The Levin Center at Wayne Law chose two Wayne Law students to serve as legal interns in congressional committee offices in Washington, D.C. this summer. Mallory Fiordellisi worked on the Minority Staff of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. Charles Roarty worked on the Minority Staff of the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs. Both worked on congressional investigations underway at their committees. This is the second year the Levin Center has sponsored the internships.

The Levin Center at Wayne Law has launched 16 online tutorials on how to conduct congressional oversight investigations as part of its work to strengthen the effectiveness of legislative oversight efforts. The new tutorials, primarily for congressional staff, are part of the Levin Center’s Inside Oversight multimedia library. The first of their kind, the tutorials, transcripts and supplemental materials are available at law.wayne.edu/oversighttraining.

Congressional oversight boot camps train 125 on investigations

To date, the Levin Center at Wayne Law, in conjunction with The Lugar Center and the Project On Government Oversight, have sponsored six boot camps that have trained 125 congressional staffers on the practice of bipartisan congressional oversight investigations. The two-day boot camps have trained staffers from both parties and both houses of Congress, with the latest on Aug. 23 and 24.

Professor Robert M. Ackerman, former dean of Wayne Law and a nationally known expert on alternative dispute resolution and communitarianism, has been appointed director of the Levin Center at Wayne Law. Ackerman teaches courses in torts, dispute resolution and negotiation, and serves on the advisory boards for Labor@Wayne and the Center for Peace and Conflict Studies. He succeeds former Dean Jocelyn Benson, who served as director of the Levin Center since Sept. 2016. She will continue her affiliation with the Levin Center by serving as vice chair of its advisory board. 

Save the Date (Nov. 10): Current Issues in Immigration Policy

This day-long, free conference at Wayne Law in Detroit will feature a special luncheon panel on the recent detention of Chaldeans in the Detroit area. Three other panels will focus on the “travel ban,” sanctuary cities and immigration federalism, and detention in deportation proceedings. Registration materials and additional details will be circulated in the coming weeks.

The Wayne Law Review, with support from the Levin Center at Wayne Law, will present a symposium on congressional oversight at Wayne Law in Detroit. Building upon the Scholars Roundtable on Congressional Oversight sponsored by the Levin Center in June 2017, the symposium is intended to encourage increased academic research into the legal, political and historical aspects of congressional oversight investigations, their techniques and effectiveness, and their role in the constitutional system of checks and balances.

Levin Center focus of Roll Call article

The Levin Center at Wayne Law and former U.S. Sen. Carl Levin, chair of the Levin Center, were the focus of a story for Roll Call, The Levin Legacy: Next-Gen Congressional Oversight. Roll Call is a leading periodical on Congress.

Carl Levin writes opinion columns

Former U.S. Sen. Carl Levin wrote several opinion columns for The Hill including, Congress must press forward with its Russia investigation, For the sake of American taxpayers, companies must pay their fair share and Devin Nunes has jeopardized the oversight role of Congress.