Faculty Forum (Blaze and Baxter)

Faculty Forum, March 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 will participate in UT’s Intersectionality Community of Scholars Symposium.  The conference, entitled “New Horizons in Intersectionality: Research, Policy, and Activism,” will be held March 23–24 at the College of Law.  Bach will speak 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.”

Wendy Bach

Professor Wendy Bach will give a presentation at the Association of American Law Schools Clinical Conference.  The conference will be held in Baltimore in May.

Bach also recently gave a presentation at the Conference on Poverty Law.  The conference was held in mid-February in Seattle.

Additionally, Bach gave a presentation at the Externships 8 Conference, held March 3–6 at Cleveland–Marshall College of Law in Cleveland, OH.

Ben Barton

Professor Ben Barton was quoted in Bloomberg on March 9.  The article, “Law Student Finally Gets Her Shot at Alma Mater,” discusses the former student who is suing Thomas Jefferson Law School.  Barton discusses the misleading reporting of employment statistics by some law schools.

Barton was also recently quoted in the Commercial Appeal on March 5.  The article, “County Pays Millions to Settle Claims, Records Show,” discusses law suits against Shelby County arising from mistreatment of prisoners in the Shelby County jail.

Additionally, Barton as quoted in the New York Times Magazine on February 15.  The article, “How to Bring the Supreme Court Back Down to Earth,” quotes Barton on the question of what are appropriate qualifications for a Supreme Court justice.

Judy Cornett

Professor Judy Cornett will give two presentations for the Knoxville Bar Association.  On April 14, she will be a panelist on “Comin’ Through the Rye: Conforming Tennessee’s Summary Judgment Standard to Federal Law.”  And on May 6, she will give the Law Day keynote address, on “Where Have All the Heroes Gone?  Atticus Finch in ‘Go Set a Watchman.’”

Joan Heminway

In June, Professor Joan Heminway will travel to Chicago and Seattle to present a work-in-progress on publicly traded for-profit benefit corporations (incorporated entities engaged in social enterprise).  In Chicago, she will present the paper at the National Business Las Scholars Conference, an annual event hosted this year by the University of Chicago Law School, for which Heminway also serves on the organizing committee.  In Seattle, she will present her work as an invited participant in the eighth Annual Adolf A. Berle Symposium on Corporation, Law and Society at the Seattle University School of Law.  The theme for the symposium is “Benefit Corporations and the Firm Commitment Universe.”  The paper looks at corporate purpose and litigation risk in publicly held for-profit benefit corporations organized in the United States.  Katie Smalley ‘16 has served as Heminway’s research assistant on this project.

Heminway has also published the chapter “Intermediating Crowdfunding: A Foundational Assessment,” in the book “Strategic Approaches to Successful Crowdfunding” (Djamchid Assadi, ed., IGI Global, 2016).

Additionally, Heminway gave a presentation, “The LLC Operating Agreement and its Relation to Contract,” at St. Mary’s University School of Law.  Her presentation was part of a panel at the 11th International Conference on Contracts, held in February 2016 in San Antonio, TX.

Heminway was also a panelist at the Stetson University College of Law symposium on “Corporate Criminal Liability 2.0.”  Her presentation was entitled “Corporate Criminal Liability for Reckless C-Suite Insider Trading Violations.”  The conference took place in Tampa, FL, in February.

Additionally, Heminway’s article, “A Tennessee Court Is ‘In Business’” For Us All,” appeared in the March 2016 issue of DICTA, the monthly publication of the Knoxville Bar Association.

Michael Higdon

Professor Michael Higdon’s article, “State Misdemeanant, Federal Felon: Adolescent Sexual Offenders and the INA,” was featured as the Immigration Article of the Day for February 19 on the ImmigrationProf Blog.

Becky Jacobs

Professor Becky Jacobs will give a presentation at the 13th IMODEV International Symposium on “Citizen Participation and Collaboration in Promoting Open Government.”  The conference takes place in March in Paris.

Brian Krumm

Professor Brian Krumm gave a presentation at the Conference on Poverty Law.  The conference was held in mid-February in Seattle.

Additionally, Krumm will participate in this year’s faculty exchange program with Georgia State University College of Law.  Krumm will give a presentation at Georgia State on March 24.

George Kuney and Donna Looper

Professor George Kuney and Adjunct Professor Donna Looper were invited by the Knoxville Inns of Court to give a presentation on their book, “A Civil Matter,” and related projects, including “A Transactional Matter” and “A Criminal Matter.”  These projects involve use of the “case file” method of teaching, and the explanation of the law and legal process as a more efficient method than the traditional casebook format.  Their presentation took place on March 8.

Bob Lloyd

Professor Bob Lloyd will give a presentation in March at the Mid-Year Meeting of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers.  His talk is entitled, “The Uniform Voidable Transactions Act: Some Hidden Gems.”

