Provost Joe Benson recently announced the search committee for the new Dean of the School of Law.
Judge Joseph Colquitt – Jere Beasley Professor, School of Law
Heather Elliott – Associate Professor, School of Law
Fournier (Boots) Gale III – Regions Financial Corporation
Julie Hill – Associate Professor, School of Law
Anne Hornsby – Associate Dean for Clinical Programs, School of Law
Thomas Keene – Ruston, Stakely, Johnston & Garrett PA
Ron Krotoszynski – John S. Stone Chairholder, School of Law (Committee Chair)
Vanessa Leonard – Attorney at Law
Finis St. John – St. John and St. John LLC
Provost Benson stated, “The Law School has enjoyed superb leadership in the past and we are convinced that the reputation of the school and the opportunities it provides for continued advancement will allow us to identify an outstanding leader for the future.” Benson also announced the university has hired SpencerStuart, executive search and leadership consulting firm, to assist in the search.
A special reception for local alumni will be held on Friday, October 25. The reception will be held in conjunction with Professor Pierson’s new class/CLE called The Business of Being a Lawyer (BBL) and will take place in the lobby of the McMillan Lecture Hall from 5:00 p.m.-6:30 p.m. For more information, please contact Jami Gates, Events Coordinator, at jgates@law.ua.edu or (205) 348-6775.
All active members of the Farrah Law Alumni Society are invited to tailgate on the Quad prior to the 2013 home SEC football games. The Law School Foundation tent is conveniently located just off University Boulevard near Denny Chimes. Complimentary food and beverages will be provided three hours prior to scheduled kickoff, until kickoff. We invite all Farrah Law Alumni Society members to stop by and enjoy this opportunity to engage with other members, students, faculty and staff on game day!
For additional information regarding the tailgate tent or joining Farrah, contact Candice Robbins in the Advancement Office at crobbins@law.ua.edu or (205) 348-5752.
October 19, Alabama vs. Arkansas: 3:00 p.m.-6:00 p.m.
October 26, Alabama vs. Tennessee
November 9, Alabama vs. L.S.U.
Location: A14 (see below for map)
Hours: 3 Hours prior to kickoff until kickoff
Casual/Game Day attire
No R.S.V.P. is necessary
The Law School hosted Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, Elena Kagan, on October 4, as the 2013 Albritton Lecturer. During the lecture, Justice Kagan discussed the confirmation process, the Court’s decision making process, and the lack of geographic and educational diversity in the court. The lecture series was established in 1996 under the leadership of Judge William Harold Albritton III, a 1960 Alabama Law alumnus and Senior Judge on the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama. Past lecturers have included eight of the nine sitting justices on the U.S. Supreme Court.
On Thursday, September 19, Stanford Law Professor Paul Goldstein was honored at the National Press Club as the 2013 winner of the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction. Goldstein’s winning novel, Havana Requiem, was the subject of a panel discussion featuring Morris Dees, Dr. Sharon Malone, Dan Kornstein, and Marianne Szegedy-Maszak. Click here to see photos from the event, and look for a video of the event on the Law School’s website in the coming weeks.
Thank you to everyone who attended the D.C.-Area Alumni Social on September 18. The Law School would like to extend a special thank you to Mike House (’71) for hosting the social. If you would like to see photos from the event, please click here.
There is still time to sign up for Fall On-Campus Interviews. The Career Services Office is happy to help you locate students for summer positions or Three-Ls and alumni for post-graduation employment. If you are interested in hiring an Alabama Law student for summer or permanent employment, please contact the Assistant Dean for Career Services, Tom Ksobiech (tksobiech@law.ua.edu). The CSO can arrange an on campus interview, collect resumes or post a position on its electronic job board. All CSO services are free of charge.
Cathy and Mark Boardman (’82) gave $20,000.00 to the Cathy and Mark Boardman Endowed Scholarship Support Fund.
The law firm of Maynard Cooper & Gale, PC donated $13,800.00 to the Farrah Law Alumni Society on behalf of the firm’s alumni.
The Law School:
The Washington Post: “Supreme Court Justice Kagan to University of Alabama: Confirmation process ‘sort of broken'”
Tuscaloosa News: “U.S. Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan speaks about diversity”
Business Insider: “The 15 Best Value Law Schools In America”
Montré Carodine:
The Christian Science Monitor: “Gulf Oil Spill: How much flowed? BP Trial Judge to Decide”
Fred Vars:
Wall Street Journal Law Blog: “The Gun Rights of the Mentally Ill”
Michael Pardo:
The Chronicle of Higher Education: “Watch What You Think. Others Can.”
Martha Griffith:
Platform Magazine: “Law & PR: Different Sides of the Same Coin”
Regions Financial selected Jeff Rabren (’00) to manage economic development initiatives for the company.
