1. law, govt and politics

Fall 2011
GREETINGS!
I hope this letter finds you well. I am writing today to let you know about some of our upcoming events and to review the past
academic year.
ALUMNI WEEKEND
Alumni Weekend takes place from October 28 to 30, 2011. Whether it has been 5 years or 50 since you were last on campus,
we hope to see you for this special event. Alumni Weekend is open to all alumni, not just those celebrating special reunions—
this makes it a great opportunity to reconnect with classmates and professors, revisit familiar spots on campus and enjoy
the city in autumn! Dozens of events are planned across the University, but here are two that I hope you will find particularly
interesting:
OCTOBER 29, 12:00 P.M.: BU’S 65TH ANNUAL ALUMNI AWARDS CEREMONY & LUNCHEON
Join President Robert A. Brown and fellow alumni in the GSU Metcalf Ballroom for one of the highlights of Alumni Weekend.
Among the honorees this year is Gerard H. Cohen (’62), who has been a friend and benefactor to BU Law and a leading
member of the Executive Committee of the Law School Alumni Association for many years. It would be wonderful to have a
group of BU Law alumni in attendance to honor Gerry and all he has done for the School over the years.
Other alumni being recognized include Elizabeth Cohen (SPH ’92; no relation to Gerry), Meera Gandhi (GSM ’89) and the
Young Alumni Award recipient, Travis Roy (COM ’00). More details are available at www.bu.edu/alumniweekend.
OCTOBER 29, 6:00 P.M.: BU LAW ANNUAL REUNION GALA DINNER & SILVER SHINGLE AWARDS PRESENTATION
We are pleased to host the law school’s Annual Reunion Gala Dinner at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Boston. During the
dinner, we will present the 2011 Silver Shingle Awards to outstanding alumni and friends of BU Law (for the list of award
winners, see the next page). Spend Saturday night with us, catching up with old friends, making new connections and
celebrating the achievements of your fellow alumni. All BU Law alumni are welcome at the dinner, so join us if you can. More
details are available at www.bu.edu/law/alumni/events.
We will distribute class directories to reunion classes at the Gala Dinner, so please send us a class note about yourself—even
if you can’t be there. Your classmates will enjoy hearing from you! To be included in the directories, submit your class note by
October 17th to [email protected].
2011 SILVER SHINGLE AWARD WINNERS
• Professor Kenneth W. Simons, Esq.
The Honorable Frank R. Kenison Distinguished Scholar in Law
Boston University School of Law Silver Shingle for Service to the School
• Major General Stephen D. Tom (’74)
Commander
Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command
Silver Shingle for Service to the Community
• Stephen M. Zide (’86)
Managing Director
Bain Capital NY LLC
Silver Shingle for Service to the School
• Jennifer A. Serafyn (’01)
Assistant United States Attorney
District of Massachusetts
Young Lawyer’s Chair
• The Honorable Allan van Gestel (Ret.) (LL.B. ’61)
Mediator & Arbitrator
JAMS
Silver Shingle for Service to the Profession
• Maura J. Kelly, Esq.
Assistant Dean for Career Development and Public Service
Boston University School of Law
Gerard H. Cohen Award
THE YEAR AHEAD
UPCOMING EVENTS
This year, we will host a number of lectures, conferences and events. Below is a list of just a few of the events happening this
fall. I encourage you to check our Web site at www.bu.edu/law/events/upcoming for more information about these events
and others. We love when alumni attend events and reconnect with their professors and meet our current students.
• September 30–October 1: BU Law hosts a workshop on intellectual property law, Innovation and Patent Harmonization:
Does One Size Fit All? The workshop will consider legal and empirical economics scholarship on patent harmonization
and innovation, as well as legal practitioners’ experience in the field.
• October 3–4: The symposium Antimicrobial Resistance: Biology, Population Dynamics and Policy Options will explore
the roles of transmission modeling, pathogen genomics and traditional surveillance in understanding the biology and
population dynamics of antimicrobial resistance. Organized by the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at
Harvard School of Public Health, the symposium will be hosted at BU Law.
• October 14: BU Law hosts the conference Ten Years In: Appraising the International Law of the “Long War” in
Afghanistan and Pakistan. The keynote speaker will be David Kilcullen, a leading authority on counterinsurgency and
counterterrorism and a former senior counterinsurgency adviser to General David Petraeus.
• October 23: The Pike Conference on Health Law, sponsored by the Schools of Law and Public Health in partnership
with BU’s Florence & Chafetz Hillel House, will focus on the resiliency and fragility of Holocaust survivors and issues of
restitution.
