Annual Fund Supports King Hall Symposia

Gifts to the King Hall Annual Fund provide the Law School with a vital resource that enhances the student experience and overall educational quality of King Hall in a variety of critically important ways.  Most alumni know gifts to the fund support scholarships and student organizations, clinical programs, and contribute to the expansion and renovation of King Hall, but there’s another important role the annual fund plays that many are probably unaware of: funding Law School special events such as the recent Law Review Symposium on Justice John Paul Stevens.

Held March 6 in the Wilkins Moot Courtroom, the symposium brought together an impressive roster of experts from government, academia, and the media, many of whom served as law clerks to the Justice.  The panel discussions of Stevens’ legacy, which ranged over issues related to terrorism, capital punishment, abortion, affirmative action, and other controversial issues, drew coverage from local newspapers and from CSPAN, which taped the proceedings for later broadcast. 

The symposium served several important purposes that are vital to King Hall.  It brought to the Law School experts such as Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Linda Greenhouse and former U.S. Deputy Assistant Attorney General Teresa Wynn Roseborough, who served as one of the principal attorneys for the Gore campaign in the litigation that followed the 2000 Presidential election, for a probing discussion of many of the most important legal issues of our time.  It supported the UC Davis Law Review’s status as one of the most respected legal journals in the country, and supported the work of faculty, including Professor Diane Marie Amann, who served as a panelist and who is writing a biography of Justice Stevens.  Additionally, by attracting CSPAN cameras and other media attention, it brought the excellence of King Hall to national attention.

Events such as the Law Review Symposium, the Fenwick & Lecture Series in Technology, Entrepreneurship, and Law (TESLaw), the Edward L. Barrett, Jr. Lectureship on Constitutional Law, and the Brigitte M. Bodenheimer Lecture on Family Law serve to demonstrate some of the ways private support can positively impact the quality of education and scholarship at King Hall as well as its reputation.  Now, more than ever, the continued excellence of UC Davis School of Law depends on the continued support of alumni and friends.