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Faculty News & Briefs

Ken AbrahamKenneth Abraham published “Four Conceptions of Insurance” in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review; “Liability for Bad Faith and the Principle without a Name (Yet)” in the Connecticut Insurance Law Journal; and “Self-Proving Causation” in the Virginia Law Review.



Kerry AbramsKerry Abrams
published an article, co-authored with Kent Piacenti ’12, “Immigration’s Family Values” in the Virginia Law Review. She also co-authored an amicus brief in Bostic v. Schaefer, the case thagvbsdgfsdgfsdt successfully challenged Virginia’s same-sex marriage ban.

In February Abrams organized a panel with Charlotte Patterson of the UVA Department of Psychology analyzing the impact of the Supreme Court’s striking down of the Defense of Marriage Act in Windsor v. United States. Panelists included Deborah Hellman and Professor Nancy Polikoff of the American University Washington College of Law.

In March Abrams served as the local host for the annual meeting of the Association for the Study of Law, Culture, and Humanities, a conference that drew over 200 scholars from around the world to Charlottesville.
In June Abrams joined the University administration as Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs. In that position, she is working to implement policies that will ensure that the University can recruit and retain an excellent faculty.


Margo Bagley

In November 2013 the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars released a commissioned report by Margo Bagley and Arti K. Rai entitled “The Nagoya Protocol and Synthetic Biology: A Look at the Potential Impacts.” Bagley spoke at a conference about the report at the Center on the day of the report’s release. Bagley also presented the report in June at a side event of the 18th meeting of the Convention on Biological Diversity Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical & Technological Advice in Montreal, Quebec.

In May Bagley published “The Wheat and the GMO Tares: Lessons from Plant Patent Litigation and the Parables of Christ” in the St. Thomas Law Journal (2014, symposium issue). She also presented “Of Indigenous People Straws and Developed Country Camels: Intellectual Property Protection for Genetic Resources and Associated Traditional Knowledge,” at the International Intellectual Property Scholars Roundtable at DePaul University School of Law in Chicago; and in September at the European Policy on Intellectual Property Conference at the European Parliament in Brussels, Belgium.

In July Bagley taught short courses in “Pharmaceuticals and IP” and “Protection of Biotechnological Inventions” at the Max Planck Munich Intellectual Property Law Center in Munich, Germany. She also provided further expert assistance to the government of Mozambique in the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Intergovernmental Committee (IGC) on Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge, and Folklore at its 28th session negotiations and in the September 2014 WIPO General Assembly, both in Geneva, Switzerland.

In August Bagley drafted regulations to implement the patent and utility model provisions of a new Industrial Property Act in Namibia, and was part of a team that trained Namibian Industrial Property Office personnel in Windhoek, Namibia on features of the new law and the new regulations.

In September Bagley presented “Intellectual Property: Plurality, Culture, National Interest, and International Harmonization” at a European Science Foundation Workshop at the University of Hamburg in Germany.



Michal Barzuza

Michal Barzuza’s “What Happens in Nevada? Self-Selecting into Lax Law” with David C. Smith (from UVA McIntire School of Commerce) is forthcoming in the Review of Financial Studies; and her “Directors Interlock and Corporate Governance” (with Quinn Curtis) is forthcoming in the Delaware Journal of Corporate Law.

Barzuza was a panelist at the Conference on Financial Regulation and Comparative Corporate Governance at Tel Aviv University in January; and on “Incorporation and the Nevada Delaware Debate, Power and Control” at the Law School in February.

Barzuza presented “Board Interlock and Indemnification Protection after Schoon,” also co-authored with Quinn Curtis, at the Berkeley law and economics workshop in October and at the Conference for Empirical Legal Studies in November.



Richard Bonnie

The National Academy of Sciences released two consensus studies chaired by Richard Bonnie ’69 during the fall of 2014. “Investing in the Health and Well-Being of Young Adults” is a comprehensive review of federal and state policies and programs affecting the health, safety, and well-being of young adults, taking account of substantial demographic, cultural, social, and economic changes and scientific advances in developmental neuroscience. The premise for the study, funded by the federal Departments of Health and Human Services and Defense as well as several foundations, is that medical and social science research and public policies and programs typically classify the population in two categories, juveniles/minors (usually under 18) and adults, without providing an integrated look at the extended transitional period of early adulthood. Bonnie taught a seminar entitled “The Age of Majority” and arranged for his students to review the NAS report when it was undergoing scientific review.

