School of Law: 114Th Diploma Ceremony
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23 MAY 2021 | 10:30 A.M. The Trustees and the President of Fordham University and the Dean and the Faculty of Fordham University School of Law welcome and congratulate the families and friends of the graduates of the following classes: J.D. SEPTEMBER 2020 J.D. FEBRUARY 2021 J.D. MAY 2021 M.S.L. FEBRUARY 2021 M.S.L. MAY 2021 M.S.L. SEPTEMBER 2021 LL.M. SEPTEMBER 2020 LL.M. FEBRUARY 2021 LL.M. MAY 2021 S.J.D. MAY 2021 S.J.D. SEPTEMBER 2021 1 TEACHER OF THE YEAR AWARD Clare Huntington Joseph M. McLaughlin Professor of Law Clare Huntington is the Joseph M. McLaughlin Professor of Law. She is an expert in the fields of family law and poverty law, publishing widely in both areas, including a monograph, Failure to Flourish: How Law Undermines Family Relationships, published by Oxford University Press. Huntington serves as an associate reporter for the American Law Institute’s Restatement of the Law, Children and the Law. Her legal experience includes serving as an attorney advisor in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel as well as clerking for Justice Harry A. Blackmun and Justice Stephen Breyer of the Supreme Court of the United States, Judge Merrick B. Garland of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and Judge Denise Cote of the United States District Court of the Southern District of New York. She earned her J.D. from Columbia Law School and her B.A. from Oberlin College. 2 ADJUNCT TEACHER OF THE YEAR AWARD Jordana Alter Confino Adjunct Professor of Law; Director of Professionalism and Special Projects Jordana Alter Confino is an adjunct professor of law and the director of professionalism and special projects, overseeing the house system and Fordham Law’s professionalism and wellness curricula. In addition to teaching Positive Lawyering and Peer Mentoring & Leadership, Confino has developed a robust series of programs designed to help students cultivate the social, emotional, and professional competencies they will need to flourish in their legal careers. Confino is an expert in positive psychology and lawyer well-being, and her article “Where Are We on the Path to Law Student Well-Being?” was recently published in the Journal of Legal Education. Prior to joining Fordham, she served as a lecturer in law, assistant director of academic counseling, and acting clerkship director at Columbia Law School. She also served as a judicial law clerk for Judge Robert D. Sack of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and Judge Paul A. Engelmayer of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. Confino holds a J.D. from Yale Law School, a B.A. in psychology from Yale University, and a Certification in Applied Positive Psychology from the New York Open Center. 3 EUGENE J. KEEFE AWARD Cristina Lombardi Class of 2021 Cristina Lombardi is a member of the Fordham Law class of 2021. She has served as the treasurer and vice president of the Student Bar Association, the inter-house professionalism fellow, the symposium editor for the Fordham Urban Law Journal, secretary of the Entrepreneurial Society, and a student advisor as part of the Board of Student Advisors program. Lombardi also worked as a legal intern in the Federal Tax Clinic with Professor Elizabeth Maresca. During her 1L summer, she split her time between the Tax Clinic and working as a legal research assistant on corporate matters at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. In the summer after her 2L year, Lombardi was a summer associate at Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP. After graduation, she will join the corporate department at Cooley LLP in New York. Lombardi received her M.A. in political science, with a concentration in comparative politics, from Villanova University in 2015, and her B.A. in political science and economics from Villanova University in 2014. 4 DEAN’S MEDAL OF RECOGNITION Linda Sugin Associate Dean for Academic Affairs; Professor of Law Linda Sugin has served as the associate dean for academic affairs since 2017. In that role, she focused on students, transforming the Fordham Law School student experience. Sugin guided the Law School’s academic program through the pandemic, keeping the academic program strong with substantially reduced in- person capacity. Fordham Law School’s professionalism program reflects Sugin’s vision for expanding the scope of legal education to include emotional support, leadership training, and essential skills that are not traditionally included in the law school curriculum. She launched the Law School’s two signature professionalism programs, the Peer Mentorship Program and the House System, and created the role of the Director of Professionalism. She oversaw the introduction of a January term for upper-level students, designed to offer students small-credit courses in a condensed time frame. Sugin also conceived the