LL.M. Faculty
All of the specialized agricultural and food law courses offered in the LL.M. Program are taught by professors with both distinguished scholarly backgrounds and experience in the practice of law. In class, our professors combine the academic with the practical, addressing policy issues, scholarship, and representation considerations. We ask, how do these issues affect clients and constituents - covering the range of possibilities, from farmers, processors, retailers, and ultimately to non-farm consumers.
Tenured University of Arkansas Faculty
Susan Schneider has practiced and taught agricultural law throughout her entire career as an attorney. She joined the University of Arkansas School of Law faculty in 1998 and has served as the LL.M. Program director since 2000. Her primary teaching and research interests are in food law and policy, agricultural finance, bankruptcy, agricultural labor law, and agricultural policy.
Professor Schneider grew up on a family dairy farm in Minnesota and graduated with a B.A. in Political Science from the College of St. Catherine (Phi Beta Kappa, Pi Gamma Mu) in St. Paul, Minnesota. Professor Schneider earned her J.D., cum laude, from the University of Minnesota School of Law and her LL.M. in agricultural law from the University of Arkansas School of Law.
Professor Schneider's private practice experience includes agricultural law work with firms in Minnesota, North Dakota, and Washington, D.C. She served as a staff attorney at Farmer's Legal Action Group Inc. and at the National Center for Agricultural Law Research & Information. Prior to coming to Arkansas, she taught agricultural law and related subjects at William Mitchell College of Law in Minnesota and more recently taught in the Drake University School of Law Summer Agricultural Law Institute.
Professor Schneider has published numerous articles on agricultural law subjects, including food law and policy, farm finance, agricultural bankruptcy, ground-water contamination, farm program payments, and women in agriculture. In addition to her traditional publications, she is a regular contributor to the aglaw blog on the Jurisdynamics Network and has crea
ted a blog for the LL.M. Program, aglawllm that highlights current program activities and alumni news. She tweets on behalf of the Program @aglawllm.
Professor Schneider is the author of a new agricultural law casebook, Food, Farming & Sustainability: Readings in Agricultural Law that was published in December 2010. She is a frequent speaker at agricultural and food law conferences, presenting last fall in Oregon and in Nebraska.
Professor Schneider is an active member of the American Agricultural Law Association (AALA) and is a past president and former AALA board member. She currently serves on the Board of Directors of Farmers Legal Action Group, Inc., a non-profit law firm representing family farm interests.
Christopher Kelley has a distinguished career in agricultural law practice, teaching and scholarship. He currently teaches in the LL.M. program in the areas of environmental law, government regulation, and international issues. In the J.D. program, Professor Kelley teaches Administrative Law and the Rule of Law seminar. He received his B.A. from Louisiana State University, his J.D., with honors, from the Howard University School of Law, and his LL.M. in Agricultural Law from the University of Arkansas School of Law. He has been admitted to the practice of law in Arkansas, Georgia, Minnesota, North Dakota, and the District of Colombia.
Before joining the University of Arkansas School of Law faculty, Professor Kelley practiced law in both the public and private sectors. His private agricultural law practice experience includes work with Arent Fox in Washington D.C., and Linquist & Vennum P.L.L.P. in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He began his legal career in the Solicitor General's Office of the Minnesota Attorney General. He also has been a public defender, a legal services attorney, and staff counsel to the American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi.
Professor Kelley also has taught at the William Mitchell College of Law, the University of North Dakota School of Law, the University of South Dakota School of Law, and in the Drake University School of Law Summer Agricultural Law Institute.
In 2005, Professor Kelley taught as a Fulbright Scholar at the Kharkiv National Agrarian University and the Kharkiv National University of Internal Affairs in Kharkiv, Ukraine. He continues to visit and lecture frequently in Ukraine, and he teaches a distance course, Legal Writing in English to Ukrainian law students each semester. He is Of Counsel to the Inyurpolis law firm in Kharkiv, Ukraine. Professor Kelley has been honored with another Fulbright award, and he will be teaching Spring 2011 in Moldova.
Professor Kelley has led the School of Law in the use of interactive audiovisual conferences to connect us with attorneys, scholars, and students throughout the world. Working through the U.S. Embassy, the State Department, and a host of other contacts, Professor Kelley has led our professors and students in real-time dialogue across the world discussing legal issues of interest to us all.
Professor Kelley is a Co-Chair of the Russia/Eurasia Committee of the American Bar Association Section of International Law. He participated in the World Justice Forum in Vienna, Austria in 2008 and 2009. He was a delegate on the American Bar Association Section of International Law's International Legal Exchange (ILEX) program in Australia and New Zealand in 2010. He currently serves on the planning committee for the ILEX program in Jordan and Lebanon in 2011. He is also a member of the International Bar Association.
Distinguished Agricultural Law Visitors and Adjunct Faculty
Neil Hamilton is a well recognized leader in the study of agricultural law and its part in our food system, and he is a long time friend of the LL.M. Program. Professor Hamilton is the Dwight D. Opperman Chair of Law at the Drake University School of Law in Des Moines, Iowa and also serves as the Director of the Drake Agricultural Law Center. He has taught agricultural law for over twenty-seven years and was instrumental in the founding of our LL.M. Program, serving as one of our first professors in 1981. He teaches our introductory course, Introduction to the Law of Food and Agriculture and a new course that explores new opportunities such as wind power, Rural Lands Rural Livelihoods.
