Lecture Programs and Other Academic Opportunities
The regular curriculum at Yale Law School is augmented by a host of events that enrich legal education and scholarship. Distinguished speakers—lawyers, judges, public figures, government officials, scholars, and other prominent individuals—are invited by faculty members, student organizations, and academic programs within the School to give talks or participate in panel discussions on a wide variety of topics throughout the year. Conferences sponsored or co-sponsored by the School or by its faculty or students address issues of legal import both here and abroad. Additionally, an abundant resource of endowed funds allows the School to invite many specially designated fellows who not only give lectures but also spend time mentoring students with similar academic or professional interests.
Lecture Programs
A sampling of the endowed lecture programs from the 2008–2009 academic year follows:
The Robert P. Anderson Memorial Lecture provides a forum for distinguished judges to speak on matters of general importance to law and society. The Honorable Margaret Marshall ’76, Chief Justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, delivered the 2008 Anderson Lecture, speaking on “Leading Indicators: State Courts in the Global Marketplace of Ideas.”
The Ralph Gregory Elliot First Amendment Lectureship provides for lectures, preferably on an annual basis, on some aspect of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Stanford University professor Joshua Cohen gave the 2008–2009 Elliot Lecture on the topic “Religious Establishment, Civic Exclusion, and Democracy’s Public Reason.”
The John Hart Ely Fellowship Lecture on Professional Responsibility highlights research and teaching in the field of ethics and professional responsibility. This year’s Ely Lecture was given by Georgetown law professor Milton C. Regan, Jr., on “Legal Counseling and Conflicted Citizens: The Case of Tax Practice.”
The Fowler Harper Memorial Fund and Fellowship brings to Yale Law School a prominent person who has made a distinguished contribution to the public life of the nation.
The Samuel and Ronnie ’72 Heyman Lecture on Public Service is part of a gift that also supports the Heyman Federal Public Service Fellowship Program. U.S. Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin delivered the Heyman Lecture this year on “Where Law Is King: Restoring the Rule of Law after the Bush Administration.”
The Arthur Allen Leff Fellowship brings to Yale Law School individuals whose work in other disciplines illuminates the study of law and legal institutions. The 2008–2009 Leff Fellowship Lecture was delivered by Professor Samuel Bowles, research professor and director of the Behavioral Sciences Program at the Santa Fe Institute. Professor Bowles spoke on “Good Government and Human Behavior: New Evidence on Enduring Questions.”
The Judge Jon O. Newman Lectureship supports an annual lecture in global justice, or public international, human rights, or comparative law, by a distinguished individual who is not a citizen of, and does not reside in, the United States. The Honourable Louise Arbour, former U.N. high commissioner for human rights and former justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, delivered the 2009 Newman Lecture, discussing “Peace and Justice: A Framework for Peaceful Co-existence.”
The Robert H. Preiskel and Leon Silverman Program on the Practicing Lawyer and the Public Interest sponsors lectures and other events celebrating private lawyers’ contributions to the public interest. Judith Scott, general counsel for the Service Employees International Union, Washington D.C., delivered the 2008–2009 Preiskel-Silverman Lecture. The title of her talk was “Standing up for the Real Joe the Plumbers: Social Justice Lawyering in the Age of Obama.”
The John R. Raben/Sullivan & Cromwell Fellowship brings to the Law School a leading expert in securities law or accounting for business enterprises, to deliver a public lecture. University of Chicago professor Luigi Zingales gave the 2008–2009 Raben/Sullivan & Cromwell Lecture on “The Future of Securities Regulation.”
The Sherrill Lectureship brings distinguished visitors with special expertise in problems of international law and international relations. Jean-Marie Guéhenno, under-secretary-general for peacekeeping operations at the United Nations, lectured on “Peacekeeping: Testing the Limits of the Concept of an International Community” during the 2008-2009 academic year.
