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The response date on your NDLA Board ballots has been extended. Please know that you have until August 1 to postmark your ballot and return it to Melanie McDonald by mail. Thank you for participating in this important process….

Professor Mary Ellen O’Connell—an international law specialist who has written specifically on the enforcement of World Court judgments—says it is vital that the United States comply with the July 16, 2008 International Court of Justice (also World Court) order to stay the execution of five Mexican nationals on death row in Texas.

On April 26, 1998, Bishop Juan Gerardi of Guatemala was found dead in his garage, bludgeoned to death by a chunk of concrete. Mario Domingo—a 2008 graduate of the LL.M. program in international and human rights law at Notre Dame Law School’s Center for Civil and Human Rights—prosecuted the case. Since then, Novelist Francisco Goldman has published an acclaimed book on the trial titled “The Art of Political Murder.” The book, the author, and the actors involved are the subject of a story in the July 7 edition of “The Nation.”

The Center for Civil and Human Rights (CCHR) has joined the Notre Dame Haiti Program to launch a joint project on health and human rights in Haiti. The yearlong project is headed by Haitian lawyer Jean-Marc Brissau, a graduate of the CCHR’s LL.M. program in international human rights law.

”...Petitioners suggest that the litigation here simply represents an effort by the aggregators and the payphone operators to circumvent Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23’s class-action requirements. But we do not understand how “circumvention” of Rule 23 could constitute a basis for denying standing here.

“The Second Amendment is one of the better known, but more mysterious, provisions of our Constitution,” Professor Richard Garnett observed. “Until today, the Supreme Court had not squarely examined its meaning in nearly 70 years.”

On Friday, June 20, 2008, the Internal Revenue Service ruled that amounts forgiven under law schools’ Loan Repayment Assistance Programs (LRAP) including Notre Dame’s generally will not be treated as taxable income.

Notre Dame Law Professor Jimmy Gurulé, an internationally known expert in the field of international criminal law—specifically, terrorism, terrorist financing, and anti-money laundering—led a class on terrorist financing for a group of senior-level Los Angeles police officers earlier this month. Gurulé was invited to speak by the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, which just established the Center for Policing Terrorism (CPT) to educate and assist state and local law enforcement.

The Catholic Press Association (CPA) of the United States and Canada awarded Notre Dame Law Professor Robert Rodes, Jr., first place in the category “Best Essay, Scholarly Magazines” for his essay titled “On Marriage and Metaphysics.” The piece was published in the Winter 2007 issue of National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly.

Nicole Tlachac, a 2008 graduate of the University of Notre Dame Law School, received the 2008 Arthur A. May Award from the law firm of May Oberfell Lorber. Named for the firm’s longtime partner and a 1947 Notre Dame Law School graduate, the May award is presented each year to…

Joseph W. Thomas, the head of technical services at the Kresge Law Library, was honored with the Rev. Paul J. Foik, C.S.C., excellence award at the annual Notre Dame President’s Dinner held on campus in May.

On May 16, 2008, Notre Dame Law School Professor Mary Ellen O’Connell appeared on The Agenda with Steve Paikin, a current affairs program produced by Canadian broadcaster TVO, to debate the international concept The Responsibility to Protect (R2P).

You have heard several wonderful messages today: Be noble in this profession, lead integrated lives, pursue justice. I am not going to repeat them. Surely they resonate deeply with you. You have received one of the most rigorous legal educations offered in this nation by any standard, especially by a standard that deeply values relationships between law, faith, and reason.

Prof. Carter Snead recently spoke to an assembly of federal and state judges about the current and future impact of neuroscience and neuroimaging on civil and criminal court cases. He presented alongside prominent neuroscientists who spoke about how their work might have implications for the law.

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“There is no one such thing as a Catholic voter,” said Cathleen Kaveny, a professor of law and theology at Notre Dame, who attended the event in South Bend and is a member of Obama’s national steering committee of Catholic advisers.

