Professor Joyce Vance published her most recent opinion article titled “Judge Amy Berman Jackson’s Barr rebuke opens the door to DOJ accountability” on MSNBC.com.
Alabama Law professor, Adam Steinman, joined professors Helen Hershkoff, Arthur R. Miller, Alan B. Morrison, and John E. Sexton in writing an amicus brief that was recently cited by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in the Douglass v. Nippon Yusen Kabushiki Kaisha decision. To learn more about the 5th Circuit’s decision in this case, read Professor Steinman’s recent post on the “Civil Procedure & Federal Courts Blog.”
Each year, students from Alabama Law compete in several moot court competitions covering a variety of topics from environmental to bankruptcy law. Throughout the past semester, these teams have performed impressively—including a first-place finish at the National Health Law Transactional Moot Court Competition, an “Elite Eight Finish” at the ABA National Appellate Advocacy Competition, and several “Best Oralist” awards.
National Health Law Transactional Moot Court Competition
On March 26, the Alabama Law students Alicia Gilbert, Halle Diaz, and Steffie Rosene, with faculty co-coaches Ben McMichael and Bill Brewbaker, earned a first-place win in the National Health Law Transactional Moot Court Competition. This event included both written and oral components, and the judges highly praised the team’s presentation style in the final oral round.
ABA National Appellate Advocacy Competition
Alabama Law fielded two successful teams at the ABA National Appellate Advocacy Competition who together made up the Carol Andrews ABA National Moot Court Team. The first team—including John Gillespie, Mollie Gillis, and Robert Humphrey—was named regional co-champions and finished in the “Elite Eight” at nationals—placing in the top eight out of 192 teams from across the country. The second team—including Ian Ross, Tyler Smoot, and Hilary Williamson—had a strong showing at the Oklahoma City Regional competition, and Hilary was awarded the eighth-best oralist among a field of 93 advocates. Mollie Gillis also won an individual award as the sixth-best oralist at the regional competition. Both teams were greatly supported by coach Anita Kay Head and team manager Caitlin Cobb.
Duberstein Bankruptcy Moot Court Competition
Near the end of March students Tatum Jackson, Catherine Milling, and Ethan Calhoun— with support from manager Kristin Martin and coaches Gary Sullivan and Mark Williams—competed in the 29th Annual Duberstein Bankruptcy Moot Court Competition hosted virtually by St. John’s Law School and the Cristol Kahn Paskay Cup hosted virtually by the University of Miami. The team did an outstanding job representing the Law School through the preliminary rounds in each competition.
Environmental Law National Moot Court Competition
Students Anna Grace Freeman, Michael Mertle, Tyler Thull, and student coach Charles Miller progressed through to the quarter-finals in the Environmental Law National Moot Court Competition hosted virtually by the Elizabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University in New York. Grace brought home an award for best oralist during preliminaries and coaches Heather Elliot and Bill Andreen say they couldn’t be prouder of the team.
Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition
Students Ian Burt, Anna Marcroft, Gillian Purser, Jennifer Sandlin, and Gabby Spiro—coached by Cameron Fogle—competed this April in the International Rounds of the Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition after going 3-1 in the preliminary rounds with their only loss against Harvard Law School.
Saul Lefkowitz Trademark Law Moot Court Competition
The talent for moot court oralists spans far and wide across the different Alabama Law teams, and this was made clear by the Bruce Siegal Intellectual Property Moot Court Team who finished second at the regional competition and came home with a national win for best oralist at the first all-virtual Saul Lefkowitz Trademark Law Moot Court Competition. The team coached by Alan Durham consisted of students Erin Hall, Nancy Grace Klein, and Reave Shewmake who received high praise from a panel of judges largely consisting of members of the Trademark Trial and Appeals Board.
Uvaldo Herrera National Moot Court Competition
Even though most competitions were virtual this year, students Stephanie Marrero and Carter-William Palek were not competing from the comfort of their homes but instead from different countries in the Uvaldo Herrera National Moot Court Competition. Despite the fact that a power outage meant he participated in the competition from a Pizza Hut restaurant, Palek was able to bring home a win for best oralist, and the team—coached by Cameron Fogle—finished in third place overall. The team was coached by Cameron Fogle.
The University of Alabama School of Law congratulates these and all of our teams on a job well done!
Though masks and social distancing offered a different experience than years before, Alabama Law hosted in-person Commencement at Coleman Coliseum on Sunday, May 2. Because last year’s event was moved to a virtual format, the Law School was delighted to invite members of the Class of 2020 to come back and celebrate their achievements with the Class of 2021.
