W&L Law - Summer 2013

n and Lee School of Law Ma shingto gazin a W e The S u m m e r 2 013

Too Much and Too Many Overcriminalization in the U.S.

Dejure Students use the library lobby to take a quick study break.

Photo by Patrick Hinely ’73.

Cover: Illustration by Walt Taylor

DEPARTMENTS

2 General Stats By the numbers

3 Dean’s Message

Who Are My Heroes? W&L Alumni

4 Discovery

Graduation, new Law Council members, faculty books and accomplishments

20 Class Notes

Reunion Weekend, alumni news and profiles

FEATURE

12 Too Much

and Too Many

W&L faculty examine the concept of overcriminalization in the U.S.

—> By St e ph a n i e Wi l k i n s o n

In Brief

by the

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The Hon. Pam White ’77L received an honorary doctorate of law during W&L’s undergraduate commencement ceremonies. The University paid tribute to her as a “talented and tenacious advocate” who, as an attorney in Baltimore for 30 years, handled “countless cases that dealt with employment controversies that arise in a complex economy.”

The Tax Clinic at W&L received a multi-year matching grant from the Internal Revenue Service’s Low-Income Taxpayer Clinic program. This year’s grant of $70,000, the largest in the clinic’s history, will help fund the clinic for the 2013 calendar year. This is the sixth straight year it has received federal dollars to support its efforts.

46,725

Jim Ferguson ’88L, who was named 2013 Volunteer of the Year during Reunion Weekend (see p. 21), presented a check for $46,725 to President Ken Ruscio ’76. The check from ExxonMobil was the company’s gift, matching contributions from alumni colleagues (both undergraduate and law) to the University.

© Washington and Lee University

Volume 13 No. 2 Summer 2013

Louise Uffelman ED ITO R

Mary Webster CL A S S N OTE S ED ITO R

Patrick Hinely ’73, Kevin Remington U N I VER S IT Y PH OTO G R APH ER S

Mary Woodson G R APH I C D E S I G N ER

Bart Morris, Morris Design ART D I R EC TO R

Published by Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Va. 24450. All communications and POD Forms 3579 should be sent to Washington and Lee, Law Alumni Magazine, 7 Courthouse Square, Lexington Va. 24450-2519.

Periodicals postage paid at Norfolk, Va.

University Advancement Jeffery G. Hanna EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATIONS AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS

Elizabeth Outland Branner DIRECTOR OF LAW SCHOOL ADVANCEMENT

Peter Jetton DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATIONS FOR THE SCHOOL OF LAW

Julie A. Campbell ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATIONS AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS

L AW AL U M N I A S S O CIATI O N

Eric A. Anderson ’82L President (New York City) William M. Toles ’92, ’95L Vice President (Dallas) T. Hal Clarke Jr. ’73, ’76L Immediate Past President (Charlotte, N.C.) Darlene Moore Executive Secretary (Lexington)

WASHINGTON AND LEE UNIVERSITY

SCHOOL OF LAW Lexington, Virginia

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L AW CO U N CI L E M ER ITI Blas P. Arroyo ’81L (Charlotte, N.C.) Katherine Tritschler Boone ’06L (London) Thomas E. Evans ’91L (Bentonville, Ark.) James J. Ferguson Jr. ’88L (Irving, Texas) Thomas J. Gearen ’82L (Park Ridge, Ill.) Betsy Callicott Goodell ’80L (Bronxville, New York) Rakesh Gopalan ’06L (Charlotte) M. Peebles Harrison ’92L (Kill Devil Hills, N.C.) Christina E. Hassan ’98L (New York City) Nathan V. Hendricks III ’66, ’69L (Atlanta) John Huss ’65L (St. Paul, Minn.)

Wyndall Ivey ’99L (Vestavia Hills, Ala.) The Hon. Mary Miller Johnston ’84L (Wilmington, Del.) Chong J. Kim ’92L (Atlanta) Carter Magee Jr. ’79L (Roanoke) The Hon. Everett A. Martin Jr. ’74, ’77L (Norfolk) Andrew J. Olmem ’96, ’01L (Washington) Diana Grimes Palmer ’07L (Des Moines, Iowa) Lesley Brown Schless ’80L (Greenwich, Conn.)

W. Hildebrandt Surgner, Jr. ’87, ’94L (Richmond) Stacy Gould Van Goor ’95L (San Diego) Andrea K. Wahlquist ’95L (New York City)

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Elizabeth Outland Branner Director of Law School Advancement Sydney Lewis Hall Washington and Lee University School of Law Lexington, VA 24450-2116

By E-Mail:

brannere@wlu.edu

By Phone:

(540) 458-8191 All letters should be signed and include the author’s name, address and daytime phone number. Letters selected for publication may be edited for length, content and style. Signed articles reflect the views of their authors and not necessarily those of the editors or the University.

Who Are My Heroes? W&L Alumni

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Nora V. Demleitner, Dean

Another exciting six months have just drawn to a close, with the finale of the academic year, graduation, at its climax. It was heartwarming to watch 141 robed and smiling graduates shaking President Ruscio’s hand, with their families barely stifling shouts of excitement, gratitude and pride.

As an institution, we are proud of this determined, smart and dedicated group of young people who came to W&L three years ago with their hearts and minds set on becoming lawyers and judges, going into business, venturing into politics. They had dreams and goals that are now beginning to come to fruition.

I happily report that many of these graduates have found full-time, Nora V. Demleitner, Dean permanent legal employment with law firms and in government positions. Four of our graduates will be joining the Judge Advocate General. About two dozen are going into federal and state clerkships. Many are interviewing for judicial clerkships and local and state governments, as well as for associate positions in law firms. Even as the economy seems to be picking up, legal employment remains challenging.

W&L, nevertheless, finds itself in a privileged position because of our alumni.

So many of our students have commented on your generosity in assisting with their employment search. Sometimes you have had to comfort them and remind them that this is not the first or only time this country has experienced an economic downturn; sometimes you have moved résumés in front of a hiring partner; at times you have had to reset expectations and help shape career goals; at other times you have advised on conditions and expectations in a particular employment market; many times you have sent us advance announcements of position openings. You should realize how important your commitment is to individual students. Likewise, it is your active involvement with our students that highlights and preserves the special character of this law school.

Even when our students graduate with employment or a good prospect of being employed in the fall, they are about to face monthly repayment of their debt load. The average law school debt facing the class of 2013 is almost $121,000. In some cheaper real estate markets, one can buy a house, and often a nice one, for this amount.

To alleviate the debt load that confronts our students, we are beginning an in-depth analysis of our expenses and costs to ascertain where we might be able to trim our budgets while building smartly on our strengths. For the Law School portion of the capital campaign, we are also re-emphasizing the value and importance of a robust scholarship endowment and a vibrant loan-forgiveness program for those graduates who elect to go into public service or work for nonprofits. If giving is a blessing, it is even more so when it is designed to assist talented and dedicated young persons to start their careers without a crushing debt load so that they are able to choose to serve others, in this country or abroad. For our current and future students, I wish for them to be able to gain the same great W&L education that all of you received with the support of the alumni who preceded you.

When Sen. Tim Kaine, this year’s graduation speaker, asked our students to be someone’s hero, I already knew I had found my heroes: W&L alumni whose generosity of spirit and the purse has left an indelible impact on countless generations of W&L students, the legal profession and, ultimately, our country.

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Dean’s Message

L AW CO U N CI L Stacy D. Blank ’88L (Tampa, Fla.) J. Alexander Boone ’95L (Roanoke) Benjamin C. Brown ’94, ’03L (Washington) John A. Cocklereece Jr. ’76, ’79L (Winston-Salem, N.C.) Malinda E. Dunn ’81L (Alexandria, Va.) Sally Pruett Falck ’80L (Phoenix, Ariz.)

David K. Friedfeld ’83L (Dix Hills, N.Y.) Fred K. Granade ’75L (Bay Minette, Ala.) Nanette C. Heide ’90L (New York City) Herman J.F. Hoying ’03L (San Francisco) Bruce H. Jackson ’65, ’68L (San Francisco) W. Henry Jernigan Jr. ’72, ’75L (Charleston, W.Va.) Lauren Troxclair Lebioda ’06L (Charlotte) Susan Appel McMillan ’89L (Boise, Idaho) Samuel A. Nolen ’79L (Wilmington, Del.) Douglas A. Pettit ’92L (San Diego) W. Brantley Phillips Jr. ’97L (Nashville, Tenn.)

Colin V. Ram ’08L (Washington) Moira T. Roberts ’93L (Washington) J. Andrew Robison ’02L (Birmingham, Ala.) Thomas L. Sansonetti ’76L (Greenwood Village, Colo.)

James S. Seevers ’97L (Richmond) Michael H. Spencer ’96L (Bentonville, Ark.) Richard T. Woulfe ’76L (Fort Lauderdale, Fla.)

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The Class of 2013

2013 Commencement— Be a Hero

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Awards

en. Tim Kaine, of Virginia, had a simple message for the 141 students who received their juris doctor degrees on May 11: “Be someone’s hero.”

Addressing the 158th commencement ceremony, Kaine said that while the newly graduated lawyers may not fully grasp it now, “one of the great things about having a law degree is the degree to which it puts you in the position to be someone’s hero.”

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Order of the Coif Paul Bennett IV Daniel Owen Callaghan Joanna Louise Heiberg Matthias John Kaseorg Kimberly M. Marston Kristopher Richard McClellan Chloë Bell McDougal Kelly Maureen McGuire Anthony David Raucci Brandt Haywood Stitzer Alexander Michael Sugzda Scott M. Weingart Alan James Wenger Charles Anthony Wolfe IV

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Citing the requirement that all W&L law students must complete 40 hours of community service in order to graduate, Kaine told them that they already had a good start on becoming heroes.

“This class has done 12,000 hours of community service, which, by my calculation, means the average is about 85 hours,” he said. “These students have done, on average, double what they are required to do in public

service. It seems like you’re already absorbing the lesson.”

He noted, “Whether you are a litigator or whether you are a transaction lawyer or whether you decide to work in the business world or the non-profit world, you have a chance to represent somebody in a case, help a non-profit organization, file papers to get their non-profit status so they can do good things, help a family straighten out their financial situations.”

John W. Davis Prize for Law highest cumulative grade point average Alan James Wenger

Calhoun Bond University Service Award significant contribution to the University community Mary Margret Nerino

Academic Progress Award most satisfactory scholastic progress in final year Steven A. Nunes Virginia Trial Lawyers Association Award effective trial advocacy Alexander Michael Sugzda

Frederic L. Kirgis Jr. International Law Award excellence in international law Kathryne Marie Gray and Scott M. Weingart National Association of Women Lawyers Award outstanding woman law student Haley W. Schaefer

Ruscio concluded: “Your years at Washington and Lee have prepared you in ways that are not readily apparent today. During our time here, we come to take for granted the benefits of collegiality and civility, or how trust in others leads us to respect for individuals. We tell the truth as a matter of course. When we face a decision about how to behave, we don’t ask first, ‘What are the consequences to me?’ We ask, ‘What is appropriate and right?’ The character of our community develops within us certain habits of the heart.”

Kain told the graduates that they would have the opportunity to decide to be a hero again and again, adding that it is “an enormous blessing and an enormous responsibility.

“W&L tries to inculcate the value of being a hero, but, at this point, that is the everyday choice that you have to make,” he said. “I am here to urge you to make it your choice throughout your career, because, if you do, you will love the opportunity to be a member of the legal profession.”

