News » Feature Stories

It was “a once in a lifetime experience,” Australian law student Chloe Donjerkovich recounts.

Last summer, Chloe and thirty-three other law students from around the world embarked upon Notre Dame Law School’s Summer in London Program. Students of the six-week program selected up to six credits of international law courses taught at the Law School’s central-London campus.…

Professor Roger P. Alford was in New York City January 11 to accept the "CPR Award for Best Electronic Media About Alternative Dispute Resolution" at a ceremony held at the New York office of Weil Gotshal & Manges LLP.

Professor Paolo Carozza participated in the Second Seminar of the Catholic-Muslim Forum on November 21 – 23, held at the site of Jesus’ baptism in Jordan.

Carozza was one of 24 Catholics invited to attend the seminar by the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, headed by Cardinal Jean-François Tauran. Twenty-four prominent Muslim religious leaders and scholars also attended, led by H.R.H. Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad of Jordan.

The First Seminar, whose theme was “Love of God, Love of Neighbour: The Dignity of the Human Person and Mutual Respect,” took place in Rome in 2008. This year’s theme was “Reason, Faith, and the Human Person.” > Read More

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie will deliver the keynote address during a day-long symposium titled "Educational Innovation and the Law" to be held at 2:30 p.m. on Nov. 18 (Friday) in the Patrick F. McCartan Courtroom at the Notre Dame Law School. The symposium is free and open to the public, but tickets are required for the keynote address. Ticketing information is available on the Forum website, where the keynote will also be streamed live.

The event is part of the 2011-12 Notre Dame Forum, "Reimagining School: To Nurture the Soul of a Nation," a year-long discussion of the profound and challenging questions that shape the national debate about K-12 education.

The Law School will host the Indiana Supreme Court oral arguments in the case of Jerrme Damar Cartwright v. State of Indiana at 3:30 p.m. Monday, November 14 in the Patrick F. McCartan Courtroom. For more background on the case, spectators are encouraged to read the Court of Appeals’ decision at this link. The parties’ briefs are also available at this link.

Professor Barry Cushman will lecture on “Carolene Products and Constitutional Structure” at 4:30 p.m. Thursday, October 27, in Eck Hall of Law Room 3140.

The author of Rethinking the New Deal Court: The Structure of a Constitutional Revolution (Oxford University Press), Professor Cushman is the John P. Murphy Foundation Visiting Professor at NDLS. At the University of Virginia he is the James Monroe Distinguished Professor of Law, David H. Ibbeken ’71 Research Professor of Law, and Professor of History.

In honor of the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi, Rev. John J. Coughlin, O.F.M., Professor of Law and Concurrent Professor of Theology, blessed the NDLS community’s pets in the Law School Courtyard October 4.

The ceremony was organized by NDLS Student Bar Association co-chairs for Spiritual Life, Alex Blair and Sana Din, who noted that St. Francis is said to have warned that “If you have men who will exclude any of God’s creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men.”

Sean O’Brien, assistant director of the NDLS Center for Civil and Human Rights, moderated a panel discussion on the history and significance of civil rights memorials October 11 at Indiana University South Bend’s Civil Rights Heritage Center, 1040 W. Washington St.

On the panel were NDLS Professor Douglass Cassel; the chair of Notre Dame’s Department of American Studies, Prof. Erika Doss; Notre Dame Professor of Spanish Carlos Jerez-Farrán; and the director of the Civil Rights Heritage Center at the Natatorium, IUSB Assistant Professor of Sociology Kevin Lamarr James.

The 3rd Annual International Law Society Symposium on September 30 will explore emerging issues in national security law and the connections between international law and the diverse domestic laws of States. The all-day program will feature a morning panel that begins at 9 a.m. and an afternoon panel that begins at 12:30 p.m. in Biolchini Hall 1315.

Speakers include Thomas Anthony Durkin, Esq. (Durkin & Roberts), Dr. David Cortright (Kroc Institute), and Professors Mary Ellen O’Connell (Notre Dame Law School), Vijay Padhmanabhan (Vanderbilt Law School), Cynthia Shwamreh (University of Chicago Law School), Juliet Sorensen (Northwestern Law School), and William Snyder (Syracuse University Law School).

Last spring, Oxford University Press published a five-volume collection of essays by Biolchini Family Professor of Law John M. Finnis and a second edition of Finnis’s masterwork, Natural Law and Natural Rights.

To celebrate this remarkable achievement, Professor Gerard Bradley and Notre Dame Law School hosted an all-day conference at the Law School on September 9, 2011 in Eck Hall of Law – Lecture Hall 1140.

See event schedule.

