Minnesota Law Magazine | Spring 2024

GettingtoDown Work

Six Minnesota Law alumni who focus on labor and employment law discuss the business of work

THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA LAW SCHOOL MAGAZINE

INTERIM DEAN

William McGeveran

DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATIONS

Monica Wittstock

SENIOR MANAGER OF VISUAL DESIGN AND SOCIAL MEDIA

Julie Longo

MARKETING AND COMMUNICATIONS SPECIALIST

Jeff Kasimor

SENIOR EVENT MANAGER

Olivia Kurtz

DIGITAL AND MULTIMEDIA MANAGER

Riley Grittinger

CHIEF ADVANCEMENT OFFICER

David L. Jensen

SR. DIRECTOR OF ALUMNI RELATIONS AND ANNUAL GIVING

Lizzy Beghelli

ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR OF DONOR RELATIONS AND STEWARDSHIP

Maureen Cunningham

COPY EDITOR

Kathy Graves

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

Eric Butterman

Dick Dahl

Suzy Frisch

Kathy Graves

Ryan Greenwood

Amy Carlson Gustafson

Dan Heilman

Jeff Kasimor

Cathy Madison

Todd Nelson

Monica Wittstock

PHOTOGRAPHERS

Emily Baxter

Oren Gross

Jayme Halbritter

James Kim

Jay Mallin

Tony Nelson

Leslie Plesser

Cory Ryan

COVER PHOTO

Jay Mallin

ILLUSTRATOR

Nigel Buchanan

DESIGNER

Erin Gibbons,

Launch Lab Creative

2023–24

BOARD OF ADVISORS

Joshua L. Colburn ’07, Chair

The Honorable Nancy E. Brasel ’96, Chair-Elect

Barbara Jean D’Aquila ’80, Immediate Past Chair

Richard Allyn ’69

B. Andrew Bednark ’02

Brandon L. Blakely ’18

Rachel S. Brass ’01

Rjay J. Brunkow ’04

Laura G. Coates ’05

Coré S. Cotton ’89

Annamarie Daley ’84

Devin Driscoll ’18

Emerald Gratz ’05

Timothy E. Grimsrud ’04

Ronald E. Hunter ’78

Cherée Johnson ’03

Christopher K. Larus ’91

Juanita (Nita) Bolland Luis ’77

Hugh Magill ’85

Catlan M. McCurdy ’11

Liwanag Ojala ’98

James W. Poradek ’98

Jami Rahman ’03

Michael L. Skoglund ’01

James H. Snelson ’97

Hema L. Viswanathan ’05

Renae L. Welder ’96

Emily M. Wessels ’14

Bruce Wojack ’85

Wanda Young Wilson ’79

Minnesota Law is a general interest magazine published in the fall and spring of the academic year for the University of Minnesota Law School community of alumni, friends, and supporters. Letters to the editor or any other communication regarding content should be sent to Monica Wittstock (witt0265@umn.edu), Director of Communications, University of Minnesota Law School, 229 19th Avenue South, 417 Mondale Hall, Minneapolis, MN 55455.

The University of Minnesota shall provide equal access to and opportunity in its programs, facilities, and employment without regard to race, color, creed, religion, national origin, gender, age, marital status, disability, public assistance status, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression.

© 2024 Regents of the University of Minnesota. All rights reserved.

Achieving Great Things Together

IN ONE WEEK RECENTLY, I greeted our new graduates as they picked up their commencement regalia and also celebrated with our alumni during Spring Alumni Week events. The overlap highlighted how a Minnesota Law education provides a strong foundation for a future filled with impact and success. In this edition of Minnesota Law magazine, you will see the incredible accomplishments of both our current students and our alumni, and you will understand why I feel so proud and why I am so excited to serve as the Law School’s 12th dean.

Our students are working hard and achieving great things! Three of our teams won national moot court competitions — a first in Law School history — and the mock trial teams reached quarterfinals in their national competition. Law student Chad Nowlan ’24 received the University President’s Student Leadership & Service Award, all four journals elected women as editors-in-chief, and the Theater of the Relatively Talentless brought down the house with its annual show. As usual, there are too many accomplishments to list them all.

In this issue, we’re focusing on one of Minnesota Law’s historic strengths, labor and employment law. Our feature story includes six impressive alumni who discuss their work experience in labor and employment law for government agencies, unions, nonprofits, law firms, and corporations. You’ll also hear from our exceptional labor and employment law faculty, Professor Matthew Bodie and Professor Charlotte Garden, who are carrying on our long legacy of superb teaching and scholarship in this dynamic area of the law from Professor Emeritus Stephen Befort ’74 and Professor Emerita Laura Cooper. Once again, training today for excellence tomorrow!

This spring, we celebrated the retirement of two of our most distinguished faculty, Professor Carol Chomsky

and Professor Robert A. Stein ’61, whose contributions to the Law School, the University, and the legal profession have been immense. We also announced three new faculty, James Coleman, Emmanuel Mauleón, and Ilan Wurman, who will all join us this fall — along with Professor Francis Shen, who returned to the faculty in January.

Unfortunately, we have also had some sad news this semester. As a community, we deeply mourn the loss of Professor Emerita Ann Burkhart, a fiercely dedicated teacher, scholar, and beloved colleague and friend, who passed away in March. She, too, leaves her mark on countless alumni whose lives she touched while they studied here.

These pages demonstrate our commitment to continuing in the tradition of legendary professors like Ann — as well as Steve and Laura, Carol and Bob — to educate our students for their lives as accomplished Minnesota Law alumni. Now we can welcome the extremely wellprepared class of 2024 to the profession. The faculty and staff join me in gratitude for your enduring support of the Law School in this mission. I look forward to working with all of you to carry Minnesota Law to new levels of accomplishment as dean!

Warmly,

William McGeveran Interim Dean

Gray, Plant, Mooty, Mooty & Bennett Professor of Law University of Minnesota Law School

34 FACULTY FOCUS

34 In Remembrance of Professor Emerita Ann Burkhart Beloved teacher, scholar, and colleague

36 Faculty News & Honors

38 Professor Carol Chomsky Retires

A dedicat ed and innovative teacher who forged new paths in service to Minnesota Law, the legal community, and the University

40 Professor Robert A. Stein ’61 Retires

A visionar y leader committed to service shaped Minnesota Law, the University, and the legal profession

42 Author in Question

Professor June Carbone and co-authors publish Fair Shake: Women and the Fight to Build a Just Economy

44 Theory at Work: A Transparent Approach

Professor Jill Hasday displays rare gift for translating complicated legal issues for the general public

46 Professor Francis Shen Returns to Minnesota Law

Breaking new ground in law and neuroscience

48 Breaking New Ground While Advancing Global Human Rights

Professor Fionnuala Ní Aoláin concludes her role at the U.N.

50 Leading Questions

Professor Kevin Reitz served as Reporter for the American Law Institute’s Model Penal Code: Sentencing

52

ALL RISE

52 Advocating for Gun Violence Prevention

Chad Nowlan ’24 finds his passion at Minnesota Law

54 Growing Volunteerism

A record number of Minnesota Law students volunteer to help prepare income taxes

56 Big Picture A Winning Combination: Minnesota Law’s inaugural Sports Law Competition Team wins national championship

60 Student News

62 TORT Presents: (Moot) Cars!

64 RAISING THE BAR

564 Alumni Interrogatory

June Hoidal ’03, managing par tner, Zimmerman Reed

66 Spring Alumni Week 2024

68 Alumni Profile

Emanual Williams ’23 and Clemency Clinic successfully advocated for a client’s sentence to be commuted

71 Class Notes

75 Recent Gifts

77 Tributes

79 In Memoriam

80 Why I Give Brandon Blakely ’18

in BRIEF

William McGeveran Appointed 12th Dean of Minnesota Law

After a national search, William McGeveran, who served as interim dean during the 2023-24 academic year, was named the University of Minnesota Law School’s 12th dean, effective June 17, 2024, by Executive Vice President and Provost Rachel T.A. Croson. McGeveran is an expert in data privacy and intellectual property. He has served on Minnesota Law’s faculty for more than 18 years and is deeply passionate about advancing the mission of the Law School.

Professor Fionnuala Ní Aoláin

Makes Historic Visit to Ukraine

Professor Fionnuala Ní Aoláin visited Lviv, Ukraine, in December for the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Genocide Convention. She joined 75 international lawyers from the American Society of International Law and 75 lawyers from the Ukrainian Association of International Law, all dedicated to upholding human rights and international law.

Mitchell E. Zamoff Delivers Appointment Lecture

Assistant Dean of Experiential Education Mitchell E. Zamoff delivered the J. Stewart and Mario Thomas McClendon Professor in Law and Alternative Dispute Resolution Appointment Lecture. He presented his article, “Proposed Guidelines for Arbitral Disclosure of Social Media Activity,” published in the Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution and recognized as the Best Scholarly Article of 2023 by the Alternative Dispute Resolution section of the Association of American Law Schools.

Gun Violence Prevention Clinic

Named Minnesota

Attorneys of the Year

Students in the Gun Violence Prevention Clinic, led by Visiting Clinical Professor of Law Megan Walsh, were named Attorneys of the Year by Minnesota Lawyer for defending Minnesota gun regulations following the Bruen decision. The Gun Violence Prevention Clinic was nominated by the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office.

Pictured: Meghan Zula ’25, David Lamb ’24, Aidan Earnest ’24, Chad Nowlan ’24, Ted Mathiowetz ’24, Prof. Megan Walsh, Will Roberts ’25, Nicholas Taylor ’24, Emily Byers Olson ’25, Wyatt Lutenbacher ’25, and Rose Lewis ’24.

MondaleMoments

1 Members of the Black Law Student Association (BLSA) volunteered with African American Survivor Services in St. Paul's historic Rondo neighborhood. From L to R: Betty Annan Noonoo ’26, Reauna Stiff ’25, Lauren Hamilton ’25, Louica Alexandre ’24, and Jadyn Lovelady ’26.

2 Professor Francis Shen and child Gabriel joined law students for Minnesota Law's annual day of service at Arc's Value Village.

3 Fariza Hassan ’25, Isabella Jurcisin ’25, and Madi Rubin ’25 celebrate Valentine’s Day in the Law Library.

4 The Clemency Project Clinic visited the Netherlands over spring break where they had the opportunity to get a first-hand look at the Netherlands’ criminal justice system. From L to R: Sam Buisman ’25, Anna Mitchell ’24, Prof. JaneAnne Murray, Myah Grimm ’25, and Amy Cohen ’24.

5 Minnesota Law deans enjoyed connecting with students during Donuts with the Deans. From L to R: Assistant Dean of Career Services Claudia Melo, Assistant Dean and Chief of Staff Amanda Furst, Assistant Dean of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Ra’Shya Ghee ’13, Interim Dean William McGeveran, Associate Dean for Research & Planning Tom Cotter, Assistant Dean of Experiential Education Mitchell Zamoff, and Assistant Dean of Students Jay Wong.

6 Thaameran Sarveswaran ’25 and Ethan Shapiro ’25 handed out snacks on behalf of Law Council on Leap Day.

Tethering the Past to the Present: Dr. King and the Long Arc Toward Reproductive Freedom and Justice

Professor Michele B. Goodwin delivers Minnesota Law’s 9th Annual MLK Convocation

WHILE REV. DR. MARTIN

LUTHER KING, JR. is well known for his advocacy concerning racial acceptance and equality, former Minnesota Law Professor Michele Bratcher Goodwin and Assistant Dean of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Ra’Shya Ghee ’13 reminded audience members at Minnesota Law’s 9th Annual MLK Convocation, “Dr. King and the Long Arc Toward Reproductive Freedom and Justice,” of King’s often forgotten advocacy for reproductive rights.

Goodwin is currently the Linda D. & Timothy J. O’Neill Professor of Constitutional Law and Global Health Policy at Georgetown Law, where she is also the co-faculty director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law.

Goodwin and Ghee used King’s landmark acceptance speech, after receiving Planned Parenthood’s inaugural Margaret Sanger Award, to suggest that the fight for reproductive freedom today is not so far removed from similar struggles in the past.

Assistant Dean of Experiential Education Mitchell E. Zamoff’s opening remarks framed the discussion.

“Here at Minnesota Law, we know that lawyers play a critical role in defining, protecting, and expanding reproductive freedoms,” said Zamoff.

Assistant Dean Ghee noted that in Dr. King’s acceptance speech, he marries the struggles for racial justice and racial equality to the struggle for reproductive freedom. She asked Goodwin her thoughts on why it was important for King to do so.

“Dr. King recognized that the very first journeys of lawmaking in

this country involved questions of reproduction,” Goodwin shared. “Those questions of reproduction were very specifically questions related to Black women and girls and their bodies.”

Drawing on records left behind by Thomas Jefferson urging fellow slave owners to populate their plantations with Black women rather than men, Professor Goodwin added that Jefferson preferred Black women because he profited from their presence and labor every few years. Specifically, Goodwin stated that Jefferson’s choice shed light on “forced coercive labor” of a sexual nature upon Black women’s bodies.

Goodwin added that Dr. King intended with his speech to bring the audience to a common understanding of the key objectives and intersectional interest of fights for racial justice and reproductive justice. “He was showing that that past tethered to the present,” she said.

Goodwin explored the relationship between King’s words and the era during which they were spoken. She noted that King gave his speech during the Great Migration, a time in which African Americans fled the racial violence and Jim Crow policies of the South while searching for refuge in northern and midwestern cities.

King’s speech articulated the challenges African American transplants would face in these more densely populated regions. He acknowledged what was reasonable in the south — having an abundance of children who took on sharecropping and farming responsibilities — could not be sustained, for example, in one-bedroom Chicago tenements.

Professor Goodwin said that King’s solution to this unsustainable way of living was family planning. Goodwin skillfully argued that women deserve the right to decide the scale and scope of their family, and that diminishing a woman’s options denies her dignity. She drew on King’s speech to conclude that from slavery to Jim Crow and beyond, laws forcing women, especially Black women, to bear children whom they could not adequately accommodate require both racial and reproductive advocacy.

Assistant Dean Ghee asked Professor Goodwin to expand on how Dr. King’s work often invokes a strain of antebellum history. She also asked Goodwin to consider if there are viable arguments in favor of reproductive freedom using the 13th Amendment.

“Abolition of American slavery, sexual assault, and rape was on the minds of the abolitionists,” Goodwin said. She added that when abolitionists fought for the 13th Amendment’s prohibition on involuntary servitude, they were also cognizant of sexual involuntary servitude, which yielded both political and economic interests. Professor Goodwin encouraged

lawyers to recalibrate their thinking about the relationship of constitutional provisions to the concerns of women, characterizing these arguments as a “muscle that hasn’t been worked by many lawyers quite yet.”

Assistant Dean Ghee asked Professor Goodwin what steps those interested in intersectional advocacy could take to ensure the progress of both racial and reproductive movements. Goodwin said that these movements require advocates to read with intention, become students of history, and contemplate how historical treatment of other rights, such as voting rights, can affect decisions in the United States.

Professor Goodwin referenced the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the case overturning Roe v. Wade and holding that the U.S. Constitution confers no right to abortion. Goodwin said that before the Supreme Court’s decision, an important lower court decision from

Judge Carlton Reeves in Mississippi contained critical comments in the footnotes, which could be missed without a thorough reading of history. Originally, Judge Reeves discarded arguments from Mississippi claiming abortion bans are rooted in concern for the health and safety of women. Instead, he implored the state to show where in its history it could point to other ways women’s health and safety had been prioritized.

In response to questions from the audience, Professor Goodwin urged legal advocates to evaluate how to use their training to protect and advise physicians who attempt to uphold reproductive freedoms. Goodwin asserted that hyper-surveillance and hyper-policing have become dangerous for healthcare providers and patients alike.

She also emphasized the importance of voting. “If one looks at what we have experienced in recent years in this country, it says a lot about why

voting matters,” she said. “The votes that we cast today say a lot about what our future will look like.” ❘❘❘❘

By Reauna Stiff ’25

Reauna Stiff ’25 is a Minnesota Law student from Southern Illinois. She is the president of the Black Law Student Association (BLSA), an admissions ambassador, an instructor for the RISE (Race Informed Student Instruction) group, and a student attorney in the Innocence Clinic.

To view the video of this conversation or listen to the podcast, visit: z.umn.edu/spring2024-MLK

 Professor Michele B. Goodwin with Assistant Dean of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Ra'Shya Ghee ’13 at the 9th Annual MLK Convocation.

 Assistant Dean of Experiential Education

Mitchell E. Zamoff, Professor Michele B. Goodwin, and BLSA President Reauna Stiff ’25.

Photos: Tony Nelson

Faculty & Staff Notes News about Law School Hires and Moves

Faculty Arrivals

Professor Francis X. Shen rejoined the faculty at Minnesota Law as a professor of law and the Solly Robbins Distinguished Research Scholar. He is the co-chair of the Consortium on Law and Values in Health, Environment & the Life Sciences, a faculty member in the University’s Graduate Program in Neuroscience, and director of the Shen Neurolaw Lab. Before returning to Minnesota Law, Shen was a faculty member at Harvard Medical School in the Center for Bioethics and at Massachusetts General Hospital’s Department of Psychiatry. He is the co-author of four books, including the first Law and Neuroscience casebook (Aspen, with Jones and Schall). In 2021, he was awarded the Early Career Scholars Medal by the American Law Institute (ALI), one of two medals awarded every other year. In announcing the award, the ALI recognized Shen as “a pioneer in establishing the interdisciplinary field of law and neuroscience.” He teaches Criminal Law, Evidence, Introduction to American Law, Law & Neuroscience, Law & Artificial Intelligence, and Education Law. His work has been supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Science Foundation (NSF), multiple

foundations, and private philanthropy. He currently co-leads two NIH BRAIN Initiative grants, one on portable MRI and one on community engagement in neuroimaging research. He is also the founding director of the Dana Foundation Career Network on Neuroscience & Society. Shen earned a B.A. in economics and English from the University of Chicago, a J.D. from Harvard Law School, and a Ph.D. in government and social policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Staff

Arrivals

Adam Lacock joined Minnesota Law as the chief financial officer in January. He was formerly the senior finance director with TPTTwin Cities PBS, where he worked for the last eight years leading financial planning and analysis, driving operational efficiency, and developing financial processes. He previously worked for Target in various finance management roles, and he is the former chair, treasurer, and member of the board for Cornerstone Advocacy Services, a domestic violence prevention non-profit in the West Metro. Adam holds an MBA from Drake University.

Joy Mbithe Musyimi joined Minnesota Law this academic year as the assistant director of Student Affairs. Before joining the Law School, she was a sexual violence coordinator for Iusroon, a local grassroots organization that advocates for social change for Somali women. She earned a master’s in human rights from the Humphrey School of Public Affairs and was a practicing attorney in Nairobi, Kenya. She graduated from Moi University School of Law with her LL.B. and holds a Diploma in Law from the Kenya School of Law.

Teddy Wolfe is the operations associate for Minnesota Law’s Office of Advancement. He previously taught history at the middle school and high school level in Bloomington, Minnesota, and worked for The Blake School in Minneapolis where he provided integrated classroom technology and event support. He has a B.A. in History and Education from Carleton College.

Staff Promotions

Lizzy Beghelli was promoted to senior director of alumni relations and annual giving at the Law School. She was previously the director of alumni relations and annual giving. Beghelli leads the alumni relations and annual giving team and has implemented several initiatives during her time at Minnesota Law. She expanded

the alumni reunion and annual giving program, initiated the Student Philanthropy Board, developed Spring Alumni Week and Gopher Gratitude Day, and expanded affinity programming including the GOLD Council and international alumni programming. She has a B.A. in Public Relations with a minor in Journalism from the University of Northwestern and an M.A. in Italian Studies from The Ohio State University.

Monica Wittstock was promoted to director of communications at Minnesota Law. She previously served as interim director of communications and associate director of communications for the Law School. She serves as

editor-in-chief of Minnesota Law magazine, leads the communications and events team, directs external and internal communications, and oversees public relations for the Law School. She has a B.A. from the University of Minnesota in Multidisciplinary Studies and an M.A. in Strategic Communications from the University of Minnesota. ❘❘❘❘

Minnesota Law Welcomes Three New Faculty Members for the 2024-25 Academic Year

Professor James Coleman will join Minnesota Law as a professor of law and serve as an affiliated faculty member with the University of Minnesota's Institute on the Environment this fall. He is currently a professor of law and the Robert G. Storey Distinguished Faculty Fellow at Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law. His scholarship focuses on the regulation of North American energy companies.

Professor Emmanuel Mauleón will join the faculty as an associate professor of law this fall. He is currently the Bernard A. and Lenore S. Greenberg Scholar Fellow at the UCLA School of Law. He writes about the role that police and other state security actors play in producing social, political, and legal regimes of domination and subordination.

Professor Ilan Wurman will join Minnesota Law as an associate professor of law, with tenure, beginning in the 2024-25 academic year. Wurman is currently an associate professor of law at the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law at Arizona State University, where he teaches administrative law and constitutional law. He writes primarily on the Fourteenth Amendment, administrative law, separation of powers, and constitutionalism. ❘❘❘❘

New Law Library Digital Resource:

Classic Cases: Historical Foundations of First-Year Law School Cases

THE LAW LIBRARY RELEASED a new digital resource, “Classic Cases: Historical Foundations of First-Year Law School Cases.”

As part of the Library’s growing Digital Special Collections, the site provides access to historical precedents and authorities utilized by many of the classic cases studied by first-year law students. This site opens a revealing window into the judicial reasoning of an earlier age, and illuminates the extent to which fundamental American case law is based on English precedents reaching as far back as the thirteenth century. It is a common rite of passage for generations of law students to debate the ruling in Palsgraf v. Long Island Railroad (1924), study the legacy of McCulloch v. Maryland (1819), and review the complex rule against perpetuities in the Duke of Norfolk’s Case (1682). These classic cases, and many others taken from the pages of casebooks in first-year classes, are standard-bearers of legal history and the common law tradition. The precedents and authorities cited in these cases help to establish a vital historical context, offering valuable

insight into the ways in which lawyers and judges have argued and decided cases in the past.

This new research site features classic cases in five areas of law: constitutional law, contracts, criminal law, property, and torts. Following analytic summaries of the cases are descriptions of selected historical precedents on which their decisions were based, as well as additional resources, including images, maps, and links to more information. A timeline for the classic cases furnishes a visual and chronological context.

