New awards recognize law school excellence

July 21, 2017

Spider Pride

We've always had excellent scholarship at Richmond Law. This week, we're celebrating the stalwart support and generosity of our alumni and friends that make recognizing and retaining top-notch faculty possible. 

Dean Wendy Perdue — who currently serves as president-elect of the American Association of Law Schools — recently announced three faculty appointments to recognize the outstanding contributions of Richmond Law professors.

Alum and trustee Roberts Moore, L'61, and his wife, Sandra, made the new professorship possible. Moore is a senior litigation partner with Gentry Locke in Roanoke, and in addition to serving as a trustee of the University, also volunteers as a member of the Richmond Law Advisory Board. 
 
Perdue named Corinna Barrett Lain the inaugural S.D. Roberts & Sandra Moore Professor of Law. Lain is a nationally known constitutional law scholar who writes about the influence of extralegal norms on Supreme Court decision making, with a particular focus on the field of capital punishment. In 2016, the Delaware Supreme Court cited her legal history work in its opinion invalidating the death penalty.

Additionally, a new Research Scholar position now honors the legacy of the Hon. Austin E. Owen, L’50. Judge Owen was the Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia and a partner at Owen, Guy, Rhodes, Betz, Smith, and Dickerson before he was appointed a judge of the Second Judicial Circuit in Virginia. The Austin E. Owen Research Scholar Endowment was established by Judge Owen’s daughter, Dr. Judith Owen Hopkins, W'74, and son-in-law, Dr. Marbry B. Hopkins, R'74. 

Dean Perdue named professors Henry L. Chambers Jr. and Kimberly Jenkins Robinson as our first Austin E. Owen Research Scholars. 

Chambers teaches and writes in the areas of constitutional law, employment discrimination, voting rights, criminal law, and law and religion. His scholarship led him to serve as a special assistant attorney general for Virginia during the state’s most recent redistricting, and as a member of the American Law Institute.
 
Robinson is a national expert who speaks domestically and internationally about educational equity, civil rights, and the federal role in education. Her article, “Disrupting Education Federalism” in the Washington University Law Review, won the 2016 Steven S. Goldberg Award for Distinguished Scholarship in Education Law. She is co-editor with Professor Charles J. Ogletree Jr. of The Enduring Legacy of Rodriguez: Creating New Pathways to Equal Educational Opportunity.

In a few weeks, our new 1L students will arrive on campus to begin their legal education, and these new appointments remind us how much they have to look forward to train the next generation of general counsels, judges, prosecutors, and defenders who came to Richmond Law before their careers.

Learn more about Lain, Chambers, and Robinson