Last year, I initiated a periodic Dean's Update to the NUSL community.  The purpose is to give everyone --- faculty, staff, and students -- an update on matters, small and large, that may not always be sufficiently transparent.  For those students on co-op, this is one way to keep up on developments.  This is the first Update since last summer and thus the first for first year students. It is also the first being sent to students  via the WeBoard, rather than individual email.  Please give me feedback: Are there issues that I have missed? Are there ways to make this more informative?

 

As in the past, this Update is divided between items of interest to everyone, and items primarily of interest to students.

 

Matters of interest to staff, faculty and students:

 

Transitions... Staff and Faculty

 

Associate Deans: As of this past Fall, we have a new line-up of Associate Deans and a new division of authority.  Dick Daynard, as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, is responsible for all things related to the curriculum, including selection of adjunct professors, and for student academic issues (the latter together with Assistant Dean Bettye Freeman).  Jim Rowan focuses on experiential learning and community based education and research.  Sara Sayess, who joined us in October 2004, is responsible for administration, planning and budget.  Special projects and initiatives are divided among us based upon a variety of factors: if you're not sure, just ask.

 

Faculty:  Dan Williams joined the faculty this past Fall and is teaching Criminal Law, Evidence and related courses.  Dan Danielsen is now a permanent member of the faculty.  Susan Richey is here as a visiting professor teaching Federal Courts; she will be returning to Franklin Pierce law school after the Spring quarter.  The following members of the faculty will be on half year sabbaticals next year: James Hackney, Margaret Woo, David Phillips, Stacey Dogan, Hope Lewis and Peter Enrich.  (Note: This may sound like a lot, but in fact this is about average for a faculty this size.)  Returning from sabbaticals and leaves from the current year will be Karl Klare, Lee Breckenridge, Lucy Williams, John Flym, Debbie Ramirez and Wendy Parmet.

 

We are delighted that Joan Neisser has accepted our offer to assume the new position of Writing Specialist.  Starting in the coming summer quarter, she will be teaching Advanced Legal Writing every quarter and will also offer office hours for other students who would like to talk with her about their writing.  We will let you know more specifics as we work them out.

 

Alice Alexander is retiring at the end of February after 20 years as the Assistant Dean and Director of the Cooperative Legal Education Office.  She has asked that we not hold a farewell event for her, and so we have chosen to honor her in a different way: we have established, in Alice's honor, the Alice Alexander Judicial Clerkship Co-op Stipend which will be awarded twice a year (one to each rotation) to a student on a clerkship. We are currently reviewing the staffing of the Coop Office, and we will keep you posted on how we plan to fill Alice's position.   

 

Brian Hodge departed as Director of Financial Aid last Fall.  After a very careful search to find a replacement, we are delighted that Linda Schoendorf has accepted our offer and will be starting here in March.  She will be working until 2:30 each day, and Mary Frances Church will continue to staff the office in the afternoon.

 

Ellen Kulik started at the end of February as our new Director of Development and Alumni Relations.  She is working with Nicole King Brady (Class of 2000) and will be building the staffing of that office over the next month.  As we go forward, we hope that everyone – students, faculty and staff – will help Ellen build a new and more vigorous program for both alumni relations and fundraising.

 

In the law library, Mary Liz Brenninkmeyer is the new Reference and Electronic Services Librarian.  Mary Liz graduated magna cum laude from BC Law School and practiced with Choate, Hall & Stewart before pursuing her MLIS (Master's of Library and Information Science) degree at Simmons College.  Long-time Law Library Circulation Supervisor Stephanie Hudner, now earning her MLIS degree from Simmons, was promoted  to Cataloger in December, 2004.   

 

Building update (small and large)...

 

Changes within the current building:  As you no doubt have noticed, last summer we completed the conversion of the first floor student lounge for use as offices for Assistant Dean Bettye Freeman and Financial Aid.  As a result, we have been able to provide some additional space for LCD teaching facilitators in Cargill.  We moved on to do some minor renovations of the Admissions Office and the Dean's Suite.   

 

But clearly, we need more.   

 

Major renovations:  Since I came as Dean in mid-2002, we have been in discussions regarding major renovations that will substantially expand and improve the available law school space. Conversations have been very slow, but they are still promising.  The University is committed to renovating Dockser Hall on Forsyth Street for our use. This will allow for new classrooms and offices, and will bring the clinics back home from Columbus Place.  The full extent of the project depends on an agreement on financing, which we are working on now. Stay tuned!

