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.
Teri Baxter and Glenn Reynolds
On October 31, Professors Teri Baxter and Glenn Reynolds served as panelists for the Free Speech and Diversity Forum sponsored by the UT Faculty Senate Task Force on Diversity and Inclusion and the UTK American Association of University Professionals.
Rob Blitt
Professor Rob Blitt delivered a lecture at Queen’s University Law School on October 28. Professor Blitt’s presentation addressed the Organization of Islamic Cooperation’s perspective on international human rights norms, and focused specifically on the issues of gender rights and sexual orientation. The invited talk was part of Queen’s Law’s Visiting Speaker and Lecture Series and was co-sponsored by the law school’s Feminist Legal Studies research group.
Joan Heminway
Professor Joan Heminway presented her paper “Shareholder Wealth Maximization as a Function of Statutes, Decisional Law, and Organic Documents” at Washington and Lee Law Review’s Lara D. Gass Symposium, held at the Washington and Lee University School of Law in Lexington, Virginia on October 21 and 22. The symposium focused on corporate law and governance, honoring the scholarship of two of the law school’s longest-serving faculty members, Lyman Johnson and David Millon. In addition, on October 28, Professor Heminway presented in Louisville, Kentucky at the 2016 Securities Law Conference sponsored by the Kentucky Bar Association. Her presentation at the conference addressed securities law enforcement issues and was entitled: “Where There’s a Securities Market, There’s Fraud (and Other Misconduct): Hot Topics In Federal Securities Litigation.”
Professor Joan Heminway has been invited to speak at the Eugene P. and Delia S. Murphy Corporate Law Colloquium at the Fordham Corporate Law Center in March 2017.
Becky Jacobs
Professor Becky Jacobs participated on a panel at the Society of American Law Teachers conference in Chicago in October. The panel – “Teaching About Social Justice by Not Talking About It” – discussed faculty approaches to encourage students to examine critically the effect of different policies, doctrines and legal responses on society.
Professor Jacobs also organized, moderated, and participated in two panels on the topic of “An Ethical, Sustainable Energy Industry” in October: one as part of the Energy and Environment Forum at UT’s Baker Center and one at the Appalachian Public Interest Environmental Law conference at UT COL. Finally, as part of the Discussion Series hosted by the UT Libraries’ Diversity Committee, Professor Jacobs facilitated a discussion about engaging in difficult conversations in early November.
Brian Krumm
Professor Brian Krumm recently addressed the Centre for Common Law at Renmin University of China in Beijing on the “Changing Landscape of Innovation Finance.” In addition, Professor Krumm and Professor Karl Okamoto, of Drexel University jointly conducted a seminar for the Renmin Faculty Development Centre on “The Value of Transactional Law Clinics and Simulation Exercises in Teaching Transactional Law Skills.”
Professor Krumm also recently joined the Bloomberg Law Corporate Transactions Advisory Board.
George Kuney
The newest installment in a series of short articles for the non-academic crowd that Professor George Kuney published with Jon Friedland, a former Clayton Visiting Professor, can be viewed at https://www.dailydac.com/commercialbankruptcy/litigation/articles/dealing-with-distress-for-fun-and-profit-priority-scheme-of-bankruptcy. The series has a national circulation among insolvency professionals and laypeople.
Karla McKanders
Professor Karla McKanders was a featured keynote speaker at the 12th Annual National Black Pre-Law Conference at the New York University School of Law on November 12.
Glenn Reynolds
Professor Glenn Reynolds’s article, “Second Amendment Limitations” has been published by the Georgetown Journal of Law and Public Policy. Professor Reynolds has also been named a 2016 Hoover Media Fellow at Stanford University. He will visit the campus to meet with students and faculty in March 2017.
Dean Rivkin
At a recent meeting in Nashville of the Legislature’s Juvenile Justice Realignment Task Force, Professor Dean Rivkin was asked by the Task Force Chair, Sen. Majority Leader Mark Norris (R. Collierville), to make a presentation on truancy reform. The presentation centered on Knox County’s experience in reducing the number of truancy prosecutions and the lessons for statewide reform.
Maurice Stucke
Professor Maurice Stucke was quoted in a BNA.com article discussing the likely influence that the presidential election could have on the Bayer’s proposed acquisition of Monsanto.
Harper’s Magazine and The Authors Guild organized a special discussion with Professors Maurice E. Stucke and Ariel Ezrachi, to promote their new book Virtual Competition: The Promise and Perils of the Algorithm-Driven Economy on November 14 in New York City. The book was also mentioned in a press release by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in connection with the 7th meeting of the UNCTAD Research Partnership Platform on October 19. Virtual Competition was also reviewed by Yale game theorist guru Barry Nalebuff in Science magazine, which is published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Professors Stucke and Ezrachi published an article in the Harvard Business Review titled “How Pricing Bots Could Form Cartels and Make Things More Expensive.” In the article, the authors question whether antitrust regulators will fare “in a world where intelligent pricing algorithms subtly collude with one another.”
Val Vojdik
On October 24, Professor Val Vojdik spoke at the Town Hall discussion sponsored by the UT Division of Student Life Diversity Committee on “Freedom of Speech and Bias Protocol.” Professor Vojdik has also been invited by Interim Vice Chancellor Jacob Rudolf to participate on a planning committee, as directed by Chancellor Jimmy Cheek, to organize a First Amendment program for early Spring 2017. The goal of this event (or series of events) is to create a platform for experts to gather and to engage our community on the topic of Freedom of Expression on college campuses.
Professor Vojdik’s article “Conceptualizing Intimate Violence and Gender Equality: A Comparative Approach” (published in the Fordham International Law Journal) will be included in a 3 volume set, Gender and Constitutional Law, edited by Professor Catharine MacKinnon for the Constitutional Law Series (editors, Mark Tushnet and Paul Craig).