THE INCOMING CLASS
We are delighted to be welcoming 242 1L students this year. Our new students come from 32 states, the District of Columbia,
Puerto Rico and nine foreign countries. California, Massachusetts, New York, Florida, New Jersey and Texas are the most
heavily represented states in this year’s class. Class members attended 112 undergraduate institutions, and 18 students hold
advanced degrees (including two Ph.D.s). Two-thirds of the incoming class come to law school with at least one year, and
often many years, of work and life experience.
Our LL.M. in American Law Program is welcoming 71 students from 26 countries. Our LL.M. in Banking and Financial Law
Program is enrolling 57 students from 24 countries, and our LL.M. in Taxation Program welcomes 38 students from the
United States and eight other countries.
FACULTY NEWS
I’m delighted to announce the arrival of two new full-time faculty members:
Professor of the Practice of Law Tina L. Stark joins the BU Law faculty as the director of the new Transactional Law Program
(for more about the program, see below). She comes to us from Emory University School of Law where she was professor in
the practice of law and executive director of the Center for Transactional Law and Practice. She received her A.B. with honors
from Brown University and her J.D. from New York University School of Law.
Clinical Associate Professor Karen Pita Loor joins us from Florida International University School of Law where she taught
in and supervised the Immigrant Children’s Justice Clinic. At BU Law, she will serve as a clinical associate professor and
supervisor in the Criminal Defender Program. Professor Loor graduated with honors from American University’s Washington
College of Law.
We are also pleased to have two new visiting faculty members this year. Harvard Law Professor Randall Kennedy, one of the
country’s most important scholars on issues of law and race, will teach a seminar on the legal history of the American civil
rights movement. Professor Kennedy is the author of numerous articles and five books, including Race, Crime, and the Law and
the recently released The Persistence of the Color Line: Racial Politics and the Obama Presidency. Michael Vitali, a 1998 graduate
of our law school and an experienced defense attorney, will serve as a visiting assistant professor, teaching students in the
criminal clinic. He has supervised and trained lawyers who practice criminal law in state courts and has taught undergraduate
criminal justice courses at Stonehill College.
Finally, I’d like to express my appreciation to Professors Daniel Partan and Eva Nilsen, who are retiring from teaching after
long and distinguished careers. We are grateful to them for their many years of service to the School, and we wish them well
in the next phase of their lives.
TRANSACTIONAL LAW PROGRAM
I am very pleased to announce that BU Law is launching a new Transactional Law Program, to be headed by Professor Tina
Stark. The program will teach students the doctrine, skills and tasks necessary to participate meaningfully in a transaction of
any kind—whether a house closing or an initial public offering. Among other things, students will learn how to draft contracts
from the client’s business perspective; how to perform due diligence; how to draft third-party opinion letters, letters of intent
and corporate resolutions; and how to negotiate on behalf of a business client. Adjuncts will teach many of the new courses,
bringing a real-world perspective to the program. This fall, Professor Stark is teaching Contract Drafting, which focuses
on how to translate the business deal into the contract as well as how to draft it clearly. The course also teaches students
contract analysis and how to add value to a deal by addressing its central business issues.
BU Law’s clinical programs have long distinguished themselves for the outstanding training they provide in the practical skills
needed for litigation. I expect that the Transactional Law Program will provide the same level of training for students who
want to be transactional lawyers. My hope is that we will have a program that makes us leaders in this important emerging
branch of legal education for years to come.
PROGRAM UPDATES
Here are some other programs that are reaching major milestones or undergoing exciting changes in the coming year:
• The law school’s writing program now has a new name—the Legal Writing and Appellate Advocacy Program—and a
range of new courses. We have expanded our offerings for second- and third-year students with courses such as Judicial
Writing and Legal Writing for Civil Litigation.
• Launched this past March, the Executive LL.M. in International Business Law is expected to graduate its first four
students by the end of the calendar year. The Executive LL.M. is an innovative degree program that combines on-site
modules taught by BU Law faculty with long-distance learning components, allowing foreign and U.S. lawyers to study
international business law without having to leave their practice for an extended period.
• During the 2011–2012 academic year, Margalit Faden (’12) will become the first student to participate in our new dualdegree program with the National University of Singapore (NUS). Upon successful completion of a year of studies in
Singapore, Ms. Faden will receive both an LL.M. in Asian Legal Studies from NUS and a J.D. from BU Law.
• BU Law is completing negotiations for a new international dual-degree program with Universidad Pontificia Comillas
(ICADE) in Madrid, which would enable J.D. students to earn an LL.M. in European and International Business Law from
ICADE (in English) during their third year. We hope to launch this program in 2012–2013.
• Three students are participating in the inaugural year of our new exchange program with University College London
(UCL). These students will participate in a unique program, run by UCL’s Faculty of Laws, that offers a select group of
U.S. J.D. students the opportunity to study law in London for a fall semester.
