Explore the milestones and achievements of the 2021-22 school year at the University of Virginia School of Law.
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The Law School remained No. 1 in Best Professors, Best Quality of Life and Best Classroom Experience, according to The Princeton Review’s annual law school rankings.
The Law School welcomed a first-year J.D. class with the strongest academic numbers and the most racial diversity in the school’s history.
Law students should embrace their failures and setbacks, and grow from them, Grace Fu ’09, general counsel of KAYAK and OpenTable, told the Class of 2024 during her orientation address.
The Law School community returned to a fully in-person experience, following a year of hybrid learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Michael Corcoran ’17 and Henry Dickman ’20 will clerk at the U.S. Supreme Court for the 2022 term. Mariette Peltier ’20 is serving as one of five Bristow Fellows in the Office of the Solicitor General at the U.S. Department of Justice this summer.
University officials planted a black gum tree in the Law School’s Spies Garden to honor professor and former dean John C. Jeffries Jr. ’73.
A record 116 alumni clerked across the country during the 2021 court term. Graduates have topped the school’s record for the number of clerks for three straight years.
UVA Law announced the hires of several professors: (top) Amanda Frost, Juliet Hatchett ’15, Kelly Orians, (bottom) Elizabeth Rowe and Alison Gocke. Hatchett was named associate director of the Innocence Project Clinic, and Orians leads the new Decarceration and Community Reentry Clinic.
UVA Law launched the LawTech Center, which focuses on pressing questions in law and technology, with Professor Danielle Citron serving as inaugural director.
Robert Mueller ’73 and the attorneys who led the special counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election taught a short course in the fall, The Mueller Report and the Role of the Special Counsel.
The UVA Law Halloween carnival, hosted by the First Year Council, brought costumed tykes and families together to celebrate the season.
Michael Patton ’22 and Chris Baldacci ’22 won the 93rd William Minor Lile Moot Court Competition.
Faculty scholarship and teaching were awarded or otherwise recognized. Frederick Schauer won the Hart-Dworkin Award in Legal Philosophy, and Rachel Bayefsky won Best Untenured Article on Federal Jurisdiction, from the Association of American Law Schools; Quinn Curtis’ paper was named one of the top 10 corporate and securities articles of 2021; Payvand Ahdout won The Yale Law Journal’s inaugural Emerging Scholar of the Year Award; a paper co-authored by Kristen Eichensehr and Cathy Hwang was accepted to the 2022 Harvard/Yale/Stanford Junior Faculty Forum; and Megan Stevenson and her team received a $200,000 grant to study the hidden long-term effects of incarceration.
The new year started with a snowstorm blanketing North Grounds.
In January, Rambert Tyree ’22 received the Gregory H. Swanson Award, named in honor of UVA and the Law School’s first Black student.
Professors John Harrison, Danielle Citron, Risa Goluboff, Greg Mitchell and Cathy Hwang are sharing hosting duties during the fourth season of the Law School podcast “Common Law.”
Sejal Jhaveri ’15, Nitin Shah ’09 and Thomas Silverstein ’13 were honored for their public service work at the sixth annual Shaping Justice conference.
Scott Chamberlain ’23 was named the new editor-in-chief of the Virginia Law Review.
Andrew Teal ’22 and Max Ain ’22 won the first Transactional Law Competition at UVA Law.
At the 41st Annual Federalist Society National Student Symposium, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin encouraged students and others who wish to make a difference in their communities to get involved at the state government level.
Dean Risa Goluboff testified at Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on the nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson to the U.S. Supreme Court. Professor Kimberly Jenkins Robinson hailed her former Harvard Law School roommate’s historic confirmation.
The UVA Law chapter of the Black Law Students Association was named 2021-22 Mid-Atlantic chapter of the year.
The Libel Show, an annual musical sketch comedy tradition run by students at UVA Law, returned to the Caplin Auditorium stage for its 114th production.
Six Innocence Project clients were released from prison, pardoned or both. They received $6.25 million in compensation from the state with the project’s help.
The Class of 2023 celebrated being halfway through their studies at UVA Law with the Midway Toast. A troupe of singing faculty kicked off the festivities.
Juhi Desai ’23 was elected president of the Student Bar Association.
Students hosted 31 law schools and raised $27,500 for charity as part of the 39th annual North Grounds Softball League Invitational.
New books written or edited by Kenneth S. Abraham, G. Edward White, Jason S. Johnston, Frederick Schauer and David S. Law showcased faculty members’ contributions to the law.
Americans are still taking part in the democratic experiment Thomas Jefferson launched with the Declaration of Independence, said U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer upon receiving the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Law.
Faculty and administrators were recognized for going above and beyond. Professor Rachel Harmon was a recipient of one of this year’s All-University Teaching Awards; Professors Deirdre Enright ’92 and Jennifer L. Givens received a Collaborative Excellence in Public Service Awards; and Jennifer Markham Hulvey, assistant dean for financial aid, was this year’s staff recipient of UVA’s John T. Casteen Diversity-Equity-Inclusion Leadership Award.
A team of UVA Law students placed second in this year’s International and European Tax Moot Court competition (top).The school’s Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition team advanced to the round of 32 in the international rounds and its written submissions placed third among U.S. teams.
Graduates earned prestigious fellowships: Christopher Benos will pursue a master’s degree in global affairs at Beijing’s Tsinghua University as a Class of 2023 Schwarzman Scholar; Nevah Jones will work at the Charlotte Center for Legal Advocacy in North Carolina as a Skadden Fellow; and Meredith Kilburn will work with the Education Law Center in Newark, New Jersey, as the 21st Powell Fellow in Legal Services.
Professor Quinn Curtis was named the Law School’s associate dean for curricular programs.
Commencement speaker Kim Keenan ’87 paid tribute to the toughness of a class that has seen contentious political storms, war abroad and a global pandemic in their three years of law school.
With help from a record $801,000 in grants, 167 students will work in public service roles this summer. The school’s Mortimer Caplin Public Service Center awarded $761,000 in UVA Law Public Service Summer Grants and the Public Interest Law Association added an additional $40,000 from the PILA+ program. (Pictured: Grant recipients Scott Chamberlain ’23, Ruby Cherian ’23, Sydney Merritt ’24 and Taleena Nadkarni ’24)