Minnesota Law Magazine | Fall 2023 by University of Minnesota Law School

FALL 2023

THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA LAW SCHOOL MAGAZINE

+ LAW SCHOOL NEWS

2023 Stein Lecture with Justice Amy Coney Barrett FACULTY

Five New Faculty Join Minnesota Law STUDENTS

Meet the Class of 2026 — setting new records for academics and diversity

A Transformative First 10 Years The James H. Binger Center for New Americans

THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA LAW SCHOOL MAGAZINE

INTERIM DEAN

2023–24 BOARD OF ADVISORS

INTERIM DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATIONS

Joshua L. Colburn ’07, Chair

Monica Wittstock

The Honorable Nancy E. Brasel ’96, Chair-Elect

SENIOR MANAGER OF VISUAL DESIGN AND SOCIAL MEDIA

Barbara Jean D’Aquila ’80, Immediate Past Chair

William McGeveran

Julie Longo

MARKETING AND COMMUNICATIONS SPECIALIST Jeff Kasimor

EVENTS AND EVENT MARKETING MANAGER Olivia Kurtz

WEB CONTENT SPECIALIST Riley Grittinger

CHIEF ADVANCEMENT OFFICER David L. Jensen

DIRECTOR OF ALUMNI RELATIONS AND ANNUAL GIVING Lizzy Beghelli

ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR OF DONOR RELATIONS AND STEWARDSHIP Maureen Cunningham

COPY EDITOR Kathy Graves

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Kevin Coss Suzy Frisch Kathy Graves Ryan Greenwood Amy Carlson Gustafson Michael Hannon Cathy Madison Todd Nelson Charles Williams Monica Wittstock

PHOTOGRAPHERS Justin Cox Jayme Halbritter Jay Mallin Tony Nelson Cory Ryan

COVER PHOTO Tony Nelson

ILLUSTRATOR Robert Ball

DESIGNER

Erin Gibbons, Launch Lab Creative

Richard Allyn ’69 B. Andrew Bednark ’02 Brandon L. Blakely ’18 Rachel S. Brass ’01 Rjay J. Brunkow ’04 Laura G. Coates ’05 Coré S. Cotton ’89 Annamarie A. Daley ’84 Devin Driscoll ’18 Emerald Gratz ’05 Timothy E. Grimsrud ’04 Ronald E. Hunter ’78 Cherée Johnson ’03 Christopher K. Larus ’91 Juanita Bolland Luis ’77 Hugh Magill ’85 Catlan M. McCurdy ’11 Liwanag Ojala ’98 James W. Poradek ’98 Jami Rahman ’03 Michael L. Skoglund ’01 James H. Snelson ’97 Hema L Viswanathan ’05 Renae L. Welder ’96 Emily M. Wessels ’14 Bruce J. Wojack ’85 Wanda Young Wilson ’79

Minnesota Law is a general interest magazine published in the fall and spring of the academic year for the University of Minnesota Law School community of alumni, friends, and supporters. Letters to the editor or any other communication regarding content should be sent to Monica Wittstock (witt0265@umn.edu), Interim Director of Communications, University of Minnesota Law School, 229 19th Avenue South, 417 Mondale Hall, Minneapolis, MN 55455. The University of Minnesota shall provide equal access to and opportunity in its programs, facilities, and employment without regard to race, color, creed, religion, national origin, gender, age, marital status, disability, public assistance status, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression. © 2023 Regents of the University of Minnesota. All rights reserved.

FROM THE DEAN

A Bright Future Ahead for Minnesota Law

N 17 AUTUMNS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA LAW SCHOOL, I have always

enjoyed the crackle of energy as students return to Mondale Hall, joined by their eager new classmates. This fall, I experienced it from a new vantage point as interim dean, but it remained as rejuvenating as always. Our dedicated faculty and staff get to see the future of our profession walking through our doors each day, ready to learn about the law and make a difference in the world. Based on our new and record-breaking class of 2026, that future looks bright indeed. In this issue of Minnesota Law magazine, read about their impressive academic credentials, diverse backgrounds, and varied experiences, and then you will understand my optimism. This class, like others before it, brings fresh perspectives, intellectual curiosity, and a profound sense of social responsibility to our Minnesota Law family. Among the exceptional opportunities that await them here is the James H. Binger Center for New Americans, celebrating its 10th anniversary this year and featured in these pages. Since its inception, the Binger Center has represented countless immigrants and refugees, transforming the lives of clients and their families. At the same time, the Center’s holistic approach also involves advocating for change in the law on behalf of non-citizens, advancing cutting-edge interdisciplinary research, and providing our students invaluable handson training that builds tomorrow’s highly skilled immigration bar.

And the Binger Center is just one point of pride at Minnesota Law! Read on to learn about many more. Our top-notch faculty has been as active and engaged as ever and welcomed five stellar new professors this fall— including two of our own alumni. We have hosted fascinating events too numerous to list. Our students continue to make us proud, and the many accomplishments of our graduates demonstrate the powerful legacy of a Minnesota Law education. None of this is possible without your continued support. Our generous donors, our skilled adjunct faculty, and our network of alumni who mentor current students and spread the word about the great things happening at Minnesota Law are all essential to our mission. As our national search for a permanent dean moves ahead this year, I am confident that this extraordinary place will attract an extraordinary leader who can carry forward all these successes and plant the seeds for many more. Warmly,

William McGeveran Interim Dean Gray, Plant, Mooty, Mooty & Bennett Professor of Law University of Minnesota Law School

FALL 2023

MINNESOTA LAW

FALL 2023 CONTENTS

FEATURES 1FROM THE

INTERIM DEAN The Future is Bright

16 Transforming Immigration Law & the Lives of New Americans The James H. Binger Center for New Americans reflects on the first 10 years

4 FOR THE RECORD 4 5 6 8

In Brief Mondale Moments Class of 2023 Commencement Faculty & Staff Arrivals and Departures The 2023 Robert A. Stein ’61 Lecture with Justice Amy Coney Barrett New Law Library Exhibit

Celebrating the American Law Institute and the contributions of Minnesota Law faculty

The Detainee Rights Clinic and the Federal Immigration Litigation Clinic celebrate wins

Impact of Giving

Michelle Miller ’86 spearheads fellowship honoring Judge Pamela G. Alexander ’77 and Judge Michael B. Davis ’72

From the Classroom to the Front Lines

Minnesota Law’s expert faculty boldly advocate for human and civil rights

Immigration Clinics Victorious in Court

Minnesota Law Review is a Catalyst for Legal Scholarship and Practice

Law Review continues to make an impact

MINNESOTA LAW

FALL 2023

ALL RISE

30 FACULTY FOCUS 30

Student Profile: Jadyn Lovelady ’26

Meet the Class of 2026

Going Global

Student Summer Experiences

Five Full-time Faculty Join Minnesota Law

Meet our newest faculty experts in federal immigration law, administrative law, aging and elder law, intellectual property, and environmental law

34 36

Faculty News & Honors Author in Question

Professor Brian Bix publishes Families by Agreement: Navigating Choice, Tradition, and Law

Closing the Gender Pay Gap

Professor Jill Hasday’s testimony is instrumental in a new law

Lovelady puts her passion for helping others to work

Compromising a diverse and talented group of 218 individuals, the incoming class promises to continue the Law School’s tradition of producing exceptional lawyers Minnesota Law’s LL.M. program celebrates 30 years Minnesota Law students found summer jobs in a wide variety of career settings across the country and globe

Big Picture

Laura Coates ’05 serves as this year’s Homecoming Grand Marshal

RAISING THE BAR 52

Alumni Interrogatory

54 56

The William B. Lockhart Club Celebration Alumni Profile

58 61 67 68 69 72

Alumni News Class Notes Recent Gifts Tributes In Memoriam Why I Give

Theory at Work: The Future of Insurance is Here

Professor Daniel Schwarcz forges new frontiers with his innovative research into how Artificial Intelligence impacts insurance, teaching, and the law

Judge Joan Ericksen ’81, U.S. District Judge and Member of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court

Sarah Everett ’17 and the Arkansas ACLU team successfully argue to overturn the country’s first ban on gender-affirming care

Caitlinrose Fisher ’15

58 36

FALL 2023

MINNESOTA LAW

FOR THE RECORD

in BRIEF Professor Fionnuala Ní Aoláin and U.N. Team Farewell to Garry W. Jenkins, the Complete First-Ever University of Minnesota Law School’s Technical Visit to 11th Dean Detention Facility At the end of June, the Minnesota Law community said farewell to Dean W. Jenkins, who assumed the role as the president of Bates College in Guantánamo Bay, Garry in the beginning of July. University leadership, faculty, staff, alumni, friends, and family joined together in a joyous celebration of Jenkins’ leadership over Cuba the past seven years. Former University of Minnesota President Joan T.A. Gabel, Interim Dean William McGeveran, Regents Professor Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, the Honorable Kathleen Blatz ’84, Chief Advancement Officer David Jensen, and James Chosy ’89 lauded Jenkins’ extraordinary contributions, dedication, and vision as Minnesota Law’s 11th dean.

Professor Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, the former United Nations Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism (UNSRCT), was the first independent human rights investigator ever to visit the detention facility at the U.S. Naval Station in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba earlier this year. The U.N. team who visited Guantánamo include from left to right: Seh Lih Long (OHCHR); Alyssa Yamamoto (legal advisor); Fionnuala Ní Aoláin; Megan Manion ’16 (senior legal advisor); and Ed Beeter (U.N. translator).

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Assistant Dean of Students Jay Wong’s Research Cited in DOJ Report about the Minneapolis Police Department Assistant Dean of Students Jay Wong, JD, M.Ed, was cited in the Department of Justice’s report about its investigation into the City of Minneapolis and the Minneapolis Police (MPD). Wong, formerly a Hennepin County Public Defender, found there were racial disparities in MPD traffic stops and searches, which the DOJ included in the report.

Racial Justice Law Clinic Sues the City of Minneapolis on Behalf of the NAACP for Use of Covert Surveillance Tactics Minnesota Law’s Racial Justice Law Clinic, led by Professor Liliana Zaragoza and the Law Office of Tim Phillips, filed a lawsuit on behalf of the Minneapolis branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (Minneapolis NAACP) challenging the Minneapolis Police Department’s use of covert social media accounts to surveil the Minneapolis NAACP and its members. Zaragoza was interviewed by multiple media outlets about the case. ❘❘❘❘

MondaleMoments

1 Faculty members welcomed a judge from Tbilisi and members of the Minnesota judicial branch to a luncheon in October. From L to R: Prof. Nicholas Bednar ’16; Prof. Brian Bix; Prof. Tom Cotter; Prof. Jane Kirtley; Senior Judge Phillip Kanning; Senior Judge Robert Carolan; Judge Ketevan Meskhishvili from the Tbilisi Court of Appeals; Senior Judge Karen Asphaug; Prof. June Carbone; Prof. Alan Rozenshtein; and Prof. JaneAnne Murray. 2 Law Council vice president Neda Sattler ’25 (left) and president Job Okeri ’24 (right) greeted students during orientation. 3 Head Gopher Football coach P.J. Fleck visited Assistant Dean of Experiential Education Mitchell Zamoff's American Law class on Halloween. 4 The Class of 2026 takes the Minnesota Law oath. 5 Prof. John Matheson and students from his Contracts class spent a Saturday this fall volunteering to box food at Second Harvest Heartland. 6 The Minnesota Law Review held its 2023 symposium on gun violence prevention this fall. Joining the event were Interim University of Minnesota President Jeffrey Ettinger, Visiting Clinical Professor Megan Walsh, Governor Tim Walz, Symposium Editor Chad Nowlan ’24, and Editor-in-Chief Philip de Sa e Silva ’24.

FALL 2023

MINNESOTA LAW

FOR THE RECORD

CO M M ENC EMENT

2023

 Class of 2023 commencement speakers with Dean Garry W. Jenkins. From L to R: Henry Killen ’23; Eric Locker ’23; Dean Garry W. Jenkins; Nico Kast ’23; and Mica Standing Soldier ’23.  From L to R: Regent Janie S. Mayeron ’76; Dean Garry W. Jenkins; and keynote speaker Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison ’90 at Minnesota Law’s 135th commencement.

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View the gallery of photos from the Class of 2023 Commencement. z.umn.edu/2023CommencementPhotos

In Celebration of Minnesota Law’s 135th Commencement The University of Minnesota Law School celebrated its 135th commencement on Saturday, May 13, at Northrop Auditorium. More than 1,500 students, loved ones, faculty, and staff joined the graduating Class of 2023 on Saturday morning to cheer on the 205 J.D. candidates, 25 LL.M. candidates, and seven Masters of Patent Law candidates who crossed the stage and were awarded their degrees. In his remarks, Dean Garry W. Jenkins commended the Class of 2023, saying, “This commencement, in particular, is an especially meaningful one — because, let’s face it, for our J.D. graduates, you all started your law school experience under impossible circumstances — in the throes of the pandemic. [You] started your 1L year in fall 2020 and many of you were entirely remote and

Zooming into class from across the globe… and everyone was still reeling from the protests and racial reckoning taking place both in Minneapolis and across the U.S. that summer,” he said. “As such, you had to build your law school support system, your community here, with constraints like no other class before you, yet also with a deeper understanding of the urgency of addressing injustice. What I saw from all of you has been inspiring and humbling. Despite many challenges, we saw your ability to care for and lift each other up. We learned about your ability to weather whatever circumstances are thrown at you. We saw your intense drive to improve the world around you and make a difference now — both in your individual communities and in your Minnesota Law community.” ❘❘❘❘

Stanley V. Kinyon Teacher of the Year Awards In celebration of extraordinary contributions by our faculty over the past year, Dean Jenkins announced the 2023 recipients of the prestigious Stanley V. Kinyon Teacher of the Year Awards. Receiving the awards this year were Daniel Schwarcz (tenured faculty), JaneAnne Murray (clinical faculty), and Kiri Somermeyer (skills/professional faculty). ❘❘❘❘

Daniel Schwarcz (Tenured Faculty)

JaneAnne Murray (Clinical Faculty)

Kiri Somermeyer (Skills/Professional Faculty)

 Faculty members taking a selfie before commencement. From L to R: Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Oren Gross; Executive Director of the James H. Binger Center for New Americans Sarah Brenes; Visiting Clinical Professor of Law Megan Walsh, Visiting Assistant Professor of Law Elizabeth Bentley; Professor Prentiss Cox ’90; and Professor Caleb Smith.

FALL 2023

MINNESOTA LAW

FOR THE RECORD

Faculty & Staff Notes News about Law School Hires and Moves

Faculty Arrivals

Judge John Tunheim ’80 on the United States District Court for the District of Minnesota and for Judge Tracy Smith ’88 on the Minnesota Court of Appeals.

Jack Whiteley joined the Law

School as an associate professor of law. Whiteley was recently a fellow and supervising attorney in the Environmental Law and Justice Clinic at the Georgetown University Law Center. His research and teaching interests include property, environmental law, and evidence. Prior to his work at Georgetown, he was a law clerk to Judge Richard Clifton on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and was a litigation associate at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton.

Nadia Anguiano ’17 joined the Law School as associate clinical professor of law and director of the Federal Immigration Litigation Clinic. Anguiano was formerly the visiting assistant clinical professor of law and served as interim director of the Federal Immigration Clinic for 2022-23. She also served as an immigration legal fellow in the clinic from 2019-22. Prior to joining Minnesota Law, she worked as a law clerk for Judge Jane Kelly of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit and Judge Susan Richard Nelson of the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota.

Alexander Boni-Saenz joined Minnesota Law as professor of law and Robins Kaplan Distinguished Scholar. Boni-Saenz was previously the associate dean for scholarship and faculty development, professor of law, and the Norman & Edna Freehling Scholar at Chicago-Kent College of Law, Illinois Institute of Technology. His scholarship focuses on age as a socio-legal category, legal issues in aging, and theoretical and doctrinal questions in inheritance law.

Nicholas Bednar ’16 joined the Law

Sapna Kumar joined the Law School

Jacob Sayward joined Minnesota

School as associate professor of law. Bednar recently completed his Ph.D. in Political Science at Vanderbilt University. His research and teaching interests include administrative law, legislation and regulation, public administration, and torts. He clerked for Chief

faculty as the Henry J. Fletcher Professor of Law. Before joining Minnesota Law, Kumar was the John Mixon Chair in Law at the University of Houston Law Center. She writes and teaches about international law and administrative law issues relating to patent rights.

Law as the associate director of collection development in the Law Library. Prior to joining the Law School, Sayward served as the director for collections, faculty and scholarly services, and adjunct professor of law at the Cornell Law Library.

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Library Faculty Arrivals

Faculty Innovators

Staff Arrivals

Paul Ogren was promoted to Maureen Cunningham was hired

as associate director of donor relations and stewardship. Prior to joining Minnesota Law, she was a manager of annual giving at Bethel University. She holds a B.S. in industrial engineering from Purdue and an M.A. in strategic leadership from Bethel University.

director of development in the Office of Advancement. He previously served as a senior development officer.

Departures Two teams of Minnesota Law professors receive inaugural grants from the Kommerstad Faculty Imagination Fund.

Jonathan Choi departed the

Kacey Davidson was hired as an

associate development officer. Prior to joining Minnesota Law, she was a successful real estate agent with Edina Realty and First Weber.

University of Minnesota Law School to join the faculty at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law.

Promotions

Kelly Mitchell departed the Law

Kirsten Larsen was promoted to communications and events manager in the Office of Advancement. She was formerly the Advancement operations associate.

