Faculty Events

College of Law Faculty Events

Throughout the academic year, the College of Law hosts a number of events that feature scholars in the legal profession. 

The goal of these events is to enhance the intellectual life of the law school and provide a venue for dialogue among faculty members and between our faculty and outside scholars. Doing so helps us maintain an environment that challenges and enhances critical areas of law and society.

Events include:

DISTINGUISHED SPEAKER SERIES 2024-2025

Professor Ruth L. Okediji is the Jeremiah Smith, Jr., Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and Co-Director of the Berkman Klein Center. She is a leading scholar in international intellectual property and a foremost authority on the role of intellectual property in social and economic development. She advises inter-governmental organizations, regional economic communities, and national governments on a range of matters related to technology, innovation policy, and development, and works closely with several United Nations agencies, research centers, and international organizations on the human development effects of international intellectual property policy, and her scholarship has influenced government policies all around the world.

Barbara L. McQuade serves as a professor from practice at Michigan Law. From 2010-2017, she served as the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, where she oversaw cases involving public corruption, terrorism, corporate fraud, theft of trade secrets, civil rights, and health care fraud, among others. She is a legal analyst for NBC News and MSNBC. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, Foreign Policy, Lawfare, Just Security, Slate, and National Public Radio, and she has been quoted in outlets such as The New York Times, Time, Newsweek, and Politico. She is the author of Attack from Within: How Disinformation is Sabotaging America.

Allison K. Hoffman is a Professor of Law at Penn Carey Law School with a secondary appointment as Professor of Medical Ethics and Health Policy. An expert on health care law and policy, her research examines health insurance regulation, the Affordable Care Act, Medicare and retiree healthcare expenses, and long-term care. Her writing, which seeks to bring greater descriptive and analytical clarity to the purposes of health care and health insurance regulation and policy, appears in top law reviews and peer reviewed medical and health policy journals. She is a frequent media commentator, and her opinion writing has appeared in The Hill, The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and The Washington Post, and various blogs.

J.B. Ruhl is the David Daniels Allen Distinguished Chair in Law, the Joe B. Wyatt Distinguished University Professor, the Director of Program on Law and Innovation, and the Co-Director of the Energy, Environment and Land Use Program at Vanderbilt University Law School. He is an expert in environmental, national resources, and property law, focusing his research on climate change adaptation, ecosystem services, and adaptive governance. His scholarly articles relating to climate change, the Endangered Species Act, ecosystems, governance, and other issues have appeared in the nation’s top law reviews, and his works were selected by peers as among the best law review articles in the field of environmental law 12 times from 1989 to 2021.

Paul A. Lombardo is the Regents’ Professor and Bobby Lee Cook Professor of Law at the Georgia State University College of Law. He is an historian who serves as a senior advisor to the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues. He has published extensively on topics in health law, medico-legal history, and bioethics, and is best known for his work on the legal history of the American eugenics movement. His books include Three Generations, No Imbeciles: Eugenics, the Supreme Court and Buck v. Bell (2008), and A Century of Eugenics in America: From the Indiana Experiment to the Human Genome Era (2011). His work has been cited and interviews quoted in every major American newspaper.

Erwin Chemerinsky is the Dean and Jesse H. Choper Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of California Berkeley School of Law, and is a leading legal scholar focused on constitutional law, criminal procedure, and federal jurisdiction. He is the author of more than 200 law review articles, contributes to the Opinion section of the Los Angeles Times, and argues appellate cases, including in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. His most recent books include Worse Than Nothing: The Dangerous Fallacy of Originalism (2022) and No Democracy Lasts Forever (2024). In 2024, National Jurist magazine again named Dean Chemerinsky as the most influential person in legal education in the United States.

Distinguished Speaker Series Archives

The University of Tennessee’s College of Law Faculty Colloquium Series brings to campus legal scholars from across the country to discuss their scholarship in a colloquium setting.

Contact Associate Dean for Faculty Development and Professor of Law Zack Buck (zbuck@tennessee.edu) for more details. 

2023 – 2024

  • Christopher S. Yoo, University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, John H. Chestnut Professor of Law, Communication, and Computer & Information Science
  • Brad Desnoyer, Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law, Clinical Professor of Law
  • Jared Ellias, Harvard Law School, Scott C. Collins Professor of Law
  • Teresa Wynn Roseborough, The Home Depot, Executive Vice President – General Counsel & Corporate Secretary
  • Eric Segal, Georgia State University College of Law, Ashe Family Chair Professor of Law
  • Leticia Saucedo, University of California Davis School of Law, Martin Luther King Jr. Professor of Law
  • Steven A. Drizin, Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law, William M. Trumbull Clinical Professor of Law
     

2022 – 2023

  • Michael J. Gerhardt, Burton Craige Distinguished Professor of Jurisprudence, University of North Carolina
  • Mark Nevitt, Associate Professor, Emory University School of Law
  • W. Bradley Wendel, Edwin H. Woodruff Professor of Law, Cornell Law School
  • Gina Gail S. Fletcher, Professor of Law, Duke Law School
  • Edward B. Foley, Charles W. Ebersold and Florence Whitcomb Ebersold Chair in Constitutional Law; Director, Election Law at Ohio State, Ohio State University


2021 – 2022

  • Melissa Mortazavi, Second Century Presidential Professor and Professor of Law, University of Oklahoma College of Law

2020 – 2021

  • Lisa Avalos, Hermann Moyse, Sr. Professor of Law, Louisiana State University
  • Catherine Janasie, Research Counsel for the National Sea Grant Law Center, University of Mississippi School of Law
  • Thomas Bennett, Associate Professor and Wall Family Fellow, University of Missouri School of Law
  • Meera E. Deo, The Honorable Vaino Spencer Chair/Professor of Law, Southwestern Law School

2019 – 2020

  • Fred Smith, Jr., Professor of Law, Emory University
  • Hillel Levin, Alex W. Smith Professor of Law, University of Georgia
  • Shirin Sinnar, Professor of Law and John A. Wilson Faculty Scholar, Stanford University
  • Michele Bratcher Goodwin, Chancellor’s Professor of Law, University of California

2018 – 2019

  • Corrina Lain, S. D. Roberts & Sandra Moore Professor of Law, University of Richmond
  •  Joseph Fishkin, Marrs McLean Professor in Law, University of Texas, Austin
  • Dan Simon, Richard L. and Maria B. Crutcher Professor of Law, University of Southern California
  • Randy Barnett, Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Legal Theory, Georgetown University
  • Sean Seymore, Professor of Law and Professor of Chemistry, Vanderbilt University

2016 – 2017

  • Felix Chang, Professor of Law and Director of the Institute for the Global Practice of Law, University of Cincinnati College of Law
  • Mark Hall, Fred D. and Elizabeth L Turnage Professor Of Law,  Wake Forest University College of Law
  • Patricia J. Zettler, Associate Professor of Law, Georgia State University College of Law
  • Martin H. Redish, Louis and Harriet Ancel Professor of Law and Public Policy, Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law
  • Kate Sablosky, Assistant Professor of Law, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Law
  • Eric Chaffee, Distinguished University Professor, University of Toledo