Vol. Seven ◊ Issue 6 ◊ October 31, 2021

Wendy Bach has accepted an offer to serve on the Advisory Board of the Georgetown Journal on Poverty Law and Policy (GJPLP). As a member of the Board, Professor Bach will advise GJPLP editors on symposia topics and support activities that advance the journal’s mission of ending poverty and inequality.

Professor Bach also published a review on JOTWELL: The Journal of Things We Like A Lot. You can read her review of "Redistributing the Poor: Jails, Hospitals, and the Crisis of Law and Fiscal Austerity" here. 

Professor Teri Dobbins Baxter presented her work-in-progress, "Considerations and Consequences When State Actors Violate the Constitution," at the University of Hawai’i William S. Richardson School of Law (virtually) on October 21 as part of their Faculty Research Program.

In early October, Professor Rob Blitt led a web-based seminar on Kremlin-Russian Orthodox Church relations for members of the Research Project on Chinese Buddhism in Globalization. The research project is based out of Hitotsubashi University in Japan, sponsored by the Henry Luce Foundation, and boasts an interdisciplinary network of researchers based at universities around the globe. Professor Blitt’s remarks discussed church-state relations, the role of the Russian Orthodox Church in advancing Kremlin foreign policy objectives, and the human rights implications that flow from this partnership.

A draft version of Professor Blitt’s forthcoming book chapter, "Russia’s 2020 Constitutional Amendments and the Entrenchment of the Moscow Patriarchate as a Lever of Foreign Policy Soft Power," is now available via SSRN. The chapter explores Russia’s recent constitutional amendments as a springboard for assessing the Russian Orthodox Church’s growing role in advocating various foreign policies pursued by the Kremlin, including a selective approach to state sovereignty and the dissemination of “traditional values.” This contribution will form part of a larger study edited by Peter Mandaville titled The Geopolitics of Religious Soft Power: How States Use Religion in Foreign Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2022).

Professor Zack Buck was interviewed by Gerald Harris of WKRN, Nashville’s ABC affiliate, and was quoted in his story, "Governor Extends Mask Opt-Out Rule Despite Tennessee Leading the U.S. in COVID School Closures," which aired on the news on Oct. 1, 2021. The story and video are available here.

Professor Buck also authored two chapters as part of the Oxford Handbook of Comparative Health Law, published by Oxford University Press, which has just been published. Professor Buck’s chapters, “Introduction to Regulation of Professionals and Facilities” (coauthored with Deirdre Madden, Professor of Law at University College Cork, Ireland), and “Regulation of Professionals and Facilities in the United States,” examine and present an overview of the regulatory structure of American health care providers and institutions.

Judy Cornett was an invited speaker on “Conflicts of Interest” at the annual meeting of the American College of Real Estate Lawyers on October 29-30th in Nashville. In addition to participating in the panel presentation on conflicts of interest, she participated in a series of roundtable discussions of ethics with ACREL fellows from around the country.

Professor Joan Heminway led a pupilage team in presenting the October program for the Hamilton Burnett Inn of Court. The team’s program focused on what lawyers need to know about cybersecurity in and outside their own workplaces.

 

That same week, Professor Heminway also offered a program for undergraduates as part of the Clifton M. Jones Leadership Workshops organized by the Clay and Debbie Jones Center for Leadership and Service. Her workshop, "Why Would Anyone Want to be Led by Me?," addressed the meaning of leadership and how emergent leaders can think about its contours and applicability to their work and lives.

Associate Dean Michael Higdon was recently quoted in a story from WVLT concerning Judge Ronnie Greer's ruling regarding the mask mandate in Knox County schools.

On October 6, 2021, Professor Lucy Jewel presented a 1.5 hour CLE for the Federal Public Defenders Lunch & Learn series on advanced persuasion strategies. 

Also on October 6, 2021, Professor Jewel presented a 1 hour CLE Webinar on the recent Tennessee Supreme Court case of Navistar v. Milan. Sponsored by the TBA Appellate Practice Section, Professor Jewel was joined by Professor John Sobieski to discuss the significance of the case for Tennessee tort law as well as for appellate procedure issues. 

On October 8, 2021, Professor Jewel virtually participated as an invited presenter at the LSU Journal for Social Justice and Policy’s symposium on Conspiracy Theories, Disinformation, and Civil Rights. Professor Jewel’s paper, “Time is a Flat Circle,” discussed how legal scholars analyzed conspiracy theories in the 1990s and what has changed in the current age of QAnon, 5G, and other popular conspiracy theories. The LSU JSJP will publish Professor Jewel’s paper in its 2022 issue. 

On October 9, 2021, Professor Jewel presented her work on visual/visceral rhetoric in law as part of a panel at the biennial LatCrit conference, which was hosted virtually by Denver Law School.

UCLA’s Continuing Education of the Bar is publishing Professors George Kuney and Donna Looper’s newest edition of California Law of Contracts, a single volume comprehensive treatise on the subject. This 2022 edition is the 15th edition of the treatise, originally authored by them in 2006-07.

Professor Glenn Reynolds joined the Second Amendment Law Professors brief before the Supreme Court in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen.  

Professor Reynolds will also be co-producing the Age of Discovery 2.0 podcast with Scott Rank, host of the popular History Unplugged show. It explores how the next few decades of space exploration will be just as important -- but likely far more -- to our civilization as the first Age of Discovery was 500 years ago (as he has written about before). Prof. Reynolds is also one of the guests on this series, along with Robert Zubrin of the Mars Society, Rand Simberg, Robert Zimmerman, and others. 

Professor Glenn Reynolds' review of Peter Canellos' biography of the first Justice John Marshall Harlan was just published in Law & Liberty. 

Professor Maurice Stucke spoke at a couple of recent events. The Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, an independent legal research think-tank in India, invited him and his co-author Ariel Ezrachi to discuss their book Competition Overdose, with Dr. Montek Singh Ahluwalia, one of the pioneers of India’s market reforms since 1991. Details of that event are available here.

Professor Stucke also participated on virtual panel discussion organized by The Conference Board on using antitrust for social public purposes. The other participants included Avery Gardiner, chief counsel for competition & tech policy for the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, Bill Kovacic, former Chair of the FTC, Hughes, Hubbard and Reed’s Philip Giordano, and Stanford University Professor A. Douglas Melamed.