School of Law

Internationally known human rights attorney and Washington University in St. Louis alumnus Arsalan Iftikhar, JD, also known as “The Muslim Guy,” will address the timely topic of “Islamic Pacifism” as the next speaker in the annual WUSTL School of Law Public Interest Law & Policy Speakers Series, titled “Access to Justice.” This popular series, now in its 13th year, runs from fall 2010 through spring 2011 and includes nationally prominent lawyers, academics, and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists with expertise in human rights, environmental justice, death penalty, social justice, and free speech and fair use online. 

In its 15th year, the “Work, Families and Public Policy” series, a schedule of Monday brown-bag seminars presented on campus biweekly through Dec. 6 will give faculty and graduate students of St. Louis-area universities an array of opportunities to lunch and learn. The series features one-hour seminars on research interests including labor, households, health care, law and social welfare by faculty from local and national universities.

Down-and-dirty adversity during legal negotiations may be a popular image but mutual fairness is the winner when it comes to satisfactory settlements, according to the research of Rebecca Hollander-Blumoff, associate professor of law.

Lack of “complete crime” hampered conviction chances in federal corruption trial of Rod Blagojevich, says WUSTL law professor Peter Joy.

A recent article by Laura Rosenbury, JD, professor of law, examines laws governing child custody, sex toys and off-hours affairs. All are the result of legal rulings from a Supreme Court decision once expected to broaden sexual rights, Rosenbury writes in the article “Sex In and Out of Intimacy,” published in July in the Emory Law Journal.

Fourteen Washington University in St. Louis School of Law faculty, led by Gregory Magarian, JD, professor of law, played a prominent role in vetting new U.S. Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan.

Kent D. Syverud JD, dean of the Washington University in St. Louis School of Law and the Ethan A. H. Shepley University Professor, has been named an independent trustee of the $20 billion BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Trust. He is one of two appointees who will oversee the newly established trust designed to settle claims against BP resulting from the Deepwater Horizon explosion April 20.

A district judge’s decision to overturn California’s Proposition 8 ban on same-sex marriage technically puts the issue one step away from the U.S. Supreme Court. But Washington University in St. Louis experts say a final ruling may wait until other, similar cases work their way through the legal system.

The Senate’s approval of Elena Kagan as a U.S. Supreme Court justice marks the first time three women will serve together and gives the court its youngest member, among other shifts.

A comprehensive study by an intellectual property law expert published in the journal Science may guide global climate change and other scientific policy-makers in developing rules for research data release.