Indiana University - Maurer School of Law

06/03/2026

Service in action! Kim Hughes, Catherine Dyar, Jane Decker, Cassie Fitzwater, Sophia Goodman, and Matt Caldie (Jerome Hall Law Library) helped clean up Cottage Grove Avenue between Walnut Street and Woodlawn Avenue last evening as part of Monroe County's Adopt-a-Road program. Great job!

06/01/2026

Our thanks to The Indiana Lawyer for sharing the graduation speech of Gerry Regep, who delivered the remarks at our May 9 ceremony.

Law school is like friends playing a card game.  

05/26/2026

The Indiana University Maurer School of Law will host one of the nation’s leading gatherings of privacy and technology scholars this week when the Privacy Law Scholars Conference comes to Bloomington May 27-29.

Known as PLSC, the annual conference brings together academics, policymakers, civil society advocates, and industry practitioners to workshop emerging scholarship on privacy, surveillance, Artificial Intelligence, data governance, and technology law. Organizers describe it as the world’s premier academic conference focused on privacy, law, and technology.

This year marks the first time the conference has been hosted by the Maurer School of Law.

“PLSC puts out an open call for host institutions every year with the goal of creating a flexible and diverse rotation of schools,” said Ari Waldman, professor at the University of California, Irvine School of Law and chair of the conference. “In its early days, PLSC bounced back and forth between DC and Berkeley, and those cities and the schools there are great, but it also means that people who live and work beyond the coasts always have to travel far. Since I started as chair, I always hoped we could have a mix of public and private institutions that would host PLSC across the country. IU Maurer offered us that opportunity.”

Indiana Law Professor Asaf Lubin said hosting PLSC signals national recognition for IU’s standing in the field.

“PLSC sets the agenda for law and technology scholarship,” Lubin said. “The ideas workshopped here become the landmark articles, the influential books, and the conceptual frameworks that regulators and courts eventually adopt.”

Lubin called the conference “the Olympics of law and technology scholarship,” noting that host institutions are selected through a competitive process by a committee of leading scholars. He credited colleagues Fred H. Cate and Joe Tomain with helping to put together the Law School’s application to host.

“Getting a majority vote from that committee is a genuine achievement,” he said. “It means your faculty’s work is known and respected, and that the community trusts your institution to carry the conference forward with integrity.”

Read more: https://blogs.iu.edu/maurerlaw/2026/05/26/indiana-law-hosting-privacy-law-scholars-conference-this-week/

05/22/2026

Professor Valena Beety will take her forthcoming book, Pink Crime: Fighting Against the Criminalization of Motherhood, Pregnancy, and Q***r Identity, to an international audience next week with a series of speaking engagements in England, including appearances at the University of Oxford, Leigh Day Solicitors, and SOAS University of London.

Published by The New Press and scheduled for release Aug. 4, Pink Crime examines how women and q***r people are disproportionately targeted for wrongful convictions and criminal prosecutions rooted in bias, faulty forensic science, and cultural panic rather than actual criminal conduct.

A wrongful convictions litigator, former federal prosecutor, and co-founder of the Indiana Innocence Project, Beety said the book grew out of years of representing clients accused of crimes that never occurred.

“What we see is that the majority of women who are wrongfully convicted—75 percent of exonerated women—were wrongly convicted where no crime occurred,” Beety said.

The book examines cases of alleged arson, shaken baby syndrome, stillbirths, miscarriages, and prosecutions tied to q***r identity, tracing how stereotypes and discredited scientific evidence can shape criminal investigations and prosecutions. Beety said the project also reflects her own perspective as a q***r mother and her concern over increasing political and legal attacks on LGBTQ+ communities.

Among the cases discussed in Pink Crime is that of Tasha Mercedez Shelby, a Mississippi woman convicted in the death of her toddler step-son despite later medical testimony questioning the shaken baby syndrome diagnosis used at trial.

“There couldn’t have been any other explanation,” Beety said prosecutors argued at the time. Years later, however, the original medical examiner revisited the evidence and testified that the conviction should be reversed.

