We often learn about the world’s history of wars in school, but we don’t often hear about the rebuilding that comes afterward.

http://myfox8.com/2013/06/06/kosovar-albanians-learn-law-at-wake-forest/

While his classmates relaxed after final exams and looked forward to graduation, Dylan Greenwood (’13) prepared for and gave an oral argument at the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.  Greenwood recently argued at the Fourth Circuit in Richmond, Va., as part of the Appellate Advocacy Clinic.  Greenwood was the fourth Appellate Advocacy Clinic member to argue in the Fourth Circuit during the 2012-13 academic year.

Greenwood argued on behalf of Mitchell Smalls, in the case of United States v. Smalls.  Also representing Mr. Smalls were John Forneris (’13) and Professor John Korzen, the director of the Appellate Advocacy Clinic.  The issue on appeal is whether a district court judge must give an individualized explanation of the reasons for a particular sentence in a resentencing under 18 U.S.C. § 3582, or whether it is sufficient if the district court judge merely states that the sentencing factors were considered.  The Fourth Circuit previously held in 2000, in United States v. Legree, that no individualized explanation is needed, but the Court appointed the Appellate Advocacy Clinic to address whether the law has changed in the meantime due to a subsequent Supreme Court decision.

Greenwood and Forneris researched and drafted a Brief of Appellant, and then a Reply Brief of Appellant, contending that Smalls’ resentence was either inadequate under the existing Legree precedent or that Legree is no longer good law.

Greenwood had four practice arguments before the real thing.  Judges for those practices included another Clinic member, Mary Beth Usher (’13); Professors Tanya Marsh and Barbara Lentz; and four attorneys with the Federal Public Defender for the Eastern District of North Carolina, on a visit to Raleigh that Greenwood arranged.

The three-judge panel for Greenwood’s oral argument consisted of Fourth Circuit Judge Diana Motz of Maryland; Fourth Circuit Judge Roger Gregory of Virginia; and, sitting by designation, District Court Judge Ellen Hollander of Maryland.

Greenwood had some support in Richmond.  In addition to Forneris and Professor Korzen, Greenwood’s parents and girlfriend attended the argument.

“I was very impressed with all of Dylan’s work on this appeal,” Professor Korzen said, “especially his preparation for oral argument and presentation of the oral argument.  It was a hot bench with some very hard questions, but Dylan held his ground and had great answers for all their concerns.”

The Appellate Advocacy Clinic is a two-semester course for third-year law students.  During the 2012-13 academic year, the Clinic had 10 students working on six appeals in four different appellate jurisdictions.  For more information about the Clinic, contact Professor Korzen.

Many law schools are facing tight budgets and in some cases, declining enrollments. As a result, it’s important for many law schools to spend their limited resources efficiently in order to produce the highest possible educational quality.

U.S. News has developed a new, exclusive list showing which law schools are able to produce the highest educational quality, as determined by their place in our Best Law Schools rankings, but spend relatively less money to achieve that quality.

Read full story here.

With its photos of leather bound law tomes and the U.S. Supreme Court building, the Daniel Elliott Lankford’s website looks like that of many other law firms.

But read the small print, and you will quickly see that all is not as it seems: “Daniel Elliott & Lankford is a fictitious law firm which was created by three students at Wake Forest University School of Law for a class project. This website is not intended for use as legal advice and no one listed on this page is a licensed attorney.”

The website was the final course project for Professor Steve Nickles’ Church, Law and Ethics class. Three videos on the site discuss government enforcement of religious obligations, as they pertain to Islamic Mahr, Jewish Get and Spiritual Custody Orders. The website also serves as a marketing tool for its three creators: Leslie Daniel (’13), Will Elliott (’13) and Ben Lankford (’13).

The students created the website as a vehicle to deliver the three videos about government enforcement of religious obligations in secular courts. Elliott had been using a blog format for his weekly papers during the semester. That gave Daniel the idea of creating a website and adding more content. The three students all received As in the class.

For Daniel, who participated in the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Externship program and plans to work in business law at Fulbright & Jaworski in Houston after graduation, the intersection of church and business law made for an interesting study.  The way churches are run mirrors the way businesses run, she said.

