Georgetown Law Magazine: Spring 2024

GEORGETOWN LAW

JUSTICE FOR UKRAINE

GEORGETOWN LAW PARTNERS WITH UKRAINIAN PROSECUTORS

GEORGETOWN LAW

Spring 2024

ELIZABETH TERRY

Editor

BRENT FUTRELL

Director of Design

INES HILDE

Associate Director of Design

CONTRIBUTORS

Sarah Adler, Vince Beiser, Jaclyn Diaz, Merrie Leininger, Tim Mak, Sara Piccini, Madeline Portilla, Ben Purse, the Library Special Collection.

Tim Mak, an investigative journalist, is based in Kyiv, Ukraine. He has reported for NPR, Politico, Vanity Fair and other outlets and is a former U.S. Army combat medic. You can follow his work at counteroffensive. substack.com.

Vince Beiser is a journalist based in Vancouver, Canada. His work has appeared in Wired, The Atlantic, Harper’s, The Guardian and elsewhere. He is the author of the books “The World in a Grain: The Story of Sand and How It Transformed Civilization” and the forthcoming “Power Metal: The Race for the Resources That Will Shape the Future.”

Photography

iStock, Michelle Frankfurter, Brent Futrell, Getty Images, Ines Hilde, Sam Hollenshead, Bill Petros, Melissa Ryan, The Collection of War Photos, Wikimedia.

MATTHEW F. CALISE

Assistant Vice President of Alumni Engagement

GENE FINN

Assistant Dean of Development and Alumni Affairs

JUNE SHIH

Associate Vice President for Communications

WILLIAM M. TREANOR

Dean and Executive Vice President Paul Regis Dean Leadership Chair

CONTACT: Magazine Editor Georgetown Law

600 New Jersey Avenue, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20001 editor@law.georgetown.edu

Address changes/additions/deletions: 202-687-1994 or email addup@georgetown.edu

Georgetown Law magazine is on the Law Center’s website at www.law.georgetown.edu

Copyright © 2024, Georgetown University Law Center. All rights reserved.

Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, last fall’s Ruth Bader Ginsburg Lecturer, held court with students following her presentation in the newly-renovated Hart Auditorium

Making a Difference, at Home and Abroad

WheneverI ask a current or former student why they chose Georgetown Law, one of the most common responses I get is, “Because I wanted to make a difference.” The idealism and energy of the student body are so inspiring to me — as are the dedication, and accomplishments of our alumni, who are making tremendous contributions all over the world.

In this issue of our magazine, we highlight two Law Center projects that exemplify this spirit. The first is a relatively recent one: our work with the Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine through the Atrocity Crimes Advisory Group for Ukraine (ACA), a partnership formed between the United States, United Kingdom, and European Union. Georgetown Law is coordinating expert legal advice and other international resources for the Ukrainian prosecutors gathering evidence of atrocity crimes committed during the ongoing Russian invasion and developing a strategy for pursuing justice. I am extremely proud of our role in this innovative and historic initiative.

The other is one many of you know well: our Juvenile Justice Clinic, which is celebrating 50 years since its founding. The JJC has trained hundreds of lawyers who have gone on to use what they learned at Georgetown in courtrooms across the country, it helped set the standard for our unparalleled clinical education program — and most importantly, it has changed the lives of an untold number of young clients. I know we are all immensely proud of the JJC’s legacy, and that you join me in wishing them continued success.

These are exciting times at Georgetown Law, as we prepare to break ground next year on our new academic building. I look forward to welcoming you back to campus (our next reunion, for graduation years ending in 4 and 9, is October 25-27) or to seeing you when I’m in your area.

With all best wishes for you and yours,

William M. Treanor Dean and Executive Vice President Paul Regis Dean Leadership Chair

/ SCENES FROM REUNION 2023

Alumni from classes ending in 3 and 8 gathered at the National Building Museum for dinner and dancing at Georgetown Law’s beloved annual Reunion Gala on October 21, 2023. Reunion Weekend drew nearly two thousand alumni and their guests who gathered at some 34 events across Capitol Hill to reminisce and renew their relationships with classmates and professors. For more coverage, turn to page 38.

NEWS

HART AUDITORIUM RENOVATED

As we go to press, workers are putting the finishing touches on a year-long renovation of Hart Auditorium. When it opens this fall, the 368-seat event space will be unrecognizable to alumni, with a fully-reconstructed balcony, expanded reception areas with screens so that events on stage can be enjoyed from the lobby, and brand new seating equipped with power outlets. Certain seats can also be removed to accommodate wheelchair users. New wood floors have been installed on the stage, which is now dominated by a giant 40 by 11-foot LED video wall. In consultation with our Gilbert and Sullivan Society, we’ve invested in professional grade lighting and audiovisual equipment. We’ve also commissioned a new judges' bench, jury box and counsel tables for our various moot court competitions and exhibitions.

KNOW YOUR WHY “ “

PELOSI ADVISES 1LS

OnOctober 26, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, H’02 (D-Calif.), the first woman to serve as Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, joined Dean William M. Treanor and an audience of first-year J.D. students for a wide-ranging conversation about her groundbreaking career. Using her own path from parenthood to politics as an example, Pelosi urged the future lawyers and policymakers in the room to identify the issues that would fuel them to make a difference in the world.

“Environmental justice, social justice, economic justice, whatever it is,” she said. “Know your why, have your vision, have your knowledge.”

Pelosi also proudly noted her family’s close relationship with the university: in addition to her own honorary doctorate, her husband, four of her five children and one of her grandchildren all hold Georgetown degrees.

Evening student Jacob Kopnick, L’27, was excited that Pelosi and Treanor discussed his question about the Congressional leadership selection process. Opportunities to interact with legal and political leaders were why he’d chosen Georgetown Law, he said, adding, “It goes to show the school’s commitment to engaging with the country’s most pressing questions.”

Top: Pelosi speaking to the student audience; middle: Treanor and Pelosi; bottom: Pelosi lingered to continue talking with students after the event.

GLJ Symposium Spotlights

AFROFUTURISM & THE LAW

Popularized by the “Black Panther” film series and the work of science-fiction authors such as N. K. Jemisin and Octavia Butler, the Afrofuturism movement — which merges futuristic themes with Black aesthetics and culture — is largely known as an artistic genre. But a growing number of legal scholars are using Afrofuturism as a framework to examine racial injustice and the law.

On November 10, The Georgetown Law Journal hosted the nation’s first symposium on the theme of Afrofuturism and the Law. Experts gathered for a day of panels and a keynote address by pioneering legal scholar Patricia Williams, professor of law and humanities at Northeastern University, who discussed her research on how racial categories are shaped by the legal regulation of private industry and the government.

“Labor law reform is needed. We have a statute that is 88 years old, and we have such innovations in how business is performed. We don’t just live to work, we work to live. There is not sufficient sensitivity for our lives and well-being – and we’re not going to take it any more.”

–

Mark

Gaston

Pearce, executive director of the Georgetown Law Workers’ Rights Institute, in an “Office Hours” Instagram video explaining the recent uptick in strikes in industries ranging from automotive manufacturing to Hollywood acting to health care.

Keynote speaker Patricia Williams

FTC CHAIR LINA KHAN DISCUSSES HOT TOPICS IN ANTITRUST LAW

Call it the antitrust renaissance: Under the leadership of Lina Khan, who was sworn in as the youngest-ever chair of the Federal Trade Commission at age 32 in 2021, the agency has gained attention for taking on emerging challenges like regulating Big Tech companies and artificial intelligence.

On Nov. 27, Khan visited Georgetown Law for a lively, student-led Q&A session about current issues in antitrust enforcement and consumer protection. “One of the great promises of antitrust is that we have these age-old statutes that are supposed to keep pace with market developments, new technologies and new business practices,” Khan said. ”We need to make sure that doctrine is updated.”

Ricky Coyne, L’25, one of the student moderators, said he found Khan’s leadership inspiring. “Her appointment was one of the reasons why I decided to attend law school in D.C.,” he added.

GEORGETOWNLAW HOSTS DEANS OF JESUIT LAW SCHOOLS

FTC Chair Lina Khan

In December, the Law Center hosted a meeting of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities Law Deans’ Network. L-R: Amy Uelmen, C’90, L’93, S.J.D.’16, Georgetown Law Director for Mission & Ministry; Rev. Michael Garanzini, S.J., AJCU President; William M. Treanor, Dean of Georgetown Law, Tony Varona, L’96, Dean of Seattle Law; Brietta Clark, Interim Dean of Loyola Law School, Los Angeles; Matthew Diller, Dean of Fordham University School of Law; Michèle Alexandre, Dean of Loyola University Chicago School of Law; Joseph Kearney, Dean of Marquette University Law School; Michael Kaufman, Dean of Santa Clara University School of Law and Joshua Fershée, Dean of Creighton University School of Law.