School’s Robina Institute of Criminal Law and Criminal Justice for a position as the assistant commissioner of community services and reentry with the Minnesota Department of Corrections. Mitchell served as the executive director of the Robina Institute since 2014. ❘❘❘❘

Professors Amy Monahan, Daniel Schwarcz, and former Minnesota Law professor Jon Choi received $15,000 to test whether using artificial intelligence (AI) language models can improve the performance of students on legal writing tasks. This experiment expands on a paper they wrote with Professor Kristin Hickman, “ChatGPT Goes to Law School,” which drew widespread attention after the generative AI chatbot averaged “a low, but passing grade” on final exams in four fall semester courses. Professors Chris Roberts and Ryan Greenwood will put their $5,000 grant toward developing a course that includes taking students into the field to consider how advanced technologies may outpace existing law in areas such as transportation, civic infrastructure, and AI. ❘❘❘❘

FALL 2023

MINNESOTA LAW

FOR THE RECORD

The 2023 Robert A. Stein ’61 Lecture with Justice Amy Coney Barrett

Photo: Tony Nelson

Professor Stein and Justice Barrett had a wide-ranging conversation in front of a sold-out crowd

U.S. SUPREME COURT ASSOCIATE JUSTICE AMY CONEY BARRETT expressed support for

View the video of the 2023 Stein Lecture with Justice Amy Coney Barrett z.umn.edu/2023SteinLecture

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FALL 2023

a code of ethics for justices and described her judicial philosophy and relationships with colleagues during her appearance at the 2023 Robert A. Stein ’61 Lecture. Barrett became the sixth justice since 2014 to participate in the lecture series endowed by Stein, a former Law School dean and the current Everett Fraser Professor of

Law. The 90-minute event occurred on Oct. 16 before more than 2,000 people at Northrop Auditorium. Stein, noting that the court has faced criticism for not having a code of conduct, asked Barrett whether she would favor one. Reports that justices have failed to disclose travel and gifts have led some to call for the court to adopt such a code. “I think it would be a good idea for us to do it, particularly so that we can communicate to the public exactly

what it is that we’re doing in a clearer way than perhaps we have been able to do so far,” Barrett answered. Justices are thinking about how to express how they already abide by statutes that govern financial disclosures and gifts, Barrett said. She couldn’t say when justices might agree on the details of an ethics code. “I will say this, there is no lack of consensus among the justices,” Barrett said. “There’s unanimity among all nine justices that we should and do hold ourselves to the highest ethical standards possible.” Stein, recalling that Barrett had served as a clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia before his passing, asked whether her statement that his judicial philosophy was hers still held true. “Justice Scalia was very well known for his commitment to both originalism in constitutional interpretation and textualism in the interpretation of statutes,” she said. “And I would say that you could boil both of those judicial philosophies down to the proposition that the text is the law and the text controls. And I share that philosophy, and I share that commitment.” Stein asked whether the sharp differences between the majority and dissenters in written opinions affected personal relationships between justices. Barrett, who took her seat in October 2020, added to the court’s conservative majority. “The fire gets put on the page. It is not expressed in interpersonal relationships,” Justice Barrett said. “We are in the building with each other. Justices have lunch every day that we have oral arguments and every day after conference.” Stein asked whether the four women justices otherwise ever get together. “I don’t think that my perspective or that anybody’s perspective is different, just by virtue of being a woman,”

Barrett said. “Because I think we bring to the law, our methodological and jurisprudential commitments that are independent of our sex. But I think it’s delightful to have the companionship of them on the court.” Asked for her advice to law students in the audience, Barrett said they should learn to see and argue both sides of a case and to do so civilly and collegially. “That’s how you produce results for your client,” the former Notre Dame Law School professor continued. “That’s also how you become good citizens. That’s how you become leading members of the bar. That’s how you contribute to your community. So, I would say soak up all of the opportunities that you can to take classes that challenge you, to hear ideas that challenge you, and learn how to debate and argue in ways that are respectful and will prepare you for when you step into the courtroom or the deal room and have to do that same thing.” Barrett, who grew up in New Orleans — at “the other end of the Mississippi,” as Stein said — pointed out a family connection to the University. “Professor Stein did not know this when he invited me, so I don’t think it was the reason he invited me,” Barrett said. “But my brother actually went to the U, so it’s not my first time visiting campus. He lived in a rental house in Dinkytown, so I went and visited him there.” In addition to students, the audience for the Stein Lecture included judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota, the Minnesota Supreme Court, and others in the Minnesota judiciary. The University of Minnesota Police Department (UMPD) coordinated the significant security measures for

“ That’s also how you become good citizens. That’s how you become leading members of the bar. That’s how you contribute to your community. So, I would say soak up all of the opportunities that you can to take classes that challenge you, to hear ideas that challenge you, and learn how to debate and argue in ways that are respectful and will prepare you for when you step into the courtroom or the deal room and have to do that same thing.” —Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett

the event. There was an orderly protest outside the building by organizations opposed to some of the Court’s recent decisions. A brief interruption by a small group of protestors inside the auditorium ended quickly when they cooperated with UMPD officers who escorted them out. Previous Stein Lectures have included the late former Vice President Walter F. Mondale ’56; the late Supreme Court Associate Justices Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg; Chief Justice John Roberts; and Associate Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. ❘❘❘❘ Todd Nelson is a freelance writer based in Lake Elmo, Minnesota.

FALL 2023

MINNESOTA LAW

FOR THE RECORD

New Law Library Exhibit: Celebrating the American Law Institute and the Contributions of Minnesota Faculty

A NEW EXHIBIT IN THE LAW LIBRARY’S RIESENFELD RARE BOOKS RESEARCH CENTER

commemorates the 100th Anniversary of the American Law Institute (ALI) and the many contributions of Law School faculty to the Institute’s mission. Minnesota is one of a few select law schools — including Michigan, Texas, and the University of Chicago — to host the exhibit, which was curated by ALI. Founded in 1923, the Institute has endeavored to reduce the uncertainty and complexity of American law and improve the administration of justice. Through its Restatements of the Law, among other publications, ALI has made important strides toward this goal. These publications, covering a broad range of practice areas, provide concise and influential guidance for judges, lawyers, and legislators. The exhibit documents a selection of contributions of Law School faculty to ALI projects, dating from the Institute’s foundation. Dean Everett Fraser (1920–1948) became one of ALI’s earliest members and served as reporter for the fourth volume of the Restatement of the Law,

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Torts. Fraser was also an adviser on the Restatement for Property and for Trusts. Faculty involvement was particularly promoted under the deanship of Professor Robert Stein ’61 (1979–1994). As Professor Stein has said, “By participating in the scholarly work of the Institute, our distinguished faculty have an opportunity to clarify, modernize, and influence the development of American law.” Stein and Dean William Lockhart (1956–1972) were members of ALI’s governing Council, and Stein has also been an adviser on the Restatement of the Law Second, Property and an adviser on the Restatement of the Law, Third, Trusts. Stein has further served on the Drafting Committee for the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC), which governs commercial transactions. The UCC has been uniformly adopted by the states and represents one of ALI’s most significant achievements. Among other current faculty members who have played prominent roles, Professor Allan Erbsen is a member of the Consultative Group for the Restatement of the Law Third, Torts. Professor Daniel Schwarcz

has served as an adviser on the Restatement of the Law, Liability Insurance, and Professor Matthew Bodie has served as a reporter on the Restatement of the Law, Employment Law. Professor Kevin Reitz has been the reporter on the Model Penal Code, Sentencing. Reitz notes that the Model Penal Code has greatly impacted sentencing and criminal justice policies, which he says have been shifting dramatically at the state level despite federal uncertainties. Professor Richard Painter is a reporter on the Principles of the Law, Government Ethics, providing ethical guidance and standards of conduct for government officials and entities. Professor Claire Hill is a reporter on the Principles of the Law, Compliance and Enforcement for Organizations. Minnesota faculty have been recipients of ALI awards, including two Early Career Scholars Awards. Professor Amy Monahan was recognized for her work concerning health care and public sector pensions, as was Professor Daniel Schwarcz for his scholarship on insurance law. The work of the American Law Institute, a cornerstone of American jurisprudence, remains beneficial long beyond its centenary, and Minnesota faculty continue to make important contributions to ALI’s mission. ❘❘❘❘ For more information about the exhibit or to schedule a tour, please contact Ryan Greenwood (rgreenwo@umn.edu; 612-625-7323).

1 Professor Claire Hill at the 2019 ALI Annual Meeting. 2 Professor Daniel Schwarcz presents at the 2017 ALI Annual Meeting. 3 Professor Amy B. Monahan presents at the 2014 ALI Annual Meeting. 4 Edward G. Jennings and H.L. McClintock produced the Minnesota Annotations books for the earliest Restatements. 5 Professor Richard Painter at the 2023 ALI Annual Meeting. 6 Professor Matthew T. Bodie presents at the 2013 ALI Annual Meeting. 7 Professor Robert A. Stein ’61.

T RE ASU RE S O F TH E RIE SENFELD C EN TER : An Exhibit Showcasing the Strengths of the Rare Books Collection A second exhibit open in the Law Library, “Jewels of the Collection: Treasures of the Riesenfeld Rare Books Research Center,” showcases the depth of the legal heritage preserved in the Arthur C. Pulling Rare Books Collection. This centerpiece of the Library’s special collections is comprised of more than 35,000 volumes printed across six continents between the 15th century and today. The new exhibit introduces the treasures found in the Riesenfeld Center and highlights the Center’s diverse strengths. Many of the exhibit treasures have been selected as important contributions to law and history or as landmark “firsts” of legal literature. Others are notable for their associations with famous authors and owners, or for being unique artifacts and works of art. Section introductions and descriptions place the works in their historical contexts and indicate their enduring value. The items reflect a historical legal legacy that is both national and global in its scope. The exhibit was curated by Ryan Greenwood and Joy Brown, Law Library Digital Technologist. ❘❘❘❘

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IMPACT of GIVING Fellowship Offers Students Opportunity to Dig into Public Interest Work, Set Stage for Career FOR MANY YEARS, MICHELLE MILLER ’86 felt that two Minnesota

Law alumni deserved greater recognition for their accomplishments: Judge Pamela G. Alexander ’77, the first Black female judge in the state of Minnesota, and Judge Michael B. Davis ’72, the first Black federal district court judge for the District of Minnesota. Hailed as champions of the Minnesota legal community, both worked to make the justice system fairer for all and to lift up future generations of law students. “We often talk about whose shoulders we stood on, who were the pathfinders and the leaders,” Miller says. “They were supportive, trail blazers, mentors to so many of us.” During her time as vice president and chief counsel of employment law at Medtronic, Miller led the effort to endow a scholarship in their names, seeing the need for more people dedicated to social justice in the legal profession. For the past two years, the scholarship has supported students who demonstrate a commitment to social justice and a passion for making a difference through civil rights or public interest work. Recently, Miller doubled down on her commitment to helping students. She and her husband, Al, established a fellowship in Judge Alexander and Judge Davis’ names that provides financial support to students participating in summer internships in public-interest organizations, especially those who show a commitment to social justice.

Michelle Miller ’86

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Recognizing Judge Alexander and Judge Davis with the fellowship was a natural fit; they were two of the people who helped instill in Miller her appreciation for mentorship and on-the-job experience. When Miller had early doubts about continuing her legal education, Alexander encouraged her to stay the course and recognized the fit between law school and Miller’s skills and interests. Judge Davis supported and mentored Miller through an externship, listening closely to her life experiences. Both Alexander and Davis understood that Miller wanted to leave the world better than she found it. One of three students to receive the fellowship this summer, Lucy Chin ’24, worked at the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta, an organization that addresses issues such as mass incarceration and the criminalization of poverty. Chin had the opportunity to help build cases to support individuals who are currently incarcerated. The experience furthered her excitement to pursue a public interest role related to the criminal justice system and to address racial injustice within the legal system. “It was very meaningful to receive funding to support this work,” Chin says. “We should be working to make the criminal justice system as equitable and mitigate as many disparities as we can, whether that’s within the current system we have or rethinking how our system is structured.”

Photos: Tony Nelson

Olufunsho Delé Nwabuzor ’24

is halfway to obtaining his dual degree in law and social work. The fellowship supported his fellowship as a litigation clerk at the Minnesota Disability Law Center, part of Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid, where he developed his skills around litigation and researched and wrote drafts of briefs that would go to the Minnesota Supreme Court and

Minnesota Court of Appeals. “I was able to apply a lot of what I learned in law school, but also I was able to learn to lot and get some real practical experience,” Nwabuzor says. “It was a really good opportunity to liaise and work with individuals who had been practicing for longer, but also to receive feedback about each of the different aspects of the trial as I practiced them in real time.” Going forward, he plans to work in the child protection system and then to explore opportunities in legal aid or public service work, focusing on issues that combine his legal and social work backgrounds to bring about change. Miriam Miller ’25 had known when coming to Minnesota Law that she wanted to focus on an area of public interest work. Her fellowship with Federal Defenders of Alabama inspired her to choose criminal justice as her concentration. The role gave her a chance to research cases, sit in on hearings, and even visit clients on death row. “You learn all of these theories and principles in the classroom, and they seem very theoretical — and then you go into an environment like that, and you see it at play,” Miriam Miller says. “You see it come to life.” She credits the fellowship for allowing her to focus on legal work and not worry about getting a second job to make ends meet.” For Michelle Miller’s part, she hopes the students who benefited from the fellowship will harness what they learned from their experiences and dedicate themselves to making a difference in their future careers. “I don’t believe that one person can necessarily change the world,” she says. “But I do believe that if we each work on our little corner of the world and come together, we can effectuate real change.” ❘❘❘❘ Kevin Coss is a Twin Cities-based freelance writer.

Lucy Chin ’24

Olufunsho Delé Nwabuzor ’24

Miriam Miller ’25

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Transforming Immigration Law & the Lives of New Americans The First 10 Years of Minnesota Law’s James H. Binger Center for New Americans BY TODD NELSON

•••

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Current James H. Binger Center Faculty and Staff from L to R: Professor Nadia Anguiano ’17; Executive Director Sarah Brenes; Community Outreach Program and Research Coordinator Mahmoud Ahmed; Clinical Fellow Mackenzie Hendricks ’18; Executive Office and Administrative Specialist Teresa Padrón; Professor Linus Chan; Assistant Dean of Clinical Education Stephen Meili; and Legal Fellow Seiko Shastri ’21.

In just 10 years, the Law School’s James H. Binger Center for New Americans has advanced immigration law while creating a growing network of students and graduates who serve as advocates and leaders on behalf of non-citizens in Minnesota, throughout the United States, and in other countries. CONT >

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Stephen Meili Assistant Dean of Clinical Education; James H. Michael Chair in International Human Rights Law

Benjamin Casper ’97 Former Binger Center faculty director

UNDER A UNIQUE COLLABORATIVE MODEL,

students in the James H. Binger Center for New Americans’ clinics work with faculty and nonprofit and law firm partners to gain first-hand legal education experience in representing non-citizens, while developing skills in client interviewing, legal writing, oral advocacy, and case strategy. The Center’s Federal Immigration Litigation Clinic pursues litigation to improve U.S. immigration law in the federal courts. Its Detainee Rights Clinic defends indigent non-citizens held in federal detention. The Immigration and Human Rights Clinic represents asylum seekers who have fled persecution in their home countries. The Rural Immigrant Access Clinic offers legal assistance to immigrants in rural communities. The Education and Outreach program informs non-citizens of their rights and trains lawyers to provide pro bono legal services. Former Center faculty director Benjamin Casper ’97 had a modest vision of raising $150,000 to create what he described as “an ‘adjunct appellate clinic on steroids’ that would operate collaboratively with immigration nonprofits and law firms.” Then, in 2012, the Robina Foundation gave the Law School the opportunity to pursue this vision with a $4.5 million pilot grant to create a Center for New Americans, the only one of its kind at any law school in the country. “I was more than happy to be part of that,” Casper says. The Center launched as a four-year pilot in 2013.

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In 2017, the Law School received an additional $25 million endowment from the Robina Foundation — the largest philanthropic gift in the Law School’s history — to provide permanent financial support for the newly named James H. Binger Center for New Americans. From the beginning, the Center was conceived as a unique Law School collaboration with three law firm partners — Dorsey & Whitney, Faegre Drinker, and Robins Kaplan — and three nonprofit partners — the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota, Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid, and The Advocates for Human Rights. As the Center marks its 10th anniversary, Casper and others reflect on how it has affected immigration law and expanded the community of advocates who represent non-citizens.

••• CASPER TAKES PRIDE in the high-profile cases students have helped handle during the Binger Center’s first 10 years, especially a milestone win at the U.S. Supreme Court. In that case, Mellouli v. Holder, the court’s 2015 decision precluded deportation of thousands of legal residents with low-level drug convictions. That victory, just two years after the Clinic’s creation, offered early “proof of concept” for a unique program designed to transform immigration policy. Among other landmark results, Center students and partners in 2017 helped block deportation of the “Somali 92.” Last year, in Jasso Arangure v. Garland, the Sixth Circuit Court — in a case argued by a former Center student, now the Federal Immigration Litigation Clinic’s director — issued a ruling protecting non-citizens from repeated removal actions.

What stands out more for Casper, though, is that these and other accomplishments have come against a backdrop of extraordinary challenges, from simply launching the Center to reacting to sudden shifts in immigration policy to keeping students at the forefront of advocacy efforts during a pandemic. “I’m particularly proud that we’ve succeeded the way we have given the obstacles so many of our students and faculty and partners have faced,” Casper said. “We’ve built up a uniquely impactful program like no other in the United States. There’s no law school that has an integrated, collaborative, multi-clinic immigration program that, as part of its mission, systematically keeps its graduates engaged in the clinical program as faculty and adjunct faculty.” The Center’s success is due in large part, Casper said, to its home at the Law School and in the Twin Cities. “The advocacy community here is more tightly knit than in larger metropolitan areas, and diaspora refugee populations, such as the Hmong and Somali, comprise much of the state’s non-citizen population,” he says. “The Binger Center was the right project in the right place.” he said Casper, who left the Law School in September 2022, says he is most proud that the Center’s influence continues to grow as graduates do pro bono immigration work and move into leadership positions at the Center and in immigration advocacy organizations locally, around the U.S., and in other countries. “The main accomplishment to me is not how we have changed the law in individual cases so far,” Casper says. “It’s how we have proven our original vision — that by operating collaboratively the law school could change an entire advocacy community in a unique way that would give generation after generation of our graduates unrivaled opportunities to lead transformative changes in immigration law. It’s the multiplying effect, expanding our longer-term impact through uncertain times with our students and our graduates in the lead. This is what has already made the Binger Center the premier immigration clinical program in the country, and guarantees it will be an even more extraordinary force for change ten and 20 years from now.”

••• THE LEGAL IMPLICATIONS OF THE BINGER CENTER’S EFFORTS go well beyond court rulings and policy changes, says Stephen Meili, the James H.

Memorable Case

Rebecca Cassler ’16 Senior Staff Attorney, Southern Poverty Law Center’s Immigrant Justice Project Cassler worked on a habeas petition for Nelson Kargbo, a refugee from Sierra Leone who had been forced to fight there as a child soldier. Kargbo won release after more than two years in federal detention. “I was fortunate to meet him for his first meal, along with Professor Linus Chan, after detention,” Cassler says. “We went to Perkins, which is where he wanted to go.”

Michael Chair in International Human Rights Law, the Law School’s assistant dean for clinical education, and co-director of the Center’s Immigration and Human Rights Clinic. Students in that clinic have helped asylum seekers and trafficking survivors from more than a dozen countries obtain asylum or other protections in immigration and appellate courts.

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•••

Nadia Anguiano ’17 Associate Clinical Professor of Law; Director, Federal Immigration Litigation Clinic

“It’s had an impact of saving lives, because our students have helped non-citizens who would otherwise not have had representation remain in the United States and not be sent back to countries where they would be subjected to torture, rape, or other forms of persecution,” Meili says. “That’s not in a sense affecting the law but it’s having a real impact on individuals, which I think is very significant and extremely rewarding for students.” The life-and-death stakes in some cases can be difficult emotionally for students and Center partners, especially when cases go against them. “While it comes with great rewards, it also comes with great anxiety,” Meili says. While the Immigration and Human Rights Clinic had operated at the Law School for a couple of decades before the Binger Center’s creation, Meili says the Binger Center introduced an unprecedented approach to immigration and immigrant rights. “What made and makes the Binger Center unique is the ability to approach the immigration issue and the rights of immigrants in a multifaceted way, in terms of the rights of detainees, in terms of litigation over immigrant rights more generally, and continuing to work on behalf of asylum seekers,” Meili says. “It’s a scope and a breadth of representation that’s unprecedented around the country.” Working together, students at the Center and others in the immigrant rights community have to stay nimble to respond to changes in governmental policies that restrict immigrant rights, Meili said. While immigration law is largely fixed because of the lack of comprehensive reform, what makes it an ever-changing field is “the government’s ingenuity in restricting the rights of immigrants,” he says.