Dean Nora V. Demleitner, who presided over her first commencement after becoming the dean in 2012, acknowledged that these are difficult times for young lawyers. “But let me remind you that you are not any lawyer, but a W&L lawyer,” she said. “Why will this make a difference in your future? W&L has a long and proud tradition of educating skillful and ethical lawyers who have the ability to seek not only compensation but justice.”

Added Demleitner: “You are among the most highly educated members of our society, and with that education comes privilege, opportunity—even in difficult economic

times—and responsibility. Your first responsibility runs to you. Use your education wisely, build on it and allow others to help you.”

President Ken Ruscio closed the ceremony by telling the graduates that their lives should be characterized by “a sense of duty, or obligation, and of a commitment to a greater good.”

Describing the profession of law as a “higher calling,” Ruscio reminded the graduates that the life they have chosen provides them with the capacity to do so much good, “but with real consequences when you do not.”

Charles V. Laughlin Award outstanding contribution to Moot Court Program Christopher Lee Edwards

American Bankruptcy Institute Medal excellence in the study of bankruptcy law Thomas Tillman McClendon

A. H. McLeod-Ross Malone Advocacy Award distinction in oral advocacy Emerald Irene Berg

Randall P. Bezanson Award outstanding contribution to diversity in the life of the Law School community Monica Kay Tulchinsky

Barry Sullivan Constitutional Law Award excellence in constitutional law Alan James Wenger

Virginia Bar Family Law Section Award excellence in the area of family law Sabrina Noelle Chester

James W. H. Stewart Tax Law Award excellence in tax law Shane Matthew Vandenberg

Student Bar Association President Award recognition for services as president of the Student Bar Association Amy Margaret Conant

Thomas Carl Damewood Evidence Award excellence in the area of evidence Gordon McLeod Jenkins

Discovery

Left: Jim Bailey ’13L presents Dean Nora V. Demleitner with the third-year pledge to support the Law Annual Fund and the Law Scholarship Fund.

Below: Class president Jim Bailey and class vice president Rob Caison present commencement speaker Sen. Tim Kaine with a walking stick.

ALI CLE Scholarship & Leadership Award best represents a combination of scholarship and leadership Alexander Michael Sugzda

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Robin Wood ’62 Inducted into the Order of the Coif Robin Wood, at right, with presenters Uncas McThenia, Ann Massie and Nora Demleitner.

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obin Wood ’62, a principal at Edmunds & Williams in Lynchburg, was inducted as an honorary member of the Order of the Coif at the Law School. Wood has taught Virginia Law and Procedure at W&L Law since 1980 as an adjunct professor of law.

In expressing her gratitude for Wood’s service to the School, Law Dean Nora V. Demleitner remarked that Wood’s “impact on generation of lawyers in Virginia is likely unrivaled and unsurpassed.”

Others who spoke during the event included Eric Sorenson ’91L, one of Wood’s partners at Edmunds & Williams, and Andrew “Uncas” McThenia ’58, ’63L, a W&L law professor and a contemporary of Wood’s at W&L as an undergraduate.

“Your presence in the classrooms of Lewis Hall has made this a better place than it would otherwise be,” said

McThenia in his introductory comments. “Your enthusiasm for lawyering is a wonderful gift. And even better it is catching. Your students leave here with a vision of what it means to be an exemplary lawyer.”

Wood joined Edmunds & Williams in 1967, specializing in litigation and corporate and business law. He is listed in The Best Lawyers in America in the area of Commercial Litigation.

During his distinguished legal career, Wood has held leadership positions as president of the Lynchburg Bar Association and executive committee member of the Virginia Bar Association. In addition, he has served as chairman of the Litigation Section of the Virginia State Bar. Wood is a member of the Virginia Law Foundation and a participant in and former chairman of the Boyd-Graves Conference on Virginia Procedure, an influential law reform group.

Brandi Cobb Joins University Advancement Team Brandi Cobb

From l. to r.: Kyle R. Hosmer ’13L, Alexander M. Sugzda ’13L, Douglas L. Dua ’13L, Luther R. Ashworth II ’13L, Thomas L. Short ’14L and Joseph Tyler Black ’14L. Not pictured: Alan James Wenger.

On Founders’ Day, W&L inducted seven law students into Omicron Delta Kappa, recognizing their contributions to the University in superior scholarship, leadership and exemplary character. Also inducted as honorary members were Loranne Ausley ’90L (see p. 27) and Professor Mark Grunewald, who recently served as interim dean of the Law School.

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has joined the Law School Advancement team as assistant director. Most recently, Cobb served as director of the annual fund at Methodist University, as marketing assistant at N.C. State University and as alumni relations associate at the University of Virginia’s Darden School.

At W&L, Cobb will focus on managing the Law Annual Fund, developing a young alumni program, and coordinating the third-year pledge project.

with one another?

The answer lies at the core of a new book by Christopher Bruner, associate professor of law.

In “Corporate Governance in the Common-Law World (Cambridge University Press),” Bruner examines the corporate governance powers possessed by shareholders in the U.S. and other common-law countries.

Crisis? What Crisis?

This is how James E. Moliterno, the Vincent Bradford Professor of Law, would sum up the U.S. legal profession’s reaction when facing challenging times. In reality, the legal profession has faced a crisis of one sort or another every 10 to 20 years, going back 100 years. But what troubles

Moliterno is how the U.S. legal system has reacted to these challenges.

“The American legal profession acts like it has eyes in the back of its head and none in the front,” said Moliterno. “Time after time, when faced with a self-perceived crisis, the legal profession has tried to maintain the status quo by retreating to its traditional values and structure and throwing up walls to block whatever threatens it.”

The result is that the main governing structures of the American legal system have been at best idle bystanders to some of the most important cultural and political shifts in the nation’s recent history, rather than leaders and agents of change.

Moliterno explores this in “The American Legal System in Crisis” (Oxford University Press).

The book covers recent challenges, such as the explosion of technology and globalization, to the waves of

immigration in the early 20th century, examining how the legal profession reacted to these events.

Moliterno argues that these reactions usually took one of two forms. “Sometimes, the legal profession reacted by doing nothing, as was the case when the ABA officially opted out of the civil rights movement during the 1960s. But with other issues, the profession reacted with additional rules and structural changes meant to preserve the world as they knew it.

“We are, after all, trained to look at precedent, to look to the past to tell us what we should do today,” said Moliterno. “But the American legal profession needs to be equally forward-looking to allow the profession to grow with society, solve problems with, rather than against, the flow of society, and be more attuned to the very society the profession claims to serve.”

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Bruner’s theory is that relatively robust social welfare protections in countries such as the U.K., Australia and Canada have freed their corporate legal systems to focus more intently on shareholder interests without giving rise to political backlash—because other legal structures accommodate the interests of employees.

Things could be heading in this direction in the U.S. The increase in stock-based compensation for corporate directors has more closely aligned the interests of management with shareholders. This has led to a sharp rise in risk-taking within financial firms, which contributed to the most recent financial and economic crisis.

Despite the negative effects of shareholder-centrism in financial firms, Bruner believes that simultaneous passage of the Affordable Care Act, along with enhancement of other social welfare programs in the U.S., may create stronger shareholder powers in public companies. “Only a shift in tandem, with greater employee protections accompanying greater shareholder powers, will be sustainable over time.”

Bookshelf

What do corporate governance and healthcare reform have to do

He finds, contrary to popular belief, that shareholders in the U.K. and other common-law jurisdictions are both more powerful and more central to the aims of the corporation than are shareholders in the U.S. The U.S. is widely thought to have the most shareholder-centric corporate legal system in the world.

However, Bruner’s close examination of corporate laws in the U.K., Australia and Canada reveals that this is not the case. Shareholders in the U.K., for example, possess the unqualified right to remove members of a corporate board at any time without cause, and to accept hostile takeovers without board interference, whereas U.S. shareholders possess neither.

“This is especially surprising given that the U.S. is correctly viewed as being more politically conservative, and more committed to a free-market ethos, than more left-leaning countries like the U.K.,” said Bruner. “The fact that U.S. corporate law shows greater regard for other corporate stakeholders, such as employees, runs contrary to what the prevailing politics in each country would lead most to predict.”

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Sally Pruett Falck ’80L worked

in private practice in New York City for Satterlee & Stephens (now Satterlee & Stephens Burke & Burke). Most recently, she had her own practice in Ridgewood, N.J. Falck lives in Phoenix, Ariz., and is a CASA volunteer with Maricopa County. She holds an L.L.M. in taxation from New York University.

Nanette C. Heide ’90L is a partner at Duane Morris L.L.P. She is a member of the corporate practice group and represents private equity and venture capital investors, multinational and domestic corporations (public and private) in a wide spectrum of transactions. She leads the firm’s fashion, retail and luxury goods interdisciplinary practice group. Heide serves as outside counsel for many mid-sized companies on issues of corporate governance, securities law compliance, general commercial transactions and disclosure issues.

Herman J.F. Hoying ’03L is an as-

sociate in Morgan Lewis’ litigation practice, in San Franciso. He focuses on complex commercial and antitrust litigation, including a variety of complex business disputes, class action litigation, consumer fraud actions, government investigations and contractual and licensing disputes.

He also maintains an active pro bono practice, having represented individuals in their pursuit of political asylum and social security benefits.

Law Council: New Members

Herman J.F. Hoying ’03L

Nanette C. Heide ’90L

Douglas A. Pettit ’92L is vice presi-

dent of Pettit Kohn Ingrassia & Lutz, in San Diego. He practices civil litigation, professional liability, employment law, health care and product liability. He has been recognized as one of San Diego’s Top Attorneys by the San Diego Daily Transcript in 2006 and 2011 and was included in the San Diego SuperLawyers magazine in the area of professional liability from 2007 through 2012, with the distinction of being named in the Top 50 list in 2010 and 2012. He was inducted into the American Board of Trial Advocates in 2007.

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Colin V. Ram ’08L

Douglas A. Pettit ’92L

Colin V. Ram ’08L is an associate

at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom L.L.P., in Washington, where he represents corporate clients and individuals in complex civil litigation, white collar criminal defense, health-care fraud and SEC enforcement actions.

Michael H. Spencer ’96L

Michael H. Spencer ’96L is a

senior associate, general counsel, for Wal-Mart Stores Inc. His team of attorneys handles the legal administration and external relations for the legal department. Spencer has counseled Walmart regarding its foundation, WALPAC, federal and state governmental relations, communications and employment litigation.

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embers of the Black Law Students Association participated in the moot court and mock trial competitions at the organization’s regional convention, placing second and third in their respective competitions. Those teams moved on to the national competition in Atlanta in March.

The team of Brian Buckmire ’14L and Teressa Campbell ’14L took second in the Frederick Douglass Moot Court competi-

tion, which focuses on appellate advocacy. W&L entered two teams in the Thurgood Marshall Mock Trial competition. After several rounds of competition, the W&L team of Tunde Cadmus ’15L, Doris Okafor ’13L, Maisie Osteen ’14L and O’Dane Williamson ’14L placed third.

This is only the second year that W&L has fielded teams for the BLSA competitions. W&L teams advanced to the national finals in both competitions last year as well.

Discovery

BLSA Moot Court Teams Advance to National Finals

The team of Brian Buckmire ’14L and Teressa Campbell ’14L took second in the Frederick Douglass Moot Court competition.

post-graduate fellowships Monica Tulchinsky ’13L re-

she provided assistance in developing a training curriculum for Burmese activists who were learning to document human rights violations. In 2012, she interned with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in Vienna, Austria, where she worked on the Institutional Integrity Initiative, a project aimed at incorporating the principles of the UN Convention against Corruption into the integrity policies of United Nations bodies.

