Faculty Activities
2014
December 8 - Professor Alan J. Meese signed a letter (opens .pdf), along with 31 other scholars, calling upon the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to participate in rulemaking by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on so-called "Net Neutrality." The letter urged the FTC to advise the FCC that a per se ban on paid prioritization contradicts modern antitrust principles. The Washington Post, The Hill, and PC World have reported on the letter.
December 4 &5 - Professor Christie S. Warren participated in the inaugural workshop on "Post-Conflict Constitution Building Dialogues." The series of annual workshops will be jointly hosted by the Constitution Building Processes programme of International IDEA and the Edinburgh Centre for Constitutional Law at Edinburgh Law School. She presented on Cambodia during Session II (Peace Agreements and Interim Constitutional Arrangements) and moderated Session III (Non-Inclusive Interim Constitutions).
November 28 – Professor Allison Orr Larsen's article “Factual Precedents” was highlighted in a review by Adam Steinman on JOTWELL.
November 21 - Professor Alan J. Meese joined an amicus brief [view on SSRN] with 14 other antitrust scholars in O'Bannon v. NCAA.
November 13 – Professor Neal E. Devins discussed the president’s duty to defend laws he believes to be unconstitutional at a panel at the Federalist Society’s National Lawyers Convention in Washington, D.C.
November 12 – Professor James S. Heller and Paul Hellyer gave a presentation to faculty at the College on author’s rights and on negotiating with publishers.
November 12 – Professor Timothy Zick second book, The Cosmopolitan First Amendment: Protecting Transborder Expressive and Religious Liberties, was the subject of a Law School feature story and video.
November 6 – Professor Vivian Hamilton’s article “The Age of Marital Capacity: Reconsidering Civil Recognition of Adolescent Marriage,” published in the B.U. Law Review, was cited in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit’s opinion in DeBoer v. Snyder.
November 6 – Professor Allison Orr Larsen presented “A Constitutional Shelf-Life: Do Laws Expire?” at a workshop series at the University of Pennsylvania Law School.
November – Professor Jeff Bellin’s article “Trial by Google: Judicial Notice in the Information Age,” was recently published in the Northwestern Law Review.
November – Professor Adam M. Gershowitz’s article “Rethinking the Timing of Capital Clemency” was recently published in the Michigan Law Review.
November – Professor Adam M. Gershowitz was interviewed by WINA, the public radio station in Charlottesville, about a recent case in Virginia Beach in which prosecutors attempted to compel a suspect to produce the password for his cell phone.
November – Professor Fredric I. Lederer was appointed to the Global Strategic Solutions Working Group, part of the Global Advisory Committee of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Global Justice Information Sharing Initiative.
November – Professor Paul Marcus spoke at the University of Puerto Rico on “The Supreme Court and Criminal Justice.”
November – Professor Thomas J. McSweeney’s article “Magna Carta and the Right to Trial by Jury” was recently published in the volume Magna Carta: Muse and Mentor (which contains a foreword by Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr.).
November – Professor Thomas J. McSweeney presented “Writing Fiction as Law: The Story in Grágás” at the American Society for Legal History’s pre-conference workshop; the paper was one of three selected for the conference.
November – Professor Thomas J. McSweeney presented on the early English law of property as part of Emory University School of Law’s faculty workshop.
November – Professor Linda A. Malone has agreed to serve on a Members Consultative Group of the American Law Institute, which is revising the sexual offenses section of the Modal Penal Code.
November – Professor Alan J. Meese’s article “Robert Bork’s Forgotten Role in the Transaction Cost Revolution” was recently published in the Antitrust Law Journal.
November – Professor Christie S. Warren gave a presentation on “Classical Islam, Exegesis, and Contemporary Challenges in Islamic Law” at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.
November – Professor Christie S. Warren was featured in a video produced by the College of W&M law students and international engagement.
November – Professor Timothy Zick commented on the events in Ferguson, Missouri, on PrawfsBlawg; his posts can be read here, here, and here.
November – Professor Timothy Zick was featured in the open source documentary film, Preempting Dissent, excerpts from which can be seen here.
October 31 – Vice Dean Laura A. Heymann was interviewed on Bloomberg Radio about Seidman v. Chobani, LLC, pending in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, in which the holder of the trademark HOW for communications and publications on ethical corporate behavior has sued the yogurt manufacturer for an ad campaign featuring such phrases as “How we do business matters.”
