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November 2014

News

BBL Invites Alumni, Law Students To Take Stress Test
As part of the program, “The Business of Being a Lawyer,” Professor Pam Pierson and Jacklyn Nagle, a UA psychology doctoral candidate (2015), are conducting a study on how lawyers manage stress and helpful strategies for doing so.
Members of the Alabama State Bar are invited to participate by taking the Lawyer Survey.  UA law students are also invited to participate. There are separate surveys for  1L Students and another for 2L and 3L Students.
The survey takes about 10 minutes to complete. Taking it is helpful to participants in assessing their own strategies for managing stress. Data collected will be published, included in the BBL program, and used in teaching law students and lawyers how to better manage stress. This study has been approved by the NIH and UA Institutional Review Boards.

Law School Opens New Monthly Clinic For Former Alabama Inmates
The University of Alabama School of Law, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Alabama, and the local office of the state’s parole board recently opened a new monthly law clinic for former inmates. For more, read “New Clinic Provides Legal Services to Former Inmates.”

Professor Rosen Travels To Geneva for World Investment Forum
Professor Ken Rosen recently traveled to Geneva, Switzerland, where he participated in the World Investment Forum.  The WIF is organized by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development and brings together leading figures from the political, business, and academic communities to discuss how to improve global economic development. For more, read “Professor Rosen Travels to Geneva for World Investment Forum.”

Dean Brandon Delivers Montevallo Founders’ Day Address
Dean Mark E. Brandon recently delivered the Founders’ Day address at the University of Montevallo, noting that he could not have predicted he would one day become dean of the University of Alabama School of Law. Click here for “Dean Brandon Delivers Founders’ Day Address.”

Events

HOMECOMING
Join us for good times, good food, and more!
Three hours before kickoff, Saturday, Nov. 22 at the School of Law
Cost: $30 per person.

FARRAH TAILGATING
Active members of the Farrah Law Alumni Society are invited to tailgate on the Quad prior 2014 home SEC football games.
Nov. 15:  Alabama vs. Mississippi State
Nov.  29:  Alabama vs. Auburn

LEGAL EDUCATION
Alumni are invited to participate in Alabama training opportunities throughout the state.
Nov. 7: Healthcare Law – Birmingham
Nov. 14: Bankruptcy Law Update – Birmingham
Nov. 21: Estate Planning – Birmingham
Visit Continuing Legal Education.

REUNION
Reunion festivities for the milestone classes of 1964, 1965, 1974, 1975, 1984, 1985, 1989, 1990, 1994, 1995, 2004, and 2005 are scheduled for the weekend of the A-Day Game. Additional details will be posted to the Law School website later this fall.

Class Notes

  • Wesley Casteen, ’10 LL.M, is running for a seat in the North Carolina 7th Congressional District.
  • Eric Coleman, ’14, joined the Real Estate and Construction department of Baker Donelson.
  • Scott Frederick, ’13, joined the Real Estate and Construction department of Baker Donelson.
  • Ben H. Harris III, ’96, was among 50 new members elected to The American Law Institute.
  • Jonathan Head, ’98, has joined Balfour Beatty Construction’s Florida Division as Senior Vice President and Chief Legal Officer.
  • W. Michael House, ’71, was named one of the Top Lobbyists for 2014 by The Hill.
  • Arthur Richey, ’14, has joined the Corporate and Tax, and Health Care groups at Sirote & Permutt PC in Birmingham.
  • Joseph A. Sacher, ’97, was recognized by ALM, Verdict Search, and The Daily Business Review for obtaining the 3rd Largest Florida Jury Verdict of 2013, in the category of Contract Disputes.
  • Kathy P. Sherman, ’96, has joined Burton Property Group in Mobile as Vice President and General Counsel.
  • Ashley N. Wicks, ’10 LL.M., has been named the minority-at-large member of the board of commissioners of The Mississippi Bar.

Faculty Notes

PROFESSOR GAINES BRAKE’S article “In the Interest of the Beneficiary? Social Security’s Representative Payee Program Struggles to Fulfill Its Mandate,” was published in 283 Elder Law Advisory NL1.

JUDGE JOSEPH COLQUITT attended an AALS Faculty Recruitment Conference in Washington. As a member of the Law School’s Faculty Appointments Committee, he participated in the screening and interviewing of a number of individuals interested in joining the Alabama Law Faculty. Judge Colquitt is the Reporter for the Uniform Unsworn Domestic Declarations Act Drafting Committee of the Uniform Law Commission and attended a drafting committee workshop for Committee Chairs and Reporters in Chicago, Illinois.