At W&L, Tulchinsky was a founding member of the Women’s Mentorship Program and co-president of the Women Law Students Organization. She was also the symposium editor for the Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice, which hosted Discrimination against Muslim Americans in a Post-9/11 World.

Tulchinsky has accepted a Liberia-based fellowship with The Carter Center, which will place her at a government institution in which she will engage in legal reform and legal development at a critical time in Liberian history.

Sam Petsonk ’13L received a

representing coal miners who have experienced unsafe working conditions. He will also help miners gain access to a variety of state and federal health services and assist them in public hearings before regulatory agencies.

This is not Petsonk’s first foray into public service for coal miners. After attending Brandeis, Petsonk returned to West Virginia with the AmeriCorps VISTA program, helping miners access health services and educating the community on public health and other matters.

Petsonk then worked in the office of Sen. Robert Byrd, where he continued to work on coal miners’ health and safety issues, including black lung disease and safety regulation.

ceived the Oliver White Hill Law Student Pro Bono Award from the Virginia State Bar to honor her extraordinary achievement in the areas of pro bono public and under-compensated public service work.

She devoted 163 hours this year to EarthRights International, where she served as a legal and policy analyst on the Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum case.

Tulchinsky also volunteered with the Louisiana Capital Assistance Center on an appellate review project aimed at reducing the risk of wrongful convictions in the state.

In addition, Tulchinsky spent two summers working pro bono for international organizations. In 2011, she worked with the International Center for Transitional Justice in Chiang Mai, Thailand, where

prestigious post-graduate fellowship from the Skadden Foundation.

Often described as a “legal Peace Corps,” it provides fellows with a salary and benefits consistent with the public interest organization sponsoring the law student’s fellowship application. In Petsonk’s case, this organization is Mountain State Justice, a non-profit, public interest law firm based in Charleston, W.Va.

Petsonk, who was born and raised in the coalmining area around Morgantown, W.Va., will focus on

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Christopher Bruner’s book,

Faculty Accomplishments

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“Corporate Governance in the Common-Law World: The Political Foundations of Shareholder Power” (Cambridge University Press), was published in March 2013 (see p. 7).

Bruner also published “Conceptions of Corporate Purpose in Post-Crisis Financial Firms” in the Seattle University Law Review, reflecting his contribution to a symposium jointly sponsored by University College London and the Adolph A. Berle Jr. Center on Corporations, Law & Society (Seattle University School of Law). He presented his research on the corporate director’s duty of care at the 2013 Fiduciary Law Workshop hosted by Notre Dame Law School.

Robert Danforth published new

editions of two books—“Taxation of Jointly Owned Property” (BNA 3rd ed.

2013) and “Estate and Gift Taxation” (LexisNexis 3rd ed. 2013) (with Brant J. Hellwig). He is continuing his work on a new edition of “Federal Income Taxation of Estates and Trusts” (Thomson Reuters 3rd ed. 2001) (with Howard M. Zaritsky and Norman H. Lane).

Mark Drumbl presented his work on

international criminal law at Emory Law School and to the Canadian Bar Association. He lectured at a faculty retreat at the University of Ottawa on experiential learning and chaired a panel on international environmental treaties at the annual meeting of the American Society of International Law. He taught at the International Institute for Criminal Sciences in Siracusa, Italy. His book “Reimagining Child Soldiers” continues to be reviewed in prominent venues, and its first chapter was published in German.

Drumbl published an article on gender and genocide in the Michigan Journal of International Law; book chapters on child soldiers, transitional justice and the Milosevic trial; and commentaries on the Opinio Juris website. He also finalized work on the first Polish trial of a Nazi official for the crime of aggressive war.

As part of his Fulbright grant, Joshua Fairfield is conducting experiments in behavioral economics at the Bonn EconLab at the Max Planck Institute 10

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From l. to r.: Professors Mark Drumbl and Christopher Bruner lead a discussion with the Hon. Jed S. Rakoff, Southern District of New York. for Research on Collective Goods in Bonn, Germany. He’s focusing on the impact of information decay on the ability of groups to protect their privacy over social networks. Fairfield spoke on “Big Data” and ethical experimental design in social networks and virtual worlds at the Second International Conference on Digital Ethics and addressed U.S. do-not-track and browser privacy initiatives at the University of Galway. He also spoke at the Stanford-Peking University Conference on Internet Law and Policy in Beijing on trends in virtual currencies, virtual property and virtual economies.

Susan Franck gave several

presentations on evidence-based approaches to international investment disputes, including at the World

Trade Institute in Bern, Switzerland, and to the American Bar Association Section on Dispute Resolution’s conference in Chicago. She drafted an extensive role-play that modeled the introductory phases to investor-state mediation, which she presented for the American Society of International Law and the ABA Dispute Resolution International Committee. This was the first time that the brand-new IBA rules on investor-state mediation were demonstrated in public.

Brant Hellwig, together with Robert

Danforth, published a second edition of their casebook “Estate and Gift Taxation.” The book serves as an installment in the LexisNexis Graduate Tax Series. In addition, he continues to work on a major project for the United States Tax Court, detailing the

Professor Ben Spencer (far left) moderated a Federalist Society panel discussion featuring three of the attorneys fired during the 2006-07 U.S. attorney firing scandal.

2011 Supreme Court Term: Struggle for the Center” at a meeting of the Federal Bar Association in Roanoke.

He chaired the search committee for W&L’s provost. He moderated a panel “Ethical Lawyering and the Profession” at W&L Law.

Discovery

Brian Murchison presented “The

The Woman’s Law Student Organization heard from a panel of the first women admitted to W&L Law. From l. to r.: Professor Sally Wiant ’75L, Harriet Dorsey ’76L and Angelica Didier Light ’75L. evolution of the court’s jurisdiction and describing the increasing influence of the court in the larger tax administration regime.

Lyman Johnson published two

articles, “Why Register Hedge Fund Advisers?” and “Pluralism in Corporate Form: Corporate Law and Benefit Corps.” He spoke at conferences at American University and the University of St. Thomas and at the annual meeting of the Association of American Law Schools. He is the 2013 chair of the AALS Section on Agency, Partnerships and L.L.C.s. Johnson consulted and testified for the plaintiffs in a corporate director and officer fiduciary duty case under Delaware law that resulted in a $55 million settlement.

Tim Jost is completing work on the

sixth edition of his casebook, “Health Law” (West), and is beginning work on the third edition of West’s “Health Law Treatise.” A chapter he has written on Affordable Care Act litigation will appear in a book published by Oxford University Press. An article that he wrote with Mark Hall (Wake Forest) on the issue of self-insurance of small employer groups will appear in the New York University Annual Survey of American Law. Jost has been named a contributing editor to Health Affairs, the nation’s leading health policy journal, where he blogs regularly. He is also a consumer representative to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.

J.D. King’s student note comment

“Coercion, Consent, Compassion” was published in the Washington and Lee Law Review. King presented on a panel titled Reflections on Neuroscience: Crime, Culpability, and Jurisprudence at the Institute for Honor Symposium at W&L. King won the Student Bar Association Teacher of the Year Award.

Jim Moliterno published two

books (p. 7), “The American Legal Profession in Crisis” (Oxford University Press) and “Experiencing Civil Procedure” (West), in addition to several articles on legal reform and lawyer regulation. He continued his work as an international legal consultant, working on judicial training in Indonesia and Slovakia.

He received the Rebuilding Justice Award from the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System.

David Millon published

“Shareholder Social Responsibility” in the Seattle Law Review. He presented “Strong and Weak Shareholder Primacy: A Brief History” at St. Thomas University School of Law and spoke with the faculties at Stetson and Louisville law schools about W&L’s Third-Year Program. He published a blog called “The Business Case for Corporate Social Responsibility” in Jotwell: The Journal of Things We Like (Lots). He serves as president of the Southeastern Association of Law Schools.

“Rejecting Property Rules—Liability Rules for Boomer’s Nuisance Remedy: The Last Tour You Need of Calabresi and Melamed’s Cathedral” and “Remedies: A Guide for the Perplexed” were both on multiple top-10 download lists through the Social Science Research Network (SSRN). He presented “Rejecting Property Rules—Liability Rules for Boomer’s Nuisance Remedy” at the Association for Law, Property and Society Conference at the University of Minnesota Law School.

Christopher Seaman published

“Best Mode Trade Secrets” (with Brian Love) in the Yale Journal of Law and Technology. The article was selected for republication in the 2013 edition of Intellectual Property Law Review (Thomson/West) as one of the top intellectual property law review articles in the last year.

Faculty Accomplishments

Doug Rendleman’s articles

Ben Spencer published “Pleading and Access to Justice: An Anti-Apologia” in the UCLA Law Review and “Class Actions, Heightened Commonality and Declining Access to Justice” in the Boston University Law Review.

Legislation Spencer proposed was enacted by the Virginia General Assembly to amend the Virginia Code to eliminate the restriction on law professors becoming active members of the Virginia State Bar on motion without examination, paving the way for the Virginia Supreme Court to consider rule changes that would permit recently practicing new law professors to be admitted on motion.

Spencer was elected to the American Law Institute.

Sally Wiant’s book chapter on

admiralty and maritime law has been accepted for publication in the new edition of “Specialized Legal Research.”

Summer

2013 l aw.wlu.e du

11

Too Much

I LLUST R AT I O N BY WALT TAY LO R

&

Too Many W&L faculty examine the concept of overcriminalization in the U.S.

BY S T E P H A N I E W I L K I N S O N

T

The United States has long been revered as a land of plenty. From the perspective of those on the faculty who study the way our judicial system has evolved over the past few decades, however, it’s easy enough to argue that we’ve become the land of too much.

Too many laws. Too many prisoners.

Too much money spent on locking up criminals. Too many resources diverted from other critical services. Too much racial discrimination in the way the laws are applied. Too many mandatory minimum sentences. Too many civil misdeeds incurring criminal penalties. Too many state crimes recast into federal ones.

In a word, the U.S. suffers from overcriminalization.

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How did we get here? According to J.D. King, associate clinical professor of law, the trail goes something like this: A perceived spike in the crime rate in the 1970s led politicians to put in place more and stiffer penalties, including a spate of mandatory minimum sentences. That led to the ballooning of incarceration rates. “It’s insidious,” he said. “It’s the kind of thing that keeps getting ratcheted up and up and rarely goes down.”

The pattern has been repeated time and again over the past 40 years. When a particularly heinous crime occurs, the media give it extensive airplay, the public grows alarmed, and lawmakers respond with ever-more-severe statutes. Some of those new laws overlap with existing ones, King said. Carjacking is the classic example; plenty of state laws already existed on kidnapping, theft and robbery before carjacking was codified in 1992 as a separate federal crime with harsh penalties.

The growth in the sheer number of laws makes overcriminalization inevitable. In 1790, the Constitution laid out a mere three federal crimes—treason, piracy and counterfeiting—but these days federal crimes number in the

The superabundance of laws has led to hyper-incarceration.

While the population of the country between 1970 and 2005 rose by 44 percent, the U.S. prison population grew by a staggering 700 percent.

thousands. Over time, so many regulations carrying criminal penalties have been added to the books that efforts to enumerate them have failed. A 2008 best-guess study by a Louisiana State University law professor estimated the number at around 4,500.