The second study, “Reforming Juvenile Justice: The Federal Role,” proposes a strategic plan for the federal government to implement a “developmental approach” to juvenile justice reform. The Justice Department’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, the MacArthur Foundation, and the Annie E. Casey Foundation requested the expedited study after the National Research Council released its influential report on juvenile justice reform in 2013. (That study was also chaired by Bonnie.)

Bonnie is also chairing a third study, requested by Congress in the Tobacco Control Act of 2009, that addresses a very specific legal policy issue—whether the minimum age for purchasing tobacco products should be raised to 21. This report is expected to be delivered to FDA and the Congress next February.

Bonnie also made a presentation on tobacco regulation and commercial speech in August to specialists on law and public health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and published with colleagues an empirical study entitled “The Language of Mens Rea” in Vanderbilt Law Review.



George CohenGeorge Cohen presented “Productively Participating in Institutional Governance” to the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) Annual Meeting in January, to the University of Nevada Las Vegas on University Governance and Faculty Leadership in April, and in May to the University of Virginia Law Alumni Ethics CLE on Ethics in Litigation (with Rich Balnave).

In the spring he published “The State of Lawyer Knowledge under the Model Rules of Professional Conduct” in the American University Business Law Review.

Over the summer Cohen wrote “Teaching Interpretation and Structure of the Revised Uniform Partnership Act: Moren v. Jax Restaurant and the Duty of Indemnification,” forthcoming in the St. Louis University Law Journal.

In October he spoke at the ABA National Institute on International Regulation and Compliance: FCPA, Economic Sanctions, and Export Control in Washington, D.C. His topic was “Ethical Issues for Lawyers Dealing with International Regulation and Compliance.”

In February 2015 Cohen will be presenting a paper at a conference on the American Law Institute’s Principles of Liability Insurance to be held at Rutgers Camden.



Quinn CurtisQuinn Curtis published a paper on mutual fund fee litigation in the Journal of Law Economics and Organization, and a paper on foreclosure law in the Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics.

He also presented work on fees in 401(k) plans to the Department of Labor, and presented a paper on options backdating litigation at the American Law and Economics annual meeting at the University of Chicago and at Vanderbilt Law School.


Ashley Deeks

Ashley Deeks is publishing an article examining ways in which states could use international law to regulate foreign surveillance. It is entitled “An International Legal Framework for Surveillance” and is forthcoming in the Virginia Journal of International Law in early 2015.

In June she spoke at the Second Circuit Judicial Conference on a panel addressing the use of force in cyberspace. Deeks presented papers at an NYU Law School colloquium and at UVA’s Sokol Colloquium this fall, and spoke on foreign surveillance issues in October at International Law Weekend.

Deeks contributed a number of blog posts to Lawfare, including on issues related to the anticipated American use of force in Syria, NSA surveillance, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.



Kimberly Kessler FerzanKimberly Kessler Ferzan co-authored (with Larry Alexander) a book chapter, “Confused Culpability, Contrived Causation, and the Collapse of Tort Theory,” in Philosophical Foundations of the Law of Torts, John Oberdiek, ed.

The APA Newsletter on Philosophy and Law published Ferzan’s “Moving Beyond Crime and Commitment;” responses to it by Douglas Husak, Gideon Yaffe, and Louis-Phillipe Hodgson; and Ferzan’s reply, arising from a symposium to discuss the article at the American Philosophical Association’s Pacific Division conference proceedings in April 2013 honoring her being awarded the Berger Prize.

Ferzan continues to work on co-editing (with Stephen Morse) “Moral, Legal, and Metaphysical Truths: The Philosophy of Michael S. Moore,” a festschrift for Michael Moore that will be published by Oxford University Press.

Last spring Ferzan presented “The Bluff” to a University of Chicago faculty workshop, a University of Illinois criminal law theory workshop, and a UCLA legal theory workshop.