The James A. Thomas Lectures are given by scholars whose work addresses the concerns of communities or groups currently marginalized within the legal academy or society at large. University of Virginia law and history professor Tomiko Brown-Nagin ’97 delivered the 2008–2009 Thomas Lecture, “Re-Envisioning the Civil Rights Movement: Courts, Communities, and Legal Liberalism.”
The Judge Ralph K. Winter Lectureship on Corporate Law and Governance supports lectures on corporate law and governance and related topics. University of Chicago business professor Steven N. Kaplan delivered the 2008–2009 Winter Lecture, which was titled “Are U.S. CEOs Overpaid?”
Other named lecture and fellowship programs at Yale Law School include the following:
The Timothy B. Atkeson Environmental Practitioner in Residence Program brings to the Law School practitioners from a variety of environmental law practice settings to lecture, teach seminars, and counsel students on career opportunities.
The Robert L. Bernstein Fellowships in International Human Rights are awarded annually to two Yale Law School graduates pursuing projects devoted to the advancement of human rights around the world.
The Robert M. Cover Lectureship in Law and Religion brings speakers to Yale to explore the historical, philosophical, sociological, and literary intersections between law and religion.
The Kronman-Postol Lectureship supports lectures related to law and the humanities.
The Charles S. Mechem, Jr. Fellowship provides for lectures and other presentations by senior corporate executives to foster an understanding of decision making in the business environment.
The Storrs Lectures, established in 1889, constitute one of Yale Law School’s oldest and most prestigious lecture programs. They are given annually by a prominent scholar who discusses fundamental problems of law and jurisprudence.
Beyond the endowed lecture and fellowship programs, other invited speakers present topics of particular interest to the Law School community. Among those invited in the 2008–2009 academic year were former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, who spoke about “Leadership in Challenging Times”; former General Electric executive Ben Heineman ’71, who discussed “High Performance with High Integrity”; and pioneering commercial litigator Stephen Susman of Susman Godfrey, who discussed his role in blocking construction of several coal-fired power plants in a landmark case that pitted thirty-seven cities against TXU Corporation.
Other special guest lecturers included Richard Mendelson of Dickenson, Peatman & Fogarty in Napa, California, who gave a special two-day seminar on wine law in America.
In addition, many student organizations and Law School centers sponsored lectures
and conferences throughout the academic year, including the Yale Journal of Law and Feminism, the Yale Law & Policy Review, and the Law and Media program (LAMP). Other notable conferences held this year included the fifteenth annual Rebellious Lawyering Conference; the twelfth annual Arthur Liman Public Interest Law Colloquium focusing on “Forty Years of Clinical Education at Yale”; the “Global Health Policy for the New Administration” conference co-sponsored by the Law and Health Initiative; and the Robert L. Bernstein International Human Rights Fellowship Symposium on “Beyond Borders: Immigration Policy in the New Century.” The Orville H. Schell, Jr. Center for International Human Rights sponsored “The Pursuit of International Criminal Justice: The Case of Darfur”; Yale Law Women hosted “‘Opt Out’ or Pushed Out? Are Women Choosing to Leave the Legal Profession?”; and the Information Society Project (ISP) sponsored the third annual Access To Knowledge (A2K3) conference as well as a Library 2.0 Symposium.
Students also had the opportunity to learn more about various fields within the legal profession through the Dean’s Program on the Profession Lecture Series, which in 2008–2009 included a talk by William J. Perlstein, co-managing partner at WilmerHale and partner in the firm’s Bankruptcy and Financial Restructuring Practice Group.
Other regularly scheduled talks focus on a specific academic or intellectual interest. The Orville H. Schell, Jr. Center for International Human Rights sponsors a weekly Human Rights Workshop for students, scholars, and practitioners in the field. The Information Society Project hosts a weekly lunchtime speaker series, presenting leading scholars and practitioners in law, technology, ethics, information policy, and intellectual property who discuss their research and the latest news and trends impacting the information society. The Yale Law School Center for the Study of Corporate Law sponsors the Bert W. Wasserman Workshop in Law and Finance for the presentation of research and discussion of topical issues in law and finance by faculty from Yale and other universities. The China Law Center organizes a weekly workshop on Chinese legal reform, in which U.S. and Chinese scholars present papers on Chinese legal and policy developments. The Legal Theory Workshop brings to the Law School provocative new scholarship from law and affiliated disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. The Legal History Forum brings together law students, graduate students, and scholars from a variety of disciplines who have an interest in history and the law. The Law, Economics, and Organization Workshop is both a forum for ongoing scholarly research in law and economics and a Law School course. Yale Law School also sponsors a series of workshops on dispute resolution with the Quinnipiac University School of Law.