Beety, who continues to represent Shelby, said the case became one of the driving forces behind the book.

Beety will discuss Shelby’s case during a May 28 event at SOAS University of London alongside Clive Stafford Smith, founder of the human rights organization Reprieve. Organized by SOAS students, the event will focus on shaken baby syndrome prosecutions and wrongful convictions.

The international speaking tour begins May 26 at University of Oxford, where Beety will speak as part of the university’s LGBTQ Rights Discussion Group hosted by Oxford Law faculty. The following day, she will present her work at Leigh Day, a London-based human rights law firm known for its environmental and civil rights litigation.

Beety joined the Maurer School of Law faculty in 2023 and currently serves as the Robert H. McKinney Professor of Law. She originally pursued a legal career to prosecute cases involving sexual assault and domestic violence, but said her perspective shifted after meeting a man who had been wrongfully convicted, exoneree Levon Brooks.

That experience ultimately redirected her career toward wrongful conviction litigation and scholarship.

She said cases involving motherhood, pregnancy, and q***r identity often reveal recurring problems in the justice system, including unreliable forensic evidence, gender bias, false confessions, and what investigators call “tunnel vision,” in which police and prosecutors focus too narrowly on a single explanation.

Her scholarship on “changed science writs”—legal remedies that allow courts to reconsider convictions when scientific evidence evolves and advances—has drawn national attention. In 2024, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor cited Beety’s research in an opinion addressing the issue.

Beety said she hopes Pink Crime will reach prosecutors, defense attorneys, and advocates alike.

“Prosecutors shouldn’t be prosecuting people who are innocent,” she said. “There should be a greater awareness about what they’re doing, but defense attorneys also need the ability to challenge charges that were wrongfully filed.”

Publishers Weekly recently described Pink Crime as “a startling revelation of misogyny embedded deeply in the U.S. legal system.”

The book can be pre-ordered at: https://thenewpress.org/books/pink-crime/

05/21/2026

Jacquelyn Butler knew she wanted to work in law long before she stepped into a classroom at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law. What she did not know was whether law school was the right next step—or how to break into the legal profession as a first-generation student navigating the process largely on her own.

Now, as one of the first graduates of the Law School's new Master of Legal Studies (MLS) program, Butler says the degree gave her exactly what she needed: practical legal experience, professional confidence, and clarity about her future in law.

“I wanted to get my foot in the door with the legal profession without having a JD currently,” Butler said. “The MLS program gave me a lot of opportunities that I don’t think I would have had if I had just done undergraduate.”

A South Bend native and IU Bloomington graduate, Butler earned her undergraduate degree through the O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University, majoring in law and public policy while minoring in business and Spanish. She also helped lead the university’s Pre-Law Association, motivated in part by her own experience navigating the legal education process as a first-generation student.

“I had no clue what I was doing,” she said. “There were all these fees, deadlines, applications—things nobody had ever explained to me before. I wanted to help make that process more accessible for other students.”

Although Butler originally planned to attend law school immediately after graduating, she instead found herself searching for a bridge between undergraduate study and a legal career. The new MLS program at Maurer offered exactly that opportunity.

“It sounded like the perfect middle ground,” she said.

Read more about Jacquelyn's journey to the Master of Legal Studies program, and where she's going next: https://law.indiana.edu/graduate-apply/master-of-legal-studies/jacquelyn.html

We're also hosting an MLS information session tonight at 6 p.m. if you know anyone interested in earning IU's most affordable master's degree. Sign up to attend: https://iu.zoom.us/meeting/register/DjUPkn_GRbmiIspGJS5UMA #/registration

05/19/2026

We've seen a lot of tokens of appreciation from students to the faculty over the years, but this is the first time we've encountered a real pancake taped to a thank-you card. Only fitting for Prof. Jeff Stake!

05/18/2026

Nice story on Sai Srinivas Reddy, who earned his LLM from the Law School in 2025.

