The 2022 Student Leadership in Fostering Community and Inclusiveness Award was presented earlier today to 3L Abby Akrong.

Established in 2018, the award, which comes with a $2,000 scholarship, celebrates a student who “goes above and beyond to foster our diverse, inclusive, supportive, and welcoming community.” Recipients are honored for their work in the previous year.

Akrong, a Louisville native and 2020 graduate of Centre College, was cited as a role model for collegiality, civility, and professionalism.

Nominators described her as “a role model for (your) peers” who is “clearly very involved in a number of activities that hone the skills required to be an excellent lawyer.”

Akrong has been involved with the Law School’s Black Law Students Association, moot court teams, the Indiana Law Journal, and the faculty appointments process. She is also the director of administration for the Inmate Legal Assistance Project.

“Abby is a remarkable example of the kind of well-rounded students we have here at the Maurer School of Law,” said Interim Dean Christiana Ochoa. “Not only does she excel in the classroom, but she gives so much of herself to the Indiana Law community and beyond. We’re so pleased to be able to recognize Abby with the Student Leadership Award.”

The award is presented by the Student Bar Association president during orientation for new law students to recognize the recipient’s leadership capabilities and to highlight them as someone our incoming students can look to as a role model.

Akrong spent the summer serving as a legal intern with the Kentucky Department of Public Advocacy and hopes to pursue a career in public interest law when she graduates in May 2023.

Indiana University Maurer School of Law Professor Jody Madeira has been elected to the American Law Institute (ALI), the nation’s leading independent organization producing scholarly work to clarify, modernize, and otherwise improve the law.

Madeira, the Louis F. Neizer Faculty Fellow and co-director of the Center for Law, Society & Culture,  becomes the 19th member of the Indiana Law faculty to join the institute.

“This impressive group of newly elected members will add to the breadth of expertise in The American Law Institute’s membership,” said ALI President David F. Levi. “Our return to an in-person Annual Meeting this year affirmed the strength of the ALI’s spirit of collaboration and connection. I am excited to welcome this group’s participation in our ongoing projects and look forward to celebrating the ALI’s 100th anniversary with them at next year’s Annual Meeting.”

Madeira joined the Indiana Law faculty in 2007. She is an internationally recognized expert in fertility fraud, bioethics, and law and medicine, with a focus on reproductive endocrinology. Her research has been featured in national and international media, including the Netflix documentary Our Father, TEDxZurich, and investigative news programs like “20/20.” Her research interests involve empirical research; the role of emotion in law; the sociology of law; law, medicine, and bioethics; and the Second Amendment.

“Recent national events have proven just how important and timely Jody’s scholarship and outreach efforts are,” said Indiana Law Interim Dean Christiana Ochoa. “Her expertise in such a wide variety of legal fields will benefit the ALI and its members for years to come.”

Madeira is the author, coauthor, or editor of dozens of scholarly articles and three published books and two forthcoming titles, including a casebook, The Second Amendment: Gun Rights and Regulation (co-edited with Jacob D. Charles, Joseph Blocher, and Darrell Miller) (Foundation Press, forthcoming) and the Indiana Personal Injury Law Treatise (forthcoming 2023).

Her second book, Taking Baby Steps: How Patients and Fertility Clinics Collaborate in Conception, takes readers inside the infertility experience, from dealing with infertility-related emotions to forming treatment relationships with medical professionals, confronting difficult decisions, and negotiating informed consent. Based on a wealth of qualitative and quantitative data, Madeira investigates how women, men, and their care providers can utilize trust to collaboratively negotiate infertility’s personal, physical, spiritual, ethical, medical, and legal minefields.

Madeira’s first book, Killing McVeigh: The Death Penalty and the Myth of Closure, applies collective memory to criminal prosecution and sentencing, exploring the ways in which victims’ families and survivors came to comprehend and cope with the Oklahoma City bombing through membership in community groups as well as through attending and participating in Timothy McVeigh’s trial and execution.