October 25 – Professor Nancy Combs presented her paper “Advances in International Criminal Fact-Finding: Judicial Acknowledgement” at the International Law Weekend Conference, held at Fordham Law School.
October 24 – Professor Alan J. Meese presented his paper “Antitrust Federalism and State Restraints of Interstate Commerce: An Essay for Herbert Hovenkamp” as part of the Iowa Law Review’s Centennial Symposium. The event honored Prof. Hovenkamp for his antitrust scholarship.
October 23 – Professor Neal E. Devins presented a paper on Supreme Court partisanship at a faculty workshop at George Mason University School of Law.
October 20 – Professor Angela M. Banks participated on a panel titled “Implementing the Agenda: Constitutions and Transitions” as part of the World Bank’s Law, Justice, and Development Week 2014. The event brought together World Bank Group staff, senior officials from other international financial institutions, international development practitioners, government officials, lawyers, judges, and representatives from civil society.
October 13 – Professor Jeffrey Bellin was a guest of Michael Best on Bloomberg Radio, discussing Warger v. Shauers, a pending Supreme Court case concerning whether a juror may testify about statements made by other jurors during deliberations.
October 8 – Professor Cynthia Ward was among the panelists at an event sponsored by the Women's Law Society to discuss the campus's sexual assault policy, the legal response, and how students are affected. The panel was moderated by Professor Susan Grover, Vice Provost for Academics & Faculty Affairs. Both Ward and Grover are members of the William & Mary Sexual Assault Taskforce.
October 7 – Professor Tim Zick was a guest on the WHRO (NPR) program “Hearsay with Cathy Lewis”, discussing the Supreme Court’s denial of petitions for certiorari in cases involving bans on same-sex marriage.
October 6 – Professor Allison Orr Larsen was a guest on The Colbert Report, discussing her article “The Trouble with Amicus Facts,” forthcoming in the Virginia Law Review.
October 3 – Professor Timothy Zick spoke at the University of Richmond School of Law on the topic of "Freedom of Expression and Gay Equality" as part of the Emroch Faculty Colloquy Series.
October 2 – Professor Thomas J. McSweeney and Professor of History Fahad Bishara hosted the first meeting of the William & Mary Legal History Seminar. The Seminar featured paper presentations by area scholars.
October – Professor Christie S. Warren gave a presentation on “Land and Property Issues in Post-Conflict Contexts” as part of the Law School’s Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Conference.
September 25 – Professor Christopher L. Griffin, Jr. presented a lecture titled "Connecticut's Public Pension Crisis: What's at Stake, and What Should We Do About It?" in Norwalk, Connecticut at an event organized by the Connecticut Policy Institute.
Fall – Professor Lynda L. Butler’s article “The Governance Function of Constitutional Property” was published in volume 48 of the U.C. Davis Law Review.
Fall – Professor Nancy Combs traveled to Norway to testify as an expert witness in a genocide trial. The trial featured a Rwandan defendant.
Fall – Professor Neal E. Devins participated in a Federalist Society podcast on the president’s duty to defend laws he believes to be unconstitutional.
Fall – Professor Neal E. Devins spoke (via Skype) on congressional participation in Supreme Court litigation as a measure of partisanship in Congress as part of a symposium sponsored by the Case Western Reserve Law Review on “Executive Discretion and the Administrative State.
Fall – Professor Adam M. Gershowitz gave a presentation at the Virginia State Capitol to the staff attorneys at the Virginia Supreme Court and Virginia Court of Appeals.
Fall – Professor Tara Leigh Grove’s paper “Reconsidering the Political Question Doctrine” was presented at the Seventh Annual Junior Federal Courts Workshop, which took place at the University of Georgia Law School on October 10-11. Tara also presented the paper at the University of Illinois College of Law’s Constitutional Theory, History, and Law Colloquium on October 27.
Fall – Professor Fredric I. Lederer recently responded to a request by the Department of Defense for recommendations on how to improve the military criminal legal system, proposing major changes to the Uniform Code of Military Justice. He has been asked by the Administrative Conference of the United States to administer a proof of concept remote pro bono immigration representation experiment.
Fall – Professor Linda A. Malone spoke as part of the plenary session at “Children and International Criminal Justice,” a conference held at the Dean Rusk Center for International Law and Policy at the University of Georgia School of Law.
