Curriculum

Faculty, staff and alumni of The John Marshall Law School will help Dean Emeritus Fred F. Herzog celebrate his 100th birthday on Friday, Sept. 21.

The party will take place right after presentation of the Dean Fred Herzog Distinguished Visiting Scholar Lecture at 12:15 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 20, by Prof. Michel Rosenfeld of the Benjamin Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University.

Born in Austria, where he graduated in 1931 from the University of Graz and was appointed a judge for life in 1935, Herzog fled the Nazis in 1938 and was a refugee for two years in Sweden before coming to the United States.

He received a law degree at the University of Iowa in 1942 and practiced in Chicago until he joined the faculty of the Chicago-Kent College of Law in 1947 as a professor and later dean.

Herzog headed a search committee for a John Marshall dean in 1976 and was convinced to accept the position himself. He served until 1983, and again in 1990-91, and had an office at the law school until 2006. He received a Lifetime Achievement Award earlier this year.

A series of Homecoming events has been scheduled by the University of Illinois College of Law during the weekend of Friday through Sunday, Oct. 26-28. Call (217) 333-2628 for complete details and information about hotel accommodations.

At 6 p.m. Friday, an all-class reception and Distinguished Alumni Award program will take place at Lincolnshire Fields Country Club.

Saturday will begin at 8:30 a.m. with an all-class tailgate brunch in a tent on Cribbet Field, north of the law building. Several reunions are scheduled after the 11 a.m. varsity football game with Ball State. They include:

Class of 1967 barbecue in the Cribbet Field tent; Class of 1987 barbecue in Pedersen Pavilion in the law building; Class of 1962 dinner at Escobar's Restaurant; Class of 1977 dinner at Champaign County Club.

The 1977 class also will have a reunion brunch on Sunday at the Hilton Garden Inn.

Dorothy Rasinski Gregory, one of the first women to earn degrees and practice in both law and medicine, will speak on “Ethics, Law, Medicine: A Vibrant Relationship” at 5 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 20, at the Southern Illinois University School of Law.

Gregory, a pioneer in health law and bio-ethics and the only woman to be elected president of the American College of Legal Medicine, will reflect on changes on those fields during the past half-century.

Former director of medical-legal affairs for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and liaison to the Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research, she serves on the VA National Ethics Advisory Board.

Gregory's presentation at SIU will be the Dr. Arthur Grayson Distinguished Lecture. Admission is free.

Nine students are enrolled in the dual JD/MD degree program established in 1989 at SIU's School of Law and School of Medicine. Since 1995, 23 students in the program have graduated.

Dean LeRoy Pernell of the Northern Illinois University College of Law has announced that he will step down in January after 10 years.

He reportedly has accepted a new challenge to become dean of the Florida A&M University Law School in Orlando. The school has not been fully accredited. The university board will vote next month on the appointment.

Pernell has been dean at NIU since 1997 after serving as vice provost for minority affairs at Ohio State University. He is a trustee of the Law School Admissions Council and a member of the American Law Institute.

A clinical Small Business Program has been established at the Chicago-Kent College of Law to provide services to small business owners and emerging entrepreneurs in the Chicago area.

Law students directed by Prof. Jeff P. Thomas will assist in a wide range of transactional matters. The program observed Small Business Week on June 29 with a free workshop.

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Chicago-Kent will be host for the Illinois Labor Relations Board's 23rd annual conference on public sector labor relations law from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Friday, Oct. 19.

Oren Amram and Heather Kissling, recent graduates of the Chicago-Kent College of Law, are recipients of 2007 Marc Grinker Student Commitment Awards named in memory of a former professor who headed the appellate advocacy program.

Amram and Kissling, as senior associates in the Moot Court Honor Society, coached teams that competed in national programs.

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Chicago-Kent student David Simon was first runner-up in a Judicial Awareness Writing Competition conducted by the Pacific Legal Foundation. He received a $3,000 prize.