Other ALI members from the Maurer School of Law include: Fred Aman, John Applegate, Jeannine Bell, Hannah Buxbaum, Fred H. Cate, Yvonne Cripps, Ken Dau-Schmidt, Rob Fischman, Charles Geyh, Sarah Jane Hughes, Mark Janis, Jay Krishnan, Leandra Lederman, Donna Nagy, Christiana Ochoa, Aviva Orenstein, William Popkin, and Lauren Robel.

An Indiana University Maurer School of Law alumnus has been appointed by President Joe Biden to serve on a prestigious national committee that oversees the selection of some of the nation’s best and brightest high school students as Presidential Scholars. The White House announced the appointment of Terrance Stroud ’03 on July 15.

The Commission on Presidential Scholars comprises a group of eminent private citizens appointed by the President to select and honor the Presidential Scholars. Commissioners are selected from across the country, representing the fields of education, medicine, law, social services, business, and other professions.

The Commissioners make the final annual selection of the 161 Presidential Scholars. The Scholars demonstrate exceptional accomplishments in academics, the arts, career and technical education and an outstanding commitment to public service.

“Terrance will be a wonderful addition to this prestigious commission,” said Indiana Law Interim Dean Christiana Ochoa. “His service to Indiana University and our Law School has been remarkable over the years, and I know he’ll do a fantastic job helping to identify and recognize the country’s most promising high school students.”

The United States Presidential Scholars Program was established in 1964, by Executive Order of the President, to recognize and honor some of the country’s most distinguished graduating high school seniors. In 1979, the program was extended to recognize students who demonstrate exceptional talent in the visual, creative and performing arts. In 2015, the program was again extended to recognize students who demonstrate ability and accomplishment in career and technical education fields. Each year, up to 161 students are named U.S. Presidential Scholars, one of the Nation’s highest honors for high school students. The Scholars represent excellence in education and the promise of greatness in young people. In honoring the U.S. Presidential Scholars, the President of the United States symbolically honors all graduating high school seniors of high potential.

Stroud is a Deputy Commissioner at the New York City Department of Social Services leading the Office of Training & Workforce Development, which manages the development and implementation of the agency’s learning strategy. Stroud serves on the National Staff Development Training Association’s Executive Advisory Council and the Public Sector Network’s Leadership Advisory Board. He is also one of the Tri-chairs of the American Public Human Services Association’s Equity Diversity and Inclusion Peer Community.

Stroud is a fourth-generation educator whose focus is on the intersection of academic institutions and the global workforce. He is a New York-based adjunct faculty member at Indiana University Bloomington. He is the inaugural Global Affairs Fellow at the Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies where he leads the Global Leaders and Professionals Program. In addition, Stroud is an Adjunct Professor of Law overseeing the Maurer School of Law’s New York Externship Program and is the first Black recipient of the Adjunct Faculty Teaching Award. He has helped the Law School develop a number of successful diversity pipeline programs over the past several years.

A group of 24 young leaders from 18 Sub-Saharan African countries is visiting the Indiana University Maurer School of Law today (July 8) as part of the Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders.

The Fellows are in Bloomington as part of the six-week Leadership in Civic Engagement Institute at IU, and will connect with members of the Law School’s faculty and staff for a discussion on various legal topics, including:

• Assistant Dean for International Programs Lesley Davis will present on the Americans with Disabilities Act and facilitate a conversation with the Fellows to allow them to share their experiences with disability, accessibility and inclusion in their respective countries;
• Professor Emeritus Kevin Brown will present on a number of issues facing Black Americans, including how the American legal system typically resolves racial disputes, changing racial and ethnic ancestry of Blacks in the United States, Affirmative Action, and racial and ethnic socioeconomic conditions across the country; and
• Professor Luis Fuentes-Rohwer will conclude the Fellows’ session at the Law School, presenting “The U.S. Constitution in Governing Through the Rule of Law and American Legal Thought.”

This year will mark the third time the Mandela Washington Fellows have spent a day at Maurer during their visit to IU. “We’re honored to host this distinguished group of emerging civic leaders at the Law School again this year. The Maurer community is enriched by learning from their experiences on the African continent and we are delighted to have the opportunity to share the expertise of our faulty on issues of interest to the group,” said Interim Dean Christiana Ochoa. “We’re honored to play a role in their time here in Bloomington.”