Fall – Professor Linda A. Malone was invited to join the Editorial Committee for the Benchbook on International Law, a resource developed by the American Society of International Law to introduce judges to international law issues in U.S. courts.
Fall – Professor Paul Marcus gave a speech on "Comparative Criminal Justice" and "Teaching Excellence" at the University of Kansas and Howard University.
Fall – Professor Thomas J. McSweeney published two articles: "Magna Carta, Civil Law, and Canon Law," in Magna Carta and the Rule of Law, the ABA's volume celebrating the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta, and "The King's Courts and the King's Soul: Pardoning as Almsgiving in Medieval England," in Law's Dominion in the Middle Ages: Essays for Paul Hyams, a special issue of the University of Reading's Medieval Studies journal.
Fall – Professor Alan J. Meese and Professor Nathan B. Oman both signed on to comments regarding rules the Department of Health and Human Services has proposed to implement the Supreme Court’s recent Hobby Lobby decision. The comments cite the piece that Alan and Nate wrote on the subject for the Harvard Law Review Forum.
Fall – Professor Patricia Roberts participated on a panel titled “Putting Your Program in the Public Eye” at a conference held at The John Marshall Law School titled “Veterans Legal Clinics: A How-To Conference.”
Fall – Professor Christie S. Warren traveled to Burma with an ABA delegation to work with the Burmese government, lawyers, and former political prisoners. She gave a presentation on comparative law, as the legal community in Burma is debating whether to move away from a pure common law system and introduce aspects of civil code systems and laws applied in other Asian countries.
August 11 - Professor Adam Gershowitz’s article “Google Glass While Driving” was accepted by the Arizona State Law Journal for publication in 2015. Read the article.
August 7-8 – Vice Dean Laura A. Heymann and Professor Sarah R. Wasserman Rajec presented works in profess at the 14th Annual Intellectual Property Scholars Conference held at U.C. Berkeley's School of Law. Heymann presented "Knowing How to Know: Secondary Liablity for Speech," and Sarah presented "Indisputable IP."
August – Professor Linda A. Malone traveled to Bosnia and Croatia to work with Bridging Boundaries International, an NGO that sponsors programs for teenagers from different ethnic and religious backgrounds.
August – Professor Nathan B. Oman and Professor James Y. Stern hosted the second William & Mary Law Theory Workshop, a two-day roundtable on various topics in private law.
July 20-22 – Professor Nancy Combs presented "From Prosecutorial to Reparatory: A Valuable Post-Conflict Change of Focus" at the Sixth Annual CrimProf Conference held at Rutgers School of Law in Newark.
July 1 – Professor Jayne Barnard has been named to the WHRO-TV (and radio) Board of Directors for 2014-17.
July – Professor James Dwyer wrote an amicus brief that was filed in State of Tennessee v. Jacqueline Crank, on behalf of an organization called Children's Healthcare Is a Legal Duty and eight other organizations. The case involves a mother convicted of child neglect after she chose prayer over medical treatment for her daughter's ultimately fatal bone cancer.
July – Professor Adam M. Gershowitz contributed an article title "An NTSB for Capital Punishment" to Texas Tech Law Review's criminal law symposium. The article has since been highlighted on the Sentencing Law and Policy blog.
July – Vice Dean Laura A. Heymann attended the HERS Bryn Mawr Summer Institute for Women in Higher Education Administration.
July – Professor Fredric I. Lederer wrote an Evidence question that appeared on the July 2014 California Bar Exam.
June 27-28 – Professor Nancy Combs presented "Fact-Finding Without Facts: The Uncertain Evidentiary Foundations of International Criminal Convictions" at a conference on "Proof in International Criminal Trials," held at Bangor University in Wales.
June 25 – Professor Adam M.Gershowitz's amicus brief, authored on behalf of 28 criminal law professors, was cited twice in the United States Supreme Court's opinion in Riley v. California and United States v. Wurie. The amicus brief argued that police should not be permitted to search a cell phone incident to arrest without a warrant.
June 8 – Professor Thomas J. McSweeney presented "Law and Fiction in Medieval Iceland: The Story in the Gragas Manuscripts" at the Law and Humanities Junior Scholars Workshop at the University of Southern California. Read the paper.
June – Professor Evan J. Criddle presented his paper “Reclaiming the Grotian Theory of Humanitarian Intervention” at a conference on “Sovereignty as a Trusteeship for Humanity: Historical Antecedents and Their Impact on International Law,” held at Tel Aviv University
Summer – Professors Jayne Barnard and Nathan B. Oman participated in a symposium on the Supreme Court's decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. on the blog the Conglomerate.