< CONT

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The students, fellows, and faculty in the Binger Center’s Federal Immigration Litigation Clinic (FILC) have helped secure victories that have benefited countless individuals, according to director Nadia Anguiano ’17. Anguiano made a career transition from engineering, enrolling at the Law School largely because of the opportunity FILC offered. After clerking for two federal judges after graduation, Anguiano returned as a FILC fellow in 2019. She was named associate clinical professor of law and the FILC director in February 2023. An immigrant who came to the United States from Mexico as a child, Anguiano says what she’s doing now is “the most meaningful job in the world.” FILC has made its mark in cases that involve a wide range of issues, from protecting the rights of asylum seekers to ensuring that immigration law adjudicators do not unlawfully expand removal grounds based on criminal convictions. “We’ve set favorable precedent at the Supreme Court and circuit courts that impacts hundreds of individuals,” Anguiano says. “We have fought to ensure that removal proceedings adhere to basic due process requirements. By using litigation to push back on unlawful actions by the executive branch, we have made a really a big impact.” In Jasso Arangure v. Garland, Anguiano and FILC students last year helped win a decisive second victory from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in a key procedural ruling that allowed a client to reunite with family in the United States. The decision protects others from unlawful repeated removal actions, said Anguiano, who argued the case before a three-judge panel of the Sixth Circuit. Anguiano’s two years as a clinic student were empowering as students were at the forefront of an immersive and intense experience of developing cases with clients and advocating on their behalf. “It gave me the space to do the values-driven work that I came to law school to do,” Anguiano says. “That work is ultimately about ensuring that every person has the right to live with freedom and dignity. The Binger Center nurtured those values and more importantly taught me how to channel them into impactful work.”

Memorable Case

Sarah Brenes Executive Director, James H. Binger Center for New Americans; Director, Rural Immigrant Access Clinic

••• While the Binger Center has had a wide-ranging influence on key issues in immigration law in its first ten years, executive director Sarah Brenes also appreciates how it has shaped students who go on to work immigration law and expanded the ranks of those practicing immigration law. Brenes was named to lead the Center’s operations and strategic planning for its collaborative model in August 2022. She had worked closely with students and faculty at the Center since its founding, having previously directed the Refugee and Immigrant Program at The Advocates for Human Rights. “The Center has done a phenomenal job in shaping a new generation of immigration lawyers and lawyers who are connected to immigration law,” Brenes says. “Binger Center alums have a deeper appreciation for the immigrant experience that they are taking into their legal careers wherever they land.” Center students joined law firm and nonprofit partners to go to the airport to assist refugees affected by the travel ban President Trump’s administration imposed in 2017, Brenes said. Center students and Law School graduates also helped work on class-action litigation that led to an order blocking deportation of the “Somali 92,” who were forced to stay on a plane for two days before authorities returned them to the United States. “It’s a transformational transition that students have, moving from being a student and a learner to being in the driver’s seat and taking on the role and responsibility of being a partner with the client as their attorney-advocate,” Brenes says. “We balance that by being there as a safety net to help them navigate cases, but gradually work toward removing the training wheels so that they are ready to hit the ground running once they graduate.”

John Bruning ’17 Supervising Litigation Attorney, Refugee & Immigrant Program The Advocates for Human Rights Bruning traveled with Binger Center students and faculty in January 2016 to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas. He helped interview women facing deportation orders whom ICE had brought to the facility. “It was a really wild experience, and a formative one,” Bruning says. “The trip to Dilley committed me much more to immigration work. It’s a big piece of how I ended up where I am now.”

CONT >

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Memorable Case

< CONT

Linus Chan James H. Binger Clinical Professor of Law; Director, Detainee Rights Clinic

•••

Andrea N. Crumrine Jacoski ’16 Director, Detention Program, Americans for Immigrant Justice Jacoski discovered new relief for a client after reopening and investigating a flagship, precedential immigration case. She worked with an Indigenous language speaker to expand language access for a presentation before a judge at the Bloomington Immigration Court. “I definitely found my legal community within the Law School at the clinic,” Jacoski said. “I had actual cases with actual people and that was really meaningful and powerful and led me to my role doing direct representation and some bigger advocacy efforts.”

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Under the Constitution, immigration detention is a civil procedure that is not supposed to be used as punishment, according to Linus Chan, James H. Binger Professor of Clinical Law and director of the Center’s Detainee Rights Clinic. Yet the Department of Homeland Security contracts with jails and prisons to hold detainees. Chan says, “In detainment, you’re in a cage where someone is controlling what you eat, when you sleep, where you go, whether you can read, where you can exercise, every aspect of what it means to be free.” Getting someone out of detention, with its additional implications for mental and social well-being, clearly makes a profound difference in that person’s life, Chan says. “The overall goal is to help people become free and able to stay in the United States.” Chan also works to ensure that the clinic makes an impact even when it does not win. He wants clients to feel like they have autonomy and agency in a system designed to take those away. He also wants students to feel that they have had a positive effect on the client regardless of the outcome. Chan leads the only law school clinic he knows of that exclusively represents detained people. But the clinic is just one part of the process, he said, acknowledging family members who may travel far to testify and detained people who are willing to discuss, in front of strangers, terrible things they have experienced. Chan is pleased that the clinic’s efforts on behalf of detainees helped prompt Hennepin and Ramsey counties to give grants to nonprofit partners to represent detained people. Similarly, the volunteer network of lawyers the Center and law firm partners helped coordinate in response to the Trump administration’s travel bans has grown into what is now the Immigration Court Observation Project based at The Advocates for Human Rights. While the vision of the Center is to impact immigration law, Chan focuses more on its vision of creating a community with a sustainable, generative impact. “What we’re most proud of is the people and building a community that is much more of a resilient kind of space,” he says.

Memorable Case

John Keller Minnesota Chief Deputy Attorney General

••• John Keller, then executive director at the Immigrant

Law Center of Minnesota, and Casper had the idea for a center for nearly a decade before the Binger Center launched in 2013, Keller said. That idea stemmed from adoption of the Patriot Act and other legislation that resulted in further erosion of the rights of non-citizens, said Keller, who now is Minnesota’s Chief Deputy Attorney General. The times called for a new entity with attorneys, law firms, and nonprofits, grounded in high-volume, high-impact practice in immigration. The entity would benefit from the youth and energy of law students and a commitment to the long-game of advocating for greater fairness in the interpretation of laws related to non-citizens, Keller said. “The fact that we’re talking ten years later is proof that we were effective and are making important contributions in the Midwest, the Eighth Circuit, and also in key cases across the country,” Keller says. Keller cited the rapid mobilization in early 2017 when Center students and faculty joined with law firm and nonprofit partners to respond to the Trump administration’s ban on travelers from several majority-Muslim countries. Their combined efforts helped win a temporary nationwide injunction that enabled thousands of immigrants and refugees to return to the United States. It helped reunite Somali Minnesota resident Samira Dahir with her then 4-year-old daughter, Mushkaad, whose previously approved entry as a refugee was blocked under the ban. “That symbolized one success in those early days, helping to push back on a very mean-spirited and, in my opinion, misdirected exercise of executive power by the Trump administration,” Keller says. The Center offers students life-changing experiences, Keller says, while the “magic formula” of working with them is that “they keep all of us young and inspired.” “It is a beacon for law students, a beacon for practitioners to bring forward cases that can make a difference nationwide,” Keller says. “The combination of students, faculty, and partners has truly set this up as a premier place, if not the premier place, for law students who are passionate about immigration.” ❘❘❘❘

Mary Georgevich ’18 Supervising Litigation Attorney, Refugee & Immigrant Program The Advocates for Human Rights “My clinic partner and I worked on a petition for rehearing before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. Petitions for rehearing before the Eighth Circuit are very rarely granted but we convinced the panel to excise some language from an opinion that would have been harmful had it been applied to subsequent cases. We didn’t get the entire decision reconsidered but got the most harmful parts reconsidered, which we considered a win.”

Todd Nelson is a freelance writer based in Lake Elmo, Minnesota.

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From the Classroom to the Front Lines Minnesota Law’s expert faculty boldly advocate for human and civil rights BY CHARLES WILLIAMS

innesota Law is renowned for its passionate advocacy for human and civil rights, a reputation built through remarkable student engagement opportunities and the expertise of its faculty. This edition of Minnesota Law profiles three exceptional scholars whose teaching and research have impacted the legal community and ignited change.

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Professor Fionnuala Ní Aoláin In Professor Fionnuala Ní Aoláin’s classroom, the principles of international and human rights law are brought to life by a professor who complements her cutting-edge scholarship with real-world diplomacy and boots-on-the-ground advocacy. It is her hope, Ní Aoláin says, that her students become “agents of transformative change in the world, deploying their legal skills as a force for good.” A University of Minnesota Regents Professor and Robina Chair in Law, Public Policy, and Society, Ní Aoláin was appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council as the U.N.’s Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism in 2017. She was re-elected for an additional three-year term in 2020. She was the first U.N. independent expert ever allowed to interview persons tortured and rendered to the U.S. prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and the first to secure access to Syria’s crowded Al-Hol and Roj detention campus and “Panorama” prison, where 52,000 people are detained — mostly women and children, the majority younger than 12 years old. Ní Aoláin’s human rights work extends to Bosnia, where she served as a representative of the prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, and to her native country Ireland, where she is a member of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, the International Commission of Jurists, and the Executive Committee for the Belfast-based Committee on the Administration of Justice. She also is a concurrent professor at Queens University of Belfast School of Law in Northern Ireland. Ní Aoláin serves as faculty director of the Law School’s Human Rights Center, where she leads the University’s research and human rights education efforts in the context of national security and conflict, business and development, gender, and the rights of women and non-citizens.

Professor Stephen Meili

Professor Myron Orfield

Professor Stephen Meili became interested in human rights law when he worked at the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights in New York while a 1L at NYU Law in the early 1980s. He was assigned to a project seeking to provide protection to Guatemalan lawyers who were being persecuted by that country’s United States-supported government. From that experience, Meili learned about the law of asylum and how it is designed to protect those whose home country is unable or unwilling to do so. Meili used that experience when he was a post-graduate fellow at Georgetown University Law Center, representing Salvadoran and Haitian asylum-seekers. Years later, when he was invited to join the law faculty at the University of Minnesota, he embraced the opportunity. “I was attracted by the quality of this school’s human rights and international law faculty,” Meili said. “I was deeply impressed by the broad and deep support that its clinical programs receive from the administration, the faculty, and the law school’s alumni.” Now the James H. Michael Chair in International Human Rights Law at Minnesota Law, Meili teaches immigration law, produces a steady stream of scholarly research, and oversees all 28 of the school’s clinics, including its four immigration clinics (the Immigration and Human Rights Clinic, which he co-directs; the Detainee Rights Clinic; the Federal Immigration Litigation Clinic; and the Rural Immigrant Access Clinic). In addition, each summer he teaches International Refugee Law as an academic visitor at Oxford University. Today, Meili says, he remains grateful for the opportunity to help the next generation of lawyers augment their classroom learning with hands-on opportunities to apply their new knowledge to the real-life problems marginalized and under-resourced populations face.

Professor Myron Orfield Jr. already accumulated several careers’ worth of legal and policy experience when he joined the Minnesota Law faculty in 2003 to teach in the sometimes-overlapping areas of civil rights and regional metropolitan planning. He previously led a legal and planning firm that focused on regional governance reform, state and local finance, regional growth management plans, and legislative redistricting in 20 U.S. states. While serving as an elected member of the Minnesota legislature, he had authored the Metropolitan Reorganization of 1994, which transformed the Twin Cities Metropolitan Council into the most significant regional government in the U.S. Twenty years later, Orfield’s passion for these subjects remains undiminished, as evidenced by his three influential books and ongoing scholarship that explore why strategic metropolitan and regional planning is key to remediating the harsh effects of racial and economic segregation. He has also become widely known for his groundbreaking efforts to help the Obama administration uphold important Fair Housing Act rules, several of which had to survive challenges at the U.S. Supreme Court. In one, Texas Department of Housing & Community Affairs v. The Inclusive Communities Project, the Court cited Orfield’s research in support of its holding that disparate-impact claims are cognizable under the Fair Housing Act. Now the Earl R. Larson Professor of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Law and director of the Institute on Metropolitan Opportunity at Minnesota Law, Orfield continues to shape law. Students working with him often produce substantive research and engage in high-level policy discussions with national leaders, as illustrated by the 2021 Summit for Civil Rights, which students helped run. “I have been here long enough to see that experience with public policy early on changes students’ lives and careers,” says Orfield. “Preparing young lawyers to participate in the ongoing dialogue of rights and liberty in this country is the most important thing we do.” ❘❘❘❘ Charles Williams is a freelance writer based in South Bend, Indiana.

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Detainee Rights Clinic Client Wins Asylum Case

tudents in the Detainee Rights Clinic (DRC) recently scored a major victory an aslyum applicant from El Salvador — one of DRC’s first clients — who has sought asylum for nearly a decade. In 2014, Clinic leaders secured the person’s release from detention to stay deportation. Over the next few years, students worked with faculty to win an appeal at the Board of Immigration that opened a pathway for asylum. Two years ago, law students Haley Wallace ’23, Nicole Carter ’24, and Anna Schlendl ’24 took on the task of preparing for a final immigration hearing, held this past March. “These students worked hard to develop a relationship with the client, which became absolutely crucial to the success of the case,” says Professor Linus Chan, Director of the DRC at the Law School’s Center for New

Americans. “Through their good work of establishing rapport, they earned the trust of the client. They took the time to truly understand the trauma and persecution the client had endured and were confident in making the argument in front of the Immigration Court.” In March, the Immigration Court granted asylum. And importantly, says Chan, the government recognized the level of trauma and declined to appeal the ruling. “My biggest takeaway from this case is the importance of the attorney-client relationship,” says Wallace. “I worked on the case for two years, and spent a lot of time building a safe, honest, and trusting relationship with the client. I think the relationship we built was what ultimately led to winning asylum.” Chan notes that the students’ excellent written filings

Federal Immigration Litigation Clinic Prevails in Landmark Habeas Corpus Case

fter years of work, the Binger Center for New Americans has achieved key objectives to protect the rights of non-citizens subject to immigration custody. The Binger Center’s work—spearheaded by the Federal Immigration Litigation Clinic (FILC), the Detainee Rights Clinic (DRC), and some of the Center’s nonprofit and law firm partners—has focused on non-citizens with criminal histories who are spending years in mandatory civil immigration detention in Minnesota with little opportunity to meaningfully challenge their custody. Most recently, the FILC prevailed in Zackaria M. v. Garland before the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota. Clinic faculty and students joined forces with the law firm of Robins Kaplan, the National Immigrant Justice Center, Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota, The Advocates for Human Rights, and the American Civil Liberties Union. Their habeas corpus case related to non-citizens in prolonged detention. In an earlier decision, Muse v. Sessions, argued by Binger Center alum John Bruning ’17 in 2018, the U.S. District Court ruled that a non-citizen’s prolonged detention without a custody hearing was unconstitutional. Therefore, the District Court ruled, the immigration court must hold a custody hearing as a matter of due process, even when the immigration statute does not provide for one. In 2021, the District Court ruled in Pedro O. v. Garland — another Binger Center case argued by two students from the DRC — that the government, not the non-citizen, must bear the burden of proof at such

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custody hearings. In the Zackaria case, the District Court sided with the Binger Center again, ruling that due process also requires the immigration judge at a custody hearing to consider ability to post bond and whether the non-citizens’ attendance at any future hearings can be assured by alternatives to detention. “We finally won all of the due process protections we had been seeking,” says Nadia Anguiano ’17, associate professor of clinical law and director of the FILC. “We got to this point incrementally. Our position from the start was that not only did the Constitution require a custody hearing and that the government must bear the burden of proof, but also that the adjudicator must consider the ability to post bond and alternatives to detention. This was a difference maker for those who have been languishing for years in county jails with no opportunity to contest their civil immigration custody.” Anguiano says that this latest ruling reflects years of collective advocacy to shine a spotlight on how immigration court proceedings infringe on due process rights. Students in the clinic and clinic partners worked arduously to introduce evidence about what was happening in immigration court custody hearings. “While the Muse decision was a big win, the process was still flawed and custody hearings were oftentimes meaningless,” she said. Ben Gleekel ’23 started working on the habeas litigation in fall 2021 as a 2L. He and another student, Maria Saracino-Lowe ’23, drafted and filed the initial petition with the U.S. District Court under the supervision

made an expensive hearing unnecessary. “These students were persistent and searched far and wide for experts,” he says. “They produced an incredible brief, with the support of adjunct Laura Wilson, and expressed a powerful level of compassion, which made all the difference and kept a family of six together.” Wallace says that working on the case was the most rewarding experience she had in law school. “I always encourage other law student to do clinics,” she says. “There is no better way to prepare for being a lawyer than by doing the work. On this case, I got to develop a relationship with a client, draft briefs and motions to file in court, and argue a case in front of a judge. That experience is invaluable.” Carter said that she learned a great deal about asylum through researching and writing the brief for the case and preparing for court. “I’m just really glad the client was able to receive the safety and peace of mind they deserve.”❘❘❘❘

 Nicole Carter ’24, Haley Wallace ’23, and Anna Schlendl ’24

Kathy Graves is a Twin Cities-based freelance writer.

of Anguiano and other FILC faculty, including adjunct professor Mary Georgevich ’18, a senior litigation attorney with the National Immigrant Justice Center. Gleekel was then supervised by partners at Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota, including Binger alum Kerry McGuire ’16, to continue representing the client before the Immigration Court. “It was intense and complex,” Gleekel says. “I’ve lost track of how many petitions and replies we wrote. There was a lot of back and forth to get the immigration court to act in accordance with the decisions of the District Court.” Gleekel, who will continue his work at the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota full-time as an attorney and Saeks Public Interest Fellow in September, said that despite how intensive the work was, it was also deeply rewarding.

“Advocating with someone who has had their life and liberty stripped from them and going before a court to force an oppressive system to do the right thing is empowering,” he says. “It also gave me an opportunity to get to know a client well. Such an involved process for such a noble and good cause perfectly positioned me to learn.” Anguiano notes that the impact of these collective decisions extends beyond the District of Minnesota. “Habeas is being litigated everywhere in the country, so other petitioners and courts are borrowing from Minnesota to establish good case law across the country.”❘❘❘❘ Kathy Graves is a Twin Cities-based freelance writer.

