School Notes: Yale Law School
March/April 2011

CED Clinic helping to find solutions to the national foreclosure crisis

Yale Law School lecturer Robin Golden ’79, ’98JD, codirector of the school’s Ludwig Community and Economic Development Clinic (CED), and clinic student Caroline Novogrod ’12JD recently played key roles in a major collaborative study commissioned to identify the most effective and feasible strategies to address the nation’s mortgage foreclosure crisis and resulting economic distress in communities of color. The six-month study, in which experts from the private and public sectors participated, was organized by the Opportunity Funding Corporation. The resulting Economic Stabilization White Paper was written by Novogrod and former CED student John Rooney ’10MBA and formally presented to members of Congress, the Obama administration, and regulatory agencies on November 30. It advanced ten proposals to stem the foreclosure crisis, create jobs, and begin rebuilding wealth in distressed communities. Congressman Lacy Clay of Missouri thanked the project team for the white paper, describing it as “chock-full of guidance” for Congress; Congressman Elijah Cummings of Maryland said, “This is the blueprint. Every single one of those recommendations is very, very important.”

Law School mourns the death of professor and librarian emeritus

YLS Professor Emeritus and Librarian Emeritus Morris L. Cohen, who directed several of the world’s most esteemed academic law libraries, passed away December 18 at age 83. Cohen was one of the towering figures of late twentieth-century law libraries and among the foremost legal bibliographers in the United States, as well as a beloved teacher and mentor. He was a professor of law and director of the law library at Yale Law School from 1981 until his retirement in 1991, when he became professor emeritus of law and professorial lecturer in law. Before joining Yale, he served as director of the law libraries at Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and SUNY-Buffalo. “Morris was admired throughout the entire community of legal education,” said Yale Law School dean Robert Post ’77JD. “We share with many others a great loss to the world of legal scholarship.”

Law faculty honored

Yale Law professor Judith Resnik has been named a recipient of the 2010 Elizabeth Hurlock Beckman Award. The award recognizes current and former higher education faculty members, mainly in the fields of psychology, medicine, and law, who have inspired their students to make a difference in the community. Resnik was also recently honored by Choice magazine for her book,Migrations and Mobilities (2009, co-edited with Seyla Benhabib ’77PhD), which Choice named one of the Outstanding Academic Titles of 2010.

Yale Law professors John Langbein and Heather Gerken and visiting lecturer Mark Kravitz were honored for outstanding legal writing by the Green Bag, a quarterly journal dedicated to good writing about the law. Langbein was recognized for his book, History of the Common Law: The Development of Anglo-American Legal Institutions,written with Renee L. Lerner and Bruce P. Smith. Gerken was cited for her February 2, 2010, “Testimony Submitted to the U.S. Senate Committee on Rules and Administration”; and Kravitz for his article, “Written and Oral Persuasion in the United States Courts: A District Judge’s Perspective on Their History, Function, and Future.”