SeenonCampus

1. Lord Justice Rabinder Singh, left, President of the U.K. Investigatory Powers Tribunal and Professor David Cole, right, national legal director of the ACLU, before talking about Singh’s career in human rights at the Graduate Programs Fall Lecture in September. 2. In July, the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law hosted a panel on Portugal’s decision more than two decades ago to decriminalize personal drug possession. L-R: Michael Botticelli, former director of U.S. National Drug Control Policy; João Goulão, Portugal’s General-Director for Intervention on Addictive Be-

haviours and Dependencies; Miriam Delphin-Rittmon of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and Brandon Del Pozo of Brown University. 3. Natalie Roisman, left, executive director of the Georgetown Law Institute for Technology Law & Policy, moderated a June discussion on A.I. regulation with Rep. Ted Lieu, L’94, (D-Calif.) and Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.). 4. Journalist Kara Swisher, SFS’84, left, joined Prof. Douglas Emhoff, right, in October for a “Tech and News”-themed installment of the Tech Law Scholars Distinguished Speaker Series.

COMPARING CONSTITUTIONS INTERCONTINENTALLY, WITH TWO SUPREME COURT JUSTICES

Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud and recently retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer met in October before a standing-room-only audience to discuss a broad range of issues, from deliberations on landmark same-sex marriage cases to memories of their respective experiences studying abroad.

Chandrachud, who earned an LL.M. and S.J.D. in the 1980s at Harvard Law School, said his dissertation on affirmative action has continued to reverberate throughout his career. “The benefit of education is something which you realize in layers as you progress through life,” said Chandrachud. “Some of these ideas continue to shape the work which I continue to do.”

GEORGETOWN LAW REMEMBERS JUSTICE SANDRA DAY O’CONNOR

The December passing of Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, sparked memories of her relationship with the Georgetown Law community. In retirement, she partnered with the Law Center on various conferences and initiatives dedicated to judicial independence and civic education. Professor Julie Rose O’Sullivan, who clerked for O’Connor in 1985-86, worked on O’Connor’s online civics platform for children — a project O’Connor would later say was her greatest legacy. “It says a lot that she thought that inspiring new generations to be responsible participants in civic life was more important than all those 5-4 decisions,” said O’Sullivan.

Justices Chandrachud, left, and Breyer, right, found much to discuss.

Former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor speaking at a 2007 conference at Georgetown Law

A street scene in Borodianka, Ukraine, after Russian airstrikes in 2022 destroyed multiple residential buildings. Photo by GENYA SAVILOV/AFP via Getty Images.

JUSTICE FOR UKRAINE

GEORGETOWN LAW PARTNERS WITH UKRAINIAN PROSECUTORS

by Tim Mak

The morning before Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, former U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues Clint Williamson woke up to a flurry of messages.

It was the office of the Ukrainian Prosecutor General.

Up until the eve of the invasion, most Ukrainians had considered the prospect of all-out war to be quite remote. But as Russian troops gathered on the border, the Ukrainian prosecutors understood that something terrible was about to unfold.

“They were clearly rattled,” Williamson, who retired from the State Department in 2014 and is now Senior Director of the International Criminal Justice Initiative at Georgetown Law, recalled. “The then-Prosecutor General asked me if I could come immediately to Ukraine and, as she said, ‘show us how to do this.’ She knew that they were about to be inundated with potential war crimes.”

That day, from his home in Washington, Williamson began assembling a team of experts and working with the State Department to get them on the ground. They deployed to the Polish-Ukrainian border eight days after the Russian onslaught and met with Ukrainian prosecutors the following day, launching a collaborative operational relationship that has continued unabated since that time. This initiative would evolve into what’s now known as the Atrocity Crimes Advisory Group for Ukraine, or ACA, jointly supported by the United States, the European Union and the United Kingdom

Under Williamson’s leadership, Georgetown Law’s new International Criminal Justice Initiative (ICJI) has become the lead implementer of ACA, coordinating international support for Ukrainian prosecutors. Georgetown’s work began in earnest in October 2022 with an initial $10 million grant from the U.S. Department of State. A further $8.5 million was recently allocated to continue this work through late 2025.

The work that the ACA-Georgetown team is doing in Ukraine is unprecedented. Normally this sort of work would be done by an international organization, such as the United Nations. But international consensus around such traditional approaches is increasingly elusive. ACA represents a true innovation in international justice, a novel model for seeking accountability and justice in conflict. At the same time, Ukraine’s Office of the Prosecutor General is also paving a new path: taking the lead role in developing and implementing an atrocity crime prosecution strategy for its own country, even as the conflict continues to rage.

Georgetown Law faculty, staff, fellows and students are marshaling a team of multidisciplinary experts, organizing legal and other resources, providing robust practical support and assisting the Ukrainians in developing an effective atrocity crimes investigation and prosecution process. The growing ACA team of staff and consultants hails from around the globe, including the U.S., France, Canada, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Germany, Italy, Portugal and Finland. Williamson, who worked with many of these experts in past prosecutions, said, “We are truly enlisting the best of the best. Cumulatively, the team brings over 325 years of experience in atrocity crimes work. We are making a huge impact on a day-to-day

basis. This is Georgetown at its core, putting into practice its ethos of advancing social justice and making a positive difference in the world.”

Since the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion, thousands upon thousands of Ukrainian lives have been lost, and the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office has opened more than 125,000 potential atrocity crime cases. In clear violation of international law, Russian forces have targeted Ukrainian civilians throughout the conflict, launching missiles at residential buildings, hospitals and schools, abducting and deporting children and more.

The challenge facing Ukrainian prosecutors is to pivot a system meant for ordinary peacetime criminal cases towards a system to pursue justice for mass atrocities in wartime.

“They know how to investigate and prosecute crimes. What they need help with is the specific expertise,” Williamson said. “So this is what we've been trying to do: take our experience from working in international tribunals or in domestic systems where war crimes cases have featured prominently, and bring that to bear on the ground in Ukraine.”

Ukrainian leaders welcome the support. In March of this year, Ukrainian Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin posted a photo of himself and Williamson standing side by side on social media, with the comment “Grateful to Ambassador Clint Williamson for his unwavering support for Ukraine in these difficult times. In Kyiv, we discussed our continued cooperation with the Atrocity Crimes Advisory Group and Georgetown Law experts. Their practical and timely assistance is invaluable to our justice and accountability efforts.”

Those involved in the Georgetown project ticked off the unique assets that the school brings to address this enormous problem: the university’s long track record of ambitious international projects, a deep bench of faculty with extensive experience working in government or international bodies and, of course, the location in the U.S. capital.

With these tools at its disposal, the Georgetown initiative under the ACA framework is prepared to help the Ukrainian justice system for the long haul.

“This is a marathon. It's not a sprint. You're going to be dealing with these cases for decades,” Williamson predicted.

“Cumulatively, the team brings over 325 years of experience in atrocity crimes work.”

In June 2023, Georgetown Law hosted a team from the Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine. The group met with Georgetown professors and other experts and visited U.S. counterparts at federal agencies and on Capitol Hill.

A MONUMENTAL TASK

Given the unprecedented nature of the Ukrainian-ACA partnership, there is no existing road map in place. The ACA advisors have decades of expertise, but don’t know the country’s history, legal system, politics and culture like the Prosecutor General’s team does. On the other hand, Ukrainian prosecutors know their own country, but have never had to make decisions about which mass execution to prioritize dedicating investigative resources to, the way veterans of past tribunals have. It’s a multilayered process of building trust with partners at ministry headquarters in the capital city as well as with regional prosecutors in places like Dnipro, Odesa, Mariupol—Ukrainian towns and cities whose names now bring brutal images to mind. To date, ACA has carried out more than 100 field missions to 15 regions across Ukraine.

Many of those meetings are led by Williamson’s chief of staff, Christopher “Kip” Hale, another veteran of conflict-related investigations and litigations. Two decades ago, when he was a student at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law, he heard a talk by an international tribunal prosecutor that set him toward that career path. Since then he’s worked on investigations and prosecutions in the former Yugoslavia,

Cambodia, Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Myanmar and Libya — other places with bitter histories of war and civilian casualties.

“What are the things that you can investigate the best, and where can you have the greatest chance of prosecution success? And then also mixed into that is all sorts of factors. What has been the biggest impact on the population? What has been harming them the most? What are the gravest criminalities?” says Hale, running through just a few of the complex discussions he’s been having. “There's a lot of this kind of translation that has to happen, not just language translation, but translations of cultural expectations and mores.”

Ukrainians may want any number of things in addition to or in lieu of prosecutions: reparations; truth-telling about the perpetrators or information-gathering about missing loved ones; memorialization of those whose lives were lost; security guarantees to reduce the chances that war will occur again — all of those things on top of the traditional pathway towards criminal accountability: prosecution, trials and convictions.

