News

The Law School Career Center has been selected as the 2017 recipient of the P&A Senate Outstanding Unit Award. The award, given annually by the University’s Academic Professionals and Administrators Senate, recognizes a University unit that is exemplary in its support of professional and administrative staff and the role they fulfill in advancing the University’s mission.

Robert A. Stein (’61), the Everett Fraser Professor of Law at the Law School, is among the recipients of the 2017 University of Minnesota President’s Award for Outstanding Service. The award was established in 1997 to recognize faculty and staff who have provided exceptional service to the University, its schools, colleges, departments, and service units; such service must have gone well beyond the regular duties of a faculty or staff member, and demonstrate unusual commitment to the University community. Each year, approximately 12 individuals are chosen to receive the award.

The Minnesota State Bar Association has announced that Alexandra Klass, a Distinguished McKnight University Professor at the Law School, has been awarded the 2017 Eldon G. Kaul Distinguished Service Award from the MSBA’s Environmental, Natural Resource, and Energy Law Section. The award recognizes a member of the bench or bar who has demonstrated a significant commitment and made an outstanding contribution to environmental, natural resources or energy law in the state of Minnesota.

Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton has appointed Jessica J.W. Maher (’99) to serve as a district judge in the state’s 1st Judicial District, which encompasses Carver, Dakota, Goodhue, Le Sueur, McLeod, Scott, and Sibley counties. In making the appointment, Dayton praised Maher for her “exceptional commitment to public service” and said that “Minnesotans will be well served by her sound judgment and legal expertise.”

The Ramsey County Bar Association has named Judge Nicole Starr (’03) the recipient of its 2017 Excellence in Diversity Award.

Starr, a judge on Minnesota’s 2nd Judicial District bench since 2015, has been actively involved in human rights, diversity, and inclusion issues at local, national, and international levels for many years. Locally, she has organized tours of law offices for students of color. She served as vice chair of the St. Paul Human Rights Commission from 2005 to 2010 and has been a legal consultant for the Indian Child Welfare Center.

The Organization of American Historians has announced that Susanna Blumenthal, the Julius E. Davis Professor of Law and an associate professor of history in the College of Liberal Arts, is the winner of the 2017 Merle Curti Award for the best book published in American intellectual history.

Law School Professor Heidi Kitrosser has been awarded a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship. The highly competitive, national fellowship is awarded annually to about 175 scholars and artists selected from among more than 3,500 applicants. This is the first Guggenheim Fellowship awarded to a University of Minnesota Law School professor.

Alan Page (’78), a former Minnesota Supreme Court justice and a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, has been awarded the 2017 Polaris Lifetime Achievement Award for his “continuous and impactful contributions … regarding equity, diversity and justice.” Page will be the first recipient of the award, which was established by the University earlier this year to recognize emergent and established change makers who have made extraordinary contributions to enhance equity and diversity. Page will receive the award on Thursday, April 27, at the Campus Club in Coffman Memorial Union.

Clinical Professor Linus Chan has been awarded the 2017 University Outstanding Community Service Award for his work at the Binger Center for New Americans. It is the highest honor the University of Minnesota gives for service to the University and community.

“Professor Chan has made a tremendous impact on the lives of countless immigrants and refugees, and their families, through his work at the center,” says Ben Casper Sanchez (’97), clinical professor and director of the Binger Center.

Law School students Katie Ziomek (’17) and Kristin Emmons (’17) won a pair of recent intellectual property moot court competitions.

In a regional competition in Boston, Ziomek and Emmons defeated teams from Columbia Law School, Georgetown Law, Boston University School of Law, Suffolk Law School, and the University of New Hampshire School of Law. The victory earned them entry into a national IP moot court competition next month in Washington, D.C.