News

The Human Rights Center was thrilled to support Stepan Karamalac's participation at the 17th session of the UN Forum on Minority Issues at the United Nations Office at Geneva, where he represented the Bulgarian/national minority of Moldova. Stepan is a Visiting Fellow with the Human Rights Center and  The Hubert H.

The University of Minnesota Law School is thrilled to announce Amna A. Akbar will join the faculty as the Benjamin N. Berger Professor in Criminal Law in the fall of 2025. Akbar is a scholar of contemporary social movements, policing, race, capitalism, and inequality. With a focus on protest and organizing, she is interested in understanding law as a dynamic terrain of social, economic, and political contestation, and in how institutions and discourses of law define and delimit possibilities of emancipation.

Michael P. Sullivan ’62, passed away on November 20, at age 89. He was a 1962 graduate of the University of Minnesota Law School and practiced law for 25 years at the Minneapolis-based firm, Gray Plant Mooty. Sullivan served as Hennepin County Bar Association president from 1976 to 1980. During his time at the law firm, Sullivan did legal work in the franchise practice area, including with International Dairy Queen. He subsequently held the position of vice chairman of the Dairy Queen board of directors, and then went on to become CEO of Dairy Queen, a position he held from 1987 to 2001.

The University of Minnesota Law School held a reception to welcome William McGeveran as Minnesota Law's 12th dean and William S. Pattee Professor of Law on Monday, November 18 at McNamara Alumni Center.

Family, friends, faculty, staff, alumni, members of the University's Board of Regents, University leadership, members of the bench and bar, and many others gathered together in honor of Dean William McGeveran.

Sonia Sotomayor, associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, visited the University of Minnesota Law School in late October. She was in Minneapolis for the investiture of the Honorable Elizabeth Bentley to the Minnesota State Court of Appeals and visited the Law School during her stay in the Twin Cities.

The University of Minnesota Law School is pleased to announce Vinita R. Singh will join the faculty as an associate professor of law in the fall of 2025. Professor Singh studies economic statecraft, with an emphasis on examining how federal income taxation can be used to advance U.S. foreign policy and national security goals. 

The University of Minnesota Law School is pleased to announce that Samuel J. Merchant will join the faculty in the fall of 2025 as an associate professor of law. Merchant is currently a visiting assistant professor at the University of Oklahoma College of Law, where he teaches constitutional law, criminal procedure, sentencing, and Habeas Corpus. He is also a research fellow at the Georgetown Law Center for the Constitution.

Ilan Wurman, who joined the Law School this fall as an associate professor of law, has been named the Julius E. Davis Professor of Law. Before joining Minnesota Law, he was an associate professor of law at the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law at Arizona State University. He teaches and writes in the areas of administrative law and constitutional law.

Charlotte Garden has been appointed the Gray, Plant, Mooty, Mooty & Bennett Professor of Law. She joined Minnesota Law in 2022 and teaches and writes in the areas of labor law, employment law, and constitutional law. She has published over 25 journal articles and book chapters on these topics, along with casebooks and edited volumes.

Kayla Gillespie ’25 is the recipient of the Minnesota Women Lawyers (MWL) 2024 Social Justice Writing Award. This award will be presented at MWL's 30th Annual Rosalie Wahl Leadership Lecture on November 14th in recognition of her paper “Bostock, the Safe Streets Act, and Protecting LGBTQ People from Discriminatory Policing.”

Minnesota Law alum Amy Cohen ’24 received an honorable mention in recognition of her paper entitled “From Powell to Present: Defining the Right to Counsel Beyond Rothgery.”