Faculty Forum, April 2016

Faculty Forum is a monthly feature highlighting the achievements of faculty at UT Law including publications in academia and the media, speaking engagements, interviews, awards, and other accomplishments. 


Wendy Bach, Lucy Jewel, Karla McKanders, and Val Vojdik

Professors Wendy Bach, Lucy Jewel, Karla McKanders, and Val Vojdik all participated in UT’s Intersectionality Community of Scholars Symposium on March 24 at the College of Law. The conference was entitled “New Horizons in Intersectionality: Research, Policy, and Activism.” Bach gave a presentation on “The Hyper-Regulatory State,” Jewel on “The Embodiment of Inequality,” McKanders on “Morocco at the Crossroads: The Intersection of Race, Gender, and Refugee Status,” and Vojdik on “Sexual Violence Against Men: Intersectionality and Masculinities Theory.”

Ben Barton and Joy Radice

Professors Ben Barton and Joy Radice will travel to New York later this month to give presentations at New York University’s Conference on “Beyond Elite Law: Access to Civil Justice in America.” The conference celebrates the publication of a book by the same name, co-edited by Radice and NYU Professor Samuel Estreicher, to be published by Cambridge University Press. Radice will give a welcoming talk and will also speak on the “‘Emergency Room’ Model for Law School Clinics.” Barton will speak on “Small Firm and Solo Practice.” Tennessee Chief Justice Sharon Lee will also speak as part of a Luncheon Roundtable of State Supreme Court Chief Justices, on the subject, “Access to Justice: What Can the Courts Do?”

Ben Barton and Lucy Jewel

Professor Ben Barton and Lucy Jewel will give presentations as part of the International Legal Ethics Conference, to be held in July at Fordham Law School in New York.

Ben Barton

Professor Ben Barton was quoted in Bloomberg BNA’s Big Law Business: Legal Communities website on March 16. The article, “New Bar Passage Rates Could Set ABA Up for a Fight ,” examines proposed rules that would penalize law schools with low bar passage rates.

Additionally, Barton was quoted in an article at the Quartz website. The article, “American Lawyers Have an Atticus Finch Complex, and It’s Killing the Profession,” discusses the question of why there are unemployed lawyers at the same time that many poor people desperately need legal services.

Finally, Barton will give a presentation as part of the Knoxville Bar Association’s Law Practice Today Expo on April 22. Barton will speak on the topic, “Adapting to Change: What is Happening, Why is it Happening, and What You Can Do About It.”

Teri Baxter

Professor Teri Baxter’s article, “Marriage on Our Own Terms,” will be published in the New York University Review of Law and Social Change.

Carol Collins

Professor Carol Collins and former faculty member Cathy Cochran participated in a panel discussion at the 11th Annual Electronic Resources and Libraries (ER&L) Conference held in Austin, Texas. The panel “The Verdict Is In: The Case for a Discovery Trial,” centered on the experience of trying and implementing the Law Library’s EBSCO Discovery Service. This service is a search interface that covers a far greater scope than the library catalog search by including many full-text resources. The annual ER&L Conference brings together librarians and information professionals from various fields to discuss the issues associated with managing electronic resources.

Kevin Conboy

Visiting Professor Kevin Conboy will give a presentation at the Fifth Biennial Conference on Transactional Law and Skills, to be held at Emory Law School in June. Conboy will speak about the importance of marketing and sales skills to future lawyers.

Judy Cornett

Professor Judy Cornett’s book review, “Harper Lee’s First Novel: Go Set a Watchman,” has just been published at 83 Tenn. L. Rev. 353 (2015).

A revised and expanded version of Cornett’s blog post for the Faculty Lounge, “Go Set a Watchman – Breathing a Sigh of Relief,” will be published in a symposium on Go Set a Watchman in the summer 2016 issue of the Cumberland Law Review.

Iris Goodwin

Professor Iris Goodwin’s article, “Access to Justice: What to Do about the Law of Wills,” will be published in the Wisconsin Law Review.