Above: Aftermath of 2022 fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces in Bucha, Ukraine, by Oleksandr Ratushniak [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by-sa/4.0/deed]; top right: In June 2023, Georgetown Law hosted a team from the Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine. The group met with Georgetown professors and other experts and visited U.S. counterparts at federal agencies and on Capitol Hill; bottom left: ICJI Chief of Staff Kip Hale (center, bearded), meeting with ACA colleagues and prosecutors from Luhansk, Ukraine in Dnipro, Ukraine; bottom right: Ukrainian Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin, left, with Amb. Clint Williamson, right, in Kyiv, Ukraine

“It gives the law school a chance to take the lead in advancing justice on the world stage.”

This is far from the only novel approach the Georgetown-led project is adopting. They're tapping into a wide array of fields to facilitate justice: gathering psychologists to help build systems to aid witnesses and victims that cooperate with prosecutors, for example, and environmental experts who can assess ecological damage brought about by the war, and cyber specialists who can look at how Russia may be committing crimes in a new domain.

Georgetown’s initiative—through ACA—is hoping not only to lend assistance to Ukraine, but also to create a new model that combines all of the best practices for how to set up a system that brings accountability for atrocity crimes and how to provide international support to domestic jurisdictions doing the work.

“This is a monumental task, and ACA is the first salvo in trying to help Ukrainians set themselves up for ultimate success, but it requires realizing that unfortunately, the vast majority of their defendants are on the other side of the front line, and they're not getting arrested anytime soon,” Hale said. “It is very hard to tell Ukrainians to manage their expectations that way, because it doesn't bring solace or immediate relief to the thousands of victims.”

What keeps Hale going? The people he’s working with, he says. “My colleagues are just so great. The egos are checked at the door, they want to help. They are patient, they are competent, they are easy to work with.

“And so there is a lot to be inspired by, but it is a monumental task.”

STRATEGY SESSION

Other countries have also gone through this terrible process before, and learned hard-fought lessons.

Commercial flight into Ukraine is impossible due to the war, which makes traveling to Kyiv a multi-day journey involving flights to Poland followed by a 12-hour drive. Every several weeks, Hale, Williamson, or other ACA-Georgetown leaders undertake the long trip to meet with members of the prosecution team.

Even under frequent air raids, the city remains a bustling metropolis, with a vibrant street life befitting its early history as a trading post on a river route from Scandinavia south to modern-day Turkey.

At one joint meeting last summer, the lights in the hallways are off, a reflection of energy saving measures that are in place — itself the result of the alleged atrocity crimes involving Russian attacks on Ukrainian civilian energy infrastructure.

The lawyers huddle around a long conference table in a bare, humble, white-walled room marked with little more than EU and Ukrainian flags. Notebooks out, pens flutter as the whole team takes notes.

This particular meeting is on how Ukrainian lawyers might take in victim statements as they compile atrocity crime evidence. The topics are as fascinating as they are broad: how to take testimony in territories currently occupied by the Russian military, and how to protect witnesses who provide sensitive information.

And then there are the more mundane, but no less important, pieces of advice that are exchanged: how to organize the legal teams and divide responsibility for prosecutorial tasks in the most effective way, for example; and how to organize specific technical training for Ukrainian lawyers.

The advice the ACA team gives is earned from cumulative decades in the study and practice of international criminal law and related fields. It’s not only a reminder of the long history of this legal topic, but a sad reminder that other countries have also gone through this terrible process before, and learned hard-fought lessons.

Top: Displaced Ukrainians at the train station in Lviv, Ukraine, photo by Joel Carillet; top left: a team from the Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine. The group met with Georgetown professors and other experts and visited U.S. counterparts at federal agencies and on Capitol Hill.

NOT ALONE

“Collect

and preserve your evidence as much as you can, because this is not going to be a year or five-year process. You will need that evidence in thirty, forty years.”

Memorials in a cemetery in Irpin, Ukraine. Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images; Inset, Davorka Colak speaking at a Georgetown Law event. Right: Displaced children, The Collection of War Photos, photo by Tita Elena.

Davorka Čolak, a Croatian citizen and career prosecutor, traveled first to Kyiv as part of the Georgetown-led team in the summer of 2022. She’s now working with the ACA team as co-coordinator of all Georgetown’s experts.

Croatia has its own terrible experience, and has spent some thirty years trying to bring justice for atrocity crimes that happened during the Yugoslav Wars.

“I'm not here to tell [the Ukrainian government] what to do,” Čolak said. “I'm here to share my experience in all the mistakes that we made so they can be avoided.”

She advised the Ukrainians to centralize data for preservation and prosecution, for example. Her most important piece of advice is a sobering one.

“Collect and preserve your evidence as much as you can, because this is not going to be a year-long or five-year process,” she said. “You will need that evidence in thirty, forty years. So the best thing you can do right now is collect and preserve your evidence.”

She’s also told them of the need to have highlytrained, specialized investigators dealing with atrocity crimes.

"And they already did it," she said. “They already designated nine regional offices to be specialized offices.”

Čolak's personal experience injects a morale-boosting camaraderie, a terrible yet useful understanding that

Ukrainians are not alone in their struggle. The Croatian experience demonstrates that other domestic systems have successfully been able to bring about some measure of justice for atrocities.

Čolak and other ACA leaders have given Ukrainian prosecutors the opportunity to see with their own eyes some of the places they’ve been hearing about as examples. On one trip, they traveled to Vukovar, Croatia, which suffered a monthslong siege in 1991. The group visited the Ovčara memorial site commemorating the mass killing of prisoners of war and civilians. Čolak recalled seeing her Ukrainian colleagues in tears at what they were seeing.

“They said, ‘Thank you for helping us realize that this is an ongoing process, that it’s not ending in a year or two,’” said Čolak.

When asked a question on the mind of many Ukrainians: Is a war over when the fighting ends, or when justice is achieved for the wrongs done?, she began describing a special database in Croatia that stores all the evidence collected from their war.

“We were thinking, if we keep it separately… nobody in a hundred years will be able to manipulate the data, to manipulate the history,” she said.

“When is the war over? I don't know. I don't have an answer.”

Since Georgetown Law became involved with this project a year and a half ago, it has tapped into the university’s pool of alumni, adjuncts, fellows and faculty. The Georgetown Law Center on National Security and especially its executive director, Anna Cave, and faculty co-director, professor Mitt Regan L’85, played key roles in its early stages. More recently, in late 2023, professors in the Law Center’s Legal English team hosted a group of staff from the Office of the Prosecutor General for an intensive five-week course in both American legal vocabulary and the overall structure of the U.S. legal system.

Dean William M. Treanor sees the project as an embodiment of what Georgetown Law is all about. “It gives the law school a chance to take the lead in advancing justice on the world stage, provides students with an extraordinary experiential learning opportunity and gives faculty the opportunity to advance cutting-edge research on international peace and security,” he said.

Georgii Grygorian, L’23, served as a research assistant for ACA while he was still a student. He is a Ukrainian who began studying for his LL.M. at Georgetown Law in the fall of 2022.

While at Georgetown, he received terrible news: his home had been destroyed by a Russian drone attack in Kyiv. His father had been at the residence just fifteen minutes before the strike, but thankfully left right before the attack occurred.

“I lost everything I had in Ukraine,” Grygorian said. The attack had taken place near the offices of Ukraine’s electric grid operator in Kyiv, so his apartment had been lost in an attack that itself is arguably an atrocity crime—the targeting of civilian energy infrastructure during a time of war.

The incident helped inspire him to join ACA and help with the ongoing legal effort to bring justice for crimes like these. He said he wanted to "make a difference and to protect the Ukrainian people" by bringing best practices from history to his home country.

“We need to work very hard, and to take every single example from history that we know, and to implement all of these doctrines, ideas and similar cases,” Grygorian said.

Hale hopes that the groundwork the ACA-Georgetown team is laying will ultimately benefit not only the Ukrainian people, but will guide lawyers through the aftermath of conflicts yet to come. It’s a lesson he says he learned from one of his mentors, Benjamin Ferencz, who prosecuted Nazi leaders at the post-World War II Nuremberg tribunals and passed away only last year, at age 103. Ferencz loved to tell the story of the Renaissance-era Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, whose charts of the heavens were used more than three centuries after his death by NASA scientists planning the moon missions.

“Progress happens over generations,” says Hale. “So to use an American football analogy, I'm just trying to get this ball further down the field so that one day, no matter where atrocity crimes happen, be it in Ukraine, be it in Palestine, be it in Sri Lanka, be it in North Korea, be it in the United States, that it will always be investigated and where warranted, prosecuted. We're not there yet. But I feel that I'm doing my part to push that forward.”

To learn more about ACA-Georgetown’s ongoing work, visit: www.law.georgetown.edu/icji/

Bottom left: In late 2023, Georgetown Law's Legal English team hosted staff from the Office of the Ukrainian Prosecutor General for a five-week intensive language program; bottom right: Williamson speaks to a Georgetown Law student audience about the work being done in Ukraine through the ACA and ICJI.

“We need to work very hard, and to take every single example from history that we know… and to implement all of these doctrines, ideas and similar cases.”

