Alumni
Campaigning for Equal Justice in Oregon
Buried deep within the DNA of Henry H. Hewitt JD’69 is a gene for Willamette University College of Law.
Hewitt’s ties to the school go back five generations. His great-great-grandfather settled near Salem in 1843 — one year after Willamette University was founded. Not long afterwards, the first in a long succession of Hewitt family members enrolled in the University. A good number of them studied law. Standouts include Hewitt’s great-great-uncle, a circuit court judge, who earned a law degree from Willamette in 1870 — 13 years before a separate College of Law was established. Roy R. Hewitt, his grandfather’s cousin and a prominent Salem attorney, earned his law degree from the college in 1909; he served as its dean from 1927 to 1932.
Students
Valuing Diverse Perspectives
“A number of subjects in law school are very sensitive to ethnically diverse people,” said Naomi L. Levelle, president of the Multicultural Law Students Association (MLSA). “We study Brown v. Board of Education and the Dred Scott case. As a minority student, these are hard cases to read, so it is good to have a group to go to and sound off.”
Faculty
A Broader Appreciation for the Law
Every summer when she was young, W. Warren Binford’s father would pack up the family for a month-long road trip. “He would drive to the end of our street, turn to us and say, ‘OK, where to?’” These excursions took Binford to almost all 50 states and allowed her to see a side of life her childhood in Los Angeles otherwise would not have provided. “Those trips really gave me an appreciation for others — that we are all part of a larger world community,” said Binford, an assistant professor of law and the director of Willamette’s Clinical Law Program.
