Faculty Forum, May 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

Professor Wendy Bach was selected as the recipient of one of this year’s Chancellor’s Excellence in Teaching Awards.  This award was designed to recognize excellence in teaching across the Knoxville campus.  The award aims to reward individuals who are extremely effective as teachers and contribute to student life in and out of the classroom.  Students Katie Smalley ‘16 and Brady Cody ‘16 were recognized with Academic Citation Awards and Jennifer Dobbins ‘16 with an LGBT Student Leadership Award.

Ben Barton

Professor Ben Barton was featured in an article in Haverford Magazine.  The article, “Q and A: Ben Barton ‘91,” includes an interview with Haverford alumnus Barton in which he discusses his recent book, “Glass Half Full: The Decline and Rebirth of the Legal Profession” (Oxford University Press).

Professor Ben Barton has been invited to give a presentation at a conference on “New Models for Cost Effective Legal Service Delivery to Enhance Access to Justice.”  The conference, which is aimed at both academics and bar and court administrators, will take place in May at NYU School of Law.

Rob Blitt and Val Vojdik

Professors Rob Blitt and Val Vojdik will give a presentation at the 2016 Conference for Law School Computing (CALI), to be held June 16-18, 2016 at Georgia State University College of Law in Atlanta.  Their presentation, “Bringing Access to Justice to the Classroom through the A2J Author Course Project,” will focus on their experience teaching a new Human Rights Practicum as CALI Fellows this year as part of an effort to expand access to justice.

Judy Cornett

Professor Judy Cornett will give a presentation at the Tennessee Municipal Attorney Association’s Annual Conference.  The conference will take place in June in Gatlinburg.

Joan Heminway

Professor Joan Heminway’s article, “Small Business Finance: Is the Crowd the Answer?,” has just been published in Wealth Counsel Quarterly (Vol. 10, Issue 1 – April 2016).

Professor Joan Heminway has been invited to speak at the Emory Transactional Law Conference.  This conference will take place in Atlanta in June.

Professor Joan Heminway gave a presentation as part of a Tennessee Bar Association program entitled, “Unleashed: Hot Topics in Animal Law 2016.”  The program took place on May 16 in Knoxville.

Professor Joan Heminway was quoted in a Wall Street Journal article, “The Missing Piece That Could Hold Back Equity Crowdfunding” (subscription required).  The article discusses the difficulties equity investors may have in later selling their shares to others.

Michael Higdon

Professor Michael Higdon’s article, “Beyond the Metatheoretical: Implicit Bias in Law Review Article Selection,” forthcoming in the Wake Forest Law Review, was noted at the Legal Skills Prof Blog.

Lucy Jewel

Professor Lucy Jewel will give two presentations in late May and early June.  First, she will speak at the Juris Diversitas Conference, to be held at LSU Law School in Baton Rouge, LA.  Immediately afterwards, she will present at the Annual Meeting of the Law and Society Association, to be held in New Orleans.

George Kuney and Maurice Stucke

Professors George Kuney and Maurice Stucke were quoted in The Deal, in an article entitled, “Finding the Genuine Article when Federal Courts Clash.”  The article discusses the relative power of district court judges and bankruptcy court judges.

Michelle Kwon

Professor Michelle Kwon’s article, “The Criminality of Tax Planning,” which was published last year in the Florida Tax Review, was noted favorably at TaxProf Blog.

Don Leatherman

Professor Don Leatherman will participate as the Vice-Chair of the Affiliated and Related Corporations Committee at the upcoming meeting of the American Bar Association’s Tax Section.  The meeting takes place in May in Washington, DC.

Alex Long and Paula Schaefer

Associate Dean Alex Long and Professor Paula Schaefer will participate together in a panel at the upcoming Institute for Law School Teaching and Learning Conference on Real World Learning.  Their panel is entitled, “Integrating (and Assessing) Lawyering Skills in the 1L Curriculum.”  They will be joined by University of Nebraska Professor Colleen Medill, a former member of the UT Law Faculty.  The conference takes place in June at Washburn University School of Law in Topeka, KS.

