The Informant

April 15, 2008
(2007-08 Archives)

ANNOUNCEMENTS

The Student Bar Association will be hosting its Annual Allen Novak Auction on Wednesday, April 16, during the free hour on the front plaza of the law school. Students, faculty, and staff are invited to attend and to bid on some wonderful items, including several dinners and outings with faculty members. Pizza will be served during the auction ($2 per slice, $4 all you can eat). In addition to the live auction, a silent auction will be set up in the Commons from Monday, April 14, through Wednesday. Items in the live auction can be found here. Items in the silent auction an be found here.

Trey Forgety bested the duo of James Inman and Stephen Hargraves April 10 to win the 2008 Advocate’s Prize competition. 3L Forgety was also named Best Oralist and had the Best Brief. Patrick Earnest had the Second Best Brief.

UT Law Professor Mae Quinn and third-year law student Jill Shotzberger were honored with Women of Achievement Awards at the Chancellor’s Honors Banquet April 9. Prof. Quinn was the faculty honoree and Shotzberger was the graduate student award winner. MORE

Four third-year law students -- Justin L. Furrow, Laura D. Phillips, Brittain W. Sexton, and Jessica H. Shafer -- received UT Citations for Professional Promise at the Honors Banquet. MORE

Can you imagine spending 16 years on death row for a crime you didn't commit? Curtis McCarty does not have to imagine such a horror because he lived it. Curtis McCarty spent 21 years in an Oklahoma prison with 16 of those years on death row. He was released in 2007 after DNA evidence indicated that he did not commit the crime for which he was convicted. Mr. McCarty has only recently begun sharing his story, and audiences have been captivated. McCarty is living proof that people are wrongfully convicted in this country and sentenced to death. Since 1973, 128 people have been released from death rows nationwide when evidence of their innocence emerged. On Thursday, April 24, Curtis will share his story of wrongful conviction at the UT College of Law beginning at 7:00 p.m. in Room 132. The program is also sponsored by the Tennessee Coalition to Abolish State Killing and the undergraduate Amnesty International Association. As students, you are in a unique position to make thoughtful and influential decisions on key policy issues. The death penalty is an important and highly divisive issue in modern American society. Take advantage of this free event to learn more about this issue. Also, there will be FREE PIZZA at the conclusion of the event.

On April 22 and 24, at 2:10 p.m. in Room 339, the students in Prof. George Kuney’s Workouts and Reorganizations course will be presenting their case studies of recent or pending chapter 11 cases that they have been critically analyzing this semester. The presentations themselves are expected to take approximately a half hour each and represent an opportunity for the team members to present their papers in working format and react to questions and comments regarding their work before reducing it to final form. The April 22 and 24 programs each feature two presentations. Members of the law school community with an interest in chapter 11 restructuring and similar matters are invited to attend if interested.

Lambda Law is co-sponsoring (along with Speaker Series and Law Women) a speaker presentation of Karen Kahn and Pat Gozemba, the authors of Courting Equality: A Documentary History of America's First Legal Same-Sex Marriages. The two authors will be speaking about the 2003 Massachusetts Supreme Court decision in Goodridge v. the Department of Public Health that led to legal same-sex marriage in the state, its historic context and the implications the court decision created for other states.  The event will be happening in Room 135 on April 16 beginning at 12:20 p.m. 

FACULTY

Prof. Penny J. White has recently given guest lectures at two other law schools. Prof. White lectured on the topic of "Judges and the Politics of Death" at Yale Law School March 28. Prof. White gave two presentations at Harvard Law School April 7. The first presentation was entitled "Introductory to Contemporary Issues in Judicial Election" and focused on White's research regarding special interests groups' involvement in judicial elections. The second presentation focused on the issue of fairness in capital cases in states with an elected judiciary.

The Virginia Law Review In Brief has just published Prof. Jeff Hirsch’s essay, “Rent-to-Own Unionism?,” which was a response to Prof. Matt Bodie’s article, “Information and the Market for Union Representation.”

Prof. Dwight Aarons’ latest article, “The Abolitionist’s Dilemma: Establishing the Standards for the Evolving Standards of Decency,” has been published in the Pierce Law Review. The article briefly surveys the Supreme Court’s use of the ‘evolving standards of decency’ test as a means of measuring the constitutionality of the death penalty. It then discusses a case challenging lethal injection as a method of execution, which is currently pending before the Supreme Court and ends with a suggestion that death penalty abolitionists and capital defense attorneys should work toward instituting a coordinated national legal campaign that challenges the constitutionality of the death penalty. The citation is: 6 Pierce L. Rev. 441 (2008).

Profs. Glenn Reynolds and Brannon Denning (UT Class of 1995) of Cumberland School of Law were the featured speakers at “The Right to Bear Arms: A Second Amendment Forum,” sponsored by the Howard H. Baker, Jr. Center for Public Policy April 3. Also included on the discussion panel were UT Law Profs. Otis Stephens and Dwight Aarons and Professor Dorothy Bowles from the UT School of Journalism and Electronic Media.

Prof. Greg Stein’s Op-Ed article, “Note from the Dean: Send after U.S. News Rankings are Published,” appeared in The Chicago Tribune on Sunday, April 6, 2008 (available here). Blog entries about Prof. Stein’s article appeared in the online versions of the Wall Street Journal (available here) and the ABA Journal (available here), as well as at TaxProf Blog (available here) and Instapundit (available here).

Prof. Iris Goodwin attended the Holberg Seminar at NYU Law School to honor Ronald Dworkin, the 2007 laureate of the Holberg Prize. The seminar focused on themes central to the work of Prof. Dworkin, including Judicial Minimalism, Social Rights and Legal Interpretation, Free Speech, Equality, Constitutional Democracy, and Interpretive Concepts. Presenters included Cass Sunstein, Lawrence Sager, Kathleen Sullivan, Jeremy Waldron, Samuel Freeman, Thomas Scanlon, Janos Kis, and Liam Murphy.

This past weekend, Prof. Dean Rivkin organized a panel and spoke at UT's Conference on "Energy & Responsibility: A Conference on Ethics and the Environment." The panel was titled "The Legal, Environmental, Moral, and Social Implications of Mountaintop Removal Strip-mining for Coal." Prof. Becky Jacobs and Corrine Martin (2L) were members of the Conference planning committee and should be hugely credited, Rivkin said.

STAFF

Karen Britton, Director of Admissions/Financial Aid and Career Services, is speaking at the NALP Annual Education Conference in Toronto this week. Karen is leading four sessions at the conference and will chair NALP’s Research Committee again this year. NALP member organizations are all ABA accredited law schools in the US and Canada and the over 1,000 legal employers worldwide. Karen is a former President of NALP.

STUDENTS

Prof. Jeff Hirsch is looking for a research assistant to help with editing and researching materials for a forthcoming book.  If you are interested, please email Prof. Hirsch at:  Hirsch@law.utk.edu.

www.adaptibar.com is available to students preparing for the Multi-state Bar Exam.

CAREER SERVICES

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