“I found it really interesting that the class was a mix of law and divinity students,” she said. “Each side always had something interesting to add to the discussion that the other had not thought of.”

Elliott, whose uncle is both an attorney for the Georgia Presbyterian Diocese and an Episcopalian priest, has long been interested in the study of law and religion. Influenced by his uncle’s involvement in an important church-law case decided last year by the U.S. Supreme Court, he plans to look for a job as an assistant district attorney after graduation.

“The freedom of religion in America allows people to feel comfortable about being incredibly passionate about their religious beliefs,” he said. “Any time there is a group of people who passionately believe something, there is a potential for conflict and controversy with other groups.”

Churches have to deal with many of the same aspects of law as businesses do, he said. But the role of religion in our society, as defined by the Constitution, can complicate matters.

“The separation of church and state can feel like an unnatural concept at times. As Americans, people are free to follow their religion,” he said. “Since America is a democracy, our government is our people. But that government is not allowed to be religious. I think it can be hard to reconcile that in many ways.”

Lankford, who describes his family as fairly religious does not believe in God, but religion is still important to him.

“I’m interested in church law because I think the courts and ‘civil’ authority need to get out of people’s religions,” he said. “It is important that America continues to have the highest protections for religious expression because without religion, we are left with the government as our sole authority. And I hate the idea of a government divorced from the religious (self-evident truth) undertones which make America the best country on earth.”

As someone who aspires to a career as a public defender, Lankford said that the course could help him in working with clients who don’t always have a good understanding of their legal rights. For example, someone might consider taking peyote a religious practice, but the law would see that as a criminal offense.

“I wanted to show the areas where religion and the law rubbed each other sore,” Lankford said. “In a child custody hearing, which parent decides the child’s religious upbringing, taking into account that the first amendment both allows people religious freedom and forbids the government from enforcing religious doctrine. It’s a tough question, but I think our courts must err on the side of letting people chose their own religion/beliefs/family values.”

For the first time in recent memory, four graduates of the Wake Forest University School of Law are commissioning as Judge Advocate Generals (JAG): Charity Franklin, Jay Kyler, Michael Miranda and Kristina Wolf.

Franklin (’13) is going to the Navy, while the other three are joining the Army. Their careers as a JAG will start with a training regimen both in the ways of military life and military law.

Franklin will be going to Naval Justice School in Rhode Island, while her law school classmates joining the Army JAG Corps will go to JAG school in Charlottesville, Va.

After their training they will move to their first posts, which they currently do not know the location. As JAG officers they will provide professional legal services and solutions in support of military justice and other legal issues to Navy and Army members as well as their families and veterans.

“My aspiration to become a Navy JAG officer stems from a desire to give back to the people who make sacrifices for my freedom every day, by ensuring that they receive justice not only in the military, but in their personal lives as well,” said Franklin, who grew up in Spruce Pine, N.C. “In addition, life in the Navy promises untold adventure, the chance to practice law in a way that most attorneys only ever dream, and the opportunity to serve my country.”

As Army JAG officers, Franklin’s classmates will serve soldiers, their families, and retired soldiers in client services such as writing wills, doing powers of attorney, assisting with claims and tort matters, and immigration, among others.

“What first attracted me were all of the opportunities to serve others,” stated Wolf (’13), who calls Westlake, Ohio, home. “I had the opportunity to speak with a Navy JAG, just back from deployment who spoke about his ability to do international law and assist with nation building and training Iraqi soldiers in American trial ideals of not using torture and why we have evidentiary rules. He was incredibly enthusiastic about his work as a JAG officer, so I knew that I wanted to at least explore the JAG Corps.”

As Army JAGs, the Wake Forest Law alumni will also have the opportunity to serve as trial counsel (prosecutors), handling courts martial and advising commanders in charge of brigades. Finally, they will do administrative law which consists of interpreting the Army Regulations.

“For me, JAG offered the best of all worlds,” said Miranda (’13) of Morristown, N.J. “I will have the opportunity to enjoy a variety of legal assignments rather than being limited to a specific practice area.  Additionally, because JAG officers are first and foremost military officers, I will have non-legal duties, responsibilities, and experiences that simply cannot be found in more ‘traditional’ legal positions.  Finally, I am looking forward to rejoining the military community and culture.  Regardless of a soldier’s individual job, the military is truly a way of life rather than just a job, and it is a way of life I am eager to return to.”