LIVING HISTORY

Top: Sandbags surround the Princess Olga Monument in Kyiv; bottom: In February 2023, Ukrainian Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin spoke at Georgetown Law while visiting Washington. From left: Williamson, U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice Beth Van Schaack, Dean William Treanor, Senator Dick Durbin, F'66, L'69, Kostin, Professor Mitt Regan, L'85, Center for National Security Executive Director Anna Cave.

Juvenile Clinic Justice 50 The at

By Vince Beiser

Evenafter all these years, Mary Lupo, L’74, still sounds astonished as she recalls her very first delinquency case as the very first student in Georgetown Law’s Juvenile Justice Clinic, back in 1973. “He was a little shrimp, about 11,” says Lupo. The boy was locked up when she met him, awaiting his turn before a judge, facing charges of trespassing. He had been caught sneaking into a local school where he wasn’t enrolled, hoping to get one of the free breakfasts they handed out. “I mean, this is a crime?” says Lupo.

“I convinced the judge he didn’t need to be locked up for that ‘horrific crime’ while he was waiting for his trial,” Lupo says. The boy was released, and eventually the charges were dropped. Lupo went on to work in the Florida State Attorney’s Office juvenile division, where she helped set up programs to better serve abused and neglected kids and their parents, and later became the first female judge in Palm Beach County. “The training, the excitement, the energy and the care that I learned at the Clinic, I brought that to Florida with me,” says Lupo, who retired in 2004. “Putting my hard work aside, I give it all the credit for my career. How to prepare a case, massage the system, how to convince other people to work with me – I learned all of that from the Clinic.”

Professor Kristin Henning, Director of the Juvenile Justice Clinic and Initiative, advises Deena Dulgerian, L’17, in DC Superior Court.

We’ve educated close to a thousand students and fellows. And we’ve prevented more kids than I can count from being harmed.” “

— Professor Wally Mlyniec, L’70, founding director of the Juvenile Justice Clinic

Professor Judith Areen, then a family law professor who would later serve as Dean of Georgetown Law from 1989-2004, founded the Juvenile Justice Clinic in 1973. She hired recent graduate Wallace J. Mlyniec L’70 to become the clinic’s director. “Wally was the first person I ever hired in my life,” says Areen. “And he’s still the best hire I’ve made in a long career.”

That shrimpy kid Lupo got freed is just one of thousands who have been helped by students in the Georgetown Law Juvenile Justice Clinic, which is now celebrating its 50th anniversary. Founded in 1973 by former Dean Judith Areen, who hired Lupo-Ricci Professor of Clinical Legal Studies Wallace J. Mlyniec, L’70 as its first director, the program still provides individual assistance to young people in all kinds of trouble across the District of Columbia. It has also expanded to take on cutting-edge policy and professional training work, becoming a force for legal reform and youth advocacy across the country.

The clinic was created in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 1967 decision in In re Gault, which established that youth charged with crimes had the same right to

1973

Juvenile Justice Clinic founded

2015

Juvenile Justice Initiative founded

2020

Ambassadors for Racial Justice founded

counsel as adults. Suddenly obligated to find lawyers for thousands of kids facing charges, the D.C. Superior Court put out a call for volunteers. One of those who signed up was an idealistic young Chicagoan named Wally Mlyniec, then a student at Georgetown Law. After graduating in 1970, he continued practicing in juvenile court, supported by grant funding. Meanwhile, clinic programs, in which law students got hands-on experience working on actual cases, were being created around the country, including at Georgetown. A D.C.-based group of volunteer lawyers for neglected and abused kids encouraged Areen, who was then teaching family law at Georgetown, to set up a clinic for youth – something that didn’t yet exist. Undeterred by half-joking colleagues who scoffed at the idea of a “kiddie clinic,” Areen obtained foundation funding and recruited Mlyniec to be the clinic’s founding director. “Wally was the first person I ever hired in my life,” says Areen. “And he’s still the best hire I’ve made in a long career.”

“I thought I’d do the job for two years and then move on to become a public defender,” says Mlyniec. “But the

job just kept getting more interesting, more fun and better over the years.” He wound up staying with the Clinic for fifty solid years. Mlyniec handed over the director’s role to Blume Professor of Law Kristin Henning, L’97, in 2015, but stayed on in the role of “senior counsel.” (“They didn’t know what else to call me,” Mlyniec says.) In 2025, he plans to finally retire.

Over the decades, almost 900 students have enrolled in the Clinic. With faculty supervision, the lawyers-in-training defend youth charged with crimes, researching their backgrounds, cross-examining police officers and other witnesses, negotiating with prosecutors and litigating cases in court. Students also advocate for kids in school exclusion hearings, abuse and neglect proceedings,

How to prepare a case, massage the system, how to convince other people to work with me – I learned all of that from the Clinic.”

— Mary Lupo, L’74, former prosecutor and Palm Beach County, Florida’s first-ever female judge

evictions from public housing and sometimes even in their relationships with their parents. “We’d talk to the kids, gain their trust, and think outside the box,” says Lupo. “Child welfare workers might have 75 or 100 cases, all of them emergencies. The easiest thing for them to do is put a kid in foster care, so they can move on to the next one. They don’t have time to go out and find permanent or longer term placements. We would snoop out other relatives who could take those kids in, get them clothes from local charities, whatever was needed. Thanks to Wally and Judy, we learned to move through the system.” All told, clinic students, fellows and faculty have served more than 4,500 clients.

Many things have changed over that time, of course. “One of the biggest changes in my time here is the number of guns on the streets, and young people’s access to guns,” says Mlyniec. “Thanks to the Supreme Court, guns are now so abundant in cities all over America. Kids have seen so many shootings in their neighborhood they often carry guns just to protect themselves.” What hasn’t

changed is the depressingly consistent profile of most of the Clinic’s clients: low-income, often survivors of complex traumas, and overwhelmingly Black and brown children. “African American kids always seem to get the raw end of the deal,” says Mlyniec.

That’s why Henning has expanded the program’s work beyond individual cases to push also for a broader notion of racial justice. “I’ve been representing kids in juvenile court in the District of Columbia for 26 years,” she says. “In all that time only four of them were white. Every other client I have had has been African American.”

Henning was raised in Tennessee and North Carolina,

900 JJC Students (almost)

4,500 clients served by the JJC (at least)

“

It was the hardest and the best thing I’ve ever done. It was the first time I felt so emotionally connected to the people I was representing.”

— Ebony Howard, L’07, deputy director of the youth justice organization

The Gault Center

in “a family of preachers and teachers, people who cared a lot about less fortunate kids,” she says. She was a freshman at Duke University when she got a life-changing jolt. “I was an apprentice at a local juvenile court in Durham. On my first day, I walked into the courthouse and saw a line of children all shackled together at their arms and legs,” she says. “I was just blown away. It was really that moment when I knew, ‘I really want to be a defense attorney.’”

Henning went on to Yale Law School, and came to Georgetown in 1995 as a Prettyman-Stiller fellow working in both the Criminal and Juvenile Justice Clinics. She went on to work for four years with the D.C. Public Defender Service, specializing in juvenile court. With Mlyniec’s encouragement, though, she came back to Georgetown,

soon becoming a full professor. Dedicated as she was to her public defender job, she also loves to teach. “As a clinical professor, I get the great joy of both representing children accused of crime, and also teaching law students how to do this work and instilling in them a desire and a passion for serving young people,” she says. Though she’d always known about racial disparities in the justice system, Henning says one particular case convinced her the Clinic needed to broaden its approach. She once represented a young black teenager named Eric who saw a Molotov cocktail in a movie and thought it looked cool. He found an empty bottle, filled it up with some liquids he found in the family’s kitchen, stuffed some toilet paper into the neck and closed the bottle cap. After playing with it, he tucked it into his book bag – and forgot it was there when he went back to school on Monday. The bag went through the school’s metal detector and a cop assigned to the school stopped the boy, who was then arrested and charged with attempted arson. Henning and her students spent nine months litigating his case. Months later, after she told this story at a conference, a white woman came up to her and said her son had done the same thing – but instead of getting arrested, his curiosity and inventiveness got him moved into an advanced science class. “That was an a-ha moment,” she says. “I had thought Eric’s treatment was about our fears of school violence, but I realized, no. It’s that we are afraid of Black children in particular. Especially in the District of Columbia. I felt we had to be doing something about that.”

Under Henning’s leadership, the clinic has launched a number of complementary projects aimed at promoting racial justice. In 2015, the Georgetown Juvenile Justice Initiative began advocating for policy changes at the national, regional and local level aimed at making the juvenile legal system “smaller, better and more just.”

I get the great joy of instilling in my students a desire and a passion for serving young people.”

— Professor Kristin Henning, L’97, current director of the Juvenile Justice Clinic and Initiative

Continuity at Juvenile Justice Clinic. Top: Professor Wallace Mlyniec, L’70, founding director and current Senior Counsel of the Juvenile Justice Clinic; Middle: Professor Kristin Henning, L’97, the current director of the Juvenile Justice Clinic and Initiative; Bottom: Eduardo Ferrer, B’02, L’05, Policy Director of the Juvenile Justice Initiative and Visiting (Associate as of July 1) Professor of Law.

