Three Newly Elected to Council; Officers Reelected

The membership on May 13 elected Kenneth C. Frazier, Senior Vice President and General Counsel of Merck & Co., Inc.; William C. Hubbard of Columbia, South Carolina, a partner in the firm of Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough, L.L.P.; and Judge Diane P. Wood of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, who delivered the opening remarks at the Institute’s 80th Annual Meeting in Chicago, as the newest members of the ALI Council.

A native of Philadelphia, Kenneth C. Frazier, 48, is a graduate of Pennsylvania State University and of Harvard Law School. After receiving his J.D. from Harvard in 1978, he joined the Philadelphia office of the firm of Drinker, Biddle & Reath, where he remained for 14 years and became a partner in the litigation department. In 1992 he left private practice to become Vice President, General Counsel, and Secretary of Astra Merck Enterprises, a Merck subsidiary. In 1994 he was named Vice President for Public Affairs of the parent company, where in 1997 he took on the additional responsibilities of Assistant General Counsel, and in 1999 he became Vice President and Deputy General Counsel. Later in the same year he assumed his present position as Merck’s Senior Vice President and General Counsel, based at company headquarters in Whitehouse Station, New Jersey.

Chairman of the Board of the Washington-based Ethics Resource Center, Mr. Frazier also serves on the Board of Legal Services of New Jersey and as a member of the Advisory Board of CorporateProBono.Org, of the National Legal Aid and Defender Association, of the Law and Economic Center at the University of Pennsylvania, of the Health Law and Policy Center at Seton Hall University, and of The Rand Institute for Civil Justice. He has been an ALI member since 1996 and is presently serving as an Adviser to one of the ALI’s newest projects, its Principles of the Law of Nonprofit Organizations. Mr. Frazier recently was a panelist on The Brave New World of Lawyers’ Ethics, a video program on ALI-ABA’s American Law Network.

Born in Florence, South Carolina, William C. Hubbard, 51, is a magna cum laude graduate of the University of South Carolina, where he received the Algernon Sydney Sullivan Award, the University’s highest student accolade. He received his J.D. degree from the University of South Carolina School of Law in 1977 and served for a year as law clerk to Judge Robert F. Chapman of the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina. He then joined his present firm, in which he concentrates on business litigation related to breach of contract, business torts, breach of fiduciary duty, construction, unfair trade practices, and class actions. In 1986 the South Carolina Bar named Mr. Hubbard Young Lawyer of the Year. He presently chairs the firm’s Business Litigation and Employment Law Group.

A long-time leader in the American Bar Association, Mr. Hubbard is presently serving as South Carolina’s State Delegate to the ABA’s House of Delegates. He is a life member of the American Bar Foundation and is currently President of the American Bar Endowment. He is a former Chair of the ABA’s Young Lawyers Division and a former member of its Board of Governors. Active also in the South Carolina Bar, Mr. Hubbard is a former Chair of its Professionalism, Professional Responsibility, and Long-Range Planning Committees and is Co-Editor of the volumes on “Civil Procedure” in South Carolina Jurisprudence. From 1996 to 2000 Mr. Hubbard served as Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the University of South Carolina, and he is now Chairman Emeritus and a member of the University’s Executive Committee. He also currently serves as a trustee of the South Carolina Commission on Higher Education Foundation. In 2002 he received the Order of the Palmetto, the highest civilian award given by the Governor of South Carolina.

An ALI member since 1996, Mr. Hubbard serves on the Editorial Board of the ALI-ABA periodical, The Practical Litigator. He is a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers and a permanent member of the Fourth Circuit Judicial Conference.

A New Jersey native who moved to Houston at the age of 16, Judge Diane P. Wood, 52, received both her B.A. in English (with highest and special honors) and her J.D. (with high honors) from the University of Texas. After her 1975 graduation from Law School, she spent a year as a law clerk to Judge Irving Goldberg of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and then clerked for Justice Harry A. Blackmun during the 1976 term of the U.S. Supreme Court. After a brief period in the Office of the Legal Adviser for the State Department, Judge Wood became a litigator in the D.C. office of the firm of Covington & Burling, where her primary concentration was in antitrust law. During the 1980-1981 academic year, she taught at the Georgetown University Law Center. In 1981 she was appointed to the law faculty of the University of Chicago and served as Associate Dean at Chicago from 1989 to 1992. In 1990 she was named to the Harold J. and Marion F. Green Chair in International Legal Studies and became the first woman to be honored with a named Chair at the Law School.

In 1993 Judge Wood was appointed Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, where she concentrated on both appellate matters and international enforcement. She was chosen by President Clinton to join the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in 1995.

A member of the American Society of International Law and the Board of Editors of the American Journal of International Law, Judge Wood has also served on the governing Councils both of the ABA’s Section of Antitrust Law and its Section of International Law and Practice. The author of articles on antitrust law, international trade and business, and federal civil procedure, she is co-author of the casebook, Trade Regulation (5th ed. summer 2003) and of Merger Cases in the Real World: A Study of Merger Control (1994). She has presented papers for the World Trade Organization in Geneva, for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris, and for many other audiences around the world. In 1997 she presented a series of lectures on appellate courts and appellate review in the People’s Republic of China. Instrumental in developing the University of Chicago’s first policy on sexual harassment, since her appointment to the Court of Appeals she has continued to teach as a Senior Lecturer at the Chicago Law School. Judge Wood has been a member of the Institute since 1990 and is presently an Adviser to the ALI’s Transnational Civil Procedure Project.

Kathryn A. Oberly of New York City, Vice Chair and General Counsel of the accounting firm of Ernst & Young LLP, who had been elected last fall to an interim term on the Council, was elected to a regular term on May 13.

A day earlier the Council reelected all of the ALI’s officers to new one-year terms: Chair of the Council Roswell B. Perkins, President Michael Traynor, First Vice President Conrad K. Harper, Second Vice President Elizabeth Warren, Treasurer Bennett Boskey, Director Lance Liebman, and Deputy Directors Elena A. Cappella and Michael Greenwald. The Council also reelected the following to serve for another year on the Executive Committee: Shirley S. Abrahamson, Philip S. Anderson, Allen D. Black, Paul L. Friedman, Mary Kay Kane, Herma Hill Kay, Douglas Laycock, Roberta C. Ramo, Sherwin P. Simmons, and Robert A. Stein.

Susan R. Martyn, Joseph J. Ortego, and Sherwin P. Simmons were reelected to new three-year terms as ALI representatives on the ALI-ABA Committee on Continuing Legal Education. Reelected to new one-year terms on the Permanent Editorial Board for the Uniform Commercial Code were Amelia H. Boss, Donald J. Rapson, Curtis R. Reitz, Linda J. Rusch, and Steven O. Weise.