 Front: Mary Georgevich ’18, Maria Saracino-Lowe ’23, Prof. Nadia Anguiano ’17, John Weber ’22, and Ellie Soskin ’22. Back: Prof. Linus Chan and Ben Gleekel ’23

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Minnesota Law Review:

A Catalyst for Legal Scholarship and Practice After more than 100 years, Minnesota Law Review remains a major influence on scholarship and legal decision-making BY AMY CARLSON GUSTAFSON

innesota Law Review was ranked #11 among law reviews in the country, according to this year’s law journal rankings from Washington and Lee University School of Law. That marks a five-step jump from last year’s 16th place. But beyond this impressive ranking, the journal continues to make a lasting impact on the legal profession. “The Minnesota Law Review has the privilege and responsibility to publish outstanding scholarship that will affect how the law works,” says editor-in-chief Philip de Sa e Silva ’24. “It is also a powerful learning opportunity for students. Every staffer and editor works incredibly hard to create the best publication we possibly can. We have the opportunity to engage with scholars and to create a tangible product that has a real effect on the world — and we get to do this work as early as our second year of law school.” Published six times a year, the student-run Minnesota Law Review features articles by law professors and notes from law students. It includes a board of up to 39 student editors, who determine policies and procedures, and 39 student staff members. “When I joined the Minnesota Law Review, I was stunned by how positive and meaningful the experience was,” de Sa e Silva says. “It has been a highlight of my educational experience. I have particularly appreciated Law Review’s strong sense of community and the chance to collaborate with other students. My colleagues and I want to build on what previous leaders have done to make sure the journal continues to be great for other students in the future.”

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The Law School’s reputation for collegiality finds its way into the Law Review thanks to a culture where people are kind, respectful, and collaborative, says de Sa e Silva, who was a high school English teacher for eight years before starting at Minnesota Law. One of the goals is to preserve the author’s voice as much as possible through careful editing. “We hear examples of how articles published in the Minnesota Law Review go on to shape policies out in the world,” de Sa e Silva says. “People in positions of power read the works we publish, which can affect their decisionmaking. That is profound.” He also notes that publishing in a journal as well regarded as the Minnesota Law Review can have a major impact on a professor’s career and case for tenure. Established in 1917 by Henry J. Fletcher and William Reynolds Vance, the Minnesota Law Review was initially overseen by the law school in partnership with the Minnesota State Bar Association.“A well-conducted law review… ought to do something to develop the spirit of statesmanship as distinguished from a dry professionalism. It ought at the same time contribute a little something to the systematic growth of the whole law,” Fletcher wrote at the time.

AMONG LAW REVIEWS IN THE COUNTRY The 2022 Washington & Lee Law Journal Rankings were released in July, providing numerical rankings for the top 400 U.S.-published law journals.

 The Minnesota Law Review editorial board for volume 108, from L to R: Evan Dale ’24, Lead Note and Comment Editor; Chad Nowlan ’24, Symposium Articles Editor; Carly Heying ’24, Lead Articles Editor; Sam Ferguson ’24, Membership Recruitment Editor; Lucy Chin ’24, Lead Online Editor; Mary Fleming ’24, Co-Lead Managing Editor; Philip de Sa e Silva ’24, Editor-in-Chief; and Toph Beach ’24, Co-Lead Managing Editor.

Students began overseeing the publication in the 1950s, with the student-filled editor-in-chief role reinstated in the late 1980s. “The journal has a rich history of law students who believe in the importance of this work and who do the best they can to create an outstanding publication,” says de Sa e Silva. “We feel a responsibility to use the Minnesota Law Review’s platform to make a positive difference in the law and to elevate the work of scholars trying to improve the law. Our reputation allows us to do that work even more effectively.” Kristin Hickman, McKnight Presidential Professor in Law, Distinguished McKnight University Professor, and Harlan Albert Rogers Professor in Law, has advised the Minnesota Law Review staff for the last decade. She said being a part of the publication helps students improve research and writing skills, increase career opportunities, and form bonds with fellow students. She serves as a sounding board for editors when needed. “The students on the Minnesota Law Review are smart, hardworking, and engaged,” she says. “The students run it. They have their own rules, bylaws, traditions and norms, and governing structure.”

Hickman says numerous articles published in the Minnesota Law Review have made an impact on the development of the law. In 2016, in honor of its 100th anniversary, the Law Review dedicated its symposium issue to reflections on several of its most cited and influential articles. “One of the virtues of being ranked highly is that the staff largely have their pick among articles,” Hickman says. “It’s a position of prestige, privilege, and influence.” Professor Alan Rozenshtein has now joined Professor Hickman as a faculty co-advisor for the journal. “I was on my law review in law school and I know how important it is for legal scholarship,” Rozenshtein says. “To the extent that I can offer advice to make this a better experience for the students and a better experience for the legal academy, I am delighted to do that."” ❘❘❘❘❘ Amy Carlson Gustafson is a Twin Cities-based freelance writer.

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Five Full-time Faculty Join Minnesota Law Meet our newest faculty experts in federal immigration law, administrative law, aging and elder law, intellectual property, and environmental law This fall, Minnesota Law welcomed five new full-time faculty members with an impressive range of legal expertise among them, including immigration, administrative law, aging and elder law, intellectual property, and environmental law: Nadia Anguiano ’17, associate clinical professor of law and director of the Federal Immigration Litigation Clinic; Nicholas Bednar ’16, associate professor of law; Alexander Boni-Saenz, professor of law; Sapna Kumar, Henry J. Fletcher Professor of Law; and Jack Whiteley, associate professor of law.

Nadia Anguiano ’17 Earlier this year, Nadia Anguiano ’17 moved from her role as a visiting assistant clinical professor and interim director of the Federal Immigration Litigation Clinic to a permanent faculty position as an associate clinical professor of law. Anguiano continues to direct and teach at the clinic, which is part of the James H. Binger Center for New Americans, as she guides students through complex litigation to defend the rights of non-citizens. A Mexican-born immigrant, Anguiano said her background inspired her law career. She earned an engineering degree, and while working in the field, she also became deeply involved in the immigrant rights movement. Eventually, she decided to follow her passion and to pursue a second career in law. “I was working in Rochester,

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Minnesota, in my engineering career, and during that time I was also really invested in the local community pursuing immigrant rights,” Anguiano says. “I had established a home and a sense of community that I didn’t want to lose. After applying very broadly to law schools, I ultimately decided to stay home and pursue my J.D. at Minnesota Law. I was a student in the clinic that I now run when it was at the pilot stage.” As a Minnesota Law student, Anguiano was admitted to the Order of the Coif and was an editor of the Minnesota Journal of International Law. After graduating, she served as a law clerk for Judge Jane Kelly of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit and Judge Susan Richard Nelson of the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota. She was recognized for her work on the national Amicus

Committee of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. Along with directing the Federal Immigration Litigation Clinic — where she and her students represent non-citizens in complex immigration cases before the U.S. District Courts, U.S. Courts of Appeals, and the U.S. Supreme Court — Anguiano teaches a seminar in post-conviction relief. “I’m here not just because I’m passionate about immigrant rights, but because I’m also passionate about clinical education,” she says. “My vision for the clinic is that it be a prominent federal litigation program with the dual goals of providing a transformative clinical education for our students while also impacting the law in favorable ways and protecting and advancing the rights of non-citizens.”

Nadia Anguiano ’17

Photos: Tony Nelson

Nicholas Bednar ’16 A graduate of Minnesota Law, Associate Professor of Law Nicholas Bednar ’16 received his Ph.D. in political science from Vanderbilt University, where he was an affiliate of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions. He specializes in administrative law, executive-branch politics, immigration, and quantitative methods. Joining the Law School faculty is his “dream job” and a privilege, he said. “I took a constitutional law class in undergrad and I really liked it,” Bednar says. “I always thought I wanted to be a college professor and wanted to do more of a research and academic-oriented path. That is a really hard path to get into. I had many mentors at the University of Minnesota who were willing to help me along the way and push me up the ladder.”

Nicholas Bednar ’16

As a student at Minnesota Law, Bednar earned Order of the Coif honors, served as an editor on the Minnesota Law Review, and received the William B. Lockhart Award for Excellence in Scholarship, Leadership, and Service. He clerked for Chief Judge John Tunheim ’80 on the United States District Court for the District Court of Minnesota and for Judge Tracy Smith ’88 on the Minnesota Court of Appeals. Bednar’s research has appeared in the American Political Science Review, the Cardozo Law Review, the George Washington Law Review, and Political Science Research and Methods. He is teaching Torts and Legislation and Regulation in his first year at Minnesota Law. “I want to provide the type of mentorship that I received here,” he says. “And I want to be here for students, and really push them along the path. Whether that’s private practice, or public service, or wher-

ever their chosen field is, I want to help get them there.”

Alexander Boni-Saenz Alexander Boni-Saenz joins

Minnesota Law from the ChicagoKent College of Law, Illinois Institute of Technology, where he served as a professor of law, associate dean for scholarship and faculty development, and a Norman and Edna Freehling Scholar. With scholarship focused on age as a socio-legal category, legal issues in aging, and theoretical and doctrinal questions in inheritance law, BoniSaenz says his interest in aging and the law stems from a close relationship with his grandmother when he was growing up. Ever since he was young, he has sought volunteer opportunities with older adults, including at nursing homes.

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Alexander Boni-Saenz

< CONT

“That got me interested and upset about some of the conditions in which people live out their later days,” he says. “I ended up going to get a master’s in social policy with a focus on aging policy. And then I got interested in the legal side, which led me to law school.” Boni-Saenz served as a Bigelow Fellow and Lecturer at University of Chicago Law School and was a visiting professor at Washington University School of Law and University of Iowa Law. Prior to teaching, he clerked for Judge Diane P. Wood of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and practiced law as a Skadden Fellow at Legal Aid Chicago, where he created a medical-legal partnership for low-income seniors. He earned a J.D. from Harvard Law School, where he was an editor for the Harvard Law Review and the

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Sapna Kumar

Harvard Latino Law Review. He holds a M.Sc. in Social Policy from the London School of Economics and an A.B. from Harvard College, where he was a Truman Scholar. His scholarly research has appeared in publications including the Washington University Law Review, Boston College Law Review, Southern California Law Review, and UCLA Law Review. He has taught courses in property, trusts and estates, health law, elder law, and Latinx and the law. “The Law School is a very prominent and well-respected institution that provides a great platform for work I want to do,” Boni-Saenz says. “For me, in particular, there’s an aging consortium that exists at the university that brings together people doing all types of age and aging-related work. I’m excited to be part of that.”

Sapna Kumar Sapna Kumar joins the Law School as the Henry J. Fletcher Professor of Law. Previously, she was the John Mixon Chair of Law at the University of Houston Law Center, where she was a faculty member for 14 years. With a background in intellectual property and administrative law, Kumar has written extensively about the U.S. International Trade Commission and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and has experience in international intellectual property law. As a 2018–2019 FulbrightSchuman Innovation Grant recipient, Kumar researched Europe’s use of technically trained patent judges at the University of Strasbourg’s Center for International Intellectual Property Studies and at the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition in Munich.

scientific backgrounds who are interested in becoming patent agents, which I’m interested in getting more involved with as well.”

Jack Whiteley Jack Whiteley joins Minnesota

Jack Whiteley

“We have family here, so I’m thrilled not only to join the faculty but to live in Minnesota,” she says. “I also deeply appreciate Minnesota Law’s commitment to academic freedom.” Kumar, a graduate of the University of Chicago Law School, is a registered patent attorney and has practiced intellectual property litigation. A faculty fellow and part of the Center for Genome Ethics Law & Policy at Duke University of Law School, she also clerked for Judge Kenneth Ripple in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. Her work has been published in both science and legal publications, and she has presented her research around the world. Her article “Contractual Solutions to Overcome Drug Scarcity During Pandemics and Epidemics” (with Ana Santos Rutschman) was published in

Nature Biotechnology, and her follow-up book chapter, “Planning for Pandemic and Epidemic-Related Drug Scarcity” (with Ana Santos Rutschman), will be published in Intellectual Property, COVID-19, and the Next Pandemic: Diagnosing Problems, Developing Cures (forthcoming, Cambridge University Press). She teaches courses in property law, legislation and regulation, and advanced administrative law. “I’m looking forward to helping expand the intellectual property offerings at the Law School and hopefully expose more students to IP law,” she says. “When I cover property law, which is a required first-year class, I spend a few classes talking about intellectual property so students can get exposed to it and consider if it is something they’re interested in. We have a Master of Science in patent law for people with

Law from a previous position at Georgetown University Law Center, where he taught and practiced environmental law as a fellow and supervising attorney in the Environmental Law & Justice Clinic. He teaches and writes in the areas of environmental law, property, and evidence. His publications have appeared in the Cornell Law Review, Northwestern University Law Review, and Mississippi Law Journal. His scholarly interests cover issues in environmental law, property, and evidence, including the conceptual and historical foundations of these fields. Whiteley earned his J.D. at Yale Law School, where he was a Coker Fellow and executive editor of the Yale Journal of International Law. He was a litigation associate at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton and clerked for Judge Richard R. Clifton of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in Honolulu. “I am looking forward to helping prepare students to become firstyear lawyers,” he says. “I hope for students to learn not only the rules and principles of the laws that the courses cover, but also to develop skills in legal reasoning, writing, and speaking. These skills are often helpful to lawyers soon after they leave law school.” “I would like to create a learning environment where everyone is excited to participate and get good conversations going,” he continues. “I’ve found that when I was a student, those were the classes in which I learned the most effectively.” ❘❘❘❘

By Amy Carlson Gustafson

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Faculty News & Honors

work with students. From 2021 to 2023, he was the Law School’s Vaughan G. Papke Research Scholar and was awarded the Law School’s Stanley V. Kinyon Clinical Teacher of the Year Award in 2022.

Nadia Anguiano ’17, associate clinical professor of law and director of the Federal Immigration Litigation Clinic, was recognized for her work on the national Amicus Committee of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA). The Amicus Committee was awarded the 2023 Jack Wasserman Memorial Award, which was established in 1980 and is given in recognition of “excellence in litigation in the field of immigration law.” Anguiano previously served on AILA’s Federal Court Litigation Section Steering Committee and on the Board of Directors of the Minnesota Freedom Fund, a nonprofit organization that pays criminal bail and immigration bonds for incarcerated individuals who cannot otherwise afford to pay.

Linus Chan has been appointed

the James H. Binger Clinical Professor of Law. The Board of Regents also recently approved his promotion to the rank of clinical professor of law. His clinical work focuses on removal defense for those detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). He is widely recognized for his work on behalf of his clients and for his

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Kristin Hickman, McKnight Presidential Professor in Law; Distinguished McKnight University Professor; and Harlan Albert Rogers Professor in Law, was appointed a senior fellow by the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS), to serve a two-year term. ACUS is an independent, non-partisan federal agency within the executive branch dedicated to improving administrative law and federal regulatory processes. It conducts applied research and provides expert recommendations and other advice to improve federal agency procedures. Its membership is composed of senior federal officials, academics, and other experts from the private sector. Since 1968, ACUS has issued hundreds of recommendations, published reports and reference guides, and organized forums to improve the efficiency, adequacy, and fairness of administrative processes such as rulemaking and adjudication. Many have resulted in reforms by federal agencies, the President, Congress, and the Judicial Conference of the United States. Hickman previously served ACUS for six years as a public member and for four years as chair of its Judicial Review Committee.

Andrew Martineau received continuous appointment and promotion to associate librarian as approved by the Board of Regents. Martineau is the instructional services librarian. He leads the Law Library’s instructional program, which includes coordinating research instruction for first-year law students, teaching a practice-ready legal research course, and giving presentations on specialized legal research topics in upper-division seminars. He also provides reference services to the Law School community. Martineau is a member of the American Association of Law Libraries and the Minnesota Association of Law Libraries. Martineau is currently the President of the Minnesota Association of Law Libraries and serves as the vice chair/chair-elect of the AALL Law Library Journal Article of the Year Jury.

Stephen Meili, the James H.

Michael Chair in International Law, was named the assistant dean for clinical education. Meili directs the Immigration and Human Rights Clinic and leads the clinical program at the University of Minnesota Law School. Meili writes

FACULTY IN PRINT and teaches about the rights of non-citizens, particularly those seeking asylum. His work often takes a comparative approach: His recent book, published in 2022 by Oxford University Press, is a study of the constitutionalization of human rights law and its impact on asylum-seekers in Colombia, Mexico, South Africa, Uganda and the United States. His scholarship has also analyzed the effectiveness of human rights treaties in protecting asylum-seekers in Canada, Ecuador, Mexico, the U.S., and the European Union.

Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, University Regents Professor; Robina Chair in Law, Public Policy, and Society; and faculty director of the Human Rights Center at the Law School, was recently elected to the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) for a five-year term. This year, as part of her mandate as United Nations Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism, Ní Aoláin completed a technical visit to the detention facility at the U.S. Naval Station Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. She also completed an official visit to a detention camp in Syria. She presented her findings and recommendations at the conclusion of each visit. In September, she joined European parliamentarians at a global conference in Brussels that examined the closure of Guantánamo. Caleb Smith was promoted to

clinical professor of law as approved by the Board of Regents. Smith, the director of the Ronald M. Mankoff Tax Clinic, is actively involved with the American Bar Association Tax Section, where he

has served as vice chair and co-chair of the American Bar Association Tax Section Pro Bono & Tax Clinic Committee since 2018. He has given numerous presentations at national American Bar Association Tax Section conferences on lowincome tax issues and has co-authored chapters in both the seventh and eighth editions of the American Bar Association publication Effectively Representing Your Client Before the IRS. In addition to directing the Federal Tax Clinic, he teaches Federal Tax Procedure. Smith was awarded the Stanley V. Kinyon Clinical Teacher of the Year Award for clinical faculty for the 2020-21 academic year.

Stephen Meili The Constitutionalization of Human Rights Law: Implications for Refugees (Oxford University Press, 2022)

Fionnuala Ní Aoláin The Oxford Handbook of Gender and Conflict (Oxford University Press, paperback ed. with updated introduction, 2023) (co-editor with Naomi Cahn, Dina Francesca Haynes and Nahla Valji)

Loren Turner received continuous appointment and promotion to associate librarian. Turner specializes in and teaches foreign, comparative, and international legal research. She is an affiliate faculty member of the Law School’s Human Rights Center and the Law Library’s liaison to faculty and students engaged in foreign, comparative, and international law research, scholarship, and advocacy. She has served in various leadership roles within the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL), most notably as chair of the Foreign, Comparative, and International Law Special Interest Section (FCIL-SIS). Turner was recently elected vice president/ president-elect of the Minnesota Association of Law Libraries. ❘❘❘❘

Michael Tonry Prisons and Prisoners (University of Chicago Press, 2022) (co-editor with Sandra Bucerius) ❘❘❘❘

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AUTHOR in QUESTION Professor Brian Bix

Fredrick W. Thomas Professor of Law and Philosophy

Families by Agreement: Navigating Choice, Tradition, and Law Published by Cambridge University Press, Professor Brian Bix’s new book, Families by Agreement: Navigating Choice, Tradition, and Law, explores the increasing legal recognition of private ordering in American family law. Today, individuals can alter the terms of marriage and divorce through agreements, and courts sometimes allow individuals to create, waive, and alter parental rights by way of surrogacy, open adoption, and co-parenting agreements, among other mechanisms. But when is such private ordering beneficial to all, and when should it be regulated or prohibited? This important work examines these questions in accessible detail to provide an important resource for those who litigate in these areas and those who want to be thoughtful participants in these moral and policy debates. You’ve written several books. What inspired you to write this book? The connection, interaction, or overlap between family law and agreements, or contract law, has been an interest of mine for a very long time. It was the topic of one of my first law review articles, 25 years ago. The topic includes a cluster of issues I have revisited in many different forms since then, and I thought that it was time to try to view family law agreements in a broader and more comprehensive way. What are some of the issues this book explores? It looks at issues of binding agreements across domestic relations law, including common law marriage, cohabitation agreements, premarital agreements, marital agreements, separation agreements, coparenting

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agreements, surrogacy agreements, agreements dividing pre-embryos, and open adoption agreements. What differentiates this book from your other work in family law? This book is comprehensive in the types of agreements discussed, in order to try to derive more general conclusions about policy and morality for such agreements. What are a few key takeaways from your book? That the relevant moral and policy considerations do vary significantly from one type of family agreement to another, so that one cannot justify a single general position, for example enforcing all such agreements or refusing enforcement to all agreements. Also, the book urges that in nearly every area, the enforcement of

agreements will be beneficial if the right sort of regulatory restrictions — procedural safeguards and mandatory provisions — are in place. Who is the target audience for the book? I hope that it is a book that will be equally valuable to law students, family law scholars and family law practitioners. What is something you were surprised to discover when writing this book? Both family law and contract law are primarily matters of state law, not federal law, and my research for the book displays how widely states vary in their treatment, with many states authorizing or even encouraging agreements that other states refuse to enforce or even criminalize.

