After a two-year hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Maurer School of Law will resume its traditional, in-person graduation ceremony on Saturday, May 7, at noon in the Indiana University Auditorium.

The Hon. Jed Rakoff, senior U.S. District Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, will deliver remarks as this spring’s Commencement speaker. Rakoff had been invited to deliver the 2021 Commencement speech, but graciously agreed to postpone until in-person ceremonies resumed.

“We’re honored to welcome Judge Rakoff to Bloomington next month for what are sure to be inspiring remarks to our graduating students,” said Dean Austen Parrish. “His reputation as a visionary judge, scholar, and thinker is both well known and well deserved. I also want to extend my thanks to our graduation committee for their work in making this year’s ceremony possible.”

A renowned member of the judiciary, Judge Rakoff has served on the Southern District of New York since March 1996 after being appointed by President Bill Clinton. He frequently sits by designation on the 2nd and 9th Circuit Courts of Appeals. Judge Rakoff is an adjunct professor at both Columbia Law School and NYU Law School, and also teaches at Berkeley Law School and the University of Virginia Law School. He has written over 170 published articles, 750 speeches, and 1800 judicial opinions, and has co-authored five books. He is a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books.

Judge Rakoff has presided over a number of high-profile cases throughout his distinguished career, including United States v. Quinones, Associated Press v. Department of Defense, U.S. v. Adelson, and, more recently, U.S. v. Cesar Altieri Sayoc and State of New York v. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

In 2014, Fortune Magazine named Rakoff one of the “World’s 50 Greatest Leaders.” A 2017 book by Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Jessie Eisinger said “Rakoff has cried out about the injustice of the (criminal law) system. He has played a role to change the way the country addresses corporate criminals.”

This year’s Commencement ceremony will recognize members of the class of 2022, along with a few graduates who didn’t have the chance to participate in a previous ceremony due to the pandemic. Members of the Law School’s graduation committee are: Cole Byram, Sarah Chaney, Alexis Hatchard, and Alexis Jenkins.

The ceremony is expected to be livestreamed at broadcast.iu.edu.

The Indiana University Maurer School of Law will host an oral argument before the Court of Appeals of Indiana on March 3, giving law students, the IU community, and members of the public a rare local opportunity to see part of the state’s judiciary process live.

Judges Edward W. Najam, Jr., Leanna K. Weissmann, and Senior Judge John G. Baker are scheduled to hear arguments in Parkview Hospital, Inc. v. American Family Insurance Co. between 3:30 and 4:30 p.m. in the Law School’s DeLaney Moot Court Room. The appeal involves matters relating to the Hospital Lien Act, attorney’s fees, forfeiture, damages, and more.

Traveling oral arguments, or Appeals on Wheels, take the court across Indiana to help Hoosiers learn more about the judiciary’s indispensable role in Indiana government.

“The Court of Appeals affords the ‘absolute right to one appeal’ guaranteed by the Indiana Constitution,” said Court of Appeals Presiding Judge Edward W. Najam, Jr. “This year is the Court’s 50th anniversary. The Court’s eight men and seven women together have 536 years of experience as lawyers and judges. We hold our seats in trust for the people of Indiana. It is our mission to preserve the rule of law and equal justice under law. Our court is transparent and accountable. In every case, we issue a written opinion which both decides the case and explains our reasoning.”

The judges will hear oral argument, take the matter under advisement, and then issue a ruling at a future date. Judges typically take time to answer questions—not involving the case being argued—from the audience after the event.

“We’re honored to once again host the Court of Appeals of Indiana here at the Law School,” said Dean Austen L. Parrish. “Students from across the university and members of the local community will have the opportunity to see a live argument before an appellate court outside of a traditional courtroom, giving them an up close and personal view of our state’s judicial system in action.”

The Indiana Court of Appeals is the state’s second-highest court. It reviews appeals from trial court decisions. A decision of the Indiana Court of Appeals is final unless granted further review by the Indiana Supreme Court. The majority of appeals filed in Indiana are decided by the Court of Appeals.

The event is open to the public, but attendees must be seated prior to the start of the hearing. Cell phones and recording devices cannot be used during the arguments.

Five alumni from the Indiana University Maurer School of Law will receive the highest honor the school can bestow when they are inducted into the school’s Academy of Law Alumni Fellows this April. The ALAF comprises the Law School’s most distinguished alumni, recognizing those who have distinguished themselves in their careers through personal achievements and dedication to the highest standards of the legal profession.

