April 2014

Class of 2014 Commencement

Commencement for the Class of 2014 will be held May 3 at 5:00 p.m. in Coleman Coliseum. The commencement address will be given by retired UA Law Dean Kenneth C. Randall. Dean Randall is the President of InfiLaw Ventures, LLC, a consortium that provides management solutions, new educational programs and pioneering technology driven course delivery to law schools and higher education institutions.

Degree candidates will be hooded by Director of Legal Writing Program and Legal Writing Lecturer, Kimberly Boone; Thomas E. Skinner Professor of Law, Bryan Fair; and Bainbridge-Mims Professor of Law, Pamela Pierson.

A reception honoring the 163 graduating students will be held immediately following the ceremony on the Camille Wright Cook Plaza in front of the Law School. Crimson Ride buses will be available to shuttle guests from Coleman Coliseum to the Law School for the reception.

UA Law Team Wins Best Oral Presentation at Health Care Competition

The team of Chris Richard (’14), Art Richey (’14) and Ryan Sprinkle (’14) finished second at The L. Edward Bryant, Jr. National Health Law Transactional Moot Court Competition at Loyola University in Chicago. The team, coached by Interim Dean Bill Brewbaker, also won the prize for best oral presentation.

Jessup International Law Moot Court Team Competes in New Orleans

The team comprised of Robert Clark (’14), Courtney Cooper (’14), Mike Meginniss (’14), Edward O’Neal (’14) and Derek Rajavuori (’14) competed in the Jessup US South Regional Competition. The team, coached by Professor Dan Joyner, won the prize for the second place memorial (brief) in the competition. Derek Rajavuori won 8th place overall individual oralist, and Robert Clark won 1st place overall individual oralist.

Meador Lecture on Equality

The Law School will host the 2014 Meador Lecture Series on Equality on Friday April 11, in room A255 of the Law School.

The lecture series was established in 1994 to honor The University of Alabama School of Law’s late Professor and Dean, Daniel J. Meador. A 1951 Law School graduate and Professor Emeritus at The University of Virginia School of Law, Professor Meador delivered the inaugural lecture in the series.

The 2014 Meador Lectures will explore the topic of Equality and its relationships to moral, legal and political values from different scholarly disciplines and perspectives.

Participants include:

• Matthew Adler, Richard A. Horvitz Professor of Law and Professor of Economics, Philosophy and Public Policy at Duke Law School
• Martha Albertson Fineman, Robert W. Woodruff Professor of Law, Emory University Law School
• Jerry Kang, Professor of Law and Asian American Studies (by courtesy) Korea Times-Hankook Ilbo Chair in Korean American Studies, UCLA School of Law
• Reva Siegel, Nicholas deB. Katzenbach Professor of Law, Yale Law School

For more information, or to register, please contact Brenda McPherson (205) 348-5750.

This event has been approved for CLE credit (5 hours, including 1 hour of ethics).

The Best Thing for Your Resume Since Spellcheck: LL.M. Concentrations in Taxation and Business Transactions Offered Online

The Law School’s Graduate Department offers two exceptional LL.M. programs through live, interactive Internet technologies. Students receive skills-based instruction taught by respected professors and practitioners throughout the country without having to leave their offices.

The tax program permits students to focus on courses in estate planning or business tax. The course of study for the business program is interdisciplinary in fields of law and business – including tax, finance, intellectual property, entrepreneurship, and traditional corporate classes.

For more information, or to apply to either concentration, visit www.alabamallm.com or contact Assistant Dean for Graduate Law Programs Daniel Powell.

Gifts to the Law School

Laura L. Crum (’82) contributed $8,515.00 to the Farrah Law Alumni Society.

Judy Whalen Evans (’75) gave $5,000.00 to the Farrah Law Alumni Society.

Occidental Petroleum Charitable donated $5,000.00 to the Farrah Law Alumni Society. This was a matching contribution for a gift previously made by Michael Stutts (’80).

The Mary and Yetta Samford (’49) Foundation, facilitated by Victor Lott, made a contribution of $7,423.17 to the Yetta Samford III Memorial Scholarship and Maintenance Fund.

The National Christian Foundation of Alabama made a gift of $5,000.00 on behalf of J. Cole Portis (’90).

The Order of the Coif contributed $12,000.00 to the Order of the COIF Annual Scholarship.

