UofL Law Dean, Jim Chen, was recently interviewed by ABC News about the role that the 1942 case called Wickard v. Filburn will play in the health care law.

 

Read the whole article at ABC News.

 

Photo provided by Mary Lou Spurgeon. 

The University of Louisville will be closed on Monday, January 16 in observance of the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday. UofL will observe MLK Day in several ways including a Day of Service and an evening event co-hosted with Simmons College. Longtime UofL staff member Jim Runyon, who died last July, will be honored posthumously at a free public program at The Playhouse at 1 PM Monday.

 

Professor Jones recently published the memoir “A Hidden Madness.” It tells the story of a successful academic who has long struggled, mostly in silence due to fear of stigma, with severe mental illness. He has spoken more than 50 times about “Severe Mental Illness, Stigma, and the Value of Treatment” to groups including university nursing, law, medical and social work students, and won an award for his mental health advocacy efforts.

Thomas T. Johnson, Jr., '49, a Louisville native and graduate of the Louis D. Brandeis School of Law, passed away on December 28, 2011 in Los Angeles.

Johnson is best known for his ruling, issued in 1981, that the Holocaust was "a fact and not reasonably subject to dispute," in a case brought by an Auschwitz survivor against a Holocaust-denying group.

Johnson was born on Feb. 26, 1923 in Louisville, Ky. and earned degrees in engineering and law (1949) from the University of Louisville before going to work for the U.S. Justice Department.

For more information, read his Los Angeles Times obituary.

 

Photo courtesy of the Johnson family

Dean Jim Chen's paper, "A Degree of Practical Wisdom: The Ratio of Educational Debt to Income as a Basic Measurement of Law School Graduates’ Economic Viability," which discusses law school's return on investment, was featured in the ABA Journal.  Chen's theory focuses on how much a law graduate needs to earn in relation to annual tuition for adequate and good financial viability.  This article was also among the top five to be dowloaded on SSRN for the week.

Dean Chen's paper is featured on National Law Journal, Tax Law Prof Blog (a leading source on legal education and tax law), Wall Street Journal's Law Blog, Constitutional Daily, Stuart L. Pardau's blog "On The 50 Yard Line" and Above the Law.  Many law professor and law student blogs have promoted the paper.

Congratulations Dean Chen!

The Twenty-Ninth Annual Carl A. Warns Jr. Labor & Employment Law Institute invites you to submit a proposal to speak on a labor law or employment law topic. We are accepting proposals on important or cutting-edge developments on issues that are relevant to practitioners. Some suggested topics are: wage and hour issues involving independent contractors and the Internal Revenue Service, the Dukes decision and class actions in employment law, and issues involved in advising those engaged in non-traditional service relationships, rather than traditional employment relationships, about their contracts.

The Institute will take place on June 21 & 22, 2012, at the Downtown Marriott in Louisville, Kentucky. Attendees will be a nice blend of practitioners, public servants, and professors. If you are unfamiliar with Louisville, it is a great place to spend a few days. More information is available at http://www.gotolouisville.com/index.aspx.

Proposals must be submitted by midnight Friday, December 30. Based on your proposal, you may receive an invitation to speak at the Institute. Speakers at the Institute will also have the opportunity to submit a manuscript that will be published in the University of Louisville Law Review Warns Institute Colloquium Issue, subject to space availability, a review of quality, and entrance into and compliance with the University of Louisville Law Review Author Agreement. Manuscripts will be due March 1, 2011. Selection of manuscripts for publication will occur in April. All speakers must ultimately have some type of written material, such as an outline, article, or work in progress to include with the conference materials. Please submit your proposals to Ariana Levinson at a.levinson@louisville.edu and copy Elisabeth Fitzpatrick at elisabeth.fitzpatrick@louisville.edu. There is no page limit or standard format for proposals although a short succinct proposal is preferred. You are welcome to send draft manuscripts in addition to your proposal, if you desire.

Congratulations to Professor Trucios-Haynes for receiving a 2012 Richard and Constance Lewis Fellowship. She will conduct research on "Formal and Informal Migrant Networks:  Post 9/11 Connections Between Guanajuato and the United States."  Professor Trucios-Haynes will present her project in April at the 2013 Latin American and Latino Studies Showcase.

Beginning in 2012-2013, first year law students will experience an updated curriculum reducing their contact hours from 31 to 29 hours. This change provides students the opportunity to adjust to the challenges of law school and the demands of the legal profession.

Fall Semester:

Basic Legal Skills

Legal Research

Torts I

Contracts I

Criminal Law

Civil Procedure (starting approximately September 24th)

Spring Semester:

Basic Legal Skills

Torts II

Contracts II

Property

Civil Procedure II

The following faculty members will participate in our international exchange program in 2012:

Tracey Roberts at University of Mainz

Judy Fischer at University of Montpellier

Ariana Levinson at University of Leeds

Russ Weaver at University of Kwa-Zulu Natal

JoAnne Sweeny at University of Turku

The Brandeis School of Law is pleased to announce the hiring of two new professors for the next academic year.  The law school welcomes Jamie Abrams and Laura McNeal.  Jamie is currently a visiting assistant professor at Hofstra University.  Laura is currently a Harvard Law School Fellow at the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute.  Both Jamie and Laura will meet various curricular needs and enrich our faculty's already impressive record of scholarship.

 

Learn more about Jamie and Laura.