“These five individuals have led remarkable careers in a number of different fields, from private practice and the federal judiciary to public service and academia,” said Law School Dean Austen Parrish. “We couldn’t be more proud to honor Harry, Andy, Judy, and Charlotte later this spring, and to posthumously induct Judge Lozano.”

The 2022 ALAF inductees are:

Harry Gonso, JD’73. Gonso, a retired partner in the Indianapolis law firm of Ice Miller, currently serves on Indiana University’s Board of Trustees. Active in his community, he has served as a member of the Indiana State Bar Association in several leadership positions, and on the boards of directors of Community Hospital Foundation, Community Hospitals, Methodist Sports Medicine Foundation, and the Indiana University Research and Technology Corporation. He is a charter member of the IU Athletics Hall of Fame and is a director of the IU Foundation. Gonso has served as a member of the Indiana University Board of Trustees twice, 1976 to 1994 and 2017 to the present. During his first 18 years as a member of the IU Board of Trustees, Gonso was the youngest person ever elected to the board; he was vice president for more than 10 years; was the chairman of the board’s student affairs committee; and a member of its architectural committee. In 2017, Gonso was reappointed to the board by Governor Eric Holcomb. Gonso received his B.S. from IU Bloomington and his J.D. from its Maurer School of Law. As quarterback, he led the Indiana University football team that played in the 1967 Rose Bowl and was an Academic All-American and All-Big Ten selection. He has been awarded the Sagamore of the Wabash by three different Indiana governors, received the Indiana University Distinguished Alumni Award (1995), received the Z.G. Clevenger Award (1994), and was inducted into the Indiana University Athletics Hall of Fame (1982). Additionally, Gonso served on the Law School’s Board of Visitors from 1998 to 2005. In 2019, he received the IU Bicentennial Medal in recognition of his distinguished service.

Andrew Mallor, JD’74. A partner at Mallor Grodner, LLP, Mallor leads the firm’s private client division, handling all legal needs of the firm’s private clients, from matrimonial to wealth management and family wealth planning, and has been a leading family lawyer in Indiana for more than 40 years. He is board certified in family law and is an acclaimed trial lawyer. Mallor was an early advocate of the use of collaborative law techniques to resolve family law disputes in the most amicable and cost-effective way possible, and he has significant expertise in collaborative law. A skilled and gifted teacher, Mallor is the chair of the annual Family Law Institute for the Indiana Continuing Legal Education Forum (ICLEF). He is the author of more than 100 articles on family law and tax planning. Mallor is the only person from Indiana ever selected by his peers to be a member of the American College of Family Trial Lawyers, a peer-reviewed organization of the top 100 family trial lawyers in the United States. He was one of only two Indiana attorneys named to the 2020 Lawdragon 500 Leading Family Lawyers list of the nation’s best attorneys for divorce. He is a long-time “Super Lawyer,” member of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, and in 2015 received the ICLEF Excellence in Continuing Legal Education Award.

Judith A. Waltz, JD’81. Waltz is a health care partner with Foley & Lardner LLP in San Francisco, where she works with clients throughout the health care industry. She is the co-chair of the firm’s Health Care Practice Group and Health Care Industry Team, and former co-chair of the Life Sciences Industry Team. Waltz is also a member of the Government Enforcement Defense & Investigations and Bankruptcy & Business Reorganizations Practices. Prior to joining the firm in 1998, Waltz served as assistant regional counsel for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in San Francisco, primarily handling Medicare issues including survey and certification and various types of reimbursement disputes. She has held collateral appointments as a special assistant United States Attorney for the Eastern and Northern Districts of California. Waltz is a past chair of the Women’s Network Steering Committee at Foley. She is also a member the Health Law Committee of the Business Law Section of the State Bar of California, the American Bar Association’s Health Law Section, the California Society for Healthcare Attorneys, and the Health Care Compliance Association. Waltz has been consistently ranked as one of the top health care attorneys in California by Chambers USA (2009-21) where she is described as “the gold standard for issues with CMS” (2015) and “a leader in fraud and abuse” and “a masterful negotiator” (2014). She is deeply committed to the Law School, and is a long-standing member of the Law School’s Board of Visitors, having served since 2009.