Kyler (’13), who was raised Easton, Md., stated that his grandfather, Wheatley Ward, who was a Quarter Master for the Navy in World War II, was one of his biggest influences in deciding to join the military. Kyler enrolled in ROTC as undergraduate at the University of Maryland. He completed Air Assault School in Fort Knox, Ky., after his sophomore year.

“My grandfather was always very supportive and a big influence on why I joined ROTC as undergrad and then decided to become an officer,” Kyler explained. “After I got done with Air Assault school, my grandfather presented me with the ensign from the destroyer he was on in World War II and it meant a lot to me. It’s still hanging over my fireplace.”

Kyler added that he is on the same track that Dean Blake D. Morant took after the dean joined the JAG corps following his graduation from the University of Virginia law school. “I decided litigation and the law would probably be something that would suit my interests,” he said. “I thought the JAG corps would be nice mix of military and intellectual challenge.”

The JAG Corps has a long history of cultivating outstanding lawyers and leaders, beginning with Lieutenant Colonel William Tudor. He was the first judge advocate and was appointed by the Second Continental Congress for the Army in 1775. Early American judge advocates were both lawyers and combat soldiers, commanding and fighting alongside the troops. The JAG position was permanently established in 1849. By the start of World War I, the number of officers in The Judge Advocate General’s Department had grown from one lieutenant colonel to 32 officers. By the end of World War II, the size of the department reached a historical high of more than 2,000 members, 80 percent of whom had been in civilian practice prior to the outbreak of the conflict.

In 1947, the Navy created a “law specialist” program to allow line officers restricted duty to perform legal services. By the Act of May 5, 1950, Congress required that the Judge Advocate General be a lawyer. The Act also required each Judge Advocate General of any service be a member of the bar with not less than eight years of legal duties as a commissioned officer. The Act also enacted the first Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). By 1967, the Navy had 20 years of experience with the law specialist program. There was, however, increasing pressure to create a separate corps of lawyers. That year, Congress established the Judge Advocate General’s Corps within the DoN. The legislation was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on Dec. 8, 1967, and ensured Navy lawyers’ status as members of a distinct professional group within the Navy, similar to physicians and chaplains.

The Wake Forest University School of Law conferred hoods on 183 graduates on Sunday, May 19, in Wait Chapel. The graduates included the first two to earn the Scientiae Juridicae Doctor degree and the first nine to earn the Master of Studies in Law degree.

The law school’s 39th annual hooding speaker, Thomas L. Sager (’76), Dupont Legal vice president and general counsel, told the graduates and their families that it was because of Wake Forest Law that he has realized the success he has experienced. “It prepared me so well,” he said. “You have matriculated from one of the finest law schools in the nation and you will soon realize how well it has prepared you.”

Sager added that many of the graduates will embark on a career in the legal profession, which remains a noble profession for many. “As lawyers, if we do not take care of the how, the what doesn’t matter,” he explained. “I know you can make a buck, but can you make a difference? Please keep in mind it’s not the position or the money, it’s whether you made a difference. I know everyone of you will make a difference in the years to come.”

Executive Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Suzanne Reynolds congratulated the class of 2013, which received a standing ovation from family and friends in the audience.

Dean Blake Morant described this graduating class as being made up of a group of individuals who are going to contribute to society in a great way.

“I make these comments with mixed emotions because I have bonded with you over the past three years I have seen you grow not only in terms of your intellectual abilities but as individuals who dedicated well over five figures of hours of pro bono legal work,” he said. “I know you will continue to thrive and I know you will do not only for yourselves, but for others.”

Dean Morant added the graduates’ degrees are an investment for a lifetime and that 73 percent of the class donated to Class of 2013 3L campaign. “I thank you and applaud you for all you have done and for all the great things you are going to do.”

A diploma ceremony was held in Wait Chapel this morning following Commencement exercises on Hearn Plaza.

Dean Morant announced that the third-year graduating class chose Barbara Lentz as “Professor of the Year” and Officer Charlie D as “Staff Member of the Year.” Professor Mark Hall conferred the hoods.