In October she participated in a two-day conference, sponsored by the philosophy department at the University of Delaware, on the topic of just war theory, including a public panel on “When Should Nations Kill?” She is serving as an adviser for the American Law Institute’s “Project on the Model Penal Code: Sexual Assault and Related Offenses” and attended a meeting to discuss proposed changes to the Model Penal Code.



Brandon Garrett

In October Harvard Press published Brandon Garrett’s “Too Big to Jail: How Prosecutors Compromise with Corporations.”

Translations of Garrett’s “Convicting the Innocent” were just published in Taiwan (New Sharing Publishing Co.) and Japan (Nippon Hyoronsha).

He also published “Accuracy in Sentencing” in the Southern California Law Review; “Eyewitness Identifications and Police Practices in Virginia” in the Virginia Journal Of Criminal Law; “Big Data and Due Process in the Cornell Law Review Online; “Applause for the Plausible” in the University Of Pennsylvania Law Review Online; “Remaining Silent after Salinas” in the University Of Chicago Law Review Dialogue; “The Banality of Wrongful Convictions” in the Michigan Law Review (book review of Dan Simon, In Doubt, and James Liebman et al., Los Tocayos Carlos).

Forthcoming next year is “The Constitutional Standing of Corporations” in the University Of Pennsylvania Law Review; and two book chapters: “Wrongful Convictions and the Role of Forensic Science” (chapter in Wiley’s Encyclopedia of Forensic Science, and “Images of Injustice” (chapter in Punishment and Popular Culture, ed. Austin Sarat & Charles Ogletree).

Garrett contributed to two reports, The United States, in The Death Penalty Project, Wrongful Convictions, Miscarriages of Justice, Unfair Trials and the Death Penalty (2014); and DNA Exonerations in the United States, United Nations, OHCHR Global Panel, “Moving Away from the Death Penalty: Wrongful Convictions” (Sept. 2014).

He also served as a committee member on a forthcoming National Academy of Sciences Report— National Research Council, Identifying the Culprit, Assessing Eyewitness Identification (2014).

He also wrote an amicus brief, Memorandum of Law of Amicus Curiae Law Professor, and testified in hearings in September before Judge Emmet Sullivan in the case, U.S. v. Saena Tech Corp.

Garrett gave two workshops (with Kerry Abrams) on “Regulating Genetic Identity” at the Emerging Family Law Conference in May, and at the Law School in June. They presented the paper again at Duke Law School in November.

In June he gave a talk on “Too Big to Jail” at Gibson Dunn & Crutcher’s Washington D.C. office.

In July Garrett spoke at the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project’s Annual benefit, and gave a talk on “Too Big to Jail” at the Ethics Resource Center Fellows annual conference in Arlington, Virginia.

In August he gave two keynote addresses on “The Law and Science of Eyewitness Memory” and “False Confessions” at the Taiwan Association for Innocence conference, National Taiwan University, Taipei.

In October Garrett spoke on “Eyewitness Memory” and on a panel on “Cognitive Bias and Forensic Testimony” at the Virginia Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers annual conference hosted by the Law School. He also presented data on corporate prosecutions at the American Bar Association National Institute on “International Regulation and Compliance: FCPA, OFAC & Export Control” in Washington D.C.; and gave a UVA Law faculty workshop of a paper entitled “Constitutional Law and the Law of Evidence.”

His recent Op-eds include “Does Hobby Lobby Even Have Standing?”, ACS Blog in March; “Hakamada Retrial Case: Reform Interrogation Process to Prevent False Confessions” in Asahi Shimbun in April; “Behind the Hangman’s Cloak” in Jurist in May; “How do Corporate Believers Stand?” in ACS Blog in July; and “Put More Resources Toward Regulations” in the New York Times in August.

Garrett continues to advise law enforcement in Virginia on matters related to lineups and interrogation policies.

Next spring he will be a visiting fellow at All Souls College, Oxford (for Trinity Term from April to June, 2015).



Michael GilbertIn June Michael Gilbert presented a paper titled “The Problem of Voter Fraud” at the American Constitution Society’s Scholars’ Schmooze in Washington, D.C. That paper will be published next spring in the Columbia Law Review.
In December Gilbert’s paper “Disclosure and Corruption,” which he coauthored with Benjamin Aiken ’14, will be published in the Election Law Journal.
Next March Gilbert will speak at a conference at Florida State University commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act. His current research focuses on campaign finance and relationships between rules, standards, and enforcement.



