March 8th 2005 • Printer version

Two landmark Supreme Court decisions, pretrial procedures and pitfalls in civil litigation are the subject of discussion at this yearís OíConnell Conference on Thursday, March 10, 8:30 a.m. to 4:15 p.m. at the University of Oregon School of Law, 1515 Agate Street, Eugene.

The keynote speech, Revolution: How a Northwest Lawyer Transformed Criminal Procedure in the U.S. features Jeffrey Fisher,  a young attorney who became a partner in the Seattle office of Davis White Tremaine right after he had won two U.S. Supreme Court cases in four months ó his very first criminal trials. Crawford v. Washington reframed the right of confrontation, and Blakely v. Washington challenged the legality of federal sentencing guidelines.

The annual event is funded in part by a gift from Kenneth J. OíConnell, the late Oregon Supreme Court justice and UO law professor. Cosponsors of this year's conference include the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon, the Lane County Bar Association, the Southern Oregon Chapter of the Federal Bar Association, and the Lawyer Representatives to the Ninth Circuit Judicial Conference.

For more information, registered attendees may contact Assistant Professor Tom Lininger.

PANELS

U.S. District Judges Michael Hogan and Ancer Haggerty; U.S. Magistrate Judges Donald Ashmanskas and Thomas Coffin; Judge David Brewer of the Oregon Court of Appeals; Oregon Circuit Court Judges Robert Huckleberry and Roxanne Osborne; and attorneys William Barton and Barbara DiIaconi.

ABOUT THE CONFERENCE
Kenneth J. OíConnell (1910-2000) served as an Oregon Supreme Court Justice from 1958 to 1977, during a time of great energy and change in American jurisprudence. He started his Oregon career in 1935, as a member of the law school faculty. OíConnell played all possible parts in his 65 years in the stateís legal community - law professor, practicing attorney, appellate court judge and law reformer. In an editorial, the Eugene Register-Guard called him one of the finest legal minds in the West. In 1995, he donated a generous gift to the UO School of Law to further his priority of education for the appellate bench and bar. Come Together: Judges and Attorney Share the Stage is just one of the ways the UO continues to remember K.J., a great jurist and a beloved teacher at Oregonís public law school.

Read an interview with keynote speaker Jeffrey Fisher in LawCrossing.com