FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Professor of Law Steve Sheppard was recently elected into the American Law Institute, making him the fifth faculty member to become a member of this prestigious institute. The institute accepts 3,000 lawyers, judges and legal educators throughout the world.

“We are proud of Steve Sheppard for receiving this prestigious honor,” said Dean Cyndi Nance of the University of Arkansas School of Law. “Steve is a nationally recognized scholar and his membership in the American Law Institute is a well-deserved acknowledgement of his contributions.”

Organized in 1923, the institute aims to clarify and simplify the law to better adapt to social needs, administer justice and encourage and carry on scholarly and scientific legal work. Its incorporators included then-Chief Justice and former President William Howard Taft, then-future Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes and former Secretary of State Elihu Root. Judges Benjamin N. Cardozo and Learned Hand were among its early leaders.

A native of Mississippi, Sheppard graduated from the University of Southern Mississippi and went on to earn his Juris Doctor from Oxford University. He practiced law with Phelps Dunbar in Louisiana, Mississippi, and London, and then served as a law clerk to Judge William Barbour Jr. of the United States District Court and to Judge E. Grady Jolly Jr. of the United States Court of Appeals 5th Circuit Court.

As a leading legal scholar and international law expert, he has published books on law in a global context and the changing semantics of “reasonable doubt.” He is a frequent presenter of trade law in China, and he is currently writing a new law dictionary.

In 1992 he began teaching at the University of Arkansas, where he is also a member of the graduate faculty in political science, the faculty in public policy and the faculty of the King Fahd Center for Middle Eastern Studies. He is faculty adviser to the International Law Society, the Journal of Islamic Law and Culture, the Environmental Law Society and the H.L.A. Hart Society. In 2006, remaining true to his scholarly pursuits, he earned his Doctor of Science of Law from Columbia University.

Professors of law Mark Killenbeck and Carol Goforth, emeritus professor of law Mort Gitelman and Dean Nance were also previously elected into the American Law Institute.

For more information about the institute, visit its Web site at http://www.ali.org/