MINNEAPOLIS, MN (August 6, 2009) – Robert A. Stein, of counsel to the Minneapolis-based law firm of Gray Plant Mooty (GPM) and the Everett Fraser Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota School of Law, has been elected to serve a two-year term as president of the Uniform Law Commission (ULC).
Founded in 1892, the ULC is an organization of more than 350 practicing attorneys, judges, law professors, legislators, and other state officials—all lawyers—appointed by every state to draft and promote enactment of uniform laws designed to solve problems common to all the states. Commissioners donate their time as a pro bono public service.
Stein was first appointed to the ULC from Minnesota in 1973. As a Minnesota commissioner, he has served on numerous drafting committees, including the drafting committees on the Uniform Principal and Income Act and the Uniform Prudent Investor Act. He chaired the drafting committee for the Uniform Law on Notarial Acts. Stein has chaired the ULC Scope and Program Committee, and he just completed a two-year term as chair of the ULC Executive Committee.
Before rejoining the University of Minnesota Law School in 2006, Stein was executive director and chief operating officer for the American Bar Association in Chicago. He was responsible for management of the world’s largest professional membership association, with more than 400,000 members and a 900-person staff. Prior to that, Stein was a faculty member of the University of Minnesota Law School from 1964 until 1994. He served as dean of the law school from 1979 to 1994, and was the first William S. Pattee Professor of Law from 1990 until 1994. Before becoming dean of the law school, Stein was vice president for administration and planning at the University of Minnesota from 1977 to 1979. Stein has been of counsel to Gray Plant Mooty since 2006. He previously was of counsel to the firm from 1980 to 1994.
Over the next two years during Stein’s term as ULC president, the organization will continue its work in such areas as drafting new legislation to better serve the needs of military and overseas civilian absentee voters, as well as revising both the Model State Administrative Procedures Act and the Uniform Law on Notarial Acts. At Stein’s request, the ULC Executive Committee has also created a new committee to focus on federalism and state law. In proposing the new committee, Stein said: “Particularly in times of expansion of the federal government in response to current crises, the ULC needs to think strategically about how best to advance public understanding of the importance of state law in the intricate cooperative balance between federal and state laws.”
Uniform law commissioners come together once a year to study and consider drafts of specific statutes in areas of the law where uniformity between the states is desirable. U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, former U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, and recently-retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter all served as uniform law commissioners. Since its inception in 1892, the ULC has promulgated more than 200 uniform acts, among them such bulwarks of state statutory law as the Uniform Commercial Code, the Uniform Unclaimed Property Act, the Uniform Probate Code, the Uniform Partnership Act, the Uniform Securities Act, the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act, and the Uniform Interstate Family Support Act.