Summer – Professor Fredric I. Lederer welcomed the Chief Judge and other members of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to the Law School. The group viewed the McGlothlin Courtroom and discussed the Commission's technology needs.
Summer – Professor Linda A. Malone taught this summer at the China University of Political Science and Law in Beijing. Professor Malone also spoke on climate change and ecofeminism at the annual meeting of the World Conservation Union Academy of Environmental Law in Tarragona, Spain and on competency to be executed under U.S. law at the annual meeting of the International Society for the Reform of Criminal Law in Vancouver.
Summer – Professor Alan J. Meese's article "Antitrust, Regulatory Harm, and Economic Liberty," a solicited response to Tom Nachbar's article "The Antitrust Constitution," was published by the Iowa Law Review Bulletin. Read the article.
Summer – Professor Alan J. Meese's article "Competition Policy and the Great Depression: Lessons Learned and a New Way Forward" was published in the Cornell Journal of Law & Public Policy. Read the article.
May – Professor Adam M. Gershowitz served as a commentator at the Neighborhood Criminal Justice Conference at Duke Law School.
May 30 – Professor Jayne Barnard presented her paper "Power, Status, Manhood, Risk and Fraud" at the Law and Society Association's Annual Meeting in Minneapolis on May 30. The paper examines the impact of wealth, status, and power on executive risk-taking and the role of testosterone in fostering fraudulent behavior.
May 23 – Professor Thomas J. McSweeney presented "Priests of the Law: Royal Justices and Legal-Literary Culture in 13th-Century England" at the London Legal History Seminar, which is run by the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies at the University of London.
May 22 - Professor Jeffrey Bellin presented his forthcoming article "The Inverse Relationship between the Constitutionality and Effectiveness of New York City 'Stop and Frisk'" at the Neighborhood Criminal Justice Roundtable held at Duke Law School.
May 12-13 – Professor Tara Grove's most recent article, Standing Outside of Article III, 162 U. Pa. L. Rev. __ (2014), was one of three articles selected for presentation at the 2014 New Voices in Civil Justice Workshop at Vanderbilt Law School.
May 3-4 – Professor Timothy Zick participated in the "Free Expression Scholars Conference" at Yale Law School. The conference was hosted by the Information Society Project and sponsored by the Floyd Abrams Institute for Freedom of Expression. The event brought together scholars to discuss their works-in-progress concerning freedom of speech, expression, press, association, petition, assembly, and related issues of knowledge and information policy.
April 29 – Professor Rebecca Green, co-director of the Election Law Program, testified about the Revive My Vote project before the National Commission on Voting Rights. The event was held in Richmond and was organized by the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.
April 10 – Professor Jeffrey Bellin's "eHearsay" exception is being considered by a federal committee. Read the story.
April 8 – Professor Christie Warren, director of the Program in Comparative Legal Studies and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding, introduced guests of the program, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy of the Supreme Court and Justice (ret.) Richard Goldstone of South Africa, at a panel presented for law students. Read about the panel in the story titled "Justices Kennedy and Goldstone Discuss Constitutions, Old and New, at the Law School."
April – Professor Neal Devins participated in a podcast with John W. Suthers, the Colorado Attorney General, on “Do State Attorneys General Have a Duty to Defend State Laws?” The podcast was sponsored by the Federalist Society.
April – Professor Christie Warren gave a presentation in late April at the Socrates España Seminar at the Real Maestranza de Caballería de Ronda in Ronda, Spain. The seminar was titled “Heroes and Villains: Leading Business, Politics, and Civil Society in the 21st Century” and was sponsored by the Aspen Institute of Spain.
March 31 – Professor Susan S. Grover, currently a University Professor for Teaching Excellence, was named the university's vice provost for academic and faculty affairs. Professor Grover has served in a number of campus-wide leadership roles at William & Mary. She will assume her new responsibilities July 1. Read the announcement.
March 30 – Professor Christie Warren, director of the Program in Comparative Legal Studies and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding, introduced Judge (ret.) Albie Sachs of South Africa at a lecture hosted by the program, the Reves Center, and the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. Sachs also lectured at the Law School on March 31. Read about his lecture at CW in a story titled "A South African Founder in Williamsburg."
