Chris Davies – College of Law

Illinois LawCast: First-Year Experiences

Chris Davies — Tue, 19 May 2026 16:25:45 +0000

The first year of law school is a unique experience. Though some students may have the option to enroll in pre-law minor, there is no requirement for any specific curriculum to be admitted to law school, which makes the first year a foundational year that can be challenging, surprising, and inspiring in a short period of time. For this episode, we gathered a few talented and intelligent members of the Illinois Law Class of 2028 to discuss their 1L year as it comes to an end. Guests in this episode are Blessing Agyare, Liam Davis, and Darius Johnson, who discussed why they chose to study law at Illinois, what surprised them about their first year, what they’ll take with them as they go forward, and more.

If you’d like to know more about student life at Illinois Law, please check out our website. If you are considering applying, our application is always free—no codes required.

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If you have comments or suggestions for the podcast, please contact podcast@law.illinois.edu.

Clinic students earn dismissal of some charges for client

Chris Davies — Mon, 11 May 2026 18:44:17 +0000

For young lawyers, a first appearance in court is a big deal. Standing before a judge and presenting hours of hard work can reaffirm hopes and dreams or it can alter career trajectories; either way, it is not easily forgotten.

For third-year students Henry Lu and Joseph Saoud, taking part in the First Amendment Clinic offered that chance to get courtroom experience and much more.

“I personally really wanted to get that hands-on experience. I was told before starting that clinic gives students the opportunity to kind of lead their own cases, something that a lot of junior associates won’t be able to get,” Lu said. “We were given that opportunity. We had pretty significant leeway in terms of being able to navigate through the case, and I think that that was a really valuable experience.”

Lu and Saoud were assigned a defamation case involving rival politicians. After their political campaign against each other, one of the politicians filed suit claiming statements from the other politician were defamatory. The First Amendment Clinic pair joined the case in the early stages and worked on a motion to dismiss some or all of the claims as not defamatory as a matter of law.

Both students came to the clinic with a passion for the First Amendment and were excited to tackle a case like this, putting what they’ve studied so diligently in class to practice in a real-life setting. At times the case felt imposing, between the weight of filing documents in court for the first time and working for older professionals while still a student. Saoud described it as a “different kind of pressure.”

“There’s something about the stakes being so much higher when you know that this is a consequential piece of paper I’m working on right now and if I don’t give it my all this can have really big implications for someone’s life,” he added. “I think that pushed us to produce our best work when maybe in class we would have been just tired and not wanting to put in more work. But it was great. I feel so much more confident now.”

After their day in court, Lu and Saoud were able to get four-and-a-half of the 12 statements in the suit dismissed for their client, a result both felt proud to have accomplished. Saoud summed it up by saying, “If success is all the learning that we did, absolutely it was successful.”

Though helping their client was the most important thing, Lu and Saoud agreed the work was important for them personally. The experience writing briefs and learning administrative parts of the job, such as tracking hours, will be greatly beneficial in the very near future after the duo graduate and begin their careers. For all those reasons, the First Amendment clinic experience is one they would recommend to any student.

“I think the First Amendment Clinic was one of the most valuable experiences of my law school journey,” Lu said. “You spend so much time in the classroom in law school, and you never actually get to participate in the practice of law, which is what you go to law school for in the first place. Joseph and I talked about this a lot, but we always recommend our friends to apply for the First Amendment Clinic and we tell them about our experience. I think a lot of people would definitely benefit from it.”

Learn more about the First Amendment Clinic at Illinois.

Illinois LawCast: Professor Jason Mazzone on Trump v. Barbara

Chris Davies — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 16:15:00 +0000

In this special bonus episode, Professor Jason Mazzone joins the podcast to discuss the case of Trump v. Barbara, argued before the U.S. Supreme Court on April 1, 2026. Mazzone is the Albert E. Jenner, Jr. Professor of Law at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Director of the Illinois Program in Constitutional Theory, History, and Law. An expert on issues of constitutional structure and institutional design, with a particular focus on relationships between structural arrangements and individual rights, his groundbreaking work on the Constitution of the United States has appeared in dozens of prominent legal journals. He regularly advises, on a pro bono basis, litigants in cases before the Supreme Court of the United States and in other courts.

The case of Trump v. Barbara centers on Executive Order No. 14,160, issued January 20, 2025, titled “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship,” which declared that individuals born in the United States are not U.S. citizens at birth if their parents lack sufficient legal status. The order was issued on the alleged basis that the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause does not confer birthright citizenship on such children because they are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States in the constitutional sense. In this episode, Professor Mazzone explains the background of the case, what his impressions are from the arguments, and why he believes the Executive Order will be invalidated by a large majority.

Read Professor Mazzone in the New York Times.

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If you have comments or suggestions for the podcast, please contact podcast@law.illinois.edu.

Mazzone and Amar publish article on SCOTUSblog

Chris Davies — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 20:01:37 +0000

Professor Jason Mazzone joined Professor Vikram Amar in his “Brothers in Law” series for SCOTUSblog, written with his brother, Professor Akhil Amar of Yale Law School, to examine the ways in which President Donald Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship is unconstitutional. The article goes beyond the text of the 14th Amendment, and examines the Supreme Court’s landmark 1898 decision in United States v. Wong Kim Ark as well as the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act, both of which support the amendment and represent decades of settled case law. Their work was also quoted in a National Review editorial that predicts a supermajority will invalidate the executive order.