Special Initiatives
Yale Law School is shaped by the intellectual interests of its faculty and students. Those interests find expression not only in our established curriculum and other academic opportunities, but also in new activities that emerge from time to time.
For example, the growing importance of international perspectives has yielded several major initiatives. The Global Constitutionalism Seminar is an annual event in which Supreme Court and constitutional court judges from around the world meet with faculty members to discuss issues of common concern.
A second initiative is designed to strengthen democratic institutions and practices in Latin America through linkage activities with two law schools in Chile, one in Argentina, and two in Brazil. This program permits Yale students to spend a month in Chile, Argentina, or Brazil, in order to work with Latin American law students in small study groups and clinics. In the spring, students from the Latin American linkage law schools visit Yale for three weeks to participate in study groups and attend classes. In addition, legal scholars from throughout Latin America, the Caribbean Basin, Spain, and the United States meet in June for the Seminario en Latino-américa de Teoría Constitucional y Política (SELA), a three-day seminar exploring the foundational ideas of constitutional democracy. SELA is co-sponsored by Yale and a number of other law schools in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, and Spain.
A similar initiative, the Middle East Legal Studies Seminar, is an annual meeting convened by the Law School in a Middle East or nearby venue. It was created to provide a forum in which influential scholars and opinion leaders from the legal communities of the Middle East could exchange ideas and form a productive working relationship. Every year, roughly thirty-five lawyers, judges, and academics from the region meet with Yale professors and students to discuss an agreed-upon topic of common importance. Past topics have included the concept of legal authority, the basic rights and remedies available to individuals, and the challenges of religious pluralism in the Middle East.
The Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy
The center, established in 1994 by Yale Law School and the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, draws on resources throughout Yale University to develop and advance environmental policy locally, regionally, nationally, and globally. The mission of the center is to advance fresh thinking and analytically rigorous approaches to environmental decision making across disciplines, sectors, and boundaries. The center’s research projects are channeled through four program areas: Environmental Law & Governance, which examines how the principles of good governance can be applied in the context of environmental decision making; Environmental Performance Measurement, which aims to strengthen the foundations for environmental policy making by developing pollution control and natural resource management metrics and indicators; Business, Innovation, and Environment, which investigates policy tools at the nexus of business and the environment; and Environmental Attitudes and Behavior, which considers the way people relate to the environment, how they value it, and how they can be engaged on environmental policies and concepts.
The center runs the Environmental Protection Clinic, in which law students have opportunities to address environmental law and policy problems on behalf of client organizations. In recent years, Yale student teams have worked with a range of community groups, environmental groups, think tanks, government agencies, and international organizations.
The center also sponsors an Environmental Issues Lecture Series, which provides a forum for visiting scholars, environmental professionals, business leaders, and government officials. The director of the center is Professor Daniel C. Esty, the Hillhouse Professor of Environmental Law and Policy, with a joint appointment in the Law School and the School of Forestry & Environmental Studies.
The Yale Center for Law and Philosophy
The Yale Center for Law and Philosophy was founded in 2005 as a joint venture with the Law School and the Yale Philosophy department. It aims to encourage advanced work, including research degrees, at the interface of philosophy and law. Members of both faculties are affiliated with the center, as are a number of visitors. The center’s programs include regular workshops and conferences, attracting leading philosophers of law from around the world. The center also supports a postdoctoral fellowship which provides substantial funding for research. The center also helps to coordinate courses across the Law School and the Philosophy department. More information is available on the center’s Web site at www.law.yale.edu/yclp.
