News
Alabama Law Hosts Symposium on Water Resources Law
Some of the nation’s leading experts on water law visited Alabama Law August 25 for a symposium on Water Resources Law.
Participants discussed the laws governing ownership of surface water, groundwater, and other water resources in Alabama and throughout the Southeast. They addressed interstate conflicts over water law, the types of water policies that have worked in other states, and what may be inhibiting Alabama from establishing a more comprehensive water law policy.
The symposium also provided an update on the Alabama Water Agencies Working Group and information about legislative and administrative developments in Alabama and at the federal level.
UA Military Law Society, Alabama Law Student Gain Parking Privileges for Purple Heart Recipients
Purple Heart recipients now have premium parking privileges at The University of Alabama.
UA unveiled a parking space in the Ferguson Center lot on Aug. 9 designated for veterans who have received the Purple Heart, an award given to men or women who have either been wounded or killed in combat.
Alabama Law student Steven Arango is a second lieutenant in the Marines and is on reserve status while he attends school. The Clearwater, Florida, native was commissioned in August 2016 and is a president of the UA Military Law Society, which proposed to Chris D’Esposito, director, UA Transportation Services, the idea of honoring Purple Heart veterans. Arango’s step-brother, Flynn Bluett, helped create the design for this parking space.
“My grandfather, who was a sniper in the Marine Corps, was awarded the Purple Heart after being wounded in the Marshall Islands during World War II,” Arango said. “This is something that’s been on my heart. I’ve seen similar parking spaces at Home Depot, and anytime we can do something on campus to honor our veterans, I’m all for it.”
Events
5:30 p.m. – 7 p.m. Friday, September 22 at Tavern, 1904 Broadway, Nashville. Join us for this opportunity to connect with Alabama Law graduates in Nashville the evening before the Alabama vs. Vanderbilt football game. Register online by September 14 at www.ualawnashville.eventbrite.com
Class Notes
Christopher Greene (’14) has been named Senior Vice President and Chief Claims Officer of Canal Insurance Co. in Greenville, South Carolina.
Angela Holt (’02) has been named to Benchmark Litigation’s list of 2017 Top 250 Women in Litigation.
David Holt (’10) has been named as one of the top 35 Under 35 honors program for his leadership in patent strategies, intellectual properties, and product liability by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers.
Brad Sklar (’87) was elected to serve a second five-year term on the Mountain Brook School Board. After serving as President for two years, he will now serve as Vice President.
Robert C. Walthall (’67) has joined Jones Walker in Birmingham as partner in the Tax & Estates Practice Group.
Navan Ward (’02) has been appointed to the Plaintiffs Executive Committee for multidistrict litigation involving Proton Pump Inhibitor drugs linked to kidney damage.
Robert Williams (’75) has joined Hall Booth Smith as partner in the firm’s Birmingham office.
Gifts
J. Fredric Ingram (’62) contributed $10,012 to be designated for student travel to and from competitions and conferences.
Laura L. Crum (’82) donated $34,270 to the Endowed Lecture in Law & Business.
Faculty Notes
PROFESSOR BILL ANDREEN continues to direct the Law School’s exchange program with the Australian National University (ANU) College of Law. Through this program, now entering its 18th year, 150 Alabama Law students have studied at the ANU and nearly 160 ANU law students have traveled to Tuscaloosa to study at our law school. In July-August of this year, our students took a survey course on Australian Law taught by the ANU’s faculty and a Comparative National Security Law course team-taught by Professor Jenny Carroll of Alabama Law and by Dr. Mark Nolan from the ANU faculty. They also visited the Australian High Court, the Australian Parliament, the U.S. Embassy, the ACT Supreme Court, and a local prison.