The Mandela Washington Fellowship, the flagship program of the Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI), empowers young African leaders through academic coursework, leadership training, mentoring, networking, professional opportunities, and local community engagement. YALI was created in 2010 and supports young Africans as they spur economic growth and prosperity, strengthen democratic governance, and enhance peace and security across Africa.

Since 2014, the U.S. Department of State has supported nearly 5,100 Mandela Washington Fellows from across Sub-Saharan Africa to develop their leadership skills and foster connections and collaboration with U.S. professionals. The cohort of Fellows hosted by Indiana University is part of a group of 700 Mandela Washington Fellows hosted at 27 educational institutions across the United States.

In addition to their session at the Law School, the Fellows will have unique opportunities for learning and developing skills and technical capacity in areas such as community development, volunteerism, grassroots activism, leadership, social entrepreneurship, philanthropy, and fundraising for non-profits.

After their Leadership Institutes, Fellows will travel to Washington, D.C. to participate in the Mandela Washington Fellowship Summit, where they will take part in networking and panel discussions with each other and with U.S. leaders from the public, private, and non-profit sectors. Funded by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and implemented by IREX, Leadership Institutes offer programs that will challenge, motivate, and empower young leaders from Africa to tackle the challenges of the 21st century.

A new collaboration between the Indiana University Maurer School of Law and John Paul Stevens Foundation will expand financial support to students working in unpaid summer public interest positions.

Five Indiana Law students, working in a variety of capacities around the country this summer, have been selected as inaugural Stevens Fellows. They are:

• Olivia Allen, 2L, Monroe County (Indiana) Public Defender’s Office
• Annie Horner, 3L, Marion County (Indiana) Public Defender Agency
• Megan Merritt, 2L, Legal Council for Health Justice, Chicago
• Nainika Ravi, 2L, Regional Public Defender for Capital Cases, Texas
• Eric Warman, 3L, Children’s Law Center, Covington, Kentucky

Named after the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice, the John Paul Stevens Foundation is dedicated to promoting public interest and social justice values in the next generation of American lawyers. Through its unique fellowship program, the Foundation supports law students who spend the summer working in unpaid public interest law internships. The Fellowship Program reflects Justice Stevens’ deep belief that a dynamic and effective justice system depends on a cadre of trained and committed lawyers committed to public interest work.

The Maurer School of Law is one of eight new schools participating in the program, which now includes 38 law schools across the nation.

“The Justice John Paul Stevens Public Interest Fellowship Program is another way the Law School will help provide exceptional support to our students over the summer,” said Dean Austen Parrish. “And that, in turn, will allow our students to serve their local communities while honing their professional skills.”

Law students selected for a Stevens Fellowship will receive a $6,000 stipend—matched by the Law School—for the summer. The selection process is administered by the Law School, with applications accepted in the spring semester.

“Public interest work is about providing legal services to those that need them, but it is also about the larger effect this work has on the community,” Merritt said. A former nursing home assistant and clinic volunteer, Merritt said she will use her summer position to gain firsthand exposure to the field of health law. “This position and Fellowship will allow me to give back to the community by working with individual clients and give me the opportunity to learn from lawyers who have worked on various successful policy reform efforts.”

The Law School traditionally supports approximately 70 students working in unpaid public interest jobs every summer. In addition to Stevens Fellowships, the Law School offers summer funding through its Stewart Fellows Program, Family Office Program, the Julian Bond Scholar Program with the Southern Poverty Law Center, its four research centers, and more.

“The Law School provides one of the most comprehensive offerings of public service programs of any law school in the country,” Parrish said, noting that PreLaw magazine has recognized Indiana Law as “one of the best schools for doing good.”

Nearly three-quarters of all Stevens Fellows go on to work in public interest or social justice positions after they earn a law degree, according to the Stevens Foundation.

“We are delighted to be working with the leadership at these eight law schools to make this expansion possible,” says Susan Stevens Mullen, Justice Stevens’s daughter and a member of the Foundation’s board of directors.  “These schools were selected based on their commitment to producing public interest lawyers and the need for additional financial support for their students. We look forward to these collaborations, which will prepare the next generation of attorneys whose public interest work will shape law and public policy for years to come.”

