Michigan Law & Practice Encyclopedia

Mara Kent is a member of the Thomas M. Cooley Law School faculty as the vice-Chair of the Contracts and Sales Department. She is a 1993 graduate of the University of Michigan, and a 1996 graduate of the University of Detroit Mercy Law School, where she graduated summa cum laude and second in her law school class. Following law school, she served as a judicial law clerk for Michigan Supreme Court Justice Michael F. Cavanagh. After completing her clerkship, she was in private practice as an appellate attorney, specializing primarily in civil rights and employment law. Professor Kent's published law review articles have been cited to the United States Supreme Court and cited by the Michigan Supreme Court. Professor Kent also serves as a cooperating attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, where she does pro bono work. Professor Kent currently teaches Contracts, Sales, and Negotiable Instruments.

Michael P. Nowlan is a member and the Co-Leader of Clark Hill's Immigration Practice Group in Detroit, Michigan. Mr. Nowlan has lectured nationally on a variety of immigration topics. He has authored articles on consular processing for the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA). He is an active member of the Michigan and National sections of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, and has been an advocate for immigrant rights before immigration officials on a regional and national level and within Immigration Court as a trial attorney.

Mr. Nowlan completed his JD from the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law in Detroit, Michigan in 1996, and a BBA from Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti, Michigan in 1992.

Mr. Nowlan would like to thank the efforts and dedication of Evelin Johnson. Without her hard work and excellent research skills, this article would not have been possible.

Bethany Berger is an Assistant Professor at Wayne State University Law School, having joined the faculty in 2004, and a judge for the Southwest Intertribal Court of Appeals. Professor Berger graduated with honors from Wesleyan University, where she was elected to phi beta kappa, and from Yale Law School. After law school, Professor Berger went to the Navajo and Hopi reservations to serve as the Director of the Native American Youth Law Project of DNA-People's Legal Services. There, she conducted litigation challenging discrimination against Indian children, drafted and secured the passage of tribal laws affecting children, and helped to create a Navajo alternative to detention program. She then moved to New York to become Managing Attorney of Advocates for Children, where she worked on impact litigation and policy reform concerning the rights of children in public education. Professor Berger has also taught at the University of Connecticut, the University of Iowa, and the Pre-Law Summer Institute for Native students in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Professor Berger has presented at multiple scholarly societies, judicial conferences, and bar association conferences on Indian law issues and was 2005 Chair of the American Association of Law Scholars Indian Nations and Indigenous People¿s Section. She is also the Associate Editor and a co-author of Felix S. Cohen¿s Handbook of Federal Indian Law (forthcoming 2005), the leading treatise in Indian law. Some of Professor Berger¿s scholarly articles are Justice and the Outsider: Jurisdiction Over Nonmembers in Tribal Legal Systems, Arizona State Law Journal (forthcoming 2005), which was selected for presentation at the Stanford/Yale Junior Faculty Forum, ¿Power Over This Unfortunate Race¿: Race Power and Indian Law in U.S. v. Rogers, 45 William & Mary Law Review 1957 (2004), U.S. v. Lara as a Story of Native Agency, 40 Tulsa L. Rev. 5 (2004), and After Pocahontas: Indian Women and the Law, 1830-1934, 21 Am. Ind. Law Rev. 1 (1997), which has been reprinted in part in RACE AND RACES: CASES AND RESOURCES FOR A DIVERSE AMERICA (Angela Harris et al. eds., 2000), RACE LAW: CASES, COMMENTARY AND QUESTIONS (F. Michael Higginbotham 2005), GENDER AND THE LAW: CASES AND MATERIALS (Katherine Bartlett et al. eds., 2002), and MIXED RACE AMERICA AND THE LAW (Kevin Johnson ed., 2003).

Dena M. Marks (J.D., cum laude, Thomas M. Cooley Law School 1995) is an associate professor of law at Thomas M. Cooley Law School. She has taught classes at Cooley's campuses in Lansing, Grand Rapids, and Rochester, Michigan. She has also served as an Assistant Dean at Cooley's Oakland University campus in Rochester, Michigan. Before joining Cooley as a full-time faculty member in 2000, she taught there as an adjunct professor of law while practicing law full time in the Lansing area. Her practice areas included tort, insurance, and contract law. She is married to John, and has two daughters, Lisa and Stacey.

Ronald D. Richards Jr. (J.D., Thomas M. Cooley Law School, 2000) is an attorney with Foster, Swift, Collins & Smith, P.C. in Lansing, Michigan. He specializes in administrative and municipal matters. He has experience in handling a variety of administrative matters before the Michigan Public Service Commission and Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Growth, and regularly represents clients in administrative matters concerning utility, telecommunications, and occupational code issues. He also regularly represents municipalities in quasi-administrative proceedings related to municipal land use issues, including special use permits, variances, and rezoning requests. He is married to Dr. Madhvi Phadtare Richards and they have one child, Naveen Carlo Richards.