News

ABA Journal features Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Sue Bell Cobb, a 1980 UA Law alumna, in its July 2010 cover article: “Tipping the Scales.”

The New York Times piece, “An Elite, Prolific Office of U.S. Public Defenders,” features Alabama law professor David Patton discussing his work as a trial attorney in the Manhattan federal defenders’ office. Patton currently serves as director of the Law School’s Criminal Defense Clinic.

The Law School welcomes a distinguished slate of visiting professors who will teach at Alabama during the fall 2010 semester. These include: the former president of Israel’s Supreme Court, the former vice president of Israel’s National Labor Court, a leading legal advocate of fair labor standards for migrant farmworkers, the current vice dean of the Buchmann Faculty of Law at Tel Aviv University, an Oxford University graduate who is an expert on Civil Procedure, and one of today’s preeminent voices on Biomedical Ethics and Health Care Law.
Aharon Barak, the former president of the Supreme Court of Israel, will return to Alabama Law this fall. He will teach a course on Proportionality, which is the same course he teaches at Yale Law School. President Barak was named dean of Hebrew University’s Faculty of Law in 1974, served as Israel’s attorney general from 1975 to 1978, was appointed to the Supreme Court of Israel in 1978 and served as its president from 1995 to 2006. He delivered the Law School’s fall 2007 Albritton Lecture.

Elisheva Barak, the former vice president of Israel’s National Labor Court, will also return to Alabama Law this fall to teach a mini-course on Comparative Labor Law. From 1976 to 1978, Judge Barak clerked for the president of the Supreme Court of Israel, Justice Joel Sussman, and served as a legal assistant to the Court’s three subsequent presidents. In 1987, she was appointed registrar of the Regional Labor Court in Jerusalem, and in 1990, became a judge both there and in the Beersheba Regional Labor Court. She was appointed as judge in the National Labor Court in 1995 and named vice president of the Court in 2000.

William S. Geimer is a professor of law – emeritus at the Washington & Lee University School of Law. Before accepting a faculty appointment there, he was the executive director of Farmworkers Legal Services of North Carolina. He was responsible for 40,000 migrant and seasonal farmworkers and focused on federal court litigation involving the Fair Labor Standards Act, Farm Labor Contractor Registration Act and the federal peonage statutes. Professor Geimer will teach Poverty Law this fall at Alabama.

Sharon Hannes, vice dean of the Buchmann Faculty of Law at Tel Aviv University and head of the Tel Aviv – Berkeley Executive LL.M. Program, will teach a mini-course at Alabama Law on Corporate Theory. Professor Hannes holds an S.J.D. from Harvard Law School and was a recipient of the Byse Fellowship. He also holds an LL.B. and a B.A. in Accounting from Tel-Aviv University, as well as an LL.M. in Corporate Studies from New York University Law School, where he was a recipient of the Hauser Global Fellowship.

Robert Pfeffer was previously an attorney at the law firm of Weil, Gotshal & Manges. He clerked for the Honorable John Coffey in the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. Professor Pfeffer will teach Civil Procedure and Criminal Procedure at Alabama during the fall 2010 semester. He received his B.A. in Economics and his J.D., cum laude, from the University of Chicago. He also holds an M.S. in Criminology and Criminal Justice from Oxford University.

Robin Fretwell Wilson, a member of the Washington & Lee University law faculty, will teach a mini-course at Alabama in Biomedical Ethics. She earned her law degree from the University of Virginia, where she was a member of the Law Review and Order of the Coif. Professor Wilson clerked for the Honorable E. Grady Jolly of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. She also practiced law, focusing primarily on Health Care Law, at the law firms of Fulbright & Jaworski and Mayor, Day, Caldwell & Keeton. Professor Wilson is the editor of four volumes on the topics of Insurance and Biomedical Ethics, and she has published articles in the Cornell Law Review, Emory Law Journal, North Carolina Law Review and San Diego Law Review, as well as many others.

Kevin Johnson, a member of the Class of 2011, was recently elected chairman of the American Bar Association’s (ABA) Law Student Division. Johnson, who took part in the ABA’s 2010 Business Law Section Spring Meeting last month, is also a 2010 CLEO Fellow Scholar. The scholarship is awarded by the Council on Legal Education Opportunity through the ABA’s Fund for Justice and Education.

The United States Golf Association (USGA) has appointed Alabama Law alumni Jim Noel ’79 as its chief legal officer. Noel joins the USGA from ESPN, where he served as associate general counsel and as a vice president in the network’s programming and digital media departments. His work included negotiations of media rights and distribution agreements, intellectual property licensing and new-media ventures. Read more

The University of Alabama School of Law has named Andrew P. Morriss, the prolific legal scholar, author, and media contributor, as its new Jones Chair of Law.

Morriss is the author or coauthor of more than 50 book chapters, scholarly articles, and books. He serves as a Research Fellow at the New York University Center for Labor and Employment Law, a Senior Fellow at the Property & Environment Research Center in Bozeman, Montana, and a Senior Scholar at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.

Morriss is also a Reporter for the Restatement of Employment Law by the American Law Institute, and a Senior Fellow for the Houston-based Institute for Energy Research. He taught the Law and Economics of the Financial Crisis as a Visiting Professor of Law at Alabama during fall 2009 semester.

Morriss earned an A.B. from Princeton University and a J.D., as well as an M.A. in Public Affairs, from the University of Texas at Austin. He received a Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After law school, Morriss clerked for U.S. District Judge Harold Barefoot Sanders, Jr. in the Northern District of Texas and worked for two years at Texas Rural Legal Aid in Hereford and Plainview, Texas.

Morriss was formerly the inaugural H. Ross and Helen Workman Professor of Law & Professor of Business at the University of Illinois College of Law.

The recent National Law Journal article, “Get That Master of Laws Degree Online,” features Assistant Dean Dan Powell discussing Alabama’s online Tax LL.M. program. Alabama Law launched the nation’s first fully online and interactive Tax LL.M. program in 2008. The story is also posted on the TaxProf Blog.

NPR’s Neal Conan and Nina Totenberg’s recent “Talk of the Nation” segment, “Five Years Of Subtle Shifts On Supreme Court,” included references to Chief Justice of the United States John G. Roberts, Jr.’s March 9th remarks at Alabama Law. You may view the full lecture and Q&A on CSPAN.org, the law school website, or on iTunes U.

Professor Pam Bucy recently spoke with NPR regarding the Justice Department investigating allegations of misconduct within the Alabama Legislature. A podcast of the full story is available at: “Alabama Gambling Battle Draws Justice Scrutiny”

Alabama Law professor Norman Stein discusses the precarious state of some private pension plans in the April 1, 2010 Wall Street Journal article, “Private-Firm Pensions Face Deadline for Funding Level.”