UI law students raise funds for hurricane relief

The Student Hurricane Network Gulf Coast Relief Fund got a boost last month from collections made by a group of about 40 students at the University of Illinois College of Law.

Wearing Illinois orange T-shirts and carrying bright orange buckets, they joined an effort led by the Student-Athlete Advisory Board and Illini Pride.

The law students circulated in the Memorial Stadium parking lot on Sept. 13 before a varsity football game between Illinois and Louisiana-Lafayette. They also conducted a Gulf Coast Relief car wash on Sept. 20 in Urbana.

Some of the money will be used to send a group of law students to New Orleans from Jan. 11 to 17 to help hurricane victims with home repairs and legal services. More than 70 students have participated in similar trips during the past two years.

They have helped build a community center, perform social services in FEMA trailer villages, and conduct intake interviews for the New Orleans public defender’s office.

President of the Student Hurricane Network is U.I. law student Miranda Soucie, a former student-athlete in women’s basketball.

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The Women’s Law Society at the College of Law held its sixth annual Ambulance Chase, a 5K run and walk, on Sept. 28 to raise money for A Woman’s Fund. Participants actually chased an ambulance through Crystal Lake Park in Urbana.

Schedule of events

The John Marshall Law School Center for International Law will conduct a 10th anniversary conference from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 6. Call Lisa Aruldoss at (312) 427-2737, ext. 659, for details.

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The Southern Illinois University School of Law Center for Health Law and Policy will conduct a National Health Law Moot Court Friday and Saturday, Nov. 7-8. Call (618) 453-8638 for information.

The case to be argued involves the withdrawal of futile life-sustaining treatment over the objections of a patient’s family

Kent honors Collens

The Lewis Collens Atrium at the Chicago-Kent College of Law was dedicated Sept. 22 in honor of the former law dean and president emeritus of Illinois Institute of Technology.

A member of the Kent faculty since 1970, Collens was dean from 1974 to 1990 and president of IIT from 1990 until last year. He is a 1966 graduate of the University of Chicago Law School.

Heads visitor board

Jacquelyn Ann Goff has been elected president of the board of visitors of the University of Illinois College of Law. A 1973 graduate, she received a Distinguished Alumnus Award in 2005.

Jackie Goff’s 30-year career in federal government included serving as deputy counsel and civil fraud litigator at the Department of Justice, and deputy inspector general of the Government Printing Office. She is a past president of the Federal Bar Association.

Goff succeeded Jean Manning as board president. Her successor next year will be Samuel Mendenhall of Winston & Strawn, Chicago.

Associate dean mourned

James J. Kreminski, a certified public accountant and associate dean for administration at The John Marshall Law School, died Sept. 23 at age 60 of a heart attack after leaving his office.

Head of the law school’s finances and human resources department, Mr. Kreminski joined the John Marshall staff in 1978 as controller. He also taught accounting to law students.

Faculty appointments

Suja A. Thomas has joined the faculty of the University of Illinois College of Law after eight years at the University of Cincinnati College of Law, where she received the Goldman Prize for teaching excellence.

A graduate of the New York University School of Law who practiced in New York City for several years, Thomas has a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Northwestern University.

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Charles E. Tucker Jr., an Air Force brigadier general, has been named executive director of the International Human Rights Law Institute at the DePaul University College of Law.

A native of Chicago and a 1982 graduate of the law school, Tucker taught law for three years at the Air Force Academy. He has served in Bosnia, Kosovo, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Iraq, where he was legal advisor to the U.S. ambassador.

Scholars appointed

Two professors at the University of Illinois College of Law have been appointed to tenured faculty scholar positions. They are Victor Fleischer, the Thomas Mengler Faculty Scholar, and Jennifer Robbennolt, the Guy Raymond Jones Faculty Scholar.

They join colleagues Robert Lawless, the Galowich-Huizenga Faculty Scholar, Jay Kesan, the Mildred Van Voorhis Jones Faculty Scholar, and interim dean Ralph Brubaker, the Guy Raymond Jones Faculty Scholar.

Brill chair endowed

An endowed chair has been established at the Chicago-Kent College of Law in honor of Prof. Ralph L. Brill, a faculty member since 1961. The first faculty member to hold the chair will be announced later.

Brill founded the law school’s legal research and writing program and moot court program. He has taught torts, product liability, legal research and writing to more than 8,000 law students.

A graduate of the University of Illinois College of Law, he taught briefly at the University of Michigan Laws School before joining the Chicago-Kent faculty.

The Brill chair was created with $1.5 million-plus in cash and pledges from more than 400 alumni and friends. The campaign was led by Chicago attorney Thomas A. Demetrio of Corboy & Demetrio.

Parlez-vous at NIU

A delegation of 19 law students and two professors from France attended a three-week Introduction to the American Legal System program that began Aug. 23 at the Northern Illinois College of Law.

The law school and the University Montesquieu-Bordeaux IV in Agen, France, have maintained a 13-year relationship, during which more than 200 NIU students have studied French civil law and the European Union legal system.

This was the second year that Law Professors David Gabler and Daniel Reynolds coordinated the program for students from France with the NIU Division of International Programs.

Czech presented at JMLS

Prof. Vladimir Tyc, who teaches international and European law at the Mararyk University of Brno, Czech Republic, was a guest lecturer at The John Marshall Law School during the week of Oct. 6.

Tyc’s presentations in Chicago were part of John Marshall’s commemoration of the 20th anniversary next year of the overthrow of communism. The Czech Republic will be host to the presidency of the European Union in 2009.

The lectures were sponsored by the law school’s Czech/Slovak Legal Institute and Center for International Law.

Soliciting on the CTA

The St. Louis University Law School bought placard advertisements on Chicago Transit Authority trains in September to attract potential students from the metropolitan area.

Some of the ads referred to “an intimate environment on more of a city campus,” and a student body that “is collaborative, supportive and loyal to the law school experience.”

Similar messages have been placed at O’Hare and Midway Airports, and on a toll road oasis billboard. A law school source told ABAJournal.com that about 20 percent of its students are from Illinois.