Faculty Forum is a monthly feature written by Teri Baxter highlighting the achievements of faculty at UT Law including publications in academia and the media, speaking engagements, interviews, awards, and other accomplishments.
Professor Brad Areheart’s article, The Future of Genetic Privacy,will appear in Volume 128 of the Yale Law Journal. In it, he and co-author Jessica Roberts (Houston) analyze the first ten years of the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA). While nearly all commentators have described GINA as a failure, Areheart and Roberts examine all of the cases decided under the statute and argue that the law has had meaningful, albeit unforeseen, benefits. They also argue that in a world of big data, GINA offers a robust and unexpected safeguard against prying by employers and provides a blueprint for how to expand existing legal protections to further employee privacy.
Professor Areheart presented The Headwinds and Tailwinds of Workplace Equality at the University of Houston Law Center on April 6. He was part of a select workshop of faculty from across the country who write on the law of equality.
Professor Areheart was invited to write a chapter on Young v. UPS for Feminist Judgments: Employment Discrimination Opinions Rewritten, a book forthcoming in Cambridge University Press. He presented on Young v. UPS (a Supreme Court opinion at the intersection of disability and pregnancy rights) at the UNLV School of Law on April 20.
Professor Wendy Bach’s article, Prosecuting Poverty, Criminalizing Care, will appear in Volume 60 of the William and Mary Law Review.
Professor Doug Blaze has been appointed to the Board of Directors of the Tennessee Supreme Court Historical Society. He has also joined the board of The Justice Initiative– a new effort of Mark Stephens, District Public Defender for the Sixth Judicial District (Knox County, Tennessee).
Earlier in April, Professor Rob Blitt traveled to Kharkiv, Ukraine to present an invited paper on recent amendments to the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA) in the context of the conflict in Eastern Ukraine. The international conference, organized around the theme “War and Peace and Religion: Religious Freedom during the Russian-Ukrainian Conflict” was sponsored by the BYU International Center for Law and Religion Studies and the Center for Rule of Law and Religion Studies at the Yaroslav the Wise National Law University. Experts from Ukraine, Russia, and elsewhere in Europe, including former prisoner of conscience Professor Ihor Kozlovsky, discussed various aspects of the conflict, such as the role played by religious organizations and the impact of military occupation on the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion or belief.
The article How to Select a New ILS/LSP Vendor, by Professors Carol Collins and Eliza Fink, has been published in Computers in Libraries, April 2018, 4-9.
Professor Eliza Fink was selected to attend AALL’s 2018 Leadership Academy. The Academy, which continues with a one-year mentoring fellowship, was hosted April 12-14 in Oak Brook, Ill., and is designed to equip law librarians with essential leadership skills and strategies to handle challenges at the early stages of their careers
Professor Joan Heminway’s essay titled “The Business Transactional Lawyer as SEALS Leader: Reflections on Being in a Good Place with Great People at the Right Time” was published in volume 86 of the UMKC Law Reviewas part of a symposium issue celebrating the 70th anniversary of the Southeastern Association of Law Schools.
Professor Heminway also has presented at several continuing legal education programs over the past few months, including: “Global Movement of Goods, Services, and People” here at the College of Law; “Data Security and Ethical Considerations in the In-House Counsel Role” and “Corporate Governance Nuts and Bolts” as part of the Tennessee Bar Association’s Corporate Counsel Forum 2018; and “The Blockchain, Women, and Law: What We All Need to Know” for the East Tennessee Lawyers Association for Women.
Professor George Kuney’s most recent article, Understanding and Taming the Doctrine of Equitable Mootness, has been accepted for publication as the lead article in the 2018 Norton Annual Survey of Bankruptcy Law (West 2018). In the article, Professor Kuney recognizes the unlikelihood of abolishing the creeping doctrine of equitable mootness, despite its questionable basis. The article provides a breakdown of the current equitable mootness analysis in each federal circuit and then proposes a uniform test that blends together the yardsticks from each circuit. Finally, because the author is leery of an uncontrolled equitable mootness doctrine, the article argues for applying two exceptions to equitable mootness – situations that are capable of repetition and evasion of effective review and nominal damages — that would serve to limit its expansive application.
