Humanities & Society

Since launching in 2014, the WashU Prison Education Project has offered dozens of courses to incarcerated students at the Missouri Eastern Correctional Center, a men’s prison located in Pacific, Mo. Last fall, the project expanded to a second facility, the Women’s Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center in Vandalia, Mo.

The Goldman Sachs Group is considering a sale of its consumer banking business, but regulations will mean it can’t simply return to being an investment bank, said Andrew Tuch, an expert on financial and securities regulation in the School of Law.

Peter Hook has been appointed director and associate dean of the Law Library at the School of Law. Hook, who comes to the university from the University of Notre Dame Law School, will begin his role July 1.

What changes and trends could we see this year? WashU experts in areas from artificial intelligence to climate to fashion share their insights.

A proposed rule that would restrict minors’ access to public library books without parental consent “would make Missourians less free and less informed,” said Greg Magarian, a professor of law and a First Amendment expert.

A proposed federal commercial surveillance rule would be an important and overdue change in U.S. consumer protection, said Neil Richards, a privacy law expert at the Washington University School of Law.

Daniel Harawa, an associate professor of law and director of the School of Law’s Appellate Clinic, has been selected to receive the 2023 Derrick A. Bell Jr. Award, given by the Association of American Law Schools’ Minority Law Teacher’s Section.

Washington University School of Law in St. Louis will offer full-tuition scholarships for admitted JD students whose family’s income is less than 200% of the federal poverty level, announced Russell K. Osgood, dean of the School of Law.

Leila Sadat, a law professor and founder of the Initiative on Gun Violence & Human Rights at Washington University in St. Louis, equates the U.S. government’s failure to prevent and reduce gun violence with violating children’s human rights. “America’s kids are not okay. As gun violence surges and politicians dither, school shootings are traumatizing a generation of youth,” Sadat wrote in a recent essay. “While only one manifestation of America’s gun violence crisis, school shootings are shocking in their ferocity, the senseless and random nature of the violence, and their impact upon millions of young, captive and vulnerable individuals.”

Public dissatisfaction with the Supreme Court’s rulings and its performance has been growing. New research by political scientist James Gibson in Arts & Sciences suggests the controversial Dobbs decision may have been the straw that broke the camel’s back.