That includes pushing for more investment in schools, health care, restorative justice programs and other things that help keep youth from getting into trouble in the first place, and supporting them when they do. “It costs $621 a night to incarcerate a kid in D.C., but the maximum Temporary Aid to Needy Families benefit is $990 a month,” points out Eduardo Ferrer, B’02, L’05, currently the policy director of what is now known as the Juvenile Justice Clinic & Initiative.

The Initiative also runs on-site trainings and webinars that have been attended by thousands of lawyers and other advocates, and offers a Racial Justice Toolkit of sample motions and pleadings, case law summaries and other resources. Henning and Ferrer often train attorneys across the country. Most recently, the Initiative launched its Ambassadors for Racial Justice program, which has trained dozens of public defenders and other youth justice advocates committed to advancing racial equity.

“

JJC Prettyman Fellows trained in advocacy and clinical teaching

Georgetown graduates who have gone through the Clinic say the experience affected the whole direction of their careers—and more. “It was life-changing,” says Ferrer, who was a student in the Clinic in 2004-2005. “Coming into the Clinic, I knew generally about the racial disparities that existed in terms of system involvement. But working directly with clients in D.C., I really came to understand the direct connection between these disparities, systemic racism and the legacies of slavery.” After graduating, he and other clinic alumni co-founded a youth justice nonprofit before he came back to teach in and work for the Clinic and eventually the Initiative.

“It was the hardest and the best thing I’ve ever done,” says Ebony Howard, L’07, who went through the Clinic in 2007. “It was the first time I felt so emotionally connected to the people I was representing.” The work often pushed her past what she thought she could do. She’d be toiling away on some kid’s court case, she says, and then suddenly learn the kid’s school was also threatening to expel them. “Kris (Henning) would say, ‘That’s your client. Go handle it.’ It really taught me what it means to be an advocate.” Like many other Clinic alumni, Howard is still in the arena. She’s now the deputy director of the Gault Center, a youth justice organization that partners with the Juvenile Justice Clinic & Initiative on several programs. “People in the Clinic, it’s like a fraternity, or a sorority, or whatever the gender-neutral term is,” she says. “It’s a beautiful connection you don’t lose.”

lawyers from around the country trained to train other lawyers in their home states

Without the training and the knowledge base and the hands-on teaching that I received through the clinic, I could not think about doing this job.”

— Pranav Nanda, L’23, public defender

Mlyniec isn’t giving up that connection – even if he is retiring soon. “I’ll be doing work in the archive,” he says.

“After fifty years in the same chair you don’t just walk out the door.” There’s plenty of work still to be done, of course. “My biggest regret is that I hear my students still making the same arguments I did fifty years ago about the lack of rehabilitative services, or why some kid should not be locked up,” says Mlyniec.

On the other hand, there is also much to be proud of. “The fact that I’m getting invited to train judges and prosecutors shows we’re getting traction,” says Henning.

“We’ve educated close to a thousand students and fellows. Even if they go off to big law firms, a huge number of them are still involved with public interest work. I’m confident they are doing good in the world,” says Mlyniec.

“And we’ve prevented more kids than I can count from being harmed.”

One might count Pranav Nanda’s clients among them.

“The Juvenile Justice Clinic was the reason I applied to Georgetown,” says Nanda, L’23, a member of the clinic in 2022-23. One year after graduating, Nanda is now a public defender in Massachusetts, representing 40-plus young people at any given time. “Without the training and the knowledge base and the hands-on teaching that I received through the clinic,” he says, “I could not think about doing this job.”

(1) The Juvenile Justice Intitiative’s inaugural Ambassadors for Racial Justice 2020: Aleksandra Chauhan, Alma Roberson, Ana Tent, Erin Morgan, Jessica Gingold, L’18, Erin Morgan, Jonathan Nomamiukor, Kelley Jones, Kristen Rome, Mona Igram, Nicholetter Hoard. Georgetown leadership team Henning, Rebba Omer, Olajumoke Obayanju, L’20, and Gault Center Leadership Team Mary Ann Scali and Timothy Curry, L’10; A collection of photos from a cherished JJC tradition—the annual end of year picnic at Prof. Mlyniec’s house: (2) JJC Class 2002-03; (3) JJC Class 2008-09; (4) JJC Class 2017-18; (5) JJC 2021-22; (6) Paul Saunders, Lupo, Mlyniec, Areen, and Ed Ricci; (7) Mlyniec, Nanda and Henning at Nanda’s graduation in 2023. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

CAMPUS

ORIENTATION 2023:

Meet the Newest Hoya Lawyas

By any measure, the 1L class that began at Georgetown Law last fall is impressive.

Intelligent: with a record-high median college GPA of 3.91. Diverse: 59% women, 35% students of color and 10% first-generation college students. Competitive: 600 members selected out of 10,828 applicants. And geographically rich: for the first time ever, the 1L class had students from all 50 states. Including the new LL.M. students, the incoming class represented 76 different nationalities.

In his welcome address, Dean William M. Treanor reminded students that they were selected for their unique personal qualities as well as their sterling CVs. “We want a law school that represents everybody who can make a difference in the world,” he said.

Orientation week activities included themed trips to various D.C. locations, a faculty moot argument previewing an upcoming Supreme Court case and a festive campus party.

PODCASTING PROFS HIT RECORD

In recent years, several Georgetown Law faculty members have entered the world of podcasting, offering sophisticated legal analysis and insight with no tuition required.

“On

the Issues” with Michele Goodwin

Working with a team from Ms. Magazine, Goodwin, co-faculty director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, uses her podcast to explore the intersection of the law and equality and lift up issues of concern to women. “When people are able to look back, what is it that they are able to hear?” she asked, explaining her intention to showcase topics and people that are not often featured in mainstream media.

“How I Lawyer” with Jonah Perlin, L’12

Perlin, who teaches Legal Writing and Practice, launched “How I Lawyer” as a creative project during the COVID-19 pandemic, hoping to give his students insight into the diversity and variety of the legal profession. On the podcast, he chats

with lawyers about their unique career paths and niche practice areas and interests. He feels he’s already having an impact – “I’ve had several students who have told me they started listening to the podcast when they were seniors in college and it made them decide they want to go to law school,” he said.

“Prosecuting Donald Trump” with Mary McCord, L’90

McCord, executive director of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, and her co-host Andrew Weissman have decades of experience at the U.S. Department of Justice between them. They explain the latest developments in the legal cases against former President Donald Trump on their weekly podcast, produced by MSNBC. Keeping up with breaking news reminds her of preparing to go to trial, she said. “You’ve got to be nimble, ready to adjust when things change.”

4

FACULTY MILESTONES

(1) In September, we honored the retirements of Professors Charles Abernathy, Hope Babcock, Angela Campbell, Steven Goldblatt, Nan Hunter, Emma Coleman Jordan, James Oldham, Julia Ross, Steven Salop, Jeffrey Shulman, Stafford Smiley, Russell Stevenson, Peter Tague, Philip Tatarowicz, Edith Brown Weiss, Robin West and Timothy Westmoreland.

(2) Dean Treanor conferred named professorships on six faculty members: Agnes Williams Sesquicentennial Professor of Law and Politics Josh Chafetz, Linda D. & Timothy J. O’Neill Professor of Constitutional Law and Global Health Policy Michele Goodwin, Scott K. Ginsburg Professor of Law and Appellate Advocacy Erica Hashimoto, Agnes Williams Sesquicentennial Professor of Legislation Anita Krishnakumar, Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Law and Finance Adam Levitin and Scott K. Ginsburg Professor of International Law Gregory Shaffer.

(3) In January, Professor Paul Rothstein received the American Association of Law Schools Section on Evidence John Henry Wigmore Lifetime Achievement Award.

(4) And our faculty started the new school year with their first “class photo” since 2019!

Sloan Explores Mixed Legacy of FDR's SCOTUS

Professor from Practice Cliff Sloan describes his new book, The Court At War: FDR, His Justices, and the World They Made, as “a tale of two courts – the best of courts and the worst of courts.” Sloan became fascinated with the Supreme Court under Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidency when he was studying World War II-era Supreme Court rulings while working on the still-unfinished task of closing the Guantanamo Bay detention camp as a special envoy during the Obama administration. He writes that the justices Roosevelt appointed both expanded constitutional rights, as in the Skinner v. Oklahoma decision banning forced sterilizations of convicts, and also took rights away from many, as in Korematsu v. United States, which upheld the internment of Japanese Americans.

In September, U.S. Representative Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability and Professor Mary McCord, L’90, executive director of Georgetown Law’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, joined Sloan on campus for a lively discussion about the Roosevelt court’s impact and legacy – and about its parallels to contemporary debates over judicial ethics. Video of the full event is available on the Georgetown Law YouTube channel.

