Dineen Hall Opening Celebration Set for Sept. 12
Dineen Hall
The College of Law is celebrating the opening of Dineen Hall on Friday, Sept. 12, with a series of events to engage students, faculty, alumni, friends and the legal community.
To honor the remarkable legacy of their parents, Carolyn Bareham Dineen L’32 and Robert Emmet Dineen Sr. L’24, H’66, the Dineen family provided the naming gift for the building. Dineen Hall has been named one of the “Most Impressive Law School Buildings in the World” by Best Choice Schools.
Chief Judge of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals Theodore McKee L’75 will preside over the day’s events. The day will begin with an inaugural address delivered by McKee in the Melanie Gray Ceremonial Courtroom, an iconic 300-seat auditorium for advocacy competitions, the judiciary and distinguished lecturers.
At 11 a.m., for the first time in its history, the college will welcome several circuit court judges for a “Conversation from the Bench,” with Professor Keith Bybee serving as facilitator. McKee will join fellow circuit court judges James E. Graves Jr. L’80, Carolyn Dineen King, Rosemary S. Pooler and Thomas M. Reavley for a conversation about legal issues and the state of judicial independence and judicial legitimacy in an age of partisan gridlock and political polarization.
At 1:30 p.m., the opening celebration ceremony will bring together the campus community, along with the Dineen family, distinguished guests, faculty, staff, students, alumni and the legal community.
Dineen Hall, a new LEED-certified building totaling 200,000 square feet, encompasses the best practices and spaces for learning and faculty-student engagement to meet the rigorous demands of a modern law degree. It offers improved training facilities for the college’s championship Moot Court and trial advocacy programs, innovative library spaces with distinctive study rooms, and interdisciplinary teaching spaces for nationally recognized centers and institutes. SU Architecture alumnus Richard Gluckman ’70, G’71, of the Gluckman Mayner architectural firm in New York City, was lead architect on the project.
Dineen Hall is situated on a site immediately west of the college’s former buildings, E.I. White Hall and Winifred MacNaughton Hall, and is approximately the same square footage.
This location is especially meaningful to the Dineen family because the building, fittingly, is located not far from the Irish immigrant neighborhood, which was known as “the swamp,” where Robert Dineen Sr. was born and raised. White and MacNaughton Halls have been repurposed for other campus academic and programmatic use.
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