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Course Description: (PR Credit)
This course will explore parallels between historical pandemics, including the 1918 flu pandemic, and today. Faculty will discuss lessons learned from major world events that have brought changes in technology and the courts.
John A. Lupton is the Executive Director of the Illinois Supreme Court Historic Preservation Commission. He has been with the Commission since 2009. From 1991 to 2009, he worked with the Lincoln Legal Papers/Papers of Abraham Lincoln project to make Lincoln’s legal papers available to the public in two separate award-winning publications: the online edition of The Law Practice of Abraham Lincoln: Complete Documentary Edition and the four-volume The Papers of Abraham Lincoln: Legal Documents and Cases.
Lupton received his B.A. in history from Southern Illinois University Carbondale and M.A in history from the University of Illinois Springfield. He has written numerous articles and chapters on Lincoln’s law practice and Illinois legal history, including editing Prairie Justice: A History of Illinois Law under French, English, and American Law and most recently Adjudicating Illinois: Justices of the Illinois Supreme Court. Lupton has been featured as an expert on Lincoln’s handwriting, appearing in several documentaries and in the PBS program, History Detectives, and has even been called as a trial witness in a lawsuit over a forged Lincoln document.
Judge Richard Henry Mills (born July 19, 1929) is a Senior United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Central District of Illinois. Born in Beardstown, Illinois, Mills received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Illinois College in 1951, and a Juris Doctor from Mercer University School of Law in 1957. He was in the United States Army Reserve, JAG Corps from 1952 to 1954, achieving the rank of Colonel. He was in private practice in Virginia, Illinois from 1957 to 1966, and was a state's attorney of Cass County, Illinois from 1960 to 1964. He was a circuit judge of the Eighth Judicial Circuit of Illinois in Virginia from 1966 to 1976, and then a Justice of the Appellate Court of Illinois, Fourth District in Springfield from 1976 to 1985.
Judge Mills received a Master of Laws from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1982. On June 25, 1985, Mills was nominated by President Ronald Reagan to a seat on the United States District Court for the Central District of Illinois vacated by Judge James Waldo Ackerman. Mills was confirmed by the United States Senate on July 19, 1985, and received his commission on July 22, 1985. He assumed senior status on October 7, 1997.
