News

On Nov. 20, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child celebrated its 25th anniversary. In honor of this milestone, Kristi Rudelius-Palmer, co-director of the Human Rights Center, and the Law School's Fulbright Humphrey Fellow Vered Windman, participated in a mock U.S. Senate hearing on children's rights legislation at the Edward M. Kennedy Institute in Boston, which will officially open in March. The institute has a replica of the U.S.

Tim Looby (’82) has been appointed by Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton to serve as a judge in the state's First Judicial District. He replaces Judge Thomas McCarthy, who retired. The First Judicial District, with 36 judges, more than 250 staff employees, and an annual caseload topping 150,000, encompasses a seven-county area just south of the Twin Cities. Looby's investiture ceremony was held Oct. 24.

The Minnesota Justice Foundation (MJF) has announced that among the recipients of its Outstanding Service Awards this year will be Law School alumna Sara Sommarstrom (’05) and third-year law student George Byron "Geordie" Griffiths. The awards will be presented at the MJF Annual Awards Celebration on November 19.

In 1914, three students from China—Pan Wen Huen, Pan Wen Ping, and Kwong Yi Kum—enrolled at the University of Minnesota. Today, the University hosts more than 2,200 students and scholars from China each year. China 100 is the University's yearlong celebration honoring those first Chinese students and the wealth of connections that have come in the century since.

A new study by the Institute on Metropolitan Opportunity (IMO) at the University of Minnesota Law School showed that charter schools in Chicago underperform comparable traditional public schools and are more highly segregated by race. The analysis used comprehensive data for Chicago schools in 2012-13 and controlled for the mix of students and other challenges faced by individual schools.

David Weissbrodt, founder and co-director of the Human Rights Center, a member of the Law School faculty since 1975 and a local, national, and global leader in human rights advocacy, has been named a 2014 recipient of the Elizabeth Hurlock Beckman Award. The honor recognizes educators who have inspired their former students to "create an organization which has demonstrably conferred a benefit on the community at large."

Professor Heidi Kitrosser's forthcoming book, Reclaiming Accountability: Transparency, Executive Power, and the U.S. Constitution, has been named the recipient of the 2014 IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law/Roy C. Palmer Civil Liberties Prize. The book will be published in January by the University of Chicago Press.

If you want to make Ruth Bader Ginsburg smile, wear clothing based on her social media meme. The U.S. Supreme Court justice has inspired "Notorious R.B.G.," a Tumblr dedicated to all things Ginsburg. In one image on the site, she is pictured wearing a rakish crown in the style of the rapper Notorious B.I.G.

"Oh, I like your T-shirt," Ginsburg told an admirer wearing Notorious R.B.G. apparel at Tuesday's Law School-sponsored question-and-answer session.

The 195 members of the J.D. class of 2017 gathered in Mondale Hall at 8 a.m. on Aug. 26 for the start of their Law School orientation. Over the next three days, they would be welcomed, briefed, tipped off, and clued-in; meet professors, administrators, and other key figures; go to lunch, go to socials, go on a scavenger hunt; and be given not one, but two legal writing assignments, lest they forget what this whirlwind of meeting and greeting was really about.

Professor Joan S. Howland has been elected chair of the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar Council for the 2014-15 term. The Section focuses on legal education, lawyer licensing, and the bar admissions process. The Council is the national accrediting body for law schools located in the United States and Puerto Rico.

Howland has been a member of the Council since 2006. Her other work with the ABA has included service on numerous committees, including, from 2001-06, membership on the Accreditation Committee.