March 16, 2022

Professor Oliveri Named Women’s and Gender Studies Alumnae Anniversary Award

Rigel Oliver, the Isabelle Wade and Paul C. Lyda Professor of Law at Mizzou Law, was honored March 15 with a 2022 MU Women’s and Gender Studies Alumnae Anniversary Award. The award was given by the MU Department of Women’s and Gender Studies for Prof. Oliveri’s impressive networking and advocacy work across campus. Congratulations to Prof. Oliveri!.

March 11, 2022

Professor Oliveri Wins Outstanding Volunteer Service Award

Rigel Oliveri, the Isabelle Wade and Paul C. Lyda Professor of Law at the University of Missouri School of Law, has received the 11th Howard B. Lang, Jr. Award for Outstanding Volunteer Service to the City of Columbia. Professor Oliveri earned the award due to her involvement with fair and affordable housing programs and services, which includes her work with the Columbia Housing Authority and other agencies and programs. She currently serves on the Columbia Housing Authority Board and works on providing support services for low-income, public housing residents in Columbia in order to help them improve the quality of…

Feb. 8, 2022

Faculty Spotlight — Thomas Bennett

Starting a new job in the middle of a pandemic can be challenging at best. But when that job includes teaching students without ever meeting them face-to-face, “challenging” may be an understatement. For Professor Thomas Bennett, Mizzou Law’s newest faculty member, finally getting to step foot in a classroom this fall was a vast improvement over how he spent his first year teaching at Mizzou. Bennett, an associate professor of law and a Wall Family Fellow at the University of Missouri School of Law, began teaching at Mizzou in 2020 when most Mizzou Law classes took place over Zoom. Now…

Feb. 7, 2022

Prof. Oliveri co-edits affordable housing legal guide

Prof. Rigel Oliveri, the Isabelle Wade and Paul C. Lyda Professor of Law, recently published a book on which she served as co-editor. This important book, The Legal Guide to Affordable Housing Development, Third Edition is a practitioners guide to the legal field of affordable housing development. To learn more about the book, click here.

Feb. 3, 2022

Mizzou Law Announces New Faculty Hires for Fall 2022

Officials at the University of Missouri School of Law are kicking off the 150th anniversary of the school by announcing two exciting new faculty hires joining the ranks of the nationally renowned faculty scholars and teachers at Mizzou Law. Sandra Sperino, a professor at the University of Cincinnati College of Law, and Rachel Wechsler, a research fellow at the New York University School of Law, will be joining the faculty at Mizzou Law in time to begin teaching classes in the Fall 2022 semester. “We are so excited to welcome these accomplished legal experts to our faculty,” said Lyrissa Lidsky,…

Dec. 7, 2021

MU researchers say it’s time to clean up the Clean Water Act

By Kenny Gerling, MU News Bureau In 1969, the Cuyahoga River near Cleveland was so polluted that it caught fire, helping to launch the modern environmental movement and prompting Congress to pass the Clean Water Act three years later. It was one of the first laws to safeguard waterways and set national water quality standards. While the Clean Water Act successfully regulated many obvious causes of pollution, such as the dumping of wastewater, it’s done less to limit more diffuse types of pollution, such as “nonpoint source pollution” that includes agricultural runoff from fields and urban stormwater from buildings,…

Sep. 29, 2021

Paul Litton co-authors research study on how past suffering can result in future praise

A team of researchers at Mizzou, including Paul Litton, the associate dean for faculty research and R. B. Price Professor of Law at Mizzou Law, have discovered that people tend to give more praise to someone for their good deeds as an adult after discovering that person has also had to overcome adversity or suffering earlier in life, such as abuse and neglect as a child. Litton collaborated with Philip Robbins, an associate professor and chair of the Department of Philosophy in the MU College of Arts and Science. They say these findings can help to narrow a knowledge gap…

Sep. 14, 2021

Prof. David Mitchell Honored with the Spurgeon Smithson Award by the Missouri Bar Foundation

S. David Mitchell, the Ruth L. Hulston Professor of Law and co-director of the Michael A. Middleton Center for Race, Citizenship and Justice, was one of three people honored with the 2021 Spurgeon Smithson Award by the Missouri Bar Foundation. Established in 1976, the Spurgeon Smithson Awards recognize judges, law teachers, and/or lawyers who have provided outstanding services toward the increase and diffusion of justice. The Missouri Bar Foundation Board of Trustees selects the recipients, and each award recipient receives a $2,000 stipend. “I find the teaching of the law to be a privilege and am humbled and thankful to be able…

Aug. 30, 2021

Prof. Lietzen named Best Lawyer in America in FDA and Biotechnology & Life Sciences Law

Professor Erika Lietzan has again been named a “Best Lawyer in America”  in both FDA Law and Biotechnology & Life Sciences.  This marks the eighth year in a row for FDA Law and the fourteenth year in a row for Biotechnology Law.  The Best Lawyers honor is meant to identify the top 5 percent of attorneys in the United States, and it is based on the judgment of one’s peers.  Professor Lietzan practiced law for 18 years prior to joining the University of Missouri in 2014, including eight years as a partner in the Food and Drug group of Covington…

Aug. 24, 2021

Prof. Dennis Crouch and Mizzou Law student present at 2021 BYU symposium

On August 19, Professor Dennis Crouch and Dr. Homayoon Rafatijo (MU Law 3L) jointly presented their manuscript titled “States Can Infringe upon Your Intellectual Property Rights with Impunity in the Era of ‘New Federalism,” at the 2021 BYU Copyright and Trademark Symposium.  The article criticizes the Supreme Court’s 2020 sovereign immunity decision in Allen v. Cooper, looking primarily through a lens of Constitutional history.  They plan to publish the article later this year.