News Briefs
Multiple Honors for Dean Emeritus Symeon C. Symeonides
Vollmar, Expert on End of Life Issues, Lectures in Two States
The honors keep piling up for former Dean Symeon C. Symeonides: a congress in Mexico; work at the European Union; and a course at The Hague. The Mexican Academy of Private International and Comparative Law held its 33rd annual congress in honor of Symeonides. The “Symeonides Congress,” held in October in Puebla, Mexico, was attended by professors, judges and lawyers from around Latin America. Symeonides also will lead a committee of representatives from 27 European Union (EU) countries that will revise a law dealing with the jurisdiction and recognition of judgments in civil and commercial cases. The law is one of the oldest in the EU and the revision will have an enormous impact on companies inside and outside Europe that conduct business within the EU. And lastly, Symeonides has been invited again to teach a course at The Hague Academy of International Law. Founded in 1923, the academy is the world’s most prestigious legal organization. One of its activities is to sponsor international law courses every summer for academics, diplomats, judges and postgraduate law students. The courses are taught by distinguished scholars from around the world, who also are required to produce a book to be published by the academy. This is the second time Symeonides was invited to teach at The Hague; he last taught in 2002. He is the 21st American to teach private international law there since 1923 and only the fifth to be invited a second time.
Oregon’s law providing for physician-assisted suicide, also known as “death with dignity,” quietly turned 13 this year — quietly, said Professor Valerie Vollmar, because it has been in effect so long that it’s not controversial anymore. “We have 13 years of data that says there’s no abuse; it’s working well,” she said. “Physicians are much better educated on end-of-life issues. There’s a much greater use of pain medication, of hospice care. Before that, a lot of people saw family members die in a way that was inappropriate.” Vollmar, who writes and lectures extensively in the fields of estate planning, elder law and physician-assisted suicide, spoke earlier this year at a death with dignity conference in Chicago sponsored by the Chicago Bar Association/Women’s Bar Association of Illinois. She analyzed the legal developments in the field and shared data from Oregon and Washington. Later this fall, Vollmar is scheduled to speak at an estate planning seminar sponsored by the Estate Planning Council of Seattle and the Washington State Bar Association. Vollmar said states as diverse as Arizona, Hawaii, Vermont and Wisconsin are discussing whether a physician-assisted suicide law would be appropriate. She believes that more and more states will end up passing such laws. “It’s such a core issue; it’s death and dying,” she said. “What death are you going to have when you know you’re going to die anyway?”
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