The site provides access to case reports and bibliographic records for relevant volumes in the Law Library’s collections. By including scans of selected cases from the Library’s Arthur C. Pulling Rare Books Collection, the site highlights the breadth and depth of the historical legal resources found within the Law Library’s Stefan A. Riesenfeld Rare Books Research Center.

right of occupancy in North America. Pierson v. Post (1805), one of the most famous American property law cases, reveals a similar influence of European traditions. Each of the subject areas included on the site examines older, often hidden, historical legacies through its featured cases.

Visitors can discover this history at the new digital site. Use this QR code or the URL: z.umn.edu/spring2024lawlibrary

The rich legal traditions that the research site reflects on are invaluable for research purposes. American property law, for example, has deep roots in English common law, tracing its origins to the medieval period. Though early American law liberalized English property rules, the English doctrinal inheritance remains important today. Perhaps more surprisingly, visitors will discover that English and American jurists once turned to other European sources for guidance on issues related to fundamental property rights. In Johnson v. M’Intosh (1823), the Supreme Court cited a natural law tradition developed in continental Europe to describe Native Americans’

“Classic Cases: Historical Foundations of First-Year Law School Cases,” was supervised by Michael Hannon ’98, Associate Director for Access Services & Digital Initiatives, and Ryan Greenwood, Curator of Rare Books and Special Collections, with the invaluable assistance of law students and recent alumni Rachel Canoun ’24, Mason Medeiros ’22, Loren Olson ’26, and Alec Shaw ’19, who wrote and edited the case summaries. Joy Brown, digital technologist, designed and built the digital site, and Sophia Charbonneau, special collections assistant, assembled and reviewed the materials featured in the exhibit. ❘❘❘❘

By Ryan Greenwood, Law Library faculty member and curator of rare books and special collections.

1 William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-69), cited in Marbury v. Madison (1803).

2 National Intelligencer, March 6, 1824, announcing the decision in Gibbons v. Ogden (1824).

3 Justice Benjamin Cardozo, author of the majority opinion in Palsgraf v. Long Island Railroad (1928).

4 Treaty between the US government and Piankeshaw Indians (1868); Piankeshaw land was discussed in Johnson v. M'Intosh (1823).

5 Excerpt from The Case of Thorns (Hulle v. Orynge, 1466), from the Law Library’s collections.

Law Library’s Horace Hansen Archival Collection Included in New Dachau War Crimes Trial Exhibit

In 2022, the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site, located at the infamous German concentration camp in Dachau, Germany, opened a new exhibit on the Dachau War Crimes Trials. The important exhibit commemorates the Dachau war crimes prosecutions and the criminal judgments passed against the camp staff and guards. The exhibit also features reproductions from the University of Minnesota Law Library’s Horace Hansen archival collection, comprised of five boxes of documents and photographs from Horace Hansen (1910–1995), a St. Paul native and a leading prosecutor at the Dachau trials. The exhibited items include photographs that Hansen captured as evidence of war crimes and government trial photos drawn from Hansen’s collection. The 2022 exhibit at Dachau has recently been extended through the end of 2024.

For more, please see our recent blog post: z.umn.edu/DachauExhibit

IMPACT of GIVING

A Series of Fortunate Events

The Bill ’68 and Carol Tempest Scholarship Helped Janelle Walkden ’25 Find Her Path as an Environmental Lawyer

Carol and Bill ’68 Tempest

NOT LONG AGO, JANELLE

WALKDEN ’25 considered law school and a legal career beyond her reach.

Raised in rural Ohio in a singleparent household, Walkden was the first generation on her mother’s side of the family to attend college. She chose Bowling Green State University because it offered her an academic scholarship. She graduated in 2017 with a degree in political science.

“Obviously, law school is the number-one thing you’re supposed to do with a political science degree,” Walkden says. “But I was never going to law school. Ever.”

Despite that declaration, Walkden is scheduled to graduate from the University of Minnesota Law School in 2025, after which she intends to launch a career in environmental law.

Finding her passion

After college, Walkden got married and moved with her husband to Colorado, where he studied to be a park ranger environmentalist at Colorado State University. She worked in a real estate office, then shifted to a job in the Larimer County Clerk and Recorders office. It was there, Walkden says, that she began thinking about law school and started taking practice LSATs online.

Soon after, an opportunity arose in the Larimer County District Attorney’s office. Her experience in that position was life changing, Walkden says, and law school became a burning ambition. Her husband completed his undergraduate studies, and the couple contemplated a move in line with Walkden’s choice of law school. They wanted to return to the Midwest, and when the offer came from the University of Minnesota — with the gift of the Bill ’68 and Carol Tempest Scholarship her decision was made. Other schools made offers, but, she says, “The Tempest Scholarship is pretty much what sold it for me.”

A gift inspired by experience

Bill Tempest ’68, a native New Yorker, practiced law for 27 years after graduating from Minnesota Law, mostly as an in-house attorney with several high-tech firms. He is retired and living in Dallas, Texas, with his wife Carol, his high school sweetheart.

Tempest says that he and Carol, a former teacher, created a scholarship fund at Minnesota Law because they are strong believers in education and in sharing resources when you have them.

“Carol and I have both been in a position where we had lots of ambition and not a lot of money,” he says. “When we were married, I think our major asset was the 1964 Volkswagen Beetle that Carol’s dad gave her as a graduation present. So, we have a lot of empathy for people with big ambitions and not a lot of money to get there, and this is our way of helping out in that regard.”

Leaving a mark

When Walkden arrived at Minnesota Law in 2022, she already had a clear goal. “I specifically came to law school because I care about the environment,” she says. “I want to be an environmental lawyer.”

She received a summer internship as a law clerk with the Minnesota

Pollution Control Agency after her first year, and then in October 2023 she landed a part-time job as a law clerk with the Ramsey County Attorney’s office.

The Tempests are thrilled with Walkden’s successes and are excited to hear about her education and career goals. “I’m a preacher’s kid,” Bill says. “My dad was a pastor, and in our house both of my parents were the first generations of their families to go to college. So, education was kind of a second religion in our house. Carol was a teacher and we’re both all in on education. We’re both 80 years old now, and we’d like to leave a mark by the side of the road. We’ve got a lot more years behind us than in front of us, and this is a way to leave a corner of the world at least a little bit better than we found it.”

Looking ahead to what she hopes will be a productive career, Walkden offers a similar thought. “I grew up in a lower income bracket in a very rural area,” she says. “So, now that I have had such privilege to get to where I am, my biggest thing is making sure that I’m using that to give back as much as possible and try to make as many people’s lives better as I possibly can.” ❘❘❘❘

Dick Dahl is a Twin Cities-based freelance writer.

Photo: Tony Nelson

Janelle Walkden ’25

GETTING DOWN TO WORK

Six Minnesota Law alumni who focus on labor and employment law discuss the business of work

The employer-employee relationship at the center of labor and employment law is one that almost all people will experience in their lifetime. Given that reach, this area of law continues to be a major focus and one of the main strengths for the University of Minnesota Law School.

By Todd Nelson

Photo: Jay Mallin

Executive Secretary of the National Labor Relations Board

Roxanne Rothschild ’93

< CONT

AA long history of being a powerhouse in labor and employment law means that Minnesota Law alumni can be found working in some of the top regulatory agencies and biggest law firms and companies in Minnesota and the country. Some are focused on improving wages and working conditions. Others seek to prevent discrimination and harassment or to make new labor and employment laws.

Roxanne Rothschild ’93, executive secretary of the National Labor Relations Board, is one of Minnesota Law’s prominent labor and employment alumni. She traces her interest in labor and employment law to the labor issues that unfolded during her undergraduate internship at the Minneapolis Star Tribune. When a strike loomed at the newspaper, management instructed non-union employees, like Rothschild, how to cross a picket line.

“As a 19-year-old, I was terrified,” Rothschild says. “But the strike ended up not happening, and I was very relieved.”

Rothschild took all of the labor and employment law classes she could at Minnesota Law before working at a labor and employment firm in San Francisco. Homesick, she returned to Minnesota to serve as an in-house employment attorney at 3M.

Eager to return to labor law, Rothschild joined the National Labor Relations Board in 2002. When the Board named her executive secretary in October 2018, it had been 77 years since a woman had held that position.

Today, Rothschild serves as the chief judicial management officer for the Board, an independent agency that enforces the National Labor Relations Act. The Act also ensures free and fair union representation elections for those who file a petition with the NLRB. The Act protects employees who engage in “protected concerted activity,” defined as when two or more employees act together to improve their working conditions.

As executive secretary, Rothschild says that, simply put, her job is to help the Board do its job. Her office assigns cases, expedites processing of pending cases, tracks case processing statistics, and issues Board and administrative law judge decisions. Her office answers procedural questions and questions about pending matters because the Board, as a quasi-judicial body, cannot have ex parte communications with parties. Rothschild acts as Board liaison with other offices within the agency and with the Administrative Conference of the United States, the American Bar Association, and the Association of Labor Relations Agencies. She also is a fellow in the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers. Rothschild notes that the Board has issued many precedent-setting board decisions over the last few years, on a broad range of issues that affect the daily lives of workers and employers. This includes establishing a new standard for whether someone is an independent contractor or an employee, revising the standard for an employer’s duty to bargain before changing terms and conditions of employment, and adopting a new standard for assessing the lawfulness of work rules. The Board has

“I don’t feel like I'm a lawyer who happens to work for a union. I do see myself a lot of times as a unionist who’s also a lawyer.”

Eric Chen ’00

Senior Counsel for New York State United Teachers

also published new regulatory rules that restore fair and efficient procedures for union elections and revised the standard for determining whether two or more entities may be considered joint employers of a group of employees.

Rothschild credits Professor Emerita Laura Cooper as someone who helped to inspire her labor law career, and who encouraged students to carefully examine all sides of the issues.

“Everyone works or they have worked,” says Eric Chen ’00, who is employed by a labor union, has been president of a union group at his workplace, and is the son of a union member.

That’s why Chen says he likes working in labor and employment law; it’s a field to which almost everyone can relate.

Growing up with a father who, as a university professor, was a union member and supporter instilled in Chen an early interest in the labor movement. As a senior counsel for New York State United Teachers (NYSUT), he works for the same union to which his father belonged. It represents nearly 700,000 members who work at or have retired from schools, colleges, or healthcare facilities.

A union member himself, Chen led three rounds of contract negotiations during more than five years as president of the union that represents attorneys who work at NYSUT.

“I don’t feel like I’m a lawyer who happens to work for a union,” he says. “I do see myself a lot of times as a unionist who’s also a lawyer.”

Chen, who joined NYSUT in 2006, brings litigation against school districts or other employers over violations of bargaining agreements or education or labor statutes.

He defends the union in litigation and Issues are especially complex employees accused of misconduct. When NYSUT seeks to represent a group of private sector employees, Chen may appear at the National Labor Relations Board on their behalf.

Schoolteachers and other public employees have a degree of stability under New York’s Public Employees Fair Employment Act, Chen says. Known as the Taylor Law, it effectively prohibits strikes and lockouts. When parties can’t agree on terms of a new contract, the current one continues.

He sees healthcare as the next frontier for labor, with employees who faced increasing demands and pressure during the pandemic now seeking better wages and working conditions.

Based on his personal and professional experience with labor, Chen likes representing the underdog.

“It’s definitely not true for every situation, but certainly there are a lot of situations I encounter where we are the underdog,” Chen says. “Who’s on the other side of us? A school district, the government, a large employer, a large hospital system. So that’s something that appeals to me.”



Just as labor law is constantly changing, so are the business units that Sara Kalis ’07 serves as corporate counsel in labor and employee relations at Amazon.

Kalis works with a small group on big-picture strategy and day-to-day counsel for Amazon business in the United States, including Amazon web services, operations, and delivery stations.

“The businesses that I support are constantly evolving,” says Kalis. “You walk into a warehouse, or you walk into one of our air facilities and you think, ‘This looks great, everything is the way it should be, nothing else to do here.’ But there are always people looking at ways to fix, to improve, to home in on how we can change our operations to make them even better. And that is a tenet of labor law. Labor law is not a static body of law.”

Kalis went from plaintiff-side labor and employment law at Siegel, Brill, Greupner, Duffy & Foster in Minneapolis to management-side at Littler.

“On the management side, I knew I could fix things,” Kalis says. “If a client presented me with a case where it was clear that something wrong had been done, we could remedy that to the best of our abilities. On the plaintiff side, you’re asking someone else to fix it for you.”

From Littler, where Kalis traveled 50 weeks a year, she moved to transactional work at Paul Hastings. She joined Amazon in March 2022, returning to traditional labor law work.

“The businesses that I support are constantly evolving … But there are always people looking at ways to fix, to improve, to home in on how we can change our operations to make them even better.”

Sara Kalis ’07 Corporate Counsel in Labor and Employee Relations at Amazon

“There are few employers in the U.S. that have as many complex labor issues as what we are presented with daily,” Kalis says. “The opportunity to continue to grow at Amazon is not an opportunity that I see stopping any time soon.” 

Employers who do not receive reports of workplace harassment cannot assume misconduct is not happening, says Shea Holman ’20, counsel for the Purple Method. Issues are especially complex when employees work remotely or in hybrid roles, she says. The Washington, D.C.-based organization works with companies to develop anti-harassment solutions.

“When it happens in online or virtual platforms, people don’t know that it’s sexual harassment,” Holman says. “They didn’t have examples of what remote or online harassment looks like. But just because people aren’t reporting it doesn’t mean you’ve suddenly solved your harassment problem.”

Such an assumption contributes to what Holman terms a growing blind spot of unreported workplace incidents. In 2023, only 58% of employees reported poor behaviors they experienced or witnesses, down from 64% in 2019, according to an HR Acuity survey.

Photo:

James Kim

Holman’s concerns about employment discrimination and particularly workplace sexual harassment led her to pursue Minnesota Law’s Concentration in Labor and Employment Law.

During law school, she was a summer legal intern at the Purple Campaign, a nonprofit outreach, education, and advocacy organization. She returned as a legal fellow, completing the last semester of her 3L year there through the Law School’s Remote Semester Field Placement program.

Holman became law and policy director at the Purple Campaign before serving as its executive director. She joined the Purple Method in 2022.

In her current role, Holman uses her experience with federal and state anti-discrimination laws and knowledge of workplace harassment issues to provide employers with policies, procedures, and training that help create harassment-free workplaces. That sometimes means identifying what is missing from employee handbooks, such as relationship policies or anti-harassment training.

Holman credits Professor Emeritus Stephen Befort ’74, her employment law mentor, with encouraging students to think critically about the law.

“We don’t have to accept the law for what it is,” Holman says. “We can learn it and then shape it and advocate for new laws. That’s a lot of the work I do today, advocating for new laws, particularly around workplace discrimination and harassment.”

Before law school, Faegre Drinker partner Scott Wright ’88 researched trade issues in Panama on a Fulbright grant, translated for Cuban refugees, and worked on a hog and dairy farm and later in a meatprocessing plant.

Those early experiences and Wright’s extensive practice in labor and immigration law since then have prepared him to address one of the most urgent issues food and agriculture companies face today: the risk of hiring underage workers in violation of state and federal labor law.

None of his clients, Wright says, appeared in reports in the New York Times and on 60 Minutes that drew national attention to companies illegally hiring unaccompanied migrant children for dangerous jobs.

“The big issue that we’re working with our clients in food and ag on right now is how to proactively identify and prevent the employment of people who are in fact under age 18 in jobs that are defined by law as hazardous,” Wright says. “Businesses face devastating liability even when they unwittingly employ people who are under age 18.”

Wright is sought out as a subject matter expert in part because of his familiarity with various forms of documents individuals use to prove their identity and establish that they have employment authorization.

“We don’t have to accept the law for what it is. We can learn it and then shape it and advocate for new laws. That’s a lot of the work I do today, advocating for new laws, particularly around workplace discrimination and harassment.”

Shea Holman ’20 Counsel, The Purple Method

“I have looked at literally hundreds of thousands of documents — immigration documents, passports, driver’s licenses, state (identification cards), Social Security cards, birth certificates,” Wright says. “I’ve seen it all, in terms of developing expertise in what is real and what is fake.”

Wright serves as team leader of the Immigration Global Mobility team, part of Faegre’s Labor and Employment Group. The team has approximately 30 lawyers in London, Shanghai, Minneapolis, Chicago, Denver, Indianapolis, and Washington, D.C. Most of the team’s work involves managing portfolios of work visas for people going into the United Kingdom, the United States, or China or going from one developing country to another.

“My greatest passion has been the development of this team,” Wright says. “When I talk about something that I’m most proud of, for me it’s in a big firm environment to have put this team together that is so diverse in language skill, nationality backgrounds, and professional expertise.”

One of Wright’s fondest memories from his time as a student was participating in the Wagner Labor Law Moot Court Competition in New York under Professor Emerita Laura Cooper’s tutelage.

“I

have looked at literally hundreds of thousands of documents … I’ve seen it all, in terms of developing expertise in what is real and what is fake.”

Lauren Wood ’08 prefers the human side of the law, especially how it plays out in labor and employment cases.

Several Minnesota Law experiences contributed to that preference, including employment law classes with Professor Emeritus Stephen Befort ’74. Wood was a student attorney and then directed the Workers’ Rights Clinic and had a summer internship with a farm workers’ legal rights organization in Michigan.

After starting out as a business litigator, Wood pivoted back to labor and employment law.

“I’ve done antitrust, patent work and breach of contract in private practice, but there’s something about the human dynamic of employment law that I missed,” Wood says. “And so, as I moved along in my career, I just started seeking opportunities to do more of labor and employment work.”

Wood’s decision eventually took her to the San Francisco City Attorney’s Office, where she has worked since February 2022 as a deputy city attorney on the office’s labor team.

Where most public law offices tend to make heavy use of outside counsel, the City Attorney’s Office in San Francisco has more than 200 attorneys and handles almost everything in house, including litigation.

“Working in a public entity has a different feel. It’s very service-oriented, and what we’re looking for is a just result.”

Lauren Wood ’08

Deputy City Attorney, San Francisco City Attorney’s Office

“We basically regard ourselves as a public law firm,” Wood says. “We’re essentially the law firm for the City and County of San Francisco.”

While Wood provides advice to a couple of city departments on labor and employment issues, she focuses more on litigation, working with the team to handle employment lawsuits filed against the city. Those mostly involve employment discrimination claims because state law excludes governmental entities from most wage-andhour statutes.

Wood also gets involved in collective bargaining and labor relations. She has handled numerous binding arbitrations arising from grievances filed under collective bargaining agreements.

Wood began her career her with Robins Kaplan, transferring from the firm’s Minneapolis office to its Los Angeles one in 2011. She pursued opportunities to work on labor and employment matters at smaller firms.

“Working in a public entity has a different feel,” Wood said. “It’s very service-oriented, and what we’re looking for is a just result.”

Todd Nelson is a Twin Cities-based freelance writer.

Scott Wright ’88 Partner, Faegre Drinker

Photo: Tony Nelson

A TRADITION OF EXCELLENCE in LABOR & EMPLOYMENT LAW

Professors Charlotte Garden and Matthew Bodie build on an impressive legacy in labor & employment law left by Professors Laura Cooper and Stephen Befort ’74

By Todd Nelson

For the last year and a half, two extraordinary faculty members have been building on the Law School’s national reputation for excellence in labor and employment law.

Professors Charlotte Garden and Matthew Bodie joined the faculty in 2022, succeeding two pillars in Minnesota’s labor and employment law community, Professors Emeriti Laura Cooper and Stephen Befort ’74

After the retirements of Befort and Cooper — who each taught at the Law School for four decades — faculty, alumni, and students, including the Student Employment and Labor Law Association (SELLA), recognized the importance of retaining a leading labor and employment program.

“In terms of the Law School’s commitment, it says something when a school is interested in not only having one person on the faculty who teaches labor and employment classes — who thinks about these issues full time — but also in actually having two people,” Garden says.

Bodie, too, heard from multiple sources about the value of labor and employment law. “A core group of students and faculty, but particularly an energized group of students, emphasized the need for a high quality labor and employment law program,” he says.

Bodie and Garden note a strong union presence and tradition in Minnesota, as well as growing support for labor unions nationally. Last year, Gallup found that 67% of Americans approved of labor unions.

Both faculty members say that support for unions is being driven by frontline workers and others experiencing the pandemic as a work and health emergency, as well as younger workers who want more of a voice in the workplace.

A local nursing strike in 2022, the recent strikes by Hollywood writers and actors and auto workers, and the unionization of Starbucks employees also fueled that interest, Bodie says.

Bodie and Garden had met Befort and Cooper at conferences over the years. They were well aware of Minnesota Law’s long history of strong scholarships and teaching in labor and employment law.

Cooper and Befort co-edited the ABA Journal of Labor & Employment Law for nine years, adding to the Law School’s national profile, and worked with Bodie on his transition to faculty co-editor of the journal before he came to Minnesota Law.

Garden and Bodie have known each other through conferences, collaborated on amicus briefs, and served as co-editors of an online legal scholarship review site. They teamed last fall to co-host the Law School’s 18th Annual Colloquium on Scholarship and Employment in Labor Law, a national conference that drew more than 75 professors and dozens of presenters from around the country at Minnesota Law.

Garden, the Julius E. Davis Professor of Law, specializes in labor law, employment law, and constitutional law. Her writing addresses labor protest rights and the First Amendment.

“I’m interested in the difficulty of enforcing employment law rights, especially for low-wage workers, while considering ways to make labor and employment rights more real for more workers,” Garden says.

Garden’s scholarship has appeared in leading law reviews. She is co-author of two labor and employment law casebooks and co-editor of The Cambridge Handbook of U.S. Labor Law for the Twenty-First Century. Her opinion pieces have appeared in the Washington Post, The Atlantic and SCOTUSBlog, and she has been quoted in the New York Times, among many other media outlets.

“Even though a lot of adults have jobs, it’s easy for people to have misconceptions about their rights at work,” Garden says. “If I have an opportunity to help educate the public, that’s not formally part of my job but an important extension of it.”

She has worked to strengthen workers’ rights on a national policy level through the Economic Policy Institute’s Unequal Power Project. In 2019, Garden testified before a U.S. Congressional committee on the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, the most ambitious effort to reform American labor law in decades.

Garden previously was a professor at Seattle University School of Law, where she served as co-associate dean for research and faculty development.

Bodie teaches and writes on labor and employment law, corporate law, data privacy, and algorithmic management. The Robins Kaplan Professor of Law, he describes the focus of his scholarship as “the crossover between corporate law and labor law.”

Bodie is also interested in providing protections for the employee data that employers collect and the data that workers create on the job.

