Faculty Notes, compiled and written by Teri Baxter, 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.
Brad Areheart
Professor Brad Areheart recently presented his paper, The Symmetry Principle, at the 11th Annual Colloquium on Scholarship in Employment and Labor Law Conference. The conference was held at the University of Washington School of Law on September 23-24.
Wendy Bach
Jotwell has a new section on poverty that will publish reviews by its editors, including Professor Wendy Anne Bach, of recently published articles or books in the field. The first was Professor Bach’s Looking Intersectionally and Seeing Structural Bias, which reviews Priscilla Ocen, (E)Racing Childhood: Examining the Racialized Construction of Childhood and Innocence in the Treatment of Sexually Exploited Minors, 62 UCLA L. Rev. 1586 (2015)).
Robert Blitt, Brad Morgan, Joy Radice, and Valorie Vojdik
Professor Robert C. Blitt, Institute for Professional Leadership Associate Director Brad Morgan, Professor Joy Radice and Professor Valorie K. Vojdik presented at the annual Society of American Law Teachers conference. The panel was titled Bringing Access to Justice to the Classroom through Focused Experiential Education. As part of a discussion about teaching students how to use technology to assist in access to justice, Professor Blitt presented a case study from the Human Rights Practicum in which students worked with the Tennessee Human Rights Commission to automate a discrimination complaint. Professor Radice discussed the UT Expungement Mini-Clinic in which students help ex-offenders expunge their records, learn about the discriminatory effects of mass incarceration, and receive training in the necessary skills to do expungements on a pro bono basis after graduation. Director Morgan discussed The Leadership Externship, in which students do pro bono work with various advocacy and community groups as part of UT’s new Institute for Leadership. Professor Vojdik’s Civil Right Action course served as an example of a doctrinal course that incorporates discovery simulations, using the Flint water crisis as the subject.
Zack Buck
On October 6, 2016, Professor Zack Buck presented his paper The Cost of High Prices at the University of Cincinnati College of Law as part of the faculty exchange program with UT.
Judy Cornett
The Alabama Law Review has invited Professor Judy Cornett to participate in a symposium paying tribute to author Harper Lee’s works, particularly “To Kill a Mockingbird.” The title of the symposium will be The Legacy of To Kill a Mockingbird: Advocacy in an Unjust Society. Participants will explore parallels between “To Kill a Mockingbird” and our modern criminal justice system and legal profession.
Michelle Cosby and Eliza Fink
Professor Michelle Cosby and Digital Resources and Services Librarian Eliza Fink will give a pre-football CLE presentation on Saturday, November 12, 2016. The presentation is titled “Getting the Most Out of Free and Low-Cost Research Tools” and will include discussions about FastCase, Google, free resources available at the UT Law Library, and apps that assist with research and productivity.
Joan Heminway
On October 3, Professor Joan Heminway participated in a panel discussion at The University of Tennessee College of Veterinary Medicine entitled “Big Hairy Ethical Issue: Primate Personhood.” The discussion was part of the Success and Wellness Course for veterinary medical students. Later in the week, Prof. Heminway spoke on crowdfunding to business financing industry participants in New York City at The Crowdfunding Conference 2016 (hosted by DealFlow Media, Inc.) and to members of the Arkansas Bar Association as part of “Capital Raising Today and Securities Law Issues,” a continuing legal education event in Little Rock, Arkansas. Finally, at the end of the week, Prof. Heminway presented her draft paper, Why Can’t We Be Friends?: A Business Finance Lawyer’s Plaintive Plea to Entrepreneurs, at a symposium on “The Role of Law in Promoting Entrepreneurship.” The symposium was hosted by the North Carolina Law Review, which is publishing all of the presented papers in a forthcoming issue.
Professor Joan Heminway’s article “Crowdfunding & the Public Private Divide in US Securities Regulation” will be republished in volume 46 of the Texas Journal of Business Law.
On Friday, September 23, Professor Heminway was one of two panelists for a continuing legal education program on crowdfunding at the Americana Music Festival (Americanafest) in Nashville. The panel, entitled “The New Crowdfunding Laws for Private Investors & Other Ways to Legally Raise Money,” described newly effective federal laws on securities crowdfunding and other ways to solicit a small to moderate amount of funding for business activities. The panel also discussed the role of intermediaries and funders in various capital-raising transactions and the benefits and perils of different kinds of fundraising transactions.
Lucy Jewel
Professor Lucy Jewel participated on a panel at the Society of American Law Teachers conference. The panel – “Social Justice Begins at Home: The Pursuit of Full Citizenship for All Members of the Legal Academy” – was presented by the Legal Writing Institute’s Professional Status Committee, of which Professor Jewel is an appointed member. Professor Jewel provided the legal history context for the issue, explained the harm to students in maintaining these distinctions, and described continuing obstacles to reform.
George Kuney
The Fourth Edition of Legal Drafting in a Nutshell, co-authored by Professor George W. Kuney, will be published soon. The book provides guidance on producing transactional documents, contracts, instruments, legislation, and regulations that solve existing problems and prevent future problems. The book provides both a large scale, macro overview of the drafting process as well as small scale, micro focused discussion of the mechanics of legal documents at the sentence, word, and punctuation level.
Professor Kuney is also co-author of the book Bankruptcy in Practice, which was praised in the American Bankruptcy Institute’s September 2016 newsletter. The article notes that “Bankruptcy in Practice has been called ‘the best bankruptcy desk book on the market,’ and it’s easy to see why. . . . [T]the book’s engaging style and lively use of anecdotes will demystify the arcane rules of the bankruptcy road for new and nonspecialist lawyers, and nonlawyer professionals in particular.”
