By leaps

The year of the law school’s founding, 1916, was a leap year. The extra day in that year - more time for the young institution to plan, strategize, and dream - may or may not have made a difference. However, the school emerged determined, as Chancellor Warren A. Candler said, to establish its parity with the best law schools in the land and to emphasize “the ethics and ideals of an ancient and honorable profession.”

One hundred years later, no one can question the caliber of Emory Law’s faculty, students, alumni, and resources, and its ethics and ideals remain absolute. Just ask the two former US presidents who took active part in this centennial year - Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter - or civil rights leader John Lewis 14H.

The following pages walk readers through the highlights of a spectacular anniversary year, which culminated in a weekend of reunion and centennial-themed events, and the gala - the final event in a series of nationwide activities celebrating Emory Law’s founding.

Oh what a night

The Emory Law Centennial Gala, which drew a crowd of 1,200 to a transformed Woodruff PE Center on April 29, featured President Bill Clinton and former US senator and Emory Law alumnus Sam Nunn 61L 62L.

And while the event commemorated milestones in the law school’s history, its focus was on the future and the key role that both Emory Law and the rule of law more generally can play in solving disagreements and healing divisions.

“We still live in the most interdependent age in human history. Interdependence is a force for good and bad,” Clinton said in his keynote address. “If you believe in the rule of law, you must find a way to build up the positive and reduce the negative forces of our interdependence.”

Expanding the ‘Us’

The night’s themes, threaded through all the speakers’ remarks, were Emory Law’s tradition of respect for the rule of law and belief in diversity of thought, as well as a larger appeal to everyone, regardless of profession, to help with what Clinton suggested in his keynote address: “expanding ‘us’ and shrinking ‘them.’”

In his welcoming remarks, then dean Robert Schapiro acknowledged his role as the weaver of the many narratives that constitute Emory Law.

“I have been honored to meet students and alumni from around the world. You have shared your stories with me and you have challenged me. You have inspired me to make Emory Law a better place, a place of which we all can be proud, and for that I am very grateful,” he said. “Tonight, we honor our past and dream of our future.”

President Claire E. Sterk detailed key moments in the school’s history before noting the more modern aspects of the school, detailing the degrees beyond the JD that graduates may earn - including the JM and LLM - as well as the points of intersection law has with professions such as the social sciences, humanities, public health, and healthcare.

As Sterk concluded her comments, she urged attendees to “keep in mind these words from a father of an Emory alumna: ‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.’” Those were, of course, the words of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the father of Rev. Dr. Bernice A. King 90T 90L, who earned one of the joint degrees the president highlighted.

Nunn finer

Taking the stage to help honor former US Senator Sam Nunn 61l 62l with a Lifetime Achievement Award, Clyde Tuggle, senior vice president and chief public affairs and communications officer for The Coca-Cola Company, explained to the crowd, “Emory students come into the university with a Coke in their hands and leave with one as well.”

Tuggle then turned his attention to Nunn, who spent 24 years representing Georgia in the US Senate. During that time, he served as chair of the powerful Armed Services Committee and chair of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

Thanking Nunn, Tuggle asked the audience to raise the Cokes at their tables to “this proud son of Emory, a man of towering character and undersized ego, a relentless warrior for understanding security and peace, and truly a leader deserving of your recognition as a recipient of the Centennial Lifetime Achievement Award.”

100 who shaped Emory and the world

During the gala, Schapiro recounted the names of those who had received alumni awards at an earlier event. The dean then turned to the Emory Law 100, a list created to “celebrate the best of Emory Law, past and present. The list honors alumni and faculty for advancing the rule of law, making history at Emory or beyond, or significantly enhancing Emory or the Emory Law community.”

To kick off the Emory Law 100, an impressive intergenerational pairing brought Judge Clarence Cooper 67L onstage with Janiel Myers 18L, who recently became the first black editor-in-chief of the Emory Law Journal, the law school’s oldest publication.

Myers presented the Emory Law 100 medal to Cooper, who, after being one of Emory’s first black graduates, went on to become the first black assistant district attorney hired to a state prosecutor’s office in Georgia and then senior judge on the US District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.

Susan Clark, the law school’s associate dean of marketing and communications, and Ethan Rosenzweig 02L, dean of admission, financial aid, and student life, read the names of the other Emory Law 100 honorees who were in the audience. As they did so, student ambassadors were at tables to honor the winners with medals. Martin Worthy 41C 47L, celebrating his 70th year as an Emory Law alumnus, earned an affectionate response from the crowd as he received his.

As Chilton Varner 76L, an Emory University emerita trustee and Emory Law distinguished alumna, introduced Sam Nunn, she emphasized that “he has been a leader his entire life.” She quoted Nunn himself on his early-career transformation, saying, “I dropped into law school, descended into the practice of law, and sank into the depths of politics.” When describing his work in the Senate, she offered, “Time and time again he reached across the aisle in demonstrations of bipartisanship that would be literally unimaginable today.”

When Nunn spoke, he evidenced the modesty that Varner had extolled, as he paid homage to President Clinton and offered words of thanks to Emory Law, saying many of the Emory Law 100 are “my heroes.”

As lighthearted as he was in regard to himself, Nunn was serious about promoting civility in the current political climate. Praising our system of government and its checks and balances, Nunn said that it compels us to work together to overcome differences: “We are in a race between cooperation and catastrophe here and abroad,” he said. “Can we restore civility in our political system? Today in America, this is an open question.”

A welcome return

After Nunn’s remarks, Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed offered “hearty congratulations to the school.” Describing the night as a “historic and powerful moment,” Reed thanked the Emory administration, faculty, and student body for all that they have done for the city of Atlanta. “I bow in honor of you,” he concluded, “and all your contributions.”