This year, Alabama Law conferred degrees on 130 graduates—including 105 Juris Doctor (J.D) degrees. In addition, one student took the Doctor of Juridical Science Degree, two J.D. graduates took joint Master’s Degrees in Business Administration, and nine J.D. graduates took the Master of Laws Degree (LL.M.) in Taxation or Business Transactions. In addition, 12 graduates took an LL.M. in Taxation or Business Transactions, and one graduate took a Juris Masters in Taxation.
The Commencement Address was given by The Honorable John H. England, Jr., who is retired from the Tuscaloosa County Circuit Court and is a member of the Board of Trustees of The University of Alabama. Judge England is also a 1974 Alabama Law graduate and was a member of the first class of admitted African American students to the School of Law.
In his address, Judge England shared advice from his three children and niece—who are all Alabama Law Alumni—and he concluded by passing the torch of responsibility on to the next generation of legal professionals, “To the graduates, we expect you to lead us to be better than we are.” The crowd met his speech with a standing ovation as he left the stage.
In speaking to the graduates, Dean Mark E. Brandon congratulated them for their tremendous success during a particularly challenging time and shared the following:
“If I could wish anything for you, it would be not merely for success. It would be that you use your talents – and the adversity you have faced – to make a difference in the lives of others. There is no single path for doing so. But as you choose and pursue your path, I hope that you will make it one in which you can not only do well – but also do good.”
For anyone who was unable to attend the graduation ceremony, and especially for those who may have experienced technical issues with the streaming link, here is a video recording of the 2021 Alabama Law Commencement Ceremony.
On Friday, April 9, The White House announced that Alabama Law’s Charles E. Tweedy, Jr., Endowed Chairholder of Law and Director of the Program in Constitutional Studies, Tara Leigh Grove, has been selected as a Commissioner for the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States—which was formed by an executive order issued by President Biden.
Serving as a bipartisan group of experts on the Court and the debate over reforming the Court, the Commission consists of top legal and academic scholars from across the country as well as former federal judges and legal practitioners.
Every year, The University of Alabama School of Law awards one fortunate student the Frank M. Johnson, Jr. Memorial Endowed Scholarship. Tyler Smoot, a 3L student at Alabama Law, has been the recipient of this scholarship for the past two years, and he credits the financial support of this endowment for enabling him to earn his law degree.
“Because of this scholarship, I can actually find a job in something I’m passionate about instead of settling for the first one I’m offered because I’m worried about my debt. I can focus on creating some positive change and I’m just really glad that someone, somewhere believed in me.”
Read more about Tyler’s Law School journey.
The University of Alabama School of Law boasts seven different legal clinics in which students, under the supervision of a practicing attorney, gain hands-on experience by providing free legal assistance to low-income individuals, business startups, and non-profit organizations. These clinics focus on a variety of substantive areas and cases such as civil litigation, entrepreneurship, criminal defense, children’s rights, and domestic violence law. One remarkable case recently came out of our Elder Law Clinic directed by Professor Allyson Gold.
Halle Diaz, a 2L student at Alabama Law, represented an elderly, disabled woman who was at risk of being evicted from her long-term care facility due to confusion over whether she was eligible for assisted living. After months of tireless advocacy, Diaz successfully appealed the insurance termination. As a result, the client was able to remain in her home and recoup more than $25,000 in back pay compensation.
Read more about Halle’s success through the Elder Law Clinic.
Dean Nathaniel and Frances Hansford contributed $100,000 to the Nathaniel Hansford and Frances Fincher Hansford Endowed Scholarship Fund.
Professor John Felipe Acevedo’s article, Law’s Gaze, was accepted for publication in volume 25 of the Journal of Gender, Race and Justice. The article examines obscenity law through the lens of social science and humanistic theories to assert that law’s criminalization only tells us about the lawmakers and enforcers and nothing about the image being criminalized. This makes it impossible, despite claims of existing jurisprudence, to have an objective definition of criminal obscenity.
He was also named a scholar to the National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute on Law and Culture in Medieval England, which will take place virtually this summer. The institute is designed to expose faculty to pre-13th century sources of English law by pushing the definition of what is classified as a legal document.