Karla McKanders
The Fordham International Law Journal will publish an essay that Professor Karla McKanders co-authored with Valeria Gomez. The essay is entitled Refugee Reception and Perception: U.S. Detention Camps and German Welcome Centers and it compares the treatment of asylum seekers at reception in United States and Germany through each countries’ freedom and restriction of movement laws.
Thomas Plank
Professor Thomas Plank’s article “Security Interests in Deposit Accounts, Securities Accounts and Commodity Accounts: Correcting Article 9’s Confusion of Contract and Property” will be published in volume 69, issue 3 of the Oklahoma Law Review (Spring 2017).
Glenn Reynolds
Professor Glenn H. Reynolds’s article “The Supreme Court 2016 Term: Looking Ahead,” has been published in the Cato Supreme Court Review, volume 2015-16. Professor Reynolds spoke about it the Cato Supreme Court Conference in Washington DC, on Thursday, September 15. The video will be on C-SPAN sometime in the next couple of weeks.
Professor Reynolds has also been commissioned by the Florida Law Review to write a piece responding to Andrew McClurg’s “Permissible Negligence” article.
Dean Rivkin
Professor Dean Rivkin, Meg O’Neil (3L), and Brenda McGee, Pro Bono Community Cooperating Attorney for the Education Law Practicum gave a workshop on dismantling educational inequities to the Director of and lawyers who form the newly created Racial Justice Team Fellows with Legal Services of Middle Tennessee and the Cumberlands. They are committed to incorporating education advocacy into the work of their program, and the Practicum’s staff and students will support them through research, data gathering, and strategy-building.
Esther Roberts
Visiting Professor Esther Roberts, who is also Chief Executive Officer of Global Intellectual Property Asset Management, was interviewed by Scholastica for an article that appeared on their blog and in The Abstract. The interview featured her article “Trademarking Animal Abuse: Should the Tennessee Walking Horse Breeders’ and Exhibitors’ Association (TWHBEA) lose the TWHBEA Trademark Portfolio under the Lanham Act for Failure to Comply with the Horse Protection Act?” The article will be published in November in the Kentucky Journal of Equine, Agriculture, and Natural Resource Law (KJEANRL).
Briana Rosenbaum
Professor Briana Rosenbaum’s article The RICO Trend in Class Action Warfare, has been identified by Brooke D. Coleman as one of the best works of recent scholarship relating to Courts Law, in a review published in Jotwell: The Journal of Things We Like (Lots).
Greg Stein
Professor Greg Stein will participate in the upcoming annual meeting of the American College of Real Estate Lawyers (ACREL) in several capacities. Stein is a member of ACREL’s Board of Governors and the co-chair of its Law Professors Committee, both of which will meet. He will also give a presentation to the Land Use and Environmental Committee entitled, “Recent Cases in Land Use Law.” The ACREL meeting will take place in New York in October.
Maurice Stucke
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), in preparation of its conference involving competition agencies from around the world, issued a report that extensively relied on the research of Professor Maurice Stucke, including two books that he co-wrote. Professor Stucke also posted a piece entitled The Rise of the Machines – How Automated Digital Assistants Can Reduce Competition (and the Cash in Your Wallet) on the Oxford Business Law Blog.
A report co-authored by Professor Stucke was referenced in an article on TheStreet.com about the antitrust challenges to the proposed merger between Monsanto Co. and Bayer AG. The article linked to the report, which noted that without divestitures, the merger would violate a 2007 Department of Justice order. The article was also cited in the Polish online edition of Forbes.
Professor Stucke and Ariel Ezrachi of Oxford University were interviewed by ProMarket (the blog of the Stigler Center at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business) to explain how big data and artificial intelligence can be used to facilitate collusion and potentially harm consumers. The first part of the two-part interview was published on September 23 in an article titled “Is the Digital Economy Much Less Competitive Than We Think It Is?” The second installment was published on September 26 in an article titled “How Can Antitrust Be Used to Protect Competition in the Digital Marketplace?”
Penny White
Last week Professor Penny White, Director of the Center for Advocacy and Dispute Resolution, and Interim Director of Clinical Programs, presented two programs to the annual conference of Tennessee Public Defenders meeting in Knoxville. Professor White’s first presentation, “On Theory and Theme” discussed the importance of approaching theory and theme as a pervasive aspect of case analysis and preparation. The second presentation, “Avoiding Natural Reactions, Familiarizing Yourself with Evidence Rules that aren’t in the Rulebook, and Embracing Evidentiary Frontiers,” discussed the importance of developing a keen evidence acumen in order to tackle emerging evidentiary issues.
On Friday, Professor White presented a three-hour program to members of the Tennessee Judicial Conference, meeting in Knoxville. The program was designed to help judges deal with emerging authentication and admissibility issues arising out of the use of electronic evidence and electronically stored information. Professor White was assisted in the presentation by six UT law students – Hallie Dyer, Savannah Flowers, Chance Hayes, Jennifer Henszey, Logan Wilson, and Tom Winston, who presented courtroom vignettes that required the judges to analyze and rule upon evidentiary objections.
Professor White presented two programs on Friday, September 16, to Kentucky lawyers and judges at the Kentucky Association of Justice Annual Meeting held in Nashville, Tennessee. The first program, “Advocating for the Judiciary” engaged the judges in an in-depth study of recent cases involving criticism of judges in order to enable the judges to consider the propriety of responding to criticism either personally or through organized efforts. The second program, “Emerging Evidence Issues in the New Age,” introduced both lawyers and judges to issues related to authentication and admissibility of electronic evidence, including cell tower data evidence.
Val Vojdik
On Thursday, September 22, Professor Valorie K. Vojdik presented at the Tennessee Bar Association’s LGBT Law Annual Forum CLE in Nashville. Her presentation was entitled, “Recent EEOC Litigation Involving Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Discrimination.”