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December 2019

News

Justice Harwood to Receive 2020 Pipes Award

Justice Robert Bernard Harwood, Jr., founder of Rosen Harwood in Tuscaloosa, has been selected to receive the 2020 Sam W. Pipes Distinguished Alumnus Award.

The award is given by The Law School Foundation to an outstanding alumnus who has distinguished himself or herself through service to the bar, The University of Alabama, and the School of Law. The award is named for the late Samuel Wesley Pipes (’38), who was a partner in the Mobile law firm of Lyons, Pipes & Cook until his death in 1982.

Justice Harwood (’63) joined Gordon Rosen to form the law firm of Rosen and Harwood in 1967. During his years in private practice, he also served as Deputy City Judge of Tuscaloosa, as a member of the Tuscaloosa County Civil Service Board, as a Special Assistant Attorney General for the State of Alabama, and as a Lecturer in Law at the School of Law, teaching courses in trial advocacy. He was President of the Tuscaloosa County Bar Association, President of the Farrah Law Society/Order of the Coif for The University of Alabama School of Law, President of the Tuscaloosa Inn of Court, and Chairman of the Litigation Section of the Alabama State Bar.

In 1991, he was appointed to fill a vacancy on the Circuit Court of Tuscaloosa County. He was elected to a full six-year term in 1992 and was re-elected in 1998. In November 2000, he was elected as an Associate Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court and served in that position from January 2001 to January 2007, when he voluntarily retired to return to Tuscaloosa.

Justice Harwood will receive the Pipes Award at the 2020 Alabama Law Alumni Society Banquet. The event is scheduled for Friday, February 21, at The Grand Bohemian Hotel in Mountain Brook. All alumni are invited to attend the Banquet. For more information or to purchase tickets, please contact Cindy Rice at crice@law.ua.edu or at (205) 348-6775.

Alabama Law to Host Symposium on Risk-Based Gun Regulation

The Law & Psychology Review has scheduled a one-day symposium on February 21 at the Law School that will examine the recent trend of state-enacted “red flag” laws.

The symposium, Seeing Red: Risk-based Gun Regulation, will address many of the most prominent issues and concerns with red-flag legislation, including constitutional and due process concerns, the importance of language when discussing mental health and red flags, the success and efficacy of red-flag laws, the differences among reporting standards in different states, and current proposed red-flag legislation in Alabama.

Presently, seventeen states and the District of Columbia have adopted some form of law allowing the courts to issue protection orders which permit law enforcement officers to temporarily confiscate firearms or otherwise limit firearm ownership and access by persons deemed to be a danger to themselves or others. Many other state legislatures are currently considering similar bills. The rapid growth of this area of law has created a unique and pressing set of constitutional, procedural, and psychological questions to which judges, attorneys, and law enforcement alike need answers.

Confirmed presenters:

  • Joseph Blocher, Lanty L. Smith ’67 Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Duke Center for Firearms Law, Duke University School of Law
  • Merika Coleman, Assistant Minority Leader of the Alabama House of Representatives
  • Dean Brannon Denning, Associate Dean and Starnes Professor of Law, Cumberland School of Law
  • David B. Kopel, Author, Adjunct Scholar at the Cato Institute, and Adjunct Professor at Denver University, Sturm College of Law
  • Matthew Larosiere, Director of Legal Policy, Firearms Policy Coalition
  • Chana Sacks, Instructor in Medicine, Harvard Medical School
  • Jeffery Swanson, Professor in Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Duke University School of Medicine
  • Fredrick Vars, the Ira Drayton Pruitt, Sr. Professor of Law, The University of Alabama School of Law
  • Carolyn Reinach Wolf, Executive Partner, Director of Mental Health Law practice, Abrams, Fensterman, Fensterman, Eisman, Formato, Ferrara, Wolf & Carone, LLP

Events

Interested in Organizing a Reunion for Your Class?