Boston civil rights lawyer Harvey Silverglate contends that so many kinds of conduct formerly considered outside the purview of the law have been criminalized that now the average citizen in the U.S. commits three felonies a day.

Other laws driven by generalized fear create large inequities in how punishment is doled out and who ends up in prison. When the sentencing guidelines for crack cocaine were created, they were significantly more severe than those for powdered coke. “White people use cocaine at higher rates than African Americans,” King

inmates per 100,000 Residents 750

United StateS

628

RUSSian Fed.

236

Poland

148

80,229

SPain

147

66,129

denmaRk

889,598

89,805

england & WaleS

FRance

2,245,189

(total inmates)

85 52,009

67 3, 626

SOURCE: International Centre for Prison Studies at King’s College, London, “World Prison Brief. ” Datafordownloaded 2008.

SOURCE: International Centre Prison StudiesJanuary at King’s College, London, “World Prison Brief.”

Data downloaded January 2008.

NOTE: Rates are for total number of residents, not just adults. Figures in this

NOTE: Rates are not for total of residents, just adults.

Figures in methods. this chart may not align chart may alignnumber with others due to not differences in counting with others due to differences in counting methods.

Meet the Criminal Law Faculty

David Bruck , clinical professor of

law, has directed W&L’s death penalty defense clinic, the Virginia Capital Case Clearinghouse, since 2004. Bruck has argued seven death penalty cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, including Skipper v. South Carolina and Simmons v. South Carolina, and over 70 capital appeals in state and lower federal courts. He has represented capital defendants at trial in more than 20 cases, including State v. Susan Smith (1995), in which he and co-counsel Judy Clarke obtained a life sentence after their client was convicted of drowning her two small children.

Judy Clarke, professor of practice, is

one of the nation’s most prominent capital defense lawyers and has been named to the defense team for the Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

She has served as appointed counsel in many high-profile cases throughout the United States, including Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, Olympic bomber Eric Rudolph, convicted Islamic terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui and Susan Smith in the death of her two children. Clarke also served as defense counsel to Jared Lee Loughner, the perpetrator of the 2011 Tucson, Ariz., shooting, in which congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was seriously injured.

Nora V. Demleitner, dean of the

Law School, clerked for the Hon. Samuel A. Alito Jr., then a member of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

Demleitner teaches and has written widely in the areas of criminal, comparative and immigration law. Her special expertise is in sentencing and collateral sentencing consequences. At conferences around the country she regularly speaks on sentencing matters, often in a comparative context, and on issues pertaining to the state of legal education. Most recently, she reflected on the “Costs of Legal Education” at the Society of American Law Teachers annual meeting. Demleitner is an editor of the Federal Sentencing Reporter and serves on the executive editorial board of the American Journal of Comparative Law. She is the lead author of “Sentencing Law and Policy,” a major casebook.

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The Trickle-Down Effect: Overcriminalization at the High School Level

The Hon. Louis A. Trosch ’88 delivered a lecture at the Law Schoool on implicit bias in the courtroom.

The Hon. Louis Trosch ’88 remembers his high school days, back in the early 1980s, when a tossed firecracker in the hallways or a cafeteria fistfight could get you frog-marched to the principal’s office, dressed down, and maybe even suspended. But arrested? Tried in court? Sent to prison? Unheard of.

S

Somewhere between the time Trosch left high school and when he began working as a district court judge in Charlotte, N.C., the handling of high school discipline took a hard turn in many localities. States revised juvenile codes, including, in many cases, lowering the age at which a person can be tried as an adult.

Schools embarked on zero-tolerance policies for certain types of misbehavior. And uniformed police officers were placed in schools to handle kids with the same rigor they apply to adults.

The result, says Trosch, has been poor. He points to studies done in places like Clayton County, Ga., where a pioneering judge named Steve Teske ordered the examination of the impact of the new style of law enforcement at the high school level. Teske found that in schools in his district that were employing school resource officers (SROs), the dropout rate was soaring, the graduation rates were way down and criminal offenses were through the roof. Rather than protecting students and creating a healthier environment for learning, the new approach to discipline was creating a de facto school-to-prison pipeline. Overcriminalization of the high school environment was moving kids out of the school system and into the criminal justice system. And, as with the system as a whole, Trosch notes, African-American students were faring disproportionately worse than other groups.

“People are looking to criminal courts to resolve problems that used to be handled less formally. Our inexhaustible appetite for criminal punishment over the last several decades is backfiring in all sorts of ways,” Trosch said. “The amount of resources we spend on minor offenses is mind-boggling. The police, the courts, the probation system—they’re all overloaded.”

It’s not hard to understand why we’ve landed where we are, Trosch noted.

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“Law-and-order is a gut-level reaction, especially when you’re exposed to high-profile media portrayals of crime,” he said. “But the reality is that from littering to murder, crime rates have gone down across the board. And yet we’re still continuing to lock more people up. There’s a huge dichotomy between what people think about crime these days and what’s actually the case.”

The issue is beginning to receive attention. Trosch has embarked on an effort to help his community learn from Clayton County, which five years ago began dismantling some of the policies that weren’t working and encouraging the SROs to think about their jobs in a new way.

There, Judge Teske gathered a group of police chiefs, school superintendents, district attorneys and public defenders. Together, they decided to try a different way to deal with minor offenses. They agreed on five offenses that wouldn’t be reported to the courts— among them public affray, disorderly conduct and trespass—and created a diversion program for offenders who under the old system would have been channeled into the courts.

“Not surprisingly, if you put a police officer in a school, he or she does what he’s been trained to do—identify crimes and arrest people,” said Trosch. “But if you give them new tools to deal with problems, things can change. One theory is that the SROs became more effective in heading off crimes because the kids started trusting them more. And they started to see their job as working with the kids. The SROs ended up championing a second diversion program.”

Since the changes were instituted a few years ago, dropout rates have fallen, graduation rates are up and, perhaps best of all, outof-school offenses have gone down. Trosch is hoping to replicate Clayton County’s results in his district.

“Stay tuned,” he said. “We might just turn things around.”

By having a death penalty at all, “we create the illusion that every other punishment is mild ….

It legitimates excessiveness.

It legitimates life without parole, which is now ubiquitous.”

noted, “but they’re much more likely to use the powdered stuff instead of crack. That’s one reason white incarceration rates are so much lower and sentences lighter [than African-American rates] for essentially the same crime.”

The superabundance of laws has led to hyper-incarceration, King said. While the population of the country between 1970 and 2005 rose by 44 percent, the U.S. prison population grew by a staggering 700 percent. The amount spent on prisons and related expenses has grown in lockstep, dwarfing other crucial state expenditures. Between 1987 and 2007, for instance, states increased their spending on higher education by 21 percent; on prisons, it rose 127 percent.

When the system is overloaded all along the path from

Explosive Growth of Federal Criminal Law NUMBER OF FEDERAL CRIMES (select years)

5,000

Meet the Criminal Law Faculty

J.D. King is director of the Criminal

Justice Clinic and an associate clinical professor of law. In addition to designing and supervising the clinic, King teaches criminal procedure, evidence and professional responsibility and has published on mentally ill criminal defendants, prosecution ethics and the right to counsel in misdemeanor cases.

His most recent article, “Beyond ‘Life and Liberty’: The Evolving Right to Counsel” appeared in the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, vol. 48, 2013.

Erik Luna, the Sydney and

Frances Lewis Professor of Law, has testified before Congress and the U.S. Sentencing Commission, and his commentary has appeared in print and broadcast media (e.g., The New York Times, The Economist, and National Public Radio). Luna is an adjunct scholar with the Cato Institute and a project director with the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. He teaches and writes primarily in the areas of criminal law and procedure.

4,000

Thomas “Speedy” Rice,

3,000

2,000

1,000

0

1800

1850

1900

1950

2000 2010

professor of practice, has extensive experience in international criminal law. At W&L, he runs three transnational law practicums, overseeing work in support of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, the Liberia Public Defender Program (in partnership with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime) and the European Court of Human Rights.

SOURCES: Crimes Act of 1790, I Stat. 112; American Bar Association, “The Federalization of Criminal Law,” 1998; John S. Baker, Jr., “Revisiting the Explosive Growth of Federal Crimes,” Heritage Foundation Legal Memorandum, No. 26, June 16, 2008.

SOURCES: Crimes Act of 1790, I Stat. 112; American Bar Association, “The Federalization of Criminal Law,” 1998; John S. Baker, Jr., “Revisiting the Explosive Growth of Federal Crimes,” Heritage Foundation Legal Memorandum, No. 26, June 16, 2008.

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arrest to court to prison, the consequences reverberate at every level. Before coming to W&L, King spent several years as a public defender in D.C. He has a deep interest in the plight of those caught in the lowest rungs of the criminal justice system, including the indigent, the mentally ill, those charged with misdemeanors and those who receive inadequate or no legal counsel.

While the landmark 1963 Supreme Court case Gideon v.

Wainwright established defendants’ right to counsel, the enormous jump in workload created by the plethora of new laws has outpaced states’ ability to fund public defenders’ offices, said King.

“In Virginia, for example, the presumptive maximum that a court-appointed lawyer can get for handling a misdemeanor is $120 per case,” said King. “Although this amount can be exceeded in certain circumstances, the low pay makes such work unattractive to many lawyers. Some court-appointed lawyers can have several hundred cases a year. Unfortunately, it is common for lawyers to meet their clients for the first time in the courtroom on the morning of trial and to counsel a plea.

Defendants often don’t understand the process or their options,

F

Fifty years ago, the landmark case Gideon v. Wainwright established the right to counsel for criminal defendants. W&L explored the legacy of this case, its impact on the criminal justice system and the future of the right to counsel.

W&L professor and symposium coorganizer J.D. King, who directs the Law School’s Criminal Justice Clinic, noted that this was not a celebration of the case, but rather a cold, hard assessment of what has gone right and what has gone wrong since Gideon became law.

“One of the failings of the criminal justice system is that while we do provide lawyers to people who can’t afford their own, there is no meaningful check on how good those lawyers are,” said King.

“The reality of indigent defense is that in many cases defendants get a lawyer in physical presence only.”

Another issue is that Gideon and the right to counsel have been limited to apply only to so-called “serious” cases—those that could result in incarceration. However, there are more serious consequences that can result from a misdemeanor conviction now than there were 50 years ago.

“You can get deported, kicked out of your housing, lose student aid, not a get a job because of a background check or wind up on the sex offender registry, all for misdemeanors for which you were not entitled to counsel,” explained King.

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and they waive their right to counsel or to trial in an effort to save money.” (Virginia is one of several states that actually assess an additional fee to defendants who choose to be represented by a court-appointed lawyer if they are found guilty.)

In 2009, King founded the Criminal Justice Clinic at the Law School. Each year, the 10 students in the clinic take on clients in misdemeanor cases from general district courts and circuit courts in Rockbridge County and other nearby counties.

The charges range from assault to shoplifting to minor drug offenses. Of the 70-some cases that the student lawyers handled last year, almost half went to trial. Nationally, only around 2 percent of criminal cases go to trial.

“Realistically, with public defender salaries relatively low and student debt loads high, it can be very difficult for students to go into this field after law school,” said King. “But many of my students are extremely committed to providing this hugely important service to an overlooked population and find a way to pursue a career as a public defender.”

