School Notes: Yale Law School
January/February 2015

Supreme Court justices honored at Alumni Weekend

US Supreme Court justices Clarence Thomas ’74JD, Samuel A. Alito Jr. ’75JD, and Sonia Sotomayor ’79JD received the prestigious Award of Merit on October 25 at the Yale Law School’s Alumni Weekend, and took part in an enlightening discussion moderated by Kate Stith, Lafayette S. Foster Professor of Law. The justices held forth on their lives on and off the bench, and their experiences while students at the Law School. The weekend also featured panels led by Yale Law faculty around the theme of judging. Since 1957 the Yale Law School Association has presented the Award of Merit annually to an esteemed graduate or to a person who has served as a full-time member of the Yale Law School faculty for at least ten years. 

YLS program will work for community trust of law enforcement

Professors Tracey Meares and Tom Tyler are among a consortium of national law-enforcement experts enlisted by the Department of Justice for an initiative tasked with building trust between law enforcement and the communities they serve. As part of the Justice Department’s National Initiative for Building Community Trust and Justice, Yale Law School will launch the Collaborative for Justice Policy Innovation, codirected by Meares and Tyler. Through this effort, the two will work with other members of the consortium to design intervention programs in five pilot communities based on existing research concerning procedural justice, implicit bias, and race and reconciliation. Meares and Tyler have collaborated extensively in the past to research and publish findings on police legitimacy and procedural justice, and advise agencies on the practical use of these concepts in the field.  

50 years of Medicare and Medicaid

On November 6 and 7 a group of leading health law and policy scholars, as well as policymakers instrumental in designing and implementing these landmark statutes, gathered to mark half a century of Medicare and Medicaid. Organized by Professor Abbe Gluck ’00, with funding by the Oscar M. Ruebhausen Fund at Yale Law School, the conference examined the intersection of law and politics across the programs and how the statutes changed the legal frameworks, political dynamics, and governmental structures of health in America. Panelists also discussed the legal, political, and structural challenges the programs have faced in the past and potential hurdles that could arise in the future.