Charlotte Westerhaus-Renfrow, JD’92. Westerhaus-Renfrow was the first African-American woman to serve as an associate and, subsequently, assistant editor at the Indiana Law Journal. She is currently a clinical assistant professor at the Indiana University Kelley School of Business in Indianapolis as well as the faculty chair of the undergraduate program at Kelley-Indianapolis and the Kelley Honors coordinator. Her significant contributions to IU were recognized when she was named a Bicentennial Professor in July 2019 and received an Indiana University Bicentennial Medal in 2020. During law school, Westerhaus-Renfrow clerked for the Honorable Justice Brent E. Dickson of the Indiana Supreme Court. After graduation, she joined the Milwaukee law firm of Foley & Lardner. Westerhaus-Renfrow soon found her way into academia where she served as the assistant to the presidents of the Universities of Iowa and Wisconsin. Westerhaus-Renfrow also served as the director of affirmative action for Purdue University before becoming the vice president of diversity and inclusion for the National Collegiate Athletic Association. She left the NCAA to become the interim president of Martin University. She is a past board member of the board of governors for the Indiana State Bar Association. She is also a past board member of both the Indiana Bar Examiners for the State of Indiana and the Supreme Court of Wisconsin’s Board of Bar Examiners. Westerhaus-Renfrow has also been deeply connected to the Law School. She served as an adjunct professor for three years, teaching Sports Law. Westerhaus-Renfrow is also the first president of the Black Law Student Association (BLSA) Alumni Board to serve a three year term. Prior to that she served as vice president of the board. BLSA recognized her contributions by awarding her the Samuel S. Dargan Award.

The Hon. Rodolfo (Rudy) Lozano, JD’66 (posthumously). Judge Lozano, of the U.S. District Court Northern District of Indiana, served on the federal bench for 30 years, making landmark rulings in a Hammond courtroom that his peers said was known for its collegiality. A 1963 graduate of Indiana University, Rudy also served as a US Army Reserve and prior to his appointment to the federal bench, he operated his private practice in Merrillville, Indiana for 22 years. Confirmed to the Northern Indiana District Court bench by unanimous consent in 1988 after his appointment by President Ronald Reagan, Judge Lozano was the first Hispanic federal judge appointed in Indiana. Prior to his ascent to the bench, Judge Lozano had gained a reputation in the local bar as a worthy adversary and straight-shooter. The decision for which Judge Lozano is likely best known is Back v. Carter, 933 F. Supp. 738 (N.D. Ind. 1996). This ruling struck down gender and racial quotas the Indiana General Assembly had enacted for the Lake County Judicial Nominating Commission, which nominates judges for the Lake County trial court bench, as constitutionally defective. Judge Lozano granted an injunction blocking the law from taking effect, and his ruling was not appealed. Judge Lozano also presided over one of the largest federal jury damages awards ever returned against a state agency. That was the case of Roman Finnegan, et al. v. Laurel Myers, et al., 3:08-CV-503, in which a jury awarded more than $31 million to a family whose children were wrongly removed by the Department of Child Services. The state agreed to settle that suit after the jury trial for $25 million. Judge Lozano passed away in July 2018. We have recently honored his memory with a banner outside the Law School and feel that Judge Lozano is worthy of being inducted posthumously into the Academy.

The school will induct the five honorees at a banquet to be held on Friday, April 8, at the Tudor Room in the Indiana Memorial Union.

Two Indiana University Maurer School of Law faculty members are among the most-cited in the fields of legal ethics and the legal profession/professional responsibility, according to data analyzed by Brian Leiter’s Law School Reports.

Charlie Geyh and William Henderson appear tied at number seven on the list, which uses Sisk data compiled between 2016 and 2020 to track citation counts. The list recognizes faculty for whom roughly 75 percent or more of their citations (based on a sample) are in either the legal ethics or legal profession/professional responsibility fields.

The Maurer School of Law is one of only three law schools to have two faculty members ranked among the top 10.

Geyh, a Distinguished Professor and the John F. Kimberling Professor of Law, teaches and writes in the areas of judicial conduct, ethics, procedure, independence, accountability and administration. His latest book, Who Is to Judge: Judicial Elections, Judicial Appointments, and the Perennial Debate Over Judicial Selection in America, was released by Oxford University Press in 2019. Geyh was awarded an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship to research and write the book.