Professor Andreen gave a presentation on “Citizen Suit Enforcement under the Clean Water Act” at the Southeastern Environmental Law & Regulation Conference at Sandestin in June and served as a discussant on “Teaching Environmental Law and Climate Change in the Trump World” at the Southeastern Association of Law Schools Annual Conference in Boca Raton in August. He participated this summer in the Eighteenth Institute for Natural Resources Law Teachers in Banff, peer reviewed the next volume of the Land Use and Environment Law Review, and revised his chapter on Alabama Water Law (and the Water Wars), which appears in Volume 4 of Waters and Water Rights (LexisNexus).
PROFESSOR RICHARD DELGADO had an article accepted by UC Davis Law Review Online, and another by Alabama Civil Rights & Civil Liberties Law Review. The Davis article, which proceeds in the form of a Rodrigo chronicle, analyzes President Trump’s domestic agenda. The law review accepted it one hour after he submitted it. The Alabama article responds to an essay by an English philosopher about hate speech and questions the common wisdom that, before one begins a discussion of any sort, one must define one’s terms.
The administrators of the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) notified Professor Delgado that was in the top ten percent of scholars on its database over the last month, the last 12 months, and all-time.
He and PROFESSOR JEAN STEFANCIC submitted a proposal to NYU Press for a book on hate speech and white supremacy, which the press accepted. They are currently writing the book, which builds on their previous scholarship and considers recent developments, such as in Charlottesville, Virginia
PROFESSOR HEATHER ELLIOTT organized and hosted a symposium on Water Resources Law at the Law School on August 25. The keynote speaker was Christine Klein, the Chesterfield Smith Professor at the University of Florida Levin College of Law, who spoke about the Mississippi River. Other speakers included Nick Tew, the State Geologist of Alabama; Blake Hudson, a professor at the University of Houston Law Center; Chip Morgan, a member of the Delta Council; Rebecca Wright Pritchett, principal at Pritchett Environmental & Resources Law LLC; Mitch Reid, Director of External Affairs at the Nature Conservancy in Alabama; Bennett Bearden of the Water Policy and Law Institute at UA; and William Andreen, the Edgar L. Clarkson Professor of Law at the Law School.
PROFESSOR JULIE A. HILL attended the Southeastern Association of Law Schools’ annual conference. While there she was a presenter on three panels. The first panel discussed new research in commercial and consumer law. The second panel discussed business issues facing the state-legal marijuana industry. And the third panel provided scholarship advice to junior and aspiring faculty members. Professor Hill also taught a Professor’s Corner Webinar for the American Bar Association titled, “Virtual Currencies: Legal Issues and What You Need to Know.” Finally, Professor Hill spoke on “Regulation through Supervision: Rethinking the CAMELS Regime” at the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association’s Prudential Regulation Conference in Washington, D.C.
PROFESSOR RON KROTOSZYNSKI presented, “Shedding Their Constitutional Rights at the Schoolhouse Gate: The Decline of Freedom of Speech for Students and Teachers in the Nation’s Public Schools, Colleges, and Universities,” at a faculty workshop, hosted by the law faculty at the Emory University School of Law, in Atlanta, Georgia, on August 23, 2017. This talk was based on Chapter 4 of his book, The Disappearing First Amendment: On the Decline of Freedom of Speech and the Growing Problem of Inequality Among Speakers, which is forthcoming next year from Yale University Press. Professor Krotoszynski presented “Systemic Failures to Protect Newsgathering Activities by Professional Journalists and Amateur Citizen-Journalists Alike,” at a faculty workshop hosted by the faculty of the University of Alabama School of Law, in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, on August 21, 2017. The talk drew on the current draft of Chapter 7 of The Disappearing First Amendment. He attended and participated in the meeting of the Council of the ABA Section on Administrative Law, at the ABA Annual Meeting, in New York City, August 9-10, 2017. Professor Krotoszynski is currently serving in a three-year appointment to the section’s Council.
PROFESSOR ADAM STEINMAN was appointed as the University Research Professor of Law at the University of Alabama. He published “State Court Jurisdiction in the 21st Century,” as part of the Pound Civil Justice Institute’s 2017 Forum for State Appellate Court Judges. The article is available at the Pound Institute’s Judge’s Forum website: http://poundinstitute.org/node/13.
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.