The ceremony, which included the bestowing of numerous awards, was followed by the Dean’s Hooding Reception at the Forsyth Country Club. Among the award winners were:

• Melissa Catherine Evett of Apex, N.C., received the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers Award from the North Carolina Chapter.

• Rory P. Agan of Enfield, N.H., received the American Bar Association and The Bureau of National Affairs Award for Excellence in the Study of Health Law.

• Jason Richard Weber of Elkhart, Ind., received the American Bar Association’s Section of Intellectual Property Law and The Bureau of National Affairs Inc. Award for the student who achieves the highest grade among the courses of Intellectual Property, Copyright and Trademarks.

• Dustin Timothy Carlton of Murfreesboro, Tenn., and John William Forneris of Clifton, Va.,  received the American Bar Association and The Bureau of National Affairs Award for Excellence in the Study of Labor and Employment Law, which is given to the students who achieve the highest grades in the course.

• Michael Dinesh Miranda of Morristown, N.J., received the Dean’s Award, which is given to honor the extraordinary contributions of a student leader.

• Matthew Thomas Houston of Beulaville, N.C., received the E. McGruder Faris Memorial Award and $200 cash, which is given to the student exhibiting the highest standards of character, leadership and scholarship.

• Kathryn Elizabeth Hatcher of Fuquay-Varina, N.C., received the Forsyth County Women Attorney’s Association Book Award, which is presented annually to an outstanding female graduate based upon her academic achievements, leadership, service to community, professionalism and commitment to the legal profession.

•  Maria Elizabeth Usher of Charlotte, N.C., received the Laura J. Gendy Award, a new award that was established by alumni, family and friends of Laura J. Gendy (JD’ 00) to provide an annual cash award in the amount of $500 to a graduating law student who exemplifies integrity, compassion for others and strength of character that were the hallmarks of Gendy, who died in August 2008.

• Timothy Pennell Broyhill of Winston-Salem, N.C., and Margaret Ann McCall of Richmond, Va., received the Robert Goldberg Award in Trial Advocacy, which honors the memory of Robert Goldberg, a student at the School of Law, who was killed in World War II. It is an annual cash award in the amount of $3,000 given to the students showing the highest aptitude and ethics in trial advocacy.

• Alexander S. Ingle of Wichita, Kan., received the I. Beverly Lake Award, which was established in honor of I. Beverly Lake Sr., professor of law at Wake Forest University, practicing attorney, assistant attorney general of North Carolina 1951-1955, and retired Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court. The annual cash award in the amount of $500 is given to the student or students in the law school exhibiting the greatest proficiency in the study of Constitutional Law.

• Aretina K. Samuel-Priestly of Saint Croix, Virgin Islands, received the National Association of Women Lawyers Award, which is presented annually to an outstanding law graduate at each American Bar Association-approved law school.

• Kristina Marie Wolf of Westlake, Ohio, received the North Carolina State Bar Student Pro Bono Service Award, which is presented annually to a student who has contributed time and talent to law-related service.

• Morgan Lewis & Bockius LLP received the Wake Forest University School of Law Service award, which recognizes extraordinary contributions to the law school’s program of legal education, faculty or students.

Sager started his career with DuPont in August 1976 as an attorney in the labor and securities group. Sager helped pioneer the DuPont Convergence and Law Firm Partnering Program and continues to have oversight responsibility. Through his leadership, this program has become a benchmark in the industry and has received national acclaim for its innovative approach to the business of practicing law. He was named associate general counsel in 1994. In January 1998 he was named chief litigation counsel, where his responsibilities included oversight of all litigation and IS support for the entire function. He was named vice president and assistant general counsel in November 1999, and to his current position in July 2008.

Law schools hunting for students as their enrollment numbers drop are increasingly trying to attract an unexpected group: people who have no intention of practicing law.

Doctors, environmental consultants and even an urban planner have signed up for the programs, which offer master’s degrees in law and typically cost about the same as one year of law school.

Pitched at midcareer professionals, the programs tend to draw people who work in heavily regulated fields where compliance with a growing body of rules requires an increasingly sophisticated understanding of the law. Some students also hope to gain a competitive edge.

