UGA LAW SCHOOL ANNOUNCES FOUR NEW FACULTY CHAIRHOLDERS

Collection:: Press Releases
Title:: UGA LAW SCHOOL ANNOUNCES FOUR NEW FACULTY CHAIRHOLDERS
Creator:: Office of Communications and Public Relations
Date of Original:: 1999-09-03
Subject:: Law--Study and teaching
Location:: United States, Georgia, Clarke County, Athens, 33.96095, -83.37794
Medium:: press releases
Type:: Text
Format:: application/pdf
Description:: Friday, September 3, 1999 WRITER: Kathy R. Pharr, (706) 542-5172, pharr@arches.uga.edu CONTACT: David Shipley, (706) 542-7140 UGA LAW SCHOOL ANNOUNCES FOUR NEW FACULTY CHAIRHOLDERS ATHENS, Ga. - Four faculty members at the University of Georgia School of Law have been appointed to prestigious chaired professorships. They are: C. Ronald Ellington, named as the first holder of the new A. Gus Cleveland Chair of Legal Ethics and Professionalism; Paul J. Heald, named to the Allen Post Professorship; Walter Hellerstein, named Francis Shackelford Professor of Taxation; and Rebecca Hanner White, named to the J. Alton Hosch Professorship. "Endowed chairs are extremely important to the law school because the privately-funded salary supplements enable us to attract and retain the finest teachers and scholars," said David Shipley, dean of the UGA law school. "Chairs help assure that you will have someone at the top of the profession with your school for a long time. I'm particularly pleased that these four chairs have been bestowed to outstanding members of our existing faculty, and I am grateful for the support provided by our generous friends of the law school." Ellington, formerly a J. Alton Hosch Professor at the School of Law, has been a member of the law school faculty since 1969, and served as dean from 1987-1993. He has served as chair of the State Bar of Georgia's Judicial Procedure and Administration Committee and for 10 years was a member of the Chief Justice's Commission on Professionalism. He currently serves as reporter for the State Bar of Georgia's Committee on Standards of the Profession, which is concerned with improving the transition into practice for beginning lawyers. Graduating students have twice selected Ellington as the recipient of the Student Bar Association and Younger Lawyers Section of the State Bar of Georgia Award for the Teaching of Legal Ethics, and he has been the recipient of the Faculty Book Award for Teaching Excellence on three occasions. In 1994, he was chosen as a UGA Senior Teaching Fellow. His areas of teaching and scholarship include Georgia Practice and Procedure, Civil Procedure, and Complex Litigation. Ellington earned his undergraduate degree in political science summa cum laude from Emory University, then earned his law degree from the University of Virginia, where he was inducted into legal education's highest academic honor society, the Order of the Coif, and served as notes editor of the Virginia Law Review. He studied as a Fellow in Law and Humanities at Harvard University and earned a master of laws degree from Harvard. Ellington was first named to a chaired professorship in 1981, the Law School Association Professorship, then became the Thomas R. R. Cobb Professor of Law in 1983, and a Hosch Professor in 1993. Prior to joining UGA's faculty, Ellington practiced law three years with the law firm of Sutherland, Asbill & Brennan in Atlanta. "Ron Ellington epitomizes professionalism in and out of the classroom through his teaching, his lectures to practitioners, and his tireless service to the bench and bar," said Shipley. "He is held in very high regard by our students, UGA law alumni, and lawyers and judges throughout the state. His fit with the Cleveland Chair of Ethics and Professionalism is perfect." The A. Gus Cleveland Chair was created by a consent order reached in U.S. District Court at the end of 1998. DuPont Co. paid $2.5 million to each of the state's four accredited law schools to settle an action seeking sanctions against it for alleged litigation misconduct in earlier product liability cases. Judge Hugh Lawson ordered that the money would be used to endow chairs devoted to teaching professionalism and ethics in the practice of law, and also ordered DuPont to pay $1 million to endow an annual ethics symposium which will be hosted by each law school on a revolving basis. The UGA law school announced in January that its chair would be named in honor of Cleveland, widely regarded as 'the father of continuing legal education in Georgia.' Cleveland attended law school at UGA and served as one of the first presidents of its Law School Alumni Association. Heald, who turned 40 this summer, becomes the youngest professor to hold a chaired position in the history of the law school. He joined UGA in 1989 and teaches in the areas of Contracts, Intellectual Property, and Law and Literature. Recent scholarship includes Literature and Legal Problem Solving: Law and Literature as Ethical Discourse, a book to which he contributed and served as editor; and articles on law and literature, copyright, trademark and other intellectual property issues in such publications as the Duke Law Journal, the Supreme Court Review, Virginia Law Review, Texas Law Review and the Iowa Law Review, among many others. Heald earned his undergraduate degree in comparative literature cum laude with departmental distinction from the University of Illinois, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. A master's degree in comparative literature from the University of Illinois followed, and Heald worked as an English professor in Madrid, Spain and at Florida A & M University for three years before enrolling in law school. He earned his law degree with honors from the University of Chicago, where he served as associate editor of the Chicago Law Review and was inducted as a member of the Order of the Coif. He served as judicial law clerk to the late Judge Frank M. Johnson, Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit