|
|
|
law.arizona.edu
| Link
January 23, 2013
|
|
Greetings!
Our (still to be
named!) spotlight shines this week on three members of the Arizona
Law community: Ian Burrell, Toni Massaro, and Alison Bachus. It is a
pleasure for me to bring their stories to you - enjoy!
Name
This Weekly Email
We've received a
lot of great suggestions so far (e.g., Rogers' Rants, Marc's Musings,
Roger That!), but we want to make sure to get as many as we can.
Continue to email your suggestions for naming this
email.
Until the
footnotes,
Marc
|
|
|
|
Ian,
Shaylee, and Courtney Burrell
|
Ian Burrell (Class of 2013)
If you have had
the experience in the past few years of somebody dashing by you in
Tucson, that may have been Ian Burrell on his way to logging another
100 miles of weekly running. Ian, a 3L from Colorado, was an All-SEC
track and field athlete at the University of Georgia. After
graduating in 2008 with a degree in criminal justice, Ian moved to
Flagstaff to run professionally and train for international meets.
For Ian, Arizona
Law was a perfect fit since it enabled him to pursue his passion for
law in a climate accommodating to a distance runner who puts in 25-30
hours a week.
Looking ahead to
graduation, Ian is exploring the possibility of a career with the FBI,
though he would also be happy to stay in Tucson as his family is
enjoying life in the Southwest. For the past two summers, he has
focused on federal law enforcement and completed internships with US
Customs and Border Patrol.
In his time not
spent running or in law school, Ian and his wife, Courtney, stay
active keeping up with their 17-month-old daughter, Shaylee. You can
find contact information for Ian on his LinkedIn Profile.
|
 Toni
Massaro
Since 1989, Dean
Emerita Toni Massaro has been changing the lives of students at the
College. But how did she come to select Arizona Law?
"I was
attracted by the quality of the faculty and students, by the fact
that it was one of the nation's best public schools and had a
relatively small student body, and by the location: the West, with
its natural beauty, in a real college town, with surrounding
mountains and Sonoran desert," she said. "It also
mattered that the University was a first class, flagship, research
institution."
Toni's love for
the College is absolute, as is her passion for constitutional law.
You can hear that passion whenever she teaches or speaks. And this is
a golden age for constitutional scholars. For this message, Toni
penned the following lines:
"Few areas
have been more dynamic in recent years. Last year's decision
regarding the Affordable Care Act is just one example, and implicated
structural constitutional law issues - especially the nature and
limits of federal legislative power. The full implications of the
decision are not yet apparent, but the case included plenty of grist
for the mill of those who would like to rein in Congress.
The current Term
may prove to be even more of a game changer, as the Court confronts
multiple issues that involve the equality dimension of liberty. The
Voting Rights Act, marriage equality, and affirmative action all are
on the docket, before a more conservative Court than in decades past.
Several lower court cases that address new limits on abortion rights
are wending their way to the US Supreme Court. As for the future,
privacy/technology issues will become more and more significant, in
constitutional law and in other domains."
You can observe
Toni's passion in two videos of her lectures for Chris Robertson's
Law 389 class for undergraduates. In the first, she discusses Griswold v.
Connecticut and Eisenstadt v. Baird. In the second, she tackles Roe v. Wade.
Toni
recently published a paper on political discourse entitled: Freedom of Speech,
Liberal Democracy, and Emerging Evidence on Civility and Effective
Democratic Engagement.
She is also working on a book with former Arizona Law Dean, Tom Sullivan,
entitled The
Arc of Due Process, which
will be published by Oxford University Press in 2013.
You can find more of Toni's papers here.
When I asked her to choose which class she enjoys
teaching the most, she would not, only saying that she "loves
each for different reasons." If you'd like to catch up with
Toni, you can always find her contact information on her Faculty Profile.
|
 Alison
Bachus ('05)
Alison Bachus has
been a criminal Assistant US Attorney (AUSA) in Phoenix since 2006.
Her workload primarily consists of prosecuting bank and armored car
robbery cases, as well as all cases coming out of the federal
prisons. Alison also prosecutes violent crimes that occur on Indian
reservations, and, as the chief of the Civil Rights Unit, she handles
bias crimes and cases against law enforcement officers who use
excessive force.
