Scalia Law School Retirement Celebration

On Thursday, October 14, a much-awaited in-person retirement celebration honoring Dean and Professor Emeritus Daniel Polsby, Professor Emerita Joyce Malcolm, and Professor Emeritus Michael Krauss took place in the Hazel Hall Atrium. Members of the Law School Community, family, and friends gathered to acknowledge the long-lasting contributions these faculty have made to the Law School.

Dean and Professor Emeritus Daniel Polsby served as dean of Scalia Law from 2004 to 2015. Under his leadership, the Law School grew and experienced a meteoric rise in national rankings. His countless contributions will be felt for generations to come. Among dozens of articles he has published on such diverse subjects as voting rights, family law, employment rights, and spectrum utilization, is the award-winning article, “The False Promise of Gun Control,” one of the most widely anthologized essays of recent years. Dean Polsby’s wit, erudition, and fishing vests are already the stuff of legend at Scalia Law.

Professor Emeritus Michael Krauss, who began teaching at GMU in 1987, will go down as one of the greatest teachers in the history of Scalia Law School. In 1994 he was the law school’s first recipient of the university’s “Teacher of the Year” award. At the national level, he was nominated in 2010 for Best Law Teacher by the Institute for Law Teaching and Learning. Professor Krauss's research on torts and ethics issues is nationally known.

Patrick Henry Professor of Law Emerita Joyce Malcolm taught at Scalia Law for 20 years. Professor Malcolm is one of the nation’s leading Second Amendment scholars, a Pulitzer Prize nominee, and the author of numerous books on First Amendment Rights. Dick Heller himself has commented that Justice Scalia, in his “magnificent decision” in the 2008 gun-control case, District of Columbia v. Heller, cited Dr. Malcolm’s work multiple times.