Brad Clary ’75 was named the 2020 recipient of the prestigious Thomas F. Blackwell Memorial Award for outstanding achievement in the field of legal writing. This distinguished award, presented annually by the Association of Legal Writing Directors and the Legal Writing Institute, honors a person who has made an outstanding contribution to the field of legal writing by demonstrating an ability to nurture and motivate students to excellence; a willingness to help other legal writing educators improve their teaching skills or their legal writing programs; and an ability to create and integrate new ideas for teaching and motivating legal writing educators and students. 

Tom Cotter testified before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Intellectual Property at a hearing considering the STRONGER Patents Act, a piece of proposed legislation aimed at changing certain standards that apply in patent cases. 

Prentiss Cox ’90 was promoted to the position of professor of law. 

Claire Hill presented at the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans’ 2019 Investments Institute on behavioral biases in financial decision-making. At the Canadian Securities Administrators’ Biennial Commissioners Conference, Hill spoke on a panel that discussed the deterrence of securities violations. She also co-organized and spoke at the 11th annual Adolf A. Berle Symposium on Corporation, Law, and Society at Seattle University School of Law; the symposium’s theme was Law and Corporate Culture, and Hill’s presentation concerned the relationship between CEO language in companies that had experienced significant ethical lapses with those that had not. 

Jill Hasday testified before the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service on the unconstitutionality of male-only military registration. The commission was created by the U.S. Congress to make recommendations about reforming the Selective Service System. Also, Hasday’s scholarship was cited by the Iowa Court of Appeals in In re Interest of I.P., 2019 WL 3317922 (Iowa Ct. App. July 24, 2019). 

Kristin Hickman’s article—co-authored with Gerald Kerska ’17—was cited by the U. S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit in both the majority and dissenting opinions in CIC Services, LLC v. Internal Revenue Service, No. 18-5019 (6th Cir. May 22, 2019). Like the article, the case concerned whether tax regulatory actions are exempted from pre-enforcement judicial review by a provision of the tax code known as the Anti- Injunction Act. Also, Hickman’s Administrative Law Treatise was cited by the U.S. Supreme Court in Azar v. Allina Health Services, No. 17-1484 (June 3, 2019), a case concerning whether the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services failed to satisfy statutory procedural requirements. In another case heard before the U.S. Supreme Court— Kisor v. Wilkie, No. 18-15 (June 26, 2019)—Justice Neil Gorsuch cited Hickman’s essay, co-authored with Mark Thomson ’12, examining the Auer doctrine, which calls upon courts to defer to federal government agency interpretations of their own regulations.

Heidi Kitrosser, as a member of the founding steering committee, helped launch the Free Expression Legal Network, a collaboration between Yale Law School’s Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. FELN is a network of law school clinics, academics, and practitioners (including nonprofits) across the country that seeks to promote and protect free speech, free press, and the flow of information. 

Herbert Kritzer was named a recipient of a 2019 Legacy Award from the Law and Society Association, an interdisciplinary scholarly organization committed to social scientific, interpretive, and historical analyses of law across multiple social contexts. This lifetime achievement award honors people whose contributions significantly helped to develop the association through sustained commitment to its mission and legacy. 

Steve Meili presented his research on the constitutionalization of human rights law at conferences and workshops sponsored by the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law (Heidelberg), the Refugee Law Initiative at the University of London, Queen Mary University (London), the Law and Society Association (Washington, D.C.), and the Latin American Studies Association (Boston). Meili’s research, part of a long-term comparative project funded by the University of Minnesota’s Grand Challenges Research Initiative, looks at the circumstances under which constitutionalized human rights law offers protection to refugees and asylum-seekers beyond that which is provided under international law. 

Amy Monahan was inducted as a fellow of the American College of Employee Benefits Counsel. Induction as a fellow of the ACEBC is a distinction for employee benefits lawyers who have made demonstrably substantive contributions to the field of employee benefits over their careers. Monahan was one of only 20 employee benefits attorneys throughout the country to be so honored. 

Perry Moriearty received the Stanley V. Kinyon Clinical Teacher of the Year Award, presented at the 2019 commencement exercises. 

Fionnuala D. Ní Aoláin received the Stanley V. Kinyon Tenured Teacher of the Year Award, presented at the 2019 commencement exercises. Ní Aoláin was also admitted to the Royal Irish Academy, an independent academic body that promotes study and excellence in the sciences, humanities, and social sciences. The Institute on Metropolitan Opportunity, directed by Myron Orfield, released a study entitled “American Neighborhood Change in the 21st Century,” which found that poverty concentration and neighborhood decline are occurring more frequently in American cities than gentrification and displacement of low-income families. The study also found that the decline is strongly associated with white flight and concentration of families of color. 

Paul Vaaler was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to study and teach in South Africa during the 2019-20 academic year. Vaaler will join faculties at the University of Pretoria’s Gordon Institute of Business Science and the University of Limpopo’s School of Economics and Management and will work with graduate students and faculty at both universities to help them publish more research in top-tier academic and related policy journals.