Alex Long and Paula Schaefer

Associate Dean Alex Long and Professor Paula Schaefer gave a one-hour CLE presentation to alumni in the Atlanta area on March 10.  The “2016 Attorney Ethics Update and Quiz” was an interactive program in which participants considered professional conduct dilemmas based on real cases and recent news stories.  The audience attempted to identify which professional conduct rules may have been violated by an attorney’s conduct and voted on the best answer.  The presenters and participants also examined the results, discussed the possible answers, and considered how these issues should be addressed in practice.

Alex Long

Associate Dean Alex Long was quoted in the New York Times on February 22, in an article entitled, “How Does It Feel, Chief Justice Roberts, to Hone a Dylan Quote?” The Times article discusses Long’s earlier article, “The Freewheelin’ Judiciary: A Bob Dylan Anthology,” published in the Fordham Urban Law Journal in 2010, which assesses the use of Bob Dylan quotes in judicial opinions.

Additionally, Long’s article, “Prosecutorial Ethics: The Ethics of Release–Dismissal Agreements,” appeared in the March 2016 issue of DICTA, the monthly publication of the Knoxville Bar Association.

Karla McKanders

Professor Karla McKanders has been named to the Fulbright Specialist Roster.  By virtue of being listed on the Roster, McKanders is eligible to be matched with incoming project request from overseas educational institutions.  She will remain on the Fulbright Specialist Roster for a term of five years.

Bill Mercer

Professor Bill Mercer, who serves as a Lecturer at the College of Law, will give a presentation next month at the conference of the Association for the Study of Law, Culture, and the Humanities.  Mercer’s paper, “The Ballad of Hicks Carmichael,” recounts the story of an 1888 Knoxville murder trial that the newspapers approvingly described as “the speediest trial in the history of the country where capital punishment was the decree of the court.”  The conference will be held on April 2 at the University of Connecticut Law School.

Joy Radice

Professor Joy Radice gave a presentation at the Externships 8 Conference, held March 3–6 at Cleveland–Marshall College of Law in Cleveland, OH.

Additionally, Radice was one of several UT professors invited to give a breakfast presentation about experiential learning.  Her presentation was part of Faculty Appreciation Week, which UT held in February.

Dean Rivkin

Professor Dean Rivkin, along with Education Law Practicum students Brittan Moore and Nykedra Jackson, gave a talk in a graduate class at the UT College of Health, Education, and Human Sciences.  The class focuses on issues of diversity in public education, and their two-hour presentation concentrated on the legal work of the Practicum that is designed to promote equality in educational opportunities for all students.

Briana Rosenbaum

Professor Briana Rosenbaum has been invited to give two presentations on her paper, entitled “Civil RICO: The Latest Weapon in Class Action Warfare.”  She will present her paper at the Stanford Law School Grey Fellows Forum on April 1.  Rosenbaum also will present her work at the Second Annual Civil Procedure Workshop, to be held at Seattle University School of Law on July 14–15.

Greg Stein

Associate Dean Greg Stein gave a presentation to the Land Use and Environmental Committee of the American College of Real Estate Lawyers at its spring meeting.  His presentation was entitled, “Land Use Issues in Chinese Real Estate Law.”  Stein also participated in the ACREL meeting in two other capacities: He is a member of ACREL’s Board of Governors and also co-chairs its Law Professors Committee.  The meeting took place in March in San Diego.

Maurice Stucke

Professor Maurice Stucke has been invited to participate in Oxford University’s 2016 Antitrust Enforcement Symposium.  He will give a presentation on his forthcoming (coauthored) book, “Virtual Competition” (Harvard University Press).  The symposium attracts antitrust officials from the U.S. and E.U., practitioners, economists, and antitrust scholars, and will take place on June 25–26 at Oxford.

Additionally, Stucke has been invited to give a presentation at the 16th Annual Loyola Antitrust Colloquium, to be held in Chicago in April.  Stucke will give a presentation on “Big Data and Competition Policy,” drawing on a forthcoming book that he coauthored.

Val Vojdik

Professor Val Vojdik has been invited by the Human Rights Hub at Oxford University to contribute to its blog.  Vojdik will write a contribution about the US Supreme Court’s recent decision in “June Medical Services v. Gee.”

Vojdik has also been invited to present her new paper on wartime sexual violence against men at George Mason’s Center for the Study of Gender and Conflict’s 4th annual research conference.  The conference is entitled “Feminism for the Future: Critical Perspectives on Feminism and Conflict Resolution,” and will take place in April.  Vojdik’s presentation is based on a chapter that she has prepared as part of volume on “International Criminal Law and Gender.”

Penny White

Professor Penny White was featured on WUOT’s “Dialogue” on March 2.  She participated in a discussion on “Changing Attitudes about the Death Penalty.”

Additionally, White was quoted in the Washington Post on March 10.  The article is entitled “We Desperately Need More Women Judges, So Why Aren’t We Getting Them?” White suggests that women are not securing judgeships because the majority of decision makers are men.