Milestone Classes of 1970, 1980, 1990, 1995, and 2010 may choose to host a reunion at the Law School on Saturday, March 28. Contact Event Coordinator Cindy Rice for information at (205) 348-6775.

Gifts

Bradley Arant Boult Cummings donated $8,300 to the Alabama Law Alumni Society on behalf of the firm’s Alabama Law graduates.

The Jackson Lewis Foundation contributed $5,000 to the Jackson Lewis Scholarship.

Career Services Office

Are you looking for a law clerk or an associate? Do you need help with a short-term research assignment? The Career Services Office can place a job advertisement for you on our internal job board or connect you with a student through our STAR Program for help with research. Please contact Assistant Dean Megan Walsh for more information.

Class Notes

Kimberly Anderson (’09) has been appointed by Georgia Governor Brian P. Kemp to serve on the DeKalb County State Court in the Jury Division.

Steven J. Arango (’19) co-wrote an article for Forbes magazine about his grandfather’s journal during his time in the Pacific Ocean theater during World War II.

Hope Ayers (’98) published her book, Gabriel’s Balloon.

Ross Benson (’18) has joined McGlinchey Stafford as an Associate in the firm’s Birmingham office.

Jackson Britton (’19)has joined Capell & Howard in the firm’s Montgomery office. He will practice civil litigation.

Amber Hall (’18) has been named to the National Black Lawyers Top 40 under 40 list for Alabama.

Bridget Harris (’17) has been named to the National Black Lawyers Top 40 under 40 list for Alabama.

Charlie Kelley (’19) has joined Maynard Cooper as an Associate in the firm’s Birmingham office.

Joseph R. Latham (’19) has joined Phelps, Jenkins, Gibson & Fowler in the firm’s Tuscaloosa Office.

Marcus Maples (’06) has been appointed by Alabama State Bar President Christy Crow to serve as Co-chair of the Bar’s Diversity in the Profession Committee.

Ashley Cranford Marshall (’03)announced the opening of Cranford Marshall Legal LLC in Enterprise.

Jordan Patterson (’17) has joined Lightfoot, Franklin & White as an Associate in the firm’s Birmingham office.

Miriam Biffle Santo (’19) has joined Butler Snow. She will practice with the Business Services Group in the firm’s Birmingham office.

Christopher C. Schwan (’05)has joined The University of Alabama System as System Counsel.

Trent Scofield(’94) has joined Baker Donelson as Of Counsel in the firm’s Birmingham Office.

Austin Katherine Smith Sistrunk (’14) has joined Watkins & Eager as an Associate in the firm’s Birmingham office.

Claire H. Smelser (’19) has joined Ryan Law as an Associate in the firm’s Tuscaloosa office.

Bart Smith (’16)participated in the flyover team at the Auburn vs. Ole Miss game on November 2 in Auburn. Smith, a Captain in the U.S. Air Force, flies F-35 planes and is an F-16 instructor.

Larry D. Smith (’84) received a 2019 Diversity Law Institute’s Diversity Award by the Litigation Counsel of America and the Diversity Law Institute. The award is given to a select number of individuals who have advanced, promoted, or supported diversity and inclusion in the profession of law, and who share in the DLI and LCA’s commitment to promoting a more diverse, equal, and inclusive legal profession.

Jorge A. Solis (’19) has joined Butler Snow. He will practice with the Tort, Transportation, and Specialized Litigation Group in the firm’s Birmingham office.

Caroline Stephens (’18) has joined Bass, Berry & Sims as an Associate in the firm’s Nashville office.

Ashton Standeffer Taylor (’19) has joined Maynard Cooper in the firm’s Birmingham office.

Lacy Triplett (15) has joined McGlinchey Stafford as an Associate in the firm’s Birmingham office.

Brian White (’93), Brian Oakes (’96), and Amelia Griffith (’93) have formed White, Oakes, Griffith & Iverson LLC in Decatur.