ACADEMIC YEAR 2010–2011 IN REVIEW
BU LAW AWARDS $400,000 IN PUBLIC SERVICE FELLOWSHIPS
The economic downturn has had a large negative impact on the availability of entry-level public interest and government
jobs, particularly at the state and local government levels. To assist students and support underfunded agencies,
organizations and courts, BU Law has funded public service fellowships for 10 members of the Class of 2011. Each fellow
receives $40,000 for 10 months of full-time employment, working in a range of areas including representing indigent clients
in immigration claims, handling child abuse cases and analyzing climate and energy issues for developing countries. The
fellows and hosting organizations are:
Christina Asencio—Asylum Access Ecuador, Quito, Ecuador
Thea Bernas—Public Counsel, Los Angeles, CA
Jesse Blaisdell—The Defender Association, Seattle, WA
Erin Hammond—Wayne County Department of Social Services, Lyons, NY
Jeremy Knee—MA Executive Office of Environmental Affairs, Boston, MA
Kristina McKibben—California Rural Legal Services, Sacramento, CA
Mia Midenjak—New England Pension Assistance Project, Boston, MA
Jennifer Mikels—Massachusetts Superior Court, Boston, MA
Adam Peltz—Environmental Defense Fund, New York, NY
Jared Sampson—Massachusetts Land Court, Boston, MA
Meanwhile, we continue to commit resources and energy on numerous other fronts as we encourage students to make public
service a central part of their legal educations and their professional lives. The Fall 2011 issue of The Record will include a
roundup of public service news from the law school. For now, here are just a few highlights:
• Thirteen students have received Public Interest Scholarships since the program began three years ago, and six more
Public Interest Scholars matriculated this fall. Students must have a demonstrated track record of public service and a
commitment to pursuing a career in public service to be eligible for this generous scholarship.
• Our Loan Repayment Assistance Program provides financial support in the form of a forgivable loan to alumni employed
in public interest law positions. The total amount of assistance that the law school provides through this program has
increased from $15,500 in 2004 to $94,000 in 2010. Applications may be submitted prior to December 1 of each year
by alumni who have graduated within the past 10 years.
• More than 220 students participated in BU Law’s Pro Bono Program in 2010–2011. Forty-five students from the 2011
graduating class received certificates for fulfilling the pro bono pledge, which requires students to complete 35 hours of
pro bono service during law school.
STUDENT AWARDS AND HONORS
Our students continue to excel. A number of law students were selected for prestigious summer fellowship programs and
grants this year, including the Education Pioneers Fellowship, the Equal Justice Works Fellowship and the Equal Justice Works
Summer Corps program. Of the twelve Rappaport Fellowships awarded in 2011, five were granted to BU Law students—an
unprecedented number for any of the six Boston-area law schools to which the program applies. The Rappaport program
awards fellowships to gifted students from each of the schools, bringing them together to work with public policymakers on
issues that affect city and state residents.
Many students participated in competitions during the year, ably representing BU Law. Here are a few highlights:
• Todd Marabella (’11), Caitlin Monjeau (’11) and Patrick Marinaro (’11) won the 2011 Sutherland Cup Competition, as
well as the prize for Best Brief. The Sutherland Cup Competition is the oldest national moot court competition in the
country and is sponsored by the Columbus School of Law at Catholic University.
• Leigh Campbell (’11) and Jennifer Mikels (’11) were runners-up at the 21st Annual National First Amendment Moot
Court Competition, held at Vanderbilt University. The team advanced past 32 other teams to the final round.
• Claire Catalano (’11), William Davison (’11) and Alistair Reader (’11) won first place overall and the Best Brief award at
the regionals of the National Moot Court Competition.
• Robert Callahan (’12) and Paul Shapiro (’12) won the prize for Best Respondent Brief at the Eastern Regional of the
Constance Baker Motley National Moot Court Competition in Constitutional Law, held at Suffolk University.
• Eric Lee (’11) and Stephen Pessagno (’11) were undefeated at this year’s Oxford Intellectual Property Moot Court
Competition. They were one of eight teams out of twenty-two to advance to the quarterfinals, where they defeated the
team from University College London. Nonetheless, due to the scoring rules of the competition, they were unable to
advance to the semifinals.
• Celeste Davis (’12) was the BU Law recipient of the 2011 Massachusetts Black Judges Conference Book Award.
FACULTY AWARDS AND HONORS
In case you missed the news last spring, a number of law school
BU LAW RANKINGS ROUNDUP
professors were recognized for their teaching, scholarship and service to
Here are just a few of the rankings in which BU Law
appeared over the last year:
the School. Among those honored was Wendy Gordon, who was named a
William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor by BU President Robert
A. Brown. The Warren Professorship is the highest honor bestowed
upon senior members of the BU faculty who are involved in research
• The Princeton Review (2011)
#1 Best Professors
and scholarship as well as in the civic life of the University. Other award
#8 Best Classroom Experience
winners included David Walker, who received the Metcalf Award, the
#10 Best Career Prospects
University’s highest honor for excellence in teaching, and James Fleming
and Linda McClain, co-winners of the David Saul Smith Award for
Scholarship.
