Professor Joyce White Vance is quoted in The Washington Post about President Trump’s Reaction to the Russia investigation.
For more, read “Trump Keeps Saying He’s Innocent. So Why Does He Keep Sounding Like He’s Guilty?“
Professor Julie Hill is quoted in The Tennessee Star about how it is more difficult to engage in money laundering in Bermuda and the Cayman Islands.
For more, read “The Connection Between Russia and Two Green Groups Fighting Fracking in U.S.”
Professor Allyson E. Gold, Assistant Professor of Clinical Legal Instruction and Director of the Elder Law Clinic, will be honored with the 2018 Clinical Legal Education Association (CLEA) Award for Excellence in a Public Interest Case or Project for work she supervised for the Health Justice Project in Chicago.
CLEA established the award to honor and recognize a case or project that contributes to the public good, especially projects that effectively call attention to and/or significantly redress a high priority need of underserved or low-income residents.
Allyson E. Gold
“I am incredibly humbled by the recognition and hope to use it as an opportunity to also highlight the outstanding work of the Alabama Elder Law Clinic students,” Gold said.
Between 2015-2017, the Health Justice Project, a medical-legal partnership clinic at Loyola University Chicago School of Law, addressed antiquated federal laws that forced children residing in federally assisted housing to become lead poisoned at four times the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention level before requiring any lead hazard inspection. At the same time, zero-bedroom units were exempt from any protection and families were forced to stay in the unit poisoning their children if they wanted to retain their rental assistance.
After representing families and investigating the issue nationwide, the students took a “big tent” approach and, with the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law and Green & Healthy Homes Initiative as partners, convened a coalition of affected families, numerous law school clinics, national nonprofits and experts from public health, medical, scientific, and legal fields. Students drafted a Petition for Rulemaking under the Administrative Procedure Act urging HUD to update the Lead Safe Housing Rule, launched a social media campaign, conducted outreach to policymakers, drafted model comments to federal rulemaking, trained families in advocacy skills, and provided technical and drafting advice to members of Congress.
As a result, HUD updated its regulations to match the CDC standard, Congress amended federal law to remove the zero-bedroom unit exemption; the Government Accountability Office conducted a study on the issue; and senators introduced a bi-partisan bill requiring primary prevention of lead poisoning in federally assisted housing, among other successes.
Two members of The University of Alabama School of Law faculty were honored for their research contributions at Faculty Research Day.
As part of the celebration, Professors Jenny Carroll and Heather Elliott were recognized as recipients of the President’s Faculty Research Award during a ceremony April 17 in the Bryant Conference Center on the UA campus.
Jenny Carroll
Professor Carroll is a nationally visible scholar of juvenile justice. She also studies the role of juries in criminal cases.
“Professor Carroll argues that juries are not merely instruments for procedural fairness in criminal proceedings, but are also an expression of democracy, extending from the political sphere into the judicial,” said Dean Mark E. Brandon.
Professor Elliott is a nationally noted expert on the rules of standing–the rules that allow a plaintiff to press a civil claim for relief in a court of law. She also studies the availability and use of water in Alabama.
“As it happens, the State of Alabama presently relies on 19th-century legal regime to regulate 21st-century problems,” Brandon said. “Professor Elliott’s scholarship aims to nudge the state into the 21st century — so that we may deal effectively both with problems in the here-and-now and problems that we may reasonably expect to arise as products of changes in the earth’s climate.”
Heather Elliott
Sponsored by the offices of the President and Vice President for Research and Economic Development, the award goes to outstanding faculty researchers from across UA’s colleges and schools.
The winners are two senior and a junior investigators from each of three groupings: physical and biological sciences, mathematics and engineering; social and behavioral sciences; and arts and humanities.
The faculty-led Research Advisory Committee selected honorees from nominations across campus.
“The research and scholarship by our faculty on this campus betters our society and enhances the educational experience of our students, so it is fitting to set aside a day to honor those contributions,” said Dr. John Higginbotham, UA interim vice president for Research and Economic Development.
Faculty Research Day highlights and celebrates excellence in research and scholarship by bringing together faculty from across the campus. The event also increases awareness and generates enthusiasm for scholarship among faculty at UA as the University moves to advance its research enterprise.
In addition to remarks by UA President Stuart R. Bell and Higginbotham, Dr. Joshua Rothman, professor and chair of the history department, delivered the keynote address.
The 2017 Faculty Research Award Finalists were:
Senior Investigator:
Junior Investigator:
Senior Investigator:
Junior Investigator:
Senior Investigator:
Junior Investigator:
Legal scholars visited The University of Alabama School of Law April 13 to discuss gender inequality.
The symposium on Gender Inequality after 55 Years of the Equal Pay Act of 1963 recognized the broader goals of the Equal Pay Act, celebrated the successes achieved since its enactment, and invited leading scholars to lay the foundation in the fight for gender equality.
“The Equal Pay Act commanded that material compensation be based on ability and merit, for the most part, and it implied a promise of equality of economic opportunity to complement the 19th Amendment’s political opportunity,” Dean Mark E. Brandon said during his introduction.
More than a half century after the enactment, the gender wage gap continues to be a stark reality for many—particularly women of color and transgender people. With those realities in mind, the editors of the Alabama Civil Rights & Civil Liberties Law Review invited scholars who could address gender inequality in broad terms.