Read the SCOTUSblog article.

Chicago Tribune quotes Mazzone on birthright citizenship

Chris Davies — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 19:48:48 +0000

“There are few cases that are more important than this one,” Professor Jason Mazzone told the Chicago Tribune about the United States Supreme Court’s case deciding the constitutionality of President Donald Trump’s attempt to restrict birthright citizenship. In an extensive article about how the end of birthright citizenship would affect those in Chicago, Mazzone told the Tribune the Court must rule the effort unconstitutional. “If you read the president’s executive order and you match it to the language of the 14th Amendment I think most people will see the flat contradiction between those two texts,” he said.

Read the full article from the Chicago Tribune.

Sherkow authors amicus brief for SCOTUS

Chris Davies — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 19:38:15 +0000

Professor Jacob Sherkow has extensive scholarship in the area of patents and has been cited as an expert many times on the issue of drug labels being used in patent cases. In the case of Hikma Pharmaceuticals USA Inc. v. Amarin Pharma Inc., currently before the United States Supreme Court, Sherkow has authored an amicus brief with Professor Paul R. Gugliuzza of the University of Texas at Austin School of Law. The brief is written in support of neither party, but urges the court to discontinue allowing this practice of “infringement by label.”

Read the full amicus brief.

Bloomberg and STAT quote Sherkow on Moderna settlement

Chris Davies — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 19:28:51 +0000

In a settlement deal over claims Moderna infringed upon patents owned by Roviant in its COVID-19 vaccine, Moderna has agreed to pay up to $2.25 billion. The settlement, however, has a unique structure in which Moderna will pay $950 million up front and then another $1.3 million if an appeal to have parts of its liability offloaded to the federal government fail. “This was a case that should have settled at the very beginning,” Sherkow told STAT. “There was never any real dispute that Moderna was infringing. It was just a matter of coming up with a number that was mutually acceptable.”

Read Bloomberg’s coverage and STAT’s coverage of the settlement.

Illinois team featuring Rowell flags risks in reactor proposal

Chris Davies — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 19:16:50 +0000

Professor Arden Rowell was part of an interdisciplinary team of University of Illinois researchers raising concerns about a proposed rule that could reduce environmental oversight for advanced nuclear reactors. The group submitted a public comment to the U.S. Department of Energy about a rule that would allow certain advanced reactor activities—including siting, construction, operation, and decommissioning—to proceed without standard environmental reviews. The team concluded the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission should not adopt the Department of Energy’s characterization of advanced reactors as technologies that normally have no significant environmental impacts.

Johnson invested as Edward W. Cleary Professor of Law

Chris Davies — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 16:26:03 +0000

On February 24, 2026, Eric A. Johnson was invested as the Edward W. Cleary Professor of Law in a ceremony at the College of Law Building. The investiture ceremony honored Johnson for his commitment to and ways he has helped further advance the mission of the University of Illinois College of Law.

In remarks shared at the ceremony, Professor Heidi Hurd praised his tenure at Illinois thus far: “Professor Johnson is a profoundly impactful scholar with an enviable national reputation for doing exquisitely careful, detailed and rigorous work.” Dean Jamelle Sharpe added an example of the impact he has had, noting that the Illinois Supreme Court unanimously sided with Johnson’s opinion of how causal problems in overdetermination cases ought to be resolved over that of former United States Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia

Professor Johnson joined the University of Illinois in 2009 after a career as a government attorney. He spent 11 years in the Alaska Attorney General’s Office and an additional three years as assistant solicitor general in the New York State Attorney General’s Office before entering academia as the directo of the prosecution clinic at the University of Wyoming College of Law. Since coming to Illinois, Johnson has enhanced his reputation as an expert in criminal law, criminal procedure, and evidence. His work has been published in an array of peer- and student-edited journals, including Law and Philosophy, the Boston University Law Review, and the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology. Twice Johnson has received the college’s annual Carroll P. Hurd Award for Excellence in Faculty Scholarship; he has also served as associate dean for academic affairs and students named him the 2L Professor of the Year in 2013 and have chosen him as convocation hooder eight times. His full bio is available on his faculty profile page.

Professor Johnson’s endowed position was established by an estate donation from Albert E. Jenner in honor of Professor Edward Cleary. Cleary was a distinguished graduate of the Illinois Law Class of 1932 and went on to practice law and serve in the United States Navy before joining the College of Law faculty in 1946, where he established himself as an expert on legal procedure and evidence. Johnson, who was joined by members of his family at the ceremony, was honored with speeches from Dr. Amy Santos, associate provost for faculty development and professor in the Department of Special Education, as well as Dean Jamelle Sharpe.

Watch the full investiture ceremony on our YouTube page.

Sherkow talks drug labels with Illinois News Bureau

Chris Davies — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 15:40:56 +0000

In his latest paper, Professor Jacob Sherkow argues that recent court decisions that treat safety information on a drug’s package as key evidence in patent cases against generic-drug manufacturers have been incorrectly adjudicated and should be reversed by the Supreme Court. “Those lower court decisions, which embrace a legal theory we call ‘infringement by label,’ are incorrect. It’s a fictional turn in the law that we hope the Supreme Court shuts down,” he told the Illinois News Bureau.

Read the full article from the Illinois News Bureau.