2020 and 2021 graduation celebrations
at the Detroit Yacht Club

hen Professor Gregory H. Fox arrived at the Law School in 2002, he began recruiting students for the Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition. The oldest of its kind, the competition began in 1960 and simulates a case before the International Court of Justice, also known as the World Court. The International Court of Justice is the supreme judicial organ of the United Nations system and can hear cases between countries concerning any issue of international law. Recent issues debated in the Jessup include self-defense against terrorist groups, diplomatic immunity, environmental degradation, cyberattacks and foreign election subversion.

The Jessup is also the world’s largest moot court competition, hosting roughly 3,000 law students from 700 law schools in over 100 countries. Each country holds a national tournament to determine which schools will advance to the international rounds held in Washington, D.C. In the United States, nearly 100 law schools participate each year. Of these, 12 can qualify for the international rounds, with two from each of six geographic regions. Wayne Law is in the Midwest region.

The Wayne State Board of Governors approved the recommendation made by the Academic Affairs Committee to establish a bachelor of arts in law program. Beginning in fall 2023, the B.A will be offered through the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. The program will be partnered with academic units from across the Midtown campus.

Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs Mark Kornbluh told the committee that the B.A. in law is designed to be an intradisciplinary program that will provide students with a broad-based liberal arts degree.

“We started a minor in law three or four years ago and it’s grown to be one of the largest minors on the main campus,” Kornbluh said. “We see the student interest in this area, so I’m very excited that we’re proposing this.”

Wayne Law explores transgender health equity and the law during fall symposium

The symposium unveiled a special issue of the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics devoted to transgender health equity and the law, with panels from authors and local researchers on a broad array of topics, including policy as a driver of health equity, access to appropriate health care, reproductive health and international human rights.

Admiral Rachel L. Levine, U.S. assistant secretary for health, provided opening remarks at the symposium.

According to Associate Professor of Law and Social Work Heather Walter-McCabe, 2022 saw the highest number of bills introduced aimed at LGBTQ+ populations in recent history, with many of them targeting transgender populations. October 2022 saw the introduction of House Bill 6454, which, if passed, would make seeking gender-affirming care for youth child abuse potentially punishable by up to life in prison.

Overcoming adversity

Shea Mace has found her calling at Wayne Law

By Sheila Pursglove
Legal News

In her late teens, Shea Mace became addicted to drugs and alcohol to cope with childhood traumas. By 22, she was homeless, hopeless and in serious legal trouble due to her substance abuse.

Fortunately, she was thrown a lifeline with the opportunity to be enrolled in the Oakland County Adult Treatment Court in lieu of serving prison time.

“I truly believe had I not been given this opportunity, I wouldn’t be alive today,” she said. “The Adult Treatment Court treated me like a human being instead of a criminal and connected me with services that gave me the tools I needed to rebuild my life.”

Mace’s personal mental health struggles, as well as those of friends and family, led her to search for answers within the field of psychology, and she earned her undergraduate degree in the subject from Wayne State University.

A legacy celebrated

“It was like hieroglyphics,” Harring said. “Reading timeworn cases on assumpsit and trespass … was like trying to decipher a foreign language.”

But like many first-year law students, Harring had to do — as the notorious torts standard goes — what a reasonable person would under the circumstances: He took things day by day. And Littlejohn expertly guided Harring’s class through those daunting first days.

“Teaching well is hard, but teaching first-year law students is even harder and more important,” Harring said. “Professor Littlejohn managed, in his own way, to encourage students that things will be OK — this is going to be difficult.”

Nancy Chi Cantalupo named associate dean of diversity, equity and belonging

“Dean Cantalupo’s experience, talent and commitment in this role will amplify and elevate the work of every member of Wayne Law as we strive to make our school, our community and our profession diverse and equitable spaces in which everyone truly belongs,” said Richard A. Bierschbach, dean of the Law School.

Cantalupo has more than a decade of experience writing about and teaching civil rights and Title IX, and preventing discriminatory violence such as sexual harassment and gender-based violence. Her scholarship in these areas aims to give schools and those seeking to enforce civil rights protections concrete strategies to reach such goals, and several specific proposals she has made have influenced federal law in a pro-civil rights direction.

