Using a video produced by the American Academy of Achievement, Deborah Long (’80) and Judge W. Keith Watkins (’76) narrated the life and judicial decisions of Judge Frank M. Johnson, Jr. on what would have been his 100th birthday.
As Judge Johnson remembered his life on the video, law students learned about his formative years in Winston County and why he decided to become a lawyer.
“My father was a county judge, Johnson said. “That’s when I decided I wanted to be a lawyer. I used to go when I was a kid and sit in the courtroom, watch him try cases, watch lawyers argue, watch him as a judge.”
President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed Judge Johnson to serve as Judge of the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama. Just weeks after he arrived in Montgomery, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery bus.
During his tenure, Judge Johnson issued decisions that integrated buses in Montgomery, desegregated schools in Alabama, struck down the poll tax, protected the Freedom Riders, and allowed the Selma to Montgomery March to move forward.
The decisions, he said, weren’t about morality.
“I never looked on any desegregation case with moral standards in mind,” Judge Johnson said. “I wasn’t hired to be a moral judge. I wasn’t hired to be a preacher or an evangelist. I’m hired to apply the law.”
The event was sponsored jointly by The Federalist Society and the American Constitution Society.
Legal scholars and students recently discussed “Religion and Gay Marriage: Do They Have to Be at Odds? And Can University Students Make a Difference?” as part of an event titled “Tolerance Means Dialogue” at the Law School.
Robin Fretwell Wilson, the Roger and Stephany Joslin Professor of Law at the University of Illinois College of Law, and William Eskridge, the John A. Garver Professor of Jurisprudence at Yale Law School, initiated the discussion.
The Tolerance Means Dialogues are designed to bring together Millennials and scholars to find constructive approaches to living together in a pluralistic society.
Shelby Calambokidis, ‘17, was stunned when she learned that her student note about solitary confinement was cited by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
A colleague at the Southern Poverty Law Center, where Calambokidis worked off and on while attending law school, told her about the citation. She worked hard on her note and crafted it with an eye toward telling a human story. The note was published in Volume 68 of the Alabama Law Review.
“I felt like I owed it to the clients I encountered while working with the SPLC, who endured unfathomable suffering,” she said. “Their stories truly weighed on me, and writing about how the law should condemn their suffering helped me feel, selfishly, as though something could be done about it.”
Steven Arango, 3L, was recently appointed as Region VII President for the Hispanic National Bar Association’s Law Student Division.
Arango will serve as a liaison between the law student community of Region VII and the Regional Attorney of the Association who serves their region. He will report to the Division’s President-Elect on the activities and initiatives in Region VII and will recruit qualified persons and organizations within Region VII to join the Association and Division as members.
“God placed a passion on my heart to serve,” Arango said. “That passion is interwoven into my DNA, a part of the very fabric of who I am and how I view my mission in life. And becoming the Region VII President of HNBA-LSD provided me with the perfect opportunity to live out that passion.”
Bob Blackburn (‘13) has joined Maynard Cooper’s Birmingham office as Of Counsel in the firm’s Corporate Securities & Tax practice.
Greg Brockwell (’02) has been listed in Best Lawyers 2018 in the area of Construction and Litigation.
Nate Cartmell (‘15) has joined Maynard Cooper’s Birmingham office as Of Counsel in the firm’s Corporate Securities & Tax practice as well as the firm’s Banking practice.
Mary Pat Damrich (’18) has joined Starnes Davis Florie as an Associate in the firm’s Birmingham office. She will focus on a variety of areas, including general civil litigation, medical malpractice, labor and employment, professional liability, and products liability.
Alan Enslen (’97) joined Baker Donelson Bearman Caldwell & Berkowitz PC as a Shareholder on the Global Business team.
Mike Ermert (‘90) was named a Veteran of Influence by the Birmingham Business Journal.
Reggie Hamner (‘65) received the Wayne Greenhaw Service to the Humanities Award at The Alabama Colloquium. The award is given in recognition of a past or present board member for outstanding service to the Alabama Humanities Foundation.
Lyn Head (‘90) was appointed Chairman of the Board of Pardons and Paroles by Governor Kay Ivey.
Ben Morris (’03) was featured in the Birmingham Business Journal for launching FuelFox, a fuel delivery service.
Caroline Page (’18) joined Burr & Forman as an associate in the firm’s Labor and Employment practice group.
Edward S. Sledge IV (‘03) was named a Veteran of Influence by the Birmingham Business Journal.
Shalyn Smith (’16) has been appointed as Attorney in the Office of General Counsel of the United States Department of Health and Human Services.
The following alumni were named as Rising Stars of Law by the Birmingham Business Journal:
Kitty Rogers Brown (‘05), Shareholder, White Arnold & Dowd PC
Jennifer Clark (‘05), Partner, Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP
Christopher Driver (‘15), Associate, Badham and Buck
Starr Turner Drum (‘09), Attorney, Maynard Cooper & Gale
Grace Long Kipp (‘06), Partner, Spotswood Sansom & Sansbury LLC
Will Lattimore (‘11), Partner, Gathings Law
Marcus Maples (‘06), Shareholder, Baker Donelson Bearman Caldwell & Berkowitz PC
Charles W. Prueter (‘12), Associate, Waller Lansden Dortch & Davis LLP
Austin Smith (‘14), Associate, Baker Donelson Bearman Caldwell & Berkowitz PC
Jansen Voss (‘06), Partner, Christian & Small LLP
Ronald D. “Scott” Williams (‘07), Partner, Burr Forman LLP
Alabama’s Culverhouse Law is planning the inaugural Frank M. Johnson, Jr. Memorial Endowed Lecture on Constitutional Rights and Liberties. The event is scheduled to begin at 8:30 a.m. Friday, January 25, in the Bedsole Moot Court Room. The Honorable Guido Calabresi, Senior Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, has agreed to deliver the keynote address.
