Posted by Mary Wimberley on 2008-09-30

David M. Smolin will be recognized as the inaugural holder of the Harwell G. Davis Chair of Constitutional Law at Samford University's Cumberland School of Law during investiture ceremonies Thursday (Oct. 2).

The 11 a.m. event will be in the moot courtroom of Robinson law building.

Smolin, director of Cumberland's Center for Bioltechnology, Law and Ethics, has been a member of the law school faculty since 1987. He was elected by the Samford board of trustees to fill the new position effective October 1.

The late Elizabeth Davis Eshelman, a 1964 Cumberland graduate, endowed the chair in honor of her father, Harwell Goodwin Davis, a former Alabama attorney general who was president of Samford from 1939 to 1958.

Eshelman established the chair in 2000 with the understanding that a trust from her estate would provide the funding after her death. She died in 2007.

 
Samford is a leading Christian university offering undergraduate programs grounded in the liberal arts with an array of nationally recognized graduate and professional schools. Founded in 1841, Samford is the 87th-oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. Samford enrolls 5,791 students from 49 states, Puerto Rico and 16 countries in its 10 academic schools: arts, arts and sciences, business, divinity, education, health professions, law, nursing, pharmacy and public health. Samford fields 17 athletic teams that compete in the tradition-rich Southern Conference and ranks 6th nationally for its Graduation Success Rate among all NCAA Division I schools.