Bodie has published more than 50 book chapters and journal articles. He is the co-author of Reconstructing the Corporation: From Shareholder Primacy to Shared Governance, which includes proposals for worker representation on corporate boards. He has been interviewed and quoted in many media outlets, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post. Prior tojoining Minnesota Law, Bodie was the Callis Family Professor at Saint Louis University School of Law, where he was a member and co-director of the Wefel Center for Employment Law. Before that, he was an associate professor at Hofstra University School of Law and an acting assistant professor of lawyering at NYU School of Law.

Garden and Bodie both enjoy engaging with alumni who practice in the labor and employment law arena and frequently have them speak with students.

Building on a legacy

Bodie recognizes how many students Befort and Cooper influenced and inspired over the years. “We hear the names of Steve Befort and Laura Cooper so often mentioned as meaningful mentors in the field, so we want to carry on that tradition,” he says.

In addition to alumni in private practice and in-house roles, Minnesota Law graduates who studied with Befort or Cooper hold top positions in numerous state and federal labor regulatory agencies, such as the National Labor Relations Board and Minnesota Public Employment Relations Board (PERB).

Jess Anna King ’03 is executive director and general counsel of PERB, where Cooper now serves as board chair. Befort, King’s Labor Law professor, served as her mentor when she became an arbitrator.

Prof. Matthew Bodie and Prof. Charlotte Garden

Photo: Tony Nelson

“If you’re practicing labor or employment in the state of Minnesota, you’ve had Cooper or Befort or both and they’ve made an impact on your life and practice,” King says.

Cooper was the first woman to receive tenure at Minnesota Law. A renowned expert in labor law and workplace dispute resolution, she helped the Law School establish labor and employment law as a specialty.

To prepare, Cooper worked for a summer as an attorney at the National Labor Relations Board’s regional office in Minneapolis. She then spent a sabbatical year observing federal and state mediators, arbitrators, and labor attorneys, as well as agency and court proceedings.

“It would be inappropriate if not fraudulent for someone to say, ‘I am the labor law teacher’ without being immersed in the labor law world,” Cooper says.

Cooper eventually created the capstone course in Labor and Employment Law, an innovative semester-long simulation that integrated labor and employment law with practical skills and ethical and professional issues.

Cooper obtained grants for empirical and analytical research on labor law, among other subjects, which helped her build expertise and eventually become a labor arbitrator. The co-author or co-editor of six books on labor law and workplace dispute resolution, she also received the 2009 Stanley V. Kinyon Tenured Teacher of the Year Award.

As opportunities arose, Cooper collaborated with Befort, including on the ABA Journal of Labor & Employment Law. They persuaded the ABA to publish articles by students on a trial basis — which it had never done before. This was so successful that there are now three student articles published per year in the journal.

A national authority on labor and employment law, Befort has continued teaching since his retirement. His honors include the Stanley V. Kinyon Teaching and Counseling Award in 1993 and 2008.

Befort’s positive clinic experience as a student motivated him to serve as the Law School’s Clinic program director from 1982 to 2003, during which time he increased the number of clinics and faculty regard for the clinical education program.

“I still consider Professor Befort a mentor who helped shape the direction of my career,” says Richard Pins ’95, a partner at Stinson’s Minneapolis office. “He was both a smart and practical professor but also my civil clinic supervisor. In those roles he was patient and prepared and understanding.”

Befort is proud of the work he and Cooper did to build the labor and employment law curriculum and program, as well as the relationships they forged with the practicing bar in Minnesota and nationally. Those connections often helped students find jobs.

Before joining the faculty, Befort worked in the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office and was principal assistant Ramsey County attorney. He began his career as legal counsel to PERB and the Bureau of Mediation Services. He has written more than 60 articles, book chapters, and papers on labor and employment subjects and has authored six books and co-authored a casebook on disability law.

“Professor Cooper and I both did a lot of publishing in top journals,” Befort says. “We were also very active in different labor and employment groups that involved academics in the field. We were passionate about the topic and interested in not just building a reputation but being involved. It helped us in terms of our knowledge and teaching and scholarship to exchange ideas with leading scholars from other schools.”

Befort was among those who pushed to hire new faculty to continue advancing the labor and employment law program he and Cooper built.

“Charlotte and Matthew are exactly what we need to carry on and enhance the labor and employment program,” Befort says. “To hire not one but two excellent, younger faculty to take over is a home run.” ❘❘❘❘

Todd Nelson is a Twin Cities-based freelance writer.

Prof. Emirita Laura Cooper

Prof. Emeritus Stephen Befort ’74

VISIONS of a HEALTHY WORK CULTURE

KENDRA BRODIN ’03 UNDERSTANDS THE VALUE OF WELL-BEING IN THE LEGAL PROFESSION. She is the founder of EsquireWell, a leading lawyer well-being and performance consulting firm that provides training, strategic guidance, coaching, and online learning tools to help lawyers and legal professionals be happier, healthier, and more successful. She sees the impact a legal work environment has on everything from attorney retention to mental health to productivity.

“Well-being in a law firm can be a challenge when you are paid based on billable hours,” Brodin says. “The more you work, the more you’re paid. But firms are taking a closer look at lawyer retention, performance, and wellbeing, approaching the topic like a marathon instead of a sprint. Burning people out fast doesn’t work. It just creates a negative cycle for the firm and the profession. Well-being, peak performance, leadership, and the business bottom line are all closely related.”

Brodin helps firms envision what a healthy work culture looks like where both the individual team members and the organization thrive. She then works alongside them to create programs and opportunities to make that environment a reality. When thinking about the work she does with the legal profession, Brodin often references the Desmond Tutu quote: “There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in.”

Erin McClernon, attorney development manager for Ogletree Deakins, says Brodin’s passion and insight were a key to the success of creating a program for her firm. “We collaborated closely with Kendra to build a ground-breaking employee engagement and well-being program that is designed for every single member of our firm,” McClernon says. “We worked with Kendra to make sure that the work environment helps people operate optimally at any given time. We also now have a strategy for when someone is struggling, or as Kendra puts it, ‘pulling people out of the river.’”

Prior to attending law school, Brodin earned a master’s degree in social work from the University of Pennsylvania. Before forming EsquireWell, Brodin gained deep insight into the legal profession by working in a variety of legal settings and roles, including private practice, law schools, recruiting firms, and, ultimately, as chief attorney development officer at Taft Stettinius & Hollister, where she was responsible for firmwide attorney learning.

James Keshavarz, chief wellness officer of Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher, hired Brodin to provide training for his legal team and the firm’s clients. “Her presentation style helped lawyers understand how values and empathetic communication skills can build belonging,” he says.

“We learned that we could bring people together and do things better.”

Brodin also contributes to the health of the industry by serving on the American Bar Association’s Well-Being Pledge Committee, which has a multi-part plan that addresses topics such as drinking-based events, access to addiction and mental health experts, and demonstration that help-seeking is a core cultural value. Keshavarz, also a member of the committee, notes, “Kendra’s presence helps give a strong sense of how changes can be implemented.”

Brodin is extremely active in promoting well-being in the legal profession in several other ways. Among other things, Brodin serves as a board member of Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers where she chairs the Education & Outreach Committee. She also teaches an upper-level course at the University of St. Thomas School of Law called “Well-Being and Professional Formation” and serves on the board of the University of Minnesota Law School’s Alumnae Network.

Brodin is planning many exciting things for EsquireWell, including online, on-demand well-being and professional development learning resources that provide CLE credits and ongoing access to benefits such as live desk yoga, meditation, and “office hours” where participants can drop in to ask Kendra their questions directly.

Brodin believes that most people go to law school to make a difference in some way. “This is the way that I have found to make a positive impact,” Brodin says. “I built EsquireWell to give me a way to use my unique background, experiences, and abilities to serve other lawyers, their organizations, and the legal profession. I’m optimistic that when we all do our part, we can build a profession where we not only help our colleagues who have ‘fallen into the river,’ but we prevent them from falling into the river in the first place.” ❘❘❘❘

Eric Butterman is a Texas-based freelance writer.

Kendra Brodin '03

Photo: Tony Nelson

The Great North Innocence Project and Minnesota Law’s Innocence Clinic Help Overturn the Wrongful Conviction of Marvin Haynes

RIGHTING A WRONG

To the untrained eye, Marvin Haynes’ case looked hopeless. He had spent almost 20 years in prison for the murder of a flower shop clerk in north Minneapolis in 2004, maintaining his innocence the entire time. Haynes had exhausted his appeals, and the statute of limitations for bringing a post-conviction claim for relief had run out long ago.

But in 2023, Haynes found hope with the Great North Innocence Project (GNIP) and the Innocence Clinic at Minnesota Law. Based on the evidence presented in Haynes’ application, GNIP’s legal team and the students participating in the clinic believed he was innocent and agreed to take on the challenge.

“It was an old case that presented significant procedural obstacles,” says Andrew Markquart, managing attorney at GNIP, current director of Minnesota Law’s Innocence Clinic, and lead attorney on the case. “But on the merits, this case was extremely strong.”

On May 16, 2004, Cynthia McDermid was working at Jerry’s Flower Shop with her brother, Randy Sherer. That morning a young Black man came in and ordered a floral arrangement for his mother. As McDermid turned her back, the customer pulled a gun and demanded money and any surveillance tapes. Hearing the commotion, Sherer came out from the back of the store. When Sherer told the assailant that he had no money apart from what was in the till, McDermid fled out the front door. The startled robber then shot and killed Sherer.

There was no physical evidence to identify the killer. Eyewitnesses, including McDermid, described the

BY DAN HEILMAN

perpetrator as a young Black man with short, closecropped hair. Investigators showed McDermid a photo lineup from which she identified a man as the perpetrator with 75 to 80 percent accuracy. However, that person was merely a filler and known to be out of state during the time of the murder. Shortly thereafter, a confidential informant called the police and suggested that Haynes was the perpetrator. This complicated the investigation, as Haynes did not match the description eyewitnesses originally gave to police.

The police picked up Haynes, then 16, on a curfew violation for missing court and interrogated him about the murder. Subsequently, investigators showed McDermid another photo lineup, this time including a photo of Haynes. However, the police used a twoyear-old photo that showed Mr. Haynes with shortcropped hair that more closely matched the witnesses’ description of the perpetrator, even though at the time at issue, Mr. Haynes wore his hair in a long, natural style. From this lineup and again during a live lineup, McDermid named Haynes as the culprit. However, she also expressed uncertainty and decreased confidence in her choices.

The lineup procedures that police engaged in went against best practices. Offering multiple viewings of a suspect to an eyewitness risks tainting their identification, both by suggesting to the witness that the person shown twice is the suspect and by creating a risk that the witness will be confused about whether they recognize the suspect from the actual event or a prior viewing.

Photos: Emily Baxter

The flawed eyewitness evidence was used at Haynes’ murder trial, and a jury found him guilty of first-degree murder in September 2005. In the courtroom, Haynes shouted, “I didn’t kill that man!” The Minnesota Supreme Court affirmed his conviction two years later.

McDermid, the primary eyewitness who saw the shooter, had died by the time Haynes’ case reached the clinic.

After listening to Haynes’ story, Markquart and former GNIP legal director Julie Jonas ’95 formed a team to thoroughly research the case.

“The reality of post-conviction litigation is that often you don’t even get to the merits of the case because there are so many procedural obstacles,” Markquart says. “Particularly when you’re talking about older cases, we have a very strict statute of limitations in Minnesota — two years with very narrow exceptions. A lot of the battle was just to overcome those procedural hurdles.”

“Marvin’s was my primary case when I joined the clinic,” says Trish Palermo ’23, now an associate at Taft. “At first, I sifted through thousands of documents to organize them and make sense of the case before we formed a plan,” says Palermo. She worked with Jonas, now an assistant professor at the University of St. Thomas School of Law, to create a plan and make note of the witnesses who might help with Haynes’ case.

As a 1L, Reauna Stiff ’25 was in a criminal law class taught by associate professor Perry Moriearty, who invited her client, Myon Burrell, to speak to the class. Burrell was released by the Minnesota Board of Pardons in 2020. As a result, Stiff became more interested in the challenges incarcerated individuals face, including wrongful conviction. After researching Burrell’s case, Stiff discovered an article in the Star Tribune detailing Haynes’ fight to be released. The article mentioned that the Great North Innocence Project had agreed to take his case.

“I registered for the Innocence Clinic in the hopes that I would come across Mr. Haynes’ case,” says Stiff. “I was assigned to the case during the first week of classes.”

Stiff adds: “As students, we spend a lot of time studying the theory behind laws, but rarely do we encounter someone who’s been directly impacted by the criminal justice system. I entered law school to get involved in civil rights or civil rights-adjacent work.”

Poring through filings, interviews, and police documents, the team became more and more convinced of Haynes’ innocence.

“After sifting through thousands of documents to make sense of his case, it became clear from the start that Marvin was wrongfully convicted,” says Palermo. “I worked with Julie Jonas to form a plan for tracking down witnesses that might have knowledge on Marvin’s case. One-by-one, we tracked down individuals by knocking on their doors, calling them, or sending them letters. There was a clear pattern with those we spoke to — all minors at that time, pressured and threatened by MPD to offer statements placing Marvin at the scene of the crime. GNIP used this evidence to support their case to overturn Marvin’s conviction.”

Midway through the process, the team got an unexpected break. A second eyewitness, then 14-year-old Ravi Seeley, signed an affidavit recanting his original identification of Haynes.

In June 2023, Markquart, GNIP Legal Fellow Anna McGinn, and GNIP pro bono attorney Jazz Hampton filed a petition for post-conviction relief seeking to vacate Haynes’ conviction. The petition included new testimony from Seely, who said he felt coerced by police to make an identification — and that he was never sure he’d seen Haynes but was worried at the time that he would get in trouble if he didn’t cooperate.

“I began to feel more optimistic after we interviewed Ravi,” says Palermo. “He provided an affidavit that essentially confirmed that many of the witnesses who had testified were pressured to do so.”

Haynes was exonerated in December 2023 when 4th Judicial District Judge William Koch signed an agreement between Haynes and the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office, which had brought the original murder charges, saying a flawed investigation violated Haynes’ constitutional rights and led to his wrongful conviction.

“It was a huge success for us,” says Sara Jones ’88, executive director of GNIP. “The way it was negotiated with the Hennepin County Attorney’s office, it was an amazing thing to watch.”

GNIP recently advocated for legislation (HF 2400 / SF 2597) that will change how Minnesota’s statute of limitations works. The legislation passed as part of the recent omnibus package at the Minnesota Legislature. “We’re looking for a more reasonable standard,” Markquart says. “In a case like Marvin’s, it would make it a lot easier for him to get back into court.”

As Haynes rebuilds a life outside prison, he expressed his appreciation for the help he got from the Great North Innocence Project and the Innocence Clinic. “It was wonderful working with the team. Everyone I worked with developed a great understanding of my situation and really dove into my case and took the process seriously.” ❘❘❘❘

Dan Heilman is a Twin Cities-based freelance writer.

 Following the hearing that exonerated Marvin Haynes, his family and legal team gathered. From L to R: Marvina Haynes, Jim Mayer ’01, Andrew Markquart, Marvin Haynes, Anna McGinn, Sara Jones ’88, Sydney Dobbs, Jazz Hampton, and Hayley Poxleitner.

Curricular Innovation

Just Policing: A New Sawyer Seminar at the University of Minnesota

“Just Policing: Transnational Perspectives on the Definition and Possibility of Justice in Law Enforcement” slated for 2024–25

CAN POLICING EVER BE “JUST?” That question will be at the center of a Sawyer Seminar at the University of Minnesota, slated for the 2024-25 academic year. “Just Policing: Transnational Perspectives on the Definition and Possibility of Justice in Law Enforcement” will bring together leading scholars and community activists to think about policing and its future.

Sawyer Seminars are funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support comparative inquiry on pressing social issues through the perspectives of scholars from a variety of fields.

Through a transnational and humanities-based approach, participants in the Just Policing Sawyer Seminar will seek to understand how historical narratives of policing have shaped justice in law enforcement. Conversations and public events during the Seminar will focus on the histories of policing in the Americas, Africa, Europe, and Asia, as well as on contemporary efforts to reform or abolish policing. Scholars and activists will build upon historical analysis to reimagine what constitutes justice in policing.

“Our goal is to build a space for students and faculty to think together and productively about the field of carceral state history and its future potential directions,” says Yalile Suriel, assistant professor of history at the University of Minnesota and one of the interdisciplinary faculty members leading the seminar. “By examining policing around the globe, we will explore the many ways that policing has developed and operates.”

Other faculty involved in the seminar include University of Minnesota Law School law and history professor Susanna Blumenthal; history scholars William Jones and Patrick McNamara; sociologist Michelle Phelps,

who authored The Minneapolis Reckoning: Race, Violence, and the Politics of Policing in America; Sarah Balakrishnan, a scholar of West Africa who completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Minnesota and is now an assistant professor of history at Duke University; and sociology graduate student Eric Seligman

The group plans to bring speakers to campus who are at the forefront of policing research and thought. “We hope they will spark not just discussion but also ideas that push the field in new directions,” says Suriel.

Taking a historical, transnational approach

A historical and transnational approach is imperative for the seminar, says Blumenthal. “There are many reasons to regard the U.S. as exceptional, both in terms of the scale and severity of punishment in this country,” she says. “But we need to think historically and look beyond our own laws, institutions, and practices if we are to meet this moment. We need to better understand how our models of policing have both shaped and been shaped by those in other times.”

Suriel says that much of the conversation on policing remains focused on the United States and that seminar leaders hope a transnational perspective will open new queries about the histories of policing and point toward solutions for the future.

Balakrishnan is one of the scholars bringing this transnational view to the seminar, having researched issues about policing across British colonial Africa, especially Ghana. “Policing is not just an issue in the U.S.,” she says. “The origins of policing differ greatly so we need to trace them to understand common themes. I want to understand better what the role of policing is and has been in societies in comparison to their needs.”

People often think of issues of police brutality as new issues, but Jones, whose research focuses on labor and race in the U.S., says there is a long history of reform efforts. “We can all benefit by understanding why these efforts have succeeded or failed, and in the context of a really long history, we can start to identify the lessons learned,” he says.

Bringing multiple perspectives to bear

Jones recently wrote a report with Community Change and the Center for Labor and a Just Economy at Harvard Law School about collective bargaining and how it might help with police accountability. When he saw the call for the Sawyer Seminar, he readily signed on to be part of the initiative. “There is a cluster of scholars working on this topic nationally and globally,” he says. “A comparative approach with interdisciplinary perspectives can help us step outside our own discipline and think in new ways. Sociologists and legal scholars have been paying attention to policing for quite a while but it’s a relatively new topic for historians.”

For Blumenthal, the Sawyer Seminar offers an invaluable opportunity for sustained, interdisciplinary conversations. “This project can bring in students and faculty from the Law School who have investments in this field into conversation with scholars in other disciplines as well as activists and community leaders working within and beyond this university,” she says. “I’m very excited about the way the Law School can be part of these conversations and the collaborations and institutional changes that may result from them.”

Inviting community into the discussion

This Sawyer Seminar will have a significant public-facing aspect. Leaders agreed early on that they wanted to engage people who are working on policing reform in the conversation. “We bring the academic lens but the community who will attend can bring real-world experience to help with the generation of ideas,” says Balakrishnan.

Phelps notes that this work is particularly important in the city where George Floyd was murdered and where city leaders and residents are grappling with major changes to public safety. “While the charter amendment failed at the ballot booth, changes to public safety are still happening on the ground that will continue to shape policing here and nationally,” says Phelps. “The Sawyer Seminar on Just Policing will bring together scholars, activists, community leaders, and the public to ask: ‘What might it take to create just policing?’”

Sustaining a year-long conversation

The Mellon Foundation funding will provide for a research assistant, two Ph.D. candidates, and a postdoctoral scholar for the Seminar. A group of about 15 graduate students will meet weekly to hear from faculty, postdoctoral scholars, and guest speakers from around the country. Approximately three times each semester the public will be invited to a presentation and discussion.

“We have in mind a series of wide-ranging interdisciplinary conversations, even as we focus intensively on policing, with the aim of rethinking what we do in the name of public safety,” says Blumenthal. “Our hope is that the Seminar will foster transformative work that advances the cause of justice.” ❘❘❘❘

Kathy Graves is a Twin Cities-based freelance writer.

Prof. Susanna Blumenthal

Prof. William Jones

Prof. Michelle Phelps

Prof. Sarah Balakrishnan

Curricular Innovation

Law in Practice Continues to Lead in Innovative Legal Education

Bloomberg Law honors Law in Practice for overall excellence in practical skills training for the second year in a row

IMANI JAAFAR WASN’T SURPRISED TO LEARN that the Law in Practice (LiP) course at Minnesota Law earned national recognition from Bloomberg Law for the second year running. In her four years as an adjunct professor for the class, Jaafar has witnessed its innovative approach to teaching 1Ls the day-to-day skills they will need to practice law.

“You really get to see students grow right in front of you,” says Jaafar, a lead compliance governance consultant at Target Corporation. “You see them find their own voice and learn how they will present themselves as a lawyer. It really builds confidence.”

Jaafar has been an adjunct professor for 15 years, teaching a variety of courses. She observes that LiP truly stands out for its approach to helping students master the art of being a lawyer. Students work on two simulated cases during the semester — one litigation and one

transactional — that steer them through typical case development, from client interview to deposition to chambers conference or mediation.

Bloomberg Law started its Law School Innovation Program in 2023 and named Law in Practice to its first class of winners. It recognized LiP as one of 10 honorees in its “Innovation & Experience” category. This year, Bloomberg highlighted innovative law schools that prioritize practical skills development, selecting LiP as one of 12 overall honorees who excel at innovation in legal

 Law in Practice faculty and student directors. Back from L-R: Law in Practice Director Prof. Randall Ryder ’09; Adjunct Prof. Michael Reif ’06; Adjunct Prof. Robert Ambrose; Janelle Walkden ’25; Emma Kruger ’24; Mollie Ahsan ’24; Savannah Klein ’25; Cheyenne Petrich ’25; Benjamin White ’24; and Phillip Mellon ’24. Front from L-R: Adjunct Prof. Erin Conlin ’18; Adjunct Prof. Maria de Sam Lazaro ’19; Adjunct Prof. Imani Jaafar; Ali Casey ’24; Ashley Kim ’25; Suzanne Mead ’24; Kayla Haeg ’24; and Jack Tate ’24.

education. Bloomberg specifically recognized LiP as a top leader in pedagogy for its unique methods to advance instruction for all students.

Ahead of its time

LiP was ahead of its time when Minnesota Law launched the course in 2013, and it has maintained that edge ever since by continuing to evolve the program, says Randall Ryder ’09, LiP director and assistant professor of appellate advocacy. He points out that, compared to similar programs at peer schools, LiP is distinctive for the depth and breadth of its practical skills education for first-year students.

