Reflections on My Short Tenure as the Iowa Law Review Faculty Advisor

• Author: Tung Yin
• Position: Professor of Law, Lewis & Clark Law School
• Pages: 1383-1387

Reflections on My Short Tenure as the Iowa Law Review Faculty Advisor Tung Yin  If you were to create a timeline of the faculty advisors to the Iowa Law Review (“ ILR ”), 1 there would be legendary names like Willard “Sandy” Boyd, Bill Buss, Randy Bezanson, and Todd Pettys, who has held the position since 2001, with the exception of 2007 to 2009. For those years, I was privileged enough to serve as the faculty advisor. While my brief stint may appear as just a coffee break for Professor Pettys’ marathon-like presence, I have vivid and warm memories from those two years, and indeed, had my wife and I not decided to move back to the West Coast, it’s very likely that I would be playing faculty host to this Centennial celebration. I’m honored and delighted to be able to share those memories. TAKING OVER AS FACULTY ADVISOR One spring day in 2007, the outgoing Editor in Chief (“EIC”) of the Volume 92 board, Ozan Varol, stopped by my office to ask if I would be interested in taking over as the ILR faculty advisor. 2 I agreed immediately. For one thing, my experience on the California Law Review , first as a member and then as a Notes & Comments Editor, was perhaps my top highlight of law school, and I still felt the respect and awe for an institution that had thrived for over 90 years. Also, I felt a special bond with many of the Volume 92 board members. I had inherited Federal Courts from Professor Pettys the previous fall semester, and the EIC, a Managing Editor, and the entire Articles Department were all in the course, which had a total enrollment of under 20. There’s nothing like  Professor of Law, Lewis & Clark Law School. From 2002 to 2009, I was a law professor at the University of Iowa College of Law, and from 2007 to 2009, I was the faculty advisor to the Iowa Law Review . 1. See Willard L. Boyd & Randall P. Bezanson, Ninety Years of the Iowa Law Review : The Personalities, Policies, and Events that Shaped an Enduring Tradition in Iowa Legal Education , 91 IOWA L. REV. 1, 5–30 (2005); see also Willard L. Boyd & Randall P. Bezanson, Iowa Law Review Centennial: Its Mission, History, and Future , 100 IOWA L. REV. 455, 459 (2015). 2. By coincidence, or perhaps not, Ozan Varol now sits two doors up from me as a colleague at Lewis & Clark Law School. 1384 IOWA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 100:1383 the combination of a small course, the massive Hart and Wechsler casebook, 3 and arcane topics like congressional authority to strip federal courts of jurisdiction over hot button issues to forge that kind of special bond. I had another link with those board members, as I had been serving as the Faculty Judicial Clerkship Advisor since 2005. I had observed ILR board members to be active and ambitious clerkship applicants, generally speaking, and the Volume 92 board was no exception. When all was said and done, they had locked up clerkships with judges from the Second, Eighth, and Ninth Circuits, the District of...