The Indiana Conference on Legal Education Opportunities (ICLEO) is designed to assist Indiana minority, low-income or educationally disadvantaged college graduates in pursuing a law degree. ICLEO fellows, who will all be starting law school in the fall at one of Indiana’s four law schools, attended classes for six weeks during the summer to prepare them for the rigors of law school.

Some of the world’s leading experts across a variety of relevant disciplines are coming to the Notre Dame Law School for a weeklong “Workshop on Adult and Non-embryonic Stem Cell Research” June 27 – July 1. In conjunction with the workshop, an afternoon lecture series, “Alternate Visions of Stem Cell Research: Scientific, Ethical, Legal & Theological Dimensions” will be open to the public from 4 – 5 p.m. each day in the Patrick F. McCartan Courtroom in the Law School’s Eck Hall of Law.

Oliver O’Donovan, professor of Christian Ethics and Practical Theology at the University of Edinburgh, will be at Notre Dame Law School April 11 to deliver the 2011 Natural Law Lecture.

Dean Nell Jessup Newton has announced that beginning in 2011-2012, 2L students may choose between a one-semester or full-year option and 3L students will also be able to enroll in the London Program in the fall semester.

The Notre Dame Law School Spring 2011 Symposium, “Corporate Governance and Business Ethics in a Post-Crisis World” will be held on Friday April 1 from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. in Notre Dame’s Eck Hall of Law.

This year’s International Law Society symposium focuses on the rights of non-citizens and will take place Friday, February 18, from 9:30a.m. – 3:45 p.m. in Biolchini Hall, Room 1310.

Professor Tomuschat, one of the world’s leading international human rights lawyers, is emeritus professor of law at Humboldt University, Berlin. Before taking the chair of international law at Humboldt, he taught for 22 years at the Law Faculty of the University of Bonn where he directed the Institute of International Law.

Three more Notre Dame Law School graduates have ascended to the bench in Illinois, Minnesota, and Michigan.

Notre Dame Law School’s completely renovated Biolchini Hall of Law was dedicated on Friday October 8. Fr. John Jenkins blessed the building after a mass of celebration in the Basilica.

On July 1, 2010, Notre Dame Law School alumnus John Hurley began his tenure as the first lay president of Canisius College in that institution’s 140-year history. He previously served as the college’s executive vice president and vice president for college relations.

On May 15, 172 J.D. students became Notre Dame Law School alumni. As a group, they are employed in 24 states and the District of Columbia. They’ve chosen to work in private practice, government, judicial clerkships, the military JAG Corps, and corporations. Get to know some of them here.

Environmental laws don’t always impact the environment in expected ways and, in other cases, laws seemingly unrelated to the environment have a tremendous impact on our habitats. Notre Dame’s John N. Matthews Professor of Law John Nagle explains this phenomenon in his new book, “Law’s Environment: How the Law Shapes the Places We Live (Yale University Press, 2010).

Takeshi Nobuhiro is one of 30 judges chosen by the Supreme Court of Japan to study law and judicial system in a foreign country for a year as part of the Overseas Training and Research Program. “I have attended classes here, and have observed hearings and trials at the courthouse in South Bend,” says Nobuhiro.

We are excited to have the opportunity to host this year’s reunion classes in the beautiful Eck Hall of Law and the newly expanded and renovated Biolchini Hall during Reunion 2010 this spring! The weekend is sure to be one to remember.

“Students who come to London do so because they appreciate the increasingly global aspects of practicing law in the United States,” explains Programme Director Geoffrey Bennett.

The phrase “all the world’s a stage” became particularly relevant to a group of law and theology students taking Notre Dame Professor of Law and Professor of Theology M. Cathleen Kaveny’s seminar titled Faith, Morality, and the Law. The class met with performers from Tim Robbins’ The Actors’ Gang, a Los Angeles theatre troupe on campus to perform “The Trial of the Catonsville Nine.”

After two weeks of fundraising for Haitian relief, the Black Law Students Association (BLSA) collected $2,300 for the cause. BLSA, which established donation centers throughout the Law School, will give the money to the American Red Cross to assist victims of the January 12 earthquake that left the nation devastated. Donors included students, faculty, staff, and student groups.…

John Crowley, a 1992 Notre Dame Law School alumnus, is the subject of “Extraordinary Measures,” a movie that tells the true story of Crowley’s search for a treatment for Pompe Disease.

A panel discussion titled “What Would a Good Conscience Clause Look Like? A Catholic University’s Perspective” will be held Dec. 3 (Thursday) at 12:30 p.m. in the Patrick F. McCartan Courtroom of the University of Notre Dame’s Eck Hall of Law.

Changes to the Loan Repayment Assistance Program (LRAP) should more than double the total annual benefits paid out to qualifying alumni, making public service work possible for more graduates.