For more than an hour recently, faculty and students discussed mass incarceration and criminal justice during a town hall meeting.
The online program attracted 100 participants. Sponsored by the Student Bar Association, Black Law Students Association, and the Criminal Law Society, it featured Professor Jenny Carroll, a former public defender, Professor Joyce White Vance, a former U.S. Attorney, as well as Brenita Softley (2L), a prison rights advocate, and Allen Slater (3L), a former policeman and corrections officer. Professor Anil Mujumdar moderated the event.
Panelists examined a wide variety of topics, including what society values, what the criminal justice system currently looks like, and what it should look like in the future.
Early in the conversation, panelists discussed bias in law enforcement, from arrest to sentencing. Professor Carroll noted the overuse of the criminal justice system as a means to promote safety as well as law and order.
“That contributes directly to a system that says: ‘We do need to lock up children who misbehave at school; we do need to lock up folks, who, regardless of the types of offenses they’re committing, we view as contrary to notions of law and order, and safety,’” Carroll said.
Dean Mark E. Brandon recently announced four new appointments to the faculty and two new appointments to the Executive Staff at The University of Alabama School of Law.
Kara Deal Gamble (‘15) joins the law school legal writing faculty and teaches Legal Writing to first-year students.
Russell Gold is an Associate Professor. He is teaching teach a section of Criminal Law and serves as Faculty Advisor for the Alabama Civil Rights & Civil Liberties Law Review.
Martha Griffith (‘12) begins her role as Assistant Dean for Administration and Communications with extensive experience at the Law School.
Tara Leigh Grove joins the Law School as the Charles E. Tweedy, Jr. Endowed Chairholder in Law in the fall semester. Professor Grove is teaching Federal Jurisdiction. She will also serve as Director of a new Program in Constitutional Studies.
Associate Professor of Legal Writing Anita Kay Head (‘06) is now also serving as Assistant Dean of Students.
Joshua Porter joins the Law School as Director of Diversity & Inclusion and Assistant Professor of Law in Residence. He will teach his first class at Alabama Law in the Spring semester.
Allen Slater (3L) recently published an article in the Berkeley Journal of African-American Law & Policy. His article, “It Should Never Be Justified: A Critical Examination of the Binary Paradigm Used to Categorize Police Shootings,” makes the case for a more nuanced, transparent, and accountable framework for evaluating police shootings.
Alabama Pattern Jury Instructions Civil contributed $10,000 to the William C. Sullivan Scholarship.
Frank M. Bainbridge (’54) donated $75,524 to the Bainbridge-Mims Professorship of Law.
Myla Calhoun (‘85) has been named Vice President of the Birmingham Division of Alabama Power.
Aubrey B. Coleman, II (‘14) received the Up & Comers Award from the American Bar Association. The award is presented to a young practitioner who is 36 or younger, and who, through their efforts and accomplishments, shows great promise to continue these contributions for future achievements.
Michael Kirtland (LL.M. ‘99) published “Getting Started with Advance Directives,” along with Donna Jackson. The book, published by the American Bar Association, was a joint project of the Senior Lawyers Division and the Real Property, Trust and Estate Law Section.
Robert J. Landry, III (‘94) has been appointed by the American Business Law Journal to its six-member editorial board.
Carmella J. Penn (‘96) has been appointed to the position of City Prosecutor by the Union Springs City Council.
Emily K. Price (‘08) has joined the Cumberland School of Law faculty as an Instructor in Lawyering and Legal Reasoning.
Stephen W. Still, Jr. (‘05) was elected as Secretary-Treasurer of the Alabama Defense Lawyers Association.
Kimberly C. Thomas (‘91)has been named Director of the Joseph F. Decosimo Success Center in the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga’s Gary W. Rollins College of Business.
PROFESSOR DEEPA DAS ACEVEDO co-edited, with Anna Offit (SMU Dedman Law), a Special Virtual Issue of the Law and Society Review. Titled “Innovation in Legal Anthropology: an LSR Retrospective,” the issue featured an introduction co-authored by guest editors as well as six cutting-edge anthropological studies of law professors who were previously published in the Review. The entire virtual issue is available, open access, through the end of September 2020.
Professor Acevedo was invited to join JOTWELL as a Contributing Editor to the Work Law section; in this capacity, she will be reviewing recent scholarship in labor and employment law for a broader legal academic audience.
On August 21, Professor Acevedo was interviewed for the podcast of the Indian Journal of Law & Public Policy, regarding the Indian Supreme Court’s recent temple management verdict and her research on religion-state relations in India. The podcast is available at https://soundcloud.com/ijlpp.
PROFESSOR JOHN FELIPE ACEVEDO published an essay: “The Model Speak?” in Gender Justice and the Law: Theoretical Practices and Intersectional Identity (Elaine Wood ed., 2020).
PROFESSOR RICHARD DELGADO gave a talk at Seattle University School of Law. He and PROFESSOR JEAN STEFANCIC spoke at a session on campus protest, academic freedom, and hate speech at the American Sociological Association’s annual meeting.
The New York Times and RealClearPolitics interviewed Professor Delgado on the recent spread of critical race theory ideas in popular discourse, and he reviewed an article for the editors of Harvard Law Review.
Professors Delgado and Stefancic published “Borders by Consent: A Proposal for Minimizing Two Kinds of Violence in Immigration Practice,” in Arizona State Law Review.
Their NYU Press book, Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, now in its third edition, is nearing 100,000 net sales.
Professor Delgado and Stefancic participated in a virtual Town Hall organized by the Student Bar Association and the Black Law Students Association on policing, systemic racism, and the law.
PROFESSOR HEATHER ELLIOTT published “Associations and Cities as (Forbidden) Pure Private Attorneys General” in the William & Mary Law Review (61 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 1329) in summer 2020.
PROFESSOR RUSSELL GOLD is a co-editor of a forthcoming book: The Oxford Handbook of Prosecutors and Prosecution (Ronald F. Wright, Kay L. Levine & Russell M. Gold eds.).
Professor Gold is also the author of a forthcoming chapter in that book: “Prosecutors and Their Legislatures, Legislatures and Their Prosecutors,” in The Oxford Handbook of Prosecutors and Prosecution (Ronald F. Wright, Kay L. Levine & Russell M. Gold eds., forthcoming 2021).
His article, “The Political Patterns of Bail Reform,” has been accepted by the Wake Forest Law Review (forthcoming 2021) (symposium foreword) (with Ronald F. Wright).
He presented “Volunteer Prosecutors” at the SEALS Conference as part of the panel on The Private Role in Criminal Justice on July 31, 2020, via Zoom.
PROFESSOR EMERITUS GENE MARSH retired from Jackson Lewis in August. He practiced sports law with two law firms after leaving his teaching position in 2009. He taught Contracts to first-year law students at Alabama Law in the Spring Semester 2020 and will do so again in 2021.
The views, opinions, and conclusions expressed by faculty in their publications or research activities are those of the author and not necessarily those of The University of Alabama or its officers and trustees. The content of faculty publications has not been approved by The University of Alabama, and the author is solely responsible for that content.