Catholics, who account for about 18 percent of the population of Indiana and a quarter of the national electorate, are much more diverse in the United States than they are often portrayed, Kaveny said. The challenge for Obama, she said, is to make Catholics more familiar with his message of economic empowerment, equality, and ending the Iraq war.

Notre Dame Law School and the St. Joseph County Courts are co-sponsoring a domestic relations mediation training program for area attorneys and law students this week and next on campus. Notre Dame Associate Clinical Professor of Law Michael Jenuwine serves as one of the program’s lead trainers…

The Irish Voice newspaper and Irish America Magazine have named Notre Dame Law School Professor Mary Ellen O’Connell to their Legal 100, a list of the leading Irish American lawyers in the United States. Nominations for the Legal 100 are submitted by colleagues, institutions, and family members.

Sean O’Brien, assistant director of the Notre Dame Law School’s Center for Civil and Human Rights and concurrent assistant law professor, will speak at John Marshall Law School in Chicago as part of a panel discussion titled “The International and The United States Response to the Crisis in Darfur.”

Notre Dame Law School’s Journal of Legislation presents “Tilted Scales: Pursuing Justice Amidst Unjust Legislation” on Thursday, April 17 from 1:45 p.m. to 5 p.m. in the Law School Courtroom. The symposium features: Rev. Theodore Hesburgh, C.S.C., former president of Notre Dame and charter member of the U.S. Commission on…

The J.L. Weigand, Jr. Notre Dame Legal Education Trust awarded three full scholarships to students attending Notre Dame Law School during the 2008-09 academic year. In addition to covering 100 percent of tuition, fees and books, students receive a generous room and board allowance. The scholarship is available to students who have lived in Kansas for at least ten years. The Trust also assists scholarship recipients with career placement in Kansas during and after their graduation from law school.

Jimmy Gurulé, an internationally known expert in the field of international criminal law—specifically terrorism, terrorist financing, and anti-money laundering—will speak at the World Conference on Combating Terrorist Financing sponsored by Case Western Reserve University School of Law.

Notre Dame Law School professor Carter Snead joins five other law faculty from Harvard, UCLA and Wisconsin at the University of Alabama for an April 11 symposium titled “Legal Doubt, Scientific Certainty: What Scientific Knowledge Does For and To the Law.” Snead’s talk is called “Law, Science, and Incommensurability.”

This summer, at the annual meeting of the American Association of Law Libraries, Joseph Thomas, Head of Technical Services, will receive the Renee Chapman Award. Presented by the Technical Services Special Interest Section, the Renee Chapman Award is one of the most prestigious awards given out by any unit within the American Association of Law Libraries…

Ambassador, Richard S. Williamson, appointed in January 2008 as special envoy to Sudan by President George W. Bush., will deliver remarks related to his present work as well as his career in both private practice and public service.

Michael Kirsch, associate professor of law, will present a talk based on his NYU Law Review article, “Taxing Citizens in a Global Economy,” at Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas this week.

Notre Dame Law School professor Rick Garnett is one of two keynote speakers at an upcoming event called “Conversions and Conflict: An Interreligious Discussion of Evangelization.” The discussion will be held at the Terrence J. Murphy Institute for Catholic Thought, Law and Public Policy at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis, Minn.

Dr. David Dalin, an ordained rabbi and widely published scholar of American Jewish history and Christian-Jewish relations, will speak at Notre Dame on Thursday, April 3. The talk, which is co-sponsored through the Natural Law Institute at Notre Dame Law School, is entitled “John Paul II and the Jews,” and begins at 7:30 p.m. in room 138 of DeBartolo Hall.

In June of next year, I will complete my tenth year as dean. When I was a relatively new dean, a wonderful alumnus and generous supporter offered me what I have come to appreciate as the best analogy for the responsibilities of a dean in leading an academic institution – this is, the role of a fiduciary. It is with a great sense of pride in what our Law School has achieved over many, many years that I today shared with the Law School community my plans to complete my tenure as dean in June 2009.