America holds the dubious distinction among all the nations of having the greatest percentage of its citizens behind

Gideon at 50: Reassessing the Right to Counsel November 8 & 9, 2012 Lewis Hall The symposium is especially timely, added King, as the fiscal crisis of the last several years has put increased strain on funding for public defender systems. Indeed, in many states, including Virginia, defendants eventually bear the burden of the cost of their attorney, which can force them to waive their right to counsel from the outset.

Symposium attendees include Norman Reimer, executive director of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and Robin Steinberg, founder of the visionary defense support service The Bronx Defenders, as well as leading academics from law schools around the country.

The symposium was sponsored by the W&L Law Review, the Frances Lewis Law Center, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and the Foundation for Criminal Justice. Here is the link to the playlist on our YouTube channel: youtube.com/ playlist?list=PLJ5k4f0OFEBBNaI4q_bHy7xmvwrzr-gQA

As of 2008,

Meet the Criminal Law Faculty

one in 15 adult black males was incarcerated, compared to one in every 36 Hispanic males, and one in 106 white males.

bars. Currently, 1 percent of our adult population—2.3 million people—are incarcerated. The nation with the next highest rate: Russia. Only the former Soviet-era gulags have held a greater percentage of its population in prison than the U.S. incarcerates now. With 5 percent of the world’s population, the U.S. has 25 percent of the world’s prisoners.

“We are an order of magnitude out of step with the rest of the world in terms of percentage of citizens locked up,” observed David Bruck, clinical professor of law. “We can’t be a decent society when we’re locking up this proportion of our citizenry.”

Bruck, who directs the Law School’s death penalty defense clinic, the Virginia Capital Case Clearinghouse, spent close to 30 years practicing criminal law in South Carolina before joining the W&L faculty. He has watched the ongoing disenfranchisement of minority Americans through a justice system that increasingly marginalizes them.

The existence of the death penalty in 35 states exacerbates the problems of overcriminalization, Bruck argues. By having a death penalty at all, “we create the illusion that every other punishment is mild,” he said. “It legitimates excessiveness. It legitimates life without parole, which is now ubiquitous.

“The country is overdue for rethinking about how we incarcerate and strip people of their citizenship and equality,” confirmed Bruck. “We do it to far, far too many people.”

Bruck contends that hyper-incarceration is not directly a result of the war on drugs, as some have contended, nor of longer prison sentences in general. Along with Fordham Law School professor John Pfaff, he believes it’s a problem resulting from too often locking up non-violent, low-level offenders. Nearly half of those in state prison have been put away for non-violent offenses.

In addition, the definition of acts that can be conceived as a violent crime, and therefore trigger heavy sentences, has been expanded over time. Bruck cited the case of Robert Boswell, a South Carolina man dubbed “the Pillow Case Bandit” for his penchant for breaking into women’s homes and stealing their lingerie. Even though he committed no actual violence in his crimes, Boswell had been convicted of first-degree burglary and sentenced to life without parole. Though Bruck led a successful appeal for Boswell in 2011, he remains dismayed that the system allows for such absurdities. “Courts are very reluctant to review punishments,” he added.

Christopher B. Russell, adjunct

professor of law, is a commonwealth’s attorney who supervises students in W&L’s Public Prosecutor’s Externship Program. Externs prosecute felonies and misdemeanors under Virginia law in Virginia trial courts.

Jonathan Shapiro, visiting

professor of law, has practiced criminal law in the federal and state courts for the past 39 years.

He represented accused spies Harold Nicholson, a CIA station chief and NSA employee Brian Regan. Along with his partner Peter Greenspun, he represented Beltway Sniper John Allen Muhammad. He teaches criminal law and criminal procedure, as well as the criminal practice practicum.

Punishments for non-violent drug crimes feed the problem.

“The war on drugs is itself a gateway drug to overcrowding in prisons,” Bruck said. The inequitable application of those laws is a civil-rights era backlash, he contends, ushering in what legal scholar Michelle Alexander calls “the new Jim Crow.”

With few resources or champions, African-Americans are disproportionately caught in the prison system. As of 2008, one in 15 adult black males was incarcerated, compared to one in every 36 Hispanic males, and 1 in 106 white males.

“People in prison are out of sight, out of mind. It’s a cycle,” Bruck said. “Mass incarceration impedes family formation.

And then prisoners end up with no family to advocate for them once they’re behind bars. Essentially, we’re excluding them from democracy.”

Dean Nora Demleitner has taken a hard look at effects of collateral consequences of criminal convictions, such as

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mandatory sentencing guidelines that disenfranchise felons, leaving them with few resources to resume life as productive citizens. They’re thrown into a dead-end subculture.

“If you have a criminal record and are African-American convicted on a third strike, the chances that you’ll get caught in the mill are high,” said Demleitner. “If you have an addiction, you won’t get treatment. You won’t get housing. No food stamps.”

Another group that’s particularly vulnerable to the vast increase in laws are immigrants. Americans have become increasingly wary of immigrants, Demleitner said, though studies show they commit fewer crimes than citizens. The overabundance of current laws now provides prosecutors with a menu of charges to choose from, Demleitner said. By cherry-picking the charge, prosecutors can essentially select the sentence. Immigrants who find themselves under investigation for even a minor crime or misdemeanor can easily be bounced out of the country.

This aggregation of power in the prosecutor’s role is a topic that Erik Luna, the Sydney and Frances Lewis Professor of Law, has written about extensively. Luna has argued that our justice system has essentially turned prosecutors into the whole of the legal justice system, directing what kinds of crimes get pursued, how they roll through the courts, and what kinds of sentences are passed down.

“Police and prosecutors are the hardest-working people in society,” Luna said. “It’s not a slam against them. But the concentration of power brings its own issues.”

In an article he wrote last year for The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminality, Luna proposed turning that prosecutorial discretion into a tool to fight overcriminalization. The obvious ways to combat the problem are urging lawmakers to trim the penal codes or imposing more systematic judicial review of laws.

“Unfortunately, neither of these overarching solutions has had much traction,” he wrote, “due in large part to the dysfunctional political process that expands but never contracts the criminal justice system.” In a world where prosecutors are enabled to choose so widely, however, they can essentially act to decriminalize certain kinds of conduct by not prosecuting them—and that can be part of the solution.

Fighting ingrained or media-led perceptions about crime presents a major obstacle to deflating the bubble of too many laws and too many prisoners, Luna also contends. If you ask people whether the crime rate in the U.S. is higher or lower than it was 30 years ago, most of them will get the answer wrong. Even law students tend to think crime is up, Luna said. In reality, crime of all sorts has dropped across the board, whether it’s property crime or rape or homicide. Getting that story to stick with the public is a tremendous challenge, however.

Yet there’s some movement. “Over the last couple of decades, public interest groups and criminal justice groups have come together to highlight the problems of overcriminalization,” Luna says. “There’s now a broad coalition of political and philosophical points of view speaking out.”

The growing conviction that we’re overburdened with laws and overwhelmed by rising incarceration rates makes for

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“People in prison are out of sight, out of mind.

It’s a cycle.”

some interesting partnerships between traditional liberals and conservatives, said Luna. Newt Gingrich and the NAACP, for example, lined up together a couple of years ago to bring attention to racial disparities in incarceration and to protest out-of-control spending on prisons.

And there is some evidence that the one-way overcriminalization ratchet may be slipping. California recently amended its three-strikes system. The Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 eliminated the mandatory five-year sentence for possession of crack. Several states have recently decriminalized marijuana.

Excessive spending on incarceration has prompted states ranging from Vermont to South Carolina to Ohio to South Dakota to make dramatic changes to their sentencing laws, reducing or eliminating prison time for low-risk, non-violent offenders.

Some efforts are being made to address the collateral damages of an overcriminalized legal system, too. In Virginia, for instance, Gov. Bob McDonnell announced in June that the state will automatically restore civil and voting rights for non-violent felons who meet certain criteria. Previously, those rights could be restored only following a two-year waiting period and through the direct attention of the governor to each individual case.

“There is movement in the right direction, but it’s not enough,” said Luna, who admits to being frustrated at the pace of change.

“We need to get away from the idea that if something’s bad, it’s a crime. Some things should be subject to private action or other government mechanisms. We need to use the government medium of civil justice rather than relying so heavily on the power of the criminal justice system.

“It’s a challenge for the public, to disaggregate what is perceived to be wrong from what should be criminalized,” Luna added.

Finally, to those law-and-order folks who try to argue that crime is down because prison populations are so high, David Bruck has an answer.

“The states themselves provide the perfect natural lab for studying whether or not that’s true,” he said. “So you can look at states that have stiff penalties and a lot of people in jail and see how that compares to their crime rate. It turns out they don’t track well at all. The places with heavy incarceration still see high crime, and vice versa—low crime in places that have less harsh laws.”

The burden is high on a society that puts so many people behind bars, Bruck said, and the next generation of lawyers will be dealing with this for years to come: “It’s one of the great human rights challenges of these students’ lifetimes.”

Seriously?

That’s a Law?

Professor Erik Luna has a keen eye for the absurd, particularly when it comes to the crazy-quilt quality of the modern legal system.

In an article published in the American University Law Review in 2005, Luna describes overcriminalization as “the abuse of the supreme force of a criminal justice system— the implementation of crimes or imposition of sentences without justification.” His piece, “The Overcriminalization Phenomenon,” highlights dozens of cases and anecdotes and laws built around crimes that are, Luna writes, “so deficient in harmful wrongdoing and beyond any legitimate rationale for state action as to flunk what I have previously described as the ‘laugh test.’ ” Here are just a few of the more eye-rolling U.S. laws codified between 1988 and 2004:

Delaware punishes by up to six months’ imprisonment the sale of perfume or lotion as a beverage.

In Alabama, it is a felony to maim one’s self to “excite sympathy” or to train a bear to wrestle.

Nevada criminalizes the disturbance of a congregation at worship by “engaging in any boisterous or noisy amusement.”

In Tennessee, it’s a misdemeanor to hunt wildlife from an aircraft.

Indiana bans the coloring of birds and rabbits.

Massachusetts punishes those who frighten pigeons from their nests.

Texas declares it a felony to use live animals as lures in dog racing.

Spitting in public spaces is a misdemeanor in Virginia.

Anonymously sending an indecent or “suggestive” message in South Carolina is punishable by up to three years’ imprisonment.

The federal government prohibits placing an advertisement on the U.S. flag (or vice versa) within the District of Columbia, as well as the unauthorized use of the Red Cross emblem or the characters Smokey Bear and Woodsy Owl. S u m m e r

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Reunion Weekend April 13 and 14

Alumni who graduated 50 years or more ago received special recognition during the Saturday morning events. Dick Rose ’63L, Jay Wilks ’63L,Paul Boswell ’63L, Jerry Kesten ’63L, Uncas McThenia ’58, ’63L, Joe Hess ’60, ’63L, Paul Penick ’63L, Jim Howe ’63L, Mark Davis ’56, ’58L, Curly Greenebaum ’56, ’58L, Hardin Marion ’55, ’58L, Bob Stroud ’56, ’58L, Tom Damewood ’51, ’53L.

Law Alumni Weekend

D

uring Law Alumni Weekend, the Law School announced the recipients of the Outstanding Alum Award and the Volunteer of the Year Award.

Joe Brown ’68L, of Las Vegas, Nev., received the 2013 Outstanding Law Alumnus Award for his exceptional achievements in the legal profession and his unselfish service to his community and alma mater. Brown is a director at Fennemore Craig Jones Vargas, where he practices in the areas of government affairs, administrative law and business law.