PROFESSOR TANYA ASIM COOPER participated on the planning committee for the domestic violence conference, Student Life, Relationships, and the Law at Pepperdine University School of Law in Malibu, California, on October 10-11, 2014.  She convened a panel on campus culture and integrated institutional responses to domestic violence and intimate partner violence on campus.  She also presented her work in progress, “Breaking the Code of Silence About Domestic Violence in Greek Life on the College Campus.”
Professor Cooper, together with Professor John Gross, Director of the Criminal Defense Clinic, met with the Criminal Law Society at UASL to discuss issues at the intersection of domestic violence and criminal law.
As contributing editor to the Clinical Law Prof Blog, Professor Cooper published Implicit Bias, A Listserv Discussion and Compilation of Resources, which has received approximately 14,000 page views since it was posted on October 3, 2014.
Professor Cooper also presented her work in progress, “We Shall Overcome: Stories of Bias in American Foster Care” at the Feminism Spoken Here Brown Bag lecture series, which was co-hosted by UA’s Department of Women’s Studies and The Women’s Resource Center.

PROFESSOR RICHARD DELGADO was interviewed by a reporter from American Bar Association Journal for a story on the civil rights revolution of the Sixties; gave a keynote address at a conference at University of Minnesota law school honoring his career of scholarship; and had a new article accepted at Wake Forest Law Review, his third there this year.
He and PROFESSOR JEAN STEFANCIC submitted the final manuscript for a new edition of their casebook, Race and Races: Cases and Resources for a Diverse America (West Law Group).
They received a check for three cents from Westview/Perseus for their first book, Failed Revolutions. The check was a milestone, indicating that the book, which sold poorly, had, after 23 years, finally paid off its cash advance.

PROFESSOR HEATHER ELLIOTT moderated a session at the Blue Ribbon Water Policy Symposium on October 9, 2014 at Birmingham Southern College. The event was organized by the Alabama Rivers Alliance and the Southern Environmental Law Center. Professor Elliott also participated as a senior commenter at the Seventh Annual Junior Federal Courts Faculty Workshop at the University of Georgia School of Law on October 10 and 11, 2014.  She also served as a senior commenter for the Southeast Regional Junior Faculty Working Papers Conference at Florida State University College of Law on October 24 and 25, 2014.

PROFESSOR MIRIT EYAL-COHEN presented a paper titled “Downscaling Regulatory Burdens” at the Canadian Law and Economics conference on September 20.  On October 10, Professor Eyal-Cohen presented a paper for the Boston College School of Law conference on Entity Reform titled “Organizational Choices of Entrepreneurial Entities.”  She will also present a paper at the at the Junior-Senior Southern Law School Faculty Conference at Florida State University School of Law titled “The Origins of Affirmative Fiscal Action” on October 24.

PROFESSOR JOHN GROSS moderated a panel discussion at the UA School of Law on October 14, Public Defender Day.  He spoke with the Criminal Law Society about careers in public defense on October 22.  Professor Gross also gave a presentation on October 25 at the Southern Clinical Conference at William & Mary School of Law titled “Educating Future Legal Aid Lawyers: What Does It Mean to Be ‘Practice Ready’ When There Are No Standards of Practice?”

PROFESSOR ANITA KAY HEAD prepared materials and presented a Grammar and Style workshop to the 1L students on October 17. The workshop addressed the most common grammatical errors that writers make, as well as stylistic suggestions to improve the structure and efficacy of written work. The workshop also covered proofreading and editing techniques.

PROFESSOR WILLIAM HENNING attended the annual meeting of the Permanent Editorial Board for the Uniform Commercial Code (PEB), of which he is a member, in New York City on October 18. Professor Henning made a final report during the meeting on behalf of the PEB Working Group on Bogus Filings, which he chaired and which has now completed its work. He has been appointed to two new working groups that will develop official PEB Commentaries on issues arising under the UCC.
Professor Henning is also a member of a working group, appointed by the State Department’s Office of Private International Law (OPIL), which is developing a report on the United Nations Convention on the Assignment of Receivables.  OPIL will use the report in its transmittal package to the White House and later for consideration by the Senate in relation to its advice-and-consent responsibilities. The report was finalized in October.

PROFESSOR DAN JOYNER presented a paper and participated on a panel discussion on “Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament:  U.S. Policy and International Law” at the International Law Association’s annual conference at Fordham Law School in New York City on October 24.