Risa Goluboff

Risa Goluboff was the lead advisor on the exhibit, “The Civil Rights Act of 1964: A Long Struggle for Freedom,” which opened in September at the Library of Congress to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the act. She is also featured in the accompanying short film, alongside Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Congressman John L. Lewis, and Taylor Branch.

Goluboff spoke in September on a panel about “Saying ‘No’ to War—WWI, the Vietnam War and Conscientious Objectors” as part of a conference at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton on “Civil Liberties in Times of War.”

In October she spoke to the Charlottesville Albemarle Bar Association, and also appeared again on the radio show Backstory, speaking about the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

In January, she will speak on a panel organized by Dick Howard about Magna Carta for the Virginia Bar Association.



Rachel HarmonLast December Rachel Harmon gave a talk on “Designing Effective and Legitimate Consent Decrees” at the “Models of Police Institutional Reform Litigation Conference” at Columbia University.

She has been and continues to serve on the National Research Council’s “Committee on the Illicit Tobacco Market: Collection and Analysis of the International Experience.”

Harmon published “Legal Control of the Police” in the Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice (2014).

In June she wrote a post of PrawfsBlawg on the fragility of knowledge in the U.S. Supreme Court’s Wurie/Riley opinion (about whether police may search the cellphone of an arrestee) which was recognized by Green Bag and reprinted in its journal, The Post: Good Scholarship from the Internet.

In July Harmon presented the paper “Federal Public Safety Programs and the Real Costs of Policing” at Rutgers School of Law.



Andrew Hayashi

Andrew Hayashi recently submitted for publication a paper called “Determinants of Mortgage Default and Consumer Credit Use: The Effect of Foreclosure Laws and Foreclosure Delays.” The paper is co-authored with Sewin Chan at NYU and Wilbert Van der Klaauw and Andrew Haughwout of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

He is also currently working on a paper called “Taxing Phantom Income and the Simple Economics of Paying In Kind,” which he has presented at the University of Florida and will present at Georgetown, Texas A&M, Tulane, the National Tax Association Annual Meeting, and the inaugural Virginia Tax Invitational Conference.


Hayashi is also working with Michael Gilbert on an economic comparison of rules and standards and continues to work on another project developing an economic analysis of legal rules that incorporate subjective intent. He is also preparing for State Tax Notes a short article summarizing the key findings of his paper “Property Taxes and their Limits: Evidence from New York City” which appeared in the Stanford Law and Policy Review.



Dick Howard A. E. Dick Howard ’61 has been busy on both sides of the Atlantic as organizations in the United Kingdom and the United States begin preparations for the marking of Magna Carta’s 800th anniversary in 2015. In London, Howard spoke at the House of Commons to the Magna Carta 800th Anniversary Commemoration Committee, a cross-party committee laying plans for 2015. In Oxford, Howard, joined by Suzelle Smith ’83 and Don Howarth, gave the Howarth and Smith Law Lecture at Lady Margaret Hall. Their subject was “From Legem Terrae to Due Process of Law: 800 Years after Runnymede.” The American Embassy, the British Library, Salisbury Cathedral, and Oxford’s Bodleian Library have asked Howard to give lectures on Magna Carta in London in June 2015.

In the United States, Howard has been appointed to advise the Library of Congress on its forthcoming exhibit, “Magna Carta: Muse and Mentor.” In Boston, Howard gave the annual James Otis Lecture, his subject being Magna Carta’s influence on American constitutionalism.

Having assisted other countries in the writing of new constitutions, Howard reflected on that experience when he gave the Dean’s Distinguished Lecture at Wake Forest University School of Law. His topic was “To Begin the World Anew: The Influence of the American Constitutional Experience on Other Countries and Cultures.” As a warmup for his Wake Forest lecture, Howard covered some of the same ground in a lecture to the University of Virginia’s Jefferson Society. In that talk, Howard emphasized Jefferson’s time as American Minister to Paris in the 1780s.

