UND Law Faculty Expertise and Accomplishments
Christensen Named ABA Business Law Section Fellow
Grant Christensen, Associate Professor of Law, has been selected as a newly appointed 2018-2020 American Bar Association’s Business Law Fellow. The ABA’s Business Law Section Fellows Program consists of more than 30 lawyers with a wide range of backgrounds and practice areas, who have demonstrated leadership involvement and are eager to become more involved within the Section. Professor Christensen is one of only a dozen newly appointed ABA Business Law Fellows from across the nation. He is an active member of the Section, including on the Business & Corporate Litigation Committee, where he has contributed expertise related to doing business with American Indian tribes.
Kathryn Rand Radio Interview on Legalized Sports Betting
Kathryn Rand and Steven Light were recently interviewed on Prairie Public's Main Street to answer the question: what will happen now that the Supreme court has opened the door to widespread legalized sports betting? Listen to the full interview here: http://news.prairiepublic.org/post/legalized-sports-betting-mark-trahant-chuck-lura-sue-balcom-farmers-markets
McGinniss Re-Appointed to the Joint Committee on Attorney Standards and Newly Appointed as Its Chair
At the invitation of Chief Justice VandeWalle of the North Dakota Supreme Court, Associate Professor of Law Michael S. McGinniss accepted an appointment to serve a third consecutive three-year term on the Joint Committee on Attorney Standards, beginning January 1, 2018. He has also accepted an appointment by SBAND President Darcie Einarson to serve a two-year term as Chair of the Joint Committee.
The Joint Committee is established by Supreme Court Administrative Rule 38, and consists of members appointed by the Supreme Court and the SBAND Board of Governors. It provides an indispensable mechanism for the Court and SBAND to engage in continual review of the North Dakota Rules of Professional Conduct, rules governing the lawyer discipline system, and other matters concerning attorney standards and supervision.
Before joining the law school faculty in 2010, Professor McGinniss served for twelve years as Disciplinary Counsel for the Delaware Supreme Court. He currently teaches Professional Responsibility, Evidence, Conflict of Laws, and Advanced Legal Ethics. He also served for three years as a founding co-coordinator for the UND School of Law’s team-taught first-year course, Professional Foundations. Professor McGinniss’ research and scholarship interests have focused on questions concerning the professional, ethical and moral responsibilities of lawyers.
In addition to serving on the Joint Committee since January 2012, Professor McGinniss has regularly shared his expertise in lawyer discipline by providing training for members of the North Dakota Disciplinary Board and District Inquiry Committees, and served as the annual coordinator for the Mart Vogel Lecture on Professionalism and Legal Ethics. For each of the past seven years, Professor McGinniss has received the J. Philip Johnson Faculty Fellow Award, given to promote professional responsibility, leadership and ethics, both in the legal profession and in the community.
Link to website for the Joint Committee on Attorney Standards:
http://www.ndcourts.gov/court/committees/Jt_ASC/committee.asp
Christensen Publishes Law Review Article On Reading Indian Law and Presents on Corporate Law at the University of Oslo
Arizona Law Review Article: UND Professor Grant Christensen, and Melissa Tatum from the University of Arizona, have just posted their most recent legal scholarship. “Reading Indian Law” will be published later this year by the University of Tulsa Law Review and reflects the growing trend in legal scholarship to incorporate an empirical component into a traditionally qualitative discipline. Cribbing from the Abstract: “This article surveys thirty years of law review articles and compiles a formal ranking system to create a list of the 100 most influential Indian law scholarly pieces from the last thirty years. As Indian law has grown from a niche field offered by a couple schools to a robust legal discipline it is now impossible for the thousands of professors, students, practitioners, and judges to identify the most important pieces published each year. This piece, with its first of its kind approach to ranking Indian law scholarship, has the potential to not only highlight other important works but to become an article that is itself the focus of conversation.”
The article can be downloaded here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3142056
In addition to support from the University of North Dakota, Professor Christensen would like to thank the Webb family for their support of his scholarship this year. The Webb Professorship honors the late Judge Rodney Webb and supports innovative legal scholarship at the University of North Dakota.
Oslo Presentation: Professor Grant Christensen was an invited speaker at the University of Oslo as part of a three-day international conference focused on Corporate Law, Corporate Governance, and Sustainability. The event brought together legal scholars from around the world to discuss the challenges of promoting sustainability in a world governed by corporate rules that too often emphasize short term shareholder value over long term sustainability which has the potential to maintain shareholder value through periods of social, environmental, and cultural change. The speakers at the conference have each also produced a chapter summarizing their presentation to be collected and published by Cambridge University Press.
Professor Christensen focused his contributions on bringing an indigenous perspective to questions of sustainability. His scholarship emphasized that the concept of sustainability must include the promotion of social equality and cultural equity. From an indigenous perspective this includes ensuring the protection of sacred sites, the preservation of indigenous language and culture, and the respect of chthonic law (legal principles that come from indigenous legal traditions). His presentation also emphasized examples of how corporate – indigenous partnerships have produced great returns for both indigenous communities and for corporate shareholders, and contrasted such positive relationships with the cost to corporations of protracted conflict with native peoples.
In addition to support from both the University of North Dakota and the University of Oslo, Professor Christensen would like to thank the Webb family for their support of his scholarship this year. The Webb Professorship honors the late Judge Rodney Webb and supports innovative legal scholarship at the University of North Dakota.
Jackson Appointed to AALS Clinical Conference Planning Committee
Professor Margaret Moore Jackson has been appointed the Planning Committee for the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) 2017 Conference on Clinical Legal Education, which will be held in Denver, CO. Jackson also previously served in this role for the 2012 Conference.
AALS is a nonprofit association of 179 law schools whose mission is to uphold and advance excellence in legal education. The clinical conference is the largest annual meeting of an AALS section.
It is an honor to have one of UND School of Law’s professors asked to serve on the planning committee for the AALS’s largest conference for a second time. Professor Jackson’s appointment reflects her dedication, hard work, and effectiveness in representing UND at the national level.