The following alumni were elected to serve as officers in the Alabama State Bar’s Young Lawyers Section for the 2013-2014 year:
Vice President: Brandon D. Hughey (’04)
Secretary: S. Hughston Nichols (’06)
Treasurer: Charles E. “Chip” Tait (’09)
Immediate Past President: Kitty Rogers Brown (’05)
The following alumni were elected to the Executive Committee of the Alabama State Bar’s Young Lawyers Section:
Ashley W. Davis (’09)
Neah L. Mitchell (’08)
L. Robert Shreve (’11)
Amy Hill Nation (’10)
Associate Dean Montré Carodine recently published her article, “Street Cred,” in the U.C. Davis Law Review. The article focuses on the community policing movement and the community’s role in shaping the reliability of evidence in criminal trials. Associate Dean Carodine presented the article in January 2013 at a panel on bias in the judicial system at the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) Annual Conference in New Orleans.
Associate Dean Carodine has accepted invitations to present her work in the Spring at a faculty workshop at Case Western University School of Law and at a symposium at Indiana University Bloomington Mauer School of Law on social justice issues at home and abroad. She will publish her article, “Starting at Home: A Framework for Transforming ‘International Due Process’ into International Justice,” in the Indiana Journal of Law and Social Equality’s symposium issue (the article also received several other offers from general interest law school journals across the country). Additionally, Associate Dean Carodine is working on final edits for a main book chapter in Civil Rights in the American Story, which will be published by the Cambridge University Press. The chapter is entitled, “Race is Evidence: (Mis)Characterizing Blackness in the American Civil Rights Story.” Professor Tanya Cooper is publishing a commentary on Dean Carodine’s chapter in the same book.
Associate Dean Carodine also continues to provide commentary to various media outlets on cases garnering substantial national interest. Most recently, she was interviewed by NPR, the Christian Science Monitor, the Washington Times, CBS Radio in L.A. and CBS 42 News in Birmingham. Additionally, Associate Dean Carodine has accepted an invitation to speak to Tuscaloosa’s Rotary Club in November and provide an update on major developments in the law in 2013.
As part of her various administrative duties, Associate Dean Carodine recently began working as the Law School’s Director of International Programs. She has also been invited to conduct a site visit to inspect the University of Houston Law Center’s international programs in November.
Associate Dean Carodine continues her work with the American Association of University Women (AAUW), and for the second consecutive year, will chair the AAUW’s Selected Professions Panel. Each year, the Selected Professions Panel awards thousands of dollars in fellowships to women pursuing master’s and doctoral degrees in various fields in which women have traditionally been underrepresented.
Professor Heather Elliott was invited to give the first seminar of the 2013-14 academic year at Princeton University’s Program in Law and Public Affairs. She presented her paper, “How the Supreme Court Dodged Marriage Equality Questions While Making Standing Doctrine Worse,” on September 23, 2013.
On September 27th, Professor Elliott was the concluding speaker at the Law School’s symposium, Civility, Legality, and the Limits of Justice, organized by Professor Austin Sarat, the Justice Hugo L. Black Visiting Senior Faculty Scholar. Other speakers at the symposium included Jeremy Waldron of NYU Law School and All Souls College, Oxford; Linda Zerilli of the University of Chicago; Leti Volpp of the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law; Teresa Bejan of Columbia University; and Bryan Garsten of Yale University.
Professor Elliott was also featured in a documentary short film about Alabama’s dams. The film was directed by Stanford University film student Katherine Gorringe. The documentary was screened by the Southern Environmental Law Center at the Birmingham Botanical Gardens on September 24th.
Professor Elliott attended the Alabama Water Resources Symposium and Conference in Orange Beach, Alabama, September 4th-6th. She also, on September 13th, attended a networking event for University of Alabama faculty who study water resource issues. While there she met with a dozen scientists and engineers who study various water issues.
Professor Bill Henning served on the faculty of a Uniform Law Commission training workshop for drafting committee chairs and reporters. The meeting was held in Chicago.
Professor Henning also serves as Reporter for an Alabama Law Institute study of the Uniform Certificate of Title for Vessels Act and attended the final meeting of the committee in Montgomery. The Act, as modified by the committee, will be submitted to the Institute’s council for approval in November and is likely to be introduced in the Alabama legislature during the next session.
Professor Paul Horwitz published “Defending (Religious) Institutionalism,” in 99 Virginia Law Review 1049 (2013). In September, he served as the Constitution Day speaker at the College of Charleston in Charleston, South Carolina. He gave two public lectures for the occasion: one on his book, The Agnostic Age: Law, Religion, and the Constitution (Oxford University Press, 2011), and an evening lecture titled Honor, the Oath, and the Constitution. He presented his paper, “Freedom of the Church Without Romance,” at a faculty workshop at the University of Richmond Law School. He also participated and served as a commenter at a conference at DePaul University’s College of Law on The New Religious Institutionalism.