Alex Long

Associate Dean Alex Long will participate in this year’s International Legal Ethics Conference VII, as part of a program on “Free Speech Issues Affecting Lawyers.”  The conference takes place in July at Fordham Law School in New York.

Karla McKanders

Professor Karla McKanders will give a Pecha Kucha presentation at the Action Research Network of the Americas Conference, to be held in Knoxville on June 16–18.  She will speak on “Educating Lawyers in an Age of Armchair Activism.”

Greg Stein

Associate Dean Greg Stein was quoted in an article, “Why Ticket Scalpers Are Here to Stay,” in MarketWatch.  The article draws on Stein’s earlier article on ticket scalping, “Will Ticket Scalpers Meet the Same Fate as Spinal Tap Drummers? The Sale and Resale of Concert and Sports Tickets,” which appeared in the Pepperdine Law Review in 2014.

Maurice Stucke

Professor Maurice Stucke has been invited to speak at a conference honoring a leading antitrust scholar, Eleanor Fox.  The conference will take place in June in Brussels, Belgium.  The symposium is being organized by the Global Competition Law Center of the College of Europe and the Center for Law, Economics and Society of University College London.

Professor Maurice Stucke has been invited to speak on “The Pros and Cons of the Sharing Economy.”  His talk will highlight important aspects of and challenges arising from the sharing economy and how these may be dealt with within the field of antitrust analysis, from economic and legal perspectives.  The presentation will take place in November in Stockholm, Sweden.

Professor Maurice Stucke, along with his coauthor Allen Grunes, were interviewed for an article in The Guardian.  The article, “Google and Microsoft Have Made A Pact to Protect Surveillance Capitalism,” describes how the two companies are cooperating with each other in an effort to fend off government regulation.  The article refers to “Big Data and Competition Policy,” a new book authored by Stucke and Grunes and forthcoming by Oxford University Press.

Testimony by Professor Maurice Stucke was cited repeatedly by the House of Lords Select Committee on European Union, in its report on “Online Platforms and the Digital Single Market.”

Federal Trade Commissioner Terrell McSweeny gave a presentation to the 16th Annual Loyola Antitrust Colloquium in which he cited work by Professor Maurice Stucke.  McSweeny’s remarks cite Stucke’s coauthored article, “Artificial Intelligence & Collusion: When Computers Inhibit Competition.”

Professor Maurice Stucke’s presentation on big data to the Loyola University Chicago School of Law’s annual antitrust colloquium was covered in an article, “Enforcers Are Not Ready for Big Data, Stucke Says,” published in the Global Competition Review.

Professor Maurice Stucke was quoted recently in an article, “EU Android Case Not Bulletproof Despite Lower Tying Bar,” published at Law360.com.

Val Vojdik

Professor Val Vojdik gave a presentation at George Mason University in April.  Her talk, “Sexual Violence Against Men and Boys in War: Using Masculinities Theory to Enrich Feminist Theories of Gender Violence During War,” was based on her forthcoming chapter on this topic.  The conference was an international conference on gender and conflict, entitled “Feminism for the Future: Critical Perspectives on Feminism and Conflict Resolution.”  The conference was sponsored by the School of Conflict Analysis and Resolution’s Center for the Study of Gender and Conflict.   Speakers included leading experts on gender and war and scholars from Iraq, Afghanistan, Peru, Ethiopia, Australia, and other nations.

Professor Val Vojdik has been invited to present her new work-in-progress, “Recognizing Gender-Related Persecution of Boys and Men Under Aslyum Law,” at the U.S. Feminist Judgments Conference.  The conference will be held in October at the Center for Constitutional Law at The University of Akron School of Law and is co-sponsored by The University of Akron and the UNLV Boyd School of Law.

Professor Val Vojdik has been selected as the recipient of a Tennessee Teaching and Learning Center Teaching for Impact Grant.  The grant will support her work integrating theory and practice and incorporating active learning methods into her doctrinal classes.