The John M. Olin Center for Studies in Law, Economics, and Public Policy
The Olin Center for Studies in Law, Economics, and Public Policy is designed to facilitate the scholarly interests of the many distinguished law and economics scholars at Yale, including Professors Ackerman, Ayres, Brooks, Calabresi, Coleman, Donohue, Ellickson, Graetz, Hansmann, Jolls, Klevorick, Kronman, Listokin, Macey, Markovits, Mashaw, C. Priest, G. Priest, Romano, Rose, Rose-Ackerman, Schuck, Schwartz, and Winter. The center supports a broad range of scholarly work. The center’s activities include scholarships to students interested in law and economics, to students conducting law and economics research projects over the summer, as well as to students who wish to obtain joint degrees in law and economics; support for the Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization; the center’s Working Paper Series; and the Law, Economics, and Organization Workshop, at which scholars from other institutions and from Yale present papers for student and faculty criticism. The center also provides an umbrella for two programs: the Program in Civil Liability, established to promote comprehensive reanalysis of the modern law of torts, products liability, professional malpractice, insurance, and other subjects related to our civil liability system; and the Program for Studies in Capitalism, which supports research on the operation of capitalism as a mechanism of economic growth; the ethical bases of capitalism; the relation between capitalism and the poor, and between capitalism and democracy. The center’s co-directors are Professors George L. Priest and Susan Rose-Ackerman.
The Yale Law School Center for the Study of Corporate Law
The Yale Law School Center for the Study of Corporate Law was established in 1999 to promote teaching and research in the business law area. The center’s focus of study is wide-ranging, reflecting the shifting priorities of the business and regulatory environment. It includes corporate and commercial law and the law of other nongovernmental organizations; the regulation of financial markets and intermediaries; the legal framework of finance, including the law of bankruptcy and corporate reorganization; and antitrust law and the law of regulated industries.
The center hosts annually the Weil, Gotshal & Manges Roundtable, a one-day event which consists of the presentation of scholarly papers and a panel discussion on a topical issue, and two endowed lectures, the John R. Raben/Sullivan & Cromwell Fellow Lecture and the Judge Ralph Winter Lectureship on Corporate Law and Governance. Throughout the academic year, the center sponsors the Bert W. Wasserman Workshop in Law and Finance, which invites scholars from other universities to present their current research. In addition, the center organizes breakfast panel programs for alumni in New York City, occasional panels and symposia at the Law School, along with a number of career development presentations for students, which are cosponsored with the Law School’s Career Development Office and the Law and Business Society. In the spring term, the center sponsors the Marvin A. Chirelstein Colloquium on Contemporary Issues in Law and Business. The colloquium is a limited-enrollment seminar which seeks to convey to students the variety of career opportunities in the private sector through weekly presentations by distinguished alumni.
Professor Roberta Romano is the center’s director. John Morley is the John R. Raben/Sullivan & Cromwell executive director and Kris Kavanaugh is the center coordinator. The center has a board of advisers, chaired by Robert Todd Lang ’47. Faculty members serving on the center’s executive committee are Ian Ayres, Richard Brooks, John Donohue, Henry Hansmann, Christine Jolls, Alvin Klevorick, Harold Hongju Koh, Anthony Kronman, John Langbein, Yair Listokin, Jonathan Macey, Daniel Markovits, George Priest, and Alan Schwartz.
For additional information on the center’s upcoming and past activities, the business law curriculum at the Law School, and joint-degree programs with the School of Management, including the three-year J.D.-M.B.A. degree program, visit the center’s Web site at www.law.yale.edu/ccl.