Professor Ronald Krotoszynski, Jr. presented “Partisan Balance Requirements in the Age of New Formalism” at the Vanderbilt University School of Law on September 25th, incident to a faculty workshop. On August 8th, Krotoszynski spoke on a panel entitled How to Promote Faculty Scholarship, and on August 10th, he participated in a roundtable discussion on The Future of Legal Education. Both programs were part of the 2013 annual meeting of the Southeastern Association of Law Schools in Palm Beach, Florida. Professor Krotoszynski recently published “The Polysemy of Privacy” in the 88 Indiana Law Journal 881 (2013).
Mr. Hugh M. Lee, director of the Elder Law Clinic, completed revisions to his book, Alabama Elder Law, which he coauthors with former clinic director Jo Alison Taylor. The latest edition was released in September and marks the 6th edition of the book, published by Thomson West Publishing Company.
Professor Andrew Morriss’ paper, “Enduring Hierarchies in American Legal Education” (with Olufunmilayo Arewa and William D. Henderson), was accepted for publication by the Indiana Law Journal. His paper, “Clinical Legal Education & Access to Justice: Conflicts, Interests, & Evolution” (with Margaret Drew) will appear in Beyond Elite Law: Access to Civil Justice for Americans of Average Means (Samuel Estreicher & Joy Radice eds., Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2014). Professor Morriss also taught in the Asia Institute for Political Economy in Hong Kong and went on a recruiting trip to Myanmar for the program in July.
Professor Morriss participated in a Liberty Fund colloquium on religious liberty and the freedom of the church. He also spoke at a Southeastern Association of Law Schools panel on The Good, The Bad and The Ugly: Responses to the Changing Market for Legal Education. Professor Morriss participated in a panel on energy at the Bush Institute at Southern Methodist University on September 12th. His paper, with Roger Meiners, “Energy and Economic Growth,” will be published by the Institute later this year.
Professor Pam Pierson recently developed a course and CLE program entitled, The Business of Being a Lawyer. The program is off to a wonderful start thanks to the BBL faculty who are serving as panelists and breakout leaders during the course. At the September 20th class session, the following lawyers and judges served as BBL faculty: Cynthia Almond, Noel Amason, Jim Barger, Michael Bownes, Mike Ermert, Dena Prince, Bobby Prince, Philip Reich and Mark White. Professor Pierson’s research assistants, Thomas Carter, Nate Cartmell and Darius Crayton, are busy conducting videotape interviews of BBL faculty and other renowned lawyers and judges. These interviews will be posted on the BBL webpage.
As part of BBL and with the assistance of Jacklyn Nagel, Ph.D., graduate student at UA’s Department of Psychology, Professor Pierson is collecting data from law students and faculty for a stress hardiness survey. The goal of this survey is to identify strategies and techniques that help individuals become stress hardy. Such individuals do not feel the ill effects of stress as much as the rest of us even though they are under the same stresses. If you would like to participate in this study, click here.
Professor Pierson’s article, “RICO, Corruption and White Collar Crime,” was published in 85 Temple L. Rev. 523 (2013). Her article, “RICO Trends: From Gangsters to Class Actions,” will be published at 65 S. C. L. Rev. in November 2013. Her article, “Civil RICO: An Untapped Resource,” was published in 9 ABA’s Business Torts and RICO News in September 2013.
Professor Fredrick Vars was quoted in a Wall Street Journal Law Blog post regarding gun rights of the mentally ill. His essay on mental illness negating mens rea received publication offers from the Iowa and Connecticut online supplements. The Connecticut Law Review invited him to contribute a piece and to participate in a symposium on the Second Amendment.
Live Seminars:
October 18: Real Estate law (Tuscaloosa)
October 18: The Business of Being a Lawyer-Session Two (Tuscaloosa)
October 25: Fundamentals of Will Drafting (Tuscaloosa)
October 25: The Business of Being a Lawyer-Session Three (Tuscaloosa)
November 1: Social Security Disability Law (Tuscaloosa)
November 8: Healthcare Law (Birmingham)
November 8: The Business of Being a Lawyer-Session Four (Tuscaloosa)
November 15: Bankruptcy Law Update (Birmingham)
November 22: The Business of Being a Lawyer-Session Five (Tuscaloosa)
December 4: Alabama Update (Montgomery)
December 6: Tort Law (Birmingham)
December 13: Estate Planning (Birmingham)
December 18: Employment Law (Birmingham)
December 19: Alabama Update (Birmingham)
December 20: Trial Skills (Birmingham)
