November 10, 2000

Legal scholars are endowed with professorships

On November 3, the School of Law recognized two of its distinguished faculty members with endowed professorships. The gift of an endowed professorship brings honor to the donor and clearly signifies his or her desire in enhancing the university's reputation. For the faculty it is an opportunity for stimulating teaching and the source of satisfaction through the recognition a chair holder receives. For the student, it is a gift of confidence that the highest level of scholarship is represented at the university.

Patrick R. Hugg was endowed as the John J. McAulay Distinguished Professor. Hugg received his A.B. from Spring Hill College, his juris doctor from the University of Louisville, and his LL.M. from Tulane University. Prior to joining the faculty at Loyola in 1986, Hugg practiced labor and employment discrimination law in New Orleans. His research and teaching interests include the fields of appellate advocacy, legal writing, federal courts, comparative law, and European Union law. Hugg is the director of the Loyola Summer Legal Studies Program in Vienna, in which he teaches comparative law. He also served as guest professor at the University of Vienna Law School in 1995. He has spoken on judicial opinion writing and appellate advocacy to various professional groups, including numerous national conferences and The National Judicial College.

The John J. McAulay Distinguished Professorship was established through a gift from Léon C. Sarpy, a 1928 graduate of the College of Arts and Sciences, a 1931 graduate of the School of Law, and the recipient of an honorary degree in 1961. He enjoyed an illustrious legal career with the law firm of Chaffe McCall, and taught for a number of years in the law school. In recognition of outstanding individual achievement, selfless service to community and perseverance in the cause of preservation of human dignity, Sarpy was honored by his alma mater with a President's Medal. In 1996 he received the Adjutor Hominum awardwhich is the most prestigious award Loyola presents exclusively to alumni.

Ray Rabalais was invested as the Eleanor Legier Sarpy Distinguished Professor. Rabalais earned his A.B. from Princeton University, his juris doctor from Harvard, and his master's degree from Michigan State University. Rabalais joined the Loyola law faculty as an assistant professor in 1974, became an associate professor in 1977 and a professor in 1981. Currently, he teaches Western Legal Tradition, International Commercial Law and Financial Institutions Law. He has also taught Common Law Property, Constitutional Law, Trusts and Estates, Law of European Communities, Introduction to Logic and Legal Reasoning, Legislation, Conflict of Laws, Comparative Law, Jurisprudence, the Constitution and Foreign Affairs, and an Advanced Property Law seminar.

Rabalais is a member of the bar in Michigan and Texas, and is a member of the American Bar Association, the American Society for Legal History, the Southern Historical Association, and the Louisiana Supreme Court Historical Society. He has served as a visiting professor at Tulane University School of Law, the Faculty of Law at the University of Cambridge, and the Louisiana State University Law Center. He has taught in the Loyola Summer Legal Studies Program in Cuernavaca, Mexico, and in Cape Town, South Africa, and at the Louisiana State University Summer Session in Aix-en-Provence, France.

In 1993, Sarpy paid tribute to fellow law alumnus and former dean John McAulay, when he funded the John J. McAulay Distinguished Professorship. McAulay, who died in 1997, received his bachelor's degree from Loyola in 1936 and his law degree in 1940. Also in 1940, he joined the faculty of the law school, where he served as law instructor, professor, assistant dean, associate dean, and acting dean. In 1982 he was presented with an honorary degree. In honor of his wife Eleanor, who died in 1996, Sarpy and his children, Courtney Anne, Henry and John, committed to fund a professorship in Eleanor's name. The Eleanor Legier Sarpy Distinguished Professorship was matched with a grant from the Louisiana Education Quality Support Fund Endowed Professorship Program in 1999.