The China Law Center
The China Law Center at Yale Law School is a unique institution dedicated to helping promote China’s legal reforms and increasing understanding of China in the United States. In interaction with research and teaching, the core of the Center’s work is designing and carrying out sustained, in-depth cooperative projects between U.S. and Chinese experts on key issues in Chinese law and policy reform. These projects involve a range of activities, including workshops and seminars in the United States and China, research visits to Yale and to China, and publications. Projects often result in input into China’s law reform process or in books or articles by Chinese or U.S. scholars. The center also works to strengthen the capacity of reformers in China through cooperative projects in both China and the U.S. Its focus is on issues critical to China’s ongoing reform process, especially judicial reform, criminal justice reform, administrative and regulatory reform, constitutional law, and public interest law.
The center involves Yale Law School students in all aspects of its work. Students have organized and attended workshops in China and at Yale, conducted research and prepared reports and other advocacy documents, worked with visiting lawyers, scholars, and advocates at Yale, and worked during the summer in a variety of Chinese institutions, including academic centers and nongovernmental organizations.
Each term, the center hosts the Workshop on Chinese Legal Reform. The Workshop provides students and faculty an opportunity to learn about the Chinese legal system through discussions of papers presented by center staff, visiting Chinese scholars, and distinguished guest speakers (both Chinese and American). The workshop has come to serve as a focal point within Yale Law School—and increasingly within Yale University as a whole—for faculty and students with an interest in China and in exploring issues related to Chinese legal reform.
More information about the center is available on its Web site, www.yale.edu/chinalaw.
The Information Society Project
The Information Society Project (ISP) at Yale Law School was created in 1997 to study the implications of the Internet, telecommunications, and the new information technologies for law and society. Much of its work has focused on issues of freedom of speech, democracy, globalization, access to knowledge, and the growth and spread of culture on the Internet. In past years ISP has studied the effects of intellectual property and new communications technologies on globalization and development, the free speech implications of filtering and rating systems, legal protections for privacy and sensitive information on the Internet, democracy and civic participation in cyberspace, the civil liberties implications of telecommunications design and intellectual property protection, biotechnology and access to medicines, and memetics and the evolution of cultures and ideologies. ISP has held scholarly conferences on a range of subjects including access to knowledge; the Internet and globalization; democracy in cyberspace; blogging and Internet journalism; the law of virtual worlds; and emerging issues in cybercrime and cybersecurity. The project embraces a variety of activities, including fellowships for young scholars; publication of white papers and a book series; and advice and education for policy makers, business leaders, nonprofit organizations, and the legal community. The project director is Professor Jack Balkin. Additional information on ISP is available on its Web site, www.law.yale.edu/isp.
The Arthur Liman Public Interest Program
The Arthur Liman Public Interest Program was established in 1997 by family and friends of the late Arthur Liman ’57 to honor his commitment to public interest law. The program is supported today by many others, who share these commitments.
The Liman Program sponsors reading groups, colloquia, programs, and research and advocacy projects for current law students. In 2007 the focus of the reading group was on federalism and public interest advocacy, while in 2008 the topic was detention. In 2009–2010 the focus is “Imprisonment.” The Liman Program also provides fellowships for Yale Law School graduates working in the public sector and it helps to support summer fellowships for students at Barnard, Brown, Harvard, Princeton, Spelman, and Yale.
Through the Law School postgraduate fellowships, the Liman Program funds graduates to do full-time work in an ongoing or start-up project devoted to the public interest. Examples include work on behalf of workfare recipients, criminal defendants, prisoners, persons with disabilities, migrant workers, the elderly, and immigrants. Including the 2009–2010 awards, the Liman Program has supported 63 fellows at more than 50 public interest organizations.
Both fellows and current law students participate in reading groups as well as plan the annual Liman Colloquium, which over the years has addressed “The Future of Legal Services,” “Valuing Low-Wage Workers,” “Welfare ‘Reform’ and Response,” “Encountering the Criminal Justice System,” “Portraying the Public Interest,” “Public Interest Lawyering in an Era of High Anxiety,” “Organizing, Reorganizing: Public Interest in Individual and Global Contexts,” “Liman at the Local Level: Public Interest Advocacy and American Federalism,” and “Forty Years of Clinical Education at Yale: Generating Rights, Remedies, and Legal Services.”
