School of Law

​Known to generations of Washington University students and faculty members as “Sam and Betty,” Sam Lachterman and Betty Wynn, a homeless brother-and-sister who spent decades attending programs on campus, bequeathed $54,000 to Washington University. Half of their gift will fund the Nov. 1-2 performances of an Assembly Series event chosen just for them, “Three Acts, Two Dancers, One Radio Host” at Edison Theatre. The other half will live on in bequests to the School of Law, the Kemper Museum and Arts & Sciences.

To truly understand corporate law in America, the study must go through Delaware, long the favored state of incorporations for U.S. business. Washington University in St. Louis law students annually get a firsthand look at how these important courts operate through the eyes of Delaware Supreme Court and chancery judges who come to St. Louis to deliver lectures and seminars. The students also can work in the Delaware courts through corporate judicial externships and clerkships.

In the digital age in which we live, monitoring, security breaches and hacks of sensitive data are all too common. It has been argued that privacy has no place in this big data environment and anything we put online can and probably will be seen by prying eyes. In a new paper, noted Washington University in St. Louis privacy law expert Neil M. Richards, JD, makes the case that when properly understood, privacy rules will be an essential and valuable part of our digital future.

Recent revelations that NBC News’ chief medical correspondent violated an Ebola quarantine after returning from Africa, and that a Dallas health care worker infected with the virus boarded a commercial jet have focused the nation’s attention on Ebola and what can be done to protect citizens. While measures like quarantine do restrict the freedom of exposed individuals, they do so to protect the public’s health, says a Washington University in St. Louis expert on biomedical ethics.

Several “blockbuster” cases — including freedom of speech, religious freedoms in prison, pregnancy discrimination and a possible decision on gay marriage — are on the docket for the Supreme Court, which begins its new session this month. But don’t expect any decisions until next June. New research led by the School of Law finds big cases are disproportionately decided just before the court’s summer recess.

The U.S. Treasury Department has taken action to curb corporate tax inversions, making it more difficult to for U.S. companies to merge with international firms and move abroad to reduce their taxes. This move attempts to combat specific abuses within a flawed framework, according to an international tax law expert at Washington University in St. Louis School of Law.

On Sept. 10, the Missouri legislature overrode a veto by Gov. Jay Nixon and enacted one of the United States’ strictest waiting periods for women seeking abortion. The law will require a 72-hour delay, and that delay won’t make women safer or improve health outcomes, said two experts on health and family law from the School of Law at Washington University in St. Louis.

Missouri lawmakers recently overrode a veto by Gov. Jay Nixon and passed a bill allowing school districts to designate teachers or administrators as school protection officers, able to carry concealed firearms into schools. The measure also lowered the age to apply for a conceal-and-carry permit to 19 from 21 and prohibits cities from banning open carry laws. Gregory P. Magarian, JD, constitutional law expert and professor of law, weighs in from the point of the view of the Second Amendment.

On Sept. 17, Sherrilyn Ifill, the distinguished legal scholar and president/director-general of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. will visit campus to deliver an Assembly Series lecture, “From Brown to Ferguson: The Unfinished Business of Civil Rights” at noon in Anheuser-Busch Hall’s Bryan Cave Moot Courtroom on the Danforth Campus. Due to an expected large turnout, remote viewing sites within Anheuser-Busch Hall will be available.

In the wake of civil rights and social justice issues that have emerged following the death of African-American teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, the fall 2014 Washington University in St. Louis Assembly Series will feature presentations by several eminent civil rights scholars and authors, including NAACP executive Sherrilyn Ifill.