President Joe Biden announced three judicial nominees on May 25, including the Hon. Doris L. Pryor—a 2003 graduate of the Maurer School of Law—to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.

Judge Pryor has served as a U.S. Magistrate Judge for the Southern District of Indiana since 2018. Before that role, Judge Pryor served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Indiana, and as National Security Chief for the office from 2014 to 2018. From 2005 to 2006, Judge Pryor served as a Deputy Public Defender for the State of Arkansas Public Defender’s Commission. Judge Pryor served as a law clerk for Judge J. Leon Holmes on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas from 2004 to 2005 and for Chief Judge Lavenski Smith on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit from 2003 to 2004.

“These choices also continue to fulfill the President’s promise to ensure that the nation’s courts reflect the diversity that is one of our greatest assets as a country — both in terms of personal and professional backgrounds,” the White House said in a statement.

If confirmed by the U.S. Senate, Judge Pryor would make history, becoming the first judge of color to ever serve on the Seventh Circuit from Indiana.

Judge Pryor has been actively involved with the Law School since she graduated. In 2015 she began teaching a pre-trial litigation course during the school’s Wintersession, held during the week before the spring semester begins. And in August 2021, she delivered the keynote address at orientation and administered the oath of professionalism to the incoming 1L class.

A new Netflix documentary utilizes the expertise of an Indiana University Maurer School of Law professor to help explain the legal ramifications of an extraordinary fertility fraud case.

Jody Madeira, an internationally recognized expert in fertility fraud, bioethics, and law and medicine, with a focus on reproductive endocrinology, is featured as a legal expert in Our Father. The documentary examines the case of Indianapolis doctor Donald Cline, a fertility specialist who, after a fraud investigation, was found to have used his own sperm to artificially inseminate patients in the early-to-mid 1980s.

When Jacoba Ballard took a commercially available DNA test in 2014, she was surprised to discover she had seven half-siblings. As time went on, and more and more people uploaded results of their genetic testing to online databases, the number of Ballard’s half-siblings continued to grow. Cline is believed to have biologically fathered at least 94 individuals between 1979 and 1986. Court records indicate that Cline told women he was inseminating them with sperm from medical or dental residents or medical students, never acknowledging that he was using his own sperm in the process. Ballard started connecting with her half-siblings as more and more continued to appear in genealogy results, eventually bringing a complaint to the Indiana Attorney General’s Office.

Our Father covers the ethical, moral, and legal complexities of the case. At the time the inseminations occurred, there were no laws prohibiting what Cline did. While many women argued they were raped, prosecutors were faced with a major dilemma—how do you hold someone accountable for an action, reprehensible as it may be, that wasn’t illegal when it occurred?

“When you talk about rape, there is a provision in Indiana law that says rape can include conduct which a victim doesn’t know is sexual, but the perpetrator knows is sexual,” Madeira tells the film’s producers. “And that I think is the closest charge.”

Madeira interviewed Tim Delaney, the deputy prosecutor with the grand jury division of the Marion County Prosecutor’s Office, who handled the Cline case.

Cline was eventually charged in 2016 with two counts of felony obstruction of justice, for lying during the investigation. Cline admitted to lying about his involvement in the conceptions when he pleaded guilty to both counts in 2017. He received two suspended sentences and paid a $500 fine.

That punishment, Cline’s offspring argue, was not nearly severe enough for what he did. But Madeira notes that based on the laws Delaney had to enforce, he wasn’t able to go after Cline for more severe charges. If anything, she said, the case illustrates the limits of the judicial system.

“I think we have to see Tim Delaney in which the context this was brought. He said that Indiana juries were not willing to buy rape by deception theories. The jury is going to say ‘This woman consented to insemination,’ ‘This woman wanted a child,’ and the question is always out there: Does this woman’s desire for a child legitimate Donald Cline’s deception? And unfortunately, that is a question that Tim Delaney had to weigh would enter into the minds of jurors.”

Our Father is streaming now on Netflix.

As the Limestone Comedy Festival takes over downtown Bloomington for the ninth consecutive year, Indiana Law rising 3L Conor Delehanty will be a familiar face, hosting or performing in three different shows throughout the weekend.