LiP is an integral part of Minnesota Law’s approach to preparing students to thrive as lawyers. “Law in Practice is the crown jewel of our experiential education program,” said Interim Dean William McGeveran, Gray, Plant, Mooty, Mooty & Bennett Professor of Law. “Ever since it was created by Professor Prentiss Cox ’90 and now-Judge Laura Thomas, LiP has given our 1Ls unique hands-on opportunities. They can act like a lawyer as well as think like one. We consistently hear from summer employers that our 1Ls are better prepared than most, and this is a big reason why.”

Teaching students practical lawyering skills is more important than ever, with the NextGen bar exam set to launch in summer 2026, says Diana Witt, Minnesota Law’s experiential education administrator. The new exam will include a more robust assessment of foundational skills such as issue spotting and analysis, case evaluation, and client counseling — areas Minnesota Law students dive into from day one of LiP.

Students benefit from the course’s highly realistic experience, Witt says. They have regular interactions with simulated clients, who are trained actors, while practicing judges and mediators play their parts during proceedings. The practicing professionals, including adjunct professors from multiple practice areas, then provide detailed, real-time feedback that helps students refine their abilities throughout the semester.

“It can be very daunting when you start meeting clients,” Jaafar says. “The fact that students get to practice these skills before they get out into the real world and their first job is great.”

Preparing students for practice

LiP prepares students for legal practice by helping them hone important skills. They learn to take complex sets of facts, evaluate clients’ situations, apply the law to them, and then pick the best approach to advocate for clients, Ryder says. Students are graded pass/fail, which gives them the freedom to try different styles and be bold in their choices as they represent their clients.

“They have to think like a lawyer and make decisions as a lawyer that have consequences,” Ryder says. “Students

realize that most of the time they are making the right decisions, and it’s a huge boost to their confidence. If they don’t make the right decision, they are in a safe space, so it’s an excellent opportunity to learn with no downside.”

Importantly, LiP lets students make the mistakes of new lawyers. As they start their first summer clerkships or begin work in a Minnesota Law clinic, Witt says, they arrive with the practical abilities they need to succeed.

Suzy Frisch is a Twin Cities-based freelance writer.

Randall Ryder ’09 and Diana Witt

LAW CLINICS MAKE AN IMPACT FOR CLIENTS AND THE COMMUNITY

Every year, Minnesota Law provides free legal services to clients and the community through our clinical programs. We have added a new feature to Minnesota Law magazine to share the stories about how our clinics impact the lives of clients, policy, the community, and the law. You can find the full stories online by using the QR code on your phone or visiting the links.

Federal Immigration Litigation Clinic and the Civil Rights Appellate Clinic Prepare for Oral Arguments at the U.S. Supreme Court in Campos-Chaves v. Garland

Has a noncitizen truly been notified of an immigrationrelated removal hearing if the federal government fails to follow its statutory requirements to provide written notice? In January, the U.S. Supreme Court, in CamposChaves v. Garland, considered whether the federal government may remove noncitizens in absentia if they were not duly informed of their hearing date.

The justices heard arguments that were researched and drafted by Minnesota Law students and professors. Students from the Federal Immigration Litigation Clinic and the Civil Rights Appellate Clinic began working on Campos-Chaves in summer 2023 after the Supreme Court granted certiorari.

In Campos-Chaves, clinic teams partnered with attorneys in Texas, Arizona, and California, plus the Stanford Law School Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, to develop and argue the merits cases. A ruling for the noncitizens could reopen immigration proceedings for numerous people who were ordered removed in absentia, despite not receiving a compliant notice to appear, says Nadia Anguiano ’17, associate clinical professor of law and director of the Federal Immigration Litigation Clinic. If cases are reopened, individuals then could request forms of immigration relief. One possibility is the cancellation of their removal, based on factors including the length of time living in the United States and the harm their removal would cause a qualifying relative, such as a U.S. citizen family member.

To read more details about the case, visit: z.umn.edu/spring2024-FILC

 Federal Immigration Litigation Clinic from L to R: Adjunct Professor Carmen Iguina Gonzalez, Prof. Elizabeth Bentley, Earl Lin ’24; Mallorie Sckerl ’24, Hannah Grayson ’24, Hans Frank-Holzner ’25, and Prof. Nadia Anguiano ’17.

Clemency Project Clinic and Civil Rights Appellate Clinic Collaborate to Secure Major Victory in Tanya Wagner et al. v. DOC

The Clemency Project Clinic — in collaboration with the Civil Rights Appellate Clinic, ACLU-MN, and Mitchell Hamline School of Law’s Legal Assistance to Minnesota Prisoners Clinic — secured a major victory for four individuals it was representing in a lawsuit against the Department of Corrections (DOC). In Tanya Wagner et al. v. DOC, the plaintiffs challenged the DOC’s decision to return them to prison. All four previously had been granted a conditional medical release because their medical conditions put them at high risk during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In a settlement of the lawsuit filed on December 15, 2023, the DOC agreed not to return the four plaintiffs to prison unless they violate the terms of their supervised release. The settlement came on the heels of a Court of Appeals victory in September 2023, which ruled that the DOC could not return the plaintiffs to prison while their lawsuit was pending.

“Our clients thrived on release, building strong relationships with their families, including a young mother, Ms. Wagner, who built a deep bond with her now two-year-old daughter,” said JaneAnne Murray, associate clinical professor of law and director of the Clemency Project Clinic. “We welcome the DOC’s humane decision to allow our clients to continue their law-abiding lives in their communities.”

To read about this historic decision and how the clinics collaborated, visit: z.umn.edu/spring2024-clemency

Racial Justice Law Clinic Students Present Oral Arguments in Case Against City of Minneapolis and its Police Officers

Leaders of the Minneapolis NAACP and Urban League–Twin Cities had no idea that they were being surveilled online by Minneapolis Police Department officers for as long as a decade until the Minnesota Department of Human Rights revealed the practice in a 2022 report on racially discriminatory policing in the city.

This tactic and others used to falsely interact with individuals prompted the organizations to file suit in federal court with the help of Minnesota Law’s Racial Justice Law Clinic. Students enrolled in the clinic developed the case against the City of Minneapolis and 20 unnamed police officers, pursuing punitive and compensatory damages for violating plaintiffs’ civil rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments.

In October, two clinic student directors conducted the plaintiffs’ oral arguments against the motion before U.S. District Court Judge Nancy Brasel ’96

The case exemplifies what associate clinical professor of law Liliana Zaragoza envisioned when she launched the clinic at Minnesota Law in 2022. “This case was one of the very first things the clinic worked on,” Zaragoza says. “One of the central components of the clinic is building community relationships and working with existing advocates doing racial justice work, organizing, and policy.”

To read the full story in the digital edition of Minnesota Law magazine, visit: z.umn.edu/spring2024-RJLC

Photo:

Tony Nelson

 Clemency Project and Civil Rights Appellate Clinics from L to R: Emma Kruger ’24, Prof. JaneAnne Murray, and Prof. Elizabeth Bentley (Not pictured: Adam Kolb ’24, E. Isabel Park ’24, Mary Hill ’23, and Julia Kasbohm ’23).

 Racial Justice Law Clinic from L to R: Evan Dale ’24, Prof. Liliana Zaragoza, and Lucy Chin ’24.

CONT

Students from the Gun Violence Prevention Clinic Win First Case Upholding Gun Safety Regulations in Minnesota

After the U.S. Supreme Court shook up the Constitutional analysis for determining whether a gun regulation violates the Second Amendment with its 2022 ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, criminal defense attorneys quickly started to challenge the constitutionality of their clients’ gun charges. The Minnesota Attorney General’s office, which has a right to intervene in such challenges, turned to Minnesota Law’s Gun Violence Prevention Clinic (GVP) to help make the case that the state’s gun regulations pass the Bruen test.

Under Bruen, courts no longer consider whether a gun law promotes the public interest; rather, they use a test based solely on the Second Amendment text and early American history. To overcome a Second Amendment challenge, governments must identify historical laws that are analogous to the modern law in question, explains clinic founder and director Megan Walsh, a visiting assistant clinical professor of law.

Students in the GVP clinched their first victory in September 2023 with State of Minnesota v. Sterling JaVale Robin-West. Ramsey District Court Judge DeAnne Hilgers ruled against the defense’s motion to dismiss based on a Second Amendment challenge to Robin-West’s charge for carrying a weapon in public without obtaining the required permit.

To read about the Gun Violence Prevention Clinic’s work to uphold Minnesota’s gun laws, visit: z.umn.edu/spring2024-GVPC

Civil

Rights

Appellate

Clinic Wins Case in the U.S. Court of Appeals on Behalf of Survivors of a Veteran Who Died in Prison

A student team from one of Minnesota Law’s newest clinics — the Civil Rights Appellate Clinic — won a recent appeal for the estate and surviving child of a veteran who died in prison. The original lawsuit alleged violations of the man’s Eighth Amendment rights by eight defendants in the Georgia Department of Corrections. It argued that they were deliberately indifferent to his known high risk for suicide, regularly disregarded suicide protocol, and oversaw a prison that was understaffed and lacked sufficient training to prevent suicides.

The appeal questioned whether the district court erred in denying the defendant’s motion to dismiss based on qualified immunity. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit unanimously affirmed the ruling, denying the corrections officers qualified immunity and allowing the case to proceed.

The case embodies the mission of the clinic, says clinic director Elizabeth Bentley, visiting assistant professor of law. “Through its seminar and casework, the clinic aims to help students develop appellate advocacy skills in state and federal courts while working to ensure that every individual has the opportunity to live with dignity and respect.”

To read the full details about this case, visit: z.umn.edu/spring2024-civilrightsclinic

 Gun Violence Prevention Clinic from L to R: Prof. Megan Walsh, Aidan Earnest ’24, and Ted Mathiowetz ’24.



Civil Rights Appellate Clinic from L to R: E. Isabel Park ’24, Prof. Elizabeth Bentley, Tyler Blackmon ’24, Earl Lin ’24, Philip de Sa e Silva ’24, and Ciara McManus ’24.

Minnesota Law Alumni from Stinson Volunteer as Supervising Attorneys in the Business Law and Entrepreneurship Clinic

It didn’t take long for Adam Mikell ’23 to decide where he wanted to spend his time doing pro bono work — the Business Law and Entrepreneurship Clinic. After serving as the clinic’s student director in his last year at Minnesota Law, the corporate finance attorney in his first year at Stinson LLP has a special place in his heart for it.

“It was my favorite experience of law school,” Mikell says. “It was the best way to understand how to interact with clients. As a student attorney and student director, it was clear that the clinic couldn’t function without volunteers. Now that I'm in this position at Stinson, where I can volunteer and give back, I want to pay it forward.”

Students in the clinic provide transactional-based legal assistance to small businesses, nonprofits, and entrepreneurs while supervised by licensed attorneys. Six attorneys from Stinson, most of whom are also Minnesota Law alumni, volunteer with the clinic.

Amy Conway ’10, a partner at Stinson and co-chair of the firm’s pro bono committee, started working with the clinic a year ago. She says “[Stinson] wants people to be able to volunteer for matters that speak to their interests because that’s what you’re going to be passionate and excited about.”

Child Advocacy & Juvenile Justice Clinic Students Testify to Reform Minnesota's Juvenile Sentencing Laws

Since 2013, students in the Law School's Child Advocacy & Juvenile Justice Clinic and Professor Perry Moriearty have worked to reform Minnesota's Heinous Crimes Act, which became unconstitutional in 2012 when the U.S. Supreme Court banned the mandatory imposition of life in prison without parole for children. Over the course of a decade, the Clinic drafted multiple bills, met with legislators, convened stakeholders, partnered with national advocates, and prepared and delivered testimony to committees of the Minnesota Senate and House of Representatives.

In May 2023, the legislature amended Minn. Stat. 244.05, making Minnesota the 28th state in the country to abolish life without parole for children.

The new law makes anyone incarcerated as a juvenile eligible for release after serving 15 years and it has already had an impact on dozens of people who thought they would spend their lives in prison.

In March, clinic student Kate Riggers ’25 testified before the Minnesota Senate Judiciary Committee in support of additional amendments to the 2023 law. The testimony was the culmination of a semester of work by clinic students, including Riggers, Christian Purnell ’24, Shannon Kuster ’25, Madeson Martin

, Lucy Moran ’25, Rachel Pederson ’25, and Kyle Rounds

To read more about the ways these Minnesota alumni are supporting students and the community, visit: z.umn.edu/spring2024stintsonvolunteers

To read the story on the Law School’s website, visit: z.umn.edu/spring2024childadvocacylegislation

’25

’25

 Business Law and Entrepreneurship Clinic volunteer attorneys from Stinson from L to R: Adam Mikell ’23, Billy Price ’22, David Ezrilov ’94, Amy Conway ’10, and Zachary Taylor ’23.

 Child Advocacy & Juvenile Justice Clinic from L to R: Prof. Perry Moriearty; Kate Riggers ’25, Rachel Pederson ’25, Christian Purnell ’24, and Lucy Moran ’25.

In Remembrance of Professor Emerita Ann Burkhart

Beloved teacher, scholar, and colleague

Prof. Emerita Laura Cooper, Prof. Prentiss Cox ’90, Interim Dean William McGeveran, and Prof. Emerita Ann Burkhart.

Prof. Emerita Ann Burkhart

PROFESSOR EMERITA ANN BURKHART passed away March 26, 2024. Nationally recognized for her real estate law expertise, she was even more revered for her teaching prowess. She impressed generations of students with her ability to demand high standards while also supplying the support and encouragement necessary to meet them.

Burkhart was known as the “Velvet Hammer,” a nickname she embraced. “I insist on being correct,” she explained as she meticulously refined the comments she contributed to an article about her retirement in her last days.

“She was a spectacularly good teacher, loved by her students for all the years of her teaching,” says Robert Stein ’61, Everett Fraser Professor of Law and Distinguished Global Professor. “She won the Teacher of the Year Award so many times it should probably be retired.” Burkhart received the Stanley V. Kinyon Teaching and Counseling Award five times. In 2016, she was only the third Law School faculty member to receive the University’s GraduateProfessional Award, a rare honor bestowed on no more than eight University professors each year.

An outstanding academic Burkhart, the Curtis Bradbury Kellar Professor of Law before assuming emeritus status earlier this academic year, served on the faculty for 42 years. Always an outstanding academic, she earned B.S. and M.S. degrees from Purdue University and her J.D., magna cum laude, from the University of Illinois College of Law. After practicing law for five years with Sidley & Austin in Chicago, and Alston & Bird in Atlanta, she decided to pursue what she referred to as the “life of the mind” and began her career in academia. Accepting what she fondly dubbed “the most wonderful job on the planet” in 1982 at Minnesota Law was not a difficult decision, she recalled.

An accomplished scholar and teacher

REMEMBERING PROFESSOR

EMERITA ANN BURKHART

Burkhart taught classes in property law, real estate transactions, land use planning, comparative property law, and consumer protection law. She was a member of the American Law Institute and the American College of Real Estate Lawyers and a Reporter for the Uniformed Manufactured Housing Act. She was a fellow of the American Bar Foundation and the American College of Mortgage Attorneys and served on the Minnesota State Bar Association Real Estate Section Executive Council. She was also author of the most widely used casebook in property law, according to Stein, who served as Law School dean from 1979 to 1994. As associate dean during his tenure, Burkhart earned his admiration for being what Stein calls “a model of both an excellent teacher and a good citizen of the University and the Law School.”

She never tired of her field of expertise. “Real estate law has so many different aspects, and I liked the way it is constantly changing,” she said. “I was working with a lot of interesting people, which I also liked, and helping to make things happen — new buildings, new housing, new shopping malls. I was not just sitting in the library.”

Burkhart enjoyed visiting professor stints at the UCLA College of Law, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, Uppsala University College of Law in Sweden, and Christian-Albrechts University in Germany. But even more gratifying was the opportunity to help her Minnesota students launch fulfilling careers of their own. To her, they felt like one big family. “Enabling my students to go out and do good was the best part of teaching,” she said. “It always made my heart beat strong.” She was immensely proud of the students she found smart, motivated, and able to teach her so much.

“I count myself among the thousands of students who loved Ann

and were immeasurably impacted by her intellect, warmth, and kindness,” says Associate Clinical Professor Nadia Anguiano ’17 “It’s hard to adequately describe all the qualities that made her so uniquely gifted at teaching and mentoring students. I’ll never forget a few private moments I shared with her during office hours when she gave me the exact encouraging words I needed at the moment.

I will always cherish having had the privilege of knowing her.”

A cherished colleague Faculty colleagues, whom she deemed “the best in the country,” laud her compassion and accessibility. “She was always gracious with her time and advice and welcoming to faculty, staff, and students alike,” says Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Oren Gross, Irving Younger Professor of Law. “She was warm, funny, kind, and smart. She will be missed by all who knew her.”

Many alumni and colleagues cite the magic that happened in her classroom. “When I talk to alumni, they mention her as their favorite teacher almost more than anyone who’s ever taught here,” says Interim Dean William McGeveran, Gray, Plant, Mooty, Mooty & Bennett Professor of Law. “She made a real impression on multiple generations. She had a knack for being challenging and rigorous while at the same time supportive and caring.”

Widely considered a mother hen, especially to the 1Ls who took her property class, Burkhart will not be forgotten by Peter Estall ’19, now an associate at Norton Rose Fulbright’s Minneapolis office. “I was among many who followed that 1L property class with two others in the field, not because I was particularly interested in the subject, but because of Professor Burkhart,” he says. “She’s one of the best educators I’ve ever had in my life, and I’ve had some stellar ones. She will be sorely missed.” ❘❘❘❘

Cathy Madison is a Twin Cities-based freelance writer.

Faculty News & Honors

Visiting Assistant Professor of Law Elizabeth Bentley was appointed to the Minnesota Court of Appeals by Governor Tim Walz. Bentley joined the Law School full-time in 2022, having previously served as an adjunct professor in the clinics. She has taught 1L constitutional law and she founded the Civil Rights Appellate Clinic, which has already filed briefs in courts around the nation, including the U.S. Supreme Court.

Before joining the faculty, she was an appellate attorney at Jones Day and Special Counsel to Senator Amy Klobuchar and the Senate Judiciary Committee during the confirmation of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. She previously served as a law clerk to Justice Sonia Sotomayor on the Supreme Court of the United States, Chief Judge Robert A. Katzmann on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and Judge Jed S. Rakoff on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. She has served on the executive committee of the Minnesota Chapter of the Federal Bar Association, on the Appellate Practice Section Council of the Minnesota State Bar Association, and on the Federal Practice Committee of the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota. She will depart the Law School in August to begin her service on the bench.

Professor Linus Chan, James H. Binger Professor of Clinical Law, was named a Minnesota Attorney of the Year by Minnesota Lawyer in the group category for his participation in “Immigration Attorneys for Driver’s Licenses for All” in collaboration with the Immigrant Law Center and several partner attorneys. Governor Tim Walz signed “Driver’s Licenses for All” into law last spring and the law went into effect on October 1, 2023. Chan directs the Detainee Rights Clinic and is an expert in immigration law.

Professor Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, Regents Professor; Robina Chair in Law and Public Policy, and Society; and faculty director of Minnesota Law’s Human Rights Center, was appointed Honorary King’s Counsel by His Majesty King Charles III. The Lord Chancellor conferred the honor at a March ceremony in Westminster Hall, London. This appointment recognizes her decades-long work supporting the peace process in

Northern Ireland, advancing human rights protection in England and Wales, and serving as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on counter-terrorism and human rights, including for the victims of terrorism.

Professor Amy Monahan, Distinguished McKnight University Professor and the Melvin Steen & Corporate Donors Professor, was named to The Commonwealth Fund Task Force on the Future Role of Employers in the U.S. Health System. This year-long national task force will convene thought leaders and other experts to examine the changes needed to improve employees’ access to timely, affordable healthcare coverage. The task force aims to build consensus on market incentives and regulatory changes needed to enhance health coverage in the workplace, ensure access to affordable health care, and improve population health and care delivery. She is a nationally recognized expert in employee benefits, healthcare law, and health insurance law.

Professor Alan Rozenshtein was granted tenure, pending approval by the Board of Regents at the end of the academic year. Rozenshtein first came to Minnesota Law as a visiting professor in 2017. He joined the faculty as an associate professor

of law in 2019. He is a senior editor at Lawfare, a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a member of the Scholars Strategy Network, and a visiting faculty fellow at the University of Nebraska College of Law. He was previously an affiliate with the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. He is a constitutional scholar and an expert in cybersecurity law and national security.

Professor Daniel Schwarcz, Fredrikson & Byron Professor of Law, has received the University of Minnesota’s 2023-24 Award for Outstanding Contributions to Graduate and Professional Education. This honor is awarded to exceptional candidates whom their college has nominated for excellence in graduate and professional education. Schwarcz has also won the University of Minnesota Law School's Stanley V. Kinyon Teacher of the Year Award three times since joining Minnesota Law. He teaches a range of courses, including torts, contracts, insurance law, health care regulation and finance, health insurance law, regulation of financial institutions, commercial law, introduction to law for undergraduates, law and artificial intelligence, and judicial opinion writing.

Four Minnesota Law Faculty Awarded Kommerstad Faculty Imagination Fund Grants

Minnesota Law’s 2024-25 Kommerstad Faculty Imagination Fund grants have been awarded to Professors Claire Hill, Fionnuala Ní Aoláin & Alan Rozenshtein, and Paul Vaaler

Claire Hill, James Krusemark Chair in Law, will receive funding to host a conference next year on The New Behavioral Law and Economics

Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, KC (Hons), Regents Professor and Robina Chair in Law Public Policy Robina, and Alan Rozenshtein, associate professor of law, will receive funding to collaborate in convening senior editors of both Just Security (where Ní Aoláin is an editor) and Lawfare (where Rozenshtein is an editor).

Paul Vaaler, John and Bruce Mooty Chair in Law and Business, will receive funding to support his empirical research project on why mediumsized, regionally based law firms in the U.S. are “hollowed out” of mid-level associate attorneys critical to regional firm survival and success.

