Category: Law School News

Nationally known legal scholars, attorneys and government leaders gathered Sept. 7, at Drake University Law School for a conference on risk and responsibility convened by former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, a visiting distinguished professor of law at Drake.

Mark Kende, the James Madison chair in constitutional law and director of the Drake Constitutional Law Center, and Peter Yu, the Kern family chair in intellectual property law and director of the Drake Intellectual Property Law Center, participated in the 2007 Annual Meetings of the Law and Society Association and the Research Committee on Sociology of Law at Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany, from July 25-28.

The award-winning Drake Jazz Band provided a colorful backdrop for the Law School Reunion this summer. Law grads reconnected with old friends on June 8-9 in Des Moines. On Saturday, alumni met for breakfast and toured the Law School and Legal Clinic with David Walker, dean of the Law School.

David S. Walker, dean of Drake University Law School and the Dwight D. Opperman distinguished professor of law, has notified the University and the Law School that he will resign as dean at the end of the 2007-08 academic year and return to the faculty.

The Drake University Law School will kick off the 25th anniversary celebration of its Agricultural Law Center with "Rural Lands Rural Livelihoods: Using Land and Natural Resources to Revitalize Rural Iowa," a conference and art show beginning Thursday, Sept. 20.

Emma Jordan, professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center, will open the 2007-08 Constitutional Law Distinguished Lecture Series at 2 p.m., Friday, Oct. 5, in room 213 of Cartwright Hall. The lecture, which is free and open to the public is titled "Wealth and Inequality: Thinking about Communities and Individualism."

Cathy Lesser Mansfield, Drake professor of law, has been accepted as one of 20 law professors nationwide to participate in the 2007 Silberman Seminar, which is funded and conducted by the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.

The Drake Law Review teamed up with the American Judicature Society once again this year to publish their fourth annual collaborative issue.

The U.S. Constitution is often treated as if it is a nearly sacred and flawless document. But on April 7, the Drake Constitutional Law Center held a symposium on the topic of whether the U.S. Constitution actually hinders democracy.

In a lecture at Drake Law School this April, 1974 Drake Law School graduate Stephen Rapp said that the United Nations Special Court for Sierra Leone is a response to weaknesses of the tribunals in Rwanda and Yugoslavia, on which he also served.