Under a polished blue sky in April, the USC Law community gathered in the plaza outside the Musick Law Building to celebrate the achievements of students, faculty and staff. Amid music, a mountain of box lunches and most of the Class of 2010, Dean Robert K. Rasmussen and Student Bar Association President Jameil Johnson ’10 bestowed recognition on some of the law school’s highest achievers.
Johnson presented the SBA Outstanding Staff Member of the Year Award to Malissa Barnwell Scott, acting director of the Office of Public Service. The Outstanding Adjunct Professor of the Year Award went to West Hollywood Mayor John Heilman, who teaches Community Property and a bar prep course.
“His class is so popular, it has to be held in the biggest room of the law school,” said Johnson. “He is rare among law school professors because he interacts with 1Ls, 2Ls, 3Ls and LLMs through review sessions offered at the end of each semester.”
Finally, Johnson presented the Outstanding Faculty Member of the Year Award to Prof. Niels Frenzen, director of USC Law’s Immigration Clinic. Johnson praised Frenzen for his “dedication to student learning outside of the classroom as well as for the practical skills students learn through the Immigration Clinic.”
Dean Rasmussen then took over award-presenting duties, beginning with the William A. Rutter Distinguished Teaching Award, given to a faculty member who is an exceptional classroom teacher. The award’s creator, Bill Rutter ’55, founder of the legal publishing company The Rutter Group, was in attendance.
The winner was not, but the crowd of students roundly applauded him, anyway: Prof. Ron Garet, the perennially beloved professor of Law, Language and Values, among other courses.
Shattuck Awards were bestowed on 3L students who “demonstrate the greatest potential for becoming outstanding members of the bar.” The winners were: Anna Faircloth, Steffi Gascon, Abigail Greenspan, Jessica Hewins, Jameil Johnson, Rebecca Raizman and Benjamin Rubinfeld. Special recognition was also given to two international students “who have demonstrated outstanding dedication, involvement, and significant contribution to the law school community”: Kazuki Inoue of Japan and Yu-Chen Lin of Taiwan.
Next came the Miller-Johnson Equal Justice Prize, named for Loren Miller – son of a former slave, and a distinguished civil rights attorney in California – and Earl Johnson, a former faculty member who was involved in alternate dispute resolution and legal services for the poor, and former director of the federal Office of Economic Opportunity’s Legal Service Program.
The prize went to Laura Riley, who was recognized for being an advocate for social and civil justice both in and out of the law school for the past three years. She has been PILF president, is a founder of the Los Angeles Public Interest Law Journal, and has volunteered hundreds of hours at many public interest organizations.
The Mason C. Brown Award, made possible by an endowment created by the Arnold & Porter Foundation to honor the late Mason C. Brown ’70, an accomplished trial attorney, went to Adam Reich for his public service work and his advocacy for clients in the Post-Conviction Justice Project. Dean Rasmussen closed the ceremony by recognizing students who have secured judicial clerkships: Saurabh Anand, Dani Cepernich, Vincent Chuang, David Clark, Anna Faircloth, David Lourie, Marat Massen, Dana Peterson, Laura Riley, Rachael Greene Sokoloff and Kevin Spark.
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