Law Professor

Marcus Schoenfeld, 71, of Bryn Mawr, a law professor, optimist and devoted father, died July 5 at home of cardiac arrest due to complications from diabetes. Mr. Schoenfeld, a native New Yorker, received a degree in economics from Harvard College in 1954 and a law degree from Harvard Law School in 1957. He began his career as a professor of law at Cleveland-Marshall College of Law in Ohio. He joined the faculty of Villanova University School of Law in 1966, where he taught for the next 35 years and met his wife, Lyn Befarah, a law student.

Calvin Corman has received the finest tribute he could ask for. A portrait of the Cherry Hill law professor has been hung in the entrance to the School of Law Library at Rutgers University's Camden campus, honoring Corman's 30-year career. He is the first Camden-Rutgers faculty member who was not a dean to have a portrait made. Corman, 70, retired from his full-time job as a professor July 1. Only one other man, Albert Blaustein, has a longer record of uninterrupted service to the school.

Calvin Wood Corman, 76, professor emeritus at Rutgers Law School and an authority on commercial and contract law, died yesterday at Kennedy Memorial Hospitals-University Medical Center/Cherry Hill Division. A Cherry Hill resident since 1962, he was born in Waco, Texas. A widely recognized expert on commercial and contract law, Mr. Corman helped develop international trade legislation that eventually took the form of the international contracts law adopted by Congress in the late 1980s.

After President Clinton dropped University of Pennsylvania law professor Lani Guinier in 1993 as his nominee to head U.S. civil rights enforcement efforts, she decided that the worst aspect of the whole experience was being "denied the right to speak. " On Friday, as keynote speaker of the 18th Annual Conference on Black History in Pennsylvania, Guinier spoke at length about not only her controversial views on affirmative action, but also about fairness, free expression and the qualities of good leadership.

When Paul H. Robinson, 39, got tapped to go to Washington to help draw up new guidelines for sentencing every person convicted in the federal court system, he saw it as a once-in-a-century opportunity to make a dramatic impact on the nation's criminal-justice system. Instead, he discovered - to his frustration and disillusionment - that the process was fraught with politics. "It was a historic opportunity missed," said the Collingswood father of two. "That was what was so disappointing to me. " On Feb. 1, Robinson submitted his resignation to the U.S. Sentencing Commission.

A bank vice president who is a Republican and a law professor who is a Democrat have applied to fill the vacancy on the Lower Merion Board of Commissioners created by the resignation of Francis Doyle. Doyle, a Republican who represented Ward 13 in Merion, has been in ill health and resigned Saturday. His term would have ended Dec. 31. The candidates, Republican Fenton J. Fitzpatrick and Democrat David A. Sonenshein, have both said in interviews that they will run for the seat this year if they are not appointed to fill the vacancy.

John M. Lindsey, a mentor and inspiration for Temple University Law School students for 34 years, died Thursday of pulmonary fibrosis. He was 66 and lived in Swarthmore. Lindsey was emeritus law professor and former law librarian at Temple Law School. "John Lindsey was a great man," said Peter J. Liacouras, president of Temple University and former dean of the Law School. "His devotion to students and faculty was apparent from his first days as the law librarian. "He transformed the procedures and morale of the law school community to a library-friendly environment - a legacy that will continue for generations.

Hear the name Anita Hill and you think of a young law professor telling the Senate Judiciary Committee that Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas had sexually harassed her at work. Twenty years later, Hill has shifted her focus away from the office in a new book that looks at the connection between home and equality. "Home is not just a place, it's also a state of being," Hill explains. In Reimagining Equality: Stories of Gender, Race, and Finding Home (Beacon Press, $25.95)

Night transfigures a college campus, especially in winter. Especially in northern latitudes. Charming architecture turns spooky. Gothic towers brood. Footsteps echo under archways. Cold shadows take over dimly lit quadrangles. Bare branches and snow accent the bleakness. "Campuses can be terribly scary places," says Stephen L. Carter. That makes them wonderful places to set a thriller, which is what Yale law professor Carter does in his second novel, New England White (Knopf, $26.95)

William D. Valente, 83, formerly of Bryn Mawr, a professor at Villanova Law School for almost 30 years and an advocate for Catholic schools, died of complications from cancer Wednesday at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital. Mr. Valente was the youngest of 12 children born to immigrant Italian parents. He graduated from Southeast Catholic High School, now St. John Neumann, and was a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Pennsylvania. He completed Penn law school in two years and was editor of the law review and a member of the Order of the Coif, an honorary scholastic society.

