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.
Professors Wendy Bach and Joy Radice presented at the AALS Clinical Conference New Clinicians workshop on “Clinical Teaching and Design.” Professor Bach also presented her research on the criminalization of in-utero opiate transmission at the Bellow Scholars Workshop. She presented on a concurrent entitled “Contextual Conversations with Students on Race and Privilege: Creating Space for and Facilitating Discussions” and appeared on a panel for the workshop on Navigating the Complexities of the Clinical Teaching Market.
The Knoxville News-Sentinel published an Op-Ed by Professor Zack Buck criticizing the American Health Care Act (AHCA). In the article, titled “American Health Care Act will reduce number of citizens with insurance,” Professor Buck notes that the bill “has a radically different focus” than the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare). The ACHA “primarily seeks to limit health insurance costs for healthier, younger and more affluent Americans. . . . At the expense of cutting costs for healthier Americans, it cuts coverage for older, sicker and lower-income Americans.” Professor Buck warns that the changes will likely have a negative impact in Tennessee.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor cited Professors Judy Cornett and Michael Hoffmeier’s article Good-Bye Significant Contacts: General Personal Jurisdiction after Daimler AG v. Bauman, 76 Ohio St. L. J. 101 (2015) in Justice Sotomayor’s opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part in BNSF Railway Co. v. Tyrrell. In their article, Professors Cornett and Hoffmeier (Mississippi) criticized the Court’s holding and analysis in Daimler AG v. Bauman and argued that “[w]hile the [Daimler] decision may achieve a level of certainty and predictability for which some commentators have longed, it has done so at the cost of restricting access to courts and through an exercise of tenuous constitutional authority that trespasses on the power of states and precludes more appropriate regulation by Congress.” In her BNSF opinion, Justice Sotomayor notes her continued disagreement “with the path the Court struck in Daimler AG v. Bauman, 571 U. S. ___ (2014)” and cites the article in support of her assertion that “lower courts adhered to the continuous-and-systematic standard for decades before Daimler, and its predecessor Goodyear Dunlop Tires Operations, S. A. v. Brown, 564 U. S. 915 (2011), wrought the present sea change.”
The Washington and Lee Law Review Online recently published a comment written by Professor Joan Heminway regarding a recent article coauthored by three business law scholars from other law schools. The original article, Diversifying to Mitigate Risk: Can Dodd–Frank Section 342 Help Stabilize the Financial Sector?, argues that federal regulators have and should use authority delegated to them under the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 to employ diversity as a risk management device. Professor Heminway’s responsive comment agrees with the thesis of the article but offers two critiques of the work that are designed to provide additional support for that thesis.
In May, Professor Heminway presented on social entrepreneurship at two different forums. In Kansas City, Missouri, she participated in both a policy session and a panel on legal issues in social entrepreneurship at the fifth annual “Midwest Symposium on Social Entrepreneurship,” an event co-sponsored by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and the University of Missouri-Kansas City, in collaboration with the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship. The following week, Professor Heminwaytraveled to New York City to comment on crowdfunding social entrepreneurial ventures as part of a panel discussion at a conference entitled “Legal Issues in Social Entrepreneurship and Impact Investing—In the U.S. and Beyond” co-sponsored by the Impact Investing Legal Working Group and the Grunin Center for Law and Social Entrepreneurship at N.Y.U. Law. Professor Heminway also participated in a lunch discussion session focused on choosing the right entity for social enterprise businesses and related financing firms and a workshop exploring ways that legal education can be “reimagined” to address global social entrepreneurship and impact investing.
The recently-published article Aggregate Litigation & All That We Do Not Know, 102 Iowa L. Rev. Online 240 (2017) by Professor Brook Coleman (Seattle) is a response to Professor Briana Rosenbaum’s article The RICO Trend in Class Action Warfare, 102 Iowa L. Rev. 165 (2016). Professor Coleman’s article begins with praise: “A good article raises a normative question, wrestles with it, and ultimately answers it. A great article also inspires the reader to cogitate. Briana Rosenbaum’s The Rico Trend in Class Action Warfare is undoubtedly a great article.” The response focuses on the question: What do we really know about aggregate litigation?
Professor Greg Stein gave a presentation at this year’s annual meeting of the Association for Law, Property, and Society, held at the University of Michigan. Professor Stein’s presentation, entitled “Reverse Exactions,” was part of a panel on “New Perspectives on Takings.” Panelists from the US, England, and Israel offered different views on when governmental regulations require compensation to property owners. Professor Stein’s paper on this topic will appear later this year in the William and Mary Bill of Rights Journal.