News Archive

Two members of the IU McKinney faculty have been named to new professorships. Jennifer Drobac has been named a Samuel R. Rosen Professor of Law, and John Hill has been named the R. Bruce Townsend Professor of Law.

Professor Drobac's latest book, Sexual Exploitation of Teenagers: Adolescent Development, Discrimination, and Consent Law, was published in 2016 by University of Chicago Press. Professor Drobac was a Visiting Scholar during the Spring 2018 semester at Harvard Law School’s Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics, and Massachusetts General Hospital Center for Law, Brain and Behavior. She was there conducting research for her next book, The Myth of Consent, which she is co-writing with Professor Oliver Goodenough. That work will explore the neuroscience of adult decision making and how the science should influence law reform. Professor Drobac has been interviewed for well over 100 news stories about sexual harassment since Fall 2018, when allegations of sexual harassment were made against movie mogul Harvey Weinstein.

The Samuel R. Rosen Professorships are named in honor of the late Judge Rosen, a respected member of Indiana's legal community. The 1933 graduate of Harvard Law School held a number of judicial posts after he moved to Indiana in 1963, including serving as deputy attorney general, an Indiana Supreme Court administrator and the state's first senior judge accorded "at-large" judicial authority in Indiana. In 1992, Judge Rosen made a gift for the benefit of the law school to honor his Harvard classmate, Cleon H. "Bill" Foust, who served as dean of the school from 1967 until 1973. That gift supports these endowed professorships.

Professor Hill is the author of After the Natural Law: How the Classical Worldview Supports Our Modern and Moral Political Values. He holds a J.D. and a doctorate in philosophy, both of which he received from Georgetown University. In addition to being a professor of law at IU McKinney, where he teaches constitutional law, civil procedure, torts, jurisprudence and ethical and legal issues at the end of life, and an adjunct professor of philosophy in the Department of Philosophy at IUPUI.

The R. Bruce Townsend Professorship is made possible through gifts contributed in honor of the late R. Bruce Townsend, a professor at the law school from 1946 until his retirement in 1982. He became one of the best loved professors at the school, widely known for his outstanding teaching ability, his wit and his compassion.