Howard’s interest in comparative constitutionalism informed a lecture he gave to Rhodes Scholars at Oxford’s Rhodes House. Talking about “The Idea of a Constitution,” Howard considered the several phases of modern constitution-making from the founding era in France and America to the years since the collapse of communism. Here in Virginia, together with his colleagues, the Law School’s Mila Versteeg and Washington and Lee’s Russell Miller, Howard helped conceive and organize the first annual Comparative Constitutional Law Roundtable at James Madison’s Montpelier. The roundtable drew participants from major law schools around the country. Howard keynoted the roundtable with a talk on the history of Virginia’s Constitution, including tales from the campaign for the Constitution’s ratification.

Always interested in the Supreme Court of the United States, Howard spoke at Mount Vernon to the Virginia Bar Association’s Special Issues Committee on the subject “What’s Happening at the Supreme Court.” Not neglecting the Law School’s own family, Howard made remarks at receptions for alumni of the Law School in Boston and in Charlotte.



Leslie KendrickIn June Leslie Kendrick’s piece “Free Speech and Guilty Minds” was published in the Columbia Law Review. This year she has presented or will be presenting papers at Yale and at the Legal Theory workshops at UCLA and UVA.

In May Kendrick ’06 won the Carl McFarland Prize for outstanding scholarship by a junior faculty member.

In September, she provided a Supreme Court preview for the ABA that was televised on C-SPAN.



Douglas LaycockIn October Douglas Laycock argued Holt v. Hobbs in the Supreme Court representing a Muslim prisoner in Arkansas who seeks to grow a half-inch beard. The case will be the Court’s first opportunity to construe a federal statute protecting the religious liberty of prisoners. He also spoke about the case to a large gathering of UVA law students, jointly sponsored by the Federalist Society and the American Constitution Society.

For two days in the spring, he was the G. Rollie White Scholar in Residence at the University of Texas Law School. He spoke on “Government Prayer and the First Amendment” and on “Achieving Diversity through Race-Neutral Admissions Programs.” He spoke on “Advice to New Law Professors” at the Association of American Law Schools, and gave the keynote address at a “Symposium on the Twentieth Anniversary of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act” in Washington, D.C.

In November he gave the Davis, Market, Nickerson Lecture on Academic and Intellectual Freedom at the University of Michigan, where he spoke on “Religious Liberty and the Culture Wars.”

Laycock recently published “Religious Liberty and the Culture Wars” in the University of Illinois Law Review; “Imaginary Contradictions: A Reply to Professor Oleske” in the Vanderbilt Law Review En Banc; and “Protecting Same-Sex Marriage and Religious Liberty” in the Virginia Law Review Online (with Thomas C. Berg).



Michael Livermore

This spring Michael Livermore’s article “Cost-Benefit Analysis and Agency Independence” was published by the Chicago Law Review.

In April he published a comment in Nature titled “Improve Economic Models of Climate Change,” co-authored with leading law professors, climate scientists, and environmental economists including Kenneth Arrow (Nobel-prize winning economist; Stanford,), Michael Oppenheimer (Princeton, Geosciences Department), and Richard L. Revesz (NYU Law; Director of the American Law Institute).

In August Livermore presented at an interdisciplinary gathering hosted by the Neukom Institute at Dartmouth College discussing the application of new mathematical, statistical, and computational methods to the study of culture, history, and law.

In September he argued a case before the D.C. Circuit, Center for Biological Diversity v. Jewell on behalf of an environmental organization challenging the economic analysis that underlies the Department of Interior’s most recent 5-year plan for offshore oil and gas development. The challenge was based in part on his 2013 article “Patience is an Economic Virtue: Real Options, Natural Resources, and Offshore Oil,” in the University of Colorado Law Review.

He presented in October at the Vanderbilt faculty workshop a paper on “Parties and Presidential Oversight.” He was also on a panel at the American Bar Association Administrative Law Section fall conference in Washington D.C. on “Acting on Agency Action and Delay.” He discussed his 2013 paper “Regulatory Review, Capture, and Agency Inaction” (with Richard L. Revesz) that appeared in the Georgetown Law Journal.

In November he published “Rethinking Health Based Environmental Standards” (with Richard Revesz) in the New York University Law Review.