Henderson, the Stephen F. Burns Professor of Law, researches and writes primarily on the empirical analysis of the legal profession and has appeared in leading legal journals, including the Stanford Law Review, the Michigan Law Review, and the Texas Law Review. In 2015 and 2016, he was named the Most Influential Person in Legal Education by The National Jurist.

The Lieber Society on the Law of Armed Conflict has named Maurer School of Law Associate Professor Asaf Lubin the winner of the 2022 Richard R. Baxter Military Writing Prize.

The annual award is presented by the Lieber Society, an interest group of the American Society of International Law (ASIL).

Lubin’s winning work, “The Reasonable Intelligence Agency,” is forthcoming in the Yale Journal of International Law.

The Baxter Prize recognizes scholarship that “significantly enhances the understanding and implementation of the law of war (also known as international humanitarian law or “IHL”). Prof. Lubin is a former intelligence analyst with the Israel Defense Forces Intelligence Branch and has extensive practical training and expertise in national security law and foreign policy.

“The Reasonable Intelligence Agency” sheds a spotlight on the legal vacuum surrounding the wartime production, verification, and dissemination of intelligence under “our contemporary laws of war.” The article further demonstrates the existence of an accountability gap in international humanitarian law for “faulty intelligence used in targeting decisions.” As noted by the Baxter Award Selection Committee, Prof. Lubin’s paper is “an excellent and engaging work that tackles an important (and under-researched) area of IHL.”

Under the existing treatises of IHL, militaries are required “to do everything feasible to verify” the objects of attacks and minimize civilian casualties and collateral damages. But the treatises stop short of defining what constitutes an effective intelligence gathering system that would meet this obligation. As a result “wartime intelligence errors that cause avoidable civilian harms are allowed to pass with impunity,” and “civilian victims are left with no recourse to seek compensation, let alone justice.”

Through the use of historical case studies and contemporary best practices, Prof. Lubin defines a new duty of care—“The Reasonable Intelligence Agency” test—a breach of which through negligent intelligence production could trigger international liability and responsibility for States. In the wake of recent reporting on the Pentagon’s own record revealing patterns of intelligence in calamitous air campaigns in Iraq and Syria, the Baxter Selection Committee commented that Prof. Lubin’s “is bound to become even more relevant in the future.”

The Baxter Prize will be presented at ASIL’s annual meeting in April in Washington, D.C.

Indiana University Maurer School of Law Professor Jeannine Bell has been appointed to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights’ Indiana Advisory Committee, a national body charged with developing national civil rights policy and enhancing enforcement of federal civil rights laws.

The bipartisan, independent commission has jurisdiction over voting rights as well as discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, age, disability, national origin, or in the administration of justice.

Bell, the Richard S. Melvin Professor of Law, is a nationally recognized scholar in the areas of policing and hate crime. She has written extensively on criminal justice issues, and her research is broadly interdisciplinary, touching on both political science and law, and relying on her empirical expertise.

She will serve a four-year term on the Indiana Advisory Committee.

“I’m pleased to serve our state as a member of its advisory committee to the Commission on Civil Rights,” Bell said. “The state and territorial committees serve as the Commission’s eyes and ears on the ground, and I’m honored to be a part of such an important mission at a critical time in our nation’s history.”

Advisory Committees have recently examined a number of timely and topical issues, including voting rights, seclusion and restraint of students with disabilities, women’s prisons, civil rights impacts of civil asset forfeiture, immigration issues, policing practices, human trafficking, fair housing, civil rights issues related to payday lending, and criminal justice issues, among others.

Bell’s most recent book, Hate Thy Neighbor: Move-in Violence and the Persistence of Racial Segregation in American Housing, was published by NYU Press in 2013, and in 2002 she authored Policing Hatred: Law Enforcement, Civil Rights, and Hate Crime, an ethnography of a big city police hate crime unit.

The Commission maintains 56 State and U.S. Territory Advisory Committees (STACs), one for each state and the District of Columbia. Each is composed of citizen volunteers familiar with local and state civil rights issues. The members assist the Commission with its fact-finding, investigative, and information dissemination functions.

Committees hold briefings with experts, solicit public testimony, and produce reports and advisory documents on a number of issues.

Bell is active in a number of other national organizations, including the Law and Society Association, of which she has served as trustee and treasurer. She served as co-editor of the Law & Society Review from 2016-2019. Bell also was a member of the American Political Association’s Presidential Taskforce on Political Violence and Terrorism from 2004-2008. In 2019, she was elected to membership in the American Law Institute.