The sentence imposed Tuesday on Joan Orie Melvin likely was meant to humiliate the former justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. And experts agree that it will. But it also requires her to apologize to former staffers and colleagues even though she has repeatedly proclaimed her innocence and said she intends to appeal her conviction. Some wonder whether such a caveat can be enforced. Melvin was found guilty in February of six criminal charges, including three felonies, for using her judicial staff on Superior Court to work on her two statewide campaigns for the high court, in 2003 and 2009.

The New Jersey Supreme Court, once viewed as a bastion of independent, if liberal, jurisprudence, risks a sharply diminished reputation if political battles over filling its empty seats are not quickly resolved, legal experts and court-reform advocates say. The immediate issue facing the court is the maneuvering between Gov. Christie and Senate Democrats over the two unfilled positions. But experts say the larger issue is the breakdown of an informal, decades-old agreement between the parties to minimize partisan wrangling over judicial nominees.

There are no business suits in law professor Karl Okamoto's office. With a single bright-green wall, communal work table for five, and occasional YouTube-video breaks, his room on the fourth floor of the Earle Mack School of Law on the Drexel University campus feels more like a business start-up. But then again, Okamoto is the founder of ApprenNet, an independent, two-year-old company that provides apprenticeship-like job experiences online. "We all know the best way to learn lots of things is to do them yourself," said Okamoto, 50, a Columbia University law school grad.

THE SUPREME COURT will rule Thursday on whether President Obama's signature national health-care law is constitutional. The decision of the nine justices will have huge ripple effects for health care across the country, including here in Philadelphia and around the state. An estimated 1.37 million Pennsylvania residents — about 11 percent — are uninsured. Republican Gov. Tom Corbett, as state attorney general in 2010, joined a group of state officials in challenging the law. Still, Pennsylvania is working to set up a health-insurance exchange required by the law, although the state Insurance Department says that it is waiting for the Supreme Court's decision before it touches a $33 million grant it won in January to build out the exchange.

"With respect to the notion that I can just suspend deportations of immigrants brought here illegally as children through executive order, that's just not the case, because there are laws on the books that Congress has passed. " — President Obama, March 28, 2011       Those laws remain on the books. They have not changed. Yet Obama has suspended these very deportations — granting infinitely renewable "deferred action," with attendant work permits — thereby unilaterally rewriting the law. And doing precisely what he himself admits he is barred from doing.

When I retired from a 36-year legal career, I did not envision how exciting life was about to become. My son had just finished college with Russian language and history majors, was headed for a Russian history graduate program, and was to work that fall in Moscow. My only exciting retirement plan was to visit him and have him show me the Russia where he had studied during college. I had also planned to take the University of Cambridge (England) Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults (CELTA)

WASHINGTON - In a packed forum on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, the parents of Trayvon Martin found support among members of Congress who turned the death of their 17-year-old's son into a rallying cry against racial profiling. Martin's parents spoke briefly before a Democrats-only congressional panel as cameras clicked noisily in front of them. Many in the crowd, which filled the seats and lined the walls, strained to catch a glimpse of the parents whose son was shot and killed Feb. 26 in a Sanford, Fla., gated community.

Go to a Ron Paul rally or an Occupy protest, and you are likely to hear a speech like this: President Obama signed a law allowing the government to detain U.S. citizens suspected of terrorism indefinitely! In other words, the government can lock you up at any time for as long as it likes, with no opportunity for you to be heard in court or confront witnesses and evidence against you, Bill of Rights be damned. The 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA)

A defamation lawsuit filed by a tenured professor against the dean of the Widener University School of Law has been settled. Lawrence J. Connell, an associate professor at the law school for 26 years, had accused the dean, Linda L. Ammons, of intentionally making false statements that he was a racist and sexist during proceedings to oust him from his post. Connell is white and Ammons is black. Lawrence was placed on leave in December 2010, then suspended without pay in August after allegedly retaliating against two students who complained about his classroom conduct.

Hear the name Anita Hill and you think of a young law professor telling the Senate Judiciary Committee that Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas had sexually harassed her at work. Twenty years later, Hill has shifted her focus away from the office in a new book that looks at the connection between home and equality. "Home is not just a place, it's also a state of being," Hill explains. In Reimagining Equality: Stories of Gender, Race, and Finding Home (Beacon Press, $25.95)