This year, two long-standing members of the Stanford Law School community retired. Thomas C. Heller, Lewis Talbot and Nadine Hearn Shelton Professor of International Legal Studies, has accepted emeritus status, though he will remain at Stanford and continue teaching. And Miguel A. Méndez, Adelbert H. Sweet Professor of Law, is moving to UC Davis.

A polymath who has taught and written in numerous fields since he joined the faculty in 1979, Thomas Heller has become something of an academic globe-trotter in recent years. He is sought for conferences throughout the world, advises political leaders on every continent, and was intimately involved in the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which earned the Nobel Peace Prize two years ago. On campus, he has influenced generations of young lawyers through the Stanford Program in International Legal Studies (which he co-founded with Lawrence Friedman in 1996), as director of the Rule of Law Program, and as a senior fellow at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

Miguel Méndez has been a scholar and teacher at the forefront of evidence law, having published four books and more than 30 articles on the California and Federal Rules of Evidence Codes. Before coming to Stanford in 1977, he was deputy public defender in the Monterey County Public Defender’s Office, deputy director of California Rural Legal Assistance, and a staff attorney for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Earlier, Méndez clerked for the U.S. Court of Federal Claims and was a legislative assistant to U.S. Senator Alan Cranston (BA ’36). Countless students have named him among their most admired teachers.