The Indianapolis native studied philosophy, criminal justice, and religious studies at Indiana University as an undergraduate from 2008 to 2012. On December 1, 2010, Delehanty tried something he’d always wanted to do—standup comedy. Home to the nationally renowned Comedy Attic, Bloomington has become a small mecca of comedy in recent years, attracting both household names (John Mulaney, Amy Schumer, Marc Maron, and Hannibal Buress, to name but a few) and up-and-coming superstars from around the country. It provided the perfect environment for Delehanty to get started in the field.

“Had I started doing comedy earlier in my undergraduate career, I almost surely would’ve dropped out,” he said. But he finished his undergraduate education—with three majors—and moved to Chicago, where he took a job as a real estate appraiser. The flexible work schedule allowed Delehanty to continue performing at Chicago venues. That led to a move to New York City, where he honed his standup skills while working various jobs to pay the rent.

“But I had always been thinking about law school,” he said. “It was my plan before I even started doing standup. If I hadn’t started doing comedy, I would’ve started studying for the LSAT even sooner.” His older brother, Joe, graduated from the Maurer School of Law in 2013, and following his path seemed a natural road to take.

So after nearly a decade away, Delehanty returned to Bloomington—this time as a 1L. Performing for audiences around the country helped prepare him for life as a law student.

“There are similarities,” he said of the pressures of law school and making a group of strangers laugh, “but it’s also different. When you’re doing comedy, you’re in control. You’re the one presenting. I’m still getting used to being in the audience, so to speak, but I realized after the first few cold calls, just knowing how to react on the spot helps me deal with it more than most students.”

Delehanty originally had a plan to become a public defender when he started at Indiana Law, but a stint at a public defender’s office last summer pointed him in a new direction.

“My whole 2L year I’ve worked with the Conservation Law Center, and really enjoyed that, so working in a public interest field like environmental law is something I’m thinking about now,” he said. He has a summer placement with the Indiana Attorney General’s Consumer Protection Division, where he’ll help Hoosiers protect themselves against deceptive and predatory business practices. Delehanty is also active with the Law School’s Cybersecurity and Privacy Law Association, serves as a fellow with the Center for Constitutional Democracy, and is an associate with the Journal of Law and Social Equality.

Through all the demands of law school, Delehanty has remained active in the standup scene, performing his dry, cerebral comedy whenever he can. The annual Limestone Comedy Festival serves as a showcase not only for Bloomington as a comedy town, but for the city’s many successful comics.

Delehanty will perform as part of the Blooming10, where 10 local comedians perform at the historic Buskirk-Chumley Theater, and host two other shows at the festival.

“It’s amazing to me how Limestone happens,” he said. “I still remember the first night of the first festival. But the best part about it is that I get to introduce Bloomington to comedians who haven’t been here before. In a lot of bigger cities, some people’s perceptions of the Midwest aren’t accurate, so I love getting to show visitors the true character of this town.”

Mixing observational material with personal storytelling, Delehanty hopes to continue performing as long as he can—even after he earns a law degree.

“I realize that every once in awhile I may have to make that decision,” he said of focusing on a legal career instead of standup, “but as long as I’m still coming up with ideas, as long as the well isn’t dry, I think I’ll still be performing.”

While he waits to go onstage this weekend, Delehanty is eagerly awaiting his spring semester grades.

“Tell my professors I could use some good ones,” he said.

It wasn’t clear if he was joking.

You can catch Delehanty at the Blooming10 Showcase at 4 p.m. Saturday at the Buskirk-Chumley, or hosting shows for Emil Wakim (Friday, 10 p.m.) and Ashley Gavin (Saturday, 10 p.m.) at the Blockhouse Bar.

After two rounds of peer review, Indiana Law Professor Rob Fischman’s “Collaborative Governance Under the Endangered Species Act: An Empirical Analysis of Protective Regulations” has been judged one of the five best environmental law articles published in 2021. The Land Use and Environment Law Review will reprint the article, originally published in the Yale Journal on Regulation.