 

Strategic Planning for NUSL:  We are embarking on a comprehensive strategic planning process for the School.  The issues are currently being framed by two committees: the Planning Committee (comprised primarily of faculty and students) and the Administrative Planning Committee (comprised primarily of senior administrators).  During April and May, we anticipate convening discussions that include all faculty, senior staff, alumni, and many students.  Based on the initial discussions in the planning committees, we will be developing a framing memorandum and benchmark data in March that will be used as the starting place for the discussions in April and May.  I hope that there will be broad-based participation in this process.  We will also be sending out and collecting data from several surveys: to alumni/ae; to co-op employers; and to the graduation class of 2005.  Again, stay tuned!

 

Solomon Amendment:  As was previously posted on the WeBoard:  Northeastern University School of Law is now a member of the organization, Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights (FAIR) that has challenged the Solomon Amendment in the Third Circuit.  On November 29, 2004, the Third Circuit found the Solomon Amendment to be unconstitutional.  Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights v. Rumsfeld, 390 F.3d 219 (3rd Cir. 2004). That decision has now been stayed pending appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.  This week, in a separate case brought by Yale Law School faculty, the Connecticut District Court also held the Amendment to be unconstitutional.  Burt v. Rumsfeld, U.S. District Court of Connecticut, 3-03-CV-1777, decided January 31, 2005 (not yet reported, see http://islandia.law.yale.edu/ayers/burtopinion.pdf for the opinion).

 

Meanwhile, at NUSL:  On Wednesday, February 16 the ad hoc Committee on the Solomon Amendment held a very successful Teach In that provided further information to the NUSL community regarding these developments and their implications.  Until the Supreme Court rules, the military has decided to continue to enforce the Solomon Amendment.  We will continue to comply with existing law.   

 

Law Library update on available resources:  After several years of negotiation, Westlaw agreed to loosen its tight restrictions that allowed students to use Westlaw only for classes at the law school. Students may now use Westlaw, as well as Lexis, for unpaid public interest co-ops..  The Law Library continues to add new electronic research sources to support faculty and student research, including: The Economists' Voice, an e-journal from Berkeley Electronic Press. (NUSL also subscribed to ExpressO, a BEPress service allowing professors to submit their articles electronically to multiple law reviews); Social Insurance Research Network  from SSRN, a group of email journals presenting abstracts of research papers in all areas of social insurance; LawAfrica Law Reports, a database of reports from the courts of Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, and the East African COMESA Court of Justice;  Index to Legal Periodicals (ILP), previously only in print, now in a full text database allowing a search for citations to articles in over 1000 legal journals and publications from 1981 to date, with links to full text of over 200 legal periodicals from 1994 to date. Also, the ILP Retrospective  eliminates the laborious searching of older print volumes through a database of citations to articles in over 750 legal periodicals published from 1918 to 1981.  The law library has also purchased  American State Papers and Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States prior to Clinton in book format.   

 

Information/computer services: This Fall, we unveiled three projects that we were working on last year: wireless web access in the Commons and the law library; video monitor announcement boards; and the WeBoard, a web-based system for communications. 

 

Status of new and continuing faculty initiatives:

 

In November 2003, NUSL hosted the inaugural conference of NUSL's Progressive Lawyering Project: Rethinking Ideology & Strategy Progressive Lawyering, Globalization and Markets. Over 200 lawyers and academic experts attended.  Proceedings of the conference are now being put together, and should be published in 2006 as the first publication of this project.  Clare Dalton is acting as editor-in-chief.  See http://www.slaw.neu.edu/news/progressive/ for information about the conference.

 

Public health and law: Wendy Parmet is continuing her work on public health literacy for lawyers as part of her Matthews Professorship.  She will be returning to full-time teaching in the next academic year, but will be continuing to work on this project.  NUSL's joint venture with Tufts, the Public Health Advocacy Institute, is also hosting a joint project involving Dick Daynard from NUSL with Tufts' faculty on the legal approaches to the obesity epidemic.  Dick Daynard is expanding his interest in strategic litigation to include obesity, and the Tobacco Litigation Clinic will now be renamed the Public Health Legal Clinic, as the work in that clinic expands to include obesity.

 

Human Rights: A group of faculty, led by Hope Lewis and Martha Davis, have put together a concept paper for a new Program on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights to be housed at NUSL.  This initiative will include, once funded, a summer institute, development of co-op and other learning opportunities for students, and a range of work by individual and groups of faculty who are interested in both the theory and practice of human rights law that addresses inequalities.

