News at Hamline University School of Law

Professor Jesson Discusses What's Hot and What's Not in Health Care in Minnesota Lawyer

mmiller14 — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 16:04:58 -0500

Friday, July 31, 2009
What's hot & what's not: Health law

by Michelle Lore

Every time you turn on the news these days, you hear talk about health care reform. Questions around how to ensure coverage for everyone, who’s going to pay for coverage and how it will be administered and delivered are being bandied about by both political parties, often resulting in divisive...

Click Here to read the entire article.

Katrina Angela Pagonis to become assistant professor of law at Hamline's Health Law Institute

mlandis02 — Thu, 28 May 2009 14:19:14 -0500

Katrina Angela Pagonis will become an assistant professor of law at Hamline's Health Law Institute on July 1. She comes to Hamline from Nevada, where she most recently served as a law clerk to The Honorable Procter Hug., Jr., United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and earlier to The Honorable Edward C. Reed, Jr., United States District Court for the District of Nevada.

Pagonis was a teaching fellow at the O'Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law in 2007-08 at Georgetown University Law Center, where she earned her JD in 2005. She also earned an LL.M. degree from Yale Law School, an MPH degree from John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and a BA from the University of California, Berkeley, where she majored in both political science, and molecular and cell biology.

"Professor Pagonis brings exceptional academic, teaching and judicial experience to Hamline's Health Law Institute. She will be an important asset in our growing program,
which was ranked among the top 20 health law programs in the country by US News & World Report this year," said Hamline University School of Law Dean Donald M. Lewis.

Cruz Reynoso Inspires Jurist Fiesta Guests

cbielke01 — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 14:31:46 -0500

Distinguished Jurist and University of California Davis School of Law Professor Emeritus Cruz Reynoso (shown here with Dean Lewis, left, and Professor Tom Romero, right) provided an inspiring presentation on the Struggle for Social Justice (audio here) as the Juris Fiesta keynote speaker on March 14, 2009.

Professor Cruz Reynoso was the first Latino person to serve on the California Supreme Court. He served as an Associate Justice from 1982 to 1987 and is credited with helping to extend additional protections for the environment, individual liberties and civil rights. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States' highest civilian honor, from President Clinton in 2000, the same year he received the Hispanic Heritage Foundation Award in Education. He served as the Vice Chair on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights from 1994-2004 and was a professor at the UCLA School of Law from 1991-2001. Professor Reynoso also is the inaugural holder of the UC Davis School of Law's Boochever and Bird Chair for the Study and Teaching of Freedom and Equality, which recognizes outstanding scholarship and teaching, along with a commitment to preserving and expanding the understanding of "the virtues necessary of a great republic."

Jurist Fiesta is a major annual event at Hamline, drawing more than 200 members of Minnesota's bench and bar and featuring prominent Latino legal educators, including Professor Elizabeth Iglesias from the University of Miami School of Law and Jose Roberto (Beto) Juarez, Jr., dean of the Sturm College of Law at the University of Denver. Funds raised at the event have led to the establishment of a scholarship for Latino law students at Hamline, which this year was presented to 3L student Dulce Mendoza (right).

CLE Celebrates SMRLS, Advocates for Low-Income Persons

cbielke01 — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 14:57:06 -0500

"The economic downturn is an opportunity to build connections and bonds, and to break open the anti-poor grip that has strangled this nation for three decades," said long-time advocate for the poor and professor at Northeastern University School of Law Lucy A. Williams (above right with Associate Dean Marie Failinger) during her keynote address at the 2009 Hamline Law Alumni Spring CLE Symposium, which was co-presented with Southern Minnesota Regional Legal Services (SMRLS) on the occasion of its centennial anniversary and the Hamline Journal of Public Law and Policy.

Martha Eaves, SMRLS Senior Staff Attorney, commented on the special relationship that SMRLS has shared with Hamline University School of Law over the years. "Hamline wanted to be different," she said, noting the "shared desire to serve the disadvantaged, forgotten, unrepresented, and those populations frequently most in need."

The CLE, "Justice and the Administrative Process," featured three administrative law judges and attorneys from SMRLS and other practice settings who discussed "best practices" for administrative tribunal representation. Other speakers included Dr. Augustine Romero, Director of Student Equity at Tucson University School of Law; former SMRLS board member, the Honorable Tanya Bransford, District Court Judge, and Loretta Frederick, a leading international speaker on domestic violence issues and former SMRLS attorney.

