School Notes: Yale Law School
January/February 2013

Supreme Court justice on campus

Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was at Yale Law School on opening day of Alumni Weekend to deliver the inaugural Gruber Distinguished Lecture in Women’s Rights. A trailblazer in the fight for gender equality long before she joined the high court in 1993, Justice Ginsburg spent the afternoon of October 19 reflecting on her career as an advocate for women’s rights, speaking first at a panel discussion and later in a conversation with Yale Law School lecturer Linda Greenhouse ’78MSL. In the 90-minute conversation at Battell Chapel, Justice Ginsburg addressed topics ranging from her pioneering work to end sex discrimination to the challenges she has faced on the Supreme Court bench. Philanthropists Patricia and Peter Gruber established the Gruber Program for Global Justice and Women’s Rights at Yale Law School in 2011. In addition to lectures on global justice and women’s rights, the program supports the annual Global Constitutionalism Seminar and the Gruber Global Justice and Women’s Rights Fellowships.

Governor signs bill written by students

Connecticut governor Dannel Malloy held a ceremonial bill signing at Yale Law School on Veterans Day Monday, November 12, signing, among several veterans’ bills, one in which Yale Law School students played a major role. Connecticut Pub. Act. No. 12-42 was researched and drafted by students in the Veterans Legal Services Clinic on behalf of the Connecticut Veterans Legal Center, a clinic client. The students fought vigorously and successfully for passage of the bill, which expands access to existing pretrial diversionary programs for veterans charged with low-level criminal offenses, helping them obtain treatment and avoid incarceration. State Rep. Jack Hennessy, cochair of the Select Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, said that without the efforts of the Veterans Clinic students, “a very important bill wouldn’t have been passed.” Among those attending the ceremony were clinic codirectors Professor Fiona Doherty ’99JD, Professor Mike Wishnie ’87, ’93JD, and Visiting Clinical Lecturer Margaret Middleton; and clinic students Jon Fougner ’05, ’14JD, Sofia Nelson ’13JD, and Eric Parrie ‘13JD, who worked on the bill.