 

Partnering for Prevention: Debbie Ramirez has moved her PfP project from the Institute for Race and Justice to the School of Professional and Continuing Studies.  The project will train national and local law enforcement together with members of the Arab, Sikh, and Muslim communities in an effort to protect peoples' civil liberties while allowing effective anti-terrorism law enforcement.  Debbie will return to teaching full-time next academic year and will again be teaching first year Criminal Justice as well as an upper level seminar on Balancing Liberty and Security that will be offered to both rotations.

 

Institute for Race and Justice: With Debbie Ramirez' departure from the Institute for Race and Justice, we are exploring new and different ways in which the faculty and students of the School of Law can work with social scientists at Northeastern in the areas of race and justice.  The Institute is a joint enterprise of the Colleges of Arts and Sciences and Criminal Justice and the School of Law.   

 

Law and Economic Development: A group of faculty has continued to meet to study the issues of law and development and to develop ideas for programs at NUSL.   

 

Development and Alumni Relations: Under the leadership of Ellen Kulik, our new Director of Development and Alumni Relations, we are putting together a new staff and a new strategic plan for these areas for the school.  Last year, we were delighted to receive large gifts from the Stride Rite Charitable Foundation, and Richard and Nonnie Burnes to support the Public Interest Scholars Program currently, as well as a commitment of $1.5 million from Susan Deitch to endow the scholarship permanently. We also received a gift from the Thomas A. Pappas Charitable Foundation to expand our library collection in the area of international public interest and human rights law.  Our alumni participation in Annual Fund giving continues to be at the top of law schools nationally.

 

Speakers at NUSL: We have continued the NU Law Forum: Discussions on Contemporary Issues for a second year.  This year, we welcomed John Bonifaz, General Counsel, National Voting Rights Institute in July.  In September, we hosted a panel on the "Balance Between Freedom and Security."  Michael Ratner, Center for Constitutional Rights, and David Rivkin, former White House staff member in the Bush Administration, spoke.  The event was co-sponsored by NURF and the NUSL Federalist Society.  In January, the Honorable Justice Richard Goldstone of the South Africa Constitutional Court spoke.  And, coming on March 24, we will welcome gay rights activist Urvashi Vaid.

 

Daynard Public Interest Visiting Fellows Program.  This year was the inaugural year of our new Visiting Fellows program. Under this new program, we are selecting two public interest practitioners to visit NUSL for a few days, one in the fall quarter, and the second in the winter quarter.  This program is being funded by a generous gift from Carol and Richard Daynard.  Each Fellow gives a community lecture, visit classes, and meet with students, staff and faculty.  The first two Fellows in the program were Mary Bonauto, Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD) (fall quarter) and D. Milo Mumgaard, founder of the Nebraska Appleseed Center (winter quarter).  A committee, chaired by Martha Davis, is now working on the selection of fellows for the 2005-2006 academic year.

 

Especially for the Class of 2005:

 

Upper legal writing requirement.  Do not forget that you must complete this requirement in order to graduate.  DEADLINE IS MARCH 1.

 

Third year student survey:   Members of the class of 2005 will be receiving an email survey later this Spring.  We are counting on you to fill it out and return it.  We want your opinions on a wide range of issues before you leave.

 

For all classes:

 

Status of student governance: Mario Choi '05 and Richard Moore '07 continue to work on developing a new structure for student governance at NUSL.  If you are interested, please contact them.

 

Moot court & related matters: We continue to examine ways to improve Moot Court and develop our participation in other competitions and activities in which students can excel.  If you have ideas, please let Susan Maze Rothstein know.  Watch for further development on this during the Spring quarter.

 

International law update: We continue to work on expanding international law opportunities for NUSL students through co-ops and courses.  We have implemented the new policy on Summer Abroad programs.  We will be examining ways to deepen and expand opportunities in this area.  If you have concerns or ideas, please let one of the following know: Dick Daynard, Bettye Freeman, Hope Lewis, or Jerry Slater. To learn more, see  http://www.slaw.neu.edu/coop/international.html .

 

Curriculum Committee review of research and writing: The Curriculum Committee will be completing an exhaustive review of research and writing in the coming months, primarily focused on the first year.  If you have thoughts about this, please let Mary O'Connell, chair of the committee, know.  The Committee will be making recommendations regarding improvements in this area to the faculty and the Governing Council before the fall.

 

And finally:

 

Congratulations on completion of the WINTER QUARTER!   

 

EAS

 

Emily A. Spieler

Dean

Edwin Hadley Professor of Law