News
Alabama Law Receives Grant to Help Increase Diversity in Legal Profession
The University of Alabama School of Law has been awarded a $300,000 grant from the Law School Admission Council to create the Alabama Pre-Law Undergraduate Scholars Program. The program is designed to help prepare students for the law school admission process, to promote success in law school, and to inform about careers in the legal profession.
The Alabama PLUS Program will invite about 30 undergraduate students to the Law School in the summers of 2018, 2019, and 2020 to expose them for four weeks to the joys and rigors of legal education. Participants will focus on becoming competitive law school applicants, professional development and exposure to different legal practice areas.
“I’m grateful to the Law School Admission Council for the opportunity to offer a Pre-Law Undergraduate Scholars Program at Alabama Law,” said Dean Mark E. Brandon. “This is a chance for the Law School to contribute to the lives of aspiring law students and a way for those students to enrich the life of the Law School.”
Dean Brandon Announces the Appointment of Seven Endowed Professorships
Dean Mark E. Brandon is pleased to announce the appointment of seven of his colleagues to endowed professorships.
The University’s and the Law School’s substantive criteria for appointments are rigorous. A candidate for an endowed professorship must be an outstanding scholar of national or international reputation, an excellent teacher, and an exemplary academic and professional citizen.
“It’s safe to say that each of my colleagues has surpassed the University’s weighty standards,” Brandon said.
Class Notes
Akiesha Anderson (’17) was named the Daniel H. Renberg Law Fellow for the Williams Institute, a think tank at UCLA Law that is dedicated to conducting rigorous, independent research on sexual orientation and gender identity law and public policy.
James R. Artzer (’17) has joined Jones Walker as a member of the Construction Team in the firm’s Atlanta office.
Stephanie Emens Balzli (’10) was named a Rising Star of Law by the Birmingham Business Journal.
Lindsey C. Boney, IV (’09) was named a Rising Star of Law by the Birmingham Business Journal.
Alexia Borden (’05) was elected as Senior Vice President and General Counsel for Alabama Power by the Alabama Power Board of Directors.
Robert Caldwell (’99) is serving as President of Litigation Commission and Vice President of the Sports Law Commission of the Union Internationale des Avocats. Caldwell was selected to participate in The Union of European Football Associations’ prestigious Football Law Program.
Chris Compton (’96) has joined Winstead in the firm’s Public Finance Practice Group as Of Counsel in the Dallas office.
Bruce Ely (’80) received the Paul Frankel Excellence in State Taxation Award from the Council on State Taxation (COST), was elected to join the Fellows of the American Bar Foundation, and was included in Who’s Who Legal: Corporate Tax 2017.
Heather Fann (’06) received the Leading Practitioner Award from the National LGBT Bar Association.
Joe Heilman (’15) has founded a film production company based in Los Angeles. He and his brother produced Erdogan: The Dictator’s Republic, a documentary that won the DOC LA Freedom Award and The Storyteller Award.
Ryan Hodinka (’11) was named a Rising Star of Law by the Birmingham Business Journal.
Kermit Kendrick (’00) was appointed to the Hoover Board of Education by the Hoover City Council.
Jon Macklem (’05) was named a Rising Star of Law by the Birmingham Business Journal.
Adam Overstreet (’01) has joined Burr & Forman in the firm’s Healthcare Practice Group in Birmingham.
Amber M. Parris (’13) has joined Carr Allison as an Associate in the firm’s Medicare Compliance Group.
Christopher B. Saville (’17) has joined Carr Allison as an Associate.
Tempe Smith (’10) was named a Rising Star of Law by the Birmingham Business Journal.
Timothy M. Threadgill (’91) was inducted as a fellow of the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers, the highest recognition by a lawyer’s colleagues of sustained outstanding performance in the labor and employment field.
Jansen Voss (’06) was named a Rising Star of Law by the Birmingham Business Journal.
Bennett White (’06) was named a Rising Star of Law by the Birmingham Business Journal.
Parker Yates (’11) was named a Rising Star of Law by the Birmingham Business Journal.
Gifts
Paul S. Crawford (’89) contributed $5,500 to the Thomas L. Jones Endowed Scholarship.
Jackson Lewis, P.C. donated $5,000 to the Jackson Lewis, P.C. Scholarship.
