Jessica Hoyer wins workers’ rights fellowship
Wayne State University Law School student Jessica Hoyer has been awarded a 2016 Peggy Browning Summer Fellowship to work for the United Auto Workers International Union at its Detroit headquarters for 10 weeks.
Hoyer of Livonia is the daughter of a union-represented truck driver and granddaughter of a former automobile plant employee. She grew up in a blue-collar family that impressed upon her the importance of unions.
“Winning this fellowship has been a goal of mine since the start of my first year of law school,” Hoyer said. “I’m honored to have the opportunity to work for the UAW, especially given their influence in the history of Detroit’s auto industry and the role unions have always played in my personal family history, as well.”
As a fellow, Hoyer will serve as a law clerk for the union’s in-house legal staff, conducting research, drafting briefs and accompanying staff lawyers to hearings and oral arguments.
“Earning my undergraduate degree in sociology allowed me to explore the intersections between class and economic standing, which eventually led to my interest in workers’ rights and labor law,” Hoyer said.
Last year, Hoyer worked on the Sexual Assault Kit Task Force at the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office and helped prosecutors organize and develop cases stemming from more than 11,000 untested sexual assault kits discovered in a storage warehouse.
For 2015-16, Hoyer was a student lawyer with Wayne Law’s Disability Law Clinic and an assistant editor of the Wayne Law Review.
She earned her bachelor’s degree from Marygrove College.
The mission of the Peggy Browning Fund is to educate and inspire the next generation of law students to become advocates for workplace justice. It was established in memory of Margaret A. Browning, a prominent labor attorney and member of the National Labor Relations Board.
Sean Riddell wins social justice scholarship
Sean Riddell, who graduated Monday, May 16, from Wayne State University Law School, was awarded the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Veterans Scholarship in recognition of his work promoting social justice.
The award is presented each year to WSU undergraduate and graduate students who best exemplify the values of the university’s students who fought fascism in Spain in the 1930s. This is the 33rd year the scholarships have been given.
Recipients will be honored Friday, June 17. Riddell will receive a $1,000 scholarship.
Riddell of Detroit was a leader and active participant in numerous organizations while a student at Wayne Law. He was elected co-facilitator of Wayne Law’s chapter of the National Lawyers Guild in his first and second years of law school. The National Lawyers Guild is a bar association dedicated to protecting human rights and civil liberties.
Under his leadership, students involved in the guild have consistently advocated for a more inclusive community. As a second-year student, he was the lead organizer for the guild’s Mideast Regional Conference, which featured 10 speaker panels, including topics such as the Detroit housing crisis, the school-to-prison pipeline and emergency management.
In February, Riddell was honored as an Outstanding Law Student of the Year by the National Lawyers Guild Detroit and Michigan Chapter.
Through the Keith Center Students for Civil Rights, Riddell was involved in hosting high school students from metro Detroit at the law school to discuss ways in which the high school students can positively affect their communities.
He served as director of The Journal of Law in Society’s 2016 symposium, “A Tribute to Professor Emeritus Edward J. Littlejohn and His Work with Race, Racism, and the Law,” in March.
Additionally, Riddell has been active in the American Civil Liberties Union and the Wayne Law Team, a group of students who researched issues for the DeBoer v. Snyder marriage equality litigation team.
For the past year, Riddell worked part time for the civil rights law firm of Goodman & Hurwitz PC in Detroit. He will be working for the legal aid organization Counsel & Advocacy Law Line in Southfield after taking the bar examination.
He earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan in 2009 with a major in American culture and minors in music and history.
Peter Henning to teach in Taiwan as Fulbright Specialist
Wayne State University Law School Professor Peter J. Henning has received a Fulbright Specialist grant to teach for three weeks this summer in Taiwan.
Henning of Grosse Pointe Park will present “Study on Criminal Law and Procedure” at the Academy for the Judiciary, Ministry of Justice in Taipei from June 14 to July 1. His topics will include a discussion of the Hobbs Act, the recent encryption dispute between the FBI and Apple, the protection of privacy and the admissibility of video recordings.
“Being selected for a Fulbright Specialist grant is a great honor because it helps foster closer relations with the host country and provides a wonderful learning experience,” Henning said. “I will get to work with and interact with judges at all levels of Taiwan’s judiciary and help contribute to the development of the law there. It is also a great chance to see up close how another legal system operates and compare it with the United States. I’m very excited to spend time in Taiwan, and I’m hopeful that it will help Wayne Law develop further relationships there.”
Wayne Law has a partnership for student and faculty exchanges with National Taiwan University.
The Fulbright Specialist Program promotes cooperation and relationship building between United States scholars and professionals and their counterparts at host institutions abroad. The focus of the program is to build educational capacity and to develop long-term relationships. Specialist grants are awarded to U.S. faculty and professionals, in select disciplines, to work on collaborative two-week to six-week projects at eligible facilities throughout the world.
The program is part of the broader Fulbright Program, the U.S. government’s flagship international exchange effort to increase understanding between Americans and people in other countries.
In 2013, Henning was a Fulbright Scholar teaching at the University of Zagreb in Croatia.
Henning joined the Wayne Law faculty in 1994 and has received numerous teaching awards, including the President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching and the Donald H. Gordon Award for Excellence in Teaching.
After graduating from Georgetown University Law Center in 1985, Henning was a senior attorney in the Division of Enforcement at the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission until 1991. He worked on cases involving insider trading, penny stock fraud, market manipulation and accounting irregularities. He then moved to the Criminal Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, working in the Fraud Section on the investigation and prosecution of bank fraud.
Henning’s scholarship focuses primarily on white collar crime, constitutional criminal procedure and attorney ethics. He frequently publishes articles and often is quoted in the media and asked to comment on legal issues. He is an elected member of the American Law Institute. Henning writes a regular column, “White Collar Watch,” for The New York Times DealBook.
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