“I thought it would be smart to learn about health law, not just for my day-to-day practice but to help me perhaps get involved in some administrative role,” said Dr. Benjamin Goldman, an obstetrician and gynecologist at North Shore University Hospital on Long Island. He completed an online degree program in health law through Loyola University Chicago School of Law, and graduated over the weekend.

Law schools are also beefing up existing programs for foreign lawyers looking for a primer in U.S. legal practice, and for attorneys who want to burnish their credentials with additional degrees in intellectual property and other hot practice areas.

Student enrollment in programs that don’t offer a juris doctor, or J.D.—the traditional three-year-law degree—has increased 13% since 2010, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of American Bar Association data.

The Wall Street Journal

Last year, Emory University School of Law in Atlanta and Wake Forest University School of Law in Winston-Salem, N.C., both launched master’s-degree programs geared specifically for nonlawyers who want grounding in legal basics.

Fordham University School of Law in New York recently added an LLM, or Master of Laws, program in international dispute resolution and is teeing up another in corporate compliance. About 90% of the school’s 190 LLM students are from abroad, said Toni Fine, an assistant dean at the school, and demand from Asian lawyers in particular has spiked.

The ABA doesn’t track how many law schools launch new non-J.D. programs each year. But legal educators and ABA officials report anecdotally that such programs have mushroomed in recent years, as more schools introduce new offerings or expand existing programs. They say the trend could partly offset the current enrollment slump among first-year law students.

Law schools are grappling with steep declines in applications and enrollment amid a weak legal-jobs market.

As of May 10, applications to law schools were at their lowest level, year-to-date, since 2001, according to the Law School Admission Council, a nonprofit group that administers the Law School Admission Test and compiles admissions data.

Students have submitted 372,225 applications for the fall 2013 semester so far this year, a 19% drop compared with the same time in 2012 and a 37% decline from that in 2010, during the recession, when students flocked to law schools.

“Adding new degree programs is like a company diversifying its product lines. If demand for one sags, you’ve still got alternative sources of revenue coming in,” said Paul McGreal, dean of the University of Dayton School of Law, which now offers master’s degrees for nonlawyers and practicing attorneys alike.

As the supply of would-be lawyers declines, some law schools have trimmed staff. Others have opted to limit the size of incoming classes, a cost-cutting move that can also help schools stay selective on the admissions side, and thus maintain their position in the widely followed U.S. News & World Report rankings.

Barry Currier, the ABA’s managing director of accreditation and legal education, said more non-J.D. programs are popping up now for two reasons: They can generate revenue for schools, and they respond to market needs for people with specialized training.

“It preceded the economic downturn,” Mr. Currier said, “but it’s accelerated as the J.D. enrollments have declined, and it’s continuing this year.”

Some educators are skeptical about the new crop of offerings. Nan Hunter, a law professor and associate dean for graduate programs at Georgetown University Law Center, which has long offered LLM degrees in tax, national security, health and securities law, said some schools appeared to be “rushing into the business” because of financial concerns.

At Emory, Dean Robert Schapiro played down the role additional revenue might have had in setting up the new program, which he said was a response to “strong” demand for legal education in the broader population and outside the U.S. The 40 or so students in Emory’s program include physicians, a dentist, a sports-communications staffer at CNN, an environmental-consulting executive and a South Korean patent judge.

But Chris Meazell, head of Wake Forest’s new Master of Studies in Law program, said the program was launched largely to diversify the school’s offerings at a time of shrinking enrollment at law schools nationwide.

Tiffany Kallam is set to graduate on Monday from the fledgling Wake Forest program. A 2012 graduate of Guilford College in Greensboro, N.C., Ms. Kallam wants to develop educational opportunities for prison inmates, and said the one-year master’s program gave her “a better understanding of criminal law and prison culture” without the expense and time of enrolling in a traditional J.D. program.

Technology has also helped drive the growth of programs aimed at students not headed into law careers, as schools roll out online courses that allow distance learning and offer more flexibility for students such as Dr. Goldman, who are juggling legal studies with full-time work.

