News

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.

The Law School’s pioneering Center for New Americans (CNA) has announced that Deepinder Singh Mayell will become the director of its Education and Outreach Program in January. The program engages law students, along with the CNA’s law firm and nonprofit partners, in collaborative projects that teach noncitizens about their legal rights and train lawyers to provide high-quality pro bono representation to immigrants.

Griffin Ferry, who is on track to receive his J.D. from the Law School next May, has been named the winner of the 2015 International Humanitarian Law (IHL) Student Writing Competition. The competition is sponsored by the Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law at American University Washington College of Law, the American Society of International Law’s Lieber Society, and the IHL program of the American Red Cross.

David Wippman, the 10th dean of the University of Minnesota Law School, announced today that he will be stepping down at the end of the current academic year to accept a position as president of Hamilton College in Clinton, New York. Wippman, who grew up in Minnesota and was previously a professor and associate dean at Cornell Law School and vice provost for international relations at Cornell University, has been the Law School’s dean since July 1, 2008.

In a message to alumni and friends, he said:

Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton has appointed Tracy M. Smith (’88) to the Minnesota Court of Appeals, effective Feb. 2, 2016. She will replace Judge John P. Smith (no relation), who is retiring. Tracy Smith has been the University of Minnesota’s deputy general counsel since 2013, after serving as an associate in the general counsel’s office since 1994. She previously clerked for Judge Max Rosenn of the U.S.

Following a remarkable second round of litigation before the U.S. Supreme Court, the immigration case of Moones Mellouli came to a definitive end last week when an immigration court dismissed with prejudice all deportation proceedings against him after federal authorities promised the Supreme Court that they would never again seek to deport him, or any other immigrant, on the basis of drug convictions that have no proven connection to substances controlled under federal law.