Fischman co-authored the article with conservation biologist Vicky Meretsky, from Indiana University’s O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs and Environmental Protection Agency Senior Assistant Regional Counsel Matthew Castelli, JD’15

The reviewers selected Fischman’s work from more than 100 articles. This marks the second selection of one of Fischman’s works to be included in the annual publication, and the ninth time one of his articles has made it to the final review panel (including three of the past four years).

“The recognition for Professor Fischman’s work is well deserved,” said Dean Austen Parrish. “His record of scholarship on environmental law issues is impressive, and his collaborations with other scholars—including at the nation’s top-ranked O’Neill School—is a testament to the interdisciplinary work that makes a difference.”

“Collaborative Governance” examines the nearly 200 Endangered Species Act (ESA) protective regulations that tailor federal restrictions to the ecological and social circumstances of particular extinction threats. The researchers’ empirical study explored how those rules manifest collaborative governance, as well as the extent to which they promote imperiled species recovery. Castelli, Fischman, and Meretsky focused on provisions in which parties agree to curb activities in exchange for limited statutory liability. They found that three-quarters of protective regulations substitute practice-based limitations for difficult-to-detect, proximate-effect prohibitions.

In this way, collaborative governance transforms the ESA from a statute prohibiting certain outcomes (such as harm or jeopardy to a species) to a regulatory program implementing collaboratively crafted best practices, along the lines of pollution-control statutes. Paradoxically, this shift may improve the prospect for species recovery, even with regulations that are less stringent than the standard statutory prohibitions. These and related results support the authors’ recommended new mechanisms for crafting better regulations to improve conservation outcomes. The article also contributes evidence to test the collaborative governance concepts advanced in legal and policy scholarship.

An Indiana University Maurer School of Law graduate is one of 84 recipients of a 2022 Equal Justice Works Fellowship from the nation’s largest facilitator of opportunities in public interest law.

Kat Grant, who graduated May 7, will spend two years working to improve the legal landscape for LGBTQIA+ people in the United States through a focused effort on advocacy based on the free exercise and establishment clauses of the First Amendment.

“As a queer person who grew up in a conservative religious community, I know first-hand how important the separation of church and state is to ensure the safety and dignity of LGBTQIA+ individuals and communities,” Grant said.

Members of the 2022 class of Equal Justice Works Fellows were selected from 385 applications. Each applicant designs a unique project in partnership with a legal service organization. The projects are funded by law firms, corporations, private foundations, and individual supporters. This year’s class includes graduates from 45 law schools across the country. Fellows will work at 76 different legal service organizations across 20 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico.

“We’re proud to see the Law School’s long legacy of outstanding public interest lawyers continue with Kat’s selection as an Equal Justice Works Fellow,” said Dean Austen Parrish. “Their dedication to improving the lives of those from traditionally underserved communities will have a lasting impact.”

Grant said their passion for advocacy started with their experiences as an openly queer student, reaffirming their commitment to “making the world a safer, more equitable place for all members of LGBTQIA+ communities.”

Grant will work on litigation through representation and amicus briefs as LGBTQIA+ rights cases make their way through the court system. They will also work on public educational materials, including know your rights resources and webinars, and participate in legislative advocacy efforts.

“It is an honor for Equal Justice Works to play a role in helping new public interest lawyers pursue their passion for public service and equal justice,” said Jessica Ryckman, Equal Justice Works Director of Fellowships. “We are proud to support Kat in their work to improve the legal landscape for LGBTQIA+ people in our country and we look forward to highlighting their contributions over the next two years.”

A native of Washington, Indiana, Grant earned their undergraduate degree in political science from Indiana University Bloomington. During their time at the Maurer School of Law, Grant served as co-director of the Law School’s LGBTQ+ Project, as student chair of the National Lawyer’s Guild Disability Justice Committee, as a member of the Disability Justice Committee for the Maurer Chapter of the National Lawyer’s Guild, and was involved in OUTLaw, a student alliance working to promote equal rights and protect against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender.

Grant was honored on May 6 with the Leonard D. Fromm Public Interest Student Award, presented by the Law School’s Public Interest Law Foundation to a student who excelled at community service. Grant completed more than 250 hours of pro bono service during their time at Indiana Law.