News

During times of social upheaval, many people become overwhelmed. Instead of getting engaged, they nod off, dreaming of quieter times. At the Law School’s fourth annual Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Convocation, Laura Coates ’05, a CNN legal analyst and author, urged listeners not to be one of those people.

Coates began her speech, titled “Conscious Justice in a Fake News Era; A Reflection on MLK’s Sermon ‘Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution,’” by reading an excerpt of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s 1968 address at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.

The Law School just launched a new clinic designed to provide legal assistance to the growing number of immigrants living in rural areas.

Professor Daniel Schwarcz has been named the Fredrikson & Byron Professor of Law.

Associate Professor Steve Meili has been named the inaugural James H. Binger Professor in Clinical Law.

Meili, who entered law teaching in 1991, joined the Law School faculty in 2008 as a clinical professor. He received tenure as an associate professor in 2018.

Warren Francis Plunkett ’48, who served for 26 years as a judge in Minnesota’s 3rd Judicial District, died Dec. 30 in Austin, Minnesota, of complications from pneumonia. He was 98.

An interdisciplinary immigration-data-collection project proposed by Professor Linus Chan and Jack DeWaard, professor of sociology in the College of Liberal Arts, has received a faculty research award.

The title of the newly funded project is “Promoting Transparency and Engagement in U.S. Immigration Court by Ensuring the Quality and Utility of Data Collected by Volunteer Observers.” The University of Minnesota’s Human Rights Initiative approved $47,087 in funding for the 2019 calendar year.

Minnesota Law is home to a very vibrant community of international students from around the globe. One of those students is Natacha Garcia from Caracas, Venezuela, who first came to Minnesota Law in 2016 to get her LL.M. After completing that program, she enrolled in our J.D. program and is currently a 3L.

Why did you choose Minnesota Law when you originally came here for your LL.M. degree?

Governor-Elect Tim Walz appointed Nancy Leppink ’85 as commissioner of the Department of Labor and Industry.

Leppink is currently chief of labour administration with the Labour Inspection and Occupational Safety and Health Branch of the International Labour Organization in Geneva, Switzerland.

Leppink has more than 25 years’ experience as a strategist and leader in employment and labor policy, law, administration, enforcement and compliance. Her experience includes work at the international, national, and state levels working with public, private and non-profit sectors

Minnesota Gov.-elect Tim Walz has appointed Rebecca Lucero ’07 as commissioner of the state’s Department of Human Rights. 

Lucero currently serves as the public policy director at the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits.

Professor Allan Erbsen was recently elected to membership in the American Law Institute.

ALI is the leading independent organization in the United States producing scholarly work to clarify, modernize, and improve the law. The group drafts, discusses, revises, and publishes Restatements of the Law, Model Codes, and Principles of Law that are enormously influential in the courts and legislatures, as well as in legal scholarship and education.

Erbsen joins about 20 fellow faculty members currently teaching at Minnesota Law who have been elected to ALI membership.