News

The Law School's National Moot Court Competition teams achieved outstanding results at the Region 14 tournament held at Mitchell Hamline School of Law in St. Paul Nov. 16-18, winning a best brief award and sending one team on to the national finals.

The Law School’s Robina Institute of Criminal Law and Criminal Justice and its co-director, Professor Kevin Reitz, have been selected to take part in a new interdisciplinary research project under the auspices of the University’s Driving Tomorrow Grand Challenges program. The two-year project, entitled “Identifying and Addressing Disparities in the Criminal Justice and Health Care Systems,” will also involve researchers from the University’s medicine, sociology, and pediatrics departments; it is part of the Grand Challenges focus area Fostering Just and Equitable Communities.

The Law School’s Institute on Metropolitan Opportunity and Law & Inequality: A Journal of Theory and Practice will present a “Summit for Civil Rights: Racial Unity and Integration as a Path to Prosperity” Nov. 9-10.

Vice President Walter Mondale (’56) and Rep. Keith Ellison (’90) are serving as co-conveners of the summit. The Kresge Foundation, based in Troy, Mich., is a sponsor of the convening and is providing grant support.

The Law School’s Intellectual Property & Entrepreneurship Clinic will host free drop-in legal advice sessions. The sessions are designed to help innovators, creators, and entrepreneurs protect their ideas, kickstart their startup companies, and build and secure their dream businesses. All sessions are offered under limited representation, and are filled on a first-come, first-served basis. Professor Phillip Goter will serve as faculty supervisor during each session.

Second-year Law School student Abigail Hencheck (’19) has been selected to receive a 2017-18 Benjamin B. Ferencz Fellowship in Human Rights and Law. The fellowship, which is awarded by World Without Genocide, an organization based at Mitchell Hamline School of Law in St. Paul, is named in honor of international human rights advocate Benjamin B. Ferencz.

Karen Lundquist, assistant professor of legal writing and English as a second language in the Law School’s LL.M. program, has been honored as the 2017 Volunteer of the Year by LegalCORPS, a Minneapolis-based nonprofit. Through the services of volunteer attorneys, LegalCORPS provides free assistance in nonlitigation business law matters to low-income owners of small businesses, small nonprofit organizations, and low-income innovators in Minnesota. Lundquist will receive her award at LegalCORPS’ annual celebration, to be held the evening of Monday, Oct.

The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers has presented Professor JaneAnne Murray with a presidential commendation for her “commitment to ensuring justice and due process for all” as a leader with two NACDL clemency efforts: Clemency Project 2014, an initiative spearheaded by the Obama administration, and the recently launched NACDL/FAMM (Families Against Mandatory Minimums) State Clemency Project. Also honored was Marjorie J. Peerce, co-managing partner with Ballard Spahr, a New York firm that recently merged with Minneapolis-based Lindquist & Vennum.

Clinical Professor Brad Clary (’75) has been appointed to serve on the Accreditation Committee of the American Bar Association’s Council on Legal Education, the official U.S. Department of Education-approved accrediting agency for the nation’s law schools.

At 9 a.m. on Aug. 28, the members of the J.D. class of 2020 gathered in Mondale Hall for the start of their University of Minnesota Law School orientation. The next four days would be a whirlwind: welcoming speeches from Dean Garry W. Jenkins and other leaders, meet-and-greet moments, section assignments and meetings, no less than three legal writing sessions, insights from professors, introductions to the Law Library and Career Center, a group photo, an ice cream social, mock classes, working lunches, the Great Law School Scavenger Hunt, and much more.

The American criminal justice system relies on jurors to regularly decode the mental states of criminal defendants. When those defendants are people of color, decoding minority mental states is a centerpiece of the justice process.

A new study released by Law School Professor Francis Shen finds that it may be possible to make these “minority mens rea” determinations (mens rea is a legal term referring to criminal intent) without significant racial bias.