Alumni News

The Following alumni have joined the Birmingham office of Hand Arendall, a full-service law firm providing its clients with legal services in all areas of traditional civil practice:

The Following alumni joined the law firm of Butler Snow since its expansion of its Birmingham office:

UA Law in the News

Paul Horwitz:

Al.com: “Hobby Lobby and religious rights: An Alabama law professor weighs in”

Andrew Morriss:

CayCompass.com: “UA law students learn to dispel island myths”

Faculty Notes

Professor William Andreen’s book chapter entitled “Dynamic Federalism and the Clean Water Act: Completing the Task” will appear in The Law and Policy of Environmental Federalism: A Comparative Analysis, edited by Erin Ryan and Kalyani Robbins, and published by Edward Elgar Publishing). Other contributors include Professors Rob Glicksmen, Bill Buzbee, Bob Percival, Rob Fowler, Kirsten Engel, Hannah Wiseman, Annegret Eppler, and Alexandra Klass.

Professor James Bryce worked as a Reporter for years on the Limited Liability Company Act for the Alabama Law Institute Committee, which was passed by the Alabama Legislature and signed by Governor Bentley. This new Act will bring Alabama into the forefront of limited liability company legislation.

Professor Tanya Asim Cooper was featured in March’s Public Interest Attorney Profile by the UASL Public Interest Institute. Professor Cooper presented her paper, “Stories of Bias in American Foster Care,” at Challenging Authority: A Symposium in Honor of Derrick Bell at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. She also attended the Eleventh Annual Intellectual Property Law Seminar in Huntsville at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center. Additionally, Professor Cooper published a lead article, “Racial Bias in American Foster Care: The National Debate,” 97 Marquette Law Review 215 (2014).

Professor Cooper, along with Staff Attorney Robbyn Gourdouze and second year law student Alice Balagia, gave a presentation on the Domestic Violence Law Clinic and Basics on Protection from Abuse Law and Practice to the Domestic Violence Task Force of Tuscaloosa County.

Professor Cooper was invited to present at the Christian Scholars Conference on Racial Bias in the Church and its Role in American Foster Care. She also accepted an invitation to become one of 17 contributing writers for the Clinical Law Profs Blog.

Professor Richard Delgado delivered a keynote address at a symposium in honor of Derrick Bell at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, Professor Delgado’s alma mater.

Professors Delgado’s paper, with Professor Jean Stefancic, “Four Observations About Hate Speech,” made an SSRN top-ten download list for AARN:Schools.

Professor Shahar Dillbary attended the ABA Spring Antitrust Annual meeting in Washington D.C. in March 2014 and met with representatives of antitrust agencies including the Federal Trade Commission, the Department of Justice, and the Israeli Antitrust Authority. He also met with antitrust lawyers and scholars from Germany, Italy and Turkey. Earlier this month Professor Dillbary gave a guest-lecture in Professor Lee’s Contracts class. The focus of the lecture was the Unconscionability Doctrine and the effects of anti-price gouging laws.

Professor Tony Freyer coauthored, with Professor Andrew Morriss, an article entitled “Creating Cayman as an Offshore Financial Center: Structure & Strategy since 1960,” which was published in March in 45 Arizona State Law Journal 1297-1398 (2013). He delivered a paper coauthored with Professor Morriss entitled, “The Cayman Offshore Financial Center and Issues of Corruption,” at the conference on Combating Corruption in the Caribbean at University College Cayman Islands on March 21. Professor Freyer also participated in UA Law School’s course on Offshore Financial Transactions held in the Cayman Islands during the last week in March.

Professor Freyer’s book, The Passenger Cases and the Commerce Clause Immigrants, Blacks, and States Rights in Antebellum America, is forthcoming Fall 2014 and will be published by the University Press of Kansas.

Professor William Henning is chair of a Uniform Law Commission (ULC) drafting committee that is preparing a uniform act on wage garnishment. The committee held its first in-person meeting in Salt Lake City in March.

Professor Henning was appointed to a ULC study committee that will recommend whether a uniform act should be drafted on the subject of alternative and mobile payment systems.

Professor Steven H. Hobbs gave a lecture on the United States Supreme Court’s 1967 Loving v. Virginia case, which overturned anti-miscegenation laws, as part of the Created Equal: America’s Civil Rights Struggle Lecture Series, sponsored by the Mississippi State University Libraries and African American Studies Department. He also attended Sharing The Fire: Northeast Storytelling Conference in Amherst, Massachusetts.

Professor Paul Horwitz published “Permeable Sovereignty and Religious Liberty,” 49 Tulsa Law Review 235 (2013). He also published a short piece in Commonweal Magazine, “Same-Sex Marriage and Religious Freedom: A New Round in an Old Debate,” which can be found here.