He is a former appointee of President Ronald Reagan to the State Justice Institute and the Foreign Claims Settlement Commission of the United States and has served as an officer or director of many businesses, civic and charitable organizations, including the

Nature Conservancy, the Department of Wildlife, the Nevada Development Authority, the Nevada Athletic Commission and Wells Fargo Bank.

Presently, he serves as a commissioner for the Nevada Gaming Commission and vice chair of the Nevada Military Support Alliance.

Brown is listed as one of the Best Lawyers in America in the field of government relations law and was also recognized in the 2007 through 2010 issues of SuperLawyers magazine as one of the top business and corporate lawyers in the five-state mountain region, as well as being named to the 2011 SuperLawyers business edition and the 2012 Best Lawyers in America list. In addition, Brown served as chairman of the government affairs practice group of Terralex.

At W&L Brown has served on the

Law Council and as a Law class agent.

He currently serves as a Law alumni mentor.

Jim Ferguson ’88L received the 2013 Volunteer of the Year Award, which recognizes those individuals who go above and beyond assisting the Law School. He is the former chair of the Law Annual Fund, a former Law Class Agent, the immediate past president of the Law Council and an active member in the W&L Dallas Chapter.

Ferguson has worked tirelessly on behalf of W&L, whether recruiting students, interviewing them for employment, connecting them to other attorneys, raising money, hosting events in his home or encouraging classmates to return for reunion. In addition to this, he has a full-time job as manager of the tax counsel & standards division at Exxon Mobil Corp.

Joe Brown ’68L (with Dean Nora Demlietner), who was named Outstanding Alumnus, noted, “My years here in Lexington were life changing—where I became an adult. It was here 47 years ago that Pam and I began our married life, and in those wonderful years, living in Davidson Park, we made so many wonderful friendships. We deeply miss those who have passed on, like Gus Biddle, and Al Byrne—whose son Jeb is a first-year law student.

“[Earlier today] I attended the program about the U. S. News and World Report rankings of law schools. It indicated that W&L is as one of the best schools in the country. But what the rankings cannot quantify in their ratings is exactly what sets W&L apart from its peers. It’s impossible to measure the value of accessibility to the faculty, or the relationship of students to one another. At W&L you learn that you can be a good lawyer, while at the same time practicing with civility. And it’s impossible to measure the value of being educated under the Honor System. That treasured system of conduct stays with you for your entire life and distinguishes you from all other practitioners.

“I began my career with three goals: to be a good, ethical lawyer; to be a good husband and father; and to be a good citizen. Being recognized today in this way tells me that I’m on my way to achieving those goals. And I promise to keep moving in that direction for the next 45 years.”

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Reunion Weekend Jim Ferguson ’88L, named Volunteer of the Year, tries out the W&L chair he received in recognition for his contributions to W&L Law.

April 13 and 14

Enjoying the Saturday evening banquet under the tent.

Saturday evening reception.

From l. to r.: Melvin Hill ’83L, David Narkin ’83L, Reggie Wright ’83L and his wife, Pearl.

Law Reunion chairs/committee members present a check for $2.6 million to Dean Nora Demlietner.

From l. to r.: Outgoing Law Council president Jim Ferguson ’88L, Stacy Blank ’88L, Colin Ram, ’08L, Alisa Hurley ’88L and Carnie Bowden Freed ’03L.

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In May 1984, Kingswood Sprott ’56, ’58L launched a hot-air balloon from the University’s Front Lawn as photographers snapped the cover photo for the alumni magazine that would feature King’s avocation.

Lifting up between the Colonnade and Lee Chapel made for dramatic photos.

But in comparison to most of King’s more memorable flights, it was quite tame.

As the alumni magazine story, “A King of the Skies,” related, King had already set three world altitude records in balloons, had completed the first balloon crossing of the Andes Mountains and had received the Montgolfier Diploma from the World Congress of the Federation Aeronautique Internationale, the top award in international ballooning.

“Some people like to fish,” King said then. “Personally, fishing bores me. I like to fly balloons.”

King has now set down the stories of his ballooning in an e-book, “Nine Lives: A Memoir of Extreme Ballooning.” He describes the book on his website (kingsninelives.us) as “a personal recounting of flights and challenges that were never conceived to be death-inviting derring-do, but became so nevertheless.”

1969L

James D. Humphries III (’66) was

listed in the 2013 Georgia SuperLawyers magazine in the area of construction litigation. Humphries is based out of Stites & Harbison’s Atlanta office.

1975L

Richard F. Biribauer retired from Johnson & Johnson in 2010 after 33 years with the firm. He, his wife, Linda, and daughter, Tia, moved to Bradenton, Fla., in December 2012.

1979L

I. Vance Berry merged his law firm

with Balch and Bingham. His office is in Jacksonville, Fla.

David L. Heilberg was listed in the

2013 SuperLawyers magazine, specializing in criminal defense. Heilberg is in his fourth decade of handling bench and jury trials. His practice includes adult and juvenile (Virginia and federal) criminal; capital murder; DUI; traffic; personal injury; social security disability; professional malpractice; and civil trials and appeals. Heilberg has tried more than 100 cases to juries, including capital murder charges.

He teaches trial advocacy as adjunct faculty at W&L Law. He was the 2011 president of the Virginia Association 22

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country on legal topics including discovery of bankruptcy proofs of claim in asbestos litigation, liability for over-promotion of pharmaceutical products, inadvertent addiction and obesity litigation, as well as on topics including work-life balance and part-time work options for attorneys. She lives in Pittsburgh with her husband, Joel Johnsten ’86L.

W. Whitaker Rayner joined Jones Walker in its Jackson, Miss., office.

1992L

Christopher C. Hagenow was

elected the managing director of Hopper Blackwell P.C., in Indianapolis, Ind. Hagenow is the first person to hold this position other than the founding shareholder.

He has served in various leadership roles for the Indiana State Bar, Indianapolis Bar and St. Elizabeth’s board of directors, and serves on the board of directors for Forum Credit Union.

of Criminal Defense Lawyers. He is co-editor with Corinne J. Magee of the “Defending Criminal Cases in Virginia” manual published by the VACDL and Virginia CLE Publications, and is the author of Chapter 8: “Eyewitness Identification Procedures.”

1984L

Thomas B. Shepherd is a partner at the Jones Walker law firm in Jackson, Miss. He joined the firm in November 2011.

1986L

Dana J. Bolton retired in June

2012, after 26 years as a corporate lawyer in New York City. He is now splitting his time between New Jersey and Vermont. He is working on getting his U.S. sailing instructor certification and will teach in Burlington, Vt., next season. He is also involved with land conservation work in Vermont.

Alice Sacks Johnston, a partner

with Obermayer Rebmann Maxwell & Hippel L.L.P., served as a panelist for the American Conference Institute’s 13th Annual Advanced Forum on Asbestos Claims & Litigation. She lectures across the

“Mann and Nature” (Kettle Moraine Publishing) is a collection of essays

by Perry Mann ’49, ’62L about growing up during the Depression on a subsistence farm with his grandparents in southern West Virginia, his life-long relationship with gardening and his reverence for nature. His writing celebrates local agriculture and hard work and the benefits from both. Mann is a World War II veteran, a teacher, a philosopher, a writer, a voracious reader, a naturalist and a lawyer. At 91, he tends his two gardens, writes articles and practices law in Hinton, W.Va.

Jefferson E. Howeth was named

vice president and associate underwriting counsel for PGP Title and Premier Land Title Insurance Co., of Dallas, in October 2012.

1993L

Michael E. Hastings joined Whiteford Taylor & Preston as a partner, in Roanoke.

1994L

Jason R. Burke was elected secre-

2001L

Major Aaron D. Beam is working

in Kabul, Afghanistan, at the strategic level to train the Afghan military. He specializes in battle command and integrated training.

2002L

Jason A. Harrington joined the

Rafel Law Group in downtown Seattle.

Maynard Cooper & Gale in Birmingham, Ala., was named a 2013 Alabama Super Lawyer in the area of personal injury defense: products.

Amanda E. Shaw joined Gentry

Locke Rakes & Moore L.L.P., in Roanoke. She is an associate attorney in the firm’s medical malpractice group.

1997L

Stuart D. Roberts, an attorney at

Maynard Cooper & Gale, in Birmingham, Ala., was named a 2013 Super Lawyer in the area of employment and labor.

1999L

Carrie M. Risatti joined Greenberg Traurig’s Chicago office in its real estate practice. She will represent

John F. Eisinger started a new company, TiCranium, in January, focusing on compliance with government regulations, as well as government contracts. He lives in Alexandria, Va., with his wife, Rebecca Eisinger ’03L, and their son, Kerin.

Kathryn Roe Eldridge, an at-

sistant general counsel at Owens & Minor. He lives in Richmond with his wife, Sara Galloway ’98, ’03L.

Robert V. Sartin was appointed to

John A. Earnhardt, an attorney at

2003L

Heath H. Galloway (’99) is as-

1995L

1996L

King & Spalding L.L.P., in Atlanta, is listed in Law360’s top three healthcare attorneys under 40.

torney at Maynard Cooper & Gale in Birmingham, Ala., was named a 2013 Super Lawyer in the area of securities litigation. She was also named one of Alabama’s Rising Stars.

tary/treasurer of Hopper Blackwell P.C., in Indianapolis, Ind. He joined the firm in 2000 and represents creditors in workouts, bankruptcy and commercial litigation. He also is a frequent lecturer on a variety of bankruptcy-related topics.

Frost Brown Todd L.L.C.’s nine-person executive committee for a three-year term, after having previously served on the firm’s strategic planning, finance and advancement committees.

Sartin moved to the Nashville, Tenn., office in 2011 to help expand the firm’s presence there from Lexington, Ky., where he was the member in charge.

Michael E. Paulhus, a partner at

Milestones

1992L

developers, investors and lenders in multifamily, retail and industrial development projects.

Brett E. Morgan is employed by

Paul S. Trible Jr. ’71L (with his

wife Rosemary) received W&L’s Distinguished Alumnus Award during the College’s Reunion Weekend, recognizing his “lifetime of distinctive achievements in politics, higher education and support of W&L.”

Trible was commonwealth’s attorney for Essex County from 1974 to 1976, when he won election to the first of three terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. In 1982, he successfully ran for the U.S. Senate seat that was vacated by Harry F. Byrd Jr. He served as a member of the U.S. delegation to the United Nations and was a teaching fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.

In 1996, Trible was appointed president of Christopher Newport University, in Newport News, Va. He is widely credited with CNU’s transformation from a two-year college into a thriving four-year university, recognized nationally for making promising and innovative changes to academics, faculty, students, campus and facilities in recent years.

Michael Hausman Artist Management, in New York City. He spent the majority of the fall and early winter on the road as technician/assistant for the musician Aimee Mann, including three weeks in Europe during January 2013.

2004L

Matthew Z. Earle has been named

a partner at Kates Nussman Rapone Ellis & Farhi L.L.P., in Hackensack, N.J.

David Freed has been named a partner at Hunton & Williams in its New York City office. His wife, Carrie Freed ’03L, is senior counsel at Philip Morris International.

Anastacia M. Greene is an attorney at the Legal Assistance Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago.

Joshua D. Jones, an attorney at

Maynard Cooper & Gale, in Birmingham, Ala., was named a 2013 Super Lawyer in the area of securities litigation. He was also named one of Alabama’s Rising Stars.

Daniel L. Payne has been named a

partner at Meagher & Geer P.L.L.P. in Minneapolis, Minn.

