News
Law School Presents Meador Lectures
Renowned legal scholars visited the University of Alabama School of Law for the Meador Lectures. The 2016 lecture series focused on the topic of Identity and included lectures by Professors Richard Delgado, The University of Alabama School of Law; Janet Halley, Harvard Law School; Saul Levmore, The University of Chicago Law School; and Elyn Saks, USC Gould School of Law. The Law School established the Meador Lectures in 1995 to honor graduate and former Dean, Daniel J. Meador, who delivered the inaugural lecture. The Meador Lectures are sponsored by the law school’s Program on Cross-Disciplinary Legal Studies.
Law School Hosts Symposium on Human Rights and Legal Judgments
Scholars visited The University of Alabama School of Law for a symposium on Human Rights and Legal Judgments: The American Story. The conference brought together scholars to identify and evaluate the ways that American law recognizes and responds to claims made in the name of human rights as well as the way those claims are treated in political and cultural discourse.
Attica Locke Receives 2016 Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction
The University of Alabama School of Law and the ABA Journal awarded Attica Locke, author of “Pleasantville,” the 2016 Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction. The ceremony was held at the Library of Congress. The prize, authorized by Lee, is given annually to a book-length work of fiction that best illuminates the role of lawyers in society and their power to effect change. Locke is the sixth winner of the prize. She received a signed special edition of “To Kill a Mockingbird” and a $3,000 cash award. She also will be featured in The ABA Journal.
Law School Offers 13 Online CLE Programs on Economics, Emotional Intelligence and Financial Planning
The University of Alabama School of Law is offering 13 online CLE programs on how to thrive in the new legal marketplace. The CLE programs are part of The Business of Being a Lawyer series, and they focus on economics, emotional intelligence, and finances. The Business of Being a Lawyer course was created by Professor Pam Bucy Pierson with the help of over 100 lawyers.
Latasha L. McCrary: Serving the State
As a Staff Attorney for the Southern Poverty Law Center, Latasha L. McCrary (’08) works on behalf of more than 24,000 individuals incarcerated in Alabama’s prisons.
The SPLC, a civil rights organization based in Montgomery, filed a federal lawsuit against the Alabama Department of Corrections in 2014, claiming the department doesn’t provide adequate medical and mental health care. The SPLC lawsuit alleges that persons who have been incarcerated in state prisons have received delayed care for medical conditions, and that those who need care for mental illnesses have received little or no treatment.
“When people do not receive preventative care or proper care, then they keep needing more care. The more care they need, the more that care actually costs” McCrary said. “If you treat early and treat appropriately, that’s going to save money in the long run.”
Class Notes
Joe Davis (’16) has joined Carr Allison as an associate in its Birmingham office.
Andrew B. Freeman (’05) has been selected to participate in the Greater Mobile MS Leadership Class of 2016 campaign, which honors outstanding business professionals who are dedicated to improving the lives of those affected by multiple sclerosis.
Lloria Munnerlyn James (’05) was sworn in by Judge Eugene Reese as the Chief Deputy District Attorney of Montgomery.
Woods Parker (’16) has joined Carr Allison as an associate in its Birmingham office.
Virginia C. Patterson (’86) has been selected for the 2016-2017 class of Leadership Alabama.
Russell Register (’15) has been named the recipient of the 2015-2016 MVP Award by the University of Louisiana at Lafayette Athletics Department.
Quin Evans Segall (’06) has joined Baker Donelson as an associate in its Nashville office.
Gifts
Judy Whalen Evans (’75) contributed $5,000 to the Farrah Alumni Law Society.
The Estate of Mary Virginia Hearn, daughter of James Luther Hearn (’36), donated $7,892 to the James Luther Hearn Endowed Scholarship.
David Moody contributed $5,000 to The Judge Frank M. Johnson, Jr. and Mrs. Ruth Jenkins Johnson Memorial Endowed Scholarship.
Faculty Notes
PROFESSOR BILL ANDREEN gave “An Update on the ACF/ACT Dispute” at the Water Resources Law Symposium, which was held at the Law School on August 19.
PROFESSOR BILL BREWBAKER made a presentation titled “Clinton, Trump, and the Future of Health Care Reform” at a CLE program in Birmingham on September 16. On September 23, he served as closing commentator for Human Rights and Legal Judgments: The American Story Symposium, a conference held at the Law School.
PROFESSORS RICHARD DELGADO and JEAN STEFANCIC published “A New Southern Strategy of Multigroup Oppression: A Response to Standard White by Michael Morris” in California Law Review. Morris, a recent UA Law graduate, analyzes how, in our system, whiteness and white normativity disadvantage anyone who falls outside the middle range of a bell curve of racial traits. Delgado and Stefancic build on his analysis to explain a new conservative political strategy that is emerging that plays minority groups against one another to the detriment of each.