Faculty Notes

PROFESSOR BILL ANDREEN presented a paper titled, “Separating Fact from Fiction in Evaluating the Endangered Species Act: Recognizing the Need for Ongoing Conservation Management and Regulation,” at a Festschrift in honor of Professor Dale Goble. The event was held at the University of Idaho Water Center in Boise, Idaho, on November 1. It was sponsored by the University of Idaho College of Law and the University of Wyoming Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources.

PROFESSOR RICHARD DELGADO received a message from a Harvard professor expressing his debt to Delgado’s scholarship. The letter says, in part:

For the past decade I’ve taught a seminar on “Free Will, Responsibility, and Law” in the psychology dept. at Harvard, where I’m on the faculty. I always teach your “Rotten Social Background” article, and each time I’m struck by how far-reaching, thoughtful, and persistently relevant it is. The students invariably find it both challenging and compelling.

So, after teaching it with enthusiasm for all these years, I just thought I’d reach out and thank you and affirm that this article continues to find an audience.

SSRN twice notified Professor Delgado that he was in the top 10% of authors on SSRN by total new downloads within the previous 12 months. The Immigration Law blog named Delgado’s article, “Rodrigo’s Rebuke: Originary Violence and U.S. Border Policy,” its article of the day. https://scholarship.law.umn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1022&context=lawineq (November 19, 2019). Professor Delgado and Professor Jean Stefancic delivered a works-in-progress talk at UC-Davis law school (November 25, 2019) based on their draft article, “Borders by Consent: A Proposal for Reducing Two Kinds of Violence in Immigration Practice.”

Capstone Report, Pen and Pulpit, and five other online newspapers discussed the influence of Professor Delgado and Professor Stefancic’s book, Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, on evangelical thought. https://capstonereport.com/2019/08/29/sbc-professor-evangelicalism-closely-connected-to-white-supremacy-evangelical-movement-benefited-from-racism/32953/

PROFESSOR RONALD KROTOSZYNSKI, JR. has published a new book: The Disappearing First Amendment (Cambridge University Press 2019). The book argues, contrary to the prevailing narrative, that in many important areas First Amendment rights have declined, rather than expanded, over time in the United States. He also has published “The Clear and Present Dangers of the Clear and Present Danger Test: Schenck and Abrams Revisited,” 72 SMU L. Rev. 415 (2019). This essay constitutes Professor Krotoszynski’s contribution to a special symposium issue that charged contributors with revisiting and reevaluating the contemporary relevance of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes’s important free speech opinions in Schenck and Abrams on the 100th anniversary of their issuance.

On September 24, 2019, Professor Krotoszynski presented “‘A Republic, If [We] Can Keep It’: A Prolegomenon on Righting the Ship of State in the Wake of the Trumpian Tempest” at a faculty workshop hosted by the University of Oklahoma College of Law in Norman, Oklahoma. The Texas Law Review will be publishing the paper, a review essay of Democracy and Dysfunction, by Sandy Levinson and Jack Balkin.

He attended the American Society of Comparative Law annual meeting in Columbia, Missouri, in October. Professor Krotoszynski serves on the society’s Finance Committee and serves as an editor of the American Journal of Comparative Law. On October 25, Professor Krotoszynski presented “The First Amendment as a Procrustean Bed? On How and Why Bright-Line First Amendment Tests Can Stifle the Scope and Vibrancy of Democratic Deliberation” at a symposium considering What’s the Harm? The Future of the First Amendment, organized by the University of Chicago Legal Forum, at the University of Chicago in Chicago, Illinois.

Professor Krotoszynski served as a senior reader/commentator at the Southeast Regional Junior/Senior Legal Scholars Workshop, hosted by the Tulane University School of Law, in New Orleans, Louisiana, on November 1-2, 2019. He presented the ABA Administrative Law Section’s annual award for legal scholarship at the section’s annual fall meeting, in Washington, D.C., in November. He has served on the section’s scholarship award committee since 2007 and has chaired the committee since 2017.

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.