:30-9:00 p.m., Room B: Social Justice Film Festival: "Thin Blue Line." All are invited to join the College of Law community to view a film and discuss various social justice issues. Professor Kit Kinports to facilitate the discussion.

March 21-24, Illini Center, 200 South Wacker, Chicago: Chicago Off-Campus Interview Program. For more information contact Amanda Lindemann in the Career Services Office at 217-333-8951 or mailto:lindemnn@law.uiuc.edu.

March 29, 12:00-1:00 pm, Room 202D: Student Lunch with Dean Hurd. Students are welcome to stop by Room 202E to sign-up to have lunch with Dean Hurd.

March 30, 10:00-11:00 am, Room 200: Deans' Open Forum. Students are invited to join Dean Hurd and Assistant Dean Vermillion for an open discussion of College matters.

March 30, 6:30-9:00 p.m., Room B: Social Justice Film Festival: "Other People's Money." All are invited to join the College of Law community to view a film and discuss various social justice issues. Professor David Hyman to facilitate the discussion.

March 31: Class of 2009 Open House. For more information contact Rebecca Warsinsky at 217-333-8010 or rnw@law.uiuc.edu.

Looking ahead to May
May 26-28: European Alumni Association Reunion - Berlin, Germany. For more information contact Carolyn Pribble at mailto:cpribble@law.uiuc.edu..