Professor Hamilton has lectured throughout the United States and in 20 other countries, has written more than two dozen law review articles and several books on food and agricultural law issues. In addition to coming to Arkansas each semester, once a year he is a visiting professor at the University of Nantes in France.
Professor Hamilton is former president of the American Agricultural Law Association and former co-chair of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Small Farms Advisory Committee. He now chairs the advisory board for the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University and is the board chair of the Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation. He has been a consultant for many international organizations, such as the United Nations Development Program in China, the Royal Botanical Garden at Kew, the World Bank and the International Potato Research Center in Lima, Peru.
Vincent O. Chadick is a popular adjunct professor in the LL.M. Program. He received his B.A. degree from Georgetown University, his law degree from the University of Arkansas School of Law, and his LL.M. degree in Agricultural Law from the University of Arkansas School of Law. He is a partner in the Bassett Law Firm, practicing in the areas of agricultural law, environmental law, business and commercial law. He is a recognized leader in the Fayetteville community and is a member of the Washington County, Arkansas and Oklahoma Bar Associations. Professor Chadick brings his rich agricultural law practice experience to the classroom in his course, The Regulation of Livestock Sales, a course focused on the Packers and Stockyards Act.
Bill Marler and Denis Stearns of the Marler Clark firm based in Seattle, Washington taught a new condensed course, Unsafe Food & Product Liability in November 2010.
Bill Marler is an accomplished personal injury lawyer and national expert in foodborne illness litigation. He has been a major force in food safety policy in the United States and abroad. He and his partners at Marler Clark have represented thousands of individuals in claims against food companies whose contaminated products have caused serious injury and death. His advocacy for better food regulation has led to invitations to address local, national, and international gatherings on food safety, including recent testimony to US Congress Committee on Energy and Commerce. Marler Clark is considered the nation’s foremost law firm representing victims of foodborne illness and other serious personal injuries.
Mr. Marler began litigating foodborne illness cases in 1993, when he represented Brianne Kiner, the most seriously injured survivor of the Jack in the Box E. coli O157:H7 outbreak, resulting in her landmark $15.6 million settlement. Marler has focused his practice on representing individuals, particularly children, in litigation resulting from E. coli, Salmonella, Shigella, hepatitis A, and other food contamination cases. He has represented victims of nearly every large foodborne illness outbreak in the United States securing over $500,000,000 for his clients.
Under the umbrella of OutBreak, the nonprofit consulting arm of Marler Clark dedicated to food safety advocacy, Mr. Marler travels widely to speak to food industry groups, fair associations, and public health groups about the litigation of claims resulting from outbreaks of pathogenic bacteria and viruses and the issues surrounding it. He is also a frequent writer on topics related to foodborne illness. His articles include “Separating the Chaff from the Wheat: How to Determine the Strength of a Foodborne Illness Claim”, “Food Claims and Litigation”, How to Keep Your Focus on Food Safety, and “How to Document a Food Poisoning Case” (co-authored with David Babcock.) His blog, www.marlerblog.com is avidly read by the food safety and legal communities.
Mr. Marler is a graduate of the Seattle University School of Law in 1987. Mr. Marler was given the 2008 Outstanding Lawyer Award by the King County Bar Association, as well as being given the Public Justice Award by the Washington State Trial Lawyers Association. He has been profiled in numerous publications.
Denis Stearns is a founding partner of Marler Clark and also a principal in the non-profit company, Outbreak. He began his involvement in food-related litigation in 1993 as one of the lead defense attorneys handling the cases arising from the historic Jack in the Box E. coli O157:H7 outbreak. He was responsible for designing and implementing a discovery plan that allowed Foodmaker to present a consistent and successful defense in over one hundred lawsuits spread among several states. In this role, Mr. Stearns obtained extensive knowledge and experience in litigation that involves complex manufacturing systems, foodborne illnesses, and issues of quality control. He also became noted for a highly principled, but persistent, approach to the discovery process and is a frequent speaker and guest lecturer on ethics and the law. Since helping to found Marler Clark twelve years ago, he has worked on hundreds of food outbreak cases, including recent ones involving E. coli O157:H7-contaminated Dole spinach, Salmonella in Peter Pan peanut butter and Banquet pot pies, and a spate of outbreaks involving E. coli O157:H7 in ground beef, Nestlé cookie dough, and raw milk.
Mr. Stearns graduated from Seattle University with a degree in philosophy and obtained his law degree at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is a frequent author and speaker on a wide variety of topics related to food, law, economics, and policy, and is the author of two book-chapters, a law journal article, and numerous other articles, essays, and opinion pieces. His article most recent article, which is entitled “ON (CR)EDIBILITY: Why Food in the U.S. May Never Be Safe,” will be published April this year in Stanford Law & Policy Review. He also has had an article published in the Journal of Food Law & Policy, titled
Preempting Food Safety: An Examination of USDA Rulemaking and its E. coli O157:H7 Policy in Light of Estate of Kriefall ex rel. Kriefall v. Excel Corporation.
