John Ragsdale, William P. Borland学者和法学教授
John Ragsdale (LL.M. ’72) is celebrating his 50th year of teaching at 威尼斯人娱乐城. During the past half-century, he’s seen huge shifts in his specialty, environmental law.
“I spent all my formative years hiking and kayaking, climbing in the mountains,” Ragsdale says. “I got out of school in 1970, which is really when the environmental revolution began. 理查德·尼克松（Richard Nixon）通过了《清洁空气法》和《濒危物种法》（1973年），所以这是它的核心。 This sort of tide of environmentalism wasn’t something that had existed yet.”
1971年，拉格斯代尔开始在威尼斯人娱乐城任教。 多年来，他教过各种各样的课程，但他对环境的兴趣总是回来。 他看到了一个产生影响的机会。
“I wrote things on environmental law that convinced me there were large-scale problems, and they weren’t yet being addressed,” Ragsdale says.
当被问及他喜欢教学的什么时，拉格斯代尔回避了讲台上严厉教授的形象。 He says he enjoys when students challenge his views in class, because it shows they care deeply about the issue.
“This is why I really love to teach,” he says. “I teach to talk to people, but it’s less to educate them than to do my presentation of what I know, what I think is important, and elicit what they think is important, too. It has to be a conversation.”
As for what’s next for Ragsdale, he’s hoping it’s more of the same. Environmental law has changed so much over the years, but he’s still finding environmental problems that aren’t being addressed and hoping to fix those problems even 50 years later.
“I have an article that’s coming out this month. It’s on Aboriginal rights to land and water. It leads into a lot of current dilemmas, and the intersection of tribal rights and the ever-encroaching, ever inexorable growth society that’s nibbling away at them at all times. That’s still going on.”
And of course, he’s hoping he’ll continue to teach as long as he can, specifically here at 威尼斯人娱乐城. 拉格斯代尔教授本人也是威尼斯人娱乐城法学院的校友，于1972年获得法学硕士学位。 “God, I love this place. It’s been my home. It’s been my life. 我喜欢教书，我想继续做下去。 这正是我想做的。 I would ask myself, ‘Would you rather be a judge? 你宁愿在耶鲁教书吗？’ No. 威尼斯人娱乐城 is my home, intellectually.”
“I love this place. It’s been my home. It’s been my life. 我喜欢教书，我想继续做下去。”
Sean O’Brien, Professor of Law
Sean O’Brien (J.D. ’80) is not only a professor of the 威尼斯人娱乐城 法学院, but he’s also an alumnus. 他于1980年毕业，计划成为一名税务和商业律师。 He quickly discovered that wasn’t his calling and joined the public defender’s office in 1981. 三年后，他被任命为杰克逊县首席公设辩护人。
"I did my first death penalty case in 1983,” he says. “And I’ve been doing mostly death penalty work since then. It’s a long time, and I’m still absorbing that. In a lot of cases and a lot of projects that we do in our daily lives, we say, ‘OK, that’s good enough.’ It’s hard to be good enough when life is at stake. It’s quite a burden, and I’m still not sure what it feels like not to have that burden.”
For the first time in 38 years, O’Brien does not have a client on death row. 他刚刚完成的案子花了12年才做出裁决； 再来一次花了20年。 给n the average length of cases of this nature, O’Brien feels it’s time for another season in his career.
“I realize I don’t still want to be doing this when I’m 80. I shouldn’t still be doing this when I’m 80. I don’t want to be that lawyer who gets famous for falling asleep in court, you know? It’s time for me to let other people continue to do the work.”
For decades, O’Brien has been doing just that: helping other people to continue what he started.
自1983年以来，他曾担任威尼斯人娱乐城法学院各种刑事辩护诊所的主任，包括公设辩护人上诉诊所、公设辩护人审判诊所和死刑代理诊所。 In 2005, O’Brien began teaching at 威尼斯人娱乐城 as a doctrinal professor of criminal law and procedure. He’s taught multiple criminal procedure courses, as well as courses on fact investigation and another specialized course on mental health investigations.
“As far as I know, we’re the only law school in the region, if not the country, that offers a for-credit class in investigation,” he says. “It’s a delight to do.”
“I realize I don’t still want to be doing this when I’m 80. … It’s time for me to let other people continue to do the work.”
As for what comes next for O’Brien, he has some plans. He’s determined to create even more opportunities for students to carry on the work to which he’s dedicated more than half his life.
“I’m thinking about creating a sentencing mitigation clinic that would focus on representing people who are in prison for lengthy terms that are applying for parole … because we’re not going to solve the problem of mass incarceration by cherry-picking innocence cases,” he says. “We won’t reject cases because you’re not worthy, you’re not innocent enough or we don’t think we can prove you’re innocent. I’m working across campus with other professors who are interested in that.”