Joan Heminway

Professor Joan Heminway gave a presentation at the Hamilton Burnett Inns of Court meeting in Knoxville as part of her pupilage team. Heminway’s topic was “Critter Law,” and her presentation covered animal hoarding and animals rights.

Heminway also served as a discussant and commentator on two papers at the annual conference for the Institute for Law and Economic Policy (ILEP). The conference theme was “Vindicating Virtuous Claims.” The papers will be published in the Duke Law Journal, which co-sponsored the program.

Additionally, Heminway has been invited to give a presentation at the Kentucky Bar Association Section of Business Law’s Securities Law Conference. Her talk, “Insider Trading and Other Liability Issues under Federal and State Securities Laws,” will take place on October 28 in Louisville, KY.

Finally, Heminway was quoted in International Business Times on March 31. The article, “Sen. Elizabeth Warren Requests Federal Probe Of Financial Firms Over Varying Statements About Proposed Regulation,” discusses conflicting statements made by four different financial firms about the effect of proposed financial regulations.

Amy Hess

Professor Amy Hess gave a presentation at the annual meeting of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel. The meeting took place in mid-March in Las Vegas.

Michael Higdon

Professor Michael Higdon’s article, “State Misdemeanant, Federal Felon: Adolescent Sexual Offenders and the INA,” has been accepted for publication in the University of Illinois Law Review.

Additionally, Higdon’s essay, “Oral Advocacy and Vocal Fry: The Unseemly, Sexist Side of Nonverbal Persuasion,” will appear in Legal Communication & Rhetoric: JALWD.

Finally, Higdon has been accepted to George Mason University’s summer training program for law professors who wish to learn more about law and economics. This two-week intensive program is operated by the Law and Economics Center at GMU School of Law.

Lucy Jewel

Professor Lucy Jewel will speak at the Legal Writing Institute’s Biennial Conference. The conference will be held this July in Portland.

Additionally, Jewel gave two presentations recently in the UK. On February 27, she spoke at the University of Kent Law School’s Critical Legal Studies Conference, as part of a panel entitled, “Limiting Liberties: The Social Limits of E-Justice.” Jewel’s talk focused on technology in the courts and visual representations of justice, based on her earlier paper, “Through a Glass Darkly:  Using Brain Science and Visual Rhetoric to Gain a Professional Perspective on Visual Advocacy,” 19 S. Cal. Interdisciplinary L. J. 237 (2010).

Finally, on March 1, 2016, Jewel gave a talk to students and faculty at The Institute of Law in Jersey, a British channel island. That talk focused on her visual rhetoric paper and the state supreme court decisions that have since cited and quoted the paper as grounds for overturning a conviction.

Brian Krumm

Professor Brian Krumm will give a presentation at the biennial Transactional Law Conference. The conference, hosted by the Emory University School of Law’s Center for Transactional Law and Practice, takes place in June in Atlanta.

Additionally, Krumm will give presentations at the 15th annual Transactional Clinical Conference and the AALS Clinical Conference. Both meetings will be held in late April and early May in Baltimore.

Bob Lloyd

Professor Emeritus Bob Lloyd’s article, “Recovery of Damages for Lost Profits: The Historical Development,” co-authored by Nicholas J. Chase (‘05), has been published in the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Business Law.

Alex Long

Associate Dean Alex Long’s article, “The Lawyer as Public Figure for First Amendment Purposes,” will be published in the Boston College Law Review.

Karla McKanders

Professor Karla McKanders’s article, “America’s Disposable Youth: Undocumented Delinquent Juveniles,” will be published in the Howard Law Journal.

Additionally, McKanders was interviewed by Mother Jones on March 30. The article, “Tennessee Republicans Are Gearing Up to Sue the Government Over Syrian Refugees,” discusses a joint resolution currently under consideration by the state legislature.

William Mercer

Professor William Mercer’s book, “Locating Liberties: Barron v. Baltimore and Rights in the Early American Republic,” has been accepted for publication with the University of Oklahoma Press. It is slated for a late 2016 release.  Mercer serves as a lecturer at the College of Law and in the UT Department of History.

