Faculty Forum: July 2019

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

Professor Wendy Bach’s article “Prosecuting Poverty, Criminalizing Care” has been published in volume 60 of the William & Mary Law Review.

Professor Bach authored a chapter titled “Federalism, Entitlement and Punishment Across the U.S. Social Welfare State” in Holes In The Safety Net: Federalism and Poverty, which was recently published by Cambridge University Press. 

At the second annual Women’s Leadership in Legal Academia conference at the University of Virginia, Associate Dean Teri Baxter, Professor Joy Radice, Associate Dean Paula Schaefer, and Dean Melanie Wilson presented the workshop “Effective Individual and Institutional Responses to Bias.”

Professor Robert Blitt has been invited to join the executive council of the Tennessee Bar Association’s International Law & Practice Section beginning in July 2019. He currently serves on the executive council of the TBA’s Immigration Law Section.

In July, Professor Blitt participated in an interdisciplinary workshop on the theme Human Rights Accountability of Non-State Actors at the at the XXIX World Congress of the International Association for the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy (IVR). Professor Blitt’s presentation addressed challenges stemming from the International Religious Freedom Act’s (IRFA) recent amendments attempting to engage non-state actors violating freedom of religion or belief.

Professor Blitt’s article addressing IRFA’s impact on non-state actors operating in eastern Ukraine, titled “The United States International Religious Freedom Act, Nonstate Actors, and the Donbas Crisis,” will be published as a chapter in a forthcoming book, Religion During the Russian-Ukrainian Conflict.

Professor Zack Buck presented a work-in-progress, “A Regulatory Remedy,” at the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law on July 24 as part of its Faculty Summer Workshop Series.

Professor Joan Heminway presented the data from her insider trading research this semester at the National Business Law Scholars Conference in June in at Berkeley Law. 

Professor Heminway presented her draft paper “U.S. Microfinance through the Sharing Economy: U.S. Securities Crowdfunding as a Means of Promoting Capital Formation, Encouraging Investment, and Addressing Poverty” in June at the annual conference of the European Academy of Management in Lisbon, Portugal.  

Professor Heminway moderated the workshop “Leading from Where We Are” at the Women’s Leadership in Legal Academia conference at the University of Virginia School of Law.

Professor Michael Higdon’s article, “The Quasi-Parent Conundrum,” has been published in volume 90 of the University of Colorado Law Review. His essay “While They Waited: Pre-Obergefell Lives and the Law of Nonmarriage” has been published online by the Yale Law Journal Forum. 

Professor Lucy Jewel participated on a panel in May at Suffolk University Law School during the biennial conference of the Association of Legal Writing Directors. The panel addressed leadership strategies in competitive academic environments. 

On June 1, 2019, Professor Jewel assumed the role of President of ClassCrits, a national network of academics and activists who analyze law and economics through a critical lens. She will be heavily involved in planning the next ClassCrits conference, scheduled to take place in November 2019.

Professor Lucy Jewel led a workshop in June on scholarship for new legal writing teachers at the AALS Workshop for New Law Teachers. She also moderated two roundtable discussions that allowed conference participants to voice questions about starting their careers as law teachers.     

Professor Lucy Jewel presented her paper “Does the Reasonable Man Have OCD?” as part of a panel at the Applied Storytelling Conference at the University of Colorado Law School. Professor Jewel – along with panelists Professor Teri McMurtry-Chubb (The John Marshall Law School Chicago) and Professor Elizabeth Berenguer (Campbell Law School) – addressed how traditional forms of rhetoric can reinforce and reproduce racial stereotypes within the law and discussed methods to disrupt that process.

Professor Alex Long’s article, “Abolishing the Suicide Rule,” 113 NW. U. L. Rev. 767 (2019), was cited by the Supreme Court of South Carolina inWickersham v. Ford Motor Company.

Professor Long presented a CLE in July (along with alumnus Jared Garceau) for the Knoxville Bar Association Barristers entitled “Don’t Sin Like Vin:  The Ethics and Professionalism of My Cousin Vinny.” 

Professor Glenn Reynolds has been asked to speak at Princeton University as part of a panel discussion on James Williams’s recent book, Stand Out of Our Light: Freedom and Resistance in the Attention Economy. The discussion is sponsored by the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions.

Associate Dean Paula Schaefer’s article “Behavioral Legal Ethics Lessons for Corporate Counsel” was published in volume 69 of the Case Western Reserve Law Review. The article has been discussed by Law360Behavioral Legal Ethics Blog, and Conflict of Interest Blog.

Associate Dean Schaefer presented a CLE in July titled “Gender Bias and Professional Conduct Obligations: A Practical Approach.” The program was sponsored by the East Tennessee Lawyer’s Association for Women.

Associate Dean Schaefer was one of thirty legal educators invited to participate in the Leading Edge Conference that brings together “legal education thought leaders to discuss key issues facing legal education and to brainstorm actionable strategies.” 

Professor Maurice Stucke appeared on CNBCon July 24 to discuss the Federal Trade Commission’s $5 billion settlement with Facebook over privacy policies.

Professor Maurice Stucke was quoted in an article titled “Desintegrando Facebook” in Forbes España.

Professor Valorie Vojdik’s chapter, “Sexual Abuse and Exploitation by UN Peacekeepers as Conflict-Related Gender Violence,” in Niamh Reilly, ed., International Human Rights of Women, has been published by Springer. The book, which includes chapters by more than twenty leading scholars in the area of international women’s rights, is available online at SpringerLink and forthcoming in print in 2020.

During the week of June 24, Professor Penny White served as a member of the faculty at the National Judicial College’s (NJC) Advanced Evidence course held in Bar Harbor, Maine. Forty-five judges from 25 states and Guam attended the week-long course during which Professor White designed and instructed ten segments including those on hearsay, confrontation, impeachment, and rehabilitation. During the course, White was presented with an award for 25 years of dedicated service as an NJC faculty member.

For the second year, Professor White joined lawyers and labor leaders in North Carolina at the Carolina Labor School the week of July 22, where 75 union officers and show stewards from the local units of a dozen international unions convened to learn about labor, employment, and privacy law, arbitration, and negotiation. She aided two NC lawyers in presenting a mock arbitration during which participants served as mock arbitrators and taught a course on negotiations.

As a result of her participation this spring in the Unrig Summit, Professor White is featured in a podcast, available on both Spotify and iTunes. The podcast, Unrig the System, is available here. White’s panel “Bipartisan Solutions for Ending the Prison-Industrial Complex Once and For All” is featured as Episode 3.

The third article in Professor White’s series on Pretrial, Trial, and Post-Trial Preservation will be published in the summer edition of For the Defense. The third article addresses preservation of constitutional and statutory issues arising out of the empaneling, selection, and challenging of petit and grand jurors and, additionally, issues of jury misconduct.

On June 12 and 13, Dean Melanie Wilson co-chaired (along with Trevor Morrison (NYU)) the ABA New Law Deans Conference in Denver, Colorado. 

Dean Wilson, along with co-authorPaul Marcus (William and Mary), recently finished the Ninth Edition of their casebook, Criminal Procedure. It should be published later this year.