Save the date for the 2019 Alabama Law Alumni Society Banquet. It is scheduled for 6 p.m. Friday, February 1, at The Florentine in Birmingham.
Lyman F. (’57) and Leannah Holland contributed $125,237 toward establishing the Lyman F. Holland Jr. and Leannah P. Holland Endowed Visiting Assistant Professorship.
The University of Alabama Chapter of the Order of the Coif donated $12,000 to the Order of the Coif Annual Scholarship at the School of Law.
Professor Penny A. Davis contributed $5,000 to the Class Composite Preservation Fund.
PROFESSOR BILL BREWBAKER presented his paper, “What is Christian Legal Thought?” at Faulkner University on October 19.
PROFESSOR RICHARD DELGADO The administrators of the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) notified Delgado that his paper, “Race and Races: Cases and Resources for a Diverse America, Third Edition – Table of Contents and Introduction,” made one of SSRN’s Top Ten download lists, with 217 downloads in a recent period.
Professor Delgado was interviewed for an hour-long podcast by NYU Professor Ulrich Baer as part of a series aimed at enriching public discourse on free speech and democracy. The podcast took as its starting point his new book, MUST WE DEFEND NAZIS: WHY THE FIRST AMENDMENT SHOULD NOT PROTECT HATE SPEECH AND WHITE SUPREMACY?, and aired recently on Facebook and iTunes. Other speakers included Robert Post (Yale), Stanley Fish (Cardozo); Erwin Chemerinsky (Berkeley), Julie Suk (CUNY Graduate Center), Fred Schauer (Virginia), Sonya Das (NYU), and Jason Stanley (Yale).
Professor Delgado also took part in a symposium on the most influential books in recent history, scheduled for publication in the Chronicle of Higher Education. Delgado selected two books by historian Peter Irons and discussed their significance for American culture and politics.
Professor Delgado ranked number two in a recent survey of most-cited authors in his field, critical race theory & feminism (2013-2017). Martha Minow (Harvard) was number one. http://leiterlawschool.typepad.com/
PROFESSOR HEATHER ELLIOTT published “Justice Gorsuch’s Would-Be War on Chevron,” 21 Green Bag 2d 315. On October 8, Professor Elliott served as a panelist at a discussion of Water Leadership at the Blackburn Institute at The University of Alabama.
PROFESSOR MIRIT EYAL-COHEN presented her empirical project on the “Causal Effect of Taxation on Innovative Companies;’ Decision-Making Process” at the Midwest Law & Economic conference held in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
PROFESSOR CASEY FAUCON’s paper, “Economic Empowerment in the Alabama Black Belt: A Transactional Law Clinic Theory and Model,” was recently solicited for publication in the symposium issue of the Tennessee Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice.
Professor Faucon presented her paper, “Black Market Legal Service Providers,” at the NYU Law School Clinical Law Review Writers Conference 2018 in September.
PROFESSOR PAUL HORWITZ participated in a symposium at Florida International University’s College of Law, “Barnette at 75,” which marked the 75th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s seminal “flag salute” decision, West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette. Professor Horwitz presented a paper offering a close reading of the opinions in Barnette. The symposium papers will be published in the FIU Law Review.
PROFESSOR RONALD J. KROTOSZYNSKI, JR. presented “The First Amendment as a Source of Positive Rights: The Warren Court and First Amendment Easements to Private Property,” a chapter in his new book, The Disappearing First Amendment (forthcoming Cambridge University Press 2019), at a colloquium hosted by the law faculty at the Syracuse University College of Law, in Syracuse, New York On October 4, 2018. On October 6, 2018, Professor Krotoszynski presented, “Do Words Matter?: The Limited Relevance of Constitutional Text to Securing the Freedom of Speech,” at the sixth annual Comparative Constitutional Law Roundtable, sponsored by the University of Virginia School of Law and hosted by the Smith Center on the Constitution at James Madison’s Montpelier estate, in Orange, Virginia. On October 25-26, 2018, he served as a reader/commentator at the annual Southeast Regional Junior/Senior Scholars Workshop, at the University of Georgia School of Law, in Athens, Georgia. On November 1, 2018, Professor Krotoszynski presented the American Bar Association Administrative Law Section’s 2018 annual award for the best work published in administrative law, at the section’s annual fall meeting, in Washington, D.C. He chairs the section’s annual award selection committee. Professor Krotoszynski recently has published “Whistleblowing Speech and the First Amendment,” 93 Indiana Law Journal 267 (2018). Finally, Professor Krotoszynski has authored three op-eds: Speaking Truth to Power, The Los Angeles Times, Oct. 2, 2018, at A11; The Case for Impeaching Kavanaugh, The New York Times, Sept. 22, 2018, at A21; and In Defense of the Country Lawyer, The New York Times, Sept. 8, 2018, at A21.
PROFESSOR JEAN STEFANCIC tied for fifteenth place, along with Mari Matsuda and Ruth Colker, in the 20 most-cited critical theories of law (feminism and critical race) scholars in the U.S. for the period 2013-2017. http://leiterlawschool.typepad.com/
PROFESSOR ADAM STEINMAN published “Access to Justice, Rationality, and Personal Jurisdiction,” 71 Vanderbilt Law Review 1401 (2018) [Link here: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3270046]
He also spoke at “MDL at 50 – The 50th Anniversary of Multidistrict Litigation,” a conference co-hosted by the Center on Civil Justice at NYU Law School and the Liman and Solomon Centers at Yale Law School. [Link here: http://www.law.nyu.edu/centers/civiljustice/2018-early-fall-conference-mdl-at-50]
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.
