Race, police-community trust, and the criminal justice system were on the minds of speakers at “Echoes of Birmingham: Dr. King’s Legacy in Today’s Minnesota,” a Jan. 19 event sponsored by the Law School Diversity Committee.

Professor Mark Kappelhoff, a former deputy assistant attorney general in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, began the discussion of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1963 “Letter from Birmingham Jail” by pointing to its most famous passage: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

The White House has announced President Obama’s nomination of Mike Rothman (’88) to a seat on the board of directors of the National Association of Registered Agents and Brokers (NARAB). Rothman is the current commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Commerce, having been appointed to that post by Gov. Mark Dayton in 2011. NARAB is an independent nonprofit corporation, established by Congress in January 2015 to streamline insurance sales throughout the 50 states while preserving the states’ ability to protect consumers.

The specter of gentrification has been raised by several local commentators in the Twin Cities in recent months. A new study evaluates the extent to which gentrification has been occurring in Minneapolis and St. Paul neighborhoods since 2000 by examining data for 12 separate indicators of neighborhood change, including income, poverty, racial change, owner occupancy rates, home values, rents, and housing affordability.

A legal team from the University of Minnesota Law School’s Center for New Americans (CNA) worked as part of the CARA Family Detention Pro Bono Project to win stays of removal for women and children who were swept up in deportation raids conducted last week by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.

Visitors to Washington, D.C., often get in touch with the offices of their U.S. representatives to request a tour of the Capitol building. For Cayla Ebert (’18), such a request resulted in an invitation to attend President Barack Obama’s final State of the Union address, which he will deliver to a joint session of Congress this evening.

Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton has reappointed Gary M. Hall (’82) to the five-judge Minnesota Workers’ Compensation Court of Appeals (WCCA), where he has served since 2012. The reappointment is for a six-year term, which will expire on January 3, 2022.

“Judge Hall has served the people of Minnesota with distinction in this important role,” Dayton said in announcing the reappointment. “I thank him for his many years of service to the state of Minnesota, and for his continued commitment to safety and justice in the workplace.”

Nick Hittler, who is on track to graduate from the Law School in May, has been selected through the U.S. Attorney General’s Honors Program to work as a judicial law clerk at the Department of Justice’s Immigration Court in Bloomington, Minn. Hittler will clerk for the Immigration Court judges during his two-year term.