March 28 – Professor Linda Malone was among the international law professors involved in the amicus brief filed in support of the defendants in Chevron v. Donziger. Read the brief.
March 26 – Professor Alan J. Meese and Professor Sarah L. Stafford were among the professors who signed a letter to Governor Chris Christie criticizing New Jersey's ban on Tesla's practice of distributing automobiles through customer-owned dealerships. Read the letter. Professor Meese devoted two blog posts to the topic: "Do Tesla Buyers Need a Nanny (State)?" and "New Jersey v. Economic Liberty."
March 24 – Professor Jayne Barnard was the lead organizer of an amicus curiae brief filed by 44 corporate and criminal law scholars in support of the petitioners in Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. and Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. v. Sebelius, cases pending before the Supreme Court. Read the story.
March 21 – Professor Adam M. Gershowitz wrote an amicus brief on behalf of 28 criminal law professors in support of Petitioner Riley and Respondent Wurie in Riley v. California and United States v. Wurie, cases pending before the Supreme Court. Read the story.
March 21 – Professor Thomas J. McSweeney attended a Magna Carta anniversary planning committee meeting with representatives from the ABA and the Presidential Precinct.
March 21 – Professor Linda Malone was a guest speaker at the JECE Spring Symposium on Environmental Justice sponsored by the Washington and Lee School of Law. An article based on the lecture will be published in fall 2014 in the Washington and Lee Journal of Energy, Climate, and the Environment.
March 14 – Virginia Lawyers Media announced that it will honor Professor Susan S. Grover among its list of "Influential Women of Virginia" at an awards dinner on May 22. Read the story.
March 10 – Professor Timothy Zick was one of more than 65 law professors to sign an amicus brief in support of the petitioner in Lane v. Franks (SSRN).
March 5 - Vice Dean Laura A. Heymann article "Overlapping Intellectual Property Doctrines: Election of Rights versus Selection of Remedies" was published in the Stanford Technology Law Review as part of a symposium on design patents. Read the article.
Spring – Professor Jeffery Bellin presented his proposal for a new hearsay exception covering electronic communications at a symposium sponsored by the Advisory Committee for the Federal Rules of Evidence at the University of Maine Law School (at the Committee’s invitation). A transcript of the presentation will be published in the Fordham Law Review.
Spring – Professor Christopher L. Griffin's article “Corrections for Racial Disparities in Law Enforcement” (co-authored with Frank A. Sloan and Lindsey M. Eldred) was published in issue 4 of the William & Mary Law Review.
February 25 – Professor Christie S. Warren presented a lecture at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy titled "Classical Islam, Contemporary Challenges."
February 24 – Professor Christie S. Warren presented at lecture titled "Crossing Borders and Rethinking Development: Human Rights and Measurement Indicators" at the Crossing Borders Symposium hosted by the University of Virginia School of Law.
February 20 – Professor Nathan B. Oman presented the Law School's 2014 Blackstone Lecture titled "Shakespeare and the Predicament of Contract Theory." Read the story.
February 13 – Professor Fredric Lederer presided over a "fractured legal fairy tale" trial conducted by our students for first and second graders.
February – Professor Tara Grove gave a presentation titled "Deciding to Decide: The Supreme Court's Power to Choose the Cases That It Hears" to the Kiwanis Club of Williamsburg.
February - Professor Adam Gershowitz’s essay "Why Arizona v. Gant Is the Wrong Solution to the Warrantless Cell Phone Search Problem" was published in the B.U. Law Review’s Annex: Perspectives.
January 31 – Professor Timothy Zick participated in a First Amendment Roundtable at Washington University (St. Louis). The event gathered First Amendment scholars from around the country to discuss scholarship and ideas relating to the freedom of speech.
January 27 – The Ruderman Family Foundation announced that Professor Michael A. Stein will receive the inaugural Morton E. Ruderman Award in Inclusion.
January 23 – Professor Lynda L. Butler presented the Law School's 2014 St. George Tucker Lecture titled "The Resilience of Property." Read the story.
January 16 – Dean Davison M. Douglas led a discussion of Martin Luther King's theory of civil disobedience as articulated in his famous 1963 "Letter from a Birmingham Jail." Read the story.
January 14 – Professor Michael Steven Green gave an invited talk at the Portmouth, Va., Second Tuesday Forum titled "Why Constitutionally Protect Private Arms Possession?" Watch the video.