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Kevin A. White was named a

partner at Kaufman & Canoles, in Richmond. He is a member of the corporate and public finance group, serving as bond counsel or underwriter’s counsel in tax-exempt and taxable bond financings for government, health care, educational and private sector borrowers. He also serves as lender’s or borrower’s counsel in loan, credit facility and liquidity facility transactions, in addition to serving as company counsel in mergers, acquisitions, financings and other commercial transactions. White also provides advice on corporate governance, contractual and regulatory matters.

2005L

Joseph R. Dunn, an attorney with

Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo P.C., was named to the San Diego Daily Transcript’s 2012 Outstanding Young Attorneys list. Dunn is a member of the firm’s bankruptcy, restructuring and commerical law section, and he focuses on all aspects of corporate reorganization and bankruptcy law, although he has significant litigation and transactional experience outside of insolvency. Dunn is a board member of the California Bankruptcy Forum and immediate past president of the San Diego Bankruptcy Forum.

2006L

Katherine E. Markeson has moved from Washington to Seattle, where she is with ALSTOM Grid.

Donald F. Winningham III, an attorney with Maynard Cooper &

Monsignor Timothy E. Keeney ’90L,

David B. Carson ’88L, an attorney

with Johnson Ayers & Matthews in Roanoke, Va., has been appointed a circuit judge for the 23rd Judicial Circuit of Virginia, effective July 1.

He has been with Johnson, Ayers & Matthews for the last 23 years and has maintained primarily a civil litigation practice. Carson has been listed in Virginia SuperLawyers the last three years and in The Best Lawyers in America from 2006 to 2012. He received the 2009 Virginia Western Community College Impact Award and the 2011 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drum Major for Justice Award. For the past eight years, he has served as a trustee for the Roanoke City School Board, the last seven as its chairman. For the past three years, he has also served as the chairman of the Roanoke Valley Governor’s School. Carson is married to Regina Carson and has three children. His oldest, Anna Paden, is a rising sophomore at W&L.

Gale, in Birmingham, Ala., was named a 2013 Super Lawyer in the area of general litigation. He was also named one of Alabama’s Rising Stars.

2008L

April A. Alongi is a special as-

sistant U.S. attorney for the Social Security Administration, Region IX. She lives in San Francisco.

Lauren Widdecombe Frame joined Bob Evans in October 2012 as legal counsel, director of labor relations, in the company’s Columbus, Ohio, office. Her husband, Eli Frame ’07L, is an attorney with Cardinal Health.

pastor of St. Bede Catholic Church, in Williamsburg, Va. was recently honored

by Pope Benedict XVI with the pontifical honor of Chaplain to His Holiness.

After graduating from the Redemptorists’ minor seminary in 1979, Keeney spent 11 years in the Redemptorists’ priestly formation program. He entered W&L Law in 1987, however, before ordination and making final vows.

After receiving his law degree from W&L, he spent two and a half years with a Norfolk law firm before he received acceptance into the Richmond Diocese’s priestly formation at Pontifical North American College and 24

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David M. Francis joined Hunts-

man as commercial counsel. He handles contracts of various types, such as sales, distribution, toll manufacturing and purchasing agreements for various Huntsman divisions. He works on miscellaneous legal projects, such as reviewing engineering and design contracts, revision of legal forms, negotiation and documentation of real property interests. Francis lives in Houston.

Robert C. Dickens practiced law

at Milbank, in New York City, until late 2010 and is now co-owner and chief operating officer of Rugged Races L.L.C., the company behind the Rugged Maniac 5K Obstacle

academic studies at the Pontifical Gregorian in Rome. He was ordained a priest in June 1996, at the Basilica of St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception, in Norfolk, and served there that summer. In October 1996, he returned to Rome to finish graduate studies in dogmatic theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University.

“Monsignor Keeney’s dedication, collegial manner and oversight of the ongoing formation of the priests of this diocese are invaluable,” said Bishop Francis X. DiLorenzo, of the Diocese of Richmond.

Keeney had served as pastor of St. Anne Parish, in Bristol, Va., until Jan. 15, when he moved to Williamsburg.

Virginia General Assembly and appointed by Gov. Bob McDonnell to an eight-year term on the Arlington Circuit Court bench beginning July 2012. DiMatteo was invested on June 29, 2012, an event which was witnessed by family, friends and many colleagues in the bar and on the bench. She is only the second woman to sit on the circuit court in Arlington County.

Prior to her appointment, DiMatteo was an assistant county attorney in Arlington, handling a wide variety of local government matters, with a concentration in civil rights and employment litigation as well as contracting and procurement for the county and its public schools. She was also an assistant county attorney for Fairfax County, where she handled child abuse cases, tax issues and public housing matters, and was a senior assistant public defender and a litigator in private practice. She lives in Arlington, Va., with her husband, Dr. Michael Megargee, and their daughter, Madeleine.

corporate department of Miller & Martin P.L.L.C., in Chattanooga, Tenn.

Micah P.S. Jost is an honors at-

torney at the National Labor Relations Board in Washington, after finishing his clerkship on the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Milestones

April Finn Holland joined the

Louise M. DiMatteo ’89L was elected by the

Neil M. Millhiser is the general

manager of Patient Services Inc., a nationwide health-care nonprofit that helps indigent patients with chronic illnesses pay for their health insurance premiums and copays. He lives in Richmond.

Megan E. Westcott lives in

Washington, where she works for Pricewaterhouse Coopers L.L.P.

2012L

Ferrell Alman Jr. lives in Los

Angeles, where he is with Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati.

Meghan Hobbs Hill lives in Race and The Great Bull Run, a U.S. version of running with the bulls.

He lives in Boston.

2009L

Karah Jones Gunther is the

director of government relations at Virginia Commonwealth University, in Richmond.

2010L

Jenna Walker Cremeans joined

Valley Health Systems, in Huntington, W.Va., in January as in-house counsel and director of legal affairs.

Valley Health Systems has facilities in approximately 30 sites across West Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio. She is also pursuing her master’s in healthcare administration.

Courtney B. Gahm joined Akin

Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld L.L.P., in Houston.

2011L

Ryan D. Brady joined White & Case

L.L.P., in Washington, in October 2012 as an associate after clerking with

Judge Claude M. Hilton in the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria.

Anthony J. Glover, previously at

Newnan, Ga., and works as an assistant attorney general in the postconviction section in the Georgia attorney general’s office.

Carlton Fields, is now at The Mosaic Co. and is part of the public affairs team. He participates in the execution of Mosaic’s political strategy at the state and federal level and represents the company before the executive and legislative branches.

His responsibilities include developing and advocating Mosaic’s public policy initiatives, particularly in the environmental, energy and corporate tax areas. Mosaic Co. is a mining and manufacturing company and a producer of concentrated crop nutrients for the global agriculture industry. He lives in Tallahassee, Fla.

Alexandria D. Lay is an associate

Jessica A. Guzik is the associate

office of Indiana Congressman Todd Young as a tax counsel in Washington.

director of strategic content for the National Journal of the Atlantic Media Co. She develops and implements digital and print products that integrate National Journal’s membership, research and editorial initiatives.

at Steptoe & Johnson P.L.L.C., in Charleston, W.Va.

Joy Y. Lee works at the District of Columbia public employee relations board in Alexandria, Va.

Lauren N. Meehan was admit-

ted to the Virginia State Bar in October 2012 and is now working for NVR Inc., in Reston, Va.

Suzanne E. Peters is an associate at Porzio, Bromberg & Newman P.C. She lives in Morristown, N.J.

Jacob L. Triolo works for the

Mary K. Vigness is the opera-

tions manager for Classical Movements Inc., in Alexandria, Va.

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Weddings

Jennifer Hubbell ’08L to Randy

Keefer Jr. on Nov. 11, 2012, in Middletown, Md. In attendance were G. Calvin Awkward III ’06, ’09L, Loren Villa ’02L and the Hon. John H. Tisdale ’74L. They reside in Hagerstown, Md., where

he works as a police officer for the Hagerstown Police Department, and she is an attorney for the public defender’s office in Frederick, Md.

Kaitlin Abplanalp ’05, ’11L to Jeremy D. Brown ’11L on

Sept. 1, 2012. In attendance were Kristen Zalenski ’11L, Trista Kang ’11L, Liz Potter ’11L, Jim Lane

’92L, Jessica Lane ’92L, Liz Price ’07, Stacy McAllister ’06, Adam McAllister ’06, Beth LeBlanc ’05, Emily Sowell ’11L and Pablo Guth ’11L. The couple live in Berkley, Mich.

Anna Knecht ’12L to Chris Page

on Aug. 31, 2012, in New York City. She is an associate at Hunton & Williams, in Richmond.

Marie Trimble ’05, ’08L to Todd Holvick ’08L on Oct. 6,

2012, in Santa Rosa, Calif. Alumni guests included Angel Daniels ’04, Lisa Jones ’04, Kristin Crawford ’04, the groom, the bride, Elizabeth Faulk ’05, Brittany Smith ’05 and Pak Phinyowattanachip ’10L. She is an associate at Gordon Resse, and Todd is an associate at Schnader Harrison Segal & Lewis L.L.P. They live in San Francisco.

Andrew S. Gerrish ’09, ’12L to Ashley T. Wohler ’09 on Aug. 18,

2012, in Lexington. The wedding party included Bobby Ray Martin ’09, ’12L, Michael Welsh ’09, Riley Barnes ’09, Christopher Martin Jr. ’09, Casidhe Horan ’09, Allison Zeger ’09, ’13L, Sarah Conner ’09 and father of the bride, Todd Wohler ’80.

Jonathan S. Berman ’81L to Yasmin McMillan on Jan. 7, 2012, in New York City. Left photo: Guests included (l. to r.): Jim Neale

’81L (best man), Buck Wellford ’81L, Paula Pierce ’81L, Neal Brickman ’81L, Jon Berman ’81L, Toosie Smith ’81L, Mike Hubbard ’79L, Gina Reilly ’81L and Kerry Wilson ’81L. Not pictured is Paul McDonnell ’81L. Right photo: The couple shared a dance at the wedding reception.

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Omicron Delta Kappa during the Founders’ Day celebration in January. She is of counsel to the law firm Hollimon P.A., in Tallahassee, Fla., as well as the southern director for Project New America, a national research and strategy firm.

She serves on several boards in Florida.

Ausley served in the U.S. travel and tourism administration in the Department of Commerce and in the Department of Housing and Urban Development before returning to her native Florida. She was chief of staff to Lt. Gov. Buddy MacKay

Births/ Adoptions Justin G. Adams ’70, ’76L and Meredith Winn Adams ’96, a

girl, Mary Meade Gordon, on Feb. 20. She joins her twin siblings, who are 19 months older. They live in Kelly, Wyo.

Rebecca Rees Dummermuth ’00L and her husband, Matt, twin daughters, Naomi Joy and Abigail Hope, on May 4, 2012. They join siblings Caleb, 7, Lydia, 4, and Micah, 3. The family live outside Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where Becky is homeschooling the children.

Lee R. Goebes ’03L and his wife, Katerina, a son, Felix Semyonov,

Angela Hepler Schoonover ’04L and her husband, Eric,

adopted William Elwood. He was born on Dec. 3, 2012, in Lubbock, Texas. They reside in Canton, Pa.

Angela Ernst Anderson ’05L and Ryan R. Anderson ’05L, a

son, William Jeffrey, on July 18, 2012. He joins sister, Natalie, 2.