Ruth MasonIn February Ruth Mason’s article in Tax Notes, “Exporting FATCA,” was cited in the bi-partisan report by senate staffers in the Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs entitled “Offshore Tax Evasion: The Effort to Collect Unpaid Taxes on Billions in Hidden Offshore Accounts.”
Mason also published “Waiting for Perseus: A Sur-Reply to Professors Graetz and Warren” in Tax Law Review; and wrote a U.S. Supreme Court amicus brief in Maryland State Comptroller of the Treasury v. Brian Wynne, Et Ux., arguing that the Maryland state income tax violates the dormant Commerce Clause.

In November she presented a comment on the G20/OECD initiative to combat corporate tax avoidance in Sydney Australia, and will be presenting a working paper on citizenship taxation at New York University next spring.



Greg MitchellThis fall Greg Mitchell presented his paper “The Folly of Evidence Law’s Epistemic Rules” at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas and the University of Minnesota.

He and colleagues published the paper “Toward a Meaningful Metric of Implicit Prejudice” in the Journal of Applied Psychology.



John Monahan

John Monahan, along with David Faigman ’86; now John F. Digardi Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of California Hastings College of the Law, and Christopher Slobogin ’77, LL.M. ’79; now Milton Underwood Professor of Law at Vanderbilt University, published “Group to Individual (G2i) Inference in Scientific Expert Testimony” in the University of Chicago Law Review. In June, Monahan presented a workshop on this topic at the Cardozo Law School National Forensic College.



John Norton MooreJohn Norton Moore reports that the 38th annual conference of the Center for Oceans Law and Policy (COLP), which Moore directs, took place in June in Bergen, Norway. The conference topic was “Challenges of the Changing Arctic: Continental Shelf, Navigation, and Fisheries.” It was opened by Ambassador Hans Corell of Sweden, and the keynote speaker was Director General Rolf Einar Fife from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Norway. The volume of papers from this conference, which Moore will co-edit, will be published by Martinus Nijhoff in the summer of 2015. The volume of papers from the 37th annual conference, “Freedom of Navigation and Globalization” (forthcoming November 2014), is at press. The 19th session of the Rhodes Academy of Oceans Law and Policy, which is organized by COLP, took place this summer in Rhodes, Greece. Moore taught four classes at the Rhodes Academy.

In June the Center for National Security Law (CNSL), which Moore also directs, hosted its 22nd National Security Law Institute. Moore taught classes at the Institute on Understanding War, Institutional Modes of Conflict Management, and the Use of Force in International Relations.

In September Moore moderated the panel “International Rights in National Courts” at the Sokol Colloquium which this year addressed Comparative International Law.

In November CNSL co-sponsored with the ABA the 24th Annual Review of the Field of National Security Law conference in Washington, D.C. CNSL sponsored a panel entitled “The Economic and Financial Threat Domain: Making Smart Sanctions Smarter.”

Finally, Moore is editing the third edition of the casebook National Security Law with co-editors Robert Turner ’81 and Guy Roberts. The new edition will be available by summer 2015 and will be published by Carolina Academic Press.



Karen MoranThe U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit is sponsoring its first “Career Clerk Summit” on December 9 and has asked Karen Moran to give a presentation on “How to Thoughtfully Edit Others’ Written Work.”




Dotan OliarIn June 2014 Dotan Oliar published “Copyright Registrations: Who, What, When, Where, and Why” (with Nate Pattison and Ross Powell ’15) with the Texas Law Review. The paper examines empirically patterns of copyright registrations. Oliar presented the paper at University of Texas law school in January 2014, and it was also selected for presentation at the annual meeting of the American Law and Economics Association in May 2014 at the University of Chicago law school. In September 2014 Oliar met with Maria Pallante, Register of Copyrights, to cooperate on an initiative that would make the copyright registration data publicly available.



Robert O'NeilIn September Robert O’Neil presented two papers at a conference at the Utah Valley University Center for Constitutional Studies. One dealt primarily with free speech and press issues (especially the link between Internet law and social media) while the other addressed religious liberty within the Mormon/LDS community (and was thus of special interest to those in the Salt Lake City area).

Also in September O’Neil gave the keynote speech in Richmond at the annual meeting of the Virginia Mediation Network on the subject of Alternative Dispute Resolution. He drew upon his experience as chairman in 1988-89 of the first Commission on the Future of the Virginia Judicial System, during which much attention was devoted to ADR, reflecting an emphasis on new technologies.



