A Home for Moses

Alan Brown (JD '95) and his family share their journey from their Texas home to a Ugandan courthouse to adopt a two-year-old orphan named Moses.

In case you didn’t know, I rented an SUV to drive during our time in Uganda rather than hire a driver, which is what most families do, but where is the adventure in that? I have been driving for a solid two days and pretty much have it down. I have successfully driven us from our hotel to the orphanage and back every day without so much as one wrong turn.

Issue: Fall 2012

Carrying a torch for all things sports

Colleen Graffy discusses a summer Olympics course designed for all things sports.

What do you think of when you think “Olympics?” For most of us, the Olympic Games conjure up images of athletes, gold medals, and the five interlocking rings symbolizing the games. But for 21 students from Pepperdine and five other law schools, the Olympic Games were revealed through the eyes of legal and media professionals and experts from both the U.K. London Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games (LOCOG) and members of the U.S. Olympic Committee (USOC).

Issue: Fall 2012

Recognizing the “Rabble-Rouser for Peace”: Going to South Africa to Bestow the Straus Institute’s Inaugural Peacemaker Award on Desmond Tutu

Thomas Stipanowich travels to South Africa to bestow the Straus Institute's inaugural Peacemaker Award on Desmond Tutu.

“You could have knocked me down with a feather . . . [I]t was almost mindboggling, that a white man could doff his hat to my mother, a black woman, really a nonentity in South Africa’s terms.” In the world of South African apartheid, a world in which racial heritage and skin color determined as a matter of law where and with whom you could live, your education and job prospects, and who you could marry, an Anglican priest’s small, instinctive act of courtesy to his mother made a huge impression on young Desmond Tutu.

Issue: Fall 2012

Building Faith from Barbed Wire

Pepperdine Law Students and alumni team to teach Bible study classes at local youth correctional facilities.

The story made the evening news that day. Eighteen-year-old Marvin Laguan had been shot more than six times while talking to his girlfriend in the 400 block of North Mar Vista Avenue in Pasadena, California. He died almost instantly.

Issue: Fall 2012

New Opportunities for First Year Students

The legendary Professor Kingsfield famously tells first-year law students in the movie The Paper Chase, “You come in here with a skull full of mush and you leave thinking like a lawyer.” The “skull full of mush” sentiment is a bit much— as was Professor Kingsfield in general—but the product he identified remains the oft-repeated goal of legal education. Law students are to be taught to think like lawyers.

Issue: Fall 2012

The Law School Crisis

Message from Dean Deanell Reece Tacha: One of my goals as dean of the Pepperdine School of Law has been to address the questions and concerns being raised about the current climate of legal education. Among those concerns is the financial burden that, for many, accompanies enrollment in law school. The fact is, applications to law schools nationwide and at Pepperdine are down significantly. Student debt load is at an all-time high. At least in the short-term, the legal employment market is providing fewer employment opportunities for graduating law students than at any time in the recent past. In this piece Paul Caron, D&L Straus Distinguished Professor of Law, provides his perspective on these issues and more.

Issue: Fall 2012

In Pursuit of Power

“I just wanted to be powerful!” remembers alumna Theona Zhordania, of her childhood dreams of becoming a successful businesswoman and attorney.

Issue: Fall 2012

Making Her Own Way

Laure Sudreau-Rippe discusses the highs and lows of her success as a lawyer and her determination to save her husband's life.

Graduation day 1997 at Pepperdine School of Law. The moment of truth. The culmination of three years of hard work. For Laure Sudreau-Rippe (JD ’97), it was just the beginning. The ceremony served as a stepping-stone to the obstacles that lie ahead.

Issue: Spring-Summer 2012

Capitol Gains

School of Law students and alumni experience the value of the Washington, D.C. externship program.

While practicing in Washington, D.C., School of Law alumna Nancy Hunt (’01) recognized a gap in Pepperdine alumni representation in the federal government and related D.C. institutions. “The law school fosters rational thinking and that is something I thought we could certainly use more of in Washington,” she thought.

Issue: Spring-Summer 2012

Accountability Amid Chaos

Three Army Veterans Respond to a New Manual on Preventing Civilian Casualties

Though avoiding civilian deaths has traditionally been a focus of advanced combat training, there was never an established guidebook specifically designed to prevent civilian casualties. But in the spring of 2011, a group of U.S. Army officials gathered to combine the results of a then-recent study with a new method of engaging in combat, all with the focus of preventing harm to civilians.

Issue: Spring-Summer 2012