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Myles Lynk

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Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law
Emeritus Professor
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Osher Lifelong Learning Institute
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Sustainability Scientists and Scholars
Senior Sustainability Scientist
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Biography: 

Professor Emeritus Myles V. Lynk was the first Peter Kiewit Foundation Professor of Law and the Legal Profession at the Sandra Day O’Connor of Law, specializing in legal ethics, business organizations and civil procedure. Professor Lynk came to ASU in 2000 as a Visiting Scholar from Practice. Prior to coming to ASU he was a partner in the Washington, DC, office of a large national law firm, served on the White House Domestic Policy Staff in the Carter Administration and was a law clerk to Judge Damon J. Keith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. A past President of the District of Columbia Bar, Professor Lynk now serves as the Senior Assistant Disciplinary Counsel for appellate litigation in the District of Columbia Courts’ Office of Disciplinary Counsel.

During his tenure as a member of the College of Law’s full-time faculty Professor Lynk also held appointments as an Honors Faculty Fellow in Barrett, the Honors College; as Scholar-in-Residence at the ASU Center for the Study of Race and Democracy; as a Senior Fellow in the Lincoln Center for Applied Ethics (where his research focused on the tension between a lawyer’s ethical duties to clients, personal self-interest and responsibilities to the public); and as a Sustainability Scientist in the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute on Sustainability. In 2009 Professor Lynk delivered the Donohoe Forum lectures of the Arizona Ecumenical Council on the ethical issues presented by the Great Recession of 2008-09. He has held visiting professorships in law at Duke University and George Washington University. In 2014 Professor Lynk was a Visiting Fellow at Magdalene College, University of Cambridge, England, and a Visitor to the Faculty of Law at the University of Cambridge, where his research focused on a comparative analysis of the differences in theory and practice in how the legal profession is regulated in the United Kingdom and the United States. His public lecture to the Cambridge Faculty of Law was on the evolution of the doctrine of judicial review of legislation by the U.S. Supreme Court, from its discussion in The Federalist No. 78, to its initial application in Marbury v. Madison, to its use by the Supreme Court today. Professor Lynk has lectured widely on legal ethics and professional discipline, including to the U.S. Naval Justice School, the Ethics Summit of the National Attorneys General Training and Research Institute, the International Conference of Legal Regulators, the National Organization of Bar Counsel, the Bar Services Board in the United Kingdom and the Judicial Conference of the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He participated in the 2005 Transatlantic Corporate Governance Dialogue and the 2015 Northwestern University Securities Regulation Institute.

From 2004 through 2010, Professor Lynk served at the behest of ASU President Michael Crow as ASU’s NCAA and Pac-10 (now Pac-12) Conference Faculty Athletics Representative, responsible for certifying the academic eligibility of ASU’s intercollegiate student-athletes. In 2005, President Crow tasked Professor Lynk with leading the university’s investigation into the shooting death of a graduate student by an undergraduate student-athlete. This resulted in the “Lynk Report,” which recommended numerous changes to improve campus safety at ASU that have since been implemented. In April 2007, in an unprecedented step, Professor Lynk and ASU Women’s Basketball Head Coach Charli Turner Thorne published a letter in the Arizona Republic which was co-signed by over 60 ASU faculty, coaches and administrators, in support of the Rutgers University Women’s Basketball team whose Black players had been insulted by a radio talk show host.

Professor Lynk served ASU as a member of President Crow’s Academic Council, as a member of two Provost’s Regents’ Professor Nomination Committees and, most recently, as a member of a President’s Professor Advisory Panel. In 2015 Professor Lynk was an advisor to University Senate President Helene Ossipov on the revisions to ASU’s academic policy ACD 402, which addresses personal relationships between faculty and students. In the College of Law, Professor Lynk served as the Dean’s Designee for student disciplinary matters, as a faculty advisor to numerous student organizations including the John P. Morris Black Law Students Association and the ASU Sports and Entertainment Law Journal, and initiated the creation of the ASU Corporate and Business Law Journal.  

