I am deeply honored to have been appointed the 12th Dean of this great law school. It has been a joy to connect and reconnect with many alumni and friends of Minnesota Law this past year, and I am so grateful for your many messages of encouragement and support. I’m already looking forward to meeting many more of you in the months and years to come! In the meantime, you can learn a bit more about me, my career, my family, and my love of the Law School in this edition of Minnesota Law magazine.
This issue also captures some of the exciting energy and impressive accomplishments that make Minnesota Law so remarkable. Our school year has already been full of events with notable guests and speakers. A thrilling highlight was the opportunity to host Justice Sonia Sotomayor for a day-long visit with students this fall. Justice Sotomayor was so generous with her advice and time, even skipping a scheduled break to gather a group of students from the subplaza for an additional impromptu question-and-answer session.
Adding extra buzz to Mondale Hall this fall are three exceptional scholars who joined our faculty. As you will see in these pages, James Coleman, Emmanuel Mauleón, and Ilan Wurman are already making strong contributions to teaching, research, and intellectual life at the Law School.
In this issue, you’ll read about many other endeavors of our dynamic faculty. Professor Prentiss Cox ’90 has reconceived the way he teaches 1L civil procedure to build an innovative new model. Professor Amy Monahan and her colleague are recommending a new path forward for the regulation of employer-provided health insurance. And Professor Francis Shen and co-authors have published a book about neuroscience and the law as a resource for lawyers, judges, and policymakers to understand how the brain really works. Our faculty are busy!
You’ll also read about some of the extremely varied ways members of our student and alumni community are serving society. Elizabeth Mansfield ’25, has a passion for helping our immigrant community by working with the Binger Center for New Americans. Recent graduates Ben Gleekel ’23 and Lucy Chin ’24 are the latest in a long line of Minnesota Law alums selected as Equal Justice Works fellows. Minnesota Law alum Shannon Jankowski ’17 has dedicated her career
to defending freedom of speech and freedom of expression. And alum Dillon White ’16 connects with millions of followers about parenting, marriage, and the law through his social media platform @dadchats.
Unfortunately, we have lost two revered emeriti faculty this year. As a community, we deeply mourn the loss of Professor Emeritus Fred Morrison and Professor Emeritus Robert Levy, both scholarly giants who were fiercely dedicated to teaching, scholarship, and advancing the law — in addition to being great friends and colleagues to many of us at the Law School. We celebrate their legacies and accomplishments in this edition of Minnesota Law magazine.
Once again, thank you for your dedication to Minnesota Law. Your support for our work makes such a difference to me, our students, and our extraordinary Minnesota Law community.
Warmly,
William McGeveran
Dean and William S. Pattee Professor of Law
University of Minnesota Law School