NDLS Professor A.J. Bellia Jr. has been honored by the Virginia Law Review for co-authoring (with George Washington University Law Professor Bradford R. Clark) one of the most influential articles published by the Virginia Law Review in the past 100 years. Read More

The Hispanic Law Student Association presented this year’s Graciela Olivarez Award to Luz Herrera. Read More

U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. was at Notre Dame Law School April 10 as the Judge James J. Clynes Visiting Chair. Read More

Dean Nell Jessup Newton has announced that the Peter Lardy Memorial Fellowship for the 2014-2015 academic year has been awarded to 2L Christopher Stewart. Stewart’s name will now be added to the Lardy Fellowship plaque’s list of recipients, which includes 2013-2014 Fellow Armando Cordoves and extends back to the first recipient, John F. Ready, in 1976. Read More

The Center for Civil and Human Rights, with the generous support of the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, gathered a distinguished panel of human rights lawyers, scholars, diplomats, and judges involved with the Inter-American Human Rights System. Convened in private, these closed-door meetings provided an opportunity for frank, honest discussion around challenges facing the System, and began an on-going conversation about its structural needs. Read More

Sara McLanahan, the William S. Tod Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton University, delivered the keynote address for this year’s annual conference of the Leverhulme Trust on March 27 in Notre Dame Law School’s Patrick F. McCartan Courtroom. Read More

Professor G. Robert Blakey delivered the keynote address at the 2014 Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics, and Public Policy symposium March 20. Read More

The 2014 Notre Dame Black Law Students Association alumni weekend will open Friday, March 21, with a reception at the South Bend home of the Hon. Roland Chamblee Jr. and conclude on Sunday with a prayer service in memory of the Hon. Judge Willie Lipscomb, J.D. ’75. Read More

The NDLS faculty’s Shaffer Fellows Committee has concluded its deliberations and selected three 2014 Shaffer Fellows, Dean Nell Jessup Newton announced March 19. Read More

Professor Kelly has authored a new article, Toward Economic Analysis of the Uniform Probate Code. Insights from economics and the economic analysis of law may be useful in analyzing succession law, including intestacy and wills as well as nonprobate transfers such as trusts. After surveying prior works that have examined succession from a functional perspective, I explore the possibility of utilizing tools like (i) transaction costs, (ii) the ex ante/ex post distinction, and (iii) rules versus standards, to illuminate the design of the Uniform Probate Code. Specifically, I investigate how these tools, which legal scholars have employed widely in other contexts, may be relevant
in understanding events like the nonprobate revolution and issues like “dead hand” control; analyzing UPC provisions pertaining to the harmless error rule, reformation, and ademption by extinction; and evaluating law reforms such as proposals to abolish attestation or prevent the disinheritance of children. Read More