UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — After 20 years at Penn State Dickinson Law, Professor of Law Marie T. Reilly will retire in June. An expert in bankruptcy and commercial law, she joined the law school faculty in 2006. She served as associate dean for academic affairs from 2008 to 2015.
Reilly taught courses in business law, including contracts, sales, bankruptcy and secured transactions, and she also co-taught a bootcamp-style course on business fundamentals.
Her scholarship addresses a wide variety of topics, including Catholic diocesan bankruptcies, fraudulent transfer law, successor liability, sexual harassment, marital agency, and product warranty law.
“We are deeply grateful for Professor Reilly’s many years of service as senior associate dean for academic affairs from 2008 to 2015. Her keen knowledge of the American Bar Association standards, the law school curriculum, and the needs of the profession, combined with her integrity and tireless dedication to the cause of legal education, made her an exceptional academic administrator,” said Clinical Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Michele Vollmer. “As a mentor to both faculty and students, Professor Reilly inspired all of us to adhere to the highest standards by believing in our ability to meet them and guiding us on how to achieve them. I hope to follow in her footsteps and to lead our faculty and students in the same way.”
A faculty resolution passed in May recognized Reilly’s outstanding service and scholarship during her time at Penn State Dickinson Law.
“She is a legendary classroom teacher, who reaches her students not by sanding the edges off challenging material, but by insisting on the highest standards and believing in her students’ ability to meet them,” noted the resolution.
A leading commercial law and bankruptcy expert
Reilly is a distinguished and widely cited scholar. She is a nationally recognized expert and a leading commentator on the bankruptcy cases of Catholic organizations facing liability for child sexual abuse.
She worked in law practice at Schiff Hardin & Waite (now ArentFox Schiff) in Chicago and later at Williams & Connolly LLP in Washington, D.C., where her work included commercial and tax litigation as well as business counseling and transactions relating to asset acquisition, bankruptcy, corporate reorganization and secured finance.
In 1991, Reilly began her law teaching career at the University of South Carolina School of Law. Fifteen years later, in 2006, Reilly and her husband, Professor Emeritus John Lopatka, joined the faculty of the original unified Penn State Dickinson Law as part of the pioneer cohort of faculty at the new University Park location.
Reilly is an elected member of the American Law Institute. She created and maintains, in collaboration with Professor Rebecca Mattson, Catholic Dioceses in Bankruptcy, an online archive of key materials on Catholic organization bankruptcy cases. She co-authored, with late Penn State Dickinson School of Law Professor Emeritus Louis Del Duca, "Secured Transactions Under the Uniform Commercial Code and International Commerce," a casebook on secured transactions published by Carolina Academic Press.