Dan OrtizDan Ortiz has been working on a piece with former Law School faculty and now Stanford dean Elizabeth Magill ’95 entitled “Comparative Positive Political Theory and Empirics.” He has also, through his role as co-director of the Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, helped draft the petitioner’s opening merits brief and reply brief in Elonis v. United States, the Facebook threat case; the cert petition and reply in Henderson v. United States; the brief in opposition in Koopman v. Myers; and the merits-stage amicus brief of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers in Prado Navarette v. California. Ortiz also wrote in his personal capacity the cert petition in Roman Catholic Church for the Diocese of Baton Rouge v. Mayeux.



Sai PrakashIn February Saikrishna Prakash presented at a panel discussion at the Stanford Law School conference on “The Role of History in Constitutional Law.”

In March he presented a paper to the Berkeley Law School Public Law Workshop on “Congressional Power during Domestic Wars.”
In June he presented a paper to his Law School colleagues on “Time and the Perfection of Federal Law.”

In November, he participated in a Notre Dame conference on United States v. Bond and the treaty power.

Prakash published a piece in Debating the Presidency: Conflicting Perspectives on the American Executive 26 (Richard J. Ellis & Michael Nelson eds.) entitled “Resolved, The Unitary Executive is a Myth: Con.” He also had three entries in the Heritage Guide to the Constitution (2nd ed. 2014) (entries for Executive Power Vesting Clause, Take Care Clause, and the Separation of Powers).

He has two forthcoming papers, one on “Congressional Power during Domestic Wars” in the Michigan Law Review and one on the “Duty to Defend at the State Level” in the Yale Law Journal (co-authored with Neal Devins). His book, Imperial from the Beginning: The Constitution of the Original Executive, will be out from Yale Press in spring 2015.



George Rutherglen

George Rutherglen is currently working on an article on “Lincoln’s Legacy in Reconstruction,” to be published in a collection of essays by the Oxford University Press next spring.




Robert Sayler Molly ShadelRobert Sayler and Molly Shadel just published the second edition of Tongue Tied America:Reviving the Art of Verbal Persuasion.




Fred Schauer

In August Fred Schauer spent three weeks lecturing on legal reasoning, on jurisprudence, and on transparency at Alberto Hurtado University, Santiago, Chile.

He published “On the Utility of Religious Toleration” in Criminal Law and Philosophy; “Constitutions of Hope and Fear” in the Yale Law Journal; and “Mansfield on Evidence,” a tribute to the late John Mansfield, in the Harvard Law Review.

In October a symposium at Bocconi University, Milan, Italy, was devoted exclusively to his forthcoming book, The Force of Law (Harvard University Press), with speakers from Italy, Spain, France, Germany, Canada, and the United Kingdom, and a response by Schauer. On the next day another symposium about the book, at the Universita Degli Studi di Milano, featured five speakers from five different universities in Italy, followed again with a response by Schauer.

Also in October Schauer spoke on the First Amendment and pharmaceutical advertising and regulation at a conference on “Public Health in the Shadow of the First Amendment” at the Yale Law School; and (with co-author Daniel Ho of the Stanford Law School) on “Testing the Marketplace of Ideas” at a conference on “Empirical Studies of Constitutional Law” at the University of Chicago Law School.

In November Schauer spoke on “Coercion and Force in Explaining the Idea of Law” at the Hans Kelsen Institute in Vienna, Austria; and then on “”Freedom of Speech in Comparative Perspective” at the University of Vienna.



Ben SpencerBen Spencer published the fourth edition of his casebook, Civil Procedure: A Contemporary Approach and the fourth edition of Acing Civil Procedure. He also has a forthcoming article entitled “The Forms Had a Function,” which will be published in the Nevada Law Review.

Spencer has been appointed by the Virginia Supreme Court to the Council of the Virginia State Bar as of July 1. He also was recently appointed a member of the Special Committee on the Future of Law Practice, a Virginia State Bar task force looking at a number of regulatory challenges to the legal profession in the face of globalization, technological disruption, and collaboration with non-lawyer professionals. These are in addition to his recent appointment to the Board of Governors of the Virginia Bar Association.



Paul Stephan

In May Paul Stephan ’77 was a keynote speaker at the annual meeting of the British Branch of the International Law Association at King’s College, London.