“

This book is comprehensive in the types of agreements discussed, in order to try to derive more general conclusions about policy and morality for such agreements.” —Professor Brian Bix

What do you hope to accomplish with this book? I want to create a resource that allows interested students, practitioners, and scholars to consider all aspects of family agreements: doctrinal rules, policy considerations, and moral arguments. How would you describe your book to someone who is unfamiliar with the subject matter?

Did you encounter any challenges or barriers when writing your book? My own experience has been, across many such projects, that books are often easy to start but difficult to finish. ❘❘❘❘

Photo: Tony Nelson

Formal and informal agreements are pervasive in our domestic lives. When conflict occurs and one or both parties seek to enforce an agreement, the law varies from a complete refusal to enforce, through selective enforcement and regulatory rules, to strong support for enforcement. This book is about why the law’s response varies, and where the rules should be changed.

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Closing the Gender Pay Gap

MINNESOTA LAW PROFESSOR JILL HASDAY was instrumental

in the passage of a new state law aimed at combatting wage discrimination and narrowing racial and gender pay gaps in the state. Beginning in January 2024, Minnesota employers can no longer ask job applicants about their pay history under the Preventing Pay Discrimination Act, which Gov. Tim Walz signed into law in May. “Asking job applicants about their pay history perpetuates pay discrimination,” Hasday testified before the Minnesota Senate Judiciary Committee in March. Hasday’s testimony came at the invitation of Minnesota Human Rights Commissioner Rebecca Lucero ’07. “The gender pay gap is a persistent and pervasive problem,” Hasday told lawmakers. “The evidence suggests that prohibiting employers from asking applicants about pay history is an important step forward.” Lucero says she sought out Hasday because of the professor’s expertise in sex discrimination and constitutional law matters. In addition to testifying five times, Hasday wrote letters of support, discussed the act with news media and on social media, and helped Lucero wrestle with specific proposed amendments. “She is incredibly brilliant at her work,” Lucero says of Hasday. “I’m really proud of the outcome and (Hasday) was absolutely instrumental in moving this forward.” The Minnesota Department of Human Rights is planning to launch an effort soon to make employees and employers aware of the new law.

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History of disparities continues Significant wage differences continue today despite hopes that the federal Equal Pay Act of 1963 would end them, Hasday told lawmakers. Employers who are sued under the federal act for paying women less often contend that they rely on each applicant’s pay history to determine salaries, Hasday testified. Some federal courts — including the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, which covers Minnesota — have accepted that argument. “This interpretation of federal law has permitted employers in Minnesota to pay a woman less than a man doing the same job, so long as the employer can point to pay history as the basis for the discrimination,” Hasday says. “That will no longer be legal when the Preventing Pay Discrimination Act takes effect on January 1.” In 2021, the median weekly earnings for women working full time nationally were 83.1% of that of male full-time workers, Hasday testified. Black women earned 63.1% of white men’s earnings and Latinas, 58.4%. Minnesota’s pay disparities are even worse, according to sources Hasday cited. “For every dollar a white male worker earns in Minnesota, the average white woman worker earns 81 cents, the average Asian American woman earns 70 cents, the average Black woman and the average Native woman earn 61 cents, and the average Latina earns 55 cents,” she testified. Wage gaps persist in part because some employers ask job applicants

Photo: Cory Ryan

Professor Jill Hasday plays a critical role in the newly signed Preventing Pay Discrimination Act

about their pay history before determining what salary to offer, Hasday said. If a woman’s first employer pays her less than men earn for the same work, the wage difference may follow her to subsequent employers. “Asking about pay history can lock people into a cycle of unequal pay, where they cannot escape being underpaid by getting a new job,” Hasday says. Minnesota joins some 21 states and numerous local governments that have enacted pay history prohibitions. No border state has taken such action yet.

“ The gender pay gap is a persistent and pervasive problem. The evidence suggests that prohibiting employers from asking applicants about pay history is an important step forward.” —Prof. Jill Hasday

“It was well past time for Minnesota to get on the bandwagon,” Hasday says. Pay history bans pay dividends In states that have adopted pay history bans, the pay of female job changers increased by an average of 8% while the pay of African American job changers increased by an average of 13%, Hasday testified, citing a 2020 study from Boston University School of Law researchers. Hasday found unconvincing an argument that the act would create a compliance burden for employers. “All the employer has to do is not ask

the pay history question,” she says. Others argued that the act could affect profits. “I can see why some employers might not like this,” Hasday says. “But my response is, if your business model turns on underpaying people, I’m not sympathetic.” Lucero began working on the Preventing Pay Discrimination Act soon after Walz and Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan appointed her to her position in 2019. “It was at the top of my list of policy changes because the pay gap disproportionately impacts women, women of color, Black women, brown women, Indigenous women,” Lucero

says. “To work on a bill that works at this intersectional place is very exciting to me.” The act serves as a “systems fix,” Lucero says. “I don’t believe that business owners want to pay women less than men. Yet when you look at the data over and over again, that is what is happening.” Therefore, she says, the bill is also a proactive remedy. “Everywhere that we can be proactive to prevent discrimination from occurring in the first place is better for all of us,” Lucero says. ❘❘❘❘ Todd Nelson is a freelance writer in Lake Elmo, Minnesota.

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THEORY at WORK

THE FUTURE OF INSURANCE IS HERE Professor Daniel Schwarcz forges new frontiers with his innovative research into the impact of Artificial Intelligence and the law BY CATHY MADISON

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Illustration: Robert Ball

ome might call insurance law a snooze of a subject, but it has proved the opposite for Professor Daniel Schwarcz, whose academic research and teaching pursuits affect public policy in significant ways. “‘Insurance’ is a good way to kill conversation at a cocktail party,” Schwarcz admits. “But for that reason, there is a real discrepancy between its importance in the real world and the attention it receives. What I like about the field is that it allows work in so many different areas such as financial regulation, health law, contracts, artificial intelligence. Insurance is everywhere, and it’s foundational in many of the areas in which law operates.” Insurance was not on his radar when Schwarcz was growing up in New York. Long before he entered Harvard Law School, the son and grandson of lawyers viewed legal academia as an “enticing, exciting field.” A debater who loved performing before a captive audience, he looked forward to the freedom of teaching and the intellectual stimulation of research. He considered pursuing criminal law, but after graduating and joining the Boston law firm Ropes & Gray, he got his first assignment in insurance law. Schwarcz, an economics major at Amherst, was immediately drawn to the field, which offered opportunities with practical significance while satisfying his appetite for variety. “My nature is to get interested in different things and flit around,” he says. “There’s an insurance angle to pretty much anything, so I don’t get bored.” Artificial Intelligence (AI) is just one example. Headlines suggest interest in it has exploded lately, but Schwarcz has been studying AI from an insurance standpoint for years. He often tackles risk and discrimination issues, and AI’s predictions about loss raise complex issues that are at the very least contested and contestable, whether or not the law deals with them, he says. He also has become very interested in how new AI tools such as ChatGPT will impact the practice and teaching of law.

“It’s an evolution,” adds Schwarcz, the Fredrikson & Byron Professor of Law, a frequent source for media commentary. “We’re at the very start of understanding the ways in which AI will affect the practice of law, or any white-collar profession. We’re still trying to understand it.” The rapidly expanding field of cyberinsurance has also grabbed his focus. He and three other professors recently published results from a wide-ranging study that showed that during data breach investigations, lawyers doing their jobs—protecting client confidentiality, limiting litigation risk—can actually undermine cybersecurity. “Insurers are unwittingly facilitating this,” Schwarcz says. “They’re paying for the immediate after-effects of the breach but also for the liability incurred, so that means both sides of the ledger are affected. We had to look at the information in ways that would be helpful.” Co-author Josephine Wolff, associate professor of cybersecurity policy, computer science, and engineering at Tufts University, lauds not only Schwarcz’s insight and boundless energy but also his knack for tackling research that penetrates beyond academic circles. “He is incredibly brilliant as a lawyer, but he also understands how law intersects with other fields,” she says. “It’s inspiring to see how, as a scholar, he is so willing to throw himself into new areas.” Schwarcz shares this passion with his students. Since joining the Law School in 2007, he has won the Stanley V. Kinyon Teacher of the Year Award three times. “I love teaching,” he says, noting that it can deliver concrete benefits that affect many lives. “I care that what I do has an impact. For me, it’s not just about process. I like process—sometimes it’s fun—but if it were just about process I’d drive myself a little bit nuts. At the end of the day, I’m not into work unless it might matter.” ❘❘❘❘ Cathy Madison is a Twin Cities-based freelance writer.

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ALL RISE

Jadyn Lovelady ’26 Named First Recipient of the Jones Day Diversity Fellowship With a passion for helping others, she is excited about the new challenges of being a law student FASCINATED WITH HUMAN PSYCHOLOGY AND THE LAW, Jadyn Lovelady ’26 planned to

pursue a career as a forensic psychologist. She thoroughly enjoyed her work counseling youth in the juvenile justice system. But even as she was building trust with clients and helping them get on a better path in life, she realized she could make a bigger impact as a lawyer. Lovelady’s work experience in the criminal justice system honed her ability to build rapport with people and channel her empathy to champion the needs of others. She comes to Minnesota Law as a first-generation college and law student who is blazing her own trail to achieve her career goals. When Lovelady was named the first recipient of the Jones Day Diversity Fellowship, she was beyond thrilled to have the extra support and guidance. This charitable contribution to the University of Minnesota Foundation provides a full tuition scholarship for three years of law school, plus mentorship from Jones Day attorneys throughout a student’s time at Minnesota Law. A global law firm, Jones Day partnered with Minnesota Law on its scholarship and fellowship to expand the pipeline of diverse lawyers. “It’s a dream come true,” Lovelady says. “I will be able to learn a lot from the people at Jones Day. Having them have my back is such an asset.” She notes that the firm created the fellowship after the murder of George Floyd, aiming to increase diversity in the legal profession. “I’m happy to have people acknowledge that there is little racial diversity, especially for

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Black women, in the legal realm. To have people say, ‘We want you here. You belong in this space’—I’m extra appreciative of that.” Lovelady grew up in the Des Moines area and earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Creighton University. During college, she did internships in corrections and treatment programs for adult sex offenders. She engaged in research with a psychology professor studying substance abuse treatment for people participating in pretrial services or probation. Lovelady also was active in mock trial and the student senate and graduated summa cum laude. An internship with the Fourth Judicial District of Iowa that focused on rehabilitating adult sex offenders led to similar full-time work with juveniles in Des Moines. As a certified sex offender treatment professional, Lovelady worked as a problematic sexual behavior counselor for juveniles. Through weekly therapy sessions, she helped clients address the root causes of their actions and learn healthier decision-making skills, with the overall goal to prevent recidivism. She also developed curricula for group sessions and therapy for female juveniles. She found the work rewarding, especially as she saw clients gain a deeper understanding of themselves and greater self-confidence. “I loved it,” she says “Changing lives is wonderful. Learning something new and challenging my current perspective to help people get their desired lifestyle was extremely fulfilling.” Lovelady knows that this work changed her in ways that will enhance her capabilities as a lawyer. “I have learned to empathize with

people I never thought I could initially,” she says. “There is a stigma attached to people who have committed sexual offenses. Being able to empathize with perhaps one of the most ostracized groups can help me empathize with pretty much anyone. I can take the perspective of anybody and provide the best legal representation possible.” As she was considering where to attend law school, Lovelady initially planned to leave the Midwest. But the opportunities afforded by the Jones Day Diversity Fellowship, paired with a stand-out faculty and a supportive community at Minnesota Law, were too good to pass up, she says. Lovelady is open to numerous career avenues for channeling her skills. She wants to learn the most effective ways to help people and apply her critical-thinking and problem-solving abilities, whether that’s in the field of corporate law or advocating for individuals experiencing mental health challenges. “I believe that everybody deserves an ardent attorney who can fight their case on whatever side they are on,” Lovelady says. “Regardless of what you do as an attorney, you are helping move the needle in some way. And then I want to use pro bono time to help people who have the least or nothing to contribute to their defense.” Lovelady looks forward to taking on new challenges and diving into learning. “This is a privilege I am not going to take lightly,” she says. “I will continue to put my best foot forward to succeed in law school and represent Jones Day and Minnesota Law to the best of my ability.” ❘❘❘❘ Suzy Frisch is a Twin Cities-based freelance writer.

“

I’m happy to have people acknowledge that there is little racial diversity, especially for Black women, in the legal realm. To have people say, ‘We want you here. You belong in this space’ — I’m extra appreciative of that.”

Photo: Tony Nelson

—Jadyn Lovelady ’26

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MEET T HE C L ASS OF

2026

The University of Minnesota Law School is proud to welcome the Class of 2026! Comprising a diverse and talented group of 218 individuals, the incoming class promises to continue the Law School’s tradition of producing exceptional lawyers who make a difference in their communities, the nation, and the world.

because of that was denied entry to university on multiple occasions. He never gave up and he was eventually admitted. My grandfather is a living testament to determination, vision, and perseverance.”

and literature, Cheng also taught creative writing courses to students at the Minnesota Correctional Facility at Faribault through the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop. Cheng says he knows first-hand how well this school stacks up against the best in the nation and how warm, impressive, and capable the people are here. He says, “I’m lucky to attend a prestigious institution in the place I already call home.”

Ricky Bayon-Barrera ’26

is originally from Toluca, Mexico, but moved to Houston when he was a child. He studied finance and economics at Texas A & M University. While there, he became the first minority and first Hispanic president of his fraternity. In this role, he founded a philanthropic golf tournament to assist the American Diabetes Association. He also worked as a paralegal specializing in the preparation and execution of jury and bench trials of criminal cases. Bayon-Barrera says he is inspired by his grandfather. “My grandfather has an amazing life story, he was raised in extreme poverty and

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Vincent Cheng ’26 is originally from Winnipeg, Canada, but moved to Minnesota when he was seven. He majored in English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and then received a Master of Fine Arts degree in fiction from the University of Minnesota. After college, he worked as a high school English teacher where he also directed the debate program. With a deep love of writing

Paul Leon ’26 is a proud double Gopher from the Twin Cities. After graduating from the University of Minnesota, he joined the Jesuit Volunteer Corps and worked

with people with developmental disabilities. He met his wife and then traveled around Europe before they settled in Chicago where he taught and was a volunteer coordinator. They recently moved back to Minnesota to be closer to family. He said he’s excited to be back on campus and staying local—and that regardless of the locale, Minnesota Law’s reputation speaks for itself.

that preserves the story and memory of Anne Frank and victims of the Shoah, while advocating for human rights. He chose Minnesota Law because he was impressed by its offerings for those who want to learn human rights law, especially its clinics and fellowship offerings.

Board of Pardons meetings. She is also active in the Council of Asian Pacific Minnesotans.

Matt Prager ’26 is originally

Eleanor Nagel-Bennett ’26 Alex Mahmou-Werndli ’26

grew up in Wisconsin, just north of Madison. The University of Minnesota became his home during his undergrad years. He majored in Arabic and North African history and also worked for the U’s Department of Athletics and the Writing Center. After graduating, he taught English in Morocco where he met his wife. His experience in the Writing Center piqued his interest to earn a Master’s degree in rhetoric/composition at Oregon State. He then returned to Morocco as a university faculty member.

is originally from Kalamazoo, Michigan. She recently completed her undergraduate degree from Michigan State University. She chose Minnesota Law because of the community. She says, “Every interaction I’ve had with faculty, staff, and students has shown me that Minnesota Law is a special place. From my first visit, I knew Minnesota Law was the place for me.”

Pia Puentespina ’26 was born

Alex Mysler ’26 was born in the U.S. but has lived in Buenos Aires, Argentina, since the age of two. He studied history at the Universidad de Buenos Aires, and worked as an educator in various settings. During the past year, he worked at a museum

and raised in the Philippines, where her large, tight-knit family still resides. She started her educational journey at United World College in China. She then came to Macalester College where she received her undergraduate degree in political science and international studies. Following graduation, she served as an aide to the general counsel in the Minnesota governor’s office where her roles included coordinating extradition matters and preparing

from the Chicago suburbs and received his undergraduate degree from Denison University in central Ohio. Most recently, his work has included writing for the satirical fake newspaper, The Onion. Prager says he chose Minnesota Law because, “Minnesota Law is a great school in a lovely city and of course, they accepted me!”

Emily Sparling ’26 is a passionate fan of Formula One racing and a trained museologist. She was born and raised in St. Paul, but has lived across the country. She earned her bachelor’s degree in anthropology from Wheaton College and a master’s degree in museology from the University of Washington. She’s worked as an educator at the Smithsonian and the Minnesota History Center, as well as her children’s elementary school. She and her husband and two young children live on a horse farm near the St. Croix River. To Emily, what makes a good lawyer is the understanding that empathy can be an antidote to hubris and curiosity a hedge against certainty. ❘❘❘❘ FALL 2023

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Going Global Minnesota Law’s LL.M. Program Celebrates 30 Years of Excellence and Impact THIS FALL, THE LL.M. PROGRAM CELEBRATES 30 YEARS OF

bringing lawyers from around the world to study at the University of Minnesota Law School. One of the longest standing programs of its kind, it is widely recognized for its individualized attention and support. “We know everybody’s name, what they are studying, how they are doing,” says Kara Galvin, program director. “Students know our door is always open.” While the pandemic had a significant impact on enrollment, the number of LL.M. students is bouncing back with the end of travel bans. This year, 40 students from 22 countries will be on campus. Students hail from such countries as Brazil, Germany, France, China, South Korea, Thailand, Taiwan, Cambodia, Uzbekistan, Uganda, and Azerbaijan. Since its founding in 1993, the program has welcomed students from upwards of 90 countries. Minnesota Law offers both a Business Law LL.M. and a general LL.M. with the option to earn one of the Law School’s eleven concentrations. In 2019, the ABA approved an opportunity for LL.M. students to extend their study for a third semester to earn an additional concentration. Minnesota is the first law school in the country to offer this innovative opportunity. Most LL.M. students arrive at Minnesota Law with a bachelor of laws degree, which allows them to practice law in their home countries. Students often work with or in global businesses and are seeking greater knowledge of U.S. law, says Galvin. “Having an LL.M. gives them a significant competitive edge,” she says.