PROFESSOR RONALD KROTOSZYNSKI presented “Positive and Negative Comparative Constitutional Engagement in the Privacy Jurisprudence of the Supreme Court of Canada,” at a workshop hosted by the faculty at the University of Toronto School of Law in Toronto, Canada, on Wednesday, October 29, 2014.  On Monday, October 27, 2014, he presented “The Centrality of Scholarship to a Law Faculty’s Mission and Identity,” at the Texas A & M University School of Law in Fort Worth, Texas.  On October 16, 2014, Professor Krotoszynski presented the ABA Administrative Law Section’s annual award for the best administrative law scholarships published in 2013 to Professor Nick Parillo of the Yale Law School faculty for his book Against the Profit Motive (Yale University Press 2013).  Professor Krotoszynski serves as vice-chair of the section’s scholarship award committee.  He served as a senior reader/commentator at the Eleventh Circuit Junior Scholars Workshop, hosted at the Stetson University College of Law, in Gulfport, Florida, on October 10-11, 2014.  In addition, on October 9, 2014, he conducted a practicum on “The Dark Art of Article Placement and Related Strategic Advice on Article Development and the Effective Marketing of Published Legal Scholarship,” at the Stetson University College of Law.  Krotoszynski presented “Bringing Meiklejohn to Privacy:  On the Essential Complementarity of Privacy and Speech” at a symposium on “Freedom of Speech, the Internet, Privacy, and Democracy,” held at the University of Uppsala School of Law in Uppsala, Sweden, from September 21-23, 2014.  His paper will be published in a monograph forthcoming in 2015 from Liber (a Swedish academic press), in partnership will Brill (a Dutch academic publisher).  At the annual meeting of the Southeastern Association of Law Schools, Professor Krotoszynski spoke on a panel considering New York Times v. Sullivan at 50 and also participated in a discussion group examining “Transparency in Government” in Amelia Island, August 1-8, 2014.

PROFESSOR EMERITA MARTHA MORGAN attended the 59th Session of the UN Committee for the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in Geneva, Switzerland, where she serves as a trainer and mentor for women’s human rights supporters from countries reporting to the committee. She worked with civil society participants representing Brunei, China, Hong Kong, Ghana, Guinea, Poland, Solomon Islands and Venezuela.

PROFESSOR MICHAEL PARDO spoke at the University of Pennsylvania Law School symposium, The New Doctrinalism: Legal Realism and Legal Doctrine, hosted by the Penn Law Review.  In addition, Professor Pardo was invited to participate in (1) a conference at Northwestern University on evidence law reform in developing countries; (2) a conference on neuroscience and law at Swansea University, Wales; and (3) a working group of scientists, legal scholars, and bioethicists studying the neuroscience of pain, hosted by Harvard Law School and Massachusetts General Hospital.  His article, “Philosophical Foundations of Law and Neuroscience” (with Patterson), which was originally published in the Illinois Law Review, was reprinted in Legal Theory and the Natural Sciences (Del Mar & Schafer eds, Ashgate 2014) as part of The Library of Essays in Contemporary Legal Theory. Professor Pardo is currently editing articles that are forthcoming in the William & Mary Law Review, Criminal Law & Philosophy, and a symposium issue on law and science hosted by the Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics & Public Policy.

PROFESSOR PAMELA PIERSON and 2015 UA psychology doctoral candidate Jacklyn Nagle are conducting a study on how lawyers manage stress and on helpful strategies as part of the program, “The Business of Being a Lawyer.” The Alabama State Bar invited its members to participate in the study by taking the Lawyer Survey.  UA law students are also invited to participate. A separate survey will be used for 1L students and should only take about 10 minutes to complete. Taking it is helpful to participants in assessing their own strategies for managing stress. Data collected will be published, included in the BBL program, and helpful in teaching law students and lawyers how to better manage stress. This study has been approved by the NIH and UA Institutional Review Boards.

PROFESSOR KEN ROSEN attended a program at Yale Law School in New Haven, Connecticut, for the school’s China Center as well as a program with South African activist and former Supreme Court Justice Albie Sachs.  He also traveled to Geneva, Switzerland, for the World Investment Forum organized by UNCTAD to participate in a multidisciplinary conference, for which he previously submitted research materials on investment and development that helped produce a new research agenda in the area.  Professor Rosen also presented “Investor Confidence” at the meeting of the Mid-Atlantic Law and Society Association in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  In addition, he was in Washington, D.C., for the World Bank’s Law, Justice & Development Week program, bringing together leading figures from government, academics, the private sector, and civil society to discuss the post-2015 global development agenda.

PROFESSOR JEAN STEFANCIC participated in a symposium sponsored by Law and Inequality: A Journal of Theory and Practice at the University of Minnesota honoring Richard Delgado’s scholarship and teaching.  Her talk on Joint Scholarship and Teaching formed part of a keynote panel.
The eight volume of the Encyclopedia of Political Thought was published this month in association with the American Political Science Association (Wiley-Blackwell 2014), which contains her entry on critical race theory.

PROFESSOR GARY SULLIVAN presented a paper at the 11th Circuit Legal Scholarship Forum at Stetson University College of Law in October.  The title of the paper is “Fresh Starts and Federalism:  A State Model for Bankruptcy Exemption Reform.”  The paper explores justifications for exemption policy and calls on opt-out states to develop bankruptcy-specific exemption schemes consistent with the rehabilitative function of bankruptcy.  In his paper, he proposes a model to justify state legislative reforms.