Stephanie Bornstein, Associated Professor of Law at the University of Florida’s Fredric G. Levin College, examined the legal implications of framing pay discrimination as a violation of minimum labor standards under the Fair Labor Standards Act, rather than as an infringement on civil rights under Title VII.
Mary Anne Case, the Arnold I. Shure Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School, used modern examples to analyze the potential application of Title IX to the performing arts. She provided reasons why Title VII and the Equal Pay Act may not provide solutions and why Title IX could provide some relief.
Andrea Ritchie, Researcher-in-Residence on Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Criminalization at the Social Justice Institute of the Barnard Center for Research on Women, provided statistics, examples, and court cases to show how a lack of income equality and high poverty and homelessness rates render women quite vulnerable to criminalization and police violence, noting that mass incarceration and criminalization have driven women further into poverty despite progress on the wage front.
Adam Romero, Director of Legal Scholarship and Federal Policy, and the Arnold D. Kassoy Scholar of Law at The Williams Institute, explored the most recent research of employment discrimination against sexual and gender minorities, the possible effects on their health from that discrimination, and how the courts and other agencies have interpreted anti-sex discrimination statutes.
Professor Fred Vars appears on WBRC Fox 6 and discusses a study that shows gun waiting periods reduce suicides by 2 to 5 percent.
Professor Joyce White Vance writes an op-ed in USA Today with John McKay about how President Trump has violated constitutional limits on interference for self-interest.
For more, read “Pardon offers? Trump Russia Interference Violates Constitution and His Oath.”
Alabama Law is excited to announce four new members of our faculty. Their arrival strengthens the academic offerings available to our students and increases the level of quality scholarship produced by our faculty. All four will arrive this summer, and teach their first courses to our students during the 2018-19 academic year.
Deepa Das Acevedo
PhD – University of Chicago
JD – University of Chicago
AB – Princeton University
Deepa Das Acevedo studies employment regulation and new work models with a focus on the sharing economy. Her scholarship blends doctrinal analysis with ethnographic fieldwork among workers, worker-advocates, and policy-makers. Professor Das Acevedo currently teaches as a Sharswood Fellow at University of Pennsylvania Law School.
Fall ’18 Course: Workplace Law
Spring ’19 Course (tentative): Employee Benefits
Meghan Boone
LLM – Georgetown University
JD – American University
BA – Trinity College
Meghan Boone’s research interests include state regulation of the physical body, emerging trends in civil rights litigation, and issues of inclusion in the legal profession. Her current scholarship involves an examination of the ways in which laws addressing breastfeeding reinforce damaging stereotypes regarding the primacy of women’s maternal role. Professor Boone currently teaches at Wake Forest University School of Law.
Fall ’18 Courses: Family Law I and Reproductive Rights Seminar
Casey Faucon
LLM – University of Wisconsin
JD/DCL – Louisiana State University
BA – Rice University
Casey Faucon’s current scholarship focuses on the structural and operational restrictions imposed on for-profit and non-profit entities, through which lawyers provide legal services in collaboration with or in practice with other professional service providers. Her work addresses how such structural and operational restrictions have created a grey and black market for providers of legal services. Professor Faucon currently teaches at the University of Denver College of Law.
Spring ’19 Course – Entrepreneurial Clinic
Benjamin McMichael
PhD – Vanderbilt University
JD – Vanderbilt University
BS – Wake Forest University
Ben McMichael’s research focuses on the ways in which the law influences the provision of health care in the United States. He has also examined the efficacy of state and federal reforms of punitive damages awards. Professor McMichael is currently a postdoctoral scholar at the Owen Graduate School of Management at Vanderbilt University.
Fall ’18 Course – Torts
Spring ’19 Course (tentative) – Insurance Law
David McAdams, 2L, Kenton McGalliard, 3L, and Meighan Parker, 3L, performed well at the Bryant National Health Law Transactional Moot Court Competition held in Chicago on March 23.
As participants in the competition, McAdams, McGalliard, and Parker prepared a memorandum analyzing a hypothetical health care client’s position in the face of a proposed acquisition and then presented their recommendations to a mock Board of Directors composed of distinguished health care law practitioners from the Chicago area. Although the team did not place in the top three, they received highly complimentary feedback from the teams of judges before whom they made their presentation. They also acquitted themselves extremely well in practice rounds with health care law practitioners in Tuscaloosa and Birmingham.
Professor Bill Brewbaker served as the team’s faculty advisor.
Tyler Foster, Brenton Smith, Laura Stephenson, and Kory Queen, all 2Ls, competed in the final round of the John A. Campbell Moot Court Competition on Wednesday, March 28. These two teams were the last standing in a competitive field of 32 teams.
A distinguished panel served as judges for the final round. They were: The Honorable Carlos F. Lucero, United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit; The Honorable Dennis W. Shedd, United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit; and The Honorable Madeline Hughes Haikala, United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama.
Stephenson and Queen were the winning team, and Stephenson won the Reuben H. Wright Award for best advocate. Cortlin Bond and Morgan Thompson Shelton, also 2Ls, won the Walter P. Gewin Award for best brief.