Professor Lynk’s teaching and research are informed by his professional service. In 1998 he was appointed by then Chief Justice of the United States William Rehnquist to the first of two terms on the Civil Rules Advisory Committee of the United States Judicial Conference and chaired its Discovery Rules Subcommittee.  In summer 2004 Professor Lynk was a Fellow on U.S. Senator John Kyl’s Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Homeland Security of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. Professor Lynk served as a member of the National Advisory Commission on Addiction Treatment of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University and served pro bono as the legal ethics consultant to the District of Columbia Office of Attorney General. He is a member of the American Law Institute and served on its governing Council. In the American Bar Association (“ABA”), Professor Lynk served on the Board of Governors; chaired the ABA’s Section of Civil Rights and Social Justice (where he focused on the legal issues surrounding income inequality and poverty in the US); was a co-founder and initial chair of the Committee on Community Economic Development of the ABA’s Business Law Section; and chaired the Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility (where he pushed to add discrimination and sexual harassment to the Model Rules of Professional Conduct as forms of professional misconduct), the Standing Committee on Professional Discipline (where he sought to add safeguards in the Model Judicial Code to protect the independence of elected judges) and the Special Committee on Bioethics and the Law (where he helped organize the 2001 conference at Tuskegee University on bioethics, minorities and the law). In 2015 Professor Lynk participated in the deliberations that resulted in, and was one of the fifteen signatories to, the Joint Statement on Eliminating Bias in the Criminal Justice System of the American Bar Association and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. Professor Lynk served on the Board of Directors of the Sandra Day O’Connor Institute.    

In 2010, Professor Lynk received the College of Law Alumni Association’s Faculty of the Year Award. He is a recipient of the ABA’s Spirit of Excellence Award and Father Robert F. Drinan Award, of ASU’s Excellence in Diversity Award, of the Arizona Black Bar’s Excellence in Diversity Award, and of the State Bar of Arizona’s Award for Service to the Legal Profession.

Education: 
  • J.D., Harvard Law School (1976)
  • A.B., Harvard College (1971)

​Admitted to the Bar:

State of New York, since 1977
Commonwealth of Massachusetts, since 1979
District of Columbia, since 1982

Institutional Review Board Certification: 

Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative (CITI) Human Research Certification; Basic Course & Elective Modules for Institutional Review Board Administrators and Members; U.S. Indian Health Service, Dept. of Health & Human Services, Institutional Review Board; CITI Human Research Certification; Basic Course 1 & Refresher Course 2 for Group 3 Institutional Review Board Members; Arizona State University Institutional Review Board.

Publications: 

BOOKS

  • Robert N. Clinton, Kevin Gover & Myles Lynk, Law and the Regulatory State (Arizona State University College of Law 2003).KF425 C54 2003
  • A Guide to the Protection of Human Research Subjects: Selected Resources (American Bar Association 2001).K3601 A12 A12 2001
  • Tom Willging & Myles Lynk, Special Masters and Court Appointed Experts: Incidence and Activity, Report to the Advisory Committee on Civil Rules and Its Subcommittee on Special Masters (Committee on Civil Rules 2000).KF8961 Z9 W55 2000
  • Myles Lynk & Michael R. Geroe, Preparing for '96 : a Guide to Federal Election Campaign Laws for Corporations and Individuals (Dewey Ballantine 1995).KF4920 L96 1995
  • Self-determination and Representation: the Participation of National Liberation Movements as Observers in the Work of the United Nations (Harvard University 1976).