Sam Feldman 18L, student body president for the coming academic year, then introduced the 42nd president of the United States, Bill Clinton. Talking about his class and the challenges of the next century, Feldman said that he and his fellow students must do three things: look to each other; look to the law school’s distinguished alumni; and look to those “lawyers and leaders who share in the pursuit of our common goals, and in doing so we renew our commitments to ourselves and each other to become trailblazers when there is no path and problem solvers when there is no easy solution.”

It has been 22 years since Clinton’s last visit to Emory. He began by talking about the Emory Law graduates he had advanced during his administration, including five judges and two ambassadors. Clinton recalled that he was still governor of Arkansas when he met Nunn and took over leadership of the Democratic Leadership Council from him. The two men didn’t always agree.

Clinton noted a trip on which he sent Nunn, former president Jimmy Carter, and former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell in 1994 to ease out Haitian military dictator Raoul Cédras. None of the three men was particularly excited about the assignment, especially Nunn.

“I told them to go down there and let it be known that they disagreed with me,” Clinton said. “Because when you have rule of law and a free society, you can have disagreements.” As a result of the group’s negotiation skill, the transfer of power there happened peacefully.

When Clinton spoke of the achievement of the Nunn-Lugar Act, he noted that American taxpayer money went to secure the nuclear assets of the former Soviet Union.

Declaring that it was “worth every penny,” Clinton continued, “I don’t know if we could pass something like this today. It was not a world of alternative facts, but a world of alternative arguments.”

Getting an early start on the next 100

That point set Clinton’s path for the remainder of the evening, as he talked about the ways that “we can recover our balance in America.” Both Nunn and Clinton are men who still care deeply about national life. Both believe that we must listen better to one another. “We get periodic fevers,” Clinton explained. “Countries have emotional lives, but it is well that the illness not go undiagnosed.”

In his words and those of Nunn, it surely did not. Even better, Clinton clearly saw a remedy in what Emory Law offers. He closed a night of singular inspiration with these words: “We would be better off if Emory Law, in the past 100 years, had educated even more people about the weight of evidence, the strength of argument, the balance of logic and passion, and the goal of equal, fair, and honorable treatment - and of expanding ‘us’ and shrinking ‘them.’”

“So, go do it,” he implored. “You’ve got another 100 years.”

Los Angeles

At Paramount Studios on January 26—a centennial event that also offered a tour of the fabled studio—the conversation turned on “Perception and Reality in the Modern Justice System.” Leading it were the Honorable Alex Kozinski, US Court of Appeals judge for the Ninth Circuit, and Richard Freer, Charles Howard Candler Professor of Law.

Judge Kozinski spoke about the current state of criminal litigation, arguing that our judicial system is burdened by too many criminal laws and incarcerated people. In his talk, Professor Freer took on civil litigation, maintaining that the prevalence of contractual arbitration, as an alternative to civil litigation, has resulted in some important losses.

New York City

With the first-ever billionaire businessman in the White House, there has been more interest than usual in what effect the president will have on the financial markets - whether, in fact, there has been what could be called a “Trump Bump” and, if so, how sustained it will be. Trump’s proposed agenda of tax cuts, deregulation, and infrastructure spending has excited many, with its promise of kicking economic growth into a higher gear.

Emory Law had insightful answers to those questions in the form of a panel at the University Club in New York City on February 16. It featured C. Robert Henrikson72L, the former chair, president, and CEO of MetLife; Raymond L. McDanielJr. 83L, president and CEO of Moody’s; Robert L. D. Colby, chief legal officer of FINRA; and Urska Velikonja, then-Emory Law professor.

Washington, DC

Constitutional law scholar and Emory Law Professor Fred Smith Jr. talked with Congressman John Lewis 14H at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC, on March 22 in an event titled “Social Justice and the Rule of Law.”

Lewis, a recipient of Emory’s honorary doctor of laws degree, offered important context for Emory Law’s role in human and civil rights in its 100th year.

Schapiro used the occasion to share the good news that the school’s John Lewis Chair for Civil Rights and Social Justice - the result of a $1.5 million anonymous gift - had been fully funded, opening the door to a national search for a worthy scholar.

Coral Gables

Julie Seaman, associate professor of law, led an informal conversation with Deborah Lipstadt, Emory’s Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish History and Holocaust Studies, on March 28 in Coral Gables, Florida.

In her 1993 book, Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory, Lipstadt named David Irving as a Holocaust denier who distorted facts to “reach historically untenable conclusions.” Three years later, Irving fired back, filing a lawsuit against her and her publisher that played out in the British court system. Hollywood discovered the story, and Lipstadt found herself being played by Rachel Weisz in Denial, released in fall 2016.

Atlanta

Emory’s speaker for the David J. Bederman Lecture in April, President Jimmy Carter, not only added to the existing esteem of the lecture series but also underlined the special nature of the school’s 100th year.

Examining “Human Rights in Today’s World,” President Carter spoke to a capacity crowd in Emory’s Glenn Auditorium.

The former president challenged his audience to take a broad look at what constitutes human rights today, including the abuse of women around the world, human trafficking, and campus sexual assault. Though feeling sober about the state of human rights in the world today, Carter acknowledged that “to know how far we have to go might be the first step to ultimate improvement.”

Atlanta

All alumni were invited to celebrate with Emory Law in the centennial year celebration. Weekend festivities included reunion celebrations at the St. Regis Atlanta for the following classes: 1966, 1967, 1971, 1972, 1976, 1977, 1981, 1982, 1986, 1987, 1991, 1992, 1996, 1997, 2001, 2002, 2006, 2007, 2011, and 2012. A Corpus Cordis Aureum Medallion Ceremony honored alumni who graduated 50 years ago and featured the classes of 1966 and 1967 as well as classes preceding 1966.