From the Dean The Class of 2009 has now joined your ranks as our newest alumni. They received their doctoral hoods on a perfect spring morning. Judge Steve Leben, L’82, offered an official welcome on behalf of the Board of Governors. The class selected professor John Peck as the “hooder” and professor Martin Dickinson as the 2009 Moreau Award recipient. Blue skies shined overhead as the class joined other graduating students on the traditional “walk down the hill,” with Bethany Shelton carrying the law school’s banner. In late afternoon, I bid farewell to the class that joined KU Law with me in 2006. How quickly three years pass. What a three years it has been. Students brought honors to Green Hall in national and international moot court and legal writing competitions. They listened to and learned from the Chief Justice of the United States and showcased their considerable advocacy skills for him. They explored the boundaries of biology and law with professor Andrew Torrance at the biolaw symposia he convened for the Kansas Law Review and the Kansas Journal of Law and Public Policy. They grappled with difficult moral and legal issues arising from the nation’s shameful legacy of slavery, under the leadership of philosophy professor and law school teacher Derrick Darby, during the Kansas Law Review’s 2008 symposium. The law school established a new clinical program with its cutting-edge medical-legal partnership in Kansas City. It has quickly become a model for the state of Kansas. Thanks to the generosity of Shook, Hardy & Bacon, we established a Center for Excellence in Advocacy. The SHB Center quickly spawned a new certificate program in advocacy, suggested by third-year law student and recent alumna Dani Davey, and an important new course, “The Art of Advocacy,” developed by associate professor Melanie Wilson. The faculty achieved national and international recognition for scholarship. Professor John Head secured a Fulbright Professorship and spent it teaching at the University of Trento in northern Italy. Rounds Professor Chris Drahozal was tapped as a reporter for the American Law Institute’s Restatement (Third) of the U.S. Law of International Commercial Arbitration, and he testified before the U.S. Senate Republican Conference and the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law about his groundbreaking work with the Searle Civil Justice Institute on consumer arbitration. Professor and associate dean Stephen Mazza co-authored a study on lobbying for tax breaks by multinational corporations, which has received extensive media attention. We have given back to the community and benefited from the generosity of our alumni and friends. This summer, 24 law students received stipends for their work in the public interest. We launched our own Make a Difference Day with student and alumni volunteers. Our Public Interest Law Society provided invaluable assistance to The Arc of Sedgwick County in securing legal guardianships for children with special needs as they came of age. Next fall, for the first time, we will celebrate our students’ service when we recognize scholarship recipients. Later this month, John H. & John M. Kane Professor and former dean Mike Hoeflich will open the doors of Green Hall to a group of high school seniors and college freshmen with our pipeline-to-law program. We are a public law school in every sense of that word. Because we are a public school committed to access and affordability, we are also challenged in unprecedented ways. You are receiving this KU Law Magazine electronically to save scarce dollars for our primary mission of providing the very best educational experience we can to our current students. We will confront more painful choices as state support and endowment values fall. Now more than ever, we need your support. You make the difference for your legal alma mater.
Gail B. Agrawal, Dean and Professor of Law