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.

Yesterday (January 13), the United States Supreme Court blocked a mandate for employees of large, private businesses to either be vaccinated against COVID-19 or test regularly. But the court also left in place a mandate for most U.S. healthcare workers to receive the vaccination. According to Indiana University Maurer School of Law Professor Ken Dau-Schmidt, the outcome wasn’t necessarily surprising.

“The Supreme Court has decided that OSHA’s emergency temporary COVID standard requiring vaccination or testing for most employees of firms with more than 100 employees likely exceeded the agency’s statutory authority, thus effectively ending possible enforcement of this standard. The result is less surprising than the reasoning used by the Court to reach this result,” Dau-Schmidt said.

“Although the Court based its decision on the limits of OSHA’s statutory authority, it spent almost no time discussing the relevant statutory language prescribing those limits. The Occupational Safety and Health Act allows OSHA to promulgate emergency temporary standards when such standards are ‘necessary’ to protect workers from ‘grave danger,'” he said.

“Although it is a good question whether OSHA’s standard, predicated more on the size of the employer rather than employee exposure, met these statutory requirements, the majority ignored these questions in favor a discussion of congressional and administrative power and a court manufactured notion that OSHA applies only to risks peculiar to the workplace and does not include COVID risks because they also exist in the greater society.”

Dau-Schmidt, the Willard and Margaret Carr Professor of Labor and Employment Law, is a nationally recognized teacher and scholar in labor and employment law and the economic analysis of legal problems.

“The Court’s opinion raises the question: can OSHA effectively regulate COVID risks in the workplace?  During the Trump administration, OSHA determined that employers met their obligations to provide a workplace ‘free’ of recognized hazards if they met CDC guidelines for masking, distancing, and quarantine. If COVID is not a workplace risk, did this requirement exceed OSHA’s authority under the law? CDC guidelines now include a recommendation that all adults be vaccinated. Doesn’t requiring employees to work with unvaccinated coworkers expose employees to a recognized hazard? Although the Court’s decision could have been supported with well-reasoned arguments based on the statute, in this case the Court’s decision raises as many questions as it resolves.”

Dau-Schmidt can be reached at: kdauschm@indiana.edu or (812) 855-0697.

Two Indiana University Maurer School of Law faculty members have joined more than 200 legal and economic scholars from across the country in support of the Billionaires Income Tax, a proposal from U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon).

Professor David Gamage co-drafted and Professor Leandra Lederman co-signed the letter to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Sen. Wyden late last week.  Though the proposal did not make it into the health care, child care and climate bill put forth by Senate Democrats over the weekend, Wyden said he will continue examining the issue.

“Our broken income tax rules let billionaires treat the income tax system as a mere suggestion, not like the obligation most Americans face,” the letter said. “Scholars estimate that over three-quarters of the investment income of ultra-wealthy taxpayers fully and permanently escapes the existing income tax.”

The authors argue that allowing billionaires to “skip out” on the income tax is “unjust to the ordinary taxpayers who must foot the bill.”

According to Sen. Wyden’s proposal, the Billionaires Income Tax would apply to approximately 700 American taxpayers and raise hundreds of billions of dollars, ensuring the wealthiest people in the United States “pay their fair share toward historic investments in child care, paid leave, and addressing the climate crisis.”

Only taxpayers making more than $100 million in income or more than $1 billion in assets for three consecutive years would be affected.

“The Billionaires Income Tax is a needed and desirable reform to the broken state of the existing income tax,” the authors wrote, noting that no tax reform is perfect. “The Billionaires Income Tax is constitutional and would not impose excess administrative of compliance burdens or harm capital markets. …Our assessment is that the Billionaires Income Tax would substantially improve our nation’s tax system by ending the major opportunities for billionaires to currently escape the income tax.”

The letter cites two articles authored by Gamage and Georgetown University Law Center’s John R. Brooks. “Tax Now or Tax Never: Political Optionality and the Case for Current-Assessment Tax Reform” is forthcoming in the North Carolina Law Review, and “The Indirect Tax Canon, Apportionment, and Drafting a Constitutional Wealth Tax or Accrual-Income Tax Reform” is available as an Indiana Legal Studies Research Paper.

Gamage is a professor of law at the Maurer School of Law. Lederman is the William W. Oliver Professor of Tax Law and director of the Law School’s Tax Program.