School of Law

Bryan Stevenson, JD, prominent death penalty defense attorney and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, kicks off the second half of the School of Law’s 13th annual Public Interest Law & Policy Speakers Series Thursday, Feb. 3, with the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Commemorative Lecture on “Poverty, Incarceration, and Injustice in America.” The yearlong series “Access to Justice: The Social Responsibility of Lawyers” brings to WUSTL prominent experts in such areas as civil rights, racial justice, the death penalty, social justice, clinical legal education and free speech.

The Advisory Committee for the Diversity and Inclusion Grants has awarded eight grants to Washington University faculty and staff for initiatives that improve the university environment for women and members of underrepresented minority groups.

Undergraduate tuition at Washington University in St. Louis will be $40,950 for the 2011-12 academic year — a $1,550 (3.9 percent) increase over the 2010-11 current academic tuition of $39,400. The required student activity fee will total $410, and the student health fee will be no more than $632. Barbara A. Feiner, vice chancellor for finance, made the announcement. 

The Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS) has commissioned Kathleen Clark, JD, professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis, to evaluate the extent of ethics restrictions on government contractor employees. An independent agency, ACUS functions as a government think tank and commissions legal experts to examine how federal agencies can improve operations.

“The Past is Alive … The Work is Not Yet Done” is the theme of Washington University in St. Louis’ 24th annual celebration honoring Martin Luther King Jr. at 7 p.m. Monday, Jan. 17, in Graham Chapel on the Danforth Campus. Events will aslo take place at the School of Medicine, the Brown School and the School of Law.

Adrienne D. Davis, JD, the William M. Van Cleve Professor of Law at Washington University in St. Louis, has been appointed vice provost at Washington University, effective Feb. 1, 2011. Edward S. Macias, PhD, provost and executive vice chancellor for academic affairs, made the announcement of this new position in his office.

Do black leather pants qualify as a tax deduction for rock stars? Fans, musicians, journalists, researchers and anyone else interested in music can see how the courts dealt with this question and nearly any other legal issue involving the music industry at The Discography: Legal Encyclopedia of Popular Music accessible through thediscography.org. The site was created by Loren Wells, JD, musician and recent graduate of the Washington University in St. Louis School of Law and is supported by the Center for Empirical Research in the Law (CERL) at the School of Law. The site’s database — the most elaborate of its kind — covers 2,400 court opinions spanning nearly 200 years of the music industry.

“The recent response of the White House’s Office of Management and Budget to the WikiLeaks document dump gives us a peek at the sometimes surreal standards for dealing with classified information and at the fear-mongering in which some government officials are engaging,” says Kathleen Clark, JD, professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. Clark teaches and writes about government ethics, national security law, legal ethics and whistleblowing. 

Cheryl Block, JD, federal budget and tax expert and professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis, weighs in on tax cut extensions. “We want it all: low tax rates, government spending on the programs we prefer, and — ideally — a balanced budget,” she says. “Perhaps not surprisingly, the desire for prudent budgets increasingly loses out to the first two demands.”

Laura Rosenbury, JD, professor of law, grew up in rural Indiana with two very strong grandmothers but in a church community that did not have much of a track record on women’s rights. “I think it was pretty obvious from a young age that women weren’t given the same opportunities as men and were expected to take on different roles,” she says. “And I didn’t understand why.”