Professors

Daniel Schwarcz, Amy Monahan, and Kristin Hickman in Top 25

Downloaded Papers on SSRN for 2023

Minnesota Law Professors Daniel Schwarcz, Fredrikson & Byron Professor of Law and Distinguished University Teaching Professor; Amy Monahan, Distinguished McKnight University Professor and the Melvin Steen & Corporate Donors Professor; and Kristin Hickman, McKnight Presidential Professor in Law, Distinguished McKnight University Pofessor, and Harlan Albert Rogers Professor in Law, were ranked among the top 25 downloaded papers on SSRN for 2023. They were ranked #7, #18, and #22, respectively. ❘❘❘❘

Prof. Claire Hill

Prof. Fionnuala Ní Aoláin

Prof. Daniel Schwarcz

Prof. Alan Rozenshtein

Prof. Amy Monahan

Prof. Paul Vaaler

Prof. Kristin Hickman

Professor Carol Chomsky Retires

A Dedicated and Innovative Teacher who Forged New Paths in Service to Minnesota Law, the Legal Community, and the University

TEACHING WAS NOT HER GOAL WHEN PROFESSOR

CAROL CHOMSKY earned her J.D. degree, summa cum laude, from Georgetown University. Nor was the Midwest her destination, at least not before the Long Island native spent a year practicing at a firm in Moorhead, Minnesota. But after a few years at a small criminal defense firm in Washington, D.C., she decided that teaching rather than practicing law would be more fulfilling. She joined Minnesota Law in 1985.

Tackling civil procedure that first year, then switching to contracts the next, she found that she enjoyed teaching and the intellectual environment in a school where she felt fully supported by its faculty. Because the Law School had no formally trained legal historians, she decided to explore the subject, which had intrigued her during law school.

Chomsky soon became an expert in the history of women lawyers, American Indian legal history, and late nineteenth-century American legal history. Her article on the trials following the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862 remains an important analysis of this formative event. She also worked to expand equity, access, and social justice in the profession, serving as co-president of the Society of American Law Teachers (20002002), co-president of Minnesota Women Lawyers (1993-94), and, since 2010, Infinity Project board member. She was named to the American Law Institute in 1994.

Her teaching garnered high praise from colleagues who describe her as thoughtful, purposeful, and dedi-

cated. “In the last years leading up to retirement, when some are tempted to rely on the way that always worked for them, she was still innovating,” said William McGeveran, interim dean and Gray, Plant, Mooty, Mooty & Bennett Professor of Law. Chomsky was one of the first in the Law School to adopt Canvas, a web-based learning and course management system. “She dove right in, adapted it for her classes, and then helped others on the faculty do the same for theirs,” says McGeveran. “It’s just one illustration of how she was always mindful about updating her teaching and the classroom experience.”

Teaching changed significantly during her career, Chomsky says. The traditional Socratic method of an expert leading a class by grilling individual students yielded to a learning theory-based model where teachers use structured conversations in small groups to help students navigate legal issues. “It’s much more experiential, a more dynamic and fun way that works well for most students,” Chomsky says. She co-authored innovative, studentoriented casebooks in contracts and sales and greatly expanded experiential opportunities in the judicial externship program.

“One of the joys of teaching is learning as you go,” she says. “You might have a plan, but when you’re engaging with students who are interested and curious, you go where that conversation takes you.”

Chomsky also dedicated herself to institutional service. “She held numerous important positions in faculty governance, including as University Senate vice chair, and

served as the voice of the Law School,” says McGeveran. “That’s not something you get enough thanks for. It’s very, very important. She thought that those who are doing the teaching and research should have something to say about the way their schools are governed, and she gave her time to make sure that happened.”

Chomsky engaged with law faculty across the country, focusing on teaching methodology. As coordinator for the University’s Early Career Teaching and Learning Program (1999-2004), she helped junior faculty in various disciplines learn how to teach more effectively. Her work with the University’s Multicultural Teaching and Learning Fellows Program (co-director, 2003-2008) fostered diversity and multiculturalism in University classrooms.

At the Law School, Chomsky established the Structured Study Group program to support 1L students. “She bridges the gap between how law is taught and how students experience law in the classroom,” says Kim Ronning, director of academic and bar success. When Ronning moved to Minnesota in 2020, Chomsky became her mentor and role model, orienting her to the community as well as to students, staff, and faculty. Chomsky’s persistence, confidence, and dedication to work-life balance won Ronning’s admiration.

“She’s extremely detail-oriented, but she’s also able to zoom out,” Ronning says. “She’s willing to defer to my vision of the program, and we have discussions about how to manifest that. She’s been amazing.”

“One of the joys of teaching is learning as you go,” she says.

“You might have a plan, but when you’re engaging with students who are interested and curious, you go where that conversation takes you.”

—Professor Carol Chomsky

In recent years, Chomsky has become a state and national leader in attorney licensing reform. Although retiring, she plans to continue writing and pursuing her passions, including producing a new edition of one of her casebooks and advocating for experiential paths to attorney licensing.

Among colleagues, Chomsky’s influence will undoubtedly linger. “She was a remarkably strong member of our faculty,” says Robert Stein ’61, Everett Fraser Professor of Law and former dean. He applauds her keen interest in new technologies, new teaching formats, and University governance. “She was also such a leader in encouraging faculty,” he says. “That comes from within. She did it, and she did it well.” ❘❘❘❘

Cathy Madison is a Twin Cities-based freelance writer.

Professor Robert A. Stein ’61 Retires

A Visionary Leader Committed to Service Shaped Minnesota Law, the University, and the Legal Profession

BORN AND RAISED IN MINNEAPOLIS, ROBERT STEIN ’61 perhaps followed a predictable path as he graduated from South High School, then the University of Minnesota, and then Minnesota Law, where he earned the highest grade average of that time. It probably surprised no one that a large national firm scooped him up, but Law School Dean William Lockhart had another plan.

“He called me that first fall and asked me to interview for a faculty position,” says Stein. “I declined because I’d just started practicing.”

Lockhart called again the next year, then the year after that, and the year after that. In 1964, Stein finally said yes. “Once I taught, I loved it,” he says.

Stein never looked back. In fact, his vision expanded. While teaching constitutional law, estate planning, international law, tax law, and wills and trusts, Stein also acquired administrative skills during a stint as associate dean. In 1977, he was appointed vice president for administration and planning at the University, serving for three years. Then, in another unusual career move, he returned to the Law School in 1979, where, according to colleagues, he served as an extraordinary dean for 15 years.

The late Professor Emerita Ann Burkhart, an associate dean during those years, called Stein a pragmatic visionary. “He is an extremely effective leader on local, national, and international levels,” she said. “He just has a way with people.”

William McGeveran, interim dean and Gray, Plant, Mooty, Mooty

& Bennett Professor of Law, agrees.

“There are very few people more responsible for the shape of Minnesota Law today than Bob Stein. His tenure as dean was transformational for us.”

Stein’s assessment of that time is simple yet profound. “I loved being dean,” he says. “I enjoyed every aspect of it. One needs to subordinate personal goals to institutional goals, and I loved setting those goals and building the institution. The students were wonderful. All they want is for the school to be strong and have a reputation that advances their own career interests. The alumni were very supportive; most of our endowed chairs were created then. And the key to it all is our faculty. I am proud

that during my last 13 years as dean, we had no departures from our excellent faculty.”

It was an era of stability and growth fondly remembered by many. “He’s been an extraordinary presence at the Law School and the University, too,” says Professor Carol Chomsky, who was hired and earned tenure during those years. “He’s a model for engaging in University governance. He’s a great leader — steady and calm, with a vision.”

As executive director and chief operating officer of the American Bar Association from 1994 to 2006, Stein shared that vision on a national scale, expanding his already formidable network and embarking on an ongoing quest to develop rule of law programs around the world. The

Professor Robert A. Stein ’61 with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan at the 2019 Stein Lecture.

“I

loved being dean. I enjoyed every aspect of it. One needs to subordinate personal goals to institutional goals, and I loved setting those goals and building the institution. The students were wonderful.

—Professor Robert A. Stein ’61

connections he forged continue to benefit Minnesota Law, which he rejoined as Everett Fraser Professor of Law in 2006. In recent years, the Stein Lecture series has featured U.S. Supreme Court Justices Ginsburg, Scalia, Sotomayor, Roberts, Kagan, and Barrett.

Stein has always found myriad ways to serve both the University and the Law School. He was the University’s representative to the Big Ten, the Western Collegiate Hockey Association (WCHA), and the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), serving the last even after leaving the University in 1994. Among his many professional contributions, he represents Minnesota as a commissioner to the Uniform Law Commission and has

served on the executive committee of the Council of the American Law Institute. The University honored him with its Global Engagement Award in 2016 and its President’s Award for Outstanding Service in 2017.

Stein notes the many ways in which Minnesota Law has evolved during his long history, from greater use of new technologies to a more varied curriculum, including emerging specialty fields and greatly expanded clinical offerings. He says he likes to stay engaged by setting new annual goals, and, during retirement, intends to keep an office, continue to write, and pursue projects, especially those involving the rule of law. “Helping more people achieve a free and democratic society is exciting and important to me,” he says.

Chomsky points out that not every dean has an international vision about the rule of law. “He took that to the national stage at the ABA and then brought it back again,” she says.

“Not every dean is such a public intellectual leader.”

Like many others, Chomsky commends Stein for his “wonderful contacts around the country.” But the fact that he has never forgotten his roots is equally laudable. “We’re so fortunate that he came back to share his knowledge and wisdom with students,” says McGeveran.

“For one of our alumni to join the faculty, then lead the school is a special thing. He’s a Gopher all the way through.” ❘❘❘❘

Cathy Madison is a Twin Cities-based freelance writer.

AUTHOR in QUESTION

Professor June Carbone Robina Chair in Law, Science, and Technology

Fair Shake: Women and the Fight to Build a Just Economy

Fair Shake: Women and the Fight to Build a Just Economy is published by Simon & Schuster. Co-authors Naomi Cahn (University of Virginia School of Law), June Carbone (University of Minnesota Law School), and Nancy Levit (University of Missouri — Kansas City School of Law) explore issues related to gender at work with some startling results. In an era of supposed great equality, women are still falling behind in the workplace.

What inspired you and your co-authors to write this book?

We were shocked to find that, in an era of supposed gender equality, women are losing ground in the workplace. Women’s educational attainments used to be the key to advancement, but today, at a time when women are better educated than men, it is the most educated women who have fallen the furthest behind. We realized that if present trends continue, women will never catch up and we wanted to explain why.

What does this book explore?

The reasons we found why women are falling farther behind: The new corporate system, which has boosted CEO pay into the stratosphere and rewarded hedge funds and tech companies that “run fast and break things,” has fundamentally changed the ways that companies function. In the days of the organization man of the 1950s, executives bragged “My company is bigger than your company, my company is more innovative than your company.” Today, executives brag “My bonus is bigger than your bonus, my bank account in the Cayman Islands is bigger than your bank account.” We describe how the ambitious bend institutions to serve their own interests through the creation of “new boys clubs” that

outflank the restraints of the old order, enriching themselves at the expense of everyone else. We explain why women can’t win in this new game and provide the best strategy to fight it.

What differentiates this book from your other work that focuses on gender and the workplace?

This is a popular book. We try to describe these shifts through the stories of the litigants in actual cases. And while my practice career focused on employment discrimination cases, my academic work has been about the family. For me, this book is a return to my roots as a litigator who handled cases of discrimination and misconduct in the workplace.

What are a few key takeaways from your book?

When we looked at women in business, finance, and technology, as well as teachers, dentists’ offices, and Walmart, we were surprised to find that every story turned out to be the same story. CEOs use high-stakes bonus systems to bypass traditional restraints and produce immediate results — whether higher reported earnings or student test scores. The new system pits employees against each other in the competition for larger bonuses and looks the

other way at how the successful produce their impressive numbers.

Who is your target audience?

Women who feel they are overlooked at work or harassed or blocked and wonder why. Those who want to understand just how the system has been rigged on behalf of the wealthy and against the powerless. Women — and their supporters — who are inspired by the #MeToo movement or teachers’ efforts to counter the politicians who have made them punching bags. And anyone who sees the world around them falling apart and wants a playbook for fighting back.

What is something you were surprised to discover when writing this book?

We were surprised when we realized that women had become the majority of shareholders in large companies during the 1920s and the New Deal championed the idea that the stock market should be “made safe for widows and orphans.” We were stunned when we then realized that New Deal success meant that the corporation man of the 1950s could have been a woman while, today, a female version of Elon Musk, who thumbs his nose at securities regulation, would almost certainly be in jail.

What do you hope to accomplish with this book?

We want people to wake up. Pitting people against each other — whether through competitive bonuses, immigrant-bashing, or attacks on trans children — makes everyone feel less secure and more distrustful. And when that happens, people do things — like gaming quarterly earnings reports at GE or blocking support for child allowances in Congress — that ultimately hurt society. We see women who have succeeded as much more likely to do so the way former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi or Indra Noori, the former CEO of Pepsi, did. They worked their way up through the ranks, they created teams that made their institutions stronger, and they governed through a mix of practical wisdom and expertise.

How would you describe your book to someone unfamiliar with the subject matter?

Fair Shake is not a “fix the woman” book; it’s a “fix the system” book. It diagnoses the problem of what’s wrong with the modern economy and shows how, with awareness and collective action, we can build a just economy for all.

Did you encounter any challenges or barriers when writing your book?

“

Photo: Tony Nelson

Writing a popular book is different from the academic books, law review, or litigation documents that each of us has written in the past. We worked very hard at trying to explain things simply — a difficult task for law professors — and making the litigants in cases come to life. ❘❘❘❘

We were shocked to find that, in an era of supposed gender equality, women are losing ground in the workplace.”

—Professor June Carbone

A TRANSPARENT APPROACH

Professor Jill Hasday displays rare gift for translating complicated legal issues for the general public

BY CATHY MADISON

Illustration:

Nigel Buchanan

Jill Hasday, Centennial Professor of Law and Distinguished McKnight University Professor, is a renowned teacher and scholar in the academic world, but her talent for helping a wider public understand complex issues related to anti-discrimination law, constitutional law, family law, and legal history has also made her a media favorite.

“I have done more press in the last two years than in the previous five,” says Hasday, who joined the Law School in 2005. “It mainly involves responding to and explaining bad news, because usually the media calls when something terrible has happened.” Whether the topic is Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade, or legal disputes stemming from the January 6 attacks on the U.S. Capitol, or pay discrimination, women’s exclusion from military registration, or the right to sue an intimate partner, Hasday has the background and tenacity to analyze and help others understand the issue at hand.

“I am really committed to public education,” she says.

“Some people are inspiring speakers who are good at talking points, and some are really wonky, citing court cases,” says Rebecca Lucero ’07, Commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Human Rights and Hasday’s former student. “Jill can do both. It’s a rare gift.”

Hasday and Lucero collaborated closely on Minnesota’s Preventing Pay Discrimination Act, testing hypotheticals and wrestling with the nuances of the act, which went into effect in January. “Jill has the ability to give clear examples to the media and the legislature, to show not only the implications of a bill but also the unintended consequences,” says Lucero. “She is so generous with her time, not just in public conversations but actually behind the scenes. I always had complete faith that we would find the right path forward, aligned with the values of what we were trying to do.”

Hasday says she based her choice to focus on discrimination on her lived experience as a woman in the world. Despite having no academics in her family, she decided at age 17 that becoming a law professor would suit her. “I thought, ‘This is it. This is exactly what I want to do,’” she says. “I wanted to be an intellectual, to research, read, write, and control my own agenda.”

The history major earned undergraduate and J.D. degrees at Yale. Her future as an anti-discrimination scholar became clear halfway through law school when she decided she wanted to teach family law and constitutional law because so many disputes about discrimination and inequality arise in those arenas.

Eliminating sex discrimination in the military is one rocky path Hasday has traversed. In 1981, when other explicitly sex-based laws were collapsing, the U.S. Supreme

Court decision to uphold male-only military registration was an outlier, more of a nod to public opinion than a strict legal interpretation. Questions about the constitutionality of male-only registration arose again after the military opened all combat positions to women at the start of 2016.

A blue-ribbon commission established by Congress asked Hasday to testify. She explained, “Women’s exclusion from registration has always reflected and reinforced the assumption that women belong at home, which is not a constitutionally valid reason for assigning different legal responsibilities to women and men.” The commission’s 2020 report recommended sex-neutral registration, but progress has stalled since then. “Congress is going to have to face this problem eventually,” she says. “Once lawmakers either end registration or include women, it will seem bizarre that male-only registration persisted for so long.”

Hasday again bucked tradition when, in 2019, Oxford University Press published her Intimate Lies and the Law, which won the Scribes Book Award for “the best work of legal scholarship published during the previous year” and the Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award for Family and Relationships.

“My book is about deception in dating, sex, marriage, and family life, and the law’s response to this duplicity, which is usually to deny remedies to deceived intimates and protect their deceivers,” says Hasday. “Almost everyone has experienced, committed, or gossiped about intimate deception, but the subject has received remarkably little attention from legal scholars. I want to give deceived intimates access to the same legal remedies they would have if equivalently deceived outside of intimacy. I also think the law should work to counter the incentives to deceive and should look for opportunities to thwart deceitful intimates from carrying out their plans.”

Change “is a slow road,” Hasday adds. “Convincing courts and legislatures to alter their approach to intimate deception will not happen overnight. But recognizing the need for reform is the first step.”

Hasday is also working with ERA Minnesota to get an Equal Rights Amendment to the Minnesota Constitution on the ballot. Promoting pay transparency and protecting employees from retaliation for discussing pay are on her list as well. “Much more can be done to improve Minnesota employment law,” she says. She intends to keep speaking out on these issues and is committed to helping the public understand their importance and implications.

Cathy Madison is a Twin Cities-based freelance writer.

Francis Shen is the Solly Robbins Distinguished Scholar at Minnesota Law and serves on the faculty of the University of Minnesota’s Graduate Program in Neuroscience and the University’s Center for Magnetic Resonance Research, and is co-chair of the Consortium on Law and Values, in Health, Environment & the Life Sciences

Photo: Tony Nelson

Professor Francis Shen Returns to Minnesota Law

A pioneer in law and neuroscience

MINNESOTA LAW WELCOMED

PROFESSOR FRANCIS SHEN

BACK to campus in early January after his 18-month stint on the faculty of Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital and as an affiliate professor at Harvard Law School. Shen is one of the country’s leading experts at the intersections of law and neuroscience and law and artificial intelligence.

“I am thrilled to return to the Law School,” Shen says. “My brief time away made me appreciate even more Minnesota’s truly great environment, faculty, and students.”

Shen’s pioneering work focuses on how neuroscience and artificial intelligence (AI) can provide powerful insights for law and make the legal system more just and effective.

“Law is built on the concept of precedent,” he says. “But the power of the past in the law raises a challenging question: What if, in the intervening years, we have learned something important? The building blocks of the law were erected at a time when we knew little about the brain. But today we know so much more, and I believe advances in brain science will catalyze significant changes in legal doctrine and practice.”

Shen sees neuroscience playing an increasingly large role in law, in such areas as legal and policy challenges around protecting older adults with dementia, preventing brain injury, criminal sentencing, and mental health treatment. He notes that neuroscience is not just a field of knowledge but also a producer of new neurotechnology tools that are raising legal, ethical, and social issues.

“Law is in the business of governing human behavior,” he says. “That

means law needs to understand why humans do what they do. But if neuroscience is going to matter to the law, it has to improve the lives of litigants and improve the practice of law. There has to be a practical application.”

Shen’s innovative Neurolaw Lab, whose motto is “Every story is a brain story,” collaborates with scientists and legal practitioners to develop real-world applications. He observes that brain evidence is now being cited in thousands of cases and many new patents every year. He hopes to establish the first neurolaw clinic to provide lawyers and litigants across the country with legally relevant neuroscience insights.

“Brain science is increasingly going to be front and center and you need a team with expertise in law and science,” he says. “It’s exciting that the culture of the University of Minnesota encourages individuals and departments to work together. I am lucky to collaborate with colleagues across the campus to build and expand this work.”

In addition to teaching at the Law School, Shen is a faculty member in the University of Minnesota Graduate Program in Neuroscience and collaborates with colleagues at the University’s Center for Magnetic Resonance Research (CMRR). He is also taking on a larger role within the University as co-chair of the Consortium on Law and Values in Health, Environment & the Life Sciences.

Shen was well ahead of the curve when he co-authored the first casebook on law and neuroscience (Aspen, 2014) and taught his first course in 2016 on the then-nascent topic of law and AI. Last year the American Law Institute (ALI)

awarded him an ALI Early Career Scholars Medal, recognizing him as a “pioneer in establishing the interdisciplinary field of law and neuroscience.” In conjunction with receiving the award, he provided the keynote speech on law and neuroscience at ALI’s annual meeting.

Shen joined Minnesota Law as an associate professor in 2012 and previously served as executive director of education and outreach for the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Law and Neuroscience. His work has been and continues to be supported by the National Institute on Health (NIH), National Science Foundation, and multiple private foundations.

Currently, he is also working with interdisciplinary teams to co-lead two NIH BRAIN Initiative supported projects. One project explores the ethics of portable MRI, a technology that stands to transform health care but is also surrounded by unresolved ethical and legal issues. The second initiative seeks to reshape neuroimaging research by building community trust and creating new research strategies that empower more diverse and representative participants. As he expands his roles and research, Shen stays focused on his core belief: advances in neuroscience and AI can improve the law but only through careful, interdisciplinary work and community engagement. “Minnesota Law is the perfect place to pursue innovative research at the intersection of law, science, and technology,” he says. “I couldn’t be more excited to be back.” ❘❘❘❘

Kathy Graves is a Twin Cities-based freelance writer.

Breaking New Ground While Advancing Global Human Rights

United Nations Special Rapporteur on counterterrorism and human rights Fionnuala Ní Aoláin concludes her role at the U.N.

LATE-NIGHT FLIGHTS TO NEW YORK CITY and missions to high-risk spots around the globe were staples of Professor Fionnuala Ní Aoláin’s six years as United Nations Special Rapporteur on counterterrorism and human rights. During that time, she worked closely with states and United Nations entities to advance human rights protections in some of the world’s most difficult regions, situations, and contexts.

That intense pace and workload concluded last November when Ní Aoláin completed her second three-year term in the Special Rapporteur.

“Holding this particular role felt very much like the culmination of a lifetime of work,” Ní Aoláin says. “It is a rare privilege to be on the inside of global conversations, whether that’s in dialogue with members of the Security Council or with member states at the General Assembly, or whether it’s visiting countries and assessing compliance in what for many states is often their most sensitive and politically charged work in security and counterterrorism.”

A native of Ireland, Ní Aoláin says she “grew up in a conflict where bombs went off on many days of my life.” She has focused her teaching, research, and field work on international law, human rights law, national security law, transitional justice, and feminist legal theory. She serves on the National Advisory Council of the Center for Victims of Torture, a St. Paul-based human rights organization and long-time Minnesota Law partner.

