News

Dean Welcomes Students Back for Spring Term

Welcome back for spring semester! I hope everyone enjoyed the holiday break and is ready for an active and productive new term. As I do each semester, I write to bring you up to date on upcoming events, faculty news, and speaker series at Northwestern Law.

Upcoming Law School Events | Speaker Series | Faculty Conferences | Upcoming Student Organization Events

We are pleased to welcome Dan Fischel (above), who permanently joins Northwestern as a Professor of Law and Business this spring. He was formerly the Lee and Brena Freeman Professor of Law and Business at the University of Chicago, and was also a member of the Northwestern Law faculty from 1980 to 1984. He will teach Business Associations this semester.

Please join me in also welcoming the following visiting faculty, who will be here for spring 2006:

Jeffrey Kwall (above), the Kathleen and Bernard Beazley Research Professor at Loyola University School of Law—Chicago, joins the Law School as the visiting Harry R. Horrow Visiting Professor in International Law. He will be teaching two courses, Advanced Corporate Taxation and Entity Taxation, this semester.

Charlton Copeland also joins us this spring as a visiting assistant professor. His research interests include administrative law, federal courts and federalism, legislation, comparative constitutional law and theory, law and religion, law and social movements, race and the law. He will teach Comparative Constitutional Law this semester.

Finally, Sandra Babcock (above), director of the Mexican Capital Legal Assistance Program, will be a visiting clinical professor in the Center for International Human Rights. She has taught courses on international law and the death penalty and was formerly a criminal defense attorney and a consultant on issues of international criminal law.

David E. Van Zandt, Dean

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UPCOMING LAW SCHOOL EVENTS

Martin Luther King Jr. Day, January 16

There is much to look forward to this spring beginning with the Chicago campus Martin Luther King Jr. Day Celebration on Monday, January 16. This year's Chicago campus events will feature a tribute to the women of the Civil Rights Movement in honor of Rosa Parks.

Keynote speakers will be Harry Lennix (pictured above), Chicago-born actor currently starring in ABC's political drama "Commander in Chief," and Deborah Mathis, Assistant Professor at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism Washington Program and Managing Editor of the Medill News Service Washington Bureau. Lennix and Mathis will reflect on the impact of the media on the political and racial issues currently facing our nation and their impact on the contemporary civil rights agenda. The keynote addresses will take place at 11 a.m. in Thorne Auditorium.

Winter On-Campus Recruitment, January and February
The Center for Career Strategy and Advancement is sponsoring another recruitment program open to all Northwestern Law students, which will take place January 23, 25, 30 and February 1, 6, and 8. For details on how to participate, visit the Career Strategy Center.

Also, on March 1 the Career Strategy Center will host the annual Meet the Employers Night. This is a great opportunity for first-year JD students to learn about employers who recruit on campus prior to bidding for on-campus interviews. Stay posted for information on exact date and time. View a list of last year's attendees (xls).

Lawyer as Problem Solver, January 12 and 19
First-year JD, JD-MBA, and LLM students will finish the last two sessions of Lawyer as Problem Solver on January 12 and 19. The final session will conclude with a reception for sponsors and students. View more details on the offered courses.

Law Review Centennial, January 27
The Northwestern University Law Review celebrates its 100th year in publication. Join students, faculty, and fellow alumni for a Centennial Celebration on Jan. 27. Keynote address by Judge Richard C. Tallman (JD '78), U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The Journal will also publish a special centennial issue

43rd Annual Julius H. Miner Moot Court Competition, January–March
Preliminary rounds for the 43rd Annual Julius H. Miner Moot Court Competition will take place January 31 and February 2, 7, and 9. More than 80 second-year students are expected compete in this prestigious competition this year. The final round will take place March 3.

Executive LLM in Korea Students Come to Chicago, January - March
Please join me in welcoming 13 Executive LLM in Korea students who arrive this month from Seoul, South Korea, to take classes as part of the degree program's Spring Option. Over spring break in March, they will be joined by the rest of their class, 15 students, to take the last course and attend their graduation ceremony, March 25.

Northwestern Law's Executive LLM Program commences each February in Seoul . Our faculty traveled to Korea for two-week periods through the ensuing 12 months to teach courses as part of the fixed curriculum.