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Furkan Ozkundakci graduated with his LL.M. degree this past spring after earning a bachelor’s degree from Istanbul University. “The LL.M. program made me a multi-jurisdictional lawyer,” he says. “Aside from enhancing my grasp of different legal contexts, it gave me the opportunity to meet the demands of globalizing legal markets.” Kathya Dawe, LL.M. ’19, was an experienced lawyer with international experience who decided to go back to school for an LL.M. “It was the best decision I made. I have received attractive job offers to work with immigration, human rights, and even to teach at another law school,” she says. LL.M. students arrive three weeks before J.D. students to complete an Introduction to American Law orientation course. Program staff also plan numerous social events to introduce them to each other and to their new Minnesota home. “These three weeks are the hallmark of our LL.M. program,” says Galvin. “We offer a mixture of substantive law and foundational information, with many faculty coming in to talk about their area of expertise. But we also leave plenty of time for students to build community. They are together for three weeks straight and make lifelong friendships.” LL.M. students then are integrated into classes with J.D. students. “There is an excitingly supportive culture among the law school community,” Ozkundakci says. “The LL.M.’s program’s size makes the scholars admiringly accessible and allows you to tailor your schedule more to your needs.”

Ian Wang earned his LL.M. in 2002 and then stayed on to earn his J.D. in 2005. He now practices law in China and continues to serve as an important ally for Minnesota Law. “The LL.M. exposed me to common law knowledge and enabled me to better position myself in cross-border legal service market,” he says. He also notes that the small class size and personal attention were particularly meaningful. Recruiting students from around the world is not easy. Galvin and her assistant director, Hannah Logan, make multiple trips annually to Europe, Asia, South America, and more. Alumni are especially helpful. “People who come here fall in love and develop a loyalty,” Galvin says. “So many alumni are willing to be ambassadors for us after they return home.” Galvin says her team continues to make enhancements to the program while retaining the traditional elements that have worked so well for three decades. “Covid forced some good changes, including the creation of an online platform where students can work at their own pace outside of class to build legal skills.” As for the traditional elements, one event remains sacred: the annual winter clothing outing. “We rent a bus and take the whole class on a shopping trip to the outlet mall,” Galvin says. “Many of these students come from places where the weather is much warmer. This is one of the special and unique things we do as a group.” ❘❘❘❘ By Kathy Graves

MEET THE LL.M. CL ASS OF

Ilkin Gurbanov is from

Azerbaijan and is a Fulbright Scholar. He earned his bachelor of laws degree from the Police Academy of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Azerbaijan. He is a police colonel and has worked for the past 17 years as a law enforcement officer with experience in irregular migration, the provision of passports and IDs, and combating human trafficking. He has lectured and trained officials on various subjects related to state regulation of migration processes, combating human trafficking, as well as protecting and rehabilitating victims.

Mariia Melnyk is from Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine. She studied in a school that focused on foreign languages and has been learning English since she was seven and Spanish since she was ten. As happens in many other countries, she went to law school right after high school. There she obtained bachelor’s and master’s degrees in international law and the law of the European Union. While working on her master’s degree, she spent a semester studying international commercial arbitration and EU investment law in Mykolas Romeris University in Vilnius, Lithuania.

Jung Ho Shim is originally

from Seoul, South Korea, and most recently lived in Boston with her family. She is a surgical oncologist with expertise in performing laparoscopic and robotic surgeries for intestinal cancers. She has also worked with pharmaceutical and IT companies in helping to develop drugs as well as artificial intelligence driven platforms for doctors and patients.

2024

Lucy Zhang is from

Shanghai, China. She received her bachelor of laws degree from Fudan University and a master of law degree from the China University of Political Science and Law. She participated in the exchange program at the University of Montreal. For several years, she has been a transaction lawyer in the Shanghai office of Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP for several years. After she completes her LL.M. degree, she will continue her career with Faegre. ❘❘❘❘

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WHAT I DID

Last Summer

Minnesota Law students found summer jobs in a wide variety of career settings across the country and around the globe.

Marina Berardino ’24 is from Plymouth, Minnesota. She attended Boston University where she studied political science. This year, she worked as a summer associate at Sullivan & Cromwell in its New York office. Marina is currently studying as an exchange student at University College Dublin Sutherland School of Law. She is also working as a legal writing student instructor and as a managing editor for the Minnesota Law Review. Chad Berryman ’25 is from Traverse City, Michigan. He attended Augsburg University for his undergraduate degree. This summer, he worked as a legal clerk for the Migrant Farm Worker Division of Colorado Legal Services. This year, he is a staffer on Minnesota Law Review, a student instructor for first-year legal research and writing, and a judicial extern at the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Minnesota. Evan Dale ’24 is from Golden Valley, Minnesota. This year, he worked as a summer associate with Steptoe & Johnson in Washington, D.C. He received his B.A. in history and political science from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. He is currently the lead note and comment editor of Minnesota Law Review, research assistant to Professor Prentiss Cox, and a structured study group student instructor. He is also a student director for the Racial Justice Law Clinic. Evan is a former law clerk with the Office of the Minnesota Attorney General and the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office.

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Audrey Hutchinson ’25 is from Denver, Colorado, and spent the greater part of the last decade in New York after receiving a degree in studio arts from Bard College. This summer, she worked with the Urban Justice Center’s Sex Workers Project in New York City. This year, she is a staff member of the Minnesota Journal of Law, Science & Technology and the executive treasurer of the Minnesota chapter of If/When/How: Lawyering for Reproductive Rights. Isabella Jurcisin ’25 is from New York, New York. She attended Dickinson College for her undergraduate degree. This summer, she worked as a legal intern at Penguin Random House in its New York office. She also serves as an admissions ambassador and the treasurer of the Latinx Law Student Association. Job Okeri ’24 was born and raised in Kenya. He moved to Minnesota when he was 17. He earned a bachelor’s degree in global studies with a minor in business law from the University of Minnesota. This summer, he worked for the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary for Senator Amy Klobuchar. Job served as the vice president of Law Council last year and has been elected president of Law Council for 2023-24. Julian Roby ’24 is from St. Paul, Minnesota. He graduated from Rhodes College with a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology and Sociology. He earned a Master of Public Health from the University of Michigan. This summer, he worked for the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), based out of the New Orleans Office. This fall, he has returned as a student instructor for the RISE program and is continuing to serve as the student director for the Minnesota Association of Black Lawyers. ❘❘❘❘

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Big Picture

Laura Coates ’05 not only graces our screens every weeknight as a newly appointed anchor on CNN’s “Laura Coates Live,” but this fall she also assumed the esteemed position of the 2023 Homecoming Grand Marshal for the University of Minnesota, where she rallied an enthusiastic crowd as the Golden Gophers took on Louisiana.

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Photo: Justin Cox

L AUR A COATE S ’05 TAK E S THE S POT L IG HT AS THIS YEAR’S H O ME CO MIN G G RA N D M A R SHA L

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ALUMNI Interrogatory Judge Joan Ericksen ’81 U.S. District Judge and Member of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court Balances Dual Roles with Dedication and Distinction

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“

This is really important work that has to be done by judges who have experience in applying different burdens of proof. The mission is to ensure that protection of national security adheres to the rule of law and the rights and privileges guaranteed by the Constitution. I consider it an honor to serve in this capacity.” —Judge Joan Ericksen ’81

Chief Justice John Roberts nominated Judge Joan Ericksen ’81 to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) this past April, she did not hesitate to add it to her already-full plate as a senior U.S. district judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota. “This is really important work that has to be done by judges who have experience in applying different burdens of proof,” she says of FISC, which reviews requests for surveillance warrants submitted by the U.S. government for foreign intelligence purposes. “The mission is to ensure that protection of national security adheres to the rule of law and the rights and privileges guaranteed by the Constitution. I consider it an honor to serve in this capacity.”

for Assistant U.S. Attorneys and thought the position looked interesting. “I just went to a typewriter, typed up a resume, sent it in, and ultimately was interviewed and hired. I had no idea that these positions were hard to get. I was a little clueless about the whole process.” She stayed with the U.S. Attorneys’ Office for ten years, serving first in the civil division and then on the criminal side where she was in charge of white-collar crime and tried Minnesota’s first RICO case. In 1993, she returned to private practice to work on high stakes civil litigation. “My most memorable case was a lawsuit related to a fire in a cold storage warehouse in Madison, Wisconsin, where 11 million pounds of butter ran down the streets,” she recalls. “I practiced my opening for days in front of my four-year-old son.”

A Penchant for Trial Practice Ericksen did not plan a career path to the bench. She had intended to pursue a Ph.D. in English but decided law school gave her more options. She earned her J.D. and went to work for a firm that represented municipalities. “I was lucky to have 20 some misdemeanor trials in two years,” Ericksen says. “Thank goodness I had taken Trial Practice in law school. Rules of evidence came naturally to me, and I liked how they provided a way to organize otherwise unmanageable information. I knew I wanted to do more trial work.” One late evening in the office, Ericksen found herself flipping through an edition of Minnesota Lawyer. She saw an advertisement

A New Path to the Bench Ericksen’s time in private practice ended in 1995 when Governor Arne Carlson appointed her to the 4th Judicial District Court for Hennepin County. Just three years later, he appointed her to the Minnesota Court of Appeals, but before she was sworn in, a position opened on the Minnesota Supreme Court and Carlson appointed her to the state’s highest court. Four years later, President George W. Bush nominated her for her first federal appointment: the United States District Court for the District of Minnesota. “It was a very intense process because it’s national,” Ericksen says. “Competition is vigorous, and politics are involved. Getting ready for confirmation is

WHEN U.S. SUPREME COURT

unlike anything I’d had to do before. You have to unearth every speech you’ve given, every thought you’ve committed to paper. And on top of that, I had to pay for my own travel to my interview. It cost me 50,000 frequent flyer miles to fly to D.C. for a job I didn’t know if I’d get!” She was confirmed by the U.S. Senate by a 99-0 vote on April 25, 2002. A Commitment to Mentoring Over the years, Ericksen has always found time to teach and meet with students. “I had great mentors and training at the University of Minnesota so I’m eager to give back,” she says. “I try to help students learn that there are so many ways to be effective in a courtroom. I take pleasure in seeing them come to understand that they could have a courtroom presence that is in sync with their true self, that confidence and comfort come with mastering your tools. I want them to understand that in a search for the truth or a resolution of an intractable problem, it’s not about what you look like. You are here in service to something greater.” ❘❘❘❘ Kathy Graves is a Twin Cities-based writer.

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Photos: Jayme Halbritter

WILLIAM B. LOCKHART CLUB CELEBRATION On the evening of Tuesday, September 19, alumni and friends gathered at the McNamara Alumni Center for the 2023 WILLIAM B. LOCKHART CLUB CELEBRATION. The event was also livestreamed to audience members around the world. Co-chair of the Student Philanthropy Board Louica Alexandre ’24 welcomed attendees who also heard from Interim Dean William McGeveran, Assistant Dean for Clinical Education Stephen Meili, and 2023-24 Board of Advisors Chair Josh Colburn ’07 for Minnesota Law’s annual celebration recognizes donors whose generosity has shaped and continues to impact the Law School and its community.

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JOIN THE CLUB

Or renew your membership today to make a difference in the lives of tomorrow’s lawyers!

With five giving levels, the Lockhart Club brings together generations of alumni and friends who express their support of Minnesota Law with annual gifts of $2,000 or more, or as part of Lockhart GOLD for recent graduates. We hope to celebrate you and your support of this great Law School at next year’s Lockhart Club Dinner.

1 Gary Haugen ’74, Interim Dean Bill McGeveran, and Joe Price ’72 2 Assistant Dean for Clinical Education Steve Meili, shares the impact of philanthropy on Minnesota Law’s many clinics 3 Bree Cyre ’21, Nick Benson ’21, Katie Chen ’22, Harpreet Mahal ’21, Lu Li ’22, and Assistant Dean of Experiential Education Mitch Zamoff 4 Student Philanthropy Board Co-Chair Louica Alexandre ’24 welcomes attendees to the Lockhart Club Dinner 5 Prof. John Matheson, Judy Matheson, and Phil Garon ’72 6 Jim ’89 and Julie ’90 Chosy and Lizz and Randy Kahnke ’89 7 Richard Shinofield ’67, Kay Thomas, Linnea Peterson, Linda Shinofield, and Jim Rustad ’67

Make your gift and join today at law.umn.edu/give/lockhart or by calling 612-626-8539.

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Breaking Barriers: Championing Legal Justice and Health Equity for Transgender Youth Sarah Everett ’17 and the Arkansas ACLU team successfully argued to overturn the country’s first ban on gender-affirming care

SARAH EVERETT ’17 WATCHED IN DISMAY as Arkansas led efforts

to ban gender-affirming care for transgender youth. But through her work at the American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas, she has discovered opportunities to deploy her legal skills in the fight to keep such laws from going into effect. In 2021, Arkansas passed a first-in-the-nation law that banned medical treatment for transgender teenagers. It aimed to prevent healthcare professionals from providing care to transgender youth or referring patients for such care, and it prohibited state funds or insurance coverage for genderaffirming care for people under 18. The ACLU quickly filed suit, taking the case to trial in December 2022. In June, U.S. District Judge James Moody Jr. issued an 80-page ruling, siding with the ACLU’s clients — four families of transgender youth and two physicians. Though Everett was not surprised that Moody struck down the law—he had issued a bench decision in favor of a preliminary injunction—she was heartened by the victory. As policy director and a member of the plaintiffs’ counsel team, Everett said she was inspired by the transgender teens and their families who testified about their experiences receiving medical treatment for gender dysphoria. She worked closely with the client families. “I was already motivated, but after getting to know the clients, I couldn’t help but fight with them,” Everett

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says. “Our clients have incredible stories about how this care has totally transformed their lives. Some of them aren’t sure they would still be here if they didn’t have access to it.” Everett will stay on the case when it is appealed to the Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. In the meantime, the Arkansas Legislature is keeping her busy as lawmakers consider and pass new measures that target transgender people and the medical professionals who treat them. These measures include bathroom bans and expanding malpractice laws to include injury from gender-affirming care. During three recent legislative sessions, she lobbied lawmakers against such laws. Everett has been steeped in this fight since joining the ACLU in 2017, thanks initially to a post-graduate Robina Fellowship from Minnesota Law. Everett says that being an Oklahoma native who graduated from a conservative Christian university in Arkansas helps her speak her opponents’ language as she advocates to protect the constitutional rights of all. It’s work she believes she was meant to do. “Our courts have become increasingly hostile, in Arkansas especially,” Everett says. “We can’t just rely on our courts to fix whatever terrible things our legislatures do. I think we really did make a difference here this session. It’s been exciting.” ❘❘❘❘ By Suzy Frisch, a Twin Cities-based freelance writer

“ I was already motivated, but after getting to know the clients, I couldn’t help but fight with them. Our clients have incredible stories about how this care has totally transformed their lives. Some of them aren’t sure they would still be here if they didn’t have access to it.” — Sarah Everett ’17

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Alumni News

Judge Toddrick Barnette ’92 Confirmed as Community Safety Commissioner of Minneapolis In October, Toddrick Barnette ’92 was sworn in to serve as the community safety commissioner of Minneapolis. Barnette previously served as chief judge of Hennepin County where he oversaw Minnesota’s largest county court

operations, managing 63 state judges and supporting more than 550 employees. For the past thirty years, he has worked as a judge, prosecutor, and public defender. He held a leadership role on the Hennepin County Criminal Justice Coordinating Committee — a coordinator of multiple government parties to ensure justice and safety in the region.

Hon. Toddrick Barnette ’92

“Over the last three decades, Chief Judge Barnette has established himself as a leading voice in Minnesota’s public safety and criminal justice communities,” Mayor Jacob Frey said in a media release. “With his broad set of lived and professional experiences, he is uniquely situated to forge the partnerships necessary to continue building out a strong, comprehensive safety system and lead a team to keep Minneapolis safe. Judge Barnette is a rare talent, one that has deep connections in Minnesota, and I’m grateful he has agreed to serve as the next member of our administration’s cabinet.” Tamar Gronvall ’00 Appointed Commissioner of Administration Governor Tim Walz appointed Tamar Gronvall ’00 to serve as Minnesota’s Commissioner of Administration. The Commission of Administration oversees and manages administrative functions of executive branch state agencies. Gronvall will oversee about $2 billion in state purchases in a single year and another $176.5 million in operating costs. The Honorable Natalie Hudson ’82 Appointed Chief Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court The Honorable Natalie Hudson ’82 was appointed chief justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court this past summer by Governor Tim Walz. Hudson became the first chief justice of color and the first Democraticappointed judicial branch leader in 25 years. Governor Walz told Minnesota Public Radio, “I know

Tamar Gronvall ’00

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Dana Mitchell ’97

Hon. Natalie Hudson ’82

that she will use her decades of judicial experience and deep understanding of our justice system to lead the Judicial Branch with a steady hand and strong conviction.” Dana Mitchell ’97 Appointed Deputy Attorney General of Minnesota Dana Mitchell ’97 was appointed Deputy Attorney General of Minnesota by State Attorney General Keith Ellison ’90. Mitchell stepped into the role left by Deputy Attorney General Luz María Frías, who retired on September 29. Mitchell will oversee the Government Support Section of the Office, which provides legal support to a wide range of State of Minnesota agencies, boards, and commissions.

Chief Judge Jenny Starr ’03; Judge David M. Bateson ’00; Assistant Chief Judge Veronica Walther ’09; and Judge Nicole Surges ’90.

“Dana, a Minnesotan with deep roots here, is deeply committed to the people of our state,” said Attorney General Ellison. “She is smart, capable, and an excellent lawyer, of course, and she is much more: she is someone who works relationally, is an active member of the community, understands the importance of representing State agencies well, and applies an equity lens to everything that we do. In just a few short months, she’s proven herself to be a tremendous asset in the Attorney General’s Office. We’re all very proud of her and know she’s going to do a wonderful job as Deputy Attorney General.”

Four Minnesota Law Alumni Judges Sworn In at the State of Minnesota’s Office of Administrative Hearings On June 9, the Minnesota Office of Administrative Hearings (OAH) held a judicial investiture ceremony to formally swear in the 11 newest judges who have joined OAH since 2019. Four of those judges are University of Minnesota Law School alumni. Nearly 400 guests attended the ceremony, which was open to the public. Minnesota Law alumni sworn in include: Chief Judge Jenny Starr ’03; Workers’ Compensation Judge David M. Bateson ’00; Assistant Chief Judge Veronica Walther ’09; and Workers’ Compensation Judge Nicole Surges ’90. ❘❘❘❘

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Our future lawyers are depending on you. Your support of the Annual Fund today ensures Minnesota Law is able to offer a transformative and innovative legal education to the future lawyers of tomorrow. To make a gift, visit give.umn.edu/law or contact Jackie Hasselquist, annual giving officer, at 612-625-8435 or oreil061@umn.edu.