Louise P. Hairston contributed $20,000 toward the renovation of a room in the Law School in memory of her late husband, William B. Hairston, Jr. (’83).
Irving Silver (’65) donated $50,000 to The Irving Silver and Frances Grodsky Silver Faculty Scholar Endowment Fund.
Porterfield Harper Mills Motlow & Ireland, P.A. contributed $5,000 to the Porterfield Harper Mills Motlow & Ireland Annual Scholarship.
William S. Paley Foundation, Inc. and Daniel L. Mosley (’80) donated $5,000 to the Dean’s Discretionary Fund.
Laura L. Crum (’82) contributed $34,945 and facilitated a gift of $1,500 from The Crum Family Charitable Foundation to establish The Crum Family Lecture Series focusing on themes related to law and business.
Faculty Notes
PROFESSOR BILL BREWBAKER published an op-ed in The New York Times dealing with the Roy Moore controversy and evangelical politics more generally. He also was interviewed on the same subject by German Public Radio and CNN International.
PROFESSOR RICHARD DELGADO was notified by the administrators of Social Science Research Network (SSRN) notified that he was in the top 10% of authors on the website by total new downloads within the last 12 months. In addition, his paper, “The Imperial Scholar Revisited: How to Marginalize Outsider Writing, Ten Years Later,” was listed on SSRN’s Top Ten download list for: WGSRN: Critical Feminist Theory, Post-Modernism & Post-Colonial Studies (Sub-Topic). As of 28 October 2017, the paper had been downloaded 53 times.
The Huffington Post published an extensive article covering the recent Ninth Circuit decision overturning a ban on Mexican American Studies in Arizona’s Tucson Unified School District. The article, by Tony Diaz, observed that Delgado and Professor Jean Stefancic’s text, Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, was both one of the seven banned books and, in the next edition, analyzed that very ban in terms of its cultural and legal meaning. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/tonydiaz/discrimination-is-the-onl_b_7783704.html Delgado and Stefancic’s book thus was both an object of social marginalization and a site for discussing that very marginalization.
CNN covered the book ban: https://www.cnn.com/2012/03/12/us/opinion-i-am-a-book-trafficker/index.html
PROFESSOR SHAHAR DILLBARY recently presented his new empirical study (co-authored with Professor Edward Griffin) at the Midwestern Law and Economics Conference. Looking at 5 million observations, the article presents the first econometric evidence of taste-based discrimination by banks and lenders in the home mortgage market. He is currently scheduled to meet with the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB) to discuss these empirical findings.
In November, Professor Dillbary presented his experimental study on mass torts (together with Professors Cherie Metcalf and Brock Stoddard) at the Southern Economic Association conference. He was also invited and presented his scholarship in torts at Notre Dame School of Law at a combined forum of the Law and Economics and the Law and Market Behavior workshops. He is currently scheduled to present his theoretical, empirical and experimental studies in Tel Aviv (Israel) and Chicago (IL).
PROFESSOR MIRIT EYAL-COHEN presented her paper at the National Tax Association held in Philadelphia, PA, for a panel onAdministration and Cooperation. The paper titled, “The History of the R&D Tax Credit: A Smoking Gun from a Cold War,” discusses the history of the Research and Experimentation Tax Credit, which was recently made permanent. Professor Eyal-Cohen also was invited to present her paper titled, “The Cost of Inexperience,” at Loyola Law School Los Angeles in November as part of its Tax Policy Colloquium Series. The series was hosted by Katie Pratt and Ted Seto, and the paper reveals that although a regulation may be efficient in correcting a certain market failure, its distributional effects may create another.
PROFESSOR PAUL HORWITZ recently published two reviews in Commonweal Magazine: “Both Sides Have Their Reasons,” a review of Nelson Tebbe’s Religious Freedom in an Egalitarian Age, and “Breaking the News,” a review of Franklin Foer’s World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech.
PROFESSOR MICHAEL PARDO recently spoke at a symposium on “Experts, Inference, and Innocence,” hosted by Seton Hall Law School in honor of Michael Risinger. Professor Pardo’s two papers from the symposium, “Epistemology, Psychology, and Standards of Proof” and “Explanations and the Preponderance Standard,” will be forthcoming in the Seton Hall Law Review.
PROFESSOR FREDRICK VARS testified before the Massachusetts Legislature in support of a bill that would enact his suicide prevention proposal.
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.