Delgado’s article, “Words that Wound: A Tort Action for Racial Insults, Epithets, and Name-Calling,” was recently listed on SSRN’s Top Ten download list for: LSN: Personal Injury Law (Topic). As of September 17, 2016, his paper had been downloaded 795 times.
Professors Delgado and Stefancic gave a talk at Duke Law School on legal formalism and the hedonic quality of lawyers’ lives. Delgado gave another talk on individualism in American law and culture at the University of Alabama School of Law’s annual program of lectures dedicated to the memory of Dan Meador.
PROFESSOR SHAHAR DILLBARY presented his scholarship at the European Association of Law & Economics conference in Bologna, Italy, and at the Midwestern Law and Economics Association Annual Meeting, which took place at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.
Professor Dillbary’s most recent research projects investigate the relationship between changes in healthcare providers’ liability and suicide rates, problems of causation in cases involving multiple tortfeasors and cases where tort law and contract law interact. His work includes a number of theoretical, experimental and empirical projects. Professor Dillbary was recently invited and is currently scheduled to present his scholarship at the University of Chicago School of Law and the Southern Economics Association (Washington D.C.). Also, he was invited to give a special lecture at King’s College (London) and at the Law and Economics workshop at Haifa University (Israel).
The Cross-Disciplinary Program, co-directed by Professors Dillbary and Michael Pardo, hosted the Meador Lecture Series, which took place on Friday, September 16. The 2016 Series explored the topic of identity and its relationships to moral, legal, ethical and political values from different scholarly disciplines and perspectives. The one-day symposium brought together four distinguished scholars: Saul Levmore, William B. Graham Distinguished Service Professor of Law, the University of Chicago; Janet Halley, Royall Professor of Law, Harvard Law School; our very own Richard Delgado, John J. Sparkman Chair of Law, the University of Alabama School of Law; and Elyn Saks, Orrin B. Evans Professor of Law, Psychology and Psychiatry and the Behavioral Sciences, University of Southern California Gould School of Law.
PROFESSOR ALAN DURHAM‘s article, “Lost Art and the Public Domain,” has been accepted for publication in the Arizona State Law Journal. The article concerns the effect on patent validity of prior art that is no longer available to the public.
PROFESSOR MIRIT EYAL-COHEN presented the paper, “Downscaling the Regulatory Action,” at the Mid-west Law & Economics Conference held in Emory School of Law, Atlanta, Georgia. The paper argues that current cost-benefit analyses have missed the distributional nature of regulatory costs on various incumbents. It unveils the discriminatory effects of the regulatory action on startup companies and their unregulated affiliates. It argues that firms that lack economies of scale, scope, and age are regulatorily disadvantaged in a regressive manner. Lastly, it recommends ways to alleviate these unnoticed externalities and attain greater regulatory efficiency.
Professor Eyal-Cohen is now a co-organizer of a Collaborative Research Network (CRN) of the Law & Society Association together with Neil H. Buchanan, George Washington University Law School, and Jennifer Bird-Pollan, University of Kentucky. CRN 31: Law, Society and Taxation at the Law & Society Association provides a forum for scholars who are interested in the effects on society of the taxing and spending policies adopted at all levels of government (international, national, state, and local). Subjects of inquiry involve any aspect of governmental policy with respect to taxing or spending, including distributional effects of government programs, theoretical issues of equity and justice, comparative and international issues, and all other aspects of fiscal policy. Participants are encouraged to apply multi- and interdisciplinary approaches to questions across the range of tax-related scholarship: issues of social and economic inequality, international competition and coordination, comparative aspects of tax law, family issues, sexual orientation and tax law, and so on. This position provides great networking opportunities and exposure to scholars around the nation.
PROFESSOR JULIE A. HILL and the Alabama Law Review hosted a conference on bank director and officer responsibilities. The conference featured papers from academics at Catholic, Cornell, Georgia, Houston, Minnesota, and St. Mary’s. Professor Hill presented her latest work, Bank Director and Officer Duty of Care. All of the conference papers will be published in a spring edition of the law review. The conference also featured practical insights from prominent Alabama bankers.
PROFESSOR PAM PIERSON‘s article, Economics, EQ and Finances: The Next Frontier in Legal Education, 65 J. Legal Educ. 864 (2016) was featured on the Legal Skills Prof Blog on September 7, 2016. Professor Pierson’s article also made SSRN’s Top Ten downloads in two categories: Education Research and Legal Education eJournal.
PROFESSOR ADAM STEINMAN participated in the American Law Institute’s Members Consultative Group & Advisers meetings on the Restatement Fourth of the Foreign Relations Law of the United States, and the Restatement Third of Conflict of Laws. Professor Steinman continues to blog at the Civil Procedure & Federal Courts Blog on the Law Professor Blogs Network (http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/civpro/).
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.