George Michael Prall, 78, of Bloomington passed away on Tuesday, March 10, 2026 at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago.

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.

“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.

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.”

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.”

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.

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 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.

On February 10, 2026, Verity Winship was invested as the Edwin M. Adams Professor of Law in a ceremony honoring her commitment to scholarship, teaching, and public engagement.

Professor Jake Sherkow spoke to Bloomberg Law on several occasions in February, regarding patent lawsuits that are making their way through the courts.