“Most people don’t run toward conflict or violence,” Ní Aoláin says. “By virtue of where I was born and lived in Ireland — and in Belfast —

the issues I studied as a student and thereafter chose to work on as a scholar and practitioner, meant I garnered the set of skills and capacities that meant that when the process for appointing a U.N. Special Rapporteur for counterterrorism opened up, my government and others came to me and said, ‘You should apply for this role.’”

Because no woman had held it before, Ní Aoláin did not expect to receive the appointment. She even promised her husband — Professor Oren Gross, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the Law School — that she wouldn’t get it.

But then, in 2017, the United Nations Human Rights Council officially appointed Ní Aoláin as U.N. Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism. She was re-elected to a second term in 2020.

“I had to adjust my life because it changed enormously the day that I took up this position,” Ní Aoláin says. “I understood that it was going to take almost every free moment I had.”

As part-time experts, special rapporteurs are compensated for travel and expenses but not for day-to-day work, she says, underscoring the independence of their efforts.

Ní Aoláin continued teaching at the Law School but after finishing her week’s teaching on a Tuesday afternoon, she regularly flew to New York or sometimes Geneva or another country to work there the rest of the week.

She also led a series of country missions and presented at global conferences that took her to almost every continent. One eight-week summer stretch saw her travel to Costa Rica, Switzerland, and New York

before returning to Minnesota for four days. She continued on to Germany, North Macedonia, Switzerland again, Lebanon, Syria, Switzerland once more, and finally Colombia before coming home.

“It’s enormously satisfying work but at a pace that is obviously intensive and super challenging, whether that was in Syria accompanied by my full-time security team and issues of safety to the fore or meeting with victims of terrorism in countries like Germany and North Macedonia,” Ní Aoláin says.

Ní Aoláin says she rarely encountered women in roles at her level during her travels. Her all-women team included Minnesota Law graduate Megan Manion ’16, who served as senior legal advisor for her second term.

“To be a woman who didn’t appear to be afraid of things that are presumed culturally or socially that you would be afraid of, I think that gives you an advantage,” Ní Aoláin says.

Ní Aoláin made headlines last year when she led the first U.N. visit to the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. “The conditions of confinement of 9/11 detainees meet the definition of cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment and may, in particular cases, reach the threshold of torture,” she says.

Ní Aoláin and her team also met with many family members of those killed on 9/11.

“One of the major findings of my report is that the use of torture betrayed the human rights of the victims of terrorism because they haven’t had trials,” Ní Aoláin says. “They haven’t had any form of accountability for what my report describes as a crime against humanity on September 11. And they may not

have that resolution, and they don't have it because the United States broke domestic and international law by torturing hundreds of Muslim men and boys without cause.”

With her special rapporteur work complete, Ní Aoláin said she would be taking a break from the front lines. In December, however, she traveled to Ukraine for the 75th anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights & the Genocide Convention.

“I’m not avoiding war zones,” Ní Aoláin says. “My promise was sort of to do less of that. But it felt enormously, emotionally important to be in Lviv, Ukraine, which was the birthplace of the Genocide Convention, and to be there on the 75th anniversary.”

A royal honor came to Ní Aoláin in January when His Majesty the King of England approved her appointment as one of five new Honorary King’s Counsel (KC Honoris Causa),

awarded to those who have made major contributions to the law of England and Wales outside practice in the courts.

The nomination cited her work in advising the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission and civil society, and in informing and shaping the policy and legal work on the protection of social and economic rights and the rule of law in the post-Belfast Agreement context. She attended the appointment ceremony at Westminster Hall in March.

Ní Aoláin is a University Regents Professor; Robina Chair in Law, Public Policy, and Society; and faculty director of the Human Rights Center at the Law School. She is concurrently a professor of law at the Queen’s University of Belfast, School of Law. She has been elected to the International Commission of Jurists for a five-year term. ❘❘❘❘

Todd Nelson is a Twin Cities-based freelance writer.

 Professor Fionnuala Ní Aoláin stands in front of Westminster Abbey where she was named an Honorary King’s Counsel by His Majesty King Charles III.

Photo: Leslie Plesser

Photo: Oren Gross

LEADING QUESTIONS

Professor Kevin Reitz

Professor Kevin Reitz served as Reporter for the American Law Institute’s Model Penal Code: Sentencing, published in 2023

HOW DID YOU BECOME THE REPORTER FOR ALI’S MODEL PENAL CODE: SENTENCING?

Around 2000, the American Law Institute (ALI) decided to update part of the original Model Penal Code, which hadn’t been revised since 1962. The Model Penal Code: Sentencing (MPCS) project was launched to cover about half of the original Code, which addressed sentencing and corrections.

The Director of the ALI hires reporters in consultation with experts in the field. I was recommended for the role of reporter and accepted.

In 2012, Professor Cecelia Klingele from the University of Wisconsin Law School joined the project as associate reporter.

WHAT ARE SOME OF THE CENTRAL THEMES OF THE MPCS?

The MPCS argues that all forms of criminal punishment should be based on informed policies and governed by rational legal principles and fair procedures. The Code has a great deal to say about prison sentencing, but it goes far beyond that. It has extensive recommendations for probation and parole supervision, restitution, fines, fees, asset forfeiture, and collateral consequences of conviction. It offers many reforms to combat racial and ethnic disparities, which exist for all types of criminal sanctions.

The MPCS also makes several basic institutional recommendations. For instance, the Code says that every

state should have a permanent sentencing commission. The Minnesota Sentencing Guidelines Commission was the basic model for the MPCS provisions on the subject. I’m not sure Minnesotans are aware of how influential the Minnesota sentencing system has been on the laws of other states and the work of national law reform organizations.

WHAT IMPACT DOES THE MPCS HAVE ON THE LAW? WHO USES THE CODE AND TO WHAT EXTENT?

The MPCS isn’t a real “code”; rather, it is a collection of recommendations addressed to state legislatures, courts, and executive branches. The recommendations are written in statutory form. The MPCS includes detailed reasoning and research in support of each of its provisions. That’s why the book is 1,100 pages long even though the statutory text is less than 100 pages.

The original Model Penal Code was approved by ALI in 1962 and has been very influential. State legislatures in 40 states adopted at least some of the 1962 Code’s recommendations. Even in jurisdictions that have never legislated based on the 1962 Code, the courts often use it as persuasive authority. The U.S. Supreme Court makes regular reference to the Model Penal Code in criminal cases even though Congress has never adopted any part of it.

WHAT ARE A FEW KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM THE PROJECT? WERE THERE IMPORTANT DISCOVERIES THAT SURPRISED YOU?

I was aware, like most people, that America had reached a condition of “mass incarceration” in the 1990s. That is, by 2000 we had the highest national incarceration rate in the world. Since the early 1970s, the prison rate had quadrupled. By the early 2000s, the U.S. had five percent of the world’s total population but 25 percent of the world’s prison population.

In research for the MPCS project at the Robina Institute, we discovered that the U.S. also had astonishingly high rates of probation and parole supervision, five to 10 times the rates in European countries. Likewise, the weight of financial penalties we impose on people appears to be unrivaled in other Western democracies. The same is true of our collateral consequences of conviction. We started to believe that America had reached a level of “mass punishment” of many kinds, not just mass incarceration.

WHAT IS ONE THING YOU HOPE THE MPCS WILL ACCOMPLISH?

No state has the capacity to perform the depth of research and analysis that the ALI invested in the MPCS Above all, the MPCS is a unique resource that each state can use as it chooses. Criminal justice

professionals rarely have familiarity with how things work in other states. We were able to look deeply into the different laws and policies in all 50 states. That’s the only way to discover best practices rooted in actual experience. Our greatest hope is that the MPCS will give states a new breadth of knowledge and policy options that they otherwise wouldn’t have.

HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE THE MPCS TO SOMEONE WHO IS UNFAMILIAR WITH THE SUBJECT MATTER?

I look at the MPCS as a collection of 15 or 16 separate projects on a range of subjects relevant to sentencing and corrections. For example, there’s a long chapter devoted entirely to economic sanctions. Some policy-makers may

choose this one subject to focus on. We also did separate studies of victims’ rights at sentencing, a new framework for judicial “second looks” at long prison sentences, the sentencing of juveniles as adults, prison-release decision-making, and so on. No one is going to read the entire MPCS from beginning to end. They’re going to select the topics most relevant to their states or their specific policy interests.

WHAT CHALLENGES OR BARRIERS DID YOU ENCOUNTER WHEN WORKING ON THIS PROJECT?

Maybe the hardest thing was the inherent pressure of revising the original Model Penal Code, an acknowledged landmark in the history of criminal law reform. Anything having to do with the

Model Penal Code is guaranteed to get attention, so you feel an obligation to contribute. I always thought it would be an unforgivable waste if we didn’t do the best possible job! Luckily, the MPCS is the product of hundreds of people, not just the reporters. It was a joy to work with so many experts from across the country. I treasured all the meetings, conversations, correspondence, and law review articles that were devoted to the drafting of the MPCS. We got an inexpressible degree of help from dedicated people who wanted to change things for the better. ❘❘❘❘

Photo: Tony Nelson

Advocating for Gun Violence Prevention

Chad Nowlan ’24 finds a path with a purpose at Minnesota Law

WHEN CHAD NOWLAN ’24 BEGAN LAW SCHOOL, he intended to focus on law related to education. Then he heard about the Gun Violence Prevention Clinic. It didn’t take long for the urgency of the clinic’s work and his passion for upholding gun laws to supersede his other interests.

Through the clinic, Nowlan has argued several court cases in cooperation with the Minnesota Attorney General, including Minnesota v. Greenlee. In that case, the Second Judicial District Court agreed with Nowlan’s argument and upheld Minnesota gun laws that require a permit to carry a firearm in public and mandate that firearms have serial numbers.

Nowlan, the first student to argue in front of a court on behalf of the clinic, was also part of the clinic team named one of Minnesota Lawyer’s Attorneys of the Year.

“We have been very fortunate in the clinic to have a series of wins on a state level upholding state law,” says Nowlan, one of the clinic’s student directors. “Those have felt like victories. I do believe there are misapplications of current firearm regulations and disproportionate enforcement of them against Black and Brown individuals. Strong firearm regulations are our best bet for curbing gun violence, but the enforcement needs to be equitable and not fall along racial lines.”

The clinic was launched in January 2023 by Megan Walsh, visiting assistant clinical professor of law. One of her goals with the clinic is to help students understand that there is something they, as lawyers, can do

to affect the gun violence epidemic.

Nowlan is a foundational part of the clinic, Walsh says.

“Chad has a tremendous passion for gun violence prevention,” she says. “He comes at it as a former educator who has seen how his students and colleagues were affected in school settings by gun violence. This has become central to his life and his career. Chad is going to change the world one day with his lawyering.”

As lead symposium articles editor of the Minnesota Law Review, Nowlan organized the journal’s annual symposium in fall 2023. This year’s symposium, “Aiming for Answers: Balancing Rights, Safety, and Justice in a Post-Bruen America,” focused on the future of gun violence prevention litigation.

“Doing the work in court is great but hosting a space for conversations no one else wants to have but are important has become part of my passion,” he says.

Walsh says she received overwhelmingly positive feedback about the symposium.

“Chad was at the heart of it all,” she says. “He made it an incredible experience for the audience, the presenters, and the authors writing for the Minnesota Law Review.”

A Massachusetts native with a B.A. in acting from Pace University and a master’s in higher education policy administration from Bowling Green State University, Nowlan was drawn to the law when he started working on Title IX and disability law in higher education. Eventually, he changed his focus to gun violence prevention, with Walsh as a mentor. Along with his clinical work, he has completed

two successful summer internships with the U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. He also interned with Brady: United Against Gun Violence in fall 2022.

The stories he hears from victims of gun violence and their families motivate him in his work, which he considers a gift to be able to do.

“I sincerely believe there is a future in which the everyday person doesn’t have to worry about gun violence,” he says. “Right now, that feels like a pipe dream. What’s worth fighting for is the idea I could leave this world or raise children in a world better than how I found it. I’m specifically thinking about it as it relates to firearms. I am happy to be a part of that fight.”

Nowlan says he was initially drawn to Minnesota Law for its “stellar reputation.” So far, his time in law school and working with the Gun Violence Prevention clinic has exceeded his expectations.

“It’s not something I ever would have imagined or dreamt of had I not come to Minnesota Law,” he says about his clinical work. “I feel I’m on this incredible path. Minnesota Law has met and exceeded all my expectations by opening all the right doors, equipping me with the right tools, and providing me with incredible mentorship opportunities. Great leadership is when those in charge are more focused on helping the next generation than just on their own success, and I found that to be true here in Minnesota.” ❘❘❘❘

Amy Carlson Gustafson is a Twin Cities-based freelance writer.

“ I sincerely believe there is a future in which the everyday person doesn't have to worry about gun violence. Right now, that feels like a pipe dream. What’s worth fighting for is the idea I could leave this world or raise children in a world better than how I found it. I’m specifically thinking about it as it relates to firearms. I am happy to be a part of that fight.”

—Chad Nowlan ’24

Photo: Tony Nelson

Volunteering Gains Interest

A record number of Minnesota Law students volunteer to help prepare income taxes

EVERY YEAR, CLINICAL

PROFESSOR CALEB SMITH lets his students know about an ongoing volunteer opportunity with a nonprofit organization called Prepare + Prosper, which helps qualified low-income people prepare their income taxes free of charge.

Usually, one or two students respond. This year, however, eight students answered the call to help.

“I was just shocked,” says Smith, who put out the word in the Federal Tax Clinic that he directs as well as in his tax procedure class. “I don’t spend much time on it all, other than just to let people know that it exists and that it’s a great organization. I said, ‘If you’re interested, let me know.’ And just so many hands went up. It was amazing.”

Volunteering for Prepare + Prosper requires a serious time commitment — a four-hour shift per week January through the April 15 tax deadline — at one of the busiest times for law students.

Smith says he has detected a growing interest among his students around what he terms “the confluence of tax and public interest.” But he says he can’t put his finger on why student interest in Prepare + Prosper is so high this year.

While a broad explanation may remain unclear, three of the current Prepare + Prosper volunteers from Minnesota Law discussed their own reasons for stepping up.

Providing a service with practical benefits

Caroline Rice ’24 and Mohammad Ziny ’24 have law firm jobs lined up after they graduate this spring, so they are not volunteering to strengthen their resumes for prospective employers. Rather, both indicate that they are volunteering out of a sense of public-mindedness, while acknowledging that there are practical reasons that might benefit them as they begin their legal careers.

Rice, who will be joining an estate planning practice with a Minneapolis firm, recalled a conversation she had with U.S. Tax Court Judge Ronald L. Buch when the tax court came to town last year. The subject of preparing tax returns for low-income people came up.

“I asked, ‘How can I leverage this on my resume? I’m not going to be doing income tax prep except for myself,’” says Rice. “And he just said there’s just a logic that underpins the entire tax system, and the more familiar you are with how the statutes are set up, how they’re connected and how they apply to forms, and how the procedure works, it’s going to be valuable no matter what kind of tax you do.”

Ziny, who will be practicing in the transactional tax area with a firm in New York, agrees with Rice. “The experience of working with the tax code is always going to help you even if you work in completely different sections,” he says.

Cade Geldreich ’25, who is looking forward to a summer internship with a Chicago law firm and ultimately a career in tax law, believes that the volunteering experience is valuable because tax law is “a lingo-driven industry and you have to be able to speak the lingo.”

While the scales of an earned-income tax credit and a multi-million-dollar corporate R&D tax credit are different, he says their mechanics are similar. “Just being able to communicate

Photo: Tony Nelson

those words and understand what they mean in different contexts is valuable to learn.”

Motivated to help

Still, as Smith suspects, a primary motivator for the students really does appear to be a more selfless publicmindedness.

As Ziny says, “I think people in law school sometimes think you have to pick between helping people and working for corporate law firms.

But I think this is a great way to bolster your skill set in the real world and still be of service, helping people from all walks of life.”

Smith, meanwhile, thinks the attraction of being a volunteer tax preparer might be as simple as that it offers a break from the law school routine.

“Law school can be kind of alienating,” he says. “You’re sitting in a room listening to a professor or you’re reading a ton of cases. You

don’t always get a lot of direct experience working with people that you want to help, and a lot of people come to Minnesota Law because helping people is what they want to do. I don’t think they’re doing it so much for professional reasons. I think they’re doing it to feel engaged.” ❘❘❘❘

Dick Dahl is a Twin Cities-based freelance writer.

Caroline Rice ’24, Mohammad Ziny ’24, and Cade Geldreich ’25

Big Picture

Photo: Tony Nelson

A Winning Combination

Minnesota Law’s Inaugural Sports Law Competition Team Wins National Championship

LAST CHRISTMAS EVE, instead of gathering around the tree, Carter Allen ’24 and Jack Tate ’24 found themselves collaborating on a legal brief via text message. They, along with the team of Spencer Rojas ’24 and Ryan Clemmons ’25, made up the Law School’s first-ever sports law moot court competition team. The two teams competed at Tulane University’s Mardi Gras Moot Court Invitational in early February. Both teams advanced to the quarterfinals, and the Allen/Tate team won the championship.

The teams were chosen from a large pool of applicants that was

reviewed by Randall Ryder ’09, director of the school’s moot courts program. The students came to Ryder with a proposal to compete in the Tulane event.

“Carter and Jack made a compelling pitch about the competition, why the school should do it, and ideas for local sports law experts who would be ideal coaches ” says Ryder.

The idea grew from Allen’s participation in the Law School’s Sports and Name, Image & Likeness Clinic (Sports NIL), which covers topics related to name/image/likeness (NIL) laws that are playing an increasingly large role in college sports.

“Carter and I are sports fans, but I

think what both of us brought to the team was strong oral advocacy skills,” says Tate. “It wouldn’t matter as much what the subject was. We were confident that we could talk our way through it.”

To help the teams prepare, they sought help from Aalok Sharma ’13, Tarun Sharma ’22, and Chris Pham, three of just a handful of sports law attorneys in the Twin Cities. The three lawyers coached the students on sports law and appellate advocacy and held oral arguments each week.

“My main role was to serve as a mock judge for several oral arguments over the course of about a month,” says Pham, a shareholder at Fredrikson & Byron. “I would ask questions and then provide constructive feedback afterward. We covered everything from the substantive questions and answers to the tone, delivery, pace, hand gestures, eye contact, and stance during the presentation.”

“There was a limit to what we could do,” says Sharma, a partner

Photo: Tony Nelson

at Stinson. “It amounted to providing substantive legal advice within the parameters of the rules. I mostly helped them finesse their oral arguments.”

In his role overseeing moot court programs at the law school, Ryder says he’s always thinking about assembling teams and what might be the best places for them to compete.

“The sports law competition was an opportunity to diversify our portfolio of moot court competition teams,” says Ryder. “It’s an area of law that’s certainly growing. I had also judged arguments for three of the four students in moot court so I had a good sense of their advocacy skills. And then when Aalok, Chris, and Tarun — three local sports law experts —agreed to coach, I had a feeling the teams were set to excel.”

The competition, the only annual moot court appellate contest about legal issues in the sports industry, focused on trademark law, an area that Allen concedes they had not worked with before the tournament.

After their brief was done, they spent a month drilling.

“It was just practice all the time,” says Tate. “We practiced alone, we practiced together, we practiced with the other team.”

At issue was whether the fictitious “Mopster” — a product created and sold by MOPS R US — infringed on the federally protected trademark of the equally made-up Mega City Mobsters, an NFL team. Also under dispute was whether commercials created and distributed by Energy Elixir, a fledgling energy drink company, infringed on the property rights of the NFL players’ union.

Allen and Tate represented the petitioners (the team and the union). They argued that MOPS R US’s use of Mega City’s mark functioned as a source identifier for the Mopster, rather than a parody, and neither the fair use exception nor heightened protection under the First Amendment applied as a result. They also argued that Energy Elixir’s commercials 1) did not constitute effective parodies and therefore were

likely to confuse consumers in violation of the Lanham Act; 2) did not fall under either exception of Tulania’s Right of Publicity statute; and 3) did not warrant heightened protection under the First Amendment.

“I wasn’t that surprised that they won,” said Pham. “Even after the very first oral argument exercise, I knew they had a good chance. Then, after the first round of the competition, I was even more confident that they had a great shot at advancing.”

Sharma said the duo surpassed their expectations. “It was a good experience for them and for us.”

Ryder had high hopes but says, “Both teams advancing to the quarterfinals and one winning? That was the chef’s kiss.” ❘❘❘❘

Dan Heilman is a Twin Cities-based freelance writer.



From L to R: Carter Allen ’24, Coach Aalok Sharma ’13, Ryan Clemmons ’25, Spencer Rojas ’24, Jack Tate ’24, Coach Christopher Pham, and Coach Tarun Sharma ’22.

Environmental Moot Court Competition Team Wins Jefferey Miller National Environmental Law Moot Court Competition

Minnesota Law’s Environmental Moot Court Competition Team won the Jeffrey Miller National Environmental Law Moot Court Competition at Pace Law School. The winning team includes Maria Pfister ’24, Poojan Thakrar ’24, and Hanna Weil ’24. All have environmental law expertise:Pfister is pursuing an Environmental and Energy Law Concentration, Thakrar competed on the Environmental Moot Court Competition team last year, and Weil is a veteran of the Environmental Moot Court course. The team is coached by Rachel Kitze-Collins ’14 and Emily Polachek

Gender & Sexuality Moot Court Competition Team Wins Gender & Sexuality Moot Court Competition at Michigan State University

Minnesota Law’s inaugural Gender & Sexuality Moot Court Competition Team won the Gender & Sexuality

Student News

Moot Court Competition at Michigan State University. Madeleine Kim ’25 and Leah Kanihan ’25 were on the team that took first place in the competition. David Lindgren ’25 and Kaz Lane ’25 also competed. Kanihan and Kim won second best brief, and Kanihan won third best oralist. The team is coached by three Minnesota Law alums and moot court veterans, Mark Ficken ’20, Katja Lange ’23, and Andrew Nicotra Reilly ’23

Inaugural Sports Law Competition Team Wins National Championship at the Mardi Gras Moot Court Invitational

Carter Allen ’24 and Jack Tate ’24, along with the team of Spencer Rojas ’24 and Ryan Clemmons ’25, made up the Law School’s first-ever Sports Law Moot Court Competition Team. The two teams competed at Tulane University’s Mardi Gras Moot Court Invitational in early February. Both teams advanced to the quarterfinals, and the Allen/Tate team won the national championship.

