Randy Gordon is Spring 2008 Distinguished Alumni in Residence

Schedule - April 3, 2008

Photograph: Randy Gordon.Randy Gordon will visit Washburn University School of Law on April 3, 2008 as the Spring 2008 Business and Transactional Law Center Distinguished Alumni in Residence. During his visit Mr. Gordon will visit classes and make presentations to students and faculty.

Randy Gordon is a partner in the Antitrust Group at Gardere Wynne Sewell LLP, where he also serves as the Firm's Professional Development Partner. He is a past Faculty Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Edinburgh, an Adjunct Professor of Law and Lecturer in English at Southern Methodist University, a fellow of the Dallas Institute of Humanities, and a member of the Advisory Board of the Hiett Prize, the largest humanities-specific prize in the U.S. His professional activities include service as Chair of the State Bar of Texas Antitrust & Business Litigation Section, a member of the Professionalism Committee of the Legal Education Section of the ABA, a member and former board member of the Professional Development Consortium, and an elected member of the Society of Writers to Her Majesty's Signet. Mr. Gordon is also an Advisory Board Member of the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, the Hall Center for the Humanities, and the Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas. A frequent lecturer and writer, he is the Senior Host of "The Writer's Studio," a series of interviews with contemporary authors broadcast throughout the country by KERA/National Public Radio. Randy Gordon graduated from Washburn University School of Law in 1991.

Law and the Humanities Presentation

Randy Gordon will discuss how and why particular narratives come to be institutionalized as legal rules — and why others do not — in his presentation, "How Stories Become Legal Rules: A Kansas Case," on Thursday, April 3, 2008, at noon in Room 102.

Mr. Gordon will use, among other examples, the two high profile Kansas criminal cases of Betty Hundley and Peggy Stewart to illustrate his thesis. The Hundley case dealt with the persistent violent abuse of Betty by her husband Carl, which resulted in Betty killing Carl and Betty's subsequent murder trial. As Justice Herd stated in State v. Hundley, 236 Kan. 461, 693 P.2d 475 (1985), where Betty's conviction for the lesser included offense of involuntary manslaughter was reversed: "This is a textbook case of the battered wife, which is psychologically similar to hostage and prisoner of war cases."

In State v. Stewart, 243 Kan. 639, 763 P.2d 572 (1988), Peggy Stewart was charged with murder in the first degree of her husband. The trial judge entered a verdict of not guilty. The prosecution appealed on a question reserved and the Supreme Court held that statutory justification for use of deadly force in self-defense did not excuse homicide committed by a battered wife where there was no evidence of deadly threat or imminent danger contemporaneous with the killing.