Faculty Books: Lawrence Gostin

Global Health Law & Policy: Ensuring Justice for a Healthier World (Oxford University Press)

Gostin, University Professor and co-faculty director of the O’Neill Institute for National & Global Health Law, teamed up with Benjamin Mason Meier, Professor of Global Health Policy at UNC-Chapel Hill and senior scholar at the O’Neill Institute, to edit this comprehensive guide to the increasingly relevant and complex field of global health law. More than two dozen scholars in the field contributed chapters on topics from preventing future pandemics and treating mental health to the health threat posed by climate change.

Student

Works on International Trade Become Books

The Center on Inclusive Trade and Development (CITD) has become something of a publisher, compiling student assignments into two books so far. Last year, Professor from Practice and CITD co-director Jennifer Hillman edited Using Trade Tools to Fight Climate Change, a collection of essays from a seminar she taught. This year, her CITD co-director, Visiting Professor Katrin Kuhlmann followed suit with Next Generation Approaches to Trade and Development, made up of student papers from her course “International Trade, Development and the Common Good.” Both titles are available from Amazon. “I just couldn’t bear the thought of leaving the papers on my desk. There was too much in here that needed to get out into the world,” said Hillman.

Hillman, at center, with seminar students, celebrating the launch of their book.

‘Leaders

in Residence’ Share Real-World Experiences in Public Interest Law

Over the course of the fall semester, seven attorneys and advocates in practice areas ranging from reproductive rights to environmental law each spent several days on campus as part of the second cohort of the Blume Public Interest Scholars Program’s “Leaders in Residence” series. The visiting experts taught a seminar for Blume Scholars, spoke at lunches open to all students and met with individuals for further discussion and networking. Three were Georgetown Law alumni: the United Nations Population Fund’s Sarah Craven, L’92; the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Jon Devine, L’96; and Americans United for Separation of Church and State’s Bradley Girard, L’14, L’20.

During her residency, Innocence Project attorney Yosha Gunasekera (pictured above) acknowledged the many challenges of working in the public and nonprofit sectors, but advised students to stay the course. “Keep going, because the world needs you,” she said. “The legal field needs you.”

Welcome to the Neighborhood! McCourt School Moves to Capitol Campus

This fall, Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy will complete its move from the Hilltop to a brand-new 130,000 square foot building, adjacent to the Law Center campus at 125 E St., NW. The move will not only facilitate greater collaboration between policy and law experts and students in both schools, but also underscores Georgetown’s growing presence in downtown D.C. Over the coming months and years, a 23-acre Georgetown University Capitol Campus, anchored by Georgetown Law and McCourt, will eventually include the School of Continuing Studies, programs from other Georgetown units and housing options for graduate and undergraduate students.

2 3 4 5 6

BEYOND THE CLASSROOM: A LIVELY SEMESTER

Recent campus activities included: 1) a Diwali celebration hosted by the South Asian Law Students Association; 2) The “Food Builds Community Challenge,” organized by Campus Ministry, which provided pies for groups of students and colleagues to enjoy over discussions of bridging differences; 3 & 4) The annual pre-Thanksgiving “Festival of Gratitude,” where students, staff and faculty share examples from different cultural traditions around offering thanks and gathering with family and friends; 5 & 6) the annual Student Organization Fair, where representatives from dozens of student-led groups invite newcomers to get involved.

ALUMNI

Reunion 2023: Revisiting & Reconnecting

More than 1,750 Georgetown Law alumni and their guests reconvened for class reunions last October, with 34 separate events taking place across campus and beyond. These ranged from an early morning fun run to the U.S. Capitol to a familyfriendly picnic with ice cream and cuddly rescue puppies to a gala reception at the nearby National Building Museum.

The Class of 2013 won the Reunion Cup for highest attendance – as is obvious by their not being able to all fit on the stage for their group photo, seen at left.

Attendees also welcomed the chance to sit in their old classrooms and hear the latest on student life and the legal profession. Dean William M. Treanor, in his inaugural “State of the Law Center Town Hall,” spoke proudly of the strength of the most recent entering class and shared architectural renderings of the new academic building planned for the center of campus. Its flexible classrooms, clinical program suite and inviting public spaces, he said, will better serve Georgetown’s increasingly collaborative approach to legal education.

“Our students not only learn the law – they learn to apply it justly,” he said.

Reunion 2023

Congratulations to our Alumni Award Winners

The Robert F. Drinan, S.J. Public Service Award went to the Honorable Lydia Kay Griggsby, L’93, a United States District Judge in the District of Maryland. Before taking her current position, Griggsby served as a judge of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, counsel to the Senate Select Committee on Ethics, an Assistant U.S. Attorney and a trial attorney with the Civil Division of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Three alumni received Paul R. Dean Awards: Michelle Bernard, L’88, president and CEO of the Bernard Center for Women, Politics & Public Policy and principal of The Bernard Law Firm L.L.C. She has also served on Georgetown’s Board of Governors and Black Alumni Council.

Lloyd De Vos, L’73, whose practice focuses on private international law and taxation. He has served on both the Georgetown Board of Regents and the Georgetown Law Board of Visitors and is a longtime adjunct professor in the LL.M. program in taxation.

Paul Diaz, L’88, president and CEO of Myriad Genetics, a leading genetic testing and precision medicine company. He is also a former member of the Georgetown Law Board of Visitors.

Alumni award winners (L-R) Paul Diaz, L’88, Judge Lydia Kay Griggsby, L’93, Michelle Bernard, L’88 and Lloyd De Vos, L’73.

Three U.S. Attorneys from the Class of ‘08 Share Challenges and Rewards of Public Service

A highlight of reunion weekend was a special conversation between three members of the Class of 2008, all United States Attorneys. In introducing the speakers, the moderator, Professor Julie Rose O’Sullivan, mentioned a “fun fact”: including two in acting roles, at that time 14% of all U.S. Attorneys (nine of 63) were Georgetown Law alumni.

Vanessa Waldref, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Washington, Mac Schneider, U.S. Attorney for the District of North Dakota and Zachary Myers, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Indiana talked about the paths that had led each back to their home states for roles in public service, and compared notes on the local issues and interests important in their respective districts, from drug trafficking to gun violence to relations with Native American communities.

Professor Julie Rose O’Sullivan, left, with U.S. Attorneys: (L-R) Zachary Myers, L’08, of the Southern District of Indiana; Mac Schneider, L’08, of the District of North Dakota; Vanessa Waldref, C’02, L’08, of the Eastern District of Washington.

HOYA LAWYA FACULTY: Prof. Kristen Konrad Tiscione, L’87, Honored for Contributions to the Field of Legal Writing

In January, Professor of Law, Legal Practice Kristen Konrad Tiscione, L’87, received the 2024 Thomas F. Blackwell Award from the Association of Legal Writing Directors and the Legal Writing Institute.

Tiscione, who joined the Georgetown Law faculty in 1994, has witnessed a transformation of the field of legal writing. When she started law school, her legal writing course was taught by an upperclass student, but by the time she was a 3L, Georgetown Law had hired its first professors of legal writing. Today, Georgetown Law has one of the nation’s most robust legal writing programs – the size of its faculty team has doubled since Tiscione was hired and the Law Fellows program for upperclass student teaching assistants continues to this day.

“I have devoted my career to the advancement of the discipline. So to have this recognition of that effort and my years of service is amazing,” she said.

CLASS NOTES

1971

Patrick Keogh, a certified Florida pension trustee, has been appointed to the City of Gainesville’s General Employees Pension Board. He has also released a new book, Live the FINER Life: Financial Independence Never Ever Retire.

1972

John Briggs recently published America in Turmoil: Essays on Politics, the Economy, Society, and the Future. BookLife writes: “… his insightful, engaging prose clarifies complex ideas without simplifying them.” Briggs is a partner at Axinn, Veltrop & Harkrider.

1973

William Douglas Galloway sent in this reminiscence: “When my class began our studies at the E Street Warehouse, we were presented with a questionnaire. One of the questions was: ‘How many other law schools accepted you?’ I had to say ‘none.’ I only applied to one law school, Georgetown. … If the questionnaire had also

asked ‘To how many law schools did you submit applications?’ then saying ‘none’ would not have bothered me. But, it didn’t. I have been upset about this since September 1970. I am still upset. Cheers, Doug.”

1975

John Hartigan was honored by the California Lawyers Association with its Business Law Lifetime Achievement Award. A partner in the Los Angeles office of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, Hartigan advises clients on business matters including mergers and acquisitions and SEC enforcement matters.

1977

Robert Black authored two books in 2023, The Myth of Human Rights and Justice, Primitive and Modern, both published by Nine-Banded Books.

1981

David Gillespie, an energy tax attorney, has joined Greenberg Traurig in New York as a shareholder. He is a member of the firm’s Energy & Natural Resources Practice.

1984

Robert Cottrol has co-authored To Trust the People with Arms: The Supreme Court and the Second Amendment, which explores the complex legal history of the right to bear arms from the nation’s founding to the post-Heller era. Cottrol is the Harold Paul Green Research Professor of Law and professor of history and sociology at The George Washington University.