International Team Projects (ITP)
Students involved in ITP gain firsthand experience in international legal and business environments through a combination of semester-long research, an intense two-week field study abroad, and a final group project. This year's ITP groups will be researching abroad March 11-26 in the following countries: Argentina, Australia, Russia, South Africa, and Turkey. View project course proposals.

Spring Law Board Meeting, March 31 – April 1
The Law Board will meet for the second time this year in April. The board is comprised of graduates and friends of the Law School who are distinguished members of the bar, the corporate world, and the government and not-for-profit sectors. The Law Board serves to advise the faculty and administration on the future course of the Law School and helps monitor the implementation of our Strategic Plan.

Leadership Retreat, April 6 - 8
SBA Executive Board members and interested student organization leaders will take part in the third annual Lawyer as Leader development retreat in Lake Geneva, Wisc. The weekend's activities include outdoor challenge courses, team building workshops, event planning sessions, and more.

Day at Northwestern Law, April 1
We will welcome more than 100 admitted students to a Day at Northwestern Law on April 1. Second-year JD students Ben Jones and Rita Srivastava, have worked with the Admissions and Student Affairs teams to plan special events to introduce admitted students to the Law School. This year's Day at Northwestern Law coincides with Wigmore Follies, our annual student-run cabaret show, as well as the spring meetings of the Law Board, our strategic advisory board. We hope after spending some time as part of the Northwestern Law community, these admitted students choose to join us next fall.

2006 Graduation Week, May 8 - 14
The graduation committee, chaired by Tiffany Fobes (JD '06), is busy working with the Student Affairs team to plan this year's Graduation Convocation, which will take place Sunday, May 14. The graduation committee will have additional activities planned throughout the week, including a barbecue, the Last Lecture, and a dinner and dance.

This year's commencement speaker will be Hon. Joel M. Flaum, chief judge of the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals.

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SPEAKER SERIES

Yale Law Professor and Scholar to Deliver 2006 Julius Rosenthal Foundation Lecture Series, April 4 - 6
John J. Donohue, Leighton Homer Surbeck Professor of Law at Yale University, will deliver the three-part Julius Rosenthal Foundation Lectures on "Empirical Evaluation of Law and Public Policy: The Promise and the Perils." The first lecture will take place at 4 p.m. on April 4, and the following two lectures will take place at noon on April 5 and 6. Donohue is the author of Foundations of Employment Discrimination Law. He specializes in corporate finance, employment discrimination, criminal law, law and economics, contracts, law and statistics and torts, among other subjects.

Chief Justice Roberts Scheduled as 2007 Howard Trienens Visiting Judicial Scholar, January 31 - February 2, 2007
John Roberts, Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, will spend two days at Northwestern Law as the Howard J. Trienens Visiting Judicial Scholar. During his visit, he plans to breakfast and lunch with students and faculty, sit in on a class, have dinner with alumni-donors, and tour the Law School.

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FACULTY CONFERENCES

"Commemorating the 40th Anniversary of Chicago's Landmark Gautreaux Public Housing Desegregation Case," Spring 2006
This conference, organized by Professor Leonard S. Rubinowitz, will examine and assess the implications and impact of the Gautreaux public housing desegregation litigation, which was filed in 1966 and resulted in a landmark Supreme Court decision in 1976. Four decades after the case began, the remedial processes remain active and influential in Chicago, with no end in sight. The conference will address questions related to the ghettoization of African-Americans that are implicated in this litigation.

"Why Do Companies Obey the Law, When They Do?" Spring 2006
In the midst of all the news regarding corporate illegality, it is easy to forget that corporations often comply with law and, in particular, positive law in the form of regulations. Such compliance is something of a mystery for the traditional rational actor model that dominates law and economics literature. Because the probability of detection and punishment is extremely low in many cases, and government penalties often involve relatively trivial sums, we might expect to see much less compliance than we do. This conference, organized by David Dana, Associate Dean for Faculty and Research and Professor of Law, will explore the question of why, when corporations face minor expected penalties, might they nonetheless invest substantial resources in achieving compliance.

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UPCOMING STUDENT ORGANIZATION EVENTS

Law Review Centennial Celebration, January 27

Intellectual Property Week , January 30 – February 3

Diversity Week , January 23-27

Black History Month , February

Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property Symposium, February 24

APALSA Heritage Week , February 27 – March 3

Women's Leadership Coalition Week , March 6-10

Wigmore Follies, March 31 – April 1

SFPIF Benefit Dinner , April 11

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