FACULTY

FORUM

University of Tennessee

College of Law

Vol. 8 ◊ February 2023

Wendy Bach

On February 11, Professor Wendy Bach participated in an author event at Union Avenue Books in downtown Knoxville, spotlighting her book, "Prosecuting Poverty Criminalizing Care."

Professor Bach also appeared last week on a panel on the criminalization of pregnancy at an Arizona State University College of Law symposium titled "Innocence Behind Bars."

Zack Buck

Professor Zack Buck published "Fraud, Abuse, and Financial Conflicts of Interest" in the New England Journal of Medicine, on Feb. 23, 2023, as part of its Fundamentals of Health Law series. It is available here. In the piece, Professor Buck summarizes the laws that govern health care fraud and abuse and financial conflicts of interest—technical, complicated, and sprawling rules of which physicians must be aware when practicing medicine.

Professor Buck was also interviewed as part of a podcast series produced by the New England Journal of Medicine, in which he spoke about his article, "Fraud, Abuse, and Financial Conflicts of Interest." The podcast is available for download here.

Joan Heminway

On February 10, Professor Joan Heminway presented her essay, "Tennessee’s DAO Act: Positive Innovation or Fringe Legislation?," at the Florida State University College of Law. Professor Heminway was one of four featured presenters at the inaugural symposium of the FSU Business Review, “New Frontiers in Organizational Law.” The essay will be published in the FSU Business Review later this year.

Professor Heminway has also accepted an invitation to be an Anderson Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation Fellow for Spring 2023 and the 2023-2024 academic year. The fellowship program is a new initiative of the Anderson Center designed to, among other things, create “a community of people across UTK who are conducting academic research related to entrepreneurship and/or innovation.”

Professor Heminway also gave two presentations over the past few weeks. On February 16, she presented an online lecture as part of a series on the HBO Max show "Succession," primed to start its fourth and final season on March 26. Her lecture, "What the Roys Should Learn from the Demoulas Family (But Probably Won't)," offered observations about corporate fiduciary duties as they might apply to "Succession’s" Roy family by illuminating corporate fiduciary duty issues faced by the Demoulas family in Massachusetts. In addition, on February 24, Professor Heminway traveled to Chattanooga to give a continuing legal education presentation to the members of the Southeastern Tennessee Lawyer’s Association for Women (SETLAW). The presentation, "Mixed Breeds," was sponsored by Chambliss, Bahner & Stophel, P.C. and covered ways in which Tennessee’s laws governing animals are both leading and trailing national efforts and trends.

Becky Jacobs

Professor Becky L. Jacobs recently participated in several interdisciplinary seminars. The first was hosted by the CURENT research center housed in UT’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. CURENT, the Center for Ultra-Wide-Area Resilient Electric Energy Transmission Networks, is a graduated National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center that was initially supported by NSF and the Department of Energy before becoming self-sustaining. A collaboration between academia, industry, and national laboratories, CURENT is led by the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Partner institutions include Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Northeastern University, and Tuskegee University. At that workshop, she discussed state preemption of local government action decision-making on energy-related project development and its implications for environmental justice.

Professor Jacobs also attended a "Just Environments" workshop and discussed her work on the gendered impact of climate migration within the frames of wayfaring, de-centering, and rhizomatic thinking. UT’s Just Environments seminar is its chapter of a national alliance of academics, scientists, architects, planners, and other professions that merges humanities perspectives, environmental studies, law, social justice theory, and critical infrastructure studies to examine how artificial and natural infrastructures can affect, work against, or work with ecological systems to affect human communities.

Lucy Jewel

On January 4, 2023, Professor Lucy Jewel participated in an AALS session entitled "Disrupting the Status Quo: How Law Schools Can Make A Difference By Making Difference Meaningful." In her presentation, Professor Jewel discussed her research into the AALS organization and its response to civil rights issues in the first part of the 20th Century. Also at AALS, on January 6, Professor Jewel participated on a panel entitled "Teaching Towards Equity: The Use of Pedagogy to Overcome Barriers." On that panel, Professor Jewel shared some of the legal writing lessons contained in her forthcoming book "Critical and Comparative Legal Rhetoric" (with Teri McMurtry-Chubb and Elizabeth Berenguer). 

On January 17, Professor Jewel was a guest speaker (virtual) in a Law, Rhetoric, and Public Policy Seminar taught by Dr. Susan Tanner at LSU law school. Professor Jewel spoke to the class about her scholarship on critical legal rhetoric. 

On February 1, Professor Jewel virtually participated in a panel discussion at the Indigenous Access to Justice Conference in Tempe, Arizona. The conference was sponsored by the American Bar Foundation, Open Society Foundations, National Association of Indian Legal Services, and Arizona State University. Drawing upon her research in comparative rhetoric, Professor Jewel spoke about how indigenous legal rhetoric offers exciting pathways toward law and justice reform.  

Professor Jewel has been appointed to the Legal Writing Institute’s AI Task Force. The Task Force will study emerging AI technologies (like ChatGPT) and what impact they will have in the field of legal writing. 

Brian Krumm

Professor Brian Krumm was invited to be an Anderson Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation Fellow. The Anderson Center’s research goals are to facilitate and disseminate cutting-edge academic research on issues that matter concerning entrepreneurship and innovation. To achieve these goals, ACEI supports UT researchers through the Anderson Center Research Fund and partners with academic departments to promote research about entrepreneurship and innovation.

Professor Krumm was also interviewed by WBIR concerning the recently enacted Consumer Protection law which concerns businesses that makes an automatic renewal or continuous service offer to a consumer in this state. The law requires the business to provide a clear and conspicuous notice of the terms of service, obtain the consumer’s consent for the automatic renewal, and provide information on how to cancel the automatic renewal or subscription.

George Kuney

Professor George Kuney and his wife, Donna Looper, recently published, with the assistance of Kendall Jones and Professor Eliza Boles, a free source edition of their book “A Civil Matter” which tells the story of the case of Neely v. Fox, arising out of an automobile accident tried before Magistrate Bruce Guyton here in the Eastern District of Tennessee. The book presents the story and procedural history and features live links, Wikipedia style, to the underlying source litigation documents in an effort to illustrate civil practice under the FRCP. The book is located here in the College of Law’s BE Press Repository curated by Professor Boles.

Alex Long

Professor Alex Long’s article "Abolishing the Suicide Rule" was recently cited in an article in the Cincinnati Enquirer concerning a recent court ruling involving an employee who died by suicide after allegedly being the victim of a prolonged pattern of harassment.

Glenn Reynolds

Professor Glenn Reynolds is now writing long-form essays on Substack, a platform used by a number of leading independent journalists such as Virginia Postrel, Andrew Sullivan, Glenn Greenwald, and Matt Taibbi. Here's a recent example.

Professor Reynolds also appeared on Andrew Keen's "Keen On" podcast, talking about social media and the history of the blogosphere.

Briana Rosenbaum

Professor Rosenbaum gave two presentations of her research regarding the Role of Law School Faculty in Perpetuating Segregation at UT Law in February, one to the UT Law community, and one to the faculty at the University of South Carolina.  

Professor Rosenbaum has been awarded a Diversity Challenge Grant by the Division of Diversity and Engagement to support her planned project, "The History of Discrimination in Legal Education and Its Legacy Today." Using UT Law’s segregationist history as a case study, Professor Rosenbaum will tour law schools across the country to invite discussions of the history of discrimination in legal education and the impact this history continues to have on law schools and the legal profession. The Diversity Challenge Grant Program supports research or teaching projects that focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion, racial injustice, systemic racism, class, human dignity, or social justice.