April 2008
April 16, 2008
ANN ARBOR, Mich. – DNA evidence has already freed dozens of wrongfully convicted prisoners around the country, and that’s one reason Michigan Law’s new Innocence Clinic, opening in January, will focus on a potentially far larger group: prisoners convicted in cases where biological evidence like DNA doesn’t exist.
The new clinic will be headed by Professor Bridget McCormack, the Law School’s associate dean for clinical affairs, and Professor David Moran, who will join the faculty this fall as a clinical professor. Between eight and 14 law students each term will have the opportunity to work on convictions for a wide variety of crimes that appear unjust and in need of reversal.
Moran, who comes to Michigan from a position as associate dean of the Wayne State University Law School, helped found Cooley Law School’s Michigan Innocence Project in 2000. He has always believed that group’s concentration on DNA reversals could be augmented by looking at cases that relied on other types of evidence, in part because DNA is not often recovered in armed robberies, burglaries, assaults, and other less-serious crimes. And Moran says prisoners convicted of those crimes are at least as likely to be innocent as people convicted of rape or murder – which are usually both more intensively investigated and much more likely to yield biological evidence.
McCormack and Moran, for example, have been working together on a case involving two men who were convicted of a shooting and imprisoned after the judge ignored two eyewitnesses – and five other witnesses – who contradicted a victim who, later, also recanted.
“This clinic will provide students the opportunity to work on complex post-conviction cases, with litigation in the state and federal courts,” McCormack said. “The cases will be fact- and investigation-intensive, and will provide students with opportunities outside the courtroom as well as in working with media and public officials.”
The addition of Moran to the clinical faculty is an important gain for the Law School and its students, she added.
“The Law School is very lucky to have Dave joining the faculty,” McCormack said. “He is a tremendous teacher, scholar, and lawyer, and he does all of these simultaneously at a very high level.”
April 9, 2008
Contact John Masson, 734.647.7352, jpmasson@umich.edu
ANN ARBOR, Mich. – James Gustave (Gus) Speth, a leading environmentalist and the dean of Yale’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, will bring his ideas to Michigan Law April 14 as the final speaker in this academic year’s Environmental Law & Policy Program lecture series.
Speth’s talk on “The Coming Transformation: America, Capitalism, and the Environmental Future,” is expected to address some of the ideas in his new book, The Bridge at the End of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability, which was published last month.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. called The Bridge at the End of the World “the most compelling plea we have for changing our lives and our politics.” In it, Speth examines the various threats facing the environment and concludes that humanity’s place at the edge of catastrophe is an indictment of modern capitalism. Then he addresses how to fix the problems created by a voracious world economy before it’s too late.
The program is being hosted by Michigan Law’s Environmental Law & Policy Program. Co-hosts include the School of Natural Resources and the Environment, the Erb Institute, the Center for Sustainable Systems, the Graham Environmental Sustainability Institute, Michigan’s Program in the Environment, and the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning.
The talk begins at the Law School at 4 p.m. in Room 250 of Hutchins Hall. Admission is free and a reception with Speth follows in the Lawyers Club Lounge at 5:30 p.m.
April 5, 2008
Contact John Masson, 734.647.7352, jpmasson@umich.edu
The Student Funded Fellowships program may have celebrated its 30th birthday this year, but no one is suggesting the event has lost a step as it ages. This year’s program displayed the same verve, enthusiasm, and generosity on the part of the Michigan Law community that have fueled its previous 29 incarnations. And this year, SFF participants also posted a record-breaking total of more than $70,000 to aid students in public service work this summer.
This year’s auction raised more than $50,000 – itself a record – and another $20,000 came from other SFF initiatives such as the LSTAR and Donate A Day’s Pay programs. LSTAR is a hotel voucher program in which SFF receives $165 every time a Michigan Law student stays with a friend rather than in a hotel and $35 each time a student forgoes a cab ride to the airport when on a callback with a participating firm. The Donate A Day’s Pay program asks law students to donate one day’s summer firm pay.
More than 200 items, donated by faculty, students, law firms, and other supporters, were available at this year’s vocal bidding and silent auctions. Some of the choices: four VIP tickets to a taping of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart at its New York studio or lunch with director/screenwriter/producer Lawrence Kasdan, to skydiving with Michigan Law Professor Mathias Reimann, LL.M. ’83, or (an annual bid winner) a copy of Professor Brian Simpson’s book Cannibalism and the Common Law autographed with the author’s blood.
April 4, 2008
Contact John Masson, 734.647.7352, jpmasson@umich.edu
ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Michigan Law Prof. Richard Primus this week joined an international cross-section of intellectual luminaries when he was awarded one of two inaugural Guggenheim Fellowships in Constitutional Studies.
Primus joins 189 other American and Canadian Fellows in the class of 2008. Fellows were chosen from a field of 2,600 applicants; altogether, awards distributed to this year’s group of artists, scientists and scholars will total $8.2 million.
The Guggenheim Fellowships, based on “stellar achievement and exceptional promise for continued accomplishment,” were established in 1925 and are designed to encourage work in the arts, sciences, and humanities, according to the Guggenheim Foundation. This year’s Fellows are drawn from 75 different disciplines and 81 academic institutions; another 56 Fellows are either unaffiliated with an institution or teach on a part-time basis.
In Primus’ case, the award will help support continued work researching constitutional authority in the period following the Civil War. This year’s other Guggenheim Constitutional Studies Fellow, Georgetown law professor Randy E. Barnett, will look into the “reconstructed Constitution.”
At Michigan since 2001, Primus has taught the law, theory, and history of the U.S. Constitution, focusing on the role that history plays in constitutional interpretation. He earned his A.B. in social studies, summa cum laude, at Harvard College, then earned a D.Phil. in politics at Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar and the Jowett Senior Scholar at Balliol College. After studying law at Yale, Primus clerked for Judge Guido Calabresi on the Second Circuit and for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
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