AppointmentsThe Law Center will install
Philip Schrag as the new Delaney Family Professorship in Public Interest Law on Sept. 23. April McClain-Delaney (L’89) and John Delaney (L’88) endowed the newly established professorship. Schrag, who is also director of the Center for Applied Legal Studies, recently stepped down from his post as director of the Public Interest Law Scholars Program.
Awards and Honors
The Yale Journal on Regulation has named law professor
Adam Levitin as the inaugural recipient of the Walton H. Hamilton Prize for Outstanding Scholarship. The award honors an author whose article most significantly impacts the understanding of regulatory policy. Levitin wrote “Hydraulic Regulation: Regulating Credit Markets Upstream,” which explores shortcomings of consumer protection in financial services and proposes permitting states to engage in consumer protection regulation of federally chartered banks.
Books and PublicationsCharles King, the Ion Ratiu Chair of Romanian Studies, updated his book, “The Ghost of Freedom: A History of the Caucasus” (Oxford University Press, 2009) with a new epilogue on the 2008 Russia-Georgia conflict. The book provides the first history of the modern Caucasus with detail paid to the complex mix of politics and cultures that shape the region.
Gregory Orfalea, visiting professor in the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, captures life in Los Angeles – the “brutal, beautiful city along the Pacific sea” – in his memoir, “Angeleno Days: An Arab American Writer on Family, Place and Politics” (University of Arizona Press, 2009). Orfalea tries to reconcile the Los Angeles of his childhood with the city he rediscovers in adulthood while exploring the culture and concerns of the city’s Arab-American population.
Securing political asylum often has less to do with the merits of a refugee’s claim as much as the personality, background, gender and prior work experience of the adjudicator assigned to the case, according to a new book by two Georgetown law professors and an alumna. Law professor
Philip Schrag, visiting law professor
Andrew Schoenholtz and
Jaya Ramji-Nogales (L’06) co-authored “Refugee Roulette: Disparities in Asylum Adjudication and Proposals for Reform” (New York University Press, 2009). The authors uncover immense disparities in asylum approval rates and make recommendations for future reform.
In “Paths to Peace: Domestic Coalition Shifts, War Termination and the Korean War” (Stanford University Press, 2009)
Elizabeth Stanley argues the longer the war, the harder it is to end because the obstacles to peace become institutionalized. Stanley, assistant professor of security studies, applies her theory to the Korean War and its armistice terms.
Presentations
John Pilch, visiting professor of theology, presented and spoke at several seminars and conferences over the summer. In July, he delivered an address on “Scripture: the Foundation for Diakonia” at the annual meeting of the National Diaconate Institute for Continuing Education at Xavier University. In June, he delivered a research report at the International Meeting of the Context Group in Tutzing, Germany, on “Music Heard During Sky Journeys in Ancient Judeo-Christian literature (e.g., Second Enoch).” It will be published in November in the Biblical Theology Bulletin.
Research Grants
Janet Mann, professor of psychology and biology, and
Lisa Singh, assistant professor of computer science, received three grants to further their study into the social behavior of bottlenose dolphins. Two grants for $542,202 and $400,000 come from the National Science Foundation.
Elisa Bienenstock, adjunct professor of human science and affiliate in psychology, shares in the third grant for $989,173 from the Office of Naval Research. Mann also received a fourth grant for $89,924 from the National Science Foundation to find noninvasive methods of assessing diet, reproductive states and genetics in cetaceans.