David P. Grahn is the Associate General Counsel for Rural Development at the United States Department of Agriculture where he is responsible for the legal advice provided by the Office of the General Counsel to the Rural Housing Service, Rural Business-Cooperative Service, Rural Utilities Service, the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation/Risk Management Agency, and the Farm Loan Programs of the Farm Service Agency. From 1996 through 2002, Professor Grahn was the Assistant General Counsel for Legislation responsible for the drafting and reviewing of legislation and the reviewing of Congressional testimony that affected agencies of the Department of Agriculture. He was detailed to the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Forestry, and Nutrition during Congress' consideration of the Federal Agriculture Improvement and Reform Act of 1996. From 1992 through 1995, he served as a Confidential Assistant to the Administrator of the Farm Service Agency. Professor Grahn is a graduate of the University of Minnesota Law School and Carleton College.
For a number of years, we have relied on Professor Grahn's unparalleled expertise in federal farm policy as a friend and colleague. In 2010, he offered a new course on federal policy making and budgetary concerns. The new course was described as, How OZ really works: The power of credit reform and paygo in driving Federal policy and determining who makes the decisions. While Professor Grahn's duties in Washington, D.C. may not permit him to join us in person in 2011, he remains an important instructor through live video-conferences.
Mark Henry is a registered Patent Attorney with an active agricultural law, commercial law, and intellectual property practice in Fayetteville, Arkansas. He received his B.A. degree in Biology from Hendrix College, his law degree (with honors) from the University of Arkansas School of Law and his LL.M., in Agricultural Law from the University of Arkansas School of Law. He is admitted to practice in Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma, and Missouri; also admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court, the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Eighth and Federal Circuits, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern and Western Districts of Arkansas, the U.S. District Court of Nebraska, and the U.S. District Court for the Eastern and Western Districts of Oklahoma. He is a member of the Washington County, Arkansas (Chair, Intellectual Property Section, 2003-04), and American (Intellectual Property Section) Bar Associations.
In addition to his agricultural intellectual property work, Professor Henry received recognition for his firm's representation of Hmong family farmers who had moved to the region to purchase poultry contracting farms and were facing foreclosure. Professor Henry teaches a course in Agricultural Biotechnology in the LL.M. Program.
Allen Olson rejoined our faculty this year, teaching courses in the 2011 Spring semester. With over 30 years of experience as a practicing lawyer, much of it involved in representing farmers and agribusinesses, plus prior teaching experience in the LL.M. Program, we are delighted to welcome Allen back to the faculty.
Allen received his B.A. from Cornell University in 1971, his J.D. from the University of North Carolina School of Law in 1974, and his LL.M. in Agricultural Law from the University of Arkansas School of Law in 1996. He has practiced law in Virginia, Nebraska and Georgia.
Allen was recently elected to the Board of Directors of the American Agricultural Law Association and is a past Chair of the Agriculture Law Section of the Georgia State Bar. He is the author of numerous articles on agricultural law topics and is a frequent speaker at agricultural law conferences nationwide.
Allen recently opened his own law office in Albany, Georgia. His practice is concentrated on agricultural law matters, including federal farm programs, payment limitations, USDA administrative appeals, crop insurance litigation, conservation easements, farm business planning, and other matters affecting farmers and related agricultural businesses. He teaches Federal Farm Programs and a Special Projects class that integrates federal farm program planning tools.
Phil Kunkel has represented clients in agricultural law matters throughout his distinguished career, from his early work representing farmers during the farm crisis of the 1980’s to his current work involving agribusiness. He is a past president and board member of the American Agricultural Law Association (AALA) and is a popular speaker at the AALA conference. He has taught Agricultural Law at William Mitchell College of Law and is a frequent CLE lecturer on commercial financing, UCC, renewable energy, financial workouts, and bankruptcy.
Phil is a principal at the law firm of Gray Plant Mooty in St. Cloud and Minneapolis. He concentrates his current practice in commercial financing, project financing, and workouts and bankruptcy. He has represented senior lenders in more than 25 alternative energy financings totaling more than 1.75 billion; represented an administrative agent in a $400 million syndicated revolving credit facility for a multi-state integrated agricultural producer; represented an administrative agent in a $175 million syndicated financing for an agricultural processing facility in Missouri; and served as the Chapter 11 trustee and represented bankruptcy trustees in $30 million check kiting and $350 million Ponzi scheme cases in Minnesota and Missouri.
Phil’s recent publications include co-authoring the "Farm Legal Series," published by the University of Minnesota Extension Service (2009); and co-authoring the BUSINESS WORKOUTS MANUAL (West Publishing).
Phil received his J.D. cum laude from the University of Minnesota Law School, and his B.S. from Johnʼs University in Minnesota. He travels to Fayetteville to teach the Spring Semester LL.M. course, Field to Table: The Use (and Occasional Abuse) of Marketing and Production Contracts in Agriculture.
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