Professor Glenn Reynolds is profiled in the new Third Edition of a journalism text: Electronic Media Then, Now, and Later, by Norman J. Medoff & Barbara Kaye.
Professor Dean Rivkin taught a class on school discipline law and policy in a course called “Diversity in Children & Families” in the Department of Child and Family Studies.
Professor Jonathan Rohr was invited to speak at the Blockchain Law & Technology symposium on April 6 hosted by the Cleveland State Law Review. He participated in a panel discussion on smart contracts and is preparing an invited submission for publication in the journal’s next volume.
Professor Rohr presented Blockchain-Based Token Sales, Initial Coin Offerings, and the Democratization of Public Capital Markets at the University of Kentucky College of Law and at Georgia State University College of Law in March.
Professor Rohr’s article Freedom of Contract and the Publicly Traded Uncorporation was recently published in the NYU Journal of Law and Business.
Professor Briana Rosenbaum’s article Judicial Retrenchment in Congress: Hidden Incremental Reform will appear in Volume 72 of the Nebraska Law Review.
Professor Rosenbaum was invited to speak at the “Trans Student Legal Rights Workshop” in Knoxville. The workshop covered basic legal concepts, state and federal law, Constitutional rights, federal case history relating to trans rights, and the current political climate. The workshop was part of the four-part Voices for Trans Youth Organization’s Education & Advocacy Workshop Series that provided education on LGBT issues, and helped students, parents, educators, and allies develop the knowledge and practical skills necessary for LGBTQ advocacy in K-12 schools and beyond.
At the 2018 Tennessee Judicial Conference, Professor Paula Schaefer and Judge Kelvin Jones co-presented a two-hour, interactive CLE program titled Judicial Ethics Update.
Professor Schaefer participated in a meeting of the Consortium on Teaching E-Discovery at the Sixth Annual University of Florida Law E-Discovery Conference in March. Professors from eight U.S. law schools are working together in this consortium to develop a model curriculum for teaching e-discovery in law school.
Professor Schaefer was invited to participate in the Akron Law Review’s Civil Discovery Symposium. She presented “Attorney Negligence and Negligent Spoliation” at the April 2018 symposium. Her article, Attorney Negligence and Negligent Spoliation: The Need for New Tools to Prompt Attorney Competence in Preservation,will be published in Volume 51 of the Akron Law Review.
Professor Greg Stein gave a presentation to the Land Use and Environmental Committee of the American College of Real Estate Lawyers. His presentation was titled “Recent Developments in Regulatory Takings Law.” He also participated in the spring meeting of ACREL’s Board of Governors, of which he is a member. The meeting was held in March in Orlando, Fla.
Professor Maurice Stucke’s book Virtual Competition: The Promise and Perils of the Algorithm-Driven Economy(with Ariel Ezrachi) was cited in the Fast Company article “This Is How We Take Power Back From Facebook (And Every Other Monopoly).”
Professor Stucke was quoted extensively in the Lexington Herald Leader article “Is Facebook really changing? Or just trimming its data haul?”
Professor Stucke’s comments at the American Bar Association antitrust conference in Washington were quoted in the BNA article “Fair Play: The Facebook Conundrum.” In his remarks, Professor Stucke noted that “the U.S. antitrust laws may not be up to the task of addressing the power of Facebook and other tech giants like Google Inc. and Amazon.com.”
Professor Stucke was also quoted in the New York Times article “Apple’s Deal for Shazam Is Delayed in Europe Over Data Concerns.” He predicted that “[a]ntitrust cases based on data will become more common as companies use customer information as a moat against competitors” and noted that European investigations will likely influence actions by governments in other countries. The Guardian article “Is your friend getting a cheaper Uber fare than you are?” quotes Professor Stucke and mentions his book Virtual Competition.