KADAPA: Breaking barriers of geography and circumstance, Bhumireddy Sai Srinivas Reddy, a young man from Kamballi village in the faction-affected Pulivendula re

05/14/2026

Indiana University Maurer School of Law alumna Sofia Garcia has been selected as a 2026 Justice Fellow with the Immigrant Justice Corps (IJC), joining a national cohort of 30 emerging immigration advocates chosen to serve communities at a critical moment for immigrant rights in the United States.

Garcia, a Cincinnati native and graduate of the University of Dayton, will join the Migrant & Immigrant Community Action (M.I.C.A.) Project in St. Louis, Missouri, where she will provide free, merits-blind legal representation to individuals in ICE detention.

Garcia graduated from the Law School on May 9. She is the only student from Indiana selected as an IJC Fellow this year.

“Coming from a family of immigrants, I have witnessed firsthand the challenges of navigating our legal system,” Garcia said. “This work is personal to me, and IJC’s dedication to making quality legal representation accessible resonates deeply.”

Founded in 2014 by the late Judge Robert A. Katzmann of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and incubated by the Robin Hood Foundation, Immigrant Justice Corps identifies and trains promising immigration advocates to serve low-income immigrants and families in need of legal representation. To date, more than 500 IJC Fellows have supported over 125,000 immigrants and their families nationwide.

Amid what the organization describes as “one of the most challenging moments for immigrant rights in a generation,” IJC leaders say the need for trained advocates has never been greater.
“Every day in America, immigrants are deported not because they lack legal rights, but because they lack lawyers,” said Jojo Annobil, CEO of Immigrant Justice Corps. “That is not justice. It is a failure we refuse to accept. Our 2026 class represents our answer to this crisis. They are not just lawyers, they are a lifeline.”

Justice Fellows serve for two years as staff attorneys at legal services providers and community-based organizations across the country, representing asylum seekers, detained immigrants, and families navigating complex immigration proceedings.

Garcia brings extensive hands-on immigration advocacy experience to the fellowship. Over the past five years, she has worked with clients and attorneys on matters involving DACA, U visas, asylum, removal defense, and Board of Immigration Appeals cases through internships with Al Otro Lado, the National Immigrant Justice Center, and the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights.

Earlier this year she published “Vice, Morality, and Immigration: Critiquing and Examining the Application of Legal Moralism in the Criminalization of Application of Legal Moralism in the Criminalization of Immigrants for Vice-Related Crimes Immigrants for Vice-Related Crimes” in the Indiana Journal of Law & Social Equality.

At the University of Dayton, Garcia graduated summa cm laude with a degree in political science and was recognized as the university’s top political science student during both her junior and senior years. She also served as president of the Student Government Association, where she helped launch annual sexual assault bystander intervention training for nearby campus establishments in partnership with the local YWCA.

In addition, Garcia conducted fieldwork on fair housing rights in Dayton and Oakland, California through the University of Dayton Human Rights Center’s Moral Courage Project.

Garcia said the fellowship’s emphasis on mentorship and community was especially meaningful as she prepares to begin her legal career.

“As a first-generation law student, starting out in this field is overwhelming at times, and having experienced advocates to learn from makes all the difference,” Garcia said. “Combined with the strength and camaraderie of the IJC fellow community, this Fellowship felt like the ideal next step in my journey as an immigration advocate.”

Sarah Burr, IJC board president and retired immigration judge, said the incoming fellows reflect the organization’s ongoing commitment to universal representation.

“Even in the current landscape, our Fellows are committed to universal representation — making sure that every immigrant who needs a lawyer gets one,” Burr said.

Congratulations, Sofia!

05/10/2026

Congratulations, Class of 2026! Great speeches from Mickey Maurer, Don Gjerdingen, Abiodun Otaiku, Gerry Regep III, and Brandon Richter. And perhaps the most beautiful rendition of the alma mater we've ever had, performed by Kayla Behforouz. Plenty more pictures to come... Take some time to celebrate your achievements, then let's conquer the Bar!

05/09/2026

Our 2026 graduation ceremony will be broadcast live starting at 3 p.m. Tune in and celebrate our graduating students!

Maurer School of Law Ceremony 2026