School Notes: Yale Law School
July/August 2015

First Amendment lawyer heads clinic

David A. Schulz ’76MA, ’78JD, a leading First Amendment lawyer who has defended the rights of journalists and news organizations for more than 30 years, has been named clinical lecturer in law and codirector of the Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic (MFIA) at Yale Law School. His full-time appointment was made possible through the financial support of the Stanton Foundation and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The addition of Schulz as a full-time director will enable the MFIA Clinic to expand its reach by taking on more cases, with a longer view of pursuing litigation to establish precedents that will protect the rights of investigative reporters. It will also help leverage the clinic’s expertise through joint efforts with other organizations supporting open government. Prior to this appointment, Schulz was the Floyd Abrams Visiting Clinical Lecturer in Law at YLS. He has supervised students in the MFIA Clinic since it began in 2009.

Professor named Guggenheim Fellow

Gideon Yaffe, a professor of law, philosophy, and psychology at Yale, has been awarded a 2015 fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Yaffe’s research interests include the philosophy of law, particularly criminal law; metaphysics including causation, free will, and personal identity; and intention and the theory of action. He has also written about the history of early modern philosophy. His 2010 book Attempts concerns the philosophical foundations of the law governing attempted crimes. Prior to joining Yale in 2012, he was a professor of philosophy and law at the University of Southern California. Professor Yaffe is also a member of the MacArthur Foundation’s Law and Neuroscience Project.

Conference on community policing

The Justice Collaboratory at Yale hosted a two-day conference in April titled “Policing Post-Ferguson,” which brought together experts from law enforcement, government, and academia to discuss police relationships with minority communities, “broken windows” policing, civilian oversight of police departments, and the future of policing. The Collaboratory is a newly launched center created by professors Tracey Meares and Tom Tyler that unites scholars and researchers of diverse theoretical and methodological orientations to work on issues related to institutional reform and policy innovation and advancement.