Vol. 7 ◊ March 2022

Professor Brad Areheart was interviewed for a Bloomberg feature on weight discrimination. From the article: “When judges or lawmakers weigh who’s covered by existing civil rights laws or who they should be expanded to protect, a frequent concern is the question of what’s called immutability, meaning whether the trait that’s the subject of the discrimination is one a person can’t change. That poses a challenge with weight, which many Americans see largely as a matter of individual choices and discipline. In that respect, weight is comparable to credit history or criminal records, both of which the government has been hesitant to ban employers from judging workers on, says University of Tennessee law professor Brad Areheart.” The entire story is available here.

Professor Ben Barton appeared on the NPR show "On Point" last week to talk about Ketanji Brown Jackson. He joins at the 15 minute mark and is on until the end. You can find the program here.

Professor Barton was also featured in an hour-long Q & A about his book, "The Credentialed Court" that aired on CSPAN. A video can be found here.

Finally, Professor Barton's book, "The Credentialed Court" was recently reviewed favorably by the National Review, and that review can be found here.

Professor Teri Baxter's article "Traumatic Justice" has been published at 56 Univ. Richmond L. Rev. 331 (2022).

Professor Baxter was also interviewed by Raya Quttaineh from WBIR about the impact of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s nomination to the Supreme Court. The article, titled “UT Law Professor Pleased with KBJ Nomination” and interview can be found here.

At the close of 2021, Professor Robert Blitt participated in Nottingham Law School’s "Flashpoints: Human Rights, Law and Religion Conference." Professor Blitt joined panelists from the UK, India and Nigeria to talk about the phenomenon of human rights disinformation under the former Trump administration, and its preoccupation with securing “religious liberty” at the expense of other human rights.

Professor Blitt's latest article, "Human Rights & Disinformation Under the Trump Administration: The Commission on Unalienable Rights," will be published in the forthcoming volume of the Saint Louis University Law Journal and is now available for download on SSRN. The article explores how the former Trump administration harnessed disinformation to target international human rights norms, in turn assaulting common political knowledge shared by democratic states while simultaneously empowering authoritarian and illiberal actors committed to undercutting the international human rights system.

In March, Professor Blitt had an opportunity to reconnect with law students at his alma matter, the University of Toronto, as part of the Faculty of Law’s “Lawyers Doing Cool Things” program. After coming to terms with the premise for this invitation, Professor Blitt enjoyed the chance to reminisce about the other UT and field questions about career paths in academia and international law. 

Also in March, UTK Law’s newly reestablished International Law Students Association hosted a lunchtime talk by Professor Blitt on the international law and human rights-related dimensions of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. Blitt’s remarks introduced and assessed the various international mechanisms that have attempted to address the legality of Russia’s invasion and its ensuing impact on respect for international human rights.

Professor Zack Buck published a scholarship review entitled "An Unapologetically Inconsistent Enforcement Regime" on Jotwell (The Journal of Things We Like (Lots)), on Mar. 24, 2022. In the piece, he provides a review of an article written by health law colleague Jacob Elberg, "Health Care Fraud Means Never Having to Say You’re Sorry," published in the Washington Law Review in 2021. The piece is available here.

On February 22nd, Professor Sherley Cruz was a guest speaker on a Tennessee Bar Association (TBA) Continuing Legal Education workshop sponsored by the TBA’s Young Lawyer’s Division. The session, "Cultural Competency and Implicit Bias: Why It Matters," looked at implicit bias, how it impacts lawyering, and why it matters in the courtroom and when representing clients from the point of view of two women of color with diverse practice experience.

On March 29, 2022, Sherley Cruz was also a guest lecturer for Boston University School of Law’s Access to Justice Clinic. She spoke about her work representing low-wage workers, the role of narratives, and how lawyers can support social movements to tackle systemic barriers to justice.  

Professor Joan Heminway led a series of mindful yoga practices at a recent campus-wide event, "Stand-up, Speak Up: Protecting Psychological Safety in the UT Community." The forum, hosted by the Chancellor’s Commission for Women, featured speakers and workshops focused on the elements of psychological safety, strategies to employ in optimizing and addressing psychological safety in context, and available resources for faculty and staff. Professor Heminway’s portion of the program focused on controlled breathwork, chair yoga postures, and loving kindness meditation.

Professor Heminway was also an invited panelist at Stetson University College of Law’s 2022 Business Law Symposium, “White Collar Crime: A Look into The Past, Present, and Future,” hosted virtually on Zoom on Friday, February 25. She presented her paper “Criminal Insider Trading in Personal Networks,” which will be published in the inaugural volume of the Stetson University Business Law Review.

On March 25, 2022, Professor Becky Jacobs presented at the inaugural Domestic Violence Awareness & Prevention Conference, co-sponsored by UT COL, The Family Justice Center, the McNabb Center, and the YWCA.

Professor Jacob's article, "Perpetuating Persecution: Mental Health and Psychosocial Barriers to US Immigration," was recently published in volume 27 of the Texas Journal on Civil Liberties & Civil Rights (page 1) (2021).

Professor Jacobs also contributed to the Transactions Fall 2021 Connecting the Threads symposium, and that piece is in the editing process now. It is titled: "Failing to Learn from the Texas Power Crisis, (or, The Paradox of an Unreliable 'Electric Reliability Council' and a 'Public Utility Commission' in a Largely Unregulated Market)."

Professor Jacobs also wrote an essay for the book, Discussions in Dispute Resolution: The Foundational Articles (Oxford 2021), which recently won The Outstanding Book Award presented annually by The International Institute for Conflict Prevention and Resolution (CPR). The review committee comprises judges and lawyers from leading corporations, top law firms, and academic institutions across the U.S.

Professor Tom Plank's article, "Custodian or Not: Scrivener’s Error in A Bankruptcy Code Safe Harbor," was published this February in 51 Emory Bankruptcy Developments Journal, 51 Emory Bankr. Devs. J. 51-96 (2021).

A paper by Professor Glenn Reynolds and alumna/nuclear engineer Leigh Outten entered the SSRN Top Download charts at #5 with 2,016 downloads. The paper is "Pulsed Nuclear Space Propulsion and International Law: Some Preliminary Observations." 

On March 11, Professor Maurice Stucke discussed his article "The Relationship Between Privacy and Antitrust," which will appear in the Notre Dame Law Review and his forthcoming book "Breaking Away: How to Regain Control Over Our Data, Privacy, and Autonomy" at the University of Notre Dame Law School’s Data Privacy Symposium.

Also in March, Concurrences published a book, "Competition Overdose: Exploring the Limitations, Searching for the Treatment," where prominent competition lawyers and economists – from academic, judicial, enforcement and practice sides of the profession – "were invited to discuss a book by two leading antitrust thinkers. The book ’Competition Overdose: How Free Market Mythology Transformed Us from Citizen Kings to Market Servants’ by Maurice E. Stucke and Ariel Ezrachi makes a sad – though not indeed fatal – diagnosis to some axiomatic values and practices dominating antitrust as well as the overall neoliberal agenda over the previous decades. The book has generated remarkable and diverse attention in the discipline and far beyond. All contributors were invited to reflect not only on the book but also on each other’s pieces. This makes the genre of the volume closer to a classical symposium."

Professors Penny White and Glenn Reynolds hit the SSRN Top Legal Downloads chart at #7 with 1431 downloads so far for their paper, "The New Due Process: Fairness in a Fee-Driven State."