Two Mock Trial Competition Teams Named Regional CoChamps, Advance to Nationals Minnesota Law’s intercollegiate mock trial competition teams became regional co-champions of the TYLA/ ACTL National Trial Competition earlier this year. The National Trial Competition is administered by the Texas Young Lawyers Association

(TYLA) & the American College of Trial Lawyers (ACTL) and is the largest mock trial tournament in the United States, drawing competition teams from more than 140 law schools. Both teams advanced to the national competition in Houston, Texas, in April. The Maroon Team includes Diana Kawka ’24, Dominik Ruch ’24, and Thaameran Sarveswaran ’25. The Gold Team includes Nathan Barry ’25, An Duong ’24, and Simon Earle ’24. Mock Trial team coaches are Craig Roen ’87, Joe Janochoski ’18, and Tommy Harshaw ’22.

Students Compete in the Maynard Pirsig Moot Court Honors Tournament

Shayna Korsh ’25 and David Lindgren ’25 argued before Minnesota Supreme Justice G. Barry Anderson ’79, Justice Karl Procaccini, and Justice Gordon Moore of the Minnesota Supreme Court in the final round of the Maynard Pirsig Moot Court Honors Tournament in March. Korsh won the closely contested argument, with both students receiving tremendous praise for their skills. The tournament,

named in honor of the former Law School Dean Maynard Pirsig, is the culmination of the Law School’s flagship Moot Court Course — Civil Rights Civil Liberties Moot Court. Students are nominated for the tournament based on their oral advocacy skills in the year-long course. Before the final round, the four semi-finalists argued at the Minnesota Court of Appeals.

Tyler Blackmon ’24 and Patience McHenry ’26 Named Next Generation Leaders by the American Constitution Society

Tyler Blackmon ’24 and Patience McHenry ’26 were named Next Generation Leaders by the American Constitution Society (ACS). ACS has selected 34 up-and-coming legal professionals as 2024 Next Generation Leaders. Launched in 2007, the Next Generation Leaders program recognizes and supports law school students who have shown exceptional leadership in their work with their ACS student chapters. The program offers opportunities that empower the students to develop their leadership skills and make a long-lasting impact in their communities.

Chad Nowlan ’24 Receives President’s Student Leadership and Service Award

Chad Nowlan ’24 has received the University of Minnesota President’s Student Leadership and Service Award. He joins students from across the University who have shown

exemplary leadership and service to their respective communities. Nowlan is a student director in the Gun Violence Prevention Clinic and symposium editor for Minnesota Law Review. Earlier this year, he organized a national conference that brought together scholars, elected officials, advocates, lawmakers, and others from diverse backgrounds and differing points of view in a day-long symposium focused on gun violence prevention post-Bruen.

Minnesota Law Editorsin-Chief Named for 2024-25

Four women will lead the University of Minnesota Law School’s law journals in the 2024-25 academic year. The incoming editors-in-chief are Fariza Hassan ’25, Journal of Law & Inequality; Laura Reyes ’25, Journal of International Law; Callan Showers ’25, Minnesota Law Review; and Christhy Le ’25, Journal of Law, Science & Technology

Jasmin Hernandez DuBois ’24 Wins First Place in the American Association of Law Libraries Annual Student Writing Competition

Jasmin Hernandez DuBois ’24 was awarded first place by the American Association of Law Libraries’ annual student writing competition. Her paper, “The Intersection of Justice and Legal Education: Legal Education for America’s Prisoners,” focused on prison law library reformation and

history throughout the United States. It also featured first-hand research by DuBois on the first two prisoners to receive their law degrees in Minnesota.

Sean O’Brien ’24 Participates in Hearing Before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board

As part of his patent field placement, Minnesota Law student Sean O’Brien ’24 traveled to Washington, D.C., for a hearing before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). O’Brien participated in the hearing through the USPTO’s Legal Experience and Advancement Program which allows patent practitioners with three or fewer substantive oral arguments in any federal tribunal to argue a case before the PTAB.

Evan Dale ’24 Wins Inaugural Everytown Law Fund Law Student Writing Competition

Evan Dale ’24 was recognized as a co-winner by Everytown Law Fund for its inaugural Law Student Writing Competition. His article, “Help Me Sue A Gun Manufacturer: A State Legislator’s Guide To The Protection Of Lawful Commerce In Arms Act And The Predicate Exception,” analyzed how the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), which gives broad immunity to the gun industry, discourages gun companies from improving their products and business practices to the detriment of victims of gun violence and society. ❘❘❘❘

Photos: Tomy

TORT PRESENTS: (MOOT) CARS!

On March 15 and 16, Minnesota Law’s Theatre of the Relatively Talentless (TORT) performed “(Moot) Cars!” at Tedd Mann Theater on the University of Minnesota — Twin Cities Campus. The show followed Lightning McMondale, an overconfident 1L who had his sights set on transferring out of Minnesota Law. The audience watched as Lightning went on a journey of self-discovery while navigating the hijinks of his Cars-themed law school experience. When the Clary Cup resulted in the first-ever tie, a historic rematch was set for Lightning and his competitors. But after accidentally destroying the Rural Property Clinic's brief, Lightning must also make amends. Did Lightning finish the brief and help his new friends? Or, did he chase his own ambition and leave Minnesota Law behind?

ALUMNI Interrogatory

June Hoidal ’03

Managing Partner, Zimmerman Reed

Photo: Tony Nelson

Like the marathons she runs, June Hoidal’s ’03 legal cases require endurance, focus, and a commitment to making it to the finish line.

ATTORNEY JUNE HOIDAL ’03 HAD BEEN PREPARING FOR MONTHS. Now it was time to bring her preparation, drive, and psychological edge to the moment. Then, before it even started, it was over.

This was not one of the cases Hoidal had settled right before a trial was to start; rather, this was the 2023 Twin Cities Marathon, canceled because of extreme heat.

Hoidal has been logging miles on the pavement and court docket for years and both have long appealed to her sense of focus and ability to see things through to a successful conclusion.

It’s that sense of preparation and drive that makes her an equally formidable competitor in a race and as an opponent in court. Just ask the folks at e-cigarette makers Juul and Altria.

They called things off at the last moment, too, settling a case for $60.5 million in May 2023 that Hoidal had helped bring to trial for the state of Minnesota. The suit alleged the defendants violated Minnesota’s consumer protection laws, breached its duty of reasonable care, and created a public nuisance.

“That was a key moment in my career because of what was at stake,” says Hoidal, who recently became a managing partner at Zimmerman Reed. “The state claimed that the e-cigarette makers targeted marketing to children in Minnesota. The Attorney General appointed us outside counsel to work with his office to litigate this case. We were in trial for about three weeks before the case settled on the eve of closing arguments. That was a pretty intense experience going to trial on a case that was closely watched. Minnesota had a history of standing up to tobacco companies for years and it was my pleasure to join them in this fight.”

According to Hoidal, this case marked the biggest settlement per capita for any state with a case of this kind.. Many other states brought similar cases against the same defendants, but Minnesota was the only one who took it to trial.

Hoidal’s experience extends beyond the walls of the courthouses of the North Star State and includes participation in a brief before the U.S. Supreme Court.

“We represented the state of Mississippi in an antitrust case on a jurisdictional issue and it was a 9-0 victory,” says Hoidal, who served as a law clerk to Honorable Arthur J. Boylan for the United States District Court for the District of Minnesota in 2011 and was previously an attorney for then-Gray, Plant, Mooty, Mooty & Bennett from 2005 to 2007. “Essentially it had to do with where a public enforcement case can be brought by an attorney general. At the moment of oral arguments, to sit there and hear the justices talking about a case you worked on and to witness the caliber of lawyering at that level, it was a terrific experience.”

Hoidal today may be most known for her focus on public pensions and securities. “We’ve handled financial fraud and securities fraud cases and we represented, as another example, a retirement system in a class action that settled,” she says. “It can be complicated work and very rewarding.”

Hoidal says she has wanted to be a lawyer for so long that she can’t remember when she wasn’t dreaming of making an argument. She cut her teeth on the high school debate team. Her experience as an undergraduate at the University of Minnesota made her want to stay at the U for the law school experience as well.

“The people were a huge differencemaker,” she says. “So many of the students from law school days have

formed my community. Two of my classmates are just down the hall. I met my husband, Sten-Erik Hoidal ’04, at Minnesota Law. The joke many say is that law students barely have a life, but I truly found so much of my life at the Law School.”

She has found kinship with the people in her firm as well.

“Whether it’s writing a brief for the Supreme Court, preparing a witness for testimony at trial, or meeting with a client, June’s attention to detail and her dedication to doing truly excellent legal work are unmatched,” Behdad Sadeghi, a Zimmerman Reed partner, says. “Just as important, June is a great person to work with. She supports her colleagues through thick and thin, and puts a premium on collaboration, hard work, and mutual respect.”

Zimmerman Reed partner Charles Toomajian ’14 says that Hoidal also underscores her thoughtfulness for others on her team. “She cares enough to put you in positions that amplify your strengths, cares enough to carve out opportunities for your growth, and cares about you as a person outside of the office,” he says. “It’s a dream situation for a newer attorney to have a mentor like that, and it makes you want to do a better job and become a better lawyer.”

Hoidal is still pondering whether she will run the Twin Cities Marathon this year.

“I might run but I actually completed my goal,” she says. “I had put so much into it that I found another marathon and ran it the next weekend after Twin Cities was canceled. It’s like in law — you have to be ready for anything.” ❘❘❘❘

Eric Butterman is a Texas-based freelance writer.

Minnesota Law alumni filled the halls of Walter F. Mondale Hall and other local venues to celebrate this year’s SPRING ALUMNI WEEK 2024 from April 15-21, 2024. This annual celebration included in-person and virtual events and CLEs, special milestone reunion events, an alumnae brunch, a visit to the Guthrie Theater, and more.

Thank you to all our alumni who joined us to celebrate our Minnesota Law alumni community!

1 Renate Sharp ’64 and Vern Hoium ’59 at the Golden Society Brunch.

2 Members of the Class of 2014 celebrate winning this year’s Attendance Cup Trophy.

3 1Ls Evan Coakley, Patience Ranjani McHenry, Dawn Dudley, and Zena Hamilton at the All-Alumni Reception.

4 Kirk Patrick ’74, Sue Patrick, Ray Marshall ’74, and Jackie Marshall toast the class of 1974 at their 50th reunion.

5 Alumnae celebrated women in law at this year’s AluMNae Network brunch.

6 The Class of 1999 celebrated its 25th reunion.

The William B. Lockhart Club is Minnesota Law’s leadership annual giving society. It brings together generations of alumni and friends who generously express their support with annual gifts of $2,000 or more, or as part of Lockhart GOLD for recent graduates. The loyal generosity of our Lockhart Club members helps us to recruit and retain world-class faculty, attract promising and diverse students, and create transformational programs that train our students and benefit our communities.

Lockhart Club members receive a host of benefits that include an invite to the annual Lockhart Club Dinner, regular updates from the dean, and invitations to exclusive events.

For questions or for information about joining the Lockhart Club, contact Katie Jacob, assistant director of annual giving at kldjacob@umn.edu or 612-624-0097

Make a difference by joining or renewing your membership in this esteemed giving society today.

Bree Cyre ’21, Nick Benson ’21, Katie Chen ’22, Harpeet Mahal ’21, Lu Li ’22, and Assistant Dean of Experiential Education Mitch Zamoff joined Interim Dean William McGeveran and Lockhart Club members for a dinner honoring their support of the Law School.

An Early Passion for Justice Led Emanual Williams ’23 to Minnesota Law and the Clemency Project Clinic

Last fall, Williams and the Clemency Project Clinic successfully advocated for a client’s sentence to be commuted

EMANUAL WILLIAMS ’23 HAD JUST GRADUATED from the University of Minnesota Law School and was studying for the bar when he argued for and won a commutation from the Minnesota Board of Pardons (BOP) for the client he had represented as a student in the Law School’s Clemency Project Clinic. The client, Hansakda Souvannarath, had been the driver in a drive-by shooting when he was just 19 years old. In 1995, he was sentenced to life with the possibility of parole, followed by an additional sentence of 17 consecutive years.

This past summer, the BOP agreed to commute Souvannarath’s sentences from consecutive to concurrent, based on Williams’ oral advocacy and the application submitted by the Clemency Project Clinic that Williams drafted with fellow students Emily Doyle ’22 and Stephanie Huisman ’22. As a result, Souvannarath was eligible for release in April 2024 once he concludes 30 years of his original life sentence.

“Hans has made truly extraordinary strides in prison,” says Williams. “His accomplishments in education and community service are amazing, as is the number of lives he has touched. Hans is one in a million and if there is ever a person who is ready to return to society, it is him.”

Professor JaneAnne Murray, associate professor of clinical law and founder and director of the Clemency Project Clinic, says Souvannarath’s age and role as driver made for a compelling clemency case from the start. “But when we began to dig in and hear his story and the story of his family, we also realized that this was the story of many Asian

immigrants whose experiences had a significant impact on the next generation,” says Murray. “Hans’ earliest memories are of being in refugee camps, with his Laotian father relegated from hero to lower caste after the Vietnam War.”

In the application for commutation, the students’ petition argued that Souvannarath’s childhood was framed by violence and war and that he and his family had experienced racism and harassment as refugees in the U.S. As Souvannarath juggled school, work, and home responsibilities, including caring for his younger siblings, he sought comfort in a group of friends who were also Southeast Asian immigrants fighting for a place to belong, but also young people headed down a dangerous path of violence.

Williams began working on Souvannarath’s case as a 2L and bonded with his client over similarities in their backgrounds. “I did not spend more than a year in one state,” says Williams of his childhood. “My family moved a lot, and I went from a high school in Baltimore that was entirely African American to one in Texas where only six of us were Black. I know how it feels to be an outsider.”

Williams persevered, discovering early that he wanted to be an attorney. “My high school was not so welcoming to a city-slicker Black kid, but there were things that I needed to take a stand for,” he says. “My mom realized I was going to be an attorney when I went to the principal to ask why we celebrated Presidents Day and not the Martin Luther King holiday. There wasn’t a month when I wasn’t in the principal’s office defending myself or my classmates.”

Williams moved north to attend Carleton College and then the University of Minnesota Law School, where he met Murray and joined the Clemency Project Clinic. “Professor Murray has been an amazing mentor,” he says. “I can’t thank her enough for the opportunities and the solid advice she gave me on rides up to Moose Lake to see Hans.” Williams also went with a group Murray took to Norway to study the Norwegian penal system, long regarded as a leading example of a humane system. For Williams, the experience of the Clemency Project Clinic was critically important. “Law school is often very Socratic and theoretical, but that doesn’t necessarily teach you to have empathy and to be most effective for your client,” he says. “Minnesota Law clinics teach you those skills. You have real clients. You can read case law all you want, but it’s quite another thing sitting across the table from a real person.”

Williams also notes that the same day the Board of Pardons commuted Souvannarath’s sentence, he was notified that an application he submitted for another client had been rejected. “I went from consoling a grandparent in that case to being told I was the greatest by Hans,” he says. “It was a humbling moment.”

Today, Williams is using the skills he learned at Minnesota Law in his position as a criminal defense attorney for the Legal Rights Center. “The relationships I built with classmates and professors helped me find who I was,” he says. “They helped me find that I was not just a lawyer, but a lawyer named Emanual.” ❘❘❘❘

Kathy Graves is a Twin Cities-based freelance writer.

Photo: Tony Nelson

Emanual Williams ’23 is a Saeks Residency Fellow from the University of Minnesota Law School and works on the Legal Rights Center (LRC) Community Defense Team. Emanual is originally from Lovelady, Texas, where his deep passion for criminal justice reform began. He believes that every voice can and should be heard. He has experience with clemency, parole, and expungement work through various organizations. Before re-joining the LRC, he spent time at the Attorney General’s Office. He became involved with the Legal Rights Center because of his unrelenting commitment to racial equity and community-led political change.

for donors like you who make it possible for students to get a world-class legal education at Minnesota Law.

Give to the annual fund today to make an impact now. To make a gift, visit give.umn.edu/law or contact Katie Jacob, assistant director of annual giving, at kldjacob@umn.edu or 612-624-0097.

Class Notes

NEWS ABOUT YOUR CLASSMATES AND COLLEAGUES

72

Joe Price has been chosen for lifetime achievement recognition as a 2023 Attorney of the Year by Minnesota Lawyer for his “Outstanding Service to the Profession.” He is a retired partner at Faegre Drinker and is an adjunct professor at Minnesota Law.

73

Alan Eidsness is celebrating his 50th year with Henson Efron. He focuses on various family law issues, commercial matters, ADR, trust, estate, and tax planning.

78 Cathy Gorlin was named a Top Women in Law honoree by Minnesota Lawyer in 2023. She was celebrated as part of this inaugural class of leading women for her achievements and passion for making a difference in the legal community. Gorlin was also recognized in the 2024 edition of The Best Lawyers in America® for her family law and arbitration practices. In the October 2023 issue of Bench & Bar, Cathy co-authored an article looking back on the expansive tenure of Chief Justice Lorie Gildea, titled “Hail the departing chief: Gildea’s legacy includes 13 cases for 13 years.”

Kitty Taylor retired as a tax attorney from Ameriprise Financial Services. She began her career at Ameriprise in 1978.

82

Thomas Krause is the first Litigation Director for the National Organization of Social Security Claimants’ Representative, a specialized bar association for attorneys and advocates who represent social security disability insurance and supplemental security income claimants throughout the adjudicative process.

85 Elizabeth Bransdorfer has been selected for inclusion in Crain’s Notable Women in the Law for her work in family law and leadership in the legal field. She is an attorney and member of Mika Meyers Attorneys.

86 Andrew Marshall has been selected as one of Minnesota Lawyer’s Attorneys of the Year for 2023 in the category of Pro Bono. He is honored for his successful work on the “CAFO” (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation) dispute on behalf of the residents of the Town of Trade Lake.

87

Hon. David Brown was elected as a judge to the Second Judicial District in 2022. He was appointed by Governor Tim Walz on March 3, 2020.

Hon. Jeff Lerner recently completed his 35th year with the New York State Workers’ Compensation Board, serving as an administrative law judge for the agency for the past

30 years. Judge Lerner presides over cases involving work-related accidents and occupational diseases, as well as line-ofduty injuries to volunteer firefighters and volunteer ambulance workers.

89

John Dornik was named a Minnesota ICON of 2023 by Finance and Commerce and Minnesota Lawyer

Charles E. Jones has rejoined Moss & Barnett as a shareholder. He will be a member of the firm’s litigation and professional liability practice areas.

Z. Alex Zhang has been recognized as the 2023 Dealmaker of the Year for Asia by Asian Legal Business He is a partner at White & Case.

90

Stephen Yoch was joined by Chris Hayhoe ’78, Matt Hendrickson ’92, Mark Radke ’94, Lauren Weber ’14, and others from the Felhaber Larson firm in celebration of the release of Steve’s second book, Becoming Benedict Arnold

91 Micheal Larson was named Auditing & Oversight Director of Midland Trust Company, a Sioux Falls, South Dakota, trust company specializing in handling self-directed individual retirement accounts.

Hon. Karen Rotschafer Sage, Judge of the 299th District Court of Texas, was sworn in as president of the National Association of Women Judges (NAWJ)

on October 5. NAWJ’s mission is to promote the judicial role of protecting the rights of individuals under the rule of law through strong, committed, diverse judicial leadership; fairness and equality in the courts; and equal access to justice.

93

William (Bill) Stock has been named managing partner at Klasko Immigration Law Partners. He has practiced immigration law for more than 30 years.

95 Matthew McBride was named a Litigation Star by Benchmark Litigation He is a shareholder at Winthrop & Weinstine. Brian Schoenborn has been elected to Moss & Barnett’s Board of Directors. He is a member of the firm’s Business Law, Estate Planning and Wealth Preservation, Mergers and Acquisitions, Closely Held Businesses, Securities, Financial Services, Real Estate, and Technology practice groups.

96

Craig Bramley was named in the National Trial Lawyers Top 100 list. He is also managing director of Berman & Simmons Law Firm.

97 Peter Michaud became chair of Ballad Spahr. He is the former chair of Ballard Spahr’s Corporate Department and is an M&A and private equity transactions attorney.

99

Pamela Tomczik has been elected to the Patterson Companies board of directors. She will serve on the board's audit and finance committee.

00

Yende Anderson has been named senior program officer at GHR Foundation.

Mubanga Kalimamukwento, LL.M., is the winner of the 2024 Drue Heinz Literature Prize, one of the nation’s most prestigious prizes for a collection of short stories.

Tara Norgard joined the board of directors at Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity.

Brandon Roos rejoined Greenberg Traurig as a shareholder in their Hospitality and Restaurant Industry practice in Las Vegas.

01

Jessica Looman was confirmed as head of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division, where she served as the principal deputy. Looman previously worked as the commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Commerce and executive director of the Minnesota State Building and Construction Trades Council, representing 70,000 union construction workers.

02

Emily Pollock has joined Donohoe Talbert LLP, a New York City-based firm that specializes in complex family law matters, as partner.

04

Amber Lee joined Stoel Rives as of counsel in the Energy Development group in its Minneapolis office.

HON. KAREN ROTSCHAFER SAGE ’91

BECOMES PRESIDENT OF THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF WOMEN JUDGES

Hon. Karen Rotschafer Sage ’91, Judge of the 299th District Court of Texas, was sworn in as president of the National Association of Women Judges (NAWJ) on October 5. NAWJ’s mission is to promote the judicial role of protecting the rights of individuals under the rule of law through strong, committed, diverse judicial leadership; fairness and equality in the courts; and equal access to justice.

Tamela Woods Merriweather was announced as the award winner for Excellence in Legal at the 2023 U.S. Women in Finance Awards. The awards recognize and celebrate the most talented and accomplished women in multiple categories across finance.

05

Emerald Gratz joined the Minnesota Department of Public Safety as associate general counsel. She has served as assistant commissioner of the Minnesota Supreme Court since 2018.

Helen Hu has been appointed general counsel and chief legal officer and member of the executive management team of Volvo Cars.

Krista Matthews has been named director of development at the Guthrie Theater. She previously served as the chief development officer

for Planned Parenthood North Central States.

Sarah Peterson received the Roberta Freedman Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Medical Graduate Taskforce (IMGT) at its fifth Biennial Physician Immigration Law Institute in Washington, D.C.

06

Adam J. Langino has opened his own law practice, Langino Law PLLC, helping families with catastrophic injury and wrongful death claims in North Carolina and Florida.

Laurence Reszetar was appointed to the Intergovernmental Policy Advisory Committee at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. He serves as the director of international business strategy at the Minnesota Trade Office.

JESSICA LOOMAN ’01 CONFIRMED AS HEAD OF U.S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR'S WAGE AND HOUR DIVISION

Jessica Looman ’01 was confirmed as head of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division, where she served as the principal deputy. Looman previously worked as the commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Commerce and executive director of the Minnesota State Building and Construction Trades Council, representing 70,000 union construction workers.