The Washington Post published a letter to the editor by Gabe Sucher, which called for an immediate cease-fire in Ukraine, followed by a negotiated settlement. Sucher is a retired lawyer for the U.S. Department of Labor.

1985

William Jordan, C’82, has joined Day Pitney as counsel in the Real Estate and Environmental Practice, based in the firm’s Hartford, Connecticut office. He most recently served as associate general counsel and managing director of Barings LLC.

1986

The Hon. Lorie Skjerven Gildea, former chief justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court, has joined Greenberg Traurig as a shareholder in the Minneapolis office, where she is a member of the Appeals & Legal Issues Practice. Gildea was the third longest-serving chief justice in state history and the second woman to hold the position.

Dan Lawton has published Above the Ground: A True Story of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, chronicling the 40-year struggle of Kevin Barry Artt to prove his innocence after being convicted of murdering a prison official for the IRA. Kirkus Reviews calls the book “an

enthralling work of history told with intelligence and urgency.”

Lawton, who served as part of Artt’s legal team in California, is currently a shareholder with Klinedinst in San Diego.

1987

Norman Schneider served as co-counsel for the plaintiff in a construction industry hostile work environment case that led to a seven-count judgment for $2.25 million, one of the largest compensatory damage judgments for a sexual harassment victim in Washington, D.C.

1989

Kevin Kelly has joined the global strategy firm Actum as a partner in the Washington, D.C., office. He previously led the Government & Regulatory Affairs practice at Clark Hill and worked on Capitol Hill for the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Jim Moore is a full-time legal aid lawyer for Pine Tree Legal Assistance in Bangor, Maine, following his retirement after more than 30 years as an assistant U.S. Attorney. He represents low-income tenants in eviction defense and housing discrimination cases.

After holding senior positions in both Democratic and Republican administrations at the state and federal levels, Mark Schlakman is now of counsel at Rambana & Ricci in Tallahassee, Florida. His prior service includes working as special advisor to the director of the U.S. Customs and Immigration Service.

1992

Meghan DiPasquale, C’88, is among 10 attorneys from the boutique firm Ward Greenberg to join Hodgson Russ in Rochester, New York. She focuses her litigation practice on labor and employment law and commercial matters.

Gregory Lisi, a partner at Forchelli Deegan Terrana in Uniondale, New York, was appointed chair of the Nassau County, New York, Bar Association’s Lawyer Referral and Nominating Committees.

1994

Tim Hruby (J.D./MSFS) has joined Blank Rome’s Washington, D.C., office as of counsel in the International Trade Group. He most recently served as chief of staff to the Assistant Secretary of Enforcement and Compliance at the International Trade Administration.

Carol Leutner (LL.M.) has published a memoir, Race Consciousness: A Personal and Political Journey, which includes accounts of her work for the Navajo Nation and on Jesse Jackson’s first presidential campaign.

1995

Michael Burwick (LL.M.’11,’12) has joined Becker as a shareholder in the New York office. A member of the firm’s Corporate Practice, he specializes in tax deferral, mitigation and minimization.

DirectWomen, whose mission is to increase the representation of women lawyers on corporate boards, selected Jen Fitchen as one of 17 candidates for its Board Institute Class of 2023. Prior to her retirement from Sidley Austin last year, she was co-chair of the firm’s M&A practice group.

1996

Blane Workie was named a 2023 finalist in the Management Excellence category of the Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Awards for her leadership of the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Aviation Consumer Protection Team, which secured more than $1 billion in passenger refunds in 2022. The “Sammies” are considered the Oscars of government service.

The University of Maryland recognized T. Leigh Anenson (LL.M.), a professor of business law at the Robert H. Smith School of Business, as a Distinguished Scholar-Teacher. Anenson is a leading scholar of equity and government pension law, and author of the forthcoming book The National Pension Crisis and the Constitution

1997

Matthew Blackburn has joined Lewis Roca as a partner in the firm’s San Francisco office. His practice focuses on complex civil litigation and intellectual property, including copyright, patent, trademark and trade secret disputes.

Kenzo Kawanabe is among a group of five leading trial attorneys to launch a new law firm based in Denver, Olson Grimsley Kawanabe Hinchcliff & Murray. In addition to his legal practice, Kawanabe teaches at the National Institute for Trial Advocacy.

1998

Daniel White sent in the following update: “My wife (Jennifer Haro) and I are living in Chicago. I’m currently at EY, running the US-Central M&A tax practice. … We moved up from St. Louis, where I’d been a partner in the tax practice at Bryan Cave Leighton & Paisner. I co-authored a tax treatise for CCHWolters-Kluwer on Taxation of Corporations and their shareholders and, as may

come as a surprise to some, taught corporate taxation for 10 years at Washington University in St. Louis.”

John Woodward Jr., a professor of the practice of international relations at Boston University and a former CIA intelligence officer, has authored Spying: From the Fall of Jericho to the Fall of the Wall. The book draws on the pioneering scholarship of his colleague, the late professor Arthur Hulnick.

1999

Grant Dawson has published a new book with Oxford University Press, International Law and Sea-Dumped Chemical Weapons, which offers legal solutions and practical recommendations to remedy the environmental impact of chemical weapons dumped in the world’s oceans. Currently lead legal specialist at the University of Groningen, where he received his Ph.D., Dawson previously served as the principal legal officer of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons at the Hague.

Matthew Umhofer, a partner at Umhofer, Mitchell and King and a winner of the California Lawyer of the Year Award, recently litigated a novel case involving homelessness in Los Angeles that secured $4 billion for shelter, housing and mental health substance use services. “My experience at GULC prepared me for this fight,” Umfoher said.

Gatherings

Eunice Park Choi, L’07, a partner in the private investment funds group at Goodwin Procter in San Francisco, reported that her friend and classmate Peter Chang has been appointed to a judgeship in the Contra Costa County Superior Court. Jerry Chen, L’03, a partner with TechKnowledge Law Group, joined his fellow Hoyas in celebrating the appointment on the Fourth of July.

2000

After working at tech companies and startups for over a decade, Brooke Smarsh has founded her own law firm in New York, Brass Law PLLC. She provides advice to C-suite personnel in meeting growth and valuation goals.

2001

Steve Maggi, founder of immigration and consular law firm SMA, recently appeared on ABC7’s Tiempo with Joe Torres to discuss the pressing immigration crisis in New York City and provide his perspective on President Biden’s decision to extend Temporary Protection Status for Venezuelan immigrants.

2002

Jonathan Massimino has been named general counsel and corporate secretary of Viad Corp., a global travel and leisure company.

Joel Sestito (LL.M.), a partner at Blank Rome, has joined the firm’s Real Estate Group in Chicago. He represents lenders at all stages of the loan process.

2003

Joshua Janow has been named CEO of SMI Aware, an opensource intelligence data collection firm based in Pittsburgh. He formerly served as president of Gategroup North America.

2004

Patent attorney Christopher North has joined Panitch Schwarze Belisario & Nadel as counsel in the firm’s Life Sciences, Biology and Medicine practice. In addition to his J.D., North earned a Ph.D. in molecular biophysics from Florida State University.

2005

Camilla Chan has joined Frankfurt Kurnit Klein and Selz as a partner in the firm’s Los Angeles office. In her entertainment and intellectual property litigation practice, she represents actors, writers, directors, film financiers and production companies.

José M. Jara (LL.M.) of Fox Rothschild was appointed chair of the ABA’s Employee Plans and Executive Compensation Group for the 2023-2024 term. Jara is counsel in the firm’s Labor and Employment Department.

Marc Rivera has been promoted to partner at ArentFox Schiff in Washington, D.C. He focuses his practice on a wide array of commercial transactions, including securities offerings, corporate structuring and mergers and acquisitions.

2006

The Lawyers Alliance for New York recognized Daniel Shamah with its 2023 Cornerstone Award for his pro bono work on behalf of community-oriented nonprofits with local, multistate and national programs. Shamah is a partner at O’Melveny & Meyers and co-chair of the firm’s Bankruptcy Litigation Group.

2007

Denise Gitsham has authored Politics for People Who Hate Politics: How to Engage Without Losing Your Friends or Selling Your Soul, offering spiritual insights, political lessons and practical advice. A motivational speaker and former Congressional candidate, Gitsham currently runs a public affairs consulting firm.

2008

Victor Ludwig has been elected partner at Latham & Watkins in New York. A member of the Banking Practice and Finance Department, he represents investment banks and direct lenders in acquisition finance, asset-backed lending and cross-border transactions.

Paige Willan has been named co-chair of the Litigation Department at Klehr Harrison Harvey Branzburg. This past year, Philadelphia Business Journal selected Willan to its “Best of the Bar” list for business litigation.

2009

After seven years serving as a federal prosecutor with the U.S. Department of Justice, Michael Harper has joined K&L Gates as a partner in the firm’s Washington, D.C., office. During his time at the DOJ, Harper spearheaded a number of high-profile international bribery and money laundering cases, including the conviction of the former treasurer of Venezuela under Hugo Chavez.

