In mid-June, we celebrated the accomplishments and graduation of our Class of 2025 and wished them much joy, excitement, and fulfillment in the next chapters of their journeys. The past academic year was certainly an eventful one for the legal profession and higher education. As I remarked at commencement, many challenging classroom hypotheticals became vivid and real.

A hallmark of Stanford Law is how it seizes opportunities to incorporate “real-world” learning in our curriculum. In this vein, our 11 full-time clinics continue to provide a distinctive educational experience. The feature article in this issue highlights an extraordinary example: a uniquely complex, multiyear case that yielded exceptional lessons to generations of students in the Environmental Law Clinic (ELC). Led by Professor Debbie Sivas, JD ’87, the ELC represented Native American tribes and community members in the Medicine Lake area of Northern California in the case of Pit River Tribe v. Bureau of Land Management. The case was a legal marathon, with multiple stops at the district court and four arguments before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The clinic’s clients sought to protect the Medicine Lake Highlands, known as Sáttítla to the local tribal community that views them as sacred. Over the years of litigation, students prepared and delivered arguments, learned resilience from the setbacks and creativity in designing novel and adaptive approaches. In the end, their clients’ goals were not achieved in the courts but rather through a lobbying campaign that led to the establishment of Sáttítla Highlands National Monument and conservation of hundreds of thousands of acres of tribal ancestral land.

Stanford Law also takes great pride in the aspirations of our students to become public servants and in our alumni who have made a mark in government. This issue includes a Q&A with Megan Barbero, JD ’05, former SEC general counsel. Megan reflects on her influential career in financial governance with Professor Bobby Bartlett, co-director of the Arthur and Toni Rembe Rock Center for Corporate Governance.

This issue also presents recent faculty scholarship including two books: Professor David Sklansky’s Criminal Justice in Divided America and Professor Orin Kerr’s (MS ’94) The Digital Fourth Amendment. The issue highlights the innovative work of Professor Julian Nyarko on the transformative impact of AI tools in legal services and systems. And Professor Mila Sohoni’s essay “Lessons from the End of Chevron” conveys important insights and analysis of recent developments in administrative law.

It is with a heavy heart that we acknowledge the passing this summer of two extraordinary alumni and cherished friends of Stanford Law School, Miles Rubin, JD ’52 (BA ’50), and Bill Neukom, LLB ’67. Miles and Bill each had unwavering dedication to the values and goals of legal education and the mission of our law school. They each set lofty standards for us to aspire to and supported us as we worked to meet them. We were profoundly fortunate to call them our friends, and their absence leaves a void in our community that will be deeply felt. This issue offers a remembrance of Miles who, with his wife, Nancy, was critical to the creation of our Loan Repayment Assistance Program for graduates in public interest careers. The next issue of the magazine will include a reflection on the many ways in which Bill inspired the law school, most recently in the establishment of the Neukom Center for the Rule of Law.

And there’s so much more. I hope you’ll read on. SL