Professor Mirit Eyal-Cohen Professor Mirit Eyal-Cohen presented her essay “The Illusory Promise of Free Enterprise: A Primer to Promoting Racially Diverse Entrepreneurship” at the Critical Tax Theory Conference organized by the University of California at Irvine. The essay argues that, as opposed to the current depiction of the state of minority entrepreneurship, minority-owned businesses experience more business failure, turnover, and job loss than traditional businesses rendering them small and meaningless in the marketplace without the proper tools and opportunities to increase equity and wealth. In the essay, Eyal-Cohen explores how this disparity in American free enterprise is a source of systemic racism and social injustice, identifies the current legal programs that disadvantage minority-owned businesses, and proposes new legal methods to increase dedicated resources and educational access to racially diverse entrepreneurs.
Time magazine, Washington Post, Education Week, and the New York Times in a front-page story covered the recent increase of interest in critical race theory (CRT) and the role of Professor Richard Delgado, Profesor Jean Stefancic, and their book “Critical Race Theory: An Introduction” in this surge. A number of the articles trace the origin of CRT in a straight line to the early abolition movement and highlight the part the two authors’ book played in shaping a new paradigm of race and racism.
Some of the more recent coverage includes an article in The Guardian on critical white studies entitled The Invention of Whiteness; another in American Bar Association Human Rights Journal, by Janel George, entitled A Lesson on Critical Race Theory; a number by N.Y. Times columnist Michelle Goldberg, including The Social Justice Purge at Colleges; and a CNN explainer What Critical Race Theory Is–and Isn’t.
In addition, Delgado had a number of law review articles accepted or published:
Rodrigo’s Reappraisal, ___B.U. L. Rev. (online, forthcoming 2121) (coauthored with Jean Stefancic); “The Least of These”: The Case for the Nationwide Injunction in Immigration Cases as a Critical Democratic Institution, 26 UC Davis Soc. Just. L. Rev__(forthcoming 2121) (coauthored with Allen Slater); Against “Equality”: A Critical Essay for the NAACP and Others, 48 Hast. Const. L.Q. 235 (2021) (coauthored with Jean Stefancic); Groundhog Law, 21 J. L. Society 1 (2021); and Farm-Raised Trout, 25 UC Davis Soc. Just. L. Rev. 1 (2020) (coauthored with Jean Stefancic).
Professor Russell Gold’s article Volunteer Prosecutors was accepted for publication in the American Criminal Law Review (forthcoming 2022).
Professor Ronald Krotoszynski, Jr. published Squaring a Circle: Advice and Consent, Faithful Execution, and the Vacancies Reform Act, 55 Georgia Law Review 731 (2021) (co-authored with Atticus DeProspo—’19 Alabama Law graduate). He also has published Against Congressional Case Snatching, 62 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 791 (2021) (co-authored with Atticus DeProspo).
On March 19, 2021, Krotoszynski spoke on a panel considering Global Privacy Issues in the Pandemic Era at the 2021 Technology, Media, and Privacy Conference at the University of Florida Levin College of Law, in Gainesville, Florida (via Zoom); his comments focused on The U.S. Constitutional Right of Informational Privacy and Vaccine Policies (with Attention to Vaxports). On March 26, 2021, he moderated a panel on The Constitutional and Ethical Implications of Government Surveillance which was part of a large symposium considering What Do You Do When the Man’s Spying on You?: The Intersection of Government Surveillance and Legal Advocacy at the University of Alabama School of Law, in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and organized and hosted by the Journal of the Legal Profession (via Zoom).
Professor Joyce Vance was featured on NPR to discuss the verdict in the case of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin who was pronounced guilty by a jury on all three charges — second and third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. You can listen to her interview here.
Professor Susan Pace Hamill published her latest article on Canopy Forum titled “Religiously Based Ethical Arguments Favoring Estate Taxes.” The full piece can be viewed here.
Over the past few years, gig workers—individuals who provide services to customers of companies such as Uber, Door Dash and Instacart—have been making headlines as law makers, corporations and workers have tried to navigate the complexities that the gig economy has presented. In 2019, California’s state legislature passed a law, AB 5, effectively granting gig workers employee status. In 2020, however, Californian voters passed a proposition to limit the effect of AB 5, thereby demonstrating how complicated and rapidly changing the legal infrastructure surrounding gig work can be.
In October, Deepa Das Acevedo, Assistant Professor at The University of Alabama School of Law, published Beyond the Algorithm: Qualitative Insights for Gig Work Regulation with Cambridge University Press. As regulation debates continue, Das Acevedo’s volume demonstrates why government actors must go beyond mass surveys and data-scrubbing in order to truly understand the realities of gig work. Each chapter in Beyond the Algorithm uses vivid, concrete examples to show how one can better understand the similarities and differences between gig and conventional employment. As a whole, the volume helps lawyers and government officials who oversee gig work policies to respond to the needs of the workers and industry in a reasonable and humane way.
