Three Maurer faculty awarded titled positions

Three Indiana University Maurer School of Law faculty members have been awarded titled positions. Jessica Eaglin, David Gamage, and Aviva Orenstein will each take on new titles with the start of the spring 2022 semester. The Law School’s Faculty Policy Committee unanimously supported the appointments by Dean Austen Parrish.

“We have a remarkably accomplished faculty,” Dean Parrish said. “These three appointments recognize the chosen professors’ outstanding academic accomplishments and are intended to support future scholarly growth. I am proud to appoint Aviva, Jessica, and David to these titled positions.”

Eaglin will become the Harry T. Ice Faculty Fellow, an honor established in 1983 by the firm of Ice Miller Donadio and Ryan. The Fellowship pays homage to Harry T. Ice, who joined the firm of Matson Carter Ross and McCord following graduation. He remained with the firm, now called Ice Miller, for 53 years, becoming one of the nation’s leading bond counselors. Ice also served as special counsel to Indiana Attorney General Theodore I. Sendak.

Eaglin’s research examines the expansion of technical legal practices in criminal administration as response to the economic and social pressures of mass incarceration. She is a leading expert on algorithms in criminal sentencing. Her articles and essays have been published with the Cornell Law Review, Stanford Law Review Online, and Washington University Law Review, among other journals.

Gamage has been named the Whistler Fellow, honoring alumnus Charles LeRoy Whistler, LLB’51. Gamage, a scholar of tax law and policy and also of health law and policy, has written extensively on tax and budget policy at both the U.S. state and federal levels, as well as on tax theory, fiscal federalism, and the intersections between taxation and health care. He ranks in the top five of the SSRN U.S. Tax Law Professor Rankings. Professor Gamage is also ranked as the ninth most-cited U.S. tax law scholar and is the youngest scholar on that top ten list.

The Whistler Fellowship was established in 1982 by Baker and Daniels, where Whistler primarily practiced labor law. Whistler played a leading role in the shaping of Indianapolis and its modern political structure. He wrote much of the legislation consolidating the city and county governments under Unigov. He co-chaired the Regional Center Planning Committee, which sponsored the creation of the City Center on Monument Circle. He was instrumental in the reopening of the Indiana Theatre, the downtown shopping mall concept, and the planning of White River Park.

Orenstein will hold the newly established Karen Lake Buttrey and Donald W. Buttrey Chair. Donald Buttrey, JD’61, practiced for a half-century with the former McHale Cook & Welch Firm and is the former president of the Indianapolis Bar Association. He passed away in April 2021 and was preceded in death by his first wife, Karen Lake Buttrey. She had established a trust that matured upon her husband’s death, and Donald, too, had created a trust. The two gifts have been combined to create the new endowed chair. Dean Parrish thanked the Buttrey family—including Donald’s second wife and widow, Ann Hyer Buttrey—for their incredible generosity.

Orenstein writes and teaches in the area of evidence. Her scholarly interests concern the intersection of evidence law and culture, and she is currently writing about jurors’ emotions and how the emotion of regret can justify rules excluding character evidence. She also teaches Civil Procedure and, occasionally, Family Law, Legal Profession, and Children and the Law.

Fellowship and chair recipients are awarded additional financial resources to support summer research.