Tom Plank

Professor Tom Plank gave a presentation to the first-year class at Southern Illinois University School of Law on May 24. Plank’s presentation was entitled, “Contracts as Property and the Relationship between Contract and Property.” For this purpose, the Contracts and Property sections were combined into one class.

Joy Radice

Professor Joy Radice has been awarded a Graduate Research Assistantship Grant from the UT Office of Research and Engagement’s Scholarly and Research Incentive Funds. This grant will be used to provide a stipend to Brittany Moore (‘17), who will work as Radice’s research assistant during the coming summer. UT funded only 25 of these grants campus-wide.

Additionally, Radice will attend the meeting of the ABA’s Section of Legal Education and Admission to the Bar Council. Radice will be attending in her capacity as representative of the Clinical Legal Education Association.

Glenn Reynolds

Professor Glenn Reynolds’s article, “Second Amendment Limitations,” will be published in the Georgetown Journal of Law and Public Policy.

Additionally, Reynolds’s opinion piece, “Prosecutors Have Too Much Power. Juries Should Rein Them In,” appeared in the Washington Post on April 6.  Reynolds’s piece is part of the Post’s “In Theory” series, focusing this time on jury nullification and prosecutorial reform.

Finally, Reynolds’s article, “Abortion, Amendment 1, and the Future of Procreational Rights Under the Tennessee Constitution,” has been published at 83 Tenn. L. Rev. 69 (2015).

Paula Schaefer

Professor Paula Schaefer’s article, “In Pari Delicto Deconstructed: Dismantling the Doctrine that Protects the Business Entity’s Lawyer from Malpractice Liability,” will be published in the St. John’s Law Review.

Additionally, Schaefer’s article, “On Balance: Leading by Leaving,” will be published in the Tennessee Law Review.

Greg Stein

Associate Dean Greg Stein will give a presentation at the Annual Meeting of the Association for Law, Property and Society, to be held in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in May. Stein will speak on the subject, “The Expiration of Chinese Land Use Rights.”

Maurice Stucke

Professor Maurice Stucke’s article, “When Competition Fails to Optimize Quality: A Look at Search Engines,” coauthored by Professor Ariel Ezrachi (Oxford), has been published at 18 Yale Journal of Law and Technology 70 (2016).

Stucke was also quoted in Bloomberg on March 17, in an article entitled, “Justice Department Sues to Block Tribune Purchase of OC Register, Press-Enterprise.”

Additionally, Stucke’s recent article, “Artificial Intelligence & Collusion: When Computers Inhibit Competition,” coauthored with Professor Ariel Ezrachi of the University of Oxford, has been selected as the recipient of a 2016 Antitrust Writing Award by the ABA’s Antitrust Section. The article is the winner in the Academic Category, Concerted Practice Section. The award is designed to “reward excellence in antitrust writing as well as to promote competition scholarship and advocacy.” Stucke and Ezrachi will be honored at a Gala Dinner in April and will also be featured in a video on the Writing Award website. The selection process for the award lasted three months and involved more than fifty international antitrust experts.

Stucke was also quoted in the March 19 Wall Street Journal. The article, “Tribune’s Antitrust Battle Highlights a Changing Media Landscape,” discusses the question of whether the existence of the Internet weakens the argument that a print company can be a monopolist.

Addtionally, Stucke was quoted in the Global Competition Review on March 18. The article, “DoJ Sues to Stop Newspaper Deal,” addresses the Justice Department’s efforts to prevent the Los Angeles Times from acquiring two other newspapers in Southern California.

Finally, Stucke was quoted recently in the Orange County Register. The article, “U.S. Justice Department Raises ‘Serious’ Antitrust Issues in Tribune Bid for Orange County Register,” contrasts mergers of national newspapers with mergers of more regional papers.

Val Vojdik

Professor Val Vojdik gave a presentation at the Fourth Annual Research Conference, which was held at George Mason University in April.

Paula Williams

Professor Paula Williams will give presentations at the 15th annual Transactional Clinical Conference and the AALS Clinical Conference. Both meetings will be held in late April and early May in Baltimore.