The Princeton Review, in its annual law school rankings, named BU Law
• U.S. News & World Report (2011)
#2 Health Law Program
#7 Intellectual Property Program
the #1 school in the category of “Best Professors” (see box for more of
#9 Tax Program
the latest rankings). This is just further evidence of something we’ve
#22 Overall
long known: that our faculty is among the very best in the nation. By all
measures, our faculty members continue to thrive, both in the classroom
and in their research and scholarship. For example, in the past year, BU
• National Jurist ranked BU Law’s Pappas Law Library
as #17 in the country.
Law professors produced nearly 100 works of scholarship (books, book
chapters, or articles in mainstream scholarly journals). Faculty members
published 15 books in that period, with 12 additional books under contract for future years, mostly with university presses.
We have inaugurated a series of symposia celebrating the publication of new books by our faculty. The first of these, on
Khiara Bridges’s book Reproducing Race: An Ethnography of Pregnancy as a Site of Racialization (University of California Press,
2011), was held in April 2011. Two more symposia are already scheduled for this fall, focusing on books by Hugh Baxter and
Gary Lawson. Look on our Web site for details about these symposia, which will include distinguished scholars from law,
political science and philosophy as commentators.
COMMENCEMENT 2011
We were honored to have U.S. Circuit Judge Denny Chin give the commencement address to our graduating students this
year. Photos and video from the day as well as the text of speeches given by Judge Chin, Christopher Rudy (J.D. ’11) and Jing
Tang (LL.M. in American Law ’11) can be found on our Web site at www.bu.edu/law/events/commencement.
ALUMNI NEWS
GARY F. LOCKE (’75) TO SERVE AS AMBASSADOR TO CHINA
BU Law is proud to congratulate Gary F. Locke, who was unanimously confirmed by the Senate as U.S. ambassador to China.
Locke was officially sworn in by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on August 1, becoming the first Chinese American
to serve as ambassador to China.
Locke served as secretary of commerce in the Obama administration and previously was a popular two-term governor of
Washington state. Before entering politics, he worked for several years as a deputy prosecutor in King County, Washington.
BU Law interviewed Locke for the 2010 edition of our alumni magazine, The Record. In that article, he talked about his longterm goal to improve trade relations with China, explaining that he would like to loosen several of the trade restrictions that
are currently in place. “The Chinese recognize that the trade imbalance is unhealthy; they want to buy more U.S. products,”
Locke said. “But there are currently barriers to some of what they want to buy. ... We should focus on strengthening
restrictions on those items that would have a clear impact on national security and loosen the restrictions on those products
that are readily sold in other countries.”
You can read the complete interview with Locke here: www.bu.edu/law/alumni/news/the_record/past_issues.
FALL 2011 ISSUE OF THE RECORD
For more alumni news, watch for the Fall 2011 issue of The Record, which should arrive in your mailbox around November. The
issue, which spotlights BU Law alumni who are working in the entertainment industry, will include:
• Feature articles on producer and screenwriter David E. Kelley (’83), Viacom General Counsel Michael Fricklas (’84),
DC Comics Vice President Jay Kogan (’86) and other distinguished alumni.
• Exciting news about our facilities plans.
• An article summarizing the findings of the New Legal Market Project, an initiative announced last year to evaluate the
changing needs of today’s legal market and how well the law school is meeting those needs. More than 1,800 alumni
contributed to the project by sitting for interviews or participating in an online survey.
• Many other interesting articles about alumni events and BU Law activities.
STAYING IN TOUCH
You can network with fellow alumni through the BU Law Connection at any time. Just visit the BU Law Web site at
www.bu.edu/law, click on “BU Law Connection” and follow the instructions. It becomes a stronger tool as more alumni join,
so please take a few minutes to sign up. You might also want to consider joining the LinkedIn group for BU Law alumni at
www.linkedin.com.
You can find the latest alumni news on our Web site, in e-Updates @ BU Law (published monthly during the academic year)
and in our quarterly electronic alumni newsletters. If you are not receiving these and would like to be on our e-mail list, please
let us know by e-mailing [email protected].
THANK YOU
In closing, I’d like to thank all of you for your help and support. Many of you have acted as mentors to our students,
networked with students to help them find jobs, hired students, served on law school and alumni committees, and supported
the School through financial contributions. We are deeply grateful to every one of you for your generosity. All of your efforts
on our behalf, large and small, make a difference in the lives of our students.
Best wishes,
Maureen A. O’Rourke
Dean and Professor of Law
Michaels Faculty Research Scholar