07

Rich Coller has been ranked in the 2023 edition of IAM Strategy 300: The World’s Leading IP Strategists. Inclusion in the annual publication signifies an exceptional talent for “development and implementation of world-class IP value creation programs” and “a deep understanding of how intellectual property can most effectively be put to work,” according to IAM. He is a director at Sterne, Kessler, Goldstein & Fox.

Lindsey Tonsager was appointed to the Children’s Data Protection Working Group by California Governor Gavin Newsom. Tonsager is a partner at Covington and Burling in San Francisco and is co-chair of the firm’s global data privacy and cybersecurity.

Joseph Windler was named a Future Star by Benchmark Litigation. He is a shareholder at Winthrop & Weinstine.

09

Lauren Barta was appointed vice chair of the Faegre Drinker’s national hiring committee. Barta also currently serves as deputy practice area leader of the patent litigation team and is on the steering committee of Faegre Drinker Women Forward, a firm initiative that is committed to supporting the recruitment, retention, advancement, and leadership development of the firm’s women.

Joseph Bourne was promoted to partner at Lockridge Grindal Nauen PLLP. He focuses on antitrust, consumer protection, and business

litigation involving the technology, logistics, food product, and healthcare industries, among others. Steven Kerbaugh has been elected partner at Saul Ewing. He is a member of the Labor and Employment Practice, representing companies in employment and commercial litigation and advising them on employment matters affecting their daily operations.

10

Kassendra Galindo rejoined Faegre Drinker as a partner. She advises public and private companies, strategic acquirers, private equity sponsors, and founders in mergers, acquisitions, dispositions, joint ventures, and other matters affecting corporate policy and strategy.

Anthony “Tony” Todero has been promoted to shareholder at Winthrop & Weinstine. He represents global, national, regional, and community banks, life insurance companies, and other institutional lenders in a variety of financial transactions, including commercial real estate and other asset-based lending, public and private finance on bond transactions, C&I loans, syndicated and club credits, loan participations, and senior and mezzanine financing.

11

Catlan McCurdy rebranded McCurdy, LLC as McCurdy Laud, LLC to reflect the firm’s growing intellectual property litigation practice led by Sanjiv Laud, ’12.

12 Sanjiv Laud leads the intellectual property litigation practice

at McCurdy Laud, LLC as a principal attorney. January 2024 marked his third appearance at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in under a year.

13

Edmond Ahadome was awarded Best CEO of the Year in Hospitality at the 2023 Ghana CEO Vision and Awards. He serves as CEO of BridgeView Resort and leads the litigation practice at the Adomi Advising Group, a Washington, D.C.-based international law firm.

Justin Erickson is deputy general counsel for the Office of Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon.

Jaime McCarty joined the board of directors at Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity.

Mark A. Quade was elevated to shareholder at Vedder Price in Chicago. He focuses on representing ETFs and mutual funds, as well as independent directors and investment advisers, on a broad range of regulatory, compliance, governance and transactional matters under U.S. securities laws.

14

Anthony Le has been elected partner at McGuireWoods. He handles compliance issues, regulatory and enforcement matters, internal investigations, and individual and class litigation for clients in the financial services, technology, automobile, and retail sectors.

Alice Kirkland was elevated to shareholder at Littler. She advocates for employers in traditional

labor law and employment discrimination matters before state and federal courts, labor arbitrators, and government agencies, including the National Labor Relations Board, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Minnesota Department of Labor, and the Minnesota Department of Human Rights.

Chuck Toomajian was promoted to partner at Zimmerman Reed. He represents clients in civil litigation and is a member of the firm’s Public Client practice group.

15 Leah Leyendecker has been elected partner at Saul Ewing. She is a member of the corporate practice and focuses on commercial transactions driven by intellectual property, intangible assets, and technology.

Nate Louwagie was promoted to shareholder with the Carlson Caspers Intellectual Property Law Firm. He counsels clients from various industries in IP disputes and enjoys cases that involve both Federal District Court litigation and post-grant proceedings such as Inter Partes Reviews at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Emily Zambrana recently participated in Hennepin County Bar Association’s Food and the Law Series. She is a senior principal legal counsel with Whole Foods Market.

16

Andrew Glasnovich was elected partner at Stinson. He focuses on business litigation and bankruptcy and creditors’ rights.

Kyle Kroll was named among the ABA’s 2023 On The Rise Top 40 Young Lawyers. He is a shareholder at Winthrop & Weinstine, P.A. and represents clients in business matters, especially in the banking, food and beverage, manufacturing, insurance, and energy sectors.

Aylix K. Jensen was elected to shareholder at Moss & Barnett. She focuses her practice on defending creditors, fintech companies, collection agencies, and debt buyers in consumer litigation and regulatory matters at both federal and state levels.

Michael Laird was promoted to partner at Zimmerman Reed. He focuses on complex class actions and multidistrict litigation in the areas of sports law, data breach and privacy, and consumer protection.

Jim Thomson was promoted to partner at Lathrop GPM. He focuses on trust and estate litigation, working closely with families, fiduciaries, individuals, and family businesses in matters pertaining to estate planning, trust and estate administration.

17

Jon D. Finch was elected partner at Kutak Rock LLP. He focuses his practice on public finance and serves clients in taxable and tax-exempt financings throughout the country.

Edward J. Fleming rejoined Lathrop GPM LLP as an associate. He has extensive experience in M&A, private equity, financing, and corporate governance, and he has

advised companies across diverse industries on deals ranging from billion-dollar acquisitions to sensitive family business transitions.

Brandon Lira joined Stites & Harbison, PLLC in Lexington, Kentucky. He will be a member of the firm’s creditors’ rights and bankruptcy service group.

Gretel Lee joined Sher Edling LLP in March of 2022. She has dedicated her practice to environmental compliance and protection on behalf of public entities.

Samuel Thompson has been promoted to shareholder at Winthrop & Weinstine. He represents clients in the development of real estate projects, including those involving federal and state tax credits. He assists and advises his clients in navigating complex tax, regulatory, and financing structures associated with such tax credit financing.

18

Adam Setra founded Setra Law, a new civil and criminal trial practice in El Paso, Texas.

20

Jake (Jacob) Gray joined Kutak Rock LLP as an associate. He provides legal counsel to clients in corporate matters including healthcare and assists the firm’s Employee Benefits and Executive Compensation group.

21

Chris Bultena graduated from Officer Development School in November 2023 and is starting his Naval career as a lieutenant junior grade with the JAG Corps stationed in Bremerton, Washington.

Amanda Tesarek was selected as a recipient of the Gaye L. Tenoso Indian Country Fellowship through the Department of Justice Honors program. Through the fellowship, she has joined the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Violent Crimes-Indian Country division.

22

Benjamin Cooper joined Zimmerman Reed. He will join the firm’s consumer protection, privacy + data breach, and antitrust practices in the Minneapolis office.

Frances Daniels joined Faegre Drinker as an associate focusing on product liability and mass torts.

23

Jennifer Brown joined Stinson as an associate. She is a member of Stinson’s Health Care & Life Science practice division.

Mark Kaske joined Faegre Drinker as an associate focusing on corporate law.

Jett Malkoski joined Faegre Drinker as an associate focusing on corporate law.

Mason Medeiros joined Faegre Drinker as an associate focusing on insurance law.

Adam Mikell joined Stinson as an associate. She is a member of Stinson’s corporate finance practice division.

Molly Nelson-Ragan joined Faegre Drinker as an associate focusing on business litigation.

Caleb Nigrin has joined Erickson, Zierke, Kuderer & Madsen, P.A. as an associate attorney.

Justin Oakland has joined Carlson Caspers, where he will focus his legal practice on patent litigation, trademark, copyrights, and licensing agreements. He capitalizes on his background and education in genetic engineering and biochemistry to assist clients in meeting their goals.

Ben Parker joined Stinson as an associate. He is a member of Stinson’s labor, employment & benefits practice division.

Jared Roland joined Dodge County (NE) attorney Pam Hopkins’ office as a deputy.

Zack Taylor joined Stinson as an associate. He is a member of Stinson’s Private Business practice division.

Laura Trahms-Hagen has joined Maslon LLP in its corporate & securities group. She will focus on corporate governance, contracts, employment, and general commercial law.

KEEP YOUR CLASSMATES POSTED! To be included in class notes, send us your news at lawalum@umn.edu or complete this form: z.umn.edu/LawClassNotes

Recent Gifts

GIFTS OF $100,000+

Gary ’74 and Barbara Haugen pledged their support to establish the Gary J. Haugen Scholarship. This new endowed scholarship will support students so they may have the opportunity of a world-class legal education without the barriers of financial burden.

Hon. Nancy Brasel ’96 and Todd Noteboom pledged their support to the Law School Annual Fund. This fund immediately supports the needs of the Law School through student scholarship support and other programmatic needs.

Jill and Dan ’89 Gustafson made a gift to their Gustafson Family Scholarship in Law. This new scholarship is supporting its first scholar as they pursue their dream of earning a J.D. from Minnesota Law.

Robert A. Guzy ’58 continues to give generously in support of the Joseph E. Wargo Anoka County Bar Association Professor of Family Law Fund. Until recently, this professorship was held by Professor Emerita Judith Younger.

GIFTS OF $25,000–$99,999

Ben ’92 and Mary Henschel made a multi-year commitment to the Law School Scholarship Fund to take advantage of the Law School Scholarship Match and increase their impact on student scholarships.

Juanita Bolland Luis ’77 and Hon. Richard Luis ’74 made a gift to their endowed scholarship at the Law School. The fund is continuing to support its first scholar, a current 2L student, in becoming a lawyer.

Bruce ’80 and Tracy Mooty made a gift to the Bruce and Tracy Mooty Scholarship Fund and the John W. Mooty Public Service Summer Fellowship Program. The scholarship is currently supporting five scholars, and the fellowship supported two students last summer.

Richard ’81 and Ruth Harden

PLANNED GIFTS

Charles Nauen ’80 and Pati Jo Pofahl ’86 made a gift in support of their endowed scholarship. This fund supports law students who increase the diversity of the student body and the legal field.

Vance ’69 and Darin Opperman made a gift to the Law School Class of 1969 Scholarship Fund and the Law School Diversity Scholarship in honor of Vance’s 55th reunion.

William ’68 and Carol Tempest supported the William and Carol Tempest Scholarship Fund. This fund is now supporting its second Tempest Scholar who is currently a 2L.

Ward C. Schendel ’77

Support future lawyers through Planned Giving

“If Minnesota wants to continue to grow, create jobs, and provide opportunities for students, the only way to do that is through giving — paying back and paying forward to the next generation. That’s why we have given already and have pledges and commitments going into our estate.”

—Mark ’83 and Shahla Southerst

Planned gifts are as varied as the donors who make them. By partnering with Minnesota Law, along with your family and trusted advisors, you can create a plan that reflects your charitable goals, maximizes potential tax benefits, provides financial security for you and your loved ones, and creates a lasting legacy for you that will help the Law School remain a leader worldwide.

Examples of just some of the purpose-driven legacies created by those who have documented planned gifts with the Law School:

· Endowment of a new student scholarship

· A bequest to strengthen a pre-existing scholarship created by a beloved classmate

· Beneficiary designation of retirement assets to create a new faculty chair

· Direction of proceeds from a charitable gift annuity to support law school clinics

· A charitable remainder trust beneficiary designation to create a public service fellowship

· A bequest to provide unrestricted Law School support

To learn more about planned giving and ways you can achieve your philanthropic goals, contact David L. Jensen, Chief Advancement Officer, at dljensen@umn.edu or 612-625-2060.

Tributes

MICHAEL BERMAN ’64

Michael Berman ’64 passed away January 12 at age 84. Berman, a Minnesota native, notably served as deputy chief of staff and counsel to Vice President Walter Mondale ’56 and as an advisor to several elected officials. He began his legal career in private practice in Minnesota after earning his law degree from the University of Minnesota Law School in 1964.

His public service began in the Office of Attorney General for the State of Minnesota, and he went on to serve then-Senator Mondale’s office as counsel. He subsequently joined the law firm of Kilpatrick and Lockhart and later formed the Duberstein Group, becoming a successful lobbyist and advisor to many companies and organizations. He served on the board of the Brady Campaign and was a lifelong advocate for gun safety. He also served on the board of the Children’s Inn and the Human Rights Campaign where he was a stalwart champion of civil rights. Berman received an Honorary Doctor of Laws degree from University of Minnesota in 2010. He gifted his extensive collection of political memorabilia to the University.

Peter H. Benzian ’70, a retired partner in the Los Angeles-based firm of Latham & Watkins, passed away February 25, at age 81. Raised in Anoka, Minn., he earned his undergraduate degree from Dartmouth College. After serving three years in the United States Army, he was accepted into the University of Minnesota Law School.

Upon graduation in 1970, he moved to Los Angeles and joined the small law firm of Latham & Watkins.

Over his 35 years practicing there, the firm grew to be one of the largest and most respected law firms in the world. In 1984, he moved to San Diego to further build out the firm’s growing securities litigation practice. He eventually served as chairman of the litigation department. His practice emphasized securities-related actions and other complex business disputes involving antitrust, contract, and intellectual property matters. He served on several foundation boards, including as a director for the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation and as president of the San Diego Volunteer Lawyers Program.

DAN L. BURK

Former Minnesota Law professor

Dan L. Burk passed away February 4. He was a member of the Law School faculty from 2000 to 2008. Professor Burk was a Distinguished and Chancellor’s Professor of Law and founding faculty member and the first Chancellor’s Professor at the University of California Irvine School of Law. Burk was recognized as a leading scholar in intellectual property, gene patenting, digital copyright, computer trespass, and more.

He is remembered at Minnesota Law for his significant contributions to those fields but also for being generous with his time and talent and as an exceptional colleague, friend, and mentor. His intellectual curiosity, passion for the law, and commitment to advancing knowledge will forever be remembered and cherished by those fortunate enough to have crossed paths with him.

“Dan was one of my mentors when I first joined our faculty as a junior professor focused on intellectual property,” says Interim Dean William McGeveran, Gray, Plant, Mooty, Mooty & Bennett Professor of Law. “He provided invaluable guidance and introduced me to the leaders of the field. Countless IP scholars I know have similar stories about Dan’s generosity.”

PETER H. BENZIAN ’70

THOMAS HOLLORAN ’55

Thomas Holloran ’55 passed away February 15, at age 94. An active supporter of the University of Minnesota Law School, he grew up in south Minneapolis, attended Washburn High School, and earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Minnesota. He served in the U.S. Naval Reserve from 1952-54 before starting his career at Wheeler and Fredrikson law firm, which evolved into Fredrikson & Byron. He became a partner after two years.

While practicing law, he incorporated Medtronic in 1957 and later joined the company in executive roles, serving as general counsel, executive vice president, and president. He worked at Medtronic from 1967-75 and served on its board of directors for 40 years. He then led the Inter-Regional Financial Group, parent of investment banking company RBC Dain-Rauscher, as chair and CEO from 1976-85. He was national president of the University of Minnesota Alumni Association as well as a teacher at the University of St. Thomas where he was an advisor in establishing its law school. He inspired St. Thomas’ Holloran Center for Ethical Leadership.

WILLIAM R. McGRANN ’64

William R. McGrann ’64 died January 19 at the age of 86. McGrann was a founding partner of Minneapolis-based firm McGrann Shea Carnival Straughn & Lamb, Chartered. He grew up in Owatonna, Minn., and attended St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minn. He served in the military, completing infantry and Army Ranger training, followed by counterintelligence instruction. He then went on to earn his J.D. from the University of Minnesota Law School where he met his wife, Judith.

After moving to Washington, D.C., McGrann worked as a special agent with the National Security Agency and in Vietnam as a special representative of the secretary of defense. Later, he earned another graduate degree from George Washington University and served as a special assistant to Senator Hubert H. Humphrey. Minnesota Vikings Vice President Lester Bagley, a friend of his for decades, said of McGrann, “He was smart, connected, and highly regarded. We will miss the twinkle in his eye and wry smile that made him a joy to work with.”

PROFESSOR EMERITUS

STEPHEN B. SCALLEN ’59

Professor Emeritus Stephen B. Scallen ’59 passed away January 17. Born and raised in Minneapolis, Scallen graduated from the thenCollege of St. Thomas. He received a J.D. from the University of Minnesota Law School, where he was president of the Law Review. He also earned an MBA from the University of Chicago and served as a captain in the United States Air Force. Scallen began his legal career at the law firm of Covington & Burling in Washington, D.C. He later returned to the Twin Cities where he joined the faculty at the University of Minnesota Law School.

Scallen was active in nonprofit organizations and served on several boards including St. Thomas Academy, Visitation School, and the Newman Center at the University of Minnesota. He also was a founding member of St. Sahag Armenian Church in St. Paul and received the St. Gregory Medal, the highest award of the Armenian Church.

In Memoriam

CLASS OF 1954

John W. Hedberg

January 27, 2024 Edina, Minnesota

CLASS OF 1955

Thomas Holloran

February 15, 2024 Minneapolis, MN

D. Peter Rask

January 10, 2024 Albuquerque, NM

CLASS OF 1958

James L. Sifferle

May 17, 2023 Bloomington, MN

CLASS OF 1959

Edward M. Cohen

November 20, 2023 Minneapolis, MN

Stephen B. Scallen

January 17, 2024 Wayzata, MN

CLASS OF 1961

Mike Olson

March 20, 2024 Minneapolis, MN

CLASS OF 1963

Robert C. Brown

December 16, 2023 Duluth, MN

CLASS OF 1964

Michael S. Berman

January 12, 2024 Edina, MN

William R. McGrann

January 19, 2024 Minneapolis, MN

CLASS OF 1965

James D. Moe

December 4, 2023 Minneapolis, MN

Donald Jacobson

August 31, 2023 Woodside, CA

CLASS OF 1966

John H. Teget

September 13, 2023 Marathon, FL

Richard A. Miller

October 11, 2023 Minneapolis, MN

CLASS OF 1967

Richard J. Keenan

October 5, 2023 Jordan, MN

Charles K. Frundt

December 1, 2023 Blue Earth, MN

CLASS OF 1968

Raymond F. Schmitz

December 13, 2023 Rochester, MN

CLASS OF 1969

John R. Arlandson

August 17, 2023 Mendota Heights, MN

CLASS OF 1970

Peter H. Benzian

February 25, 2024 Los Angeles, CA

CLASS OF 1971

John L. Hunter

September 18, 2023 Potomac, MD

CLASS OF 1973

Nick R. Hay

September 17, 2023 Bismarck, ND

CLASS OF 1974

Ronald A. Simonson

October 27, 2023

Chisholm, MN

William J. Brudvik

August 22, 2023

Chandler, AZ

CLASS OF 1975

Robert F. Gay

November 14, 2023

Blythewood, SC

CLASS OF 1976

William C. Crutcher III

September 4, 2023 Minneapolis, MN

CLASS OF 1978

Terrance M. Cullen

November 28, 2023

St. Paul, MN

CLASS OF 1980

Paul Fjelstad

December 20, 2023

Bremerton, WA

CLASS OF 1981

Brad Gunn

April 2, 2024 Edina, MN

CLASS OF 1984

Dorothy G. Perkins

December 5, 2023

Hilton Head Island, SC

CLASS OF 1985

David W. Beehler

January 5, 2024 Foley, MN

CLASS OF 1991

Robin L. Thompson Gordon November 23, 2023

Mandan, ND

WHY I GIVE Brandon Blakely ’18

After graduating from Minnesota Law, Brandon Blakely ’18 worked for Minneapolis firms Briggs and Morgan (now Taft) and Stinson. He now lives in Phoenix, Arizona, and practices at Fennemore Craig, specializing in tax, trusts, and estates. Although no longer residing in the Twin Cities, Blakely stays involved with the Law School as an alum and member of Minnesota Law’s Board of Advisors. Before departing for Phoenix, he was active in Twin Cities Diversity in Practice (TCDiP), a nonprofit that strives to attract, recruit, advance, and retain attorneys of color to its members. There he served on the board for emerging leaders.

In addition to his passion for expanding diversity in the legal profession, Blakely is committed to giving back.

“Philanthropy is very important, and I want to make sure that Minnesota Law and its students have the resources needed to enhance the overall experience,” Blakely says. “Most importantly, I know that the Law School is competing with others in the region and across the country for the best faculty and students and that competition requires a commitment to philanthropy from alumni.”

Blakely is driven by a desire to support the potential of today's Minnesota Law students. “I think law students and young professionals have begun to influence change by questioning the status quo and demanding that our classroom and courtrooms reflect society,” Blakely says, adding that future lawyers must leverage their law degree to

impact change in a meaningful way. “They need to understand the scope of our profession and show up for those who cannot or need their voices amplified.”

Blakely’s affinity for the Law School started with an appreciation for his classmates. “I was fortunate to have an amazing section that made law school a blast. I spent my 3L fall semester in Sweden with some of those same classmates — an experience I will never forget.”

HOMETOWN: Torrance, California.

GIVING LEVEL: William B. Lockhart Club, Lockhart GOLD

WHAT WON’T WE FIND ON YOUR RESUME? I often moonlight as a sportscaster in my living room while watching sports (to my wife’s dismay). I love trivia and hope to be on “Jeopardy” someday.

WHAT IS ONE PIECE OF ADVICE YOU WOULD GIVE TO FIRST-YEAR LAW STUDENTS? Get to know your professors and take advantage of office hours. ❘❘❘❘

WAYS TO GIVE

There are many ways to give back to the University of Minnesota Law School. For more information, visit www.law.umn.edu/giving. Or send your gift directly to the University of Minnesota Foundation, P.O. Box 860266, Minneapolis, MN 55486-0266, noting “Law School” in the memo line.

ANNUAL FUND

Student scholarships, clinics, and faculty support are just a few areas that benefit from annual gifts made to the Law School. Please contact Lizzy Beghelli, senior director of alumni relations and annual giving, at beghelli@ umn.edu or call 612-626-8671 to learn more about how you can support the Annual Fund.

To make a gift, visit give.umn.edu/law

Minnesota Law Gopher Gratitude Day 2023

On November 16, nearly 250 Minnesota Law students came together to show their appreciation for the philanthropic support that comes from our alumni and friends. Students wrote thank-you notes to donors and participated in interactive activities highlighting the many ways students benefit from philanthropy at the Law School. Whether through supporting scholarships, top-notch faculty, or experiential learning opportunities, our donors are building a strong foundation for the next generation of lawyers.

Thank you!

Photos: Jayme Halbritter