Loyola University Chicago School of Law began offering online master’s degrees in 2008; since then, online enrollment has swelled from 16 to nearly 350 students, according to Kelley Yaccino, director of enrollment management and marketing for the university’s Beazley Institute for Health Law and Policy.

In January, Washington University School of Law in St. Louis introduced its online LLM program in U.S. law, an offering the school said had been planned before the recent decline in enrollment.

The inaugural class of 10 included foreign attorneys from Brazil, China, India, Japan, Mexico and Pakistan.

Tiffany Kallam (’13) learned in middle school how it feels to be judged when she overheard her guidance counselor tell a colleague that Kallam probably wouldn’t amount to anything.

Kallam, who grew up in Minnesota and also lived in Texas, had come to her guidance counselor to talk about her depression over her family situation. Her mother was struggling at the time with drug addiction, and her father was incarcerated. She was waiting outside the guidance counselor’s office when she heard the guidance counselor say Kallam would likely end up just like her mother.

“She’s sweetness and light, but there’s not much hope,” the guidance counselor said, according to Kallam.

Kallam said it felt horrible to be judged based solely on circumstances she had no control over. Kallam, who is white, also lived with her godparents and their two children, who are black, at various times during her childhood, and saw how racism affected her godparents.

Those experiences shaped a strong passion for social justice in Kallam, propelling her to Guilford College and to Wake Forest University School of Law, where she will graduate Monday with a Master’s of Studies in Law degree. She will be among the first graduates of the Master’s of Studies in Law program.

Read more here.

America’s most recent “Great Recession” brought with it public outcry over the pay of executives who were leading companies that were receiving public assistance, mainly in the form of cash infusions via the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). 

Although high executive compensation had been justified by the belief that it is designed to reflect corporate performance, that it simply rewards leaders of successful companies with high pay, the past two decades have seen executive compensation increase dramatically without any relationship to a company’s performance.  Given this stagnation in proportionality, policy makers, shareholders and academics began to increase their calls for reforms to executive compensation packages.  However, regulation, especially direct control by the federal government, has gotten mixed support at best.  While criticism over executive pay and failed reforms demonstrates that faith in the current system is a minority belief, there is little consensus as to which reforms would most effectively rein in extravagant executive pay packages or even who should be implementing these reforms.

Although Congress used provisions in TARP and the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act to impose a de facto “federalization” of executive compensation, it was merely a temporary measure.  As a result, during the post-recovery period states have begun to target executive pay, albeit as it pertains to executives in the non-profit sector, and it is only a matter of time before political pressure forces governors and state legislators to tackle the issue of pay in the for-profit sector.  Therefore, federal lawmakers ought to enact a comprehensive and long-lasting legislative scheme to prevent states from “racing to the bottom” in their attempt to (de) regulate pay.

Some academics, such as Wake Forest Law Professor Omari Simmons, have underplayed the importance of serious resource allocation to executive compensation reform.  By arguing that overemphasis on it has served as a “blue pill” for lawmakers, that is, that it serves as a diversion that pulls attention away from more important economic, social and corporate governance issues, these scholars downplay the significant impact that executive compensation reform could have on these serious societal problems, such as reducing socio-economic inequality.

Corporate governance is focused on processes, most notably “the process by which business decisions are made and the process by which the persons who will make those decisions are chosen”, or in this case, compensated.  This includes internal corporate rules and norms, shareholder rules, and federal regulations (including securities regulation).  Most important to the discussion about corporate governance is the relation between shareholders and directors and any discussion about executive compensation will certainly highlight the notion that excessive pay furthers the divide between these two parties.  Additionally, corporate governance is increasingly seen as way to ensure ethical corporate behavior and commitment to fixing other social and economic issues, which the amount and structure of executive compensation can help achieve.

Excessive executive compensation poses a grave threat to corporate governance as it furthers agency costs by incentivizing executives and directors to diverge from shareholder interests, one of the fundamental problems that corporate governance is intended to address.  Reforming executive compensation is essential to corporate governance if, for no other reason, it forces corporate boards to listen to shareholders complaints.  There is a wealth of anecdotal and statistical evidence that compensation reforms, especially say-on-pay votes, are widely successful in forcing corporate boards to listen to shareholders, even if they were originally skeptical. Although these votes on compensation are not (yet) binding, losing a vote would be embarrassing for a company and often times signal, or hasten, the departure of C-Sweep executives.  Clearly executive compensation votes have gone beyond merely passive expressions of board actions that can be easily ignored by corporate executives.  Instead, even non-binding votes have become powerful tools of the shareholders to annually show their displeasure with the direction that the corporation is headed and even put pressure on boards to make changes in the composition of the executive slate.