Alison chose
Arizona Law because of the "community feel." She said that,
"It was in contrast to the vibe I got at other institutions; the
staff and students were very welcoming."
What's her
favorite memory from law school? "There are many! I would say
fun times on the long couch in the old lobby, just laughing and
hanging out. And the mock trial I did in Trial Ad - it was Mauet's
product liability case, and my side had to defend the lighter that
looked like a bomb. My trial partner planted a juror for us, so we
got a hung jury! That trial was a great experience to learn early on that
you can be an aggressive litigator without being a jerk to the other
side."
When I asked her
how she began working with the AUSA so soon after graduation, she
said, "At the College, I had the pleasure of taking a federal
criminal law class taught by then-US Attorney and Arizona Law alum
Paul Charlton ('88), which was great. I also had the opportunity to
do an externship with Arizona Law alum and then-Chief US District
Judge Stephen McNamee ('69). I got a clerkship with Judge McNamee due
to my externship, and Paul visited chambers when I was clerking.
Through those contacts, I was interviewed and ultimately hired at the
US Attorney's Office. I would be remiss if I did not say that the
reason I'm doing what I do is because of Arizona Law and the people I
met there."
At home, Alison and her husband have a daughter who is
in kindergarten and is "quite the little litigator/arguer
herself." She has enjoyed staying engaged with the College by
keeping in touch with some of her classmates, re-connecting with others,
and meeting other Arizona Law alums (and soon-to-be alums). "I
also serve on various committees and boards with many Arizona Law
folks. I hope everyone who reads this is doing well!" You can
connect with Alison via her LinkedIn Profile.
|
February
Bar
As many of you
may know, in December the Arizona Supreme Court provisionally
approved a proposal to allow qualified 3L students to take the
February bar exam starting in February 2014. This is one of the most
dramatic responses around the country to the current critiques of
legal education.
The February bar
proposal originated at Arizona Law, and was then developed and
submitted to the Court in partnership with ASU and the Phoenix School
of Law. The provisional approval of this proposal follows the Court's
leadership in making Arizona one of the early adopters of the Uniform Bar Exam
(UBE), which allows people who take the Arizona Bar Exam to become
members of the bar in 12 states, including Washington State and
Colorado (two common destinations for grads who leave Arizona).
With the national
leadership in legal education enabled by the Court's decision, we are
now engaged in building a strong and meaningful curriculum for those
who opt to take the February bar. An ad hoc group of judges and
lawyers has worked since last spring to create a proposed
theory-to-practice residency. Those recommendations emerged from two
questions we asked: to recent graduates, "What do you wish you
had known when you graduated?" and, to those who hire graduates,
"What do you wish the new lawyers you hired had learned during
law school?"
The February bar and the new educational opportunities
it presents are part of Arizona Law's continuing effort, working with
the bar, to respond to fundamental changes in the practice of law and
to respond creatively to national debates about legal education. This
is a landmark decision for students at the College, and we are
extremely excited to be at the forefront of this action. You can read
more about the decision here, and we
welcome additional suggestions (email here).
I'd like to encourage all of you to send in your
pictures showing off your Arizona Law Pride. Below, you can see Mari,
the lovely (and quite obviously brilliant) daughter of Akilah
Kinnison (LL. M. Candidate, 2013), highlighting her mother's pocket
Constitution. According to Akilah, "I don't even know where she
found it! Must have been all that time listening to Con Law II in the
womb!"
Upcoming Events - LCA
Dinner
The 39th Annual
Law College Association (LCA) Dinner is scheduled for April 27, 2013
and will be held at the Westward Look Resort in Tucson. This year,
the LCA, with the University of Arizona Alumni Association, will
honor six outstanding individuals: Anna Maria Chavez ('94), Catherine
Douglas ('76), Prof. Steven Duke ('59), Larry Hecker ('69, '72),
Prof. Thomas Mauet, and The Honorable Frank Zapata ('73). For more
information, or to register, click here.
Finally, we've received enthusiastic responses and
feedback from many of you regarding the idea of this weekly email
message. Thank you! Please continue sending your ideas our way!
Warmly, 
Dean & Ralph W. Bilby Professor of Law
James E. Rogers College of Law
|
|
|
|
Copyright © 2013. All Rights Reserved.
|
|
|
|
