News
Sharp Queener comes to UChicago Law with a background spanning international human rights and grassroots advocacy. A Stanford graduate and former Fulbright Scholar in Nuremberg, Germany, Queener has worked as a tenant organizer and with a legal aid organization in his hometown of Santa Barbara, California.
Vyomika Gandhi, ’29, brings an interdisciplinary background in science and public service to UChicago Law. A Georgetown University graduate with degrees in psychology and neuroscience, Gandhi has worked in the nonprofit sector and conducted research on the effects of opioids and HIV on the brain.
Drew Basile, ’29, has taken an unconventional path to UChicago Law. A University of Pennsylvania graduate and Barry Scholar at Oxford, he has also won seven games on Jeopardy!, competed on Survivor, and worked as a freelance writer.
With her heart set on public interest work, Zoë Mieres Fleishaker, ’27, returned to her home state of New York for the summer to work at Brooklyn Defender Services—an experience, she said, that has been a dream come true. &
To explore his interest in Big Law, Walker Cox, ’28, took on a summer associate position in Skadden’s Chicago office. The work is giving him a taste of day-to-day life in a big firm.
Faculty in the News
America’s top law schools are figuring this out on the fly: for the new academic year, the University of Chicago Law School will ban phones, tablets and laptops from core first-year classrooms, so students cannot use technology shortcuts that “stunt intellectual growth."
But Samuel Bray, a law professor at the University of Chicago, said courts are so powerful they must observe certain restraints. They cannot decide disputes not brought to them, for instance, and they can decide only cases in which the plaintiffs have a real stake.
“Courts have the special power of giving judgments that are obeyed, even in the bitterest disputes,” he said. “But the special powers and special constraints of courts go together. And in the long run, the legitimacy of a judicial system depends on the judges’ commitment to working in a judicial mode, come what may.”
Adam Chilton, Dean, Howard G. Krane Professor of Law, was named by The National Law Review as one of the Top 50 Legal Innovators in Academia for 2026, a national recognition honoring the educators, administrators, researchers, and academic leaders who are shaping the future of legal education.
The UChicago Experience
Events
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Participating faculty: Adam Chilton, Alison L. LaCroix
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Participating faculty: Adam Chilton, William H. J. Hubbard