Since its establishment, the range of programs funded by the Arthur Liman Public Interest Program has reflected the breadth of interests, concerns, and commitments of Arthur Liman. While working as a partner at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton and Garrison, and providing counsel to a range of corporate and individual clients, Liman also led several major institutions devoted to providing services to those who could not afford lawyers, including the Legal Aid Society of New York; the Legal Action Center; the Vera Institute for Justice; Neighborhood Defender Services of Harlem; and the New York State Capital Defenders Office. He also was chief counsel to the New York State Special Commission on Attica Prison and special counsel to the United States Senate Committee Investigating Secret Military Assistance to Iran and the Nicaraguan Opposition.
The Arthur Liman Professor of Law is Judith Resnik. The director of the Liman Program is Sarah French Russell ’02, formerly a federal public defender in Connecticut.
The Orville H. Schell, Jr. Center for International Human Rights
The Orville H. Schell, Jr. Center for International Human Rights was established at Yale Law School in 1989 to honor Orville Schell, a distinguished New York City lawyer and partner at Hughes, Hubbard & Reed, who was vice chairman of Helsinki Watch and chairman of Americas Watch from its founding in 1981 until his death in 1987. International human rights practitioners rarely have the opportunity to consider the theoretical issues their work entails, while scholars studying human rights lack a forum for interdisciplinary dialogue. At the same time, law students are eager to apply the lessons they are learning in the classroom to further the cause of human rights. The Schell Center addresses these needs by seeking to increase knowledge and understanding of international human rights issues; equip lawyers and other professionals with the skills needed to advance the cause of international human rights; and assist human rights organizations.
The Schell Center conducts the Allard K. Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic every term. It sponsors frequent lectures, panels, symposia, and informal discussions on a wide range of human rights issues and provides a number of fellowship opportunities for human rights experience and scholarship. The center also supports the Lowenstein International Human Rights Project, the Yale Human Rights and Development Law Journal, and other student projects related to human rights.
In 2009 the center’s annual conference, the Robert L. Bernstein International Human Rights Fellowship Symposium, was “Beyond Borders: Immigration Policy in the New Century.” The center also hosted a conference, “The Pursuit of International Criminal Justice: The Case of Darfur,” as part of the MacArthur International Justice Lecture Series.
During 2008–2009, speakers at the center’s Human Rights Workshop: Current Issues and Events included advocates from human rights organizations, scholars, and journalists. They spoke on such topics as “Torture Team: Lawyers and War Crimes,” “Constructing a Global Corporate Human Rights Regime,” “Standard Operating Procedure: Fighting Terror with Terror at Abu Ghraib and Beyond,” “Human Rights at Home: A Domestic Policy Blueprint for the New Administration,” “International Criminal Courts: What Impact Do They Have?,” and “The Role of Gacaca in Politics and Reconciliation in Rwanda.”
The Schell Center also sponsored talks by human rights advocates and scholars, including a number of former Yale Law School students, on such topics as “Human Rights Challenges and Opportunities for the Obama Administration,” “Global Health and the Right to Health: The Current Reality and the Future Possibility,” “Justice at Home after the Fighting Ends: Challenges Facing the Domestic Prosecution of War Crimes in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” “The Global Diffusion and Domestic Use of International Law: A Conversation with the Robina Foundation Senior Fellows in Residence,” and “Kosovo’s Declaration of Independence: One Year Later.” As it does each year, the Schell Center held a human rights career panel and sponsored several panels of Kirby Simon Summer Human Rights Fellows, who spoke about their experience and the issues raised by their summer work. The Schell Center also cosponsored events with other centers and organizations within the University, including “The International Criminal Court and the Problem of Hidden Agendas: A Journalist’s Perspective on Sudan and Uganda,” “Peace vs. Justice: Is there a Conflict? If so, What is to be Done?,” “Patent Busters: Taking on the International IP System, One Lawsuit at a Time,” “Growing up in Guantanamo,” “Warring Parties: Conflict in Democratic Republic of Congo,” and “Same Sex Couples in Colombia: Equality, High Impact Litigation, and Democracy.”