In July he gave a presentation on the Fourth Restatement of Foreign Relations Law at Wilmer Hale, London, which is now available as a webcast.

In September Stephan delivered a paper at the Sokol Colloquium at the Law School. Pierre Verdier, Mila Versteeg, Anthea Roberts (Columbia Law School) and Stephan organized this conference, which was on the topic of comparative international law. Oxford University Press will publish the papers coming out of the conference.

In October Stephan spoke on a panel on the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) at the annual meeting of the American Branch of the International Law Association in New York.

In November he will deliver a paper at Notre Dame Law School as part of a conference on Bond v. United States, a Supreme Court decision last Term concerning the treaty power of the United States. Stephan also will present the latest draft of the Fourth Restatement of Foreign Relations Law—Jurisdiction, to the projects advisers.



Pierre-Hugues VerdierPierre-Hugues Verdier recently completed an extensive theoretical and empirical investigation of customary international law, resulting in two articles co-authored with Erik Voeten, a leading political scientist from Georgetown University. The articles are appearing this fall in the American Journal of International Law and International Studies Quarterly. The articles emphasize the role of precedential concerns—that is, concerns that breaching a rule may create a precedent that leads to widespread abandonment of a desirable rule—in explaining compliance with customary international rules and how they change over time. This phenomenon is illustrated by reference to the transformation of the law of foreign state immunity in many jurisdictions over the course of the 20th and early 21st centuries.

Mila VersteegVerdier is now working with Mila Versteeg on a large-scale empirical project on the reception of international law in national legal systems around the world. They presented preliminary results at the 2014 Annual Meeting of the American Society of International Law in Washington, D.C. They are also working on a new paper based on this new data, which explores whether countries whose constitutional law imposes constraints on treaty-making by the executive and makes treaties directly applicable by courts—an increasingly widespread model—are able to enhance the credibility of their promises, thus making them more desirable treaty partners.

Along with Paul Stephan, Mila Versteeg, and Anthea Roberts from Columbia Law School, Verdier organized the 2014 edition of the Sokol Colloquium on Private International Law. The colloquium brought together lawyers and scholars from multiple countries under the theme “Comparative International Law” to examine how and why different countries interpret and apply purportedly uniform international law rules in different ways. The contributions to the colloquium will be published in a collective volume by Oxford University Press.

This fall, Verdier is visiting the University of Chicago Law School, where he is teaching Public International Law.



Ted White

In September Ted White presented a paper, “The Origins and Emergence of Tort Law,” at St. Thomas University Law School in Minneapolis, Minnesota. That paper will be published in the St. Thomas University Law Review. He also presented “Intellectual History and Constitutional Decisionmaking” at the Jurisprudence and History Conference at the Law School. That comment will be published in a forthcoming issue of the Virginia Law Review.

In October White presented “The Historiography of the Court-Packing Crisis” at the Centre for Constitutional Law at the University of Edinburgh.

Next June he will be presenting a paper at a conference on “Contemporary Legal Thought” at Harvard Law School. That paper will subsequently be published in a volume of essays stemming from the conference.



George YinIn January George Yin participated in a program on “Tax Reform and the Legislative Process,” at the AALS annual meeting in New York City; and presented a paper at a conference in Malibu, Cal. on “Tax Reform in a Time of Crisis,” co-sponsored by Pepperdine Law School and Tax Analysts. Yin’s paper, entitled “Reforming (and Saving) the IRS by Respecting the Public’s Right to Know,” advocated greater transparency of the IRS’s administration of the exempt organization tax laws in order to help restore public trust in the agency. Yin presented the same paper during the spring at faculty workshops at Tulane, Virginia, and Georgia Tech as well as at the annual meeting of the Virginia Tax Study Group. He also used the paper as the basis for the Fogel Lecture at Temple Law School, which he delivered in Philadelphia in March. The paper was published in volume 100 of the Virginia Law Review.

In June Yin was the keynote speaker at a conference in Washington, D.C. on “Advancing Tax Administration” co-sponsored by the IRS and the Tax Policy Center of the Urban Institute and Brookings Institution. His topic was: “The Most Critical Issue Facing Tax Administration Today—and What to Do About It.”