Welcome to another edition of See infra, delivering a sampling of news from St. John's Law. 

Please join family, friends, and members of the St. John's Law community as we gather to honor, remember, and celebrate the life of Professor Mary Lyndon.

Wednesday, October 28, 2026

RSVP to attend.

Every day, we’re bringing you news and stories from St. John’s Law. So, be sure to follow us on social media:

You can also visit the Law School’s standalone newsroom, where we highlight career achievements and other news about Law School alumni, along with the activities and accomplishments of the St. John’s Law faculty.  

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The Campaign for St. John’s Law will help ensure the Law School remains a place of opportunity and transformation. As part of Hearts on Fire: The Campaign for St. John’s University, this Law School initiative aims to:

We invite you to support the Campaign for St. John’s Law. You can designate your gift however you like, and every gift helps us meet our Campaign goals. Make a gift today!

You’re invited to a wonderful evening of mixing, mingling, and reminiscing with your St. John’s Law classmates and Dean Jelani Jefferson Exum:

Thursday, November 12, 2026, New York City Bar Association

RSVP to attend by Monday, November 9, 2026.

Hunter Igoe ’20 was raised upstate. But as a St. John’s Law student, he fell in love with New York City, seeing the good it does for millions of people who live and work there. The son of public servants, he felt called to carry out the City’s mission. So, he was delighted to launch his legal career at the New York City Law Department, where he worked as a trial lawyer defending the City and its agencies in personal injury and property damage actions. Now, he’ll continue to serve the city and its people as Principal Court Attorney to Hon. Claudia Lanzetta in Queens Supreme Court. Read on to learn more about Hunter and his public service.

This month's Center for Bankruptcy Studies Bankruptcy Alumni Spotlight features McDermott Will & Schulte partner Kristin K. Going ‘02LL.M., while the Mattone Family Institute for Real Estate Law puts its Real Estate Alumni Spotlight on Tianja Samuel ‘13, a partner at Kriss & Feuerstein LLP.

Professor Ashley B. Armstrong is advancing the contextual case method from theory to practice, demonstrating how pairing judicial opinions with supplemental texts can give students a fuller understanding of the law. In the latest installment of our Law Matters story series, Dean Jelani Jefferson Exum talks with Professor Armstrong about what drew her to this approach and how it prepares students to become more thoughtful, effective lawyers. Read the full interview.

Next month, the Law School’s Center for Race and Law, under the leadership of Professor Renee Nicole Allen, will welcome SMU Dedman School of Law Professor Carliss Chatman as its inaugural Scholar in Residence. The new program expands the Center’s efforts to help students, academics, practitioners, and community members examine race and its intersection with the law through lectures, symposia, dialogue, and scholarship. Read more about the program launch.

Professor Adrián E. Alvarez’s article, “Saving Special Education: 504’s Stopgap Rights,” has been published in the Yale Law & Policy Review. The article examines how parents and advocates can use U.S. Department of Education regulations implementing Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 to secure special education and related services for students with disabilities when protections under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act fall short. 

Professor Sandeep Dhaliwal’s article, “The Legal Realism of W.E.B. Du Bois,” has been accepted for publication in the Cornell Law Review. In the article, he uncovers and analyzes the legal thought of the great writer, scholar, and activist W.E.B. Du Bois, exploring works ranging from Du Bois’s 1896 dissertation on the transatlantic slave trade, to Du Bois and the NAACP’s historic 1947 petition to the new United Nations. The article argues, ultimately, that Du Bois belongs in the canon of American legal thought.

Professor Philip Lee’s article, “Justice Alito’s Jurisprudence of the White Gaze,” will be published in the Georgetown Journal of Law & Modern Critical Race Perspectives. With the article, Professor Lee seeks to fill a gap in the robust literature on the “White Gaze”—the idea that the way White people see and interact with the world is the normative baseline against which all human experience is evaluated—by examining an individual U.S. Supreme Court Justice’s opinions.

Professor Eric W. Shannon will publish his essay, “Laying Down Our Arms: A Truce in the Legal Writing Classroom Generative AI Cleverness Race,” in The Scribes Journal of Legal Writing. The piece describes the growing use of generative AI by law students, and the increasingly sophisticated methods some legal writing professors use to detect students’ prohibited use of the tool. 

Professor Jacob L. Todres has contributed the chapter “Malpractice Exposure” to the textbook Practical and Ethical Guidelines for Building a Successful Tax Practice (Carolina Academic Press). Written for current and aspiring tax professionals, the book examines the governing ethical standards and rules of tax practice. Its chapters use statutes, regulations, cases, examples, and practice questions to connect professional standards with everyday, real-world decision-making.

To learn more about the St. John’s Law faculty’s activities and achievements, including their presentations and media commentary, visit our Faculty Focus blog.

Eleesia Hernandez ’28 is following her passion for science and technology as she prepares for a career in intellectual property law. This past summer, she participated in the prestigious Hispanic National Bar Association Intellectual Property Law Institute and interned with software company MongoDB, where she gained hands-on experience using AI in legal practice. Now, she's building on those experiences through coursework and student leadership at St. John’s Law. Read more about Eleesia’s IP law journey.

More than 100 members of the St. John’s Law community came together for the 2026 Justice in New York: A Pro Bono Working Lunch. Now in its third year, this daylong initiative is hosted by the Law School’s DiMartino/Smith Public Interest Center, Alumni Association Alumnae Leadership Council Chapter, Public Interest Law Students Association, and Mattone Family Institute for Real Estate Law, and in collaboration with the Labor Relations & Employment Law Society.

Working in small groups alongside alumni, faculty, and administrators serving as volunteer attorneys, students helped provide free legal information to low-income New Yorkers through the American Bar Association’s New York Free Legal Answers program. They addressed questions involving family law, mental health, trusts and estates, housing, constitutional and civil rights, and labor and employment.

Many thanks to the St. John's Law alumni who returned to campus and shared their knowledge and skills with our students, who experienced firsthand the difference pro bono work can make in the lives of New Yorkers in need. Thanks, too, to Rivkin Radler LLP (gold sponsor) and Cornerstone Land Abstract (notarization station) for generously supporting this important public interest event.

Read more about the 2026 Pro Bono Working Lunch.

Comments, Suggestions, or Content Ideas?
Please email Lori Herz, See infra's Managing Editor and Lead Writer, at herzl@stjohns.edu.

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