School Notes: Yale Law School
November/December 2009

Immigration and human rights specialist joins faculty

Professor Muneer I. Ahmad, a specialist in immigration law and international human rights, joined the Yale Law School faculty on July 1 as a clinical professor of law. Professor Ahmad spent the spring 2009 semester as a visiting clinical professor at Yale Law School, co-teaching in the Worker and Immigrant Rights Advocacy Clinic and consulting in the Immigration Legal Services Clinic. He previously taught at American University's Washington College of Law. Professor Ahmad's scholarship examines the intersections of immigration, race, and citizenship in both legal theory and legal practice. He has written and spoken widely about the impact of the September 11 attacks on Arab, Muslim, and South Asian communities.

Yale law professor's Democracy Index influences NYC

A program proposed by Yale law professor Heather Gerken to address problems in the nation's voting system is now a reality in New York City. Professor Gerken's Democracy Index is a key element in a plan Mayor Bloomberg introduced in September to improve New York City's election process. Professor Gerken, the J. Skelly Wright Professor of Law, first proposed a Democracy Index in a 2007 Legal Times commentary and has since written a book on the subject, The Democracy Index: Why Our Election System Is Failing and How to Fix It. The index would rank states based on how well their election systems perform, assessing such factors as how long people had to wait in line to vote, how many ballots got discarded, and how often voting machines broke down. Professor Gerken called the New York plan a sensational pilot project that will help uncover and solve the problems that frustrate so many voters. "A New York City Democracy Index will help the city identify problems before they happen and ensure that every New York voter can have confidence in the election system," she said. "This first-in-the-nation index is destined to become a national model for other localities and states, and perhaps even the federal government."

Supreme Court justice on campus for Alumni Weekend

A conversation with U.S. Supreme Court associate justice Sonia Sotomayor ’79JD and the return of former Yale Law dean Harold Hongju Koh to accept an award were among the highlights of Alumni Weekend 2009, October 16-18 at Yale Law School. At press time, the weekend was slated to include a series of panel discussions centering on the theme "The Regulatory Debate: Whether, What, and How?" in which alumni and faculty panelists would examine various facets of the regulatory debate -- courts and regulation, the regulatory process, and regulation in health care, the economy, and the environment. Other highlights included an All Alumni Dinner on Friday night; an interactive polling game emceed by Pamela Karlan ’84JD, Kenneth and Harle Montgomery Professor of Public Interest Law at Stanford Law School; and a memorial tribute to Professor Thomas I. Emerson ’31, who taught law at Yale for three decades. Former dean Koh, now legal adviser of the U.S. Department of State, was to accept the Yale Law School Association Award of Merit during a luncheon on Saturday. Koh is currently on leave from Yale Law School as the Martin R. Flug ’55 Professor of International Law and will return to teach when his service in Washington ends.