In Brief

People

Professor Cecelia Klingele has been elected to the American Law Institute (ALI), an independent U.S. organization that produces scholarly work to clarify, modernize, and otherwise improve the law. Made up of more than four thousand lawyers, judges, and law professors of the highest qualifications, ALI drafts, discusses, revises, and publishes restatements of the law, model statutes, and principles of law that are enormously influential in the courts and legislatures, as well as in scholarship and legal education.
Dean Margaret Raymond received the Wisconsin Law Journal’s 2013 Women in the Law award. She was among twenty-seven outstanding female attorneys and judges honored at a ceremony in Milwaukee on June 25. The annual award recognizes women who have made their mark on Wisconsin’s legal community in a variety of ways, including those who have achieved excellence in their respective fields and have influenced other women to pursue legal careers, those who have opened doors for women lawyers in job settings that historically were closed to women, and those who have advanced opportunities for women within a practice area or segment of the profession.
Professor R. Alta Charo has been honored for her outstanding service to the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academies. She received the Adam Yarmolinsky Medal, an award given to a non-physician member who has made extensive contributions to IOM through service on its boards, committees, and forums. The IOM provides research and advice to decision-makers and the public related to health and health care issues.
Professor Pilar Ossorio was named the co-director of a new Research Ethics Consultation Service at UW-Madison. The service provides the UW-Madison research community with another checkpoint on ethical challenges that arise across the research spectrum, from study design to the implications of results.
Professor Mark Sidel attended a rare economic development meeting in North Korea. It included academics and experts from six countries — the United States, Canada, India, China, Malaysia, and Vietnam — and more than seventy North Korean participants. The group met to explore the use of special economic zones to create favorable conditions for foreign investment by granting preferential treatment for land use, labor and taxes, and faster government licensing. They paid special attention to the experience of such zones in China, Vietnam, Malaysia, and India in facilitating economic development and social innovation.
Professor Thomas Mitchell received the Elizabeth Hurlock Beckman Award for inspiring a former student, John Pollock, to achieve greatness. Pollock founded the Heirs’ Property Retention Coalition and assisted Mitchell in drafting the Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act, which protects property owners from losing their family land unfairly.
Professor Heinz Klug was awarded an honorary doctorate from Hasselt University in Belgium for his contributions to the field of comparative constitutional law. He received the degree on May 28, along with six other leading international scholars.

Awards

The Global Legal Studies Center of the University of Wisconsin Law School received a $50,000 award from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to create a cross-campus human rights program. The new program provides an institutional home for faculty and students interested in human rights research and advocacy, with a focus on four research areas — state and non-state violence, health, the environment, and land and water rights. It also encourages the scholarly comparison and evaluation of various approaches to human rights.
The U.S. Department of Justice has awarded a $511,438 grant to the Wisconsin Innocence Project, based at the University of Wisconsin Law School’s Frank J. Remington Center. The federal funding allows the program to continue its work on cases where new DNA supports the convicted individual’s claim of innocence. In particular, the funds support the work of one clinical faculty attorney, a full-time intake worker, and a part-time intake assistant. The funds also cover the costs of DNA testing of biological evidence, expert fees, and office expenses.