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“Minnesota Law gave us an intellectual and practical foundation from which to thrive professionally and as citizens of our local, national, and global communities. Minnesota Law helped shape us into the lawyers and people we are today—ever ready for the ubiquitous pivot; trusted advisors at the top of our game. As you reflect on your own law school journey, I hope you are struck (as I am) by the importance of paying it forward, to ensure that the next generation of lawyers has the opportunity to build the same connections and receive the same outstanding education that we did. It is in this spirit that I invite you to join me in making a gift to the University of Minnesota Law School today.” Kristin Zinsmaster ’10 2023-24 University of Minnesota Law School Annual Fund Chair

Class Notes

Hon. Keith Davison was

interviewed by Fox News about surviving the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, and World War II. In the interview, he reflects on his “charmed life” and finding meaning through his legal practice.

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Joseph Dixon Jr. was named

a Minnesota Super Lawyer for his legal service at Henson Efron.

Robert Abdo

was elected to a two-year term on Lommen Abdo’s Board of Directors. Hon. Steve Aldrich is retired and has become a columnist for the Cook County News-Herald in Grand Marais, Minnesota. Entitled “Wondering 61,” his columns are written to learn about his new home area.

Tom Foley was

named to the 2024 Best Lawyers in America list for his work in Gaming Law and Native American Law at Foley & Quigley Law.

Hon. Paul Jacobson

retired as a judge in North Dakota’s Northwest Judicial District. He was appointed in 2013 and elected district judge in 2016 and 2022. Alan Eidsness was named a Minnesota Super Lawyer and a Top 10 honoree for his legal service at Henson Efron.

NEWS ABOUT YOUR CLASSMATES AND COLLEAGUES

Lee Sheehy

was named Interim Community Safety Commissioner for for Minneapolis to oversee the city’s five emergency departments: Police, Fire, Emergency Management, 911, and Neighborhood Safety.

Charles Nauen

was named a Minnesota Super Lawyer and recognized as the 2024 “Lawyer of the Year” by Best Lawyers for Environmental Law and Litigation in Minneapolis. Pamela Olson was awarded the American Bar Association Tax Section’s 2023 Distinguished Service Award. The award is the highest honor presented by the Section of Taxation and is given to individuals with a distinguished career in taxation.

Jon Hoganson

was named a Best Lawyers: One to Watch. He is a shareholder at Winthrop & Weinstine. David Moran was named a Best Lawyers: One to Watch. He is of counsel at Winthrop & Weinstine.

Hon. Natalie Hudson was

appointed Chief Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court. Hudson was nominated by Gov. Tim Walz, who called her “a leader and consensus builder.”

Todd Urness was named a Best Lawyers: One to Watch. He is a shareholder at Winthrop & Weinstine.

James LaBelle

authored a book entitled Wheelchair Bound? His book chronicles his experiences and what he’s learned from over 50 years of being a wheelchair user.

Regent Tadd M. Johnson

Timothy Barnett was

named a Best Lawyers: One to Watch. He is a shareholder at Winthrop & Weinstine. Annamarie A. Daley

received the MSBA’s 2023 Advocate Award and was honored at the MSBA Civil Litigation Section’s Annual Dinner in April. The award is presented to an individual who has made a significant contribution to improving the system of civil justice in Minnesota. She is of counsel at Jones Day. Kathryn Graves was named a Minnesota Super Lawyer for her legal service at Henson Efron.

Terry Rae Farley was named a finalist for the 2023 Grunin Prize for Law and Social Entrepreneurship for her work with RuralWorks Partners. The award recognizes lawyers’ participation in the ways in which business is increasingly advancing the goals of sustainability and human development.

Elizabeth Bransdorfer

was included in the 2023 edition of the Michigan Super Lawyers magazine. Dr. Nancy D. Erbe was recognized as a notable faculty member within the California State University system. She is a negotiation, conflict resolution, and peacebuilding professor at California State University, Dominguez Hills.

was nominated to renew his service as a Member of the Board of Trustees of the Morris K. Udall and Stewart L. Udall Foundation. Johnson has served on the Board since December 2017. Gaylen Knack was recognized in Chambers USA 2023 Guide. He is a partner at Lathrop GPM. Jeffrey Ansel was named a Best Lawyers: One to Watch. He is a shareholder at Winthrop & Weinstine.

Dr. Benjamin Dille was

recognized by the Secretary of State with an Award for Heroism and by the American Foreign Service Association with the Herter Award for Constructive Dissent for his work during the evacuation of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul during the Taliban’s takeover in 2021. He is a senior foreign service officer with the Department of State.

William Invie Shroyer was

named to the 2024 Best Lawyers list for

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RAISING THE BAR

his work in Corporate and Real Estate Law at Reinhart Boerner Van Deuren s.c. Wade Anderson was recognized in Chambers USA 2023 Guide. He practices exclusively in real estate-related transactions and is a partner at Lathrop GPM.

< CONT

Scott Wright

became leader of Faegre Drinker’s Labor and Employment Group’s immigration team. Wright counsels on immigration issues that arise in employment decisions, mergers and acquisitions, government audits and investigations, and labor law disputes.

Thomas Walker

was named a Best Lawyers: One to Watch. He is a shareholder at Winthrop & Weinstine.

Attorney General Keith Ellison

published his book, Break the Wheel: Ending the Cycle of Police Violence. In his book, he details how he and his team built a case against Derek Chauvin, who was convicted for the murder of George Floyd in April 2021. Robert Shelquist was named as a Minnesota Super Lawyer for his legal service at Lockridge Grindal Nauen PLLP.

Dwight Larson

joined Stinson LLP as a partner focusing on construction and energy matters.

MINNESOTA LAW

FALL 2023

Teresa Stricker

was named City Attorney for Santa Rosa , California, by the Santa Rosa City Council. She has over two decades of municipal law experience, including serving as the City Attorney for the cities of San Pablo and Richmond.

Rikke DierssenMorice joined

Blank Rome LLP’s Insurance Recovery practice group as a partner in Chicago. She represents commercial policyholders in the United States and abroad on insurance claims and in recovery litigation. Susan Ellingstad was named a Minnesota Super Lawyer and was recognized by Best Lawyers for her legal service at Lockridge Grindal Nauen PLLP. Scott Neilson was named a Minnesota Super Lawyer for his legal service at Henson Efron.

Megan Anderson was

recognized in the Chambers USA 2023 Guide. She is a partner at Lathrop GPM and specializes in employment and labor law.

Joseph Kim

was a key member of the opening team for a new Greenberg Traurig office in Singapore. Kim previously helped to launch the firm’s Asia Energy & Infrastructure Practice, of which he is practice head. Matthew McBride was named a Best Lawyers: One to Watch. He is a shareholder at Winthrop & Weinstine.

Laura Pfeiffer was named a Best Lawyers: One to Watch. She is a shareholder at Winthrop & Weinstine.

Johanna Bond

was named dean of Rutgers Law School. Bond was a Sydney and Frances Lewis Professor of Law at Washington and Lee University School of Law before beginning her deanship at Rutgers Law in July 2023. James Hilbert was named interim president and dean of Mitchell Hamline School of Law for the 2023-24 academic year. He has taught full-time there since 2010 and previously served as vice dean of academic and student affairs. Brian Johnsrud was named managing partner of Duane Morris’ Silicon Valley Office. He has over 25 years of experience in representing companies in complicated employment law matters. Norman Jones was named a Best Lawyers: One to Watch. He is a shareholder at Winthrop & Weinstine.

John Bursch

authored a new book, Loving God’s Children: The Church and Gender Ideology, on the topic of gender identity. James Lamm was recognized in Chambers High Net Worth 2023. He is a partner at Lathrop GPM and practices in the areas of estate planning, tax planning, family business succession planning, probate and trust administration, and charitable giving.

Brian T. Pierce was appointed to the Board of Directors at the Florida Justice Center, a 501(c)3 nonprofit legal aid organization dedicated to providing access to justice for those whose lives have been affected by the criminal legal system. Dana Mitchell was named Deputy Attorney General of Minnesota. In this role, she will oversee the Government Support Section of the Office, which provides legal support to a wide range of State of Minnesota agencies, boards, and commissions. Gregory Munson was promoted to president of Transwestern Real Estate Services. In this role, he will oversee operations, lead expansion opportunities, and drive business development. Hon. Daniel Schally

retired after nearly 19 years of service on the Alaska state trial court bench. He was appointed in January 2005 to the Valdez District Court and in November 2018 to the Juneau Superior Court. James Snelson was appointed Executive Vice President at Fredrikson & Byron, where he practices mergers & acquisitions, corporate law, and more.

Robert Heinrich was

recognized as a “Leader in their Field” by Chambers USA and its High Net Worth Guide and was included in the 2024 Best Lawyers list. He is a shareholder at Reinhart Boerner Van Deuren s.c.

Mitchell Granberg was promoted to the role of UnitedHealth Group chief privacy officer and deputy general counsel. He is responsible for the UnitedHealth Group, UnitedHealthcare, and Optum privacy programs. Marya Robben was recognized in Chambers High Net Worth 2023. She is a partner at Lathrop GPM, and leads the firm’s Trusts, Estates & Legacy Planning practice group.

Andrew Brown

joined Cottage Health as vice president of advancement. In this role, he will lead fund development operations and work with foundations providing fundraising support for Cottage Health.

Christopher E. Crutchfield was appointed

CEO of Ujamaa Place, a non-profit dedicated to providing holistic transformation opportunities for young Black men experiencing inequity at the intersection of race and poverty.

Clayton Chan

was recognized by Best Lawyers in America 2024 for outstanding professional excellence. He is a principal at Chan, PLLC and practices in the trusts and estates and business succession areas. John Nolde was named a Best Lawyers: One to Watch. He is a shareholder at Winthrop & Weinstine.

Katie Aune

published her first book entitled Finding Katya: How I Quit Everything to Backpack the Former Soviet States. The travel memoir details the year she backpacked through all 15 states of the former Soviet Union. Lori Johnson was made partner at Parker Daniels Kibort. She has over 22 years of experience in complex litigation matters and business disputes. Kathryn Nash was recognized in Chambers USA 2023 Guide. She is a partner at Lathrop GPM, and chairs the firm’s Labor, Employment, and Higher Education practice areas.

Will Tansey

joined Felhaber Larson as a partner. He specializes in the areas of commercial law and real estate. Nicole Saharsky was the keynote speaker at the 2023 MSBA Civil Litigation Section’s Annual Dinner. Her address “U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team’s Landmark Win for Equal Pay” detailed her work as lead appellate counsel for the U.S. women’s national soccer team and its landmark $24M settlement.

Court Anderson was

named as a Minnesota Super Lawyer for his legal service at Henson Efron.

MINNESOTA ATTORNEY GENERAL KEITH ELLISON ’90 PUBLISHES NEW BOOK

ATTORNEY JOHANNA BOND ’96 NAMED DEAN OF RUTGERS LAW SCHOOL

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison ’90 published a new book, Break the Wheel: Ending the Cycle of Police Violence. In his book, he details how he and his team built a case against Derek Chauvin, who was convicted for the murder of George Floyd in April 2021. Ellison was sworn in as Minnesota’s 30th attorney general on January 7, 2019. From 2007 to 2019, he represented Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives, serving 12 years on the House Financial Services Committee. AG Ellison served as the commencement speaker for the 135th commencement exercises at Minnesota Law.

Johanna Bond ’96 became the new dean of Rutgers Law School on July 1, 2023. She was formerly the Sydney and Frances Lewis Professor of Law at Washington and Lee University School of Law. Read the Q&A with She recently spoke Johanna Bond ’96 with Minnesota z.umn.edu/ JohannaBond Law about the importance of law schools providing high-quality, accessible legal education to a diverse range of students. She also discussed how Minnesota Law helped develop her future leadership skills through experiential learning opportunities in human rights law and social justice work that took her all over the globe. ❘❘❘❘

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Andrew Beckwith was named Southern Wesleyan University’s first chief of staff and executive vice president.

< CONT

Julien Bergerat

graduated from Cambridge University’s Judge Business School. June Hoidal was recognized as a 2024 Best Lawyers in America and was named a Minnesota Super Lawyer for her legal service at Zimmerman Reed LLP. Dean Willer was named a Best Lawyers: One to Watch. He is a shareholder at Winthrop & Weinstine. Bor Yang was named Oregon’s new legislative equity officer. She previously served as the director of the Vermont Human Rights Commission. David Zoll was named as a Minnesota Super Lawyer for his legal service at Lockridge Grindal Nauen PLLP.

Jaime Driggs

was named as a Minnesota Super Lawyer and a Top 100 honoree for his legal service at Henson Efron. Brian Gudmundson was recognized as a 2024 Best Lawyers in America and was named a Minnesota Super Lawyer for his legal service at Zimmerman Reed LLP.

Laura Coates

was named chief legal analyst for CNN and began anchoring her own daily primetime news show “Laura Coates Live.” The program showcases legal, social, political, and cultural stories. Margaux Coady Soeffker

was recognized as a Super Lawyer for 2023 for her work in family law at Margaux C. Soeffker, LLC.

MINNESOTA LAW

FALL 2023

John Stern was named a Best Lawyers: One to Watch. He is a shareholder at Winthrop & Weinstine.

Bryan Freeman

was named co-chair of Maslon LLP’s Insurance Coverage Group. He is a trial lawyer focusing his practice on insurance coverage and has helped clients recover millions of dollars in insurance proceeds. Frank Pitsoulakis was named to the 2024 Best Lawyers list for his work in Real Estate Law at Reinhart Boerner Van Deuren s.c.

Jessica Hutson Polakowski was named to

the 2024 Best Lawyers list for her work in Real Estate Law at Reinhart Boerner Van Deuren s.c. Thomas Sinas was inducted into the International Society of Barristers, an invitationonly organization devoted to the ideals of retaining trial by jury, providing training in trial advocacy, encouraging civility in the adversary system, and supporting and improving our system of justice. Holly Stocker was named a Best Lawyers: One to Watch. She is a shareholder at Winthrop & Weinstine.

Krista A.P. Hatcher

rejoined Fredrikson & Byron as a shareholder in its Employment, Labor & Benefits Group. Ryan Schildkraut was named a Best Lawyers: One to Watch. He is a shareholder at Winthrop & Weinstine.

Joseph Windler was named a Best Lawyers: One to Watch. He is a shareholder at Winthrop & Weinstine.

Lisbeth C. Robinson

joined Lathrop GPM LLP’s Intellectual Property Group as counsel in the Minneapolis Office. She is a former patent examiner and focuses her practice on patent preparation, prosecution, and analyses.

Robert Barton

joined McDermott Will & Emery’s Private Client Practice Group as a partner in Los Angeles. His practice focuses on controversies involving complex trusts and estates and fiduciary matters for high-net-worth individuals and families, charitable institutions, and corporate trustees. Joseph Bourne was named as a Minnesota Rising Star for his legal service at Lockridge Grindal Nauen PLLP. Eric Chapin was named a finalist for the 2023 Grunin Prize for Law and Social Entrepreneurship finalist through his work with RuralWorks Partners. The award recognizes lawyers’ participation in the ways in which business is increasingly advancing the goals of sustainability and human development. Brian Clark was named a Minnesota Super Lawyer for his legal service at Lockridge Grindal Nauen PLLP. Dr. Abraham Korir Sing’Oei was appointed

to serve as the Principal Secretary for Foreign Affairs by the President

of the Republic of Kenya. He has also been appointed to the boards of the Global Partnership on Sustainable Development Data and the Open Government Partnership. Anne Hoyt Taff was promoted to vice president of partnerships by the Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation. She previously served as the Foundation’s associate vice president of community impact. Douglas Wolgamot was named a Best Lawyers: One to Watch. He is a shareholder at Winthrop & Weinstine.

Chris Henjum

was appointed the Minnesota Department of Revenue’s taxpayer rights advocate by Minnesota Department of Revenue Commissioner Paul Marquart. He was previously a tax policy lead for the Income Tax and Withholding Division at Revenue. Josh Taggatz joined the International Association of Defense Counsel and was named to the 2024 Best Lawyers list. He is a trial attorney and shareholder at Reinhart Boerner Van Deuren s.c.

Scott Jahnke

was named a Best Lawyers: One to Watch. He is a shareholder at Winthrop & Weinstine. Kate Baxter-Kauf was named as a Minnesota Super Lawyer for her legal service at Lockridge Grindal Nauen PLLP. Nisha Patel Gupta

returned to Dechert LLP as an intellectual property partner based in Silicon Valley. She focuses her practice on IP litigation,

with an emphasis on patent litigation matters. Adam Tomczik was appointed by Governor Tim Walz to the Psychedelic Medicine Task Force to study and report to the legislature on the legalization of psilocybin, MDMA, and LSD for mental health treatment.

Jacob Bean was

named a Best Lawyers: One to Watch. He is a shareholder at Winthrop & Weinstine. Robert Davis was awarded the prestigious Meritorious Service Silver Medal by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Tara Houska is opening a resistance camp at Bald Rock Point, MN, where activists can observe Indigenous practices, train future leaders, and share knowledge and skills, including language. She was also honored with the $100,000 RoseWalters Prize for Global Environmental Activism. The prize is awarded to individuals who significantly impact responsible action for the planet. Melissa Muro LaMere

joined Snell & Wilmer as an employment and business litigation attorney. She has extensive experience in the field and has been recognized for her exceptional legal skills by her clients and peers.

Eric Friske

was named as a Minnesota Rising Star for his legal service at Henson Efron. Benjamin Hamborg

was named as a Minnesota Rising Star for his legal service at Henson Efron.

Ted Wagor joined Felhaber Larson where he will utilize his expertise in general business, real estate, and corporate law.

Sarvesh Desai

was named as a Minnesota Rising Star for his legal service at Henson Efron. Sarah Hewitt was named a 2023 Up & Coming Attorney by Minnesota Lawyer. She is an associate at Henson Efron. Rachel Kitze Collins

was named as a Minnesota Rising Star for her legal service at Lockridge Grindal Nauen PLLP. Charles Toomajian

was named as a Minnesota Rising Star for his legal service at Zimmerman Reed LLP.

Lehoan (Hahn) Pham was

selected to serve as an academy fellow for Littler’s 2023 National Employment Law Council.

Olivia Cooper

was named a Best Lawyers: One to Watch. She is an associate at Winthrop & Weinstine. Catherine Riihiluoma

was named a Best Lawyers: One to Watch. She is a shareholder at Winthrop & Weinstine. Amber Kraemer was named a Best Lawyers: One to Watch. She is a shareholder at Winthrop & Weinstine. Kyle Kroll was named a Best Lawyers: One to Watch. He is a shareholder at Winthrop & Weinstine. Michael Laird was named a Minnesota Rising Star for his legal service at Zimmerman Reed LLP.

