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.
APIEL Conference
The sixth annual Appalachian Public Interest Environmental Law Conference (APIEL) was held at the College of Law on October 24-25. Over the years, APIEL has brought together hundreds of eco-minded and socially conscious activists, attorneys, law professors, students, scientists, and citizens in the interest of achieving environmental and social justice throughout Appalachia and surrounding areas. The conference featured a series of workshops with the goal of exchanging information, sharing skills, and fostering collaboration between grassroots organizations, the bar, and future lawyers and policy-makers. These workshops addressed the region’s most pressing ecological problems, as well as the underlying laws, policies, and institutional dynamics of these issues.
This year’s conference was organized by students from the Environmental Law Organization, led by law student David Samples (’17) and attorney Grace Stranch (’14) of Branstetter, Stranch, and Jennings in Nashville, with the skillful CLE support of Micki Fox. Workshops by UT Law graduates and faculty included:
- Shelby Ward (’11): “The Relationship Between Clean Water Enforcement and Biodiversity in Streams in Tennessee and Kentucky.”
- Gena Lewis (’05): “Litigating the Environmental Impacts of Prisons.”
- Sam Evans (’09) and Annie Passino (’08): “FOIA and State Public Records Law.”
- Professor Dean Hill Rivkin, Stephanie Durman (Tennessee Clean Water Network), Professor Ryle Longest (Duke Law), and Professor Patrick McGinley (University of West Virginia Law): “Ethical Considerations in Public Interest Lawyering.”
The conference also featured the Tennessee premiere of the documentary “Blood on the Mountain,” which traces the historical relationships between the coal industry and politics in West Virginia. Over 100 people attended this premiere. The film’s director spoke about the film after the screening.
Brad Areheart
Professor Brad Areheart gave a presentation as part of the University of Tennessee’s Mic Nite. Areheart’s Pecha Kucha presentation was entitled “Symmetry and the Design of Antidiscrimination Law.” The program was held at Relix Variety Theater on October 28.
Ben Barton
Professor Ben Barton was quoted in the November 2015 issue of the ABA Journal. The article, “Aiming Low: Some Big Firms Are Finding Profit in Commoditized Work,” focuses on the growing number of firms undertaking repetitive, low-end legal work that generates low fees. Barton noted that large firms have not undertaken this work because they cannot figure out how to do it profitably.
Teri Baxter
Professor Teri Baxter’s forthcoming article, “My Marriage, My Contract, My Terms: Reconsidering State Regulation of Marriage after Obergefell,” was featured on the Penn Program on Regulation RegBlog, an online publication of the University of Pennsylvania Law School.
Judy Cornett
Two articles by Professor Judy Cornett are cited extensively in the Tennessee Supreme Court’s recent decision in Rye v. Women’s Care Center of Memphis, MPLLC. The court cites to Trick or Treat? Summary Judgment in Tennessee after Hannan v. Alltel Publishing Co., 77 Tenn. L. Rev. 305 (2010), and to The Legacy of Byrd v. Hall: Gossiping about Summary Judgment in Tennessee, 69 Tenn. L. Rev. 175 (2001).
Joan Heminway
Professor Joan Heminway was quoted in the Real Deal recently. The article is entitled “SEC Will Allow Developers to Crowdfund from Real Investors.”
Heminway also delivered the Friday Faculty Lecture for the Haslam Scholars program on October 30. Her presentation, entitled “Financing Businesses and Projects Through Crowdfunding,” focused on the financial needs of small business and the ways in which crowdfunding, broadly defined, may play a role in meeting those needs.
Amy Hess
Professor Amy Hess participated in a webinar on the subject of “Estate Planning for Art Collectors.” Her October 14 presentation was part of the “Professors’ Corner” series hosted by the American Bar Association’s Section of Real Property, Trust and Estate Law.
Michael Higdon
Professor Michael Higdon participated in the Wake Forest Law Review’s annual symposium, “Revisiting Langdell: Legal Education Reform and the Lawyer’s Craft,” on October 23. The symposium explored how legal education can and should move away from the traditional Langdellian model toward creating the “more intellectually vigorous and life-affirming law schools that market, morals, and humanity demand. This involves exploring the relations between theory and practice, rejecting the notion that practice taints scholarship, and embracing the opposite notion that deeper scholarship requires practice. It also involves embracing the necessary role of the humanities in good legal education.”
