Law & Politics

Byron Chrisman (’66), perhaps one of the University of Colorado Boulder Law School’s most unlikely success stories, attributes his success as a tax attorney and real estate developer to his experience at Colorado Law. Now he and his wife, Carlene, have committed a $10 million bequest to endow the Byron and Carlene Chrisman Chairs in Free Enterprise at Colorado Law. When realized upon their passing, this estate gift will be the largest cash gift in the history of Colorado Law.

A new report led by the University of Colorado Boulder, “Considerations for Climate Change and Variability Adaptation on the Navajo Nation,” synthesizes state-of-the-science information on the region’s climate, water cycle and ecology. And it goes much further, discussing social, legal, economic, infrastructural and other factors that affect people’s vulnerabilities to climate impacts as well as their adaptive capacity, and outlining one approach for how the region’s residents might plan for ongoing environmental change.

A team of University of Colorado Boulder graduate students has qualified for the final round of an international venture capital competition April 10-12 thanks in part to what it dubs its secret sauce: the local startup community.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler and Federal Trade Commission Chairwoman Edith Ramirez will speak at a University of Colorado Boulder conference dealing with Internet governance issues Feb. 9-10. The conference, “Digital Broadband Migration: After the Internet Protocol Revolution,” will be hosted by the University of Colorado Law School’s Silicon Flatirons Center for Law, Technology and Entrepreneurship .

The University of Colorado Law School announced that Britt Banks has been appointed as Executive Director of the Getches-Wilkinson Center for Natural Resources, Energy and the Environment. For over 20 years, Banks has been a leader in the international natural resources sector, as a senior corporate executive, attorney, consultant, researcher and teacher, having most recently taught at Tokyo’s Waseda University. He has previously taught at Colorado Law, where he graduated in 1988, and currently serves on the Center’s Advisory Council.

A searchable, comparative law database outlining water quality regulations for Colorado and other states experiencing shale oil and gas development is now available on LawAtlas.org. The Oil & Gas - Water Quality database project is led by the University of Colorado Boulder’s Intermountain Oil and Gas Best Management Practices (BMP) Project in partnership with Temple University’s Public Health Law Research program and its LawAtlas.org website.

Elihuu, a startup company whose slogan is “meet your manufacturer,” has met an investor -- a group of University of Colorado Boulder graduate students. The students last week put $30,000 into Elihuu, an online software platform that connects product designers with manufacturers who can make their wares. The students turned venture capitalists direct CU-Boulder’s Deming Center Venture Fund (DCVF), which was launched by a donor in 1997 and is a program of the Leeds School of Business.

Reducing the amount of desert dust swept onto snowy Rocky Mountain peaks could help Western water managers deal with the challenges of a warmer future, according to a new study led by researchers at NOAA’s Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences ( CIRES ) at the University of Colorado Boulder .

More than 50 students and dozens of alumni of the University of Colorado Boulder Law School will teach a lesson on the First Amendment in more than 50 high school classrooms throughout Colorado Sept. 11–20 in recognition of Constitution Day. Constitution Day is a national event that annually commemorates the Sept. 17, 1787, signing of the United States Constitution.

Retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor will speak at the third annual John Paul Stevens Lecture hosted by the Byron R. White Center at the University of Colorado Boulder Law School on Tuesday, Sept. 17. The event will be held from 5 to 6:30 p.m. in the University Memorial Center’s Glenn Miller Ballroom on the CU-Boulder campus. A limited number of tickets to the lecture are available to the general public at no cost. To register for tickets visit the center’s website at http://www.byronwhitecenter.org .