According to one student, “If all the professors at Widener had this much energy, enthusiasm, and personality we’d be at Yale.” Whether or not the financials would work out,
Professor Henderson appreciates this nod to his alma mater. “I like a lot of things about the world - even things that other people hate, like differential equations and country music - and I hate some things that other people like, especially any food the name of which I can’t pronounce, but I love the law,” says Professor Stephen Henderson. “That’s what I learned from law school, and that, if nothing else, is what I hope to instill in my students. The law is the story of humanity’s attempts at organizing a better world, and attempting to master its many facets is a fascinating, sometimes humorous and sometimes heartbreaking, but always worthy challenge.”
While he teaches both intellectual property and criminal law and procedure, Professor Henderson’s scholarship focuses on our Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable government searches and seizures. “Changing technologies and social norms, coupled with longstanding Supreme Court jurisprudence, leave us with very little privacy protection. Technology isn’t going backwards, and at least for now neither are social norms of information sharing, but of course the law doesn’t have to remain as it stands. This is what I hope to help change,” says Henderson. In addition to his writing, he is serving as the Reporter for an American Bar Association task force that is drafting standards for protecting private information residing with third parties.
Says Henderson, “working with students both inside and outside the classroom is wonderfully rewarding—indeed even more rewarding than I could have hoped. Our students have served as surgeons, police officers, school teachers, engineers, cowboys, musicians, Marines, and all the rest, but what you come to realize is that most every person is just as fascinating, whether their life would fill the normal resume page or not.” Some of the student organizations he works with largely run themselves, like the
Intellectual Property Society, but others like
moot court take more time. A few years ago a team he was coaching won an interscholastic competition, and Henderson was hooked: “I’m pretty sure those students won’t ever forget their win, and I know I won’t: they were simply ecstatic, and rightfully so. Ideally all of our students would get the chance to feel that way. I want to see many, many more who do.”
Although he has only been at Widener Law for six years, Professor Henderson now looks forward to a long career: “We have great students, wonderful faculty and staff, and a beautiful campus. As Mark Twain said, ‘The art of prophesy is very difficult, especially with respect to the future.’ But for now, I simply feel fortunate to be here and look forward to meeting future students and vicariously enjoying their careers once they have passed this way.”