Nearly 270 legal aid, private, corporate and government lawyers and community representatives attended and participated in the two-day program on March 12-13, 2009. Also in attendance were SMRLS CEO Jessie Nicholson; SMRLS Campaign for Legal Aid Chair Steve Kirsch ‘76, Dean Donald Lewis, Professors Angela McCaffrey, Jonathan Kahn and Tom Romero (all of whom participated in panels), Hamline alumni Patrick Kontz and Lindsay Davis, and Journal of Public Law and Policy student editors Ami Janda and Elizabeth Leahy, among many others.

The conference highlighted the important ways that staff and pro bono attorneys can help low-income persons receive the emergency assistance they need to survive the threatened loss of a job or home during the recession, or to remove welfare to work or other barriers to achieving economic self-sufficiency. The symposium also explored new "justice system" ideas to prevent domestic violence and preserve family safety, as well as laws and new programs designed to assure educational equity for low-income children.

During her keynote address, Professor Williams provided a brief overview of the development of welfare and other administrative programs that assist low-income families, remarking that the "early years saw highly discretionary programs based on individual worthiness" and that "from the beginning, administrative advocacy has been necessary to battle the misconception that poverty is based on individual fault." She challenged the participants to "find the openings" in the current system where administrative advocacy could be used to effect change.

During one of the Symposium sessions, Jon Geffen, Assistant Attorney General for the State of Minnesota in the Charities and Human Services Division and Hamline law Adjunct Professor, and SMRLS Attorney and alumna Lindsay Davis spoke of the barriers to employment faced by many individuals, frequently low-income and of color, who have had contact with the justice system at some point in their life. They noted that "in Minnesota, it is legal for employers to discriminate based on someone's criminal background." This means that even if someone has been arrested in error or never charged, he could still be denied employment based on the record of the arrest.

Geffen and Davis further explained the complicated and often misunderstood process of expungement. Because records are held by various agencies in different branches, a person may have her record expunged by one agency and believe it to be sealed, but the record could still appear within another agency's database during a background check.

SMRLS professional staff shown below from left: Bruce Beneke, Laura Melnick, Ken Gilchrist, Martha Eaves, (Lucy A. Williams), Leah Montgomery, Lindsay Davis, Charles Thomas.

Law School to Host Chicago Alumni Reception and DRI Training

sstephan — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 13:56:00 -0600

On Thursday, March 19, 2009, Hamline University School of Law and Dean Donald M. Lewis will host an alumni reception at Chicago's DoubleTree Hotel Magnificent Mile from 6:00 - 7:30 p.m. The DoubleTree is located at 300 East Ohio Street, downtown Chicago. Key members of Hamline's Dispute Resolution Institute, currently ranked fourth in the nation by U.S. News & World Report among law school dispute resolution programs, will be in Chicago for the reception on Thursday night and to present a training seminar the following day.

The "Negotiation at its Best" training seminar and CLE will take place on Friday, March 20, 2009, from 9:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at the DoubleTree Hotel Magnificent Mile in Chicago. This unique CLE opportunity will introduce alumni to the newest developments in the multi-disciplinary science of negotiation. Attendees will learn by doing through this highly interactive, skills-based program that will provide practical tools to resolve tough negotiation challenges, regardless of setting. Click here for more information on "Negotiation at its Best."

6 CLE credits have been requested, and training is FREE to Law Alumni. Enrollment is limited to enhance the interactive nature of this training, but there are still a few seats left.

Chicago "Negotiation at its Best" Faculty:

James Coben, Professor of Law, Director of the Dispute Resolution Institute, Hamline University School of Law
Ken Fox, Director of Conflict Studies, Hamline University; Senior Fellow, Dispute Resolution Institute, Hamline University School of Law

Future "Negotiation at its Best" training opportunities will take place on April 3, 2009, in Washington, DC, and in the fall of 2009 in San Diego, California, San Francisco, California and the Twin Cities.

To RSVP for the alumni reception on March 19 in Chicago and/or register for the CLE on March 20, please contact Anne Markus amarkus01@hamline.edu or 651-523-2943; for more information about the "Negotiation at its Best" CLE programs, please contact Debra Berghoff dberghoff@hamline.edu or 651-523-2946 or visit http://law.hamline.edu/alumni/negotiation_its_best.html.