ARTICLES



PRESENTATIONS

  • “Judicial Review of Congressional Legislation in the Supreme Court of the United States: Current Issues and Concerns,” , Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge, May 29, 2014.
  • “Whose Choice? Multijurisdictional Practice and the Ethics 20/20 Commission’s ‘Choice of Conflict of Interest Rule’ Amendment to the Model Rules,” , 2013 Symposium of the Miller-Becker Center for Professional Responsibility, University of Akron School of Law, Akron, OH, April 5, 2013.
  • “Rules and Their Consequences: Legal Ethics in Theory and Practice,” , Duke University School of Law, Durham, NC, March 4, 2013.
  • Legal Ethics and Sophocles’ Antigone, CLE Presentation in Legal Ethics, Arizona State University College of Law, CLE Program, Phoenix, Arizona, February 22, 2013.
  • Rules and Their Consequences: Legal Ethics in Theory and Practice, Duke University School of Law, Durham, North Carolina, March 4, 2013.
  • Leadership Lessons From Homer’s Iliad, State Bar of Arizona, Bar Leadership Institute, Phoenix, Arizona, May 18, 2012.
  • Moral Authority and Bar Leadership, State Bar of Arizona, Bar Leadership Institute, Phoenix, Arizona, October 19, 2012.
  • The ABA Model Rules for Lawyer Disciplinary Enforcement: A Look Back and Plans for the Future, 2012 ABA National Conference on Professional Responsibility, Boston, Massachusetts, May 31, 2012.
  • Arguments Against Permitting Advance Waivers of Lawyers’ Potential Conflicts of Interest Under Rule 1.7 of the Model Rules of Professional Conduct, Presentation to the ABA Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility, Tucson, Arizona, April, 2009.
  • Conflict or Community? The Rule of Law and the Role of Lawyers, Barrett, the Honors College, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, April 2009.
  • Legal Ethics, University Counsel and the Difficult Discrimination Claim, CLE Workshop for the National Association of College and University Attorneys, Tempe, Arizona, March, 2009.
  • The New Role of Corporate Governance – Transatlantic Corporate Governance Dialogue, Co-Sponsored by the European Corporate Governance Institute, Columbia University Law School & The Brookings Institution, New York, New York, September, 2009.
  • And Now for Plan B: Government Intervention, Corporate Governance and the Management of Risk by Financial Institutions in a Market Economy, Arizona State University College of Law, Tempe, Arizona, October 2008.
  • Choice and Opportunity: Black Lawyers and Corporate Law Firms, Arizona State University College of Law, Tempe, Arizona, October 2008.
  • Choice and Opportunity: Race, Politics and the Practice of Law: The impact of Barack Obama’s experiences as a lawyer and his candidacy for President on the Recruitment and Retention of African-American Lawyers in Majority Law Firms and Corporate Law Departments, ABA Section of Law Practice Management, Tucson, Arizona, October 2008.
  • The General Counsel’s Role in Corporate Governance, J. Reuben Clark Law Society International Conference, Arizona State University College of Law, Tempe, Arizona, February 15, 2008.
  • The Sub-Prime Mortgage Crisis: Lessons in Corporate Governance and Federal Regulation, Arizona State University College of Law, Tempe, Arizona, April 2008.
  • What Went Wrong? Ethical Issues and the Economic Crisis, Hillel Society Symposium, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, November 2008.
  • Corporate Directors and the Business Judgment Rule, Presentation to the Board of Directors of Dendreon Corporation, Scottsdale, Arizona, 2007.
  • Certain Provisions of The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, Corporate General Counsel Symposium, Phoenix, Arizona, 2003.
  • Legal Education and its Relevance to the Practice of Law, Cornell University Law School, Ithaca, New York, May 2002.
  • The Advocate's Search for Meaning: The Relationship Between Legal Education and the Practice of Law, Kiewit Foundation Lecture, Arizona State University College of Law, Tempe, Arizona, January 2001.
  • Representing Business Clients Before Federal Administrative Agencies: A Dual Relationship, Panel Presentation, "Law Practice Before Administrative Agencies: A Canada/U.S. Comparison," Committee on Counsel Responsibility, Section on Business Law, American Bar Association Annual Meeting, Toronto, Ontario, August 1998.
  • Tangled Loyalties: Conflicts of Interest in the Real World, Panelist, Fellows Seminar at the American Bar Foundation 42nd Annual Meeting, Nashville, Tennessee, January 31, 1998.
  • Medical Practice in a Managed Care Environment: Issues to Consider, National Medical Association Program in Continuing Medical Education, Chicago, Illinois, July 27, 1996.
  • The Impact of the New Federal Rules of Civil Procedure: Uniformity vs. Diversity Among the Federal District Courts, Developments in Commercial Litigation Seminar, National Bar Association Commercial Law Section, Washington, D.C., May 1, 1995.


 

Research Activity: 
Fall 2020
Course NumberCourse Title
LAW 781Independent Study
Summer 2020
Course NumberCourse Title
LAW 781Independent Study
Spring 2020
Course NumberCourse Title
LAW 781Independent Study
Fall 2019
Course NumberCourse Title
LAW 781Independent Study
Summer 2019
Course NumberCourse Title
LAW 654Business Organizations
LAW 781Independent Study
Spring 2019
Course NumberCourse Title
LAW 638Professional Responsibility
LAW 735Teaching Assistant
LAW 791Seminar
Fall 2018
Course NumberCourse Title
LAW 654Business Organizations
LAW 691Seminar
LAW 781Independent Study
LAW 791Seminar
Summer 2018
Course NumberCourse Title
LAW 781Independent Study
Spring 2018
Course NumberCourse Title
LAW 638Professional Responsibility
LAW 691Seminar
LAW 735Teaching Assistant
LAW 781Independent Study
LAW 791Seminar
Fall 2017
Course NumberCourse Title
LAW 638Professional Responsibility
LAW 654Business Organizations
LAW 781Independent Study
LAW 791Seminar
Summer 2017
Course NumberCourse Title
LAW 781Independent Study
Spring 2017
Course NumberCourse Title
LAW 638Professional Responsibility
LAW 691Seminar
LAW 791Seminar
Fall 2016
Course NumberCourse Title
LAW 638Professional Responsibility
LAW 654Business Organizations
LAW 781Independent Study
LAW 791Seminar
Summer 2016
Course NumberCourse Title
LAW 654Business Organizations
LAW 781Independent Study
Spring 2016
Course NumberCourse Title
HON 494Special Topics
LAW 638Professional Responsibility
LAW 691Seminar
LAW 791Seminar
Expertise Areas: 
Business Law
Civil Procedure
Legal Ethics
Sports Law and Business