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Law professors’ notable achievements

Minnesota Lawyer//April 20, 2017//

Susanna Blumenthal, Eric Janus and Heidi Kitrosser.

Law professors’ notable achievements

Minnesota Lawyer//April 20, 2017//

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Susanna Blumenthal, the University of Minnesota  Julius E. Davis Professor of Law and an associate professor of history in the College of Liberal Arts, is the winner of the 2017 Merle Curti Award for the best book published in American intellectual history.

Blumenthal’s book, “Law and the Modern Mind: Consciousness and Responsibility in American Legal Culture,” was published by Harvard University Press in 2016. It explores how attorneys in the post-Revolutionary War era struggled to define mental soundness in the courtroom. “Judges struggled to reconcile commonsense notions of rationality with novel scientific concepts that suggested deviant behavior might result from disease rather than conscious choice,” said the publisher

Also from the U of M, law school Professor Heidi Kitrosser has been awarded a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship. The fellowship is awarded annually to about 175 scholars and artists selected from among more than 3,500 applicants. This is the first Guggenheim Fellowship awarded to a University of Minnesota Law School professor.

Kitrosser teaches and writes about government secrecy, the constitutional separation of powers, and speech and press freedoms. During the fellowship, she plans to begin work on a new book, tentatively titled, ”Dangerous Knowledge: Whistleblowers, Leakers, and the Power of Information.”

From Mitchell Hamline, Professor Eric Janus appears in the new award-winning documentary “Untouchable,” showing at this year’s MSP International Film Festival.

The film features the stories of men and women who’ve been branded as sex offenders, while also focusing on the stories of those who’ve suffered sexual abuse. The film won the Albert Maysles Award for Best New Documentary Director at the Tribeca Film Festival.

Janus is considered a national expert on policy regarding sex offenders and serves on Minnesota’s Sex Offender Civil Commitment Advisory Task Force. His latest book on the topic is “Failure to Protect: America’s Sexual Predator Laws and the Rise of the Preventive State.”

The film will be shown at 10 a.m. on Saturday, April 22, and 7 p.m. on Tuesday, April 25. Janus and Patricia Wetterling will take part in a panel discussion after the movie on April 25.

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