Jason Luter has joined Blank Rome as the firm’s Dallas office co-chair and a partner in the Corporate, M&A and Securities Group.

Courtney Stieber, an employment litigator, has been named co-chair of Labor & Employment Department in Seyfarth’s New York office.

2010

Jeff Kosseff, an associate professor of cybersecurity law at the U.S. Naval Academy, has published Liar in a Crowded Theater: Freedom of Speech in a World of Misinformation. In the book, Kosseff proposes solutions that focus on minimizing the harms of misinformation, rather than resorting to regulating speech or fining or jailing speakers.

Coming this Fall: The Georgetown Gilbert & Sullivan Society’s 50th Anniversary Celebration! 1 2 3 4 5 6

For one weekend only, from September 13-15 in Washington, D.C., the Gilbert and Sullivan Society will be celebrating a half century of delivering musical theater to Georgetown audiences. A musical revue, gala reception, and brunch sing-a-long and more are in the works. Visit www.ggss50th.org for the latest. (1) Pirates of Penzance, 2002; (2) Fiddler on the Roof,

Awards

Matthew Schwartz, L’07, won the 2023 American Bar Association Silver Gavel Award for Media and the Arts for his work as host and executive producer of Bloomberg Law’s flagship podcast, “UnCommon Law.” The 2023 season’s four-part series explored the history of the Supreme Court’s most important affirmative action cases, ending with a special episode on the court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard and UNC

Derek Webb, L’12, received the 2023 Sandra Day O’Connor Award for Professional Service from the American Inns of Court for his pro bono legal work while in private practice at Sidley Austin. Kim Askew, L’83, emeritus member of the Board of Visitors, presented him with the award at the October ceremony held at the U.S. Supreme Court. Webb, currently a Yale Law school research scholar, was the 2022 Dean’s Visiting Scholar at the Law Center.

2011

John Grimm, a former Maryland assistant attorney general, has joined Goodell DeVries in Baltimore as a partner in the firm’s Commercial and Business Tort Litigation and Appellate Practice Groups.

2012

David Hiltebrand has been promoted to counsel at Hunton Andrews Kurth. Based in the Richmond, Virginia, office, he represents borrowers and lenders in secured and unsecured commercial financings.

Louis Mendez, principal at Bressler, Amery & Ross, has been elected president of Region VII of the Hispanic National Bar Association, covering Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi. Based in Birmingham, Mendez is a member of the Bressler’s Financial Institutions and Insurance practice groups.

2014

Louis DiLorenzo has been promoted to partner at Davis and Gilbert in New York City. He is a member of the firm’s Advertising and Marketing Group.

Matt Silverman (LL.M.) has authored the bestselling book The Champions Network: A Blueprint to Expand Your Influence and Spread Big Ideas in Any Organization. He is the founder and CEO of The Blueprint Organization, a consulting firm.

2015

Moshe Broder has been elected partner at Jenner & Block. A member of the firm’s Washington, D.C., office, he focuses his practice on government contracts.

Brittany Buhler was promoted to counsel at the Miami office of Hunton Andrews Kurth. She focuses her practice on the telecommunications and financial services industries.

Benjamin Gelfand has been promoted to counsel at Latham & Watkins LLP in Houston. A member of the Banking Practice and Finance Department, he represents clients in complex financing transactions, with an emphasis on the technology, life sciences and energy industries.

Drew Havens, a public defender in Los Angeles County, served as a lead advocate to secure the release of his colleague Eyvin Hernandez, who was unlawfully detained in Venezuela in March 2022. Together with Hernandez’s family and city and state officials, Havens worked with the White House and State Department to secure Hernandez’s release in a high-profile December 2023 prisoner exchange.

Christian Witzke has been elected partner at Kramer Levin in New York. He advises clients on mergers and acquisitions, divestitures, equity financings and other investment transactions.

Cameron Lyons has been elected partner at Latham & Watkins LLP in New York. A member of the Project Development & Finance Practice and Finance Department, he advises on financing transactions across credit markets in the energy and infrastructure sector.

2016

Alan J. Gocha has joined Bodman PLC in Grand Rapids, Michigan, as a senior associate in the firm’s Litigation and Alternative Dispute Resolution Practice Group.

2017

Matthew Mosteller has been elevated to principal at Fish & Richardson. Based in the firm’s Washington, D.C., office, he focuses his practice on complex patent litigation.

2018

Aneesha Sehgal Bruton has joined Robinson Bradshaw as an associate in the firm’s Research Triangle, North Carolina office. She counsels clients on a broad range of technology transactions and complex commercial contracts matters.

2019

Clinton Oas is an associate in the Annapolis, Maryland, office of PilieroMazza. A member of the firm’s Business and Transactions Group, he co-founded and sold a Boston-based healthcare startup prior to starting his legal career.

Jones Walker partner Rob Worley (LL.M.) has been inducted as a fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers. In addition to his litigation practice, he teaches Advanced Trial Advocacy at Loyola University of New Orleans College of Law.

Abigail Burton has joined Welsh & Recker as an associate focused on civil, white collar and appellate litigation. She previously served as staff attorney at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Philadelphia.

2020

William Stringer is an associate in the Tulsa, Oklahoma, office of GableGotwals. His practice focuses on general corporate transactions and tax matters. He previously served as a policy specialist at the Native American Finance Officers Association.

2021

Brendan Hobbs (LL.M.’22) has joined GrayRobinson as an associate in the Tampa, Florida, office. He focuses his practice on a range of corporate matters, including qualified retirement plans.

2023

Melissa Baney has joined Hollingsworth as an associate in the firm’s Complex Litigation, Pharmaceutical & Medical Device and Toxic Torts & Products Liability groups.

Avery Blank (LL.M.), a graduate of the master’s program in Tech Law & Policy, is working on artificial intelligence issues as counsel for the chair of the U.S. Senate Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee.

In Memoriam

Tracey Rose Beers L’91

Robert S. Bennett L’79

Robert S. Bennett C’61, L’64

John Emil Berg L’87

Addison M. Bowman III L’64

Stephen S. Bowman L’87

The Hon. Wiley A. Branton Jr. L’76

David E. Brook L’68

James G. Cuddy L’55

Edward A. Dacy L’63

The Hon. Richard J. Daschbach C’58, L’62

David W. DiSabatino L’96

Suzanne C. Fabricant L’87

William Guy Ferris L’76

Sean Francis Foley L’90, L’98

Franklin M. Gittes L’73

Thomas Griffin C’79, L’84

Albert J. Hajjar L’54

Martin G. Hamberger F’65, L’69

Edwin G. Hebb Jr. L’59

Alexander I. Heckman L’57

Donald W. Marks L’66

Joseph E. Mayer L’57

Elizabeth M. McCormick L’94

J. Carter McKaig L’57

George F. Meierhofer C’83, L’86

Rabbi David Ari Moss L’91

The Hon. Robert C. Nalley L’69

Donald W. O’Brien L’51

James J. O’Connor L’63

Donald J. O’Leary F’52, L’56

Jerome F. O’Neill F’68, L’71

Shinyung Oh L’98

Robert E. Paulson L’63

Patricia Anania Probst L’89

Paul S. Quinn Esq. L’61

Irene Ricci C’95, L’99

William P. Russell L’68

The Hon. John Paul Sullivan L’58

Addison Bowman, who earned an LL.M. at Georgetown Law in 1964, spent the better part of his life in Hawaii, including two decades as a professor at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa William S. Richardson School of Law. But he left a great legacy at Georgetown, where he launched his legal career as a Prettyman Fellow, eventually rose to full professor and founded the school’s first clinic, the Criminal Justice Clinic, in 1971. In 2002, the Society of American Law Teachers honored Bowman as a “visionary activist for equality, access and diversity throughout law and society.”

TREASURES FROM THE LIBRARY

KING HENRY VIII’S GREAT SEAL

In 1542, England’s King Henry VIII granted Sir Ralph Sadler a license to “alienate a messuage,” in other words, permission to transfer a house with outbuildings to a widow named Elizabeth Gowre. The permission was conveyed in 13 lines of Latin, written in the official court hand on a 4 ½ by 13 ½ inch piece of vellum. A wax impression of King Henry’s “Great Seal,” depicting a still-svelte king holding a orb and scepter on one side and a vigorous young king on horseback on the reverse, is attached to the document, which is in near-perfect condition more than five hundred years later. Sadler, a protege of Thomas Cromwell’s (and perhaps familiar to fans of the novel and TV series Wolf Hall), at the time was the King’s Principal Secretary of State. He would manage to survive the various upheavals of the Tudor era, dying at age 80, according to Sir Walter Scott, as “the richest commoner in England.“

Georgetown Law is grateful to Lee F. Holdmann, L.’62, L‘69, and Geri Hansen for their generosity in donating this treasure to the Library’s Special Collections in 2021.

Top: Portrait of a Man (Sir Ralph Sadler?), artist: Workshop of Hans Holbein the Younger (1535); bottom: Portrait of King Henry VIII by follower of Hans Holbein the Younger, (circa 1530s).

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