Professor Horwitz was quoted extensively in an Al.com story, “Hobby Lobby and Religious Rights: An Alabama Law Professor Weighs In,” on March 25 about the Hobby Lobby v. Sebelius case, which is pending in the U.S. Supreme Court.

Professor Horwitz participated in a planning meeting for the upcoming 2015 annual meeting of the Association of American Law Schools. As faculty advisor for the Alabama Law Review, he also participated in the Law Review’s symposium marking the 50th anniversary of New York Times v. Sullivan.

Professor Ronald Krotoszynski presented a public lecture, “Privacy Revisited: A Global Perspective on the ‘Right to Be Let Alone” at Indiana University-Indianapolis School of Law on March 28, 2014. As part of a works-in-progress series, Professor Krotoszynski presented “Reconciling Privacy and Speech: A Comparative Legal Perspective” to the Indiana University-Indiana law faculty on March 27 and to the faculty at the University of Miami School of Law, in Miami, Florida as part of that law school’s political and legal theory workshop series. Professor Krotoszynski was both speaker and commentator at the William and Mary Law Review’s annual symposium which addressed “The Contemporary First Amendment: Freedom of Speech, Press, and Assembly,” in Williamsburg, Virginia on February 20-22, 2014. He has recently published “The Unitary Executive and the Plural Judiciary: On the Potential Virtues of Decentralized Judicial Power,” 89 Notre Dame Law Review 1021 (2014).

Professor Michael Pardo presented his newest article, “Group Agency and Legal Proof; or, Why the Jury is an ‘It’,” at a faculty workshop at Northwestern University School of Law. The article is forthcoming in Volume 56 of the William & Mary Law Review. Professor Pardo’s recent book, Minds, Brains, and Law: The Conceptual Foundations of Law and Neuroscience (Oxford University Press), co-authored with Dennis Patterson, was featured in an online symposium hosted by the Neuroethics & Law Blog.

Professor Pam Pierson submitted a 500 page manuscript to West Academic entitled The Business of Being a Lawyer, which will be published in June 2014. It will be available for use in law school courses and CLEs and is the seventh book Professor Pierson has authored since entering law school teaching. The book covers macro-economic trends in the legal profession and what such trends mean for law students and lawyers, including evolving business models of private practice and how to leverage one’s career by employment choices during and immediately after law school. Secondly, the book covers personal financial planning basics by following hypothetical law students as they meet, marry and pursue their careers, focusing on major financial decisions such as repaying student debt, weighing job options that offer different benefit packages, when to buy a house, how to finance career moves, and when and how to save and invest. Lastly, the book covers “EQ” (emotional intelligence) topics such as making career choices that uses one’s strengths and dealing with stress.

Professor Ken Rosen’s article “Financial Intermediaries as Principals and Agents” was published by the Wake Forest Law Review. He was also a contributor for the World Bank and International Finance Corporation’s report, “Doing Business 2014, Understanding Regulations for Small and Medium-Size Enterprises.” Professor Rosen was chosen as the United States Reporter on Company Law and the Law of Succession. He will be traveling to Vienna, Austria, this summer for the Congress of the International Academy of Comparative Law. In other travel, he was selected to participate in The University of Alabama’s Cuba program and joined a delegation of scholars in Havana, where he met with lawyers and scholars to discuss the nature of legal education, the legal profession, and business law in the country. Professor Rosen also participated in a workshop on public choice economics at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, and will be traveling to Washington, D.C. for the upcoming joint meeting of the American Society of International Law and the International Law Association. Professor Rosen was recently elected for a three year term as Co-Chair of the Teaching International Law Interest Group of the American Society of International Law. Closer to home, Professor Rosen hosted a panel of law school alumni from Alabama, Texas, and Washington, D.C. discussing the practice of business law in the private and public sectors.

Professor Jean Stefancic gave a panel talk at a symposium in honor of Derrick Bell at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law.

Professor Stefancic’s paper, “Four Observations About Hate Speech,” coauthored with Professor Richard Delgado, made an SSRN top-ten download list for AARN: Schools.

CLE Alabama Training Opportunities

April 25 – Legal Issues Facing City and County Governments (Orange Beach)

May 9 – Mandatory Professionalism Seminar for New Admittees (Tuscaloosa)

May 9 – BRIDGE THE GAP: Criminal Defense Law, Legal Counseling and Interviewing, Discovery and E-Discovery (Tuscaloosa)