Letter from GULC

Dear members of the Georgetown Law community,

Since its founding in 1870, the Law Center has always been proud to recognize its strong connections to the legal and policy work in our nation's capital. As the hope and excitement of a new presidential administration sweeps Washington, D.C., I am delighted to announce that four members of Georgetown Law's full-time faculty have been selected to help meet the challenges of shaping the country's future. Professors Lisa Heinzerling, Neal Katyal, and Martin Lederman were appointed to roles within the Obama Administration in January; Professor Daniel Tarullo was nominated by Obama to the Federal Reserve's Board of Governors in December. By accepting the call to public service, these talented members of the Georgetown Law family will share with the country the intellectual gifts, talent, and dedication that their students and colleagues have come to appreciate on a day-to-day basis.

Professor Heinzerling, now senior climate counsel to the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, helped score an historic win for the environment in 2007 when she was the primary author of the plaintiffs' brief for Massachusetts v. EPA, a landmark environmental law case in which the Court held that the agency has the authority to regulate motor vehicle emissions of greenhouse gases. No less historic was Professor Katyal's victory before the High Court in 2005's Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, challenging the military tribunals set up by President Bush to try detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Katyal - who last year became the Law Center's Paul and Patricia Saunders Professor of National Security Law and the head of our Center on National Security and the Law - was sworn in January 21 as deputy solicitor general at the Department of Justice.

Professor Lederman, who spent three years as a visiting law professor at Georgetown before becoming a full-time faculty member last fall, returns to the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel, serving as deputy assistant attorney general. Lederman served as an attorney adviser in the OLC from 1994 to 2002, and an attorney at Bredhoff & Kaiser before that. He recently published a two-part article in the Harvard Law Review examining Congress' authority to regulate the president's conduct of war, and is a frequent contributor to Weblogs such as "SCOTUSblog" and "Balkinization."

Professor Tarullo, too, returns to public service as he moves to the Federal Reserve. Tarullo served as assistant secretary of state for economic and business affairs, deputy assistant to the president for economic policy, and assistant to the president for international economic policy during the Clinton years. His recent book, Banking on Basel: The Future of International Economic Regulation, makes several recommendations for fixing the international bank capital rules that the Federal Reserve was instrumental in writing. "Mr. Tarullo's views are significant because negotiations around Basel II are far from finished," the Wall Street Journal's Damien Paletta wrote on December 18, after Tarullo's nomination was announced. "Mr. Tarullo could play a huge role in the government's efforts to redraw oversight of financial markets."

Others connected to Georgetown Law have been, or will be, deeply involved in their new government and public policy. Alumnus Michael Steele (L'91), the former lieutenant governor of the state of Maryland, was elected in late January to chair the Republican National Committee. Steele most recently served as a partner at Dewey & LeBoeuf in Washington, D.C., advising on corporate securities, government relations, and international affairs, with an emphasis on Africa. John Podesta, a Distinguished Visitor from Practice at the Law Center, served as a co-chair of President Obama's transition team; I had the pleasure of working with John as I chaired a policy work group on immigration for the transition. And George Mitchell (L'61), alumnus and former Senate Majority Leader, is now serving as special envoy to the Middle East - less than three months after he sat down with me to talk about the Israel-Palestine crisis in our new online interview series, "http://alumni.georgetown.edu/pages/BEMLLink.aspx?j=2112&l=C218950A-97AB-49B5-A81D-BF03646B2A18&g=3CE389E9-EA1F-4540-88CC-9DEC52CD3092".

For a list of nominations and appointments - a list that includes many distinguished alumni - see the Law Center's Web site. We are proud that so many in our community are continuing the Law Center's long-standing tradition of public service, and we wish them all the best in their new endeavors.

Sincerely,
T. Alexander Aleinikoff
Dean