KU Law to honor 3 alumni with top award

Tue, 04/05/2022

Sydney Halas

LAWRENCE — Three University of Kansas School of Law alumni will receive the law school’s highest alumni honor, the Distinguished Alumni Award, this year. The award celebrates graduates for their professional achievements, contributions to the legal field and service to their communities and the university.

Three professors of law, L. Camille Hébert, James May and Irma Stephens Russell, will receive the 2022 Distinguished Alumni Award at a private dinner April 9 in Lawrence.

L. Camille Hébert, L’82, has distinguished herself through her dedication to educating the next generation of lawyers. Hébert currently serves as the Carter C. Kissell Professor of Law at Ohio State University College of Law and has served as the associate dean for academic affairs and as director of the Center for Law, Policy, and Social Science. Hébert has been teaching at Ohio State since 1988. She is also an affiliated faculty member with Ohio State’s department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies. Hébert has written or co-written four books and published law review articles on issues including sexual harassment, pregnancy discrimination, sexual orientation and gender identity, and labor law. Before starting her lifetime career in higher education, Hébert practiced labor and employment law, representing management for five years with Spencer, Fane, Britt, and Browne in Kansas City. Hébert clerked for the Hon. James Logan of the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals after graduation. During law school, she served as editor-in-chief of the Kansas Law Review and was elected to the Order of the Coif.

James May, L’89, is a law professor and environmental and human rights lawyer, writing more than 20 books, 50 book chapters and 60 law review articles, and advocating in the public interest matters before international, regional, federal and state tribunals, all pro bono. He serves on the American Bar Association's Environmental Justice Task Force and as a special representative for the International Council of Environmental Law. He is the founder or co-founder of a half-dozen nonprofit organizations, including Dignity Rights International and the Mid-Atlantic and Eastern Environmental Law Centers. May is the distinguished professor of law, founder of the Global Environmental Rights Institute and co-founder of the Dignity Law Institute at Widener University Delaware Law School. May’s law career began at Black & Veatch in Kansas City, where he counseled power companies on licensing requirements, including Wolf Creek Power Station, the last nuclear power plant to be licensed in the country. This work was close to his roots as he also holds a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from KU and worked as a national defense engineer at Allied-Signal in Kansas City prior to beginning his career in law. He is an inducted member of Phi Kappa Phi and the American College of Environmental Lawyers, and currently a visiting professor at the Haub School of Law at Pace University in New York, from which he holds a Master of Laws (LL.M.)

Irma Stephens Russell, L’80, joined the KU Law faculty this spring to serve as a distinguished visiting professor. Russell is teaching two environmental law courses: the environmental law survey course and the public lands and natural resources law seminar course. Russell’s permanent position is just across the Kansas border at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, where she serves as the Edward A. Smith/Missouri Endowed Chair in Law, the Constitution, and Society. Russell has taught at several other universities, including the University of Montana School of Law, where she served as dean. Russell practiced law for approximately a decade before beginning her career in higher education. In practice, she represented potentially responsible parties, government entities, lenders and others on issues arising under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA) and the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Russell clerked for the Hon. James Logan of the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals after earning her undergraduate, master’s and law degrees from KU.

View previous Distinguished Alumni Award recipients on the KU Law website.

The law school will also recognize James Woods Green Medallion honorees. Named after the school’s first dean, the medallion recognizes the school’s major financial supporters. This year’s honorees include: