News
Elijah Wiesman, ’29, comes to UChicago Law with experience spanning immigration law and national security. A Washington University in St. Louis graduate, Wiesman has worked in immigration law and most recently as an intelligence analyst for the FBI. We spoke with him about his path to law school, his interest in litigation and public service, and what drew him to UChicago Law.
Maya Vibhakar, ’29, comes to UChicago Law with a strong interest in government, advocacy, and civil rights. A UCLA graduate, Vibhakar has interned in the White House and U.S. House of Representatives and most recently served as a fellow with the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus.
The University of Chicago Law School welcomed 202 JD students to campus this fall for the 2026-27 academic year. The impressive group hails from 34 states, 88 undergraduate institutions, and a remarkably wide range of academic and professional backgrounds. Selected from a pool of nearly 6,400 applicants, the class of 2029 represents 65 different undergraduate majors.
The Library of Congress announced on September 22 that Martha C. Nussbaum is the 2026 recipient of the John W. Kluge Prize for Achievement in the Study of Humanity.
Originally from Spartanburg, South Carolina, Grant A. Booker, ’29, comes to UChicago Law as an active-duty officer in the U.S. Marine Corps. A graduate of the United States Naval Academy, Booker was selected for the Marine Corps’ Funded Law Education Program and plans to serve as a Judge Advocate after law school.
Faculty in the News
Craig Futterman, a clinical professor of law at the University of Chicago and one of the attorneys representing the coalition of community groups, noted how the Illinois Supreme Court in 2020 rejected a similar argument from the FOP when the union attempted to have misconduct records destroyed after five years.
“The Illinois Supreme Court said, ‘No, no, no, no, no, that violates fundamental public policy of the state and any collective bargaining agreement that is contrary to public policy is void and unenforceable,” Futterman told the Tribune.
In a research paper posted last month, Nathan Chapman, a law professor at the University of Georgia, along with Samuel Bray of the University of Chicago and Brent Strawn of Duke, assessed the Texas law requiring all public elementary and secondary school classrooms in the state to display a poster or framed copy of the Ten Commandments and found it to be clearly unconstitutional, noted Adam Liptak, chief legal affairs correspondent of the New York Times.
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."
The UChicago Experience
Events
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Room V
Participating faculty: Tom Ginsburg
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Weymouth Kirkland Courtroom
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Participating faculty: Adriana Z. Robertson, Adam Chilton