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It was interesting to watch Ave Maria Law grow from nothing to what it is today. I was there when the law school was just an idea, and I’ve been lucky enough to watch it transform, unfold, and build throughout the years. – Associate Dean Kaye Castro
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2015
2016
• Ave Maria Law receives official recognition as a Catholic Institute of Higher Learning by His Excellency, Most Reverend Frank J. Dewane, Bishop of the Diocese of Venice in Florida
• National Jurist’s PreLaw Magazine ranked Ave Maria School of Law the Number 1 Catholic law school in the nation for the Devout for a second time, and the Number 1 Most Diverse law school
• Ave Maria Law purchases its Naples campus in the Vineyards, Naples, Florida
• The Ave Maria School of Law Men’s Softball Team became the 2016 National Champs at the 33rd Annual Virginia Law School National Softball Invitational
• Ave Maria Law receives #1 Bar passage rate in the state of Florida for February first time bar exam takers • Ave Maria Law receives $1 million dollar gift from an anonymous donor to launch the Capital Campaign. • Honorary Degree Recipients: General Peter Pace, Richard L. Klaas and Dean Emeritus Eugene R. Milhizer • Commencement Speaker: General Peter Pace
• The Edward Cardinal Egan Conference Room was named in memory of His Eminence Edward Cardinal Egan, Archbishop Emeritus of New York, a member of our Board of Trustees and a devoted friend of the law school. • The Third Annual Estate Planning Conference was hosted off campus this year at The Ritz-Carlton Golf Resort with great success • This year’s Honorary Degree recipients celebrated at Commencement included: Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap., D.D., Lou Holtz, Karl Keating, and Mr. and Mrs. Vincent Von Zwehl
• Ave Maria Lecturer: Dr. John Finnis, internationally known legal scholar, author and Professor of Law and Legal Philosophy Emeritus at the University of Oxford
• 2008 College Football Hall of Fame Coach, Speaker, Author, and Retired ESPN Studio Analyst Lou Holtz served as Commencement Speaker • Our law library was named the Veterans Memorial Law Library and dedicated on December 7 to honor our nation’s veterans. Founders of the Veterans Memorial Law Library were honored at the dedication
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We were teaching at the University of Detroit Mercy Law School in the 1990s. In the years after Pope St. John Paul II’s apostolic exhortation on Catholic universities (Ex Corde Ecclesiae), there was a lot of discussion at that time about the nature of Catholic universities and Catholic law schools. Eventually in 1998, we joined with several colleagues there (Steve Safranek, Joe Falvey, Laura Hirschfeld, and Michael Kenney) and proposed the idea of a new Catholic law school to Tom Monaghan. In light of the cultural ferment of that era, we all thought there was a need for a law school that emphasized academic excellence and professionalism and that did so in light of the wisdom of the Catholic intellectual tradition. We agreed to leave Detroit and moved to Ann Arbor in 1999 to work on planning and beginning Ave Maria School of Law. We taught in Ann Arbor for almost a decade and then moved to Naples when the law school moved there in 2009. – Professors Mollie Murphy & Richard Myers
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Advocate | 2020
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