“It is important to realize that there are real people behind the regulations and policy debates—people who at the end of the day are just struggling to make a living,” said Das Acevedo. “They are not monolithic in terms of priorities and interests. [In fact], increasing numbers of empirical studies show that they have a more complicated understanding of what it means to be an employee—with no definitive explanation as to whether the overall workers desire to remain as individual contractors, with the freedoms that affords, or to become employees, with the security that provides.”
Das Acevedo’s edited volume brings together a collection of qualitative empirical research from academic scholars across law and social sciences disciplines, while also drawing on experiences of drivers, journalists, and worker’s advocates who were among the first groups to study gig work from the bottom up. In doing so, the collection is able to reveal the narrative and real-life experiences that define gig work and offer insights to the policy debates being fought out in courts, town halls, and even in Congress.
CAFE and Vox Media announced that Professor Joyce Vance has joined the CAFE Insider podcast as a co-host with Preet Bharara. Professor Vance previously served as the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama, and she is now a law professor at the University of Alabama School of Law, a frequent contributor for NBC and MSNBC, and a co-host of the #SistersInLaw podcast.
Listen in to Professor Joyce Vance and Preet Bhara on the CAFE Insider podcast here.
The University of Alabama School of Law boasts seven different legal clinics in which students, under the supervision of a practicing attorney, gain hands-on experience by providing free legal assistance to low-income individuals, business startups, and non-profit organizations. These clinics focus on a variety of substantive areas and cases such as civil litigation, entrepreneurship, criminal defense, children’s rights, and domestic violence law. One remarkable case recently came out of our Elder Law Clinic directed by Professor Allyson Gold.
Halle Diaz, a 2L student at Alabama Law, represented an elderly, disabled woman who was at risk of being evicted from her long-term care facility due to confusion over whether she was eligible for assisted living. After months of tireless advocacy, Diaz successfully appealed the insurance termination. As a result, the client was able to remain in her home and recoup more than $25,000 in back pay compensation.
Alabama Law 1L Student Halle Diaz
Remembering the initial intake call, Halle shared how shocked and overwhelmed she felt as she first heard the details of the case.
“After talking on the phone with this client for two or three hours and then looking down at my notes I felt overwhelmed. Then I thought, if I don’t take this case who else is going to want to?” Halle explained.
After waiting months for the appeal to be approved, during which the client was only saved from homelessness by the COVID eviction ban, the news of the appeal’s approval was finally delivered in December. Halle said the importance now rests in making sure all logistics are addressed so there is no chance of this happening again.
Reflecting on her path to law school, Halle credits her father for instilling a passion in her for both education and law. She recalls how he would share stories about attending law school in San Salvador during the Salvadoran Civil War—a time when people were shooting in the streets while he was trying to take the bus to school. Halle now recognizes that the privilege she enjoys of having a family that encouraged her to pursue an education is not shared by everyone, everywhere—even in the U.S.
“America isn’t considered a third world country, but there are many people in the U.S. who are living like it is,” Halle said.
While Halle doesn’t know in exactly what direction she will go post-graduation, she shared that her experience with the Elder Law Clinic has piqued an interest in elderly care law where she can help rewrite the narrative of those struggling to thrive in America. She also expressed an interest in transactional health care law, which deals with hospital mergers. No matter where she ends up, Halle shared that her experience working this case will benefit her long-term career pursuits.
“UA is an incredible law school that gives you hands-on experience. When I was measuring UA against other universities, some of them may have been higher ranked, but the Elder Law Clinic was something truly unique and special. Besides that, Alabama has great professors who care about who you are and what you want out of law school and try to help you get there,” Halle explained as she mentioned meeting with Professor Allyson Gold later that day to discuss her future plans.
When asked about this case, Professor Gold expressed little surprise that Halle performed so well. She said Halle, and many other clinic students, did not shy away from taking on the daunting task of tackling a real-life case in the middle of COVID-19. Gold expressed that her favorite part of running the Elder Law Clinic was teaching developing students who are more open to being creative in their solutions to real-world issues.
While Halle’s case is still ongoing, it is in the closing stages and it appears to be another win for the Elder Law Clinic—one of many more to come at the Alabama School of Law.
Written by: Heather Gann
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