Penn State Law

Pulitzer Prize winner Linda Greenhouse will deliver commencement addressNew York Times reporter and author Linda Greenhouse will receive an honorary doctorate of law from Penn State during Law School commencement on May 21, 2011. Penn State University President Graham B. Spanier will deliver the honor.

Ambassador Butler to lead nuclear disarmament groupAmbassador Richard Butler AC, Penn State's Distinguished Scholar of International Peace and Security and a faculty member of the School of International Affairs, has been named chairman of the Middle Powers Initiative, effective January 1, 2011.

Penn State Law Professor sheds light on foreclosure crisisPenn State Law Professor Marie Reilly, a bankruptcy and banking law expert, worries that the backlash over the current foreclosure crisis may be the “medicine that kills the patient.” Laws and regulations developed more than a century ago that require paper documentation continue to govern a process which is now electronic and involves a complex system of lenders and servicers. She discusses the origins of the current problem and what effect they may have on the economy.

Professor Flatto wraps up visit at Hebrew UniversityProfessor David Flatto is teaching a winter term course on "Transformative Phases of Early Jewish Jurisprudence," at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The course is a comparative-historical study of the development of the Jewish and Western notions of power, law, and authority.

Cherie Booth Blair to put the "World on Trial" at Penn State LawThe state-of-the-art courtroom at Penn State Law will transform into the set of a new television and interactive series World on Trial, in which viewers around the world will render verdicts on provocative international human rights issues. On September 20 the eminent human rights barrister Cherie Booth Blair, wife of the former British Prime Minister, will preside over the first trial which will be on the French “headscarf law.”

Conference asks: should big-time college athletics be a tax-exempt enterprise?For many colleges and universities, athletics revenues surge as reliably as crowd noise on rivalry weekend, allowing profits from football and other big-time sports to support hundreds of student athletes. Taxation of collegiate athletics revenues will be the subject of a panel discussion at Penn State University, The Dickinson School of Law on Friday, September 18.

Former Guantanamo Bay adversaries visit ethics classWhen Guantanamo detainee Mohammed Jawad was appointed new defense counsel nearly six years after his arrest, it was a game-changer. Jawad had been arrested in Afghanistan for allegedly throwing a grenade into an SUV containing U.S. soldiers and an Afghan interpreter in December 2002. Lt. Col. David Frakt of the United States Air Force Reserves JAG Corps was appointed to Jawad’s case and sought to challenge the Military Commissions and the government’s case from the ground up. Guantanamo Bay prosecutor Lt. Col. Darrel Vandeveld of the U.S. Army JAG Corps met him every step of the way. Both attorneys addressed a legal ethics class at Penn State Law on Friday.

Students and alumni serve those who servePenn State Law students and alumni recently joined forces to provide estate planning documents to first responders and their spouses as part of the national Wills for Heroes project.

Christopher Walker '11 offers a student's perspective on generosityIn honor of his superior academic performance, Christopher A. Walker '11 was named the recipient of the Sidney D. Kline Sr. Scholarship Program, which was established by the shareholders of the law firm of Stevens and Lee in honor and memory of the late Sidney D. Kline Sr., class of 1926 and former trustee of The Dickinson School of Law.

Judge Bufford to lend expertise to American Bar Association and World BankThe Honorable Samuel L. Bufford, distinguished scholar in residence at Penn State Law, has accepted an invitation to join the academic advisory group to the prestigious ABA Standing Committee on Federal Judicial Improvements (SCFJI), the only ABA entity dedicated entirely to the substantive issues affecting the federal judiciary.