Christopher Scott joined Lommen Abdo Law Firm. He will work in the areas of insurance defense, civil litigation, professional liability, medical malpractice, wrongful death, personal injuries, and criminal and traffic defense. JT Schuweiler was selected by Chambers USA as a 2023 Diversity and Inclusion Future Leader for his work at Fox Rothschild. Arielle Wagner was named as a Minnesota Rising Star for her legal service at Lockridge Grindal Nauen PLLP.

Yi-Chao Chang

started his own law firm, CLC Partners, with his wife, Tzu-yu Liu ’17. Royce Egeolu was selected to participate in Fox Rothchild LLP’s Leadership Council on Legal Diversity 2023 Class of Pathfinders. Sarah Everett was one of the plaintiff’s attorneys in a landmark case brought forth by the ACLU of Arkansas challenging an Arkansas law banning gender transition care for minors. She is the policy director at the ACLU of Arkansas. Edward Fleming was named a Best Lawyers: One to Watch. He is a counsel at Winthrop & Weinstine. Tzu-Yu Liu started her own law firm with her husband, Yi-Chao Chang ’17, called CLC Partners. Samuel Thompson was named a Best Lawyers: One to Watch. He is a managing associate at Winthrop & Weinstine. Roxanne Thorelli was named Outstanding New Lawyer of the Year by the

Minnesota State Bar Association for her involvement with local bar organizations, pro bono and community service work, contributions to advancing diversity, and achievements practicing corporate and business law at Fredrikson & Byron.

Alexandra Robinson was

honored with the 2023 Bernard P. Becker Award by the Minnesota State Bar Association for outstanding leadership and service to clients from marginalized communities. Cedar Weyker was named an Immigrant Justice Corps fellow. As a fellow, Cedar will work with The Advocates for Human Rights to provide unaccompanied minors in Minnesota and the Dakotas with legal representation for immigration proceedings.

❘❘❘❘

KEEP YOUR CLASSMATES POSTED! To be included in class notes, send us your news at lawalum@umn.edu or complete this form: z.umn.edu/LawClassNotes

FALL 2023

MINNESOTA LAW

RAISING THE BAR

Support future lawyers through Planned Giving Planned gifts are as varied as the donors who make them. By partnering with Minnesota Law, along with your family and trusted advisors, you can create a plan that reflects your charitable goals, maximizes potential tax benefits, provides financial security for you and your loved ones, and creates a lasting legacy for you that will help the Law School remain a leader worldwide. Examples of just some of the purpose-driven legacies created by those who have documented planned gifts with the Law School: · ·

Endowment of a new student scholarship A bequest to strengthen a pre-existing scholarship created by a beloved classmate Beneficiary designation of retirement assets to create a new faculty chair Direction of proceeds from a charitable gift annuity to support law school clinics A charitable remainder trust beneficiary designation to create a public service fellowship A bequest to provide unrestricted Law School support

“Costs have escalated so much in education. We want to help reduce that burden. We really believe in living a life of purpose that serves the common good.”

—Mike ’71 and Ann Ciresi Binger Circle, William B. Lockhart Club

To learn more about planned giving and ways you can achieve your philanthropic goals, contact David L. Jensen, Chief Advancement Officer, at dljensen@umn.edu or 612-625-2060.

· · ·

To give today, visit

law.umn.edu/give/planned-giving

MINNESOTA LAW

FALL 2023

Recent Gifts GIFTS OF $25,000–$99,999

James ’89 and Julianne ’90 Chosy made a pledge to help

create the Dean Garry W. Jenkins Scholarship Fund to honor the legacy of Dean Jenkins at the Law School.

Thomas ’73 and Maren Hood made a gift to the Law

School Annual Fund, which immediately supports the needs of the Law School through student scholarship support and other programmatic needs.

David ’78 and Martha ’78 Kadue made a gift in support

of their Section B Scholarship. This scholarship was established to honor the distinguished attorneys in Section B of the Class of 1978, and to pay forward the opportunities the Law School has provided to its alumni.

Charles Nauen ’80 and Pati Jo Pofahl ’86 made a gift

in support of their endowed Diversity Scholarship. This fund supports law students who increase the diversity of the student body and the legal field.

Christopher ’88 and Frances Renk made a pledge to the

Law School’s Annual Fund in honor of Christopher’s 25th Law School Class Reunion. The Annual Fund provides immediate support to areas of greatest need, be it scholarship support, faculty excellence, or creating and maintaining world-class experiential programming.

Greg Soukup ’76 and Mary Jo Carr made a gift to the Robert J. and Rosemary Soukup Scholarship Fund, named in memory of Greg’s parents. This fund provides financial assistance to future Law School students in their academic pursuits. Terri Stark made a gift to support the Dr. Matthew Stark Civil Liberties Internship in Law, named in honor of her husband. This fund supports law students who participate in an internship program in the area of civil liberties and alleviates the financial burden students face while holding an unpaid internship.

Paul ’64 and Jeanne Ravich pledged their support to the Law School Scholarship Fund. This fund supports students so they may have the opportunity of a worldclass legal education without the barriers of financial burden.

PLANNED GIFTS

Ronald E. ’78 and Renée Hunter Hon. Lawrence R. ’75 and Patricia J. Johnson William H. Lindberg ’73 and Connie Stephens Raymond M. Lazar ’64

Hon. Richard C. ’74 and Juanita B. ’77 Luis Hon. Paul A. ’75 and Theresa A. Nelson Dennis M. ’66 and Gail K. Mathisen

FALL 2023

MINNESOTA LAW

RAISING THE BAR

Tributes HON. THORWALD H. ANDERSON, JR. ’64

The Honorable Thorwald H. Anderson, Jr. ’64 passed away

this past April at age 86. According to his obituary, “Upon graduating from Lubbock High School in 1954, Anderson attended the University of Mississippi where he received a BA in political science in 1958. He then served over three years of active duty as a junior officer in the Navy. Following his discharge in 1961, he moved to Minnesota. He attended the University of Minnesota and received his juris doctor degree, with honors, in 1964. After law school he was a Trust Officer for Marquette National Bank before joining Everett, Thiel, and Root as an associate attorney. He was a member of the Minnesota House from 1963 through 1969 and served on the Judiciary Committee during his tenure in the House. In 1969, he left private practice and politics to become an Assistant United States Attorney. During his 26-year career with the U.S. Attorney’s office for the District of Minnesota, he was the chief attorney in the criminal division and twice served as both U.S. Attorney and First Assistant U.S. Attorney. In 1996, he was appointed as a judge in the Fourth Judicial District where he served on the bench until retiring in 2007.”

MINNESOTA LAW

FALL 2023

PROFESSOR EMERITUS DANIEL J. GIFFORD

Professor Emeritus Daniel J. Gifford died on April 8 at his home in Wimauma, Florida. Professor Gifford joined the University of Minnesota Law School faculty in 1978. He was the 1982-83 Julius E. Davis Professor of Law and served as the Robins Kaplan Professor of Law until his retirement in 2016. He was recognized as an expert on antitrust law and administrative law. He published extensively in these areas, authoring more than 60 scholarly articles, a number of legal case books, and contributing sections to edited books. He published his last book in 2014: The Atlantic Divide in Antitrust: An Examination of US and EU Competition Policy, was praised as “an intellectual tour de force” that “should be on the reading list of all antitrust lawyers.”

RONALD M. MANKOFF ’54

Ronald M. Mankoff ’54, who was

a donor and namesake of the Ronald M. Mankoff Tax Clinic, passed away on June 27. Born on the Cheyenne River Reservation near Gettysburg, South Dakota, on October 13, 1931, Ron and his family resettled in Minneapolis during the Great Depression. Mankoff enrolled in the University of Minnesota where he joined the ROTC and was president of his Zeta Beta Tau fraternity chapter. In 1954, he graduated from the University of Minnesota Law School, after serving on the Minnesota Law Review.

Mankoff practiced tax law for 20 years with Wentworth T. Durant and then with successor firms that carried the Mankoff name. He tried and argued more than 50 tax cases and appeals, among them the often-cited Commissioner vs. Tufts decision in the U.S. Supreme Court.

WILLIAM R. PEARCE ’52 William Rinehart Pearce ’52

passed away on July 19, at the age of 95. Bill and his wife Barbara Pearce supported the Mondale Hall building campaign and also have a named scholarship at the Law School, the William R. & Barbara A. Pearce Family Scholarship. Pearce worked for the Cargill’s legal department until he left to become deputy special trade representative for trade negotiations for the Nixon administration in 1971. He was instrumental in shaping the Trade Reform Act of 1974. He then returned to Cargill, and served on the board, becoming vice chair in 1991, and president of the Cargill Foundation in 1993. ❘❘❘❘

In Memoriam CLASS OF 1951

CLASS OF 1960

CLASS OF 1967

CLASS OF 1977

Mayo H. Stiegler

Fred W. Sanborn

Jon B. Middleton

Jeffrey B. Ring

June 1, 2023 San Diego, California

September 8, 2023 Pine Island, Minnesota

August 14, 2023 Granbury, Texas

August 12, 2023 Plymouth, Minnesota

CLASS OF 1952

CLASS OF 1961

CLASS OF 1968

CLASS OF 1981

William R. Pearce

John L. Burbidge

Ernest E. Cutting

Jeanne H. Unger

July 19, 2023 Minneapolis, Minnesota

July 21, 2023 Minneapolis, Minnesota

March 26, 2023 Minneapolis, Minnesota

July 7, 2023 Saint Paul, Minnesota

CLASS OF 1954

CLASS OF 1962

CLASS OF 1969

CLASS OF 1987

George L. Vobejda

Raul O. Salazar

John E. Speier

Mark A. Jacobson

March 31, 2023 Marietta, Georgia

April 6, 2023 Plymouth, Minnesota

July 6, 2023 Minneapolis, Minnesota

April 27, 2023 Bloomington, Minnesota

Ronald M. Mankoff

Philip W. Aaron

CLASS OF 1971

Clifford B. Wardlaw

June 27, 2023 Dallas, Texas

May 27, 2023 Minneapolis, Minnesota

Michael R. Dean

August 1, 2023 Saint Paul, Minnesota

Curtis J. Timm

Thomas S. Hay

July 26, 2023 Highlands, North Carolina

June 15, 2023 Saint Paul, Minnesota

CLASS OF 1955

Curtis D. Forslund

John J. Althoff

June 22, 2023 Tucson, Arizona

June 18, 2023 Greeley, Colorado

CLASS OF 1963

March 23, 2023 Duluth, Minnesota

CLASS OF 1990

Jerry K. Fellows

Steven J. Oberg

May 18, 2023 Downers Grove, Illinois

April 2, 2023 Rapid City, South Dakota

Mark W. Gehan

CLASS OF 1992

June 21, 2023 Saint Paul, Minnesota

Walter A. Paget June 27, 2023 Elm Grove, Wisconsin

Willard J. Patty

Richard H. Breen

CLASS OF 1972

June 21, 2023 Saint Paul, Minnesota

May 13, 2023 Brainerd, Minnesota

Patrick T. Strom

Thomas A. Zipoy August 27, 2023 Kimball, Minnesota

C. David Lundin

CLASS OF 1964

July 9, 2023 Sartell, Minnesota

July 20, 2023 Dresser, Wisconsin

Thorwald H. Anderson, Jr.

Glen A. Boyce

CLASS OF 1993

April 1, 2023 Minnetonka, Minnesota

September 16, 2023 North Branch, Minnesota

James D. Weiss

Wellington W. Tully

Robert K. Hick

CLASS OF 1973

June 21, 2023 Minneapolis, Minnesota

April 4, 2023 Grand Rapids, Michigan

Steven O. York

CLASS OF 2000 Jason J. Elander

CLASS OF 1959

CLASS OF 1965

July 2, 2023 Waconia, Minnesota

Herman L. Talle

John M. Broeker

CLASS OF 1975

March 2, 2023 Glenwood, Minnesota

May 17, 2023 Waconia, Minnesota

Keith E. Sjodin

Robert C. Swenson

CLASS OF 1966

April 5, 2023 Alexandria, Minnesota

Frank J. Knoll

Tracy R. Eichhorn-Hicks

May 18, 2023 Minneapolis, Minnesota

May 2, 2023 Minnetonka, Minnesota

CLASS OF 1958

August 10, 2023 River Forest, Illinois

March 11, 2023 Burnsville, Minnesota

April 3, 2023 Waconia, Minnesota

Robert J. Alfton August 2, 2023 Minneapolis, Minnesota

FALL 2023

MINNESOTA LAW

RAISING THE BAR

REUNION CLASS GIVING

CONGRATULATIONS

TO THE 2023 REUNION CUP CHALLENGE WINNERS GENEROSITY CUP

PARTICIPATION CUP

ATTENDANCE CUP

Awarded to the class that raises the most funds during their reunion year.

Awarded to the class with the highest percentage of their class giving during their reunion year.

Awarded to the class with the highest percentage of classmates in attendance for their reunion event.

1978

1968

1983

$206,238

23.8%

RAISED

14.6%

PARTICIPATION

ATTENDANCE

z.umn.edu/Reunions

2023 GRADUATING CLASS GIFT Anonymous (26) Maysa Alqaisi Victoria Blakeborough* Jennifer Brown Sarah Coleman Carli Cortina* Jacqueline Cuellar Dan O’Dea Douglas Harmon Kylee Evans Rachel Glissmann

Noah HummelHall* Henry Killen*+ Min Ji Kim Michael Kinane Jack Lemkuil Bobby Lindsay Hannah McDonald* Mason Medeiros Aramis Mendez Trish Palermo Jacob Polinsky*

* Lockhart GOLD member

Kendall Prior* Mrynna Rutan Michael Van Ryn Dylan Saul* Justice Shannon Eric Sievert Ellison Snider Hayley Steele Zack Taylor* Steven Vogel Madison Wadsworth Helen Winters+

Class Gift Committee member

Save the Date:

Mark your calendars for next year’s Spring Alumni Week celebrating our alumni community. Spring Alumni Week will be held April 15-21, 2024, and will include virtual and in-person events. Special reunion events will be held for classes ending in ’4 and ’9.

MINNESOTA LAW

FALL 2023

31.6% class participation rate

$1,888 given to Minnesota Law by the Class of 2023

100% of the Alumni & Student Engagement Committee participated in a match Gifts supported the George Floyd Memorial Scholarship to increase access to Minnesota Law.

Thank you, Partners at Work

The 2023 Partners At Work campaign raised $184,544 with 254 alumni from 29 firms making a gift! Thank you to all participating firms, firm agents, and all alumni who supported Minnesota Law through the program. Your generosity, advocacy, and time is deeply appreciated.

6 firms reached 100% alumni participation! Congratulations to these firms and their agents:

Special recognition to these firms and agents for their achievements:

Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher Rachel Brass ’01

OVERALL HIGHEST DOLLAR TOTAL

Greene Espel PLLP Jenny Gassman-Pines ’06 Lind Jensen Sullivan & Peterson Bill Davidson ’89

Gibson Dunn & Crutcher Rachel Brass ’01 HIGHEST DOLLAR TOTAL IN GROUP II

Henson Efron Eric Friske ’13 HIGHEST DOLLAR TOTAL IN GROUP III

O’Melveny & Myers LLP Carl Erik Heiberg ’06

Fredrikson & Byron Ryan Brauer ’03, Joe Cassioppi ’07, Mary Ranum ’03, and Jamie Snelson ’97

Vantage Law Group Joseph Nuñez ’84

HIGHEST ALUMNI PARTICIPATION IN GROUP II

Zimmerman Reed LLP Brian Gudmundson ’04

Nilan Johnson Lewis Heidi Christianson ’95 and Kate Andresen ’96 58% alumni participation HIGHEST ALUMNI PARTICIPATION IN GROUP III

For the full list of participating firms and agents, please visit z.umn.edu/law-paw. To learn more about Partners at Work, contact Terese Lynch at tclynch@umn.edu or 612-626-8670.

Winthrop & Weinstine Kyle Kroll ’16 and Joe Windler ’07 72% alumni participation MOST LOCKHART CLUB MEMBERS

Robins Kaplan Michael Reif ’06

FALL 2023

MINNESOTA LAW

RAISING THE BAR

WHY I GIVE Caitlinrose Fisher ’15

fter graduating from law school, Caitlinrose Fisher ’15 spent a few years immersed in appellate practice. As a student, she was a summer law intern at the United States Department of Justice, Office of the Solicitor General, where she worked on merits cases before the United States Supreme Court. She clerked for the then-Chief Judge on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, Sidney Thomas, in Billings, Montana, and then returned to her hometown of Minneapolis to clerk for the late Diana Murphy ’74 of the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals. After clerking, she spent a few years at Greene Espel in Minneapolis before co-founding her current law firm, Forsgren Fisher McCalmont DeMarea Tysver. Fisher’s firm practices in the areas of trials, investigations, and intellectual property. Since law school, Fisher has remained an active member of Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers and is a current board member and past chair of LCL’s Board of Directors. Fisher says, “I’m a strong believer in the wellbeing of members of the judicial system.” For Fisher, one of the main reasons she gives is Minnesota Law’s world-class faculty. “Time and again, faculty went out of their way to create opportunities and experiences that set me up to succeed as a lawyer,” Fisher says. “I was taught both rigorous legal analysis and practical skills. The faculty is a large part of what drew me to Minnesota Law, and I want the same caliber

MINNESOTA LAW

FALL 2023

of professors and educational experiences to be available to future students.” Fisher fondly remembers participating in the Mellouli v. Lynch case in connection with the Immigrant Law Center and the Federal Immigration Litigation Clinic. “The student team was involved in all stages of the merits Supreme Court briefing, including strategizing with amicus,” Fisher says. “A group of us was able to attend oral argument at the United States Supreme Court. It was an amazing experience and, of course, wonderful to win in a case that had such a broad, positive impact for many individuals facing removal.” HOMETOWN: Minneapolis GIVING LEVEL: Murphy Society, William B. Lockhart Club WHAT WON’T WE FIND ON YOUR RESUME? I almost went to a music conservatory to study bassoon after graduating from high school, instead of pursuing a liberal arts college education. WHAT IS ONE PIECE OF ADVICE YOU WOULD GIVE TO FIRST-YEAR LAW STUDENTS? Be kind to each other. Not only is it the right thing to do, but also the legal community is small. Your classmates will quickly become referral sources, clients, opposing parties, and decisionmakers. ❘❘❘❘

WAYS TO GIVE There are many ways to give back to the University of Minnesota Law School. For more information, visit www.law.umn.edu/giving. Or send your gift directly to the University of Minnesota Foundation, P.O. Box 860266, Minneapolis, MN 55486-0266, noting “Law School” in the memo line. ANNUAL FUND Student scholarships, clinics, and faculty support are just a few areas that benefit from annual gifts made to the Law School. Please contact Lizzy Beghelli, director of alumni relations and annual giving, at beghelli@ umn.edu or call 612-626-8671 to learn more about how you can support the Annual Fund.

To make a gift, visit give.umn.edu/law

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Photos: Cory Ryan

On August 31, Minnesota Law’s Alumni and Student Engagement Committee hosted its annual

Student & Alumni Tailgate Event. Students and alumni kicked off the start of the Golden Gophers football season with food, drinks, and plenty of fun.