They live in Bellingham, Wash., where Ryan is an assistant city attorney for the city of Bellingham, and Angela is a senior deputy at the Whatcom County public defender’s office.

Brian A. Berkley ’05L and his wife, Tamara, a daughter, Caitlin

Marie, on Dec. 16, 2012. They live in Haddonfield, N.J.

on Oct. 25, 2012. Felix joins brother Dmitri. Goebes is entering his eighth year with the public defender service in D.C.

Ronald A. Page Jr. ’05L and his wife, Susan, a son, John Harri-

Joseph A. Kaufman ’03L and his wife, Kelly, a daughter, Adeline

Lauren Troxclair Lebioda ’06L and Nathan Lebioda ’06L, a son,

Laite, on May 10. She joins sister Amelia, 3, and brother Sam, 18 months. They live in Pasadena, Calif.

Erika Patrick Leonard ’03L and Ryan Leonard ’03L, a daughter, Emma Grant, on Nov. 26, 2012.

Timothy R. Lankau ’04L and his wife, Sarah, a daughter, Esther Joy, on Nov. 14, 2012. She joins brother Benjamin.

son, on Dec. 3, 2012. They live in Richmond.

Peter Charles, on Jan. 16. He joins brother Henry.

Roger H. Miksad ’09L and his wife, Kathryn, a son, Henry Robert, on Feb. 15. They live in Washington.

Obituaries Lester L. Dillard Jr. ’43L, of

South Boston, Va., died on June

and then served in the Florida House of Representatives.

As a leader in the Florida house, she developed expertise in health care and education and became the leading advocate for children’s issues.

She sponsored the bill that created the Florida Children and Youth Cabinet.

She received, among others, awards from the Florida Development Disabilities Council, the Florida School Board Association, the Florida Association of School Psychologists and the Florida Children’s Forum.

Milestones

Loranne Ausley ’90L was inducted in

20, 2008. He was a World War II Navy veteran who witnessed the Japanese surrender from the decks of the U.S.S. Missouri. He was an attorney for more than 50 years with Tuck, Bagwell, Dillard, Mapp & Nelson. An avid golfer and sportsman, he was inducted into the Halifax County Sports Hall of Fame. He belonged to Pi Kappa Alpha.

William B. Hopkins ’42, ’44L,

of Roanoke, died on Dec. 11, 2012. He served in the Virginia senate and was majority leader.

He chaired the Hopkins Commission that paved the way for major reorganization and modernization of state government in the 1970s and secured state funds for arts and cultural programs in Roanoke.

The planetarium at the Science Museum of Western Virginia is named in his honor. A World War II veteran, he served in the South Pacific and returned to active duty during the Korean War, serving as captain in a Marine reserve unit that fought at the battle of Chosin Reservoir. He wrote “One Bugle, No Drums: The Marines at Chosin Reservoir” (1986) and “The Pacific War: The Strategy, Politics, and Players that Won the War” (2009).

He was grandfather to Virginia S. Hopkins ’08 and father to William B. Hopkins ’76. He belonged to Kappa Alpha.

Henry C. Clark ’47, 48L, of

Harrisonburg, Va., died on Jan. 11. He was a Navy aviator during Summer

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World War II. He practiced law in Harrisonburg and was a founding member of RDC Commercial and Industrial Development Protection Organization. He received the State Bar Tradition of Excellence Award. Clark served as a judge for the Harrisonburg police court, was appointed commissioner in chancery by the circuit court, was named Chamber of Commerce Business Person of the Year and served on the board of the Virginia State Bar Council. He was the first recipient of the Virginia State Bar Outstanding General Practitioner Award. He was father to Henry C. Clark III ’75, ’78L.

James R. Lyle ’48L, of St. Peters-

burg, Fla., died on Dec. 12, 2012.

He was a veteran of World War II. He practiced law in Kingsport, Tenn., Tampa, Fla., and St. Petersburg, Fla. He formed the law firm Lyle & Skipper, which became one of the largest insurance defense firms in the St. Petersburg.

John Lee Hopkins ’50L, of Rocky

Mount, Va., died on Feb. 23. During World War II, he served in the Navy as an aviation radio and radar operator on a PBM Mariner seaplane in the Caroline Islands of the South Pacific. He worked as an assistant claims attorney for Nationwide Insurance Co. and moved to Rocky Mount, where he practiced law for 32 years until his retirement in 1988. He belonged to Kappa Alpha.

The Hon. A. Dow Owens ’52L,

of Roanoke, died on Nov. 28, 2012.

He was an aviation cadet during World War II in the Army Air Force. He practiced in Pulaski and served as secretary of the electoral board, substitute trial judge, commonwealth’s attorney and circuit court judge in the 27th Judicial Circuit of Virginia. He also served as county attorney for Pulaski County, acting as attorney to the board of supervisors, school board and the department of social services. He formed and served as an attorney for the Pulaski County Industrial Development Authority and Public Service Authority, which extended water and sewer

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service to a large portion of Pulaski County. He served as counsel for the New River Waste Water Treatment Authority.

John R. Glenn ’53L, of Kanawha City, W.Va., died on March 14.

He served in the Army. He was an attorney in private practice, in Logan, W.Va., for 48 years before retiring in 2003.

Jack K. Agee ’57L, of Colorado

Springs, Colo., died Dec. 31, 2012.

He served in the Marines during the Korean War, obtaining the rank of captain. He established a law practice in Colorado Springs and served on the boards of Suicide Referral, Pikes Peak Area Council of Camp Fire Girls, Interfaith Hospitality Network, Social Advocates for Youth, Humane Society, Voice of Truth and Winter Night Club. He received several Kiwanis distinguished service awards, including the Legion of Honor Award and the Division 4 Lifetime Achievement Award.

Walter H. Lee Jr. ’61, ’63L, of

Wilmington, Del., died Nov. 12, 2012. He started a real estate firm, The Greenville Co., worked as a financial advisor at Legg Mason and was director of development and a history teacher at the Tatnall School. He belonged to Sigma Nu.

John H. Tate Jr. ’63L, of Marion,

Va., died on Dec. 11, 2012. He practiced law in Marion, and he was county attorney for Smyth County. He was elected to three terms in the Virginia House of Delegates and served on the Courts of Justice Committee. As chair of the Senior Lawyer’s Conference, he initiated a statewide tree-planting program that earned him the nickname of Johnny Appleseed. He was brother to the Hon. Joseph S. Tate ’67L.

Robert F. Rutschow ’68L, of

Charlottesville, died on Dec. 11, 2012. He served in the Air Force as an assistant air installations officer at the primary duty station, 500th Air Defense Group, at Pittsburgh Airport. He worked at Boeing Airplane Co. in stress analysis on the

B-52G. His legal career included stints at the firm of Gordon and Haugh, the first directorship of the Legal Aid Society of Charlottesville, the firm of Gordon and Marshall and service as a special justice for the 16th Judicial Circuit of Virginia.

Kearons J. Whalen III ’68L, of

Pittsfield, Mass., died on March 2. He was founding partner of the firm Reder and Whalen, where he practiced law for 45 years.

William T. Barrett ’73, ’76L, of

Winston-Salem, N.C., died Dec. 7, 2012. He practiced law in Dover, Del., and was the director of paralegal studies at Wesley College. He also worked in career services at East Carolina University and as the director of placement at Vermont Law School and Wake Forest Law School before starting his own publishing business, Career Education Institutes.

Edward M. Kowal Jr. ’74, ’77L, of Huntington, W.Va., died on Nov. 28, 2012. He was a partner at Campbell-Woods P.L.L.C. He belonged to Phi Gamma Delta.

Coyne D. Demaray ’83L, of

Birmingham, Ala., died on Feb. 18.

He began his practice of law in Birmingham at Haskell Slaughter, but later became a solo practitioner.

He also taught classes on firearm safety and instruction.

Lance O. Valdez ’88L, of Palm

Beach, Fla., died on Nov. 22, 2012.

He practiced law in New York and London. At W&L, he was executive editor of the W&L Law Review.

Michael A. Groot ’94L, of Buena

Vista, Va., died Dec. 19, 2012. He practiced law in Glen Burnie, Md., and in Buena Vista. He was brother to Donna G. Taylor ’94 and son of the late Roger D. Groot, W&L professor of law.

Ryan H. Staley ’09L, of Vir-

ginia Beach, died on March 28. He practiced law with Glassner and Glassner in Norfolk, Va.

In 1991, Robert L. Banse ’53L and his wife, Anne, transferred shares of stock to W&L under a charitable lead annuity trust and a charitable remainder annuity trust (CRTs) to endow the Robert L. and Anne W. Banse Law Scholarship. It was one of many gifts the couple gave to the Law School that will touch current and future generations of law students. As well as financially supporting W&L, Bob Banse served as a class agent, a trustee and a member of the Law Council.

From its inception, the CRTs provided the Banses with an annual income, while simultaneously funding a law scholarship. Talcott Franklin ’95L, the founding partner of Talcott Franklin P.C., held the first Banse scholarship. He developed a close relationship with the couple and explains what that scholarship and lifelong friendship meant to him.

Anne and Robert Banse ’53L

Ways to Give

Honor Our Past, Build Our Future The Campaign for Washington and Lee

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obert L. Banse ’53L was one of our Law School’s most distinguished alumni, with a career that ended while he was the general counsel and executive vice president of Merck & Co. Inc. He was a true gentleman who treated everyone with genuine warmth and respect. His wife, Anne, was a great philanthropist and horse breeder, who among other things touched lives by running a horse camp for autistic children.

When I accepted the Banses’ scholarship in 1992, I wrote them a letter thanking them for their generosity and letting them know I could not have afforded W&L without them. Bob and Anne responded immediately to my letter and came down to meet me in person. From that we established a lasting correspondence and mentorship.

For the remainder of my law school career, the Banses celebrated every milestone. When I made Law Review, they came to Lexington to celebrate. When I was named editor in chief, they came to celebrate again. When I graduated, Bob and Anne sent me one of the kindest, most encouraging notes I have ever received. Bob died the next month.

I went on to publish a few legal books, and in each of them,

I thanked Bob and Anne in the acknowledgments section. Anne was always pleased to receive them. I last spoke to Anne in 2012, the year she passed away.

My life would be completely different without Bob and Anne Banse, and I’m fortunate I was able to tell them that.

Most importantly, I never would have met my wife [Jennifer ’95L] without their generosity, and I’ve always been glad the Banses had the opportunity to meet her while we were dating. But I also was fortunate at W&L to establish enduring friendships with people I admire. Some of those people I’m now lucky enough to call colleagues, as we all work at the same firm.

Dale Carnegie said you can tell a lot about people by what gives them a sense of importance. Some get a sense of importance from telling people they are great lawyers. Bob never talked about himself like that. He and Anne got their sense of importance by helping autistic kids and giving away their money to educate people they didn’t know at a school they loved. What does that tell you about them? ­ —Talcott Franklin ’95L

Bob and Anne got their sense of importance by helping autistic kids and giving away their money to educate people they didn’t know at a school they loved. What does that tell you about them?

For more information about establishing a charitable remainder trust with W&L, please contact Elizabeth Outland Branner at (540) 458-8191 or brannere@wlu.edu.

The Washington and Lee University Law Alumni Magazine 2 0 4

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Alumni parents celebrate graduation day with their children. From l. to r.: Carter George ’13L, Shawn George ’81L, Elizabeth Barbour ’13L, Stuart Barbour ’57L, the Hon. Michael Krancer ’83L and David Krancer ’13L.