The Schell Center administers several human rights fellowships. The Robert L. Bernstein Fellowship in International Human Rights, inaugurated in 1997, funds three recent Yale Law School graduates annually to engage in full-time human rights work for a year. In 2008–2009, Bernstein Fellows worked with the Carter Center to launch a Gender Crimes Unit in Liberia, with the Center for Reproductive Rights on a documentation and advocacy project to support efforts to improve reproductive health services in Kenya, and with the International Center for Transitional Justice in Cape Town, South Africa, on a series of transitional justice initiatives in western and southern Africa. The new Robina Post-Graduate Human Rights Fellowship also funds recent Yale Law School graduates to do full-time human rights work, particularly with appropriate international or foreign courts and tribunals or to carry out human rights research. Each summer, the center provides students with travel grants for international human rights work. In 2008, Kirby Simon Summer Human Rights Fellowships allowed thirty-nine students to spend all or part of the summer engaged in human rights internships or research in nineteen countries throughout the world.
The center invites scholars and advocates to visit the Law School as Schell and Robina Senior Fellows to conduct research, teach seminars, and meet with students. The Robert M. Cover–Allard K. Lowenstein Fellow in International Human Rights Law spends two years at the Law School, working on all aspects of the center’s work, including supervision of the Lowenstein Clinic.
The center has received generous support from the John Merck Fund and friends and associates of Orville H. Schell, Jr., as well as the law firm of Hughes, Hubbard & Reed, the Merck Pharmaceutical Foundation, the Robina Foundation, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Open Society Institute, the JEHT Foundation, the Arthur Ross Foundation, and the Diamondston Foundation.
The director of the Schell Center is Professor Paul W. Kahn; the executive director is Professor James J. Silk, and the Cover-Lowenstein Fellow is Elizabeth W. Brundige. The Schell Center’s e-mail address is schell.law@yale.edu.
Opportunities for Study in Legal History
The study of American, English, and European legal history occupies an important place in the Law School’s curriculum. Recent and current offerings include courses on the history of the common law, the history of criminal procedure, constitutional history, American legal history, and European legal history. Seminars and lectures by outside scholars in legal history supplement the regular curricular offerings. An informal legal history program brings together students and faculty interested in legal history; it includes students and faculty from the Law School and the Yale Department of History as well as from elsewhere within and outside the University. The Law School also encourages advanced study and original research in American, English, and European legal history. A few students pursue the joint J.D.–Ph.D. program in History or in American Studies.
Visiting Researchers
Each year the Law School has in residence a few visiting researchers engaged in nondegree research. Visiting researchers may audit one or two courses per term (with the consent of individual instructors) and make use of library facilities for their work. Each visiting researcher is charged a registration fee. For academic year 2009–2010 the fee is $4,000 per term, or $8,000 per academic year. No financial aid from the Law School is available for participants in this program.
The visiting researcher application is available on the Law School Web site at www.law.yale.edu in the Admissions section. Applications must include a résumé or c.v.; a description of the proposed research, including a statement explaining why Yale Law School is a particularly appropriate affiliation for the proposed work; two letters of recommendation; official transcript(s) of the applicant’s academic record; the proposed length and dates of stay; and the $75 application fee. Official transcripts must be submitted in a sealed envelope, signed across the seal. All documents must be in English or accompanied by certified English translation.
The application deadlines are April 1 for the fall term and September 1 for the spring term.
Fellowships for Postgraduate Research
Yale Law School offers a number of fellowships for alumni interested in pursuing careers in academia or in public interest law. The Yale Law School Public Interest, Bernstein, Liman, and Heyman Fellowships, among others, support work in various types of public interest positions. The Ruebhausen, Ribicoff, Cover, Robina, and South Asia Fellowships are available for alumni interested in careers in law teaching. For a complete list of fellowships, visit www.law.yale.edu/currentfellowships.asp.