Law School’s January orientation, introduced in 2020, for first-year students as a day focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion, and worked with the full-time faculty to add diversity, equity, and inclusion training for faculty. Under Sugin’s leadership, the Law School recruited nine tenure-track faculty members, enriching the school’s scholarly profile and curricular offerings, and increasing the gender and racial diversity of the faculty. As chair of a search committee, she recruited Kimathi Gordon-Somers to be the Law School’s Assistant Dean of Students and Diversity. Sugin joined the faculty in 1994 and has taught courses in Federal Taxation, Tax Policy, Nonprofit Organizations, Corporations, Contracts, and Quantitative Methods for Lawyers. 5 DEAN’S MEDAL OF RECOGNITION She was the 2007 recipient of Fordham Law School’s Teacher of the Year Award. Her scholarly interests focus on issues of distributive justice in taxation and the governance of nonprofit organizations. Sugin’s works on political philosophy and taxation have been downloaded 20,000 times. Her scholarship draws attention to the way that taxation both reflects what is valued in society and shapes that society. She has written about nonprofit governance, philanthropy and inequality, and corporate philanthropy. Sugin is co-author of a textbook for the basic course on federal income taxation, The Individual Tax Base. Her op-eds have appeared in the New York Times, and she is regularly quoted in the media on issues of nonprofit governance. Sugin is a graduate of Harvard College and NYU School of Law, where she began her academic career as an acting assistant professor of law. After law school, Sugin clerked in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals for Chief Judge Wilfred Feinberg and practiced tax law at Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver and Jacobson. She is a member of the New York bar and the American Law Institute, and a former member of the board of advisors of the National Center on Philanthropy and the Law. 6 DOCTOR OF LAWS Hillary Rodham Clinton Former United States Secretary of State Throughout her long and distinguished career in American public life, Hillary Rodham Clinton has not only made history but also made an impact on personal histories everywhere. As a lawyer, activist, speaker, senator, and diplomat, she has spent decades fighting to empower people—especially children and families—and to bring about a more just and equitable society. Her passion for social justice was ignited in her childhood when she heard Martin Luther King Jr. speak during a trip to Chicago with her youth ministry. She began her career in law and public service after graduating from Wellesley College and Yale Law School, where she met her future husband, Bill Clinton. After working as a staff attorney with the Children’s Defense Fund and as a member of the impeachment inquiry staff in the House of Representatives in 1974, she moved to Arkansas with Bill. In Arkansas, she ran legal clinics serving the disenfranchised, founded one of the state’s first child advocacy groups, and championed improvements in health and educational policy during her husband’s governorship. Then, as first lady of the United States from 1993 to 2001, she helped to create the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which provided coverage to more than 8 million children. With her election to the U.S. Senate in 2000, Clinton became the first woman to win statewide office in New York. As senator, she helped secure federal funding for rebuilding New York after the 9/11 attacks, worked to secure health care for responders at Ground Zero, and launched initiatives to help New York farms and small businesses find new markets for their products. In 2009, she moved into a new role on the international stage as secretary of state under President Barack Obama. In addition to building a coalition for sanctions that 7 DOCTOR OF LAWS paved the way for the nuclear accord with Iran, she forcefully championed human rights and new opportunities for women and girls, people of color, LGBT people, and young people worldwide. In 2016 she became the first woman to earn a major party’s nomination for U.S. president. After the election, she founded Onward Together, an organization devoted to advancing progressive values and bringing about a fairer and more inclusive America. Clinton has also authored several bestselling books, including It Takes a Village, focused on how society can help children grow into capable, caring adults. For all she has done to bring people together and secure the blessings of peace, security, well-being, and opportunity for all, we, the President and Trustees of Fordham University, in solemn convocation assembled and in accord with the chartered authority bestowed on us by the Regents of the University of the State of New York, declare Hillary Rodham Clinton Doctor of Laws, honoris causa.