Read the full story here.

Coming of age in Serbian-controlled Kosovo, Kreshnik Radoniqi risked everytCategorieshing for his education.

To be taught by Albanian teachers, Radoniqi gathered with just a few other students in private houses instead of traditional school campuses. To avoid detection, they had to move from house to house, never staying too long in one place. Had Serbian authorities discovered his independent education, he would have faced beatings, confiscation of his education materials, and possibly worse.

But the risks were worth it, Radoniqi said.

“We didn’t want to be occupied. We wanted freedom,” Radoniqi said. “We struggled for education but we achieved that.”

Serbian law was no less systematically oppressive to Albanians than the educational system. But when the Serbian occupiers were finally driven out in 1999, the legal system was left in a shambles that is still struggling for reform.

That’s why Radoniqi and two fellow Kosovars – Shqipdon Fazliu and Valon Kurdaj – are taking part in a unique program for Kosovo legal professionals at Wake Forest University School of Law.

“We are still fighting for that, we are still trying to improve” the court system in Kosovo, Fazliu said. “That is why we came here.”

The three men – Radoniqi and Kurdaj are judges, Fazliu a prosecutor – said bearing witness to the injustices and human right abuses that Albanians faced during the 10-year occupation motivated them to enter the legal field.

“That made me think that in the future, I could become a lawyer and treat every person equally and without discrimination,” Fazliu said.

Kosovo – on the Balkan Peninsula in Southeast Europe – is home to 1.8 million people. About 92 percent of them are Albanians, according to U.S. estimates.

The Kosovar men are here for one academic year and will earn LL.M. degrees on Monday, May 20. Two more jurists from Kosovo are scheduled to arrive for the fall semester.

“The idea is they’ll take this experience and education and take it back to Kosovo, to be in a better position to see some of the reforms that country is desperately trying to keep in place,” said Richard Schneider, associate dean for international affairs at the School of Law. The program at Wake Forest is the only one in the country focused on providing further legal education for Kosovo attorneys.

Part of the problem in Kosovo is the sheer newness of the legal system, which has been in place for fewer than 15 years. What’s in place now, Radoniqi said, sprang from a hodgepodge of local rules as well as laws cobbled together from the United Nations’ Mission in Kosovo. Laws about who holds property are somewhat uneven because the country – once part of communist Yugoslavia – had been under a system in which property was held by the state.

“Changing from a social system to a Democratic system is a big challenge,” Radoniqi said.

There is also wide variability in the country in terms of sentencing guidelines. Because there are no plea bargains or other legal expediencies that we have here, there is a huge backlog of cases, Radoniqi said, with some non-serious cases taking up to two years for resolution.

Having a chance to see how the courts operate in the U.S. will help them bring reforms in Kosovo, Fazliu said.

The program started with discussions between the School of Law and U.S. Attorney’s Office for Eastern North Carolina, based in Raleigh. Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert J. “Bobby” Higdon  (’85, JD ’89) had made several trips to Kosovo as pat of a federal Department of Justice effort to help the nation develop its court system. As part of his efforts, Higdon brought the three Kosovo attorneys to Winston-Salem, where Schneider told them about the LL.M. program. After the three men finish their degrees, they will return to Kosovo with the goal of reforming its fledgling system.

The federal government is helping the Wake Forest program by finding and screening potential applicants from Kosovo, Schneider said.

The Kosovo students aren’t the only ones who benefit from the program, Schneider said. Other law students get a chance to learn from them.

“They’re sharing things that American law students won’t hear anywhere else…It’s adding a huge amount of depth to the discussion,” Schneider said. “It becomes a real cross-cultural, cross-legal experience for everyone involved. They’re able to contribute a kind of raw, visceral experience with criminal justice issues.”