School of Law

The small increase in take-home pay that began in April 2009 through the Making Work Pay Credit (MWPC) could mean an unexpected bump in your tax bill says Cheryl Block, tax law expert and professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis. The problem, according to Block, is that the Treasury Department’s new withholding tables do not take several individual employment circumstances into account. Some joint filers, college students and retirees, among others, may end up repaying all or part of the credit this tax season.

OUTlaw, the student- run LGBT awareness, advocacy, support, and social group at Washington University in St. Louis School of Law, will host “Queer in the Midwest,” the annual Midwest LGBT law conference Feb. 25-27

Top experts in Chinese law will gather at School of Law Thursday, Feb. 25, for a panel discussion and open public forum. The event, co-sponsored by the Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., begins at 5:30 p.m. in the Bryan Cave Moot Courtroom of Anheuser-Busch Hall. A live webcast also will be available through the program.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit will hold a special session from 9-11 a.m. Tuesday, Feb. 9, in the School of Law’s Bryan Cave Moot Courtroom in Anheuser-Busch Hall. The public is invited to hear three appeals cases related to a class action suit regarding organic food labeling; claims of false arrest, slander and malicious prosecution; and a dispute over a fee agreement between two law firms.

Faculty and graduate students from St. Louis-area universities with an interest in labor, households, health care, law and social welfare are invited to take part in a series of Monday brown-bag luncheon seminars to be held biweekly through April 26.

C.J. Larkin, J.D., senior lecturer and administrative director of the School of Law’s Dispute Resolution Program, and several law students were instrumental in helping a team-oriented mediation address issues of perceived citizen disenfranchisement in Kirkwood, Mo.

Undergraduate tuition at Washington University in St. Louis will be $39,400 for the 2010-11 academic year — a $1,600 (4.2 percent) increase over the 2009-10 current academic tuition of $37,800. The required student activity fee will total $394, and the student health fee will be no more than $580. Barbara A. Feiner, vice chancellor for finance, made the announcement.

WUSTL faculty from law and political science were quick to offer opinions to the news media about implications of a controversial Jan. 21 ruling by the The U.S. Supreme Court that will allow corporations and unions to spend freely in elections, a decision many expect to shift the balance of political power.

The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn campaign spending limits for corporations “strikes a serious blow against efforts to stem the dominance of corporations in our political process,” says Gregory  P. Magarian, J.D., constitutional and election law expert at Washington University in St. Louis.  “The Court overruled a longstanding decision that had struck a sensible, carefully drawn balance between the self-interest of corporations and interests of integrity and fairness in the political process.“

The School of Law’s 12th annual Public Interest Law & Policy Speakers Series continues Jan. 20 with the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Commemorative Lecture featuring John Payton, J.D., the director of the NAACP’s Legal Defense and Education Fund.