Lucy Jewel
Professor Lucy Jewel’s article, “Oil and Water: How Legal Education’s Doctrine and Skills Divide Reproduces Toxic Hierarchies,” which was published earlier this year in the Columbia Journal of Gender and the Law, was noted favorably on TaxProf Blog and Legal Skills Prof Blog.
George Kuney
Professor George Kuney was quoted in the article, “High Court Asked to Rein in Confusion Over 2 Key Bankruptcy Issues,” published in Westlaw Journal – Bankruptcy. The article addresses a contract dispute that will give the U.S. Supreme Court an opportunity to clarify what constitutes an “interest” that can be extinguished in a bankruptcy sale.
Bob Lloyd
Professor Bob Lloyd gave a presentation on proving economic damages to the Litigation Counsel of America, a trial honorary society, at its Annual Meeting and Induction of New Fellows. The meeting took place in Charleston, SC, on October 9.
Tom Plank
Professor Tom Plank attended and participated in the first drafting session of advisors and consultants for the American Law Institute’s Restatement (Fourth) of Property. The meeting took place on October 1 at the American Law Institute’s office in Philadelphia, PA. Most of the first session dealt with the scope of this new Restatement of Property. The reporters proposed broad coverage of the topic, including contract rights and security interests as property. Although some questioned this breadth of scope, suggesting that the Restatement should focus on real estate, Plank and others argued for broad coverage.
Glenn Reynolds
Professor Glenn Reynolds spoke at Georgetown University Law Center in early November, at a conference on the Second Amendment and Civil Liberties. His topic was “Second Amendment Limitations.” Reynolds will also publish an article in the symposium issue of the Georgetown Journal of Law and Public Policy based on the conference.
Reynolds’s article, “Ham Sandwich Nation: Due Process When Everything Is A Crime,” was favorably noted in The American Interest. The posting there, “Ignore the Prosecutor, Ignore the Problem,” refers to Reynolds’s suggestions as “[s]ome of the smartest solutions.”
Dean Rivkin
Professor Dean Rivkin conducted a one-hour webinar in November for the nonprofit statewide parent education organization STEP (Support and Training for Parents with Exceptional Children). Rivkin spoke on the topic of special education advocacy for court-involved juveniles.
Greg Stein
Associate Dean Greg Stein’s article, “Chinese Real Estate Law and the Law and Development Theory: A Comparison of Law and Practice,” has been accepted for publication in the Florida State Journal of Transnational Law and Policy. The article will appear in spring of 2016.
Maurice Stucke
The UK House of Lords invited Professor Maurice Stucke and his co-author, Oxford Professor Ariel Ezrachi, to submit comments related to its hearing on “Online Platforms and the EU Digital Single Market.” They have also completed a manuscript on this same subject.
Stucke was quoted in American Prospect Magazine, in an article entitled, “Bring Back Antitrust.” The article argues in favor of revitalizing antitrust enforcement in the face of increasing business consolidation.
Stucke’s article, “Online Platforms and the EU Digital Single Market,” was featured in the publication “Competition Policy International.”
Val Vojdik
Professor Val Vojdik has been invited to speak on a panel at the Joint Scholars and Scholarship Workshop on Feminist Jurisprudence. Her plenary panel is entitled “The U.S. Feminist Judgments Project: Collaboration as a Feminist Model for Creative Scholarship.” The program will be held at Fordham Law School on January 6. Vojdik is the author of a chapter on the VMI case for the Feminist Judgments Project that will be published by Cambridge University Press. The panel will be a discussion and reflection on the scholarly collaboration, thinking about collaboration and how feminism can reinvigorate and transform future scholarly projects.
David Wolitz
Professor David Wolitz delivered a talk on October 31 at the American Society for Legal History annual conference in Washington, DC. The talk was based on his forthcoming article “Herbert Wechsler, Legal Process, and the Jurisprudential Roots of the Model Penal Code.”