upon his graduation from law school. During his tenure at UGA, Heald has also served as a visiting professor at the Université de Lyons in France, the University of Regensburg in Germany, and the University of Texas. "Paul Heald is a very productive and eclectic scholar whose writings are having a substantial impact in several areas, including law and literature and the dynamic field of intellectual property," Shipley said. "He is a rising star in legal education and a vital part of this faculty who more than satisfies the requirements of the Post Professorship." The Allen Post Professorship was established in September 1986 following Post's death in January of that same year. The Post family and his firm, Hansell and Post, formally initiated the professorship with a pledge of $100,000. Post, a well known and respected Atlanta trial lawyer, was a UGA graduate and Rhodes Scholar. Hellerstein, a UGA law faculty member since 1978, is widely regarded as one of the nation's leading authorities on state and local taxation. He has frequently provided expert advice on tax issues to national policy makers and business leaders and has recently devoted much of his attention to the problems raised by state taxation of electronic commerce. (In June, he was summoned to address the inaugural meeting of the Congressional Advisory Commission on Electronic Commerce in Williamsburg, Virginia.) Hellerstein is the author of numerous articles and books on state and local taxation, including the 2-volume State Taxation (3rd edition, 1998) and State and Local Taxation, Cases and Materials (6th edition, 1997), both co-authored with his father, Jerome Hellerstein. Recent scholarship has appeared in the Cornell Law Review, the Tax Law Review, the Michigan Law Review, and the Journal of Taxation. In 1992, he received the Multistate Tax Commission's 25th Anniversary Award for Outstanding Contributions to Multistate Taxation, and he is a member of the American Law Institute. Hellerstein earned his bachelor's degree in government magna cum laude from Harvard College, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He then earned his law degree cum laude from the University of Chicago, where he was elected to the Order of the Coif and served as editor-in-chief of the University of Chicago Law Review. He served as judicial law clerk to the late Chief Judge Henry J. Friendly of the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals following his graduation from law school, then practiced with the law firm of Covington & Burling in Washington, D.C. He was an associate professor at the University of Chicago for two years before joining the University of Georgia law faculty. "Walter Hellerstein is held in high regard by both tax law practitioners and tax law professors around the nation," said Shipley. "He is known as the last word on state tax issues -- the nation's guru of state taxation. Professor Hellerstein's works have been cited by the United States Supreme Court, and he is having a significant impact on how e-commerce should be taxed. He is an excellent match for the Shackelford Professorship." The Francis Shackelford Professorship in Taxation was established by the Loridans Foundation of Atlanta in 1974 to provide a salary supplement for the work of a distinguished professor in a tax-related field. This Professorship honors a distinguished member of the bar and great friend of the UGA law school. White, who joined UGA in 1989, becomes the second woman to hold an endowed chair at the law school. She teaches in the areas of Labor Law, Employment Discrimination, Employment Law and Labor Arbitration, and has been selected by graduates five times as the recipient of the Faculty Book Award for Excellence in Teaching. In addition, she has also received the John C. O'Byrne Award for Contributions Furthering Student/Faculty Relations. White's recent scholarship includes a book, Employment Law & Employment Discrimination: Essential Terms and Concepts, and numerous articles on employment discrimination in such journals as the Emory Law Journal, William & Mary Law Review, North Carolina Law Review, and the Ohio State Law Journal. White earned her undergraduate degree in English from Eastern Kentucky University, where she was named to Phi Kappa Phi. She graduated first in her class from the University of Kentucky College of Law, served as editor-in-chief of the Kentucky Law Journal and was elected to the Order of the Coif. White served as judicial law clerk to the late Chief Judge George C. Edwards of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit upon graduation from law school. She then practiced labor and employment law at the law firm of Dinsmore & Shohl in Cincinnati, Ohio before beginning her teaching career at UGA. "Rebecca White is recognized as one of the nation's top young labor law scholars and a significant player in the discussion of major issues in the field of labor and employment law. In addition to her fine scholarship, she is a five-time recipient of the law school's teacher-of-the-year award. She is very deserving of the Hosch Professorship." The Hosch Professorship is one of five professorships endowed by a $2.3 million bequest from J. Alton Hosch, UGA law school dean for almost 30 years, who retired as dean in 1964 and died in 1980. Dean Hosch's gift remains the largest ever given to the law school by an individual. Photographs of all four professors are available electronically via UGA Communications' Photographic Services Web Site at http://photo.alumni.uga.edu/photohome.htm You will need to search for the individuals by name. When asked for a user name and password, leave the name slot blank and put "ugaphoto" in the password slot.
Metadata URL:: https://digitalcommons.law.uga.edu/press_releases/339
Holding Institution:: Alexander Campbell King Law Library
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