van Winkle Melton Professorship
Jeffrey Standen
Associate Dean Jeffrey Standen calls sports “one of the last frontiers of human behavior.” There are rules, but not too many. When two people agree to a contest, it’s basically unfettered competition. That’s why he loves sports so much. “It’s an unregulated sphere of life. There are not many things left like that today,” he said. “Sports law creates a wonderful little laboratory to test out rules.”
Standen blogs as The Sports Law If he wasn’t a law professor, Standen said, he would have Professor and is a sought-out taught history at a school in expert nationally on issues of New England, where he grew sports and gaming law. Both are up, and coached sports on the growing areas of law practice because of new products, such as side. His favorite sport to internet gambling. For instance, observe is hockey, but he’ll even watch figure skating as long as lawyers are still sorting out it’s competitive. where exactly a bet takes place when a gambler lives in one “What’s boring is running,” he state, a website is registered in said. “I’ll play basketball until another state and the site’s my feet are bleeding, but servers are located in a different running for its own sake? That’s country. torture.” “That’s how lawyers make their money — resolving ambiguity for their clients,” Standen said. “It’s a remarkably unsettled area of practice, and that creates opportunities.”
A Toast to our endowed professors
24 | Willamette Lawyer
The Isaac van Winkle Melton professorship was established in 2000 as the result of a series of estate gifts received from Isaac van Winkle’s daughter and son-in-law, the late Edward R. and Rosalind van Winkle Melton BA’31. Isaac van Winkle BA 1898, LLB 1901, was a prominent Salem attorney and dean of the College of Law from 1913–27. He served as Oregon’s attorney general from 1920–43.