News featuring a faculty member
A federal judge is nearing a decision on an antitrust settlement between the NCAA and college athletes, and contracts signed by athletes might actually strengthen their case for collective bargaining rights. In an article examining the arguments of both sides, ESPN quoted Professor Michael LeRoy, who said, “It’s employment on its face. There’s no masking it.”
This episode is all about advocacy and what that means for law students and lawyers. We turn the spotlight on the Kimball R. and Karen Gatsis Anderson Center for Advocacy and Professionalism and learn about the classes and competitions they offer to help Illinois Law students become the best advocates possible. Guests include Professor Tony Ghiotto, director of the Anderson Center, and third-year students Yev Kozak and Nicole Marcinkus.
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If you have comments or suggestions for the podcast, please contact podcast@law.illinois.edu.
In a co-authored blog post for Justia Verdict, Professors Lesley Wexler and Tony Ghiotto explore the significance of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s firing of Judge Advocates General in late February. Were these firings truly unprecedented? What consequences may arise from these firings, whether within military legal practice or how the military fights wars and complies with international law? Do they contribute to an ongoing existential threat to democracy and defense?
In recognition of her excellence and distinction as a leader in the field of military law, Professor Lesley Wexler has been invited to affiliate with the National Institute of Military Justice (NIMJ) as a Fellow. NIMJ was founded in 1991, and is the only American non-profit institute dedicated to the study of improvement of the military justice system. Wexler joins fellow College of Law professor and military veteran Tony Ghiotto in her affiliation with NIMJ.
Heidi M. Hurd gave the prestigious Alistair Macleod Distinguished Lecture in Philosophy at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, in late February 2025. Entitled “The Immorality of Mercy,” Professor Hurd’s talk to a packed auditorium of faculty and graduate students in law and the humanities challenged the claim that mercy is compatible with justice.
If 23andMe goes bankrupt, what happens to their millions of customers’ personal and genetic data?
Sara Gerke, Melissa B. Jacoby, and I. Glenn Cohen explore this issue in a new article published on March 2 in the New England Journal of Medicine, titled “Bankruptcy, Genetic Information, and Privacy — Selling Personal Information.”
The data are not protected by HIPAA, the authors note. The U.S. has no comprehensive federal privacy laws (and handful of overlapping, conflicting state laws.) Sure, Congress could pass consumer protection laws, but “it has been difficult to get large-scale privacy reform through Congress.”
Indeed, as the authors note, 23andMe’s privacy statement “reserves the company’s right to transfer customers’ personal information in the event of a company sale or bankruptcy.”
Basically, Gerke, Jacoby, and Cohen argue, little is stopping this data (potentially 14 million consumers’ worth) from being sold to the highest bidder.
Conclusion: “We believe it’s time to reconsider how [genetic information] data are regulated.”
Read the full article at nejm.org.
Sara Gerke is an associate professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign College of Law. Melissa B. Jacoby is a law professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I. Glenn Cohen is a Harvard Law professor and faculty director of the Petrie-Flom Center for health law policy, biotechnology, and bioethics at Harvard Law School.
The “Dear Colleague Letter” issued by the U.S. Department of Education in February expressed a threat that schools that support diversity initiatives could face funding cuts. With several cultural houses on campus, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign could be among the targets to lose funding. In an extensive examination, Illinois Public Media quotes both Dean Jamelle Sharpe and Professor Arden Rowell on how the letter may affect the Illinois campus and the levels of uncertainty that exist currently. “The Department is taking a very aggressive and expansive view of the Supreme Court’s decision,” Sharpe said. “They believe it should be applied to situations that the Supreme Court’s decision itself did not address.”
A drug label is a vital piece of information in patent cases, but a series of recent decisions from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit have changed how the court assesses claims. In a forthcoming article in the Stanford Law Review, Professor Jacob Sherkow calls this new confusion over labels “infringement by label.” In the paper, Sherkow and his co-author examine unresolved questions in patent law and return pharmaceutical patent litigation to factual and doctrinal basis.
Surgical sterilization is on the rise among young American women and one of the questions surrounding this practice is one of informed consent. Professor Robin Fretwell Wilson, who has researched extensively on this topic, told the Deseret News that consent may be hard to assure because an individual may experience regret later in life.
What role does technology have in global inequalities and can new technologies be instrumental in making the world less unfair? In the new volume Technology and Equality, co-edited by Professor Colleen Murphy, these issues and others are addressed from a wide range of perspectives by scholars from multiple disciplines. The book is published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers and available now.
Learn more about Technology and Equality.