Kirsten Matoy Carlson named ABF/JPB Foundation Access to Justice Scholar for 2023-24 cohort

The Access to Justice Scholars Program promotes the next generation of scholars and supports the infrastructure of the burgeoning field of access to justice. It brings together scholars from across the country from many disciplines — including law, political science, public health and sociology — to foster discoveries and build theoretical and empirical understanding of what is happening with access to civil justice.

Carlson is one of six faculty scholars elected by an advisory committee from a highly qualified pool of applicants with diverse academic backgrounds and project proposals. The faculty scholars will bring their unique expertise to further the program’s core mission: generating impactful research on access to civil justice and translating this research into practice. The scholars’ projects will produce both discoveries to inform social scientific understandings of access to civil justice, and knowledge to inform real-world policy and reduce poverty and inequality in the United States and beyond. Carlson’s work will investigate the gaps in existing measures of outcomes and impacts for legal services delivery in Native communities in the United States.

“No Equal Justice”

The book — which has already garnered a number of awards — begins by tracing the Crockett family history from slavery to Crockett’s admission into the University of Michigan Law School. He became one of the most senior Black lawyers in President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal administration and later played a central role fighting discrimination in the United Auto Workers union. In 1948, in a team of five attorneys, he was the only Black lawyer defending the constitutional rights of the leaders of the U.S. Communist Party in Dennis v. United States, the longest and most dramatic political trial in American history. At the close of the case, Crockett and his defense colleagues were summarily sentenced to prison for zealously representing their clients. He headed the National Lawyers Guild office in Jackson, Mississippi, during 1964’s Freedom Summer.

The latest news from Wayne Law

Khaled A. Beydoun
Associate Professor of Law

• The New Crusades: Islamophobia and the Global War on Muslims, University of California Press (2023)
• Unveiling, 111 Calif. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2023) (with Nura Sediqe)
• The New State of Surveillance: Societies of Subjugation, 79 Wash. & Lee L. Rev. 769 (2022)

Moot Court team qualifies for national final rounds of ABA’s National Appellate Advocacy Competition

The team also took home the second-place brief award, Navarre earned the second-place oralist award, and Burgam received the fourth-place oralist award. The team was undefeated in the regional, beating teams from Ohio State University Michael E. Moritz College of Law, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Law, University of Colorado Law School and Seton Hall Law School. The Brooklyn regional saw competition from 32 teams.

This year, a total of 173 teams from 100 ABA-approved law schools across the country will compete in six regionals, with the four winners of each regional advancing to the final rounds in Washington, D.C.

2023 Wayne Law Jaffe/Taft Transactional Law Invitational hosts 19 schools, names winners

The invitational is part of a skilled learning experience created and supervised by Associate Professor Eric A. Zacks and Taft attorney and Wayne Law alumnus Justin Hanna. Third-year students Muhannad Al-Ujayli, Muhammad Siwani, Trevor Lloyd and Andrew Vailliencourt served as chairpersons of this year’s competition. The program is supported by the Jaffe Transactional Law Competition Fund, established in 2018 by Jaffe/Taft.

The competition helps students develop drafting, negotiating and counseling skills, with two-member teams representing a buyer and seller involved in a complex acquisition. After a semester of drafting and revising, the negotiations brought the teams together for two rounds of competition. The panel of judges — composed of 20 attorneys — offered feedback following the completion of each round.

We welcome alumni news

• Send news of your professional accomplishments and your high-resolution headshot to lawalumni@wayne.edu.
• Did you move or get a new a job? Update your information at alumni.wayne.edu.

Ronald B. Rader ’66 was honored by the Florida Bar as a member with a 50-year cumulative legal practice with the Florida Bar and one or more United States jurisdictions.

Hon. Terrill J. LaRue ’72 was honored by the Florida Bar as a member with a 50-year cumulative legal practice with the Florida Bar and one or more United States jurisdictions. LaRue served as a circuit judge for the Seventh Judicial Circuit Court of Florida in Volusia County.

Richard G. Himelrick ’74 retired from Tiffany & Bosco in Phoenix. Before retiring, he authored six editions of Arizona Securities Fraud Law: Civil Liability, Defenses and Remedies.

Pamela Enslen ’81 was appointed executive director of California Community Colleges Foundation’s California LAW Pathways. Previously, she was a senior partner at Warner, Norcross + Judd. Enslen has also been elected to serve her second three-year term on the board of governors of the American Bar Association.