Notable scholarship and activity from the Pitt Law faculty
Notable scholarship and activity from the Pitt Law faculty
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Faculty Impact                                           Sept. 2018 

Chaz Arnett presents at Stanford's Culp Colloquium and CrimFest, publishes in Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology

Chaz Arnett
Chaz Arnett presented his draft paper, “From Decarceration to E-carceration,” at Stanford Law School's Culp Colloquium on June 4, and at the CrimFest conference at Cardozo Law School on July 16-17. Additionally, Arnett presented an early stage project, “Panoptic Policing: Surveillance Technology and the Struggle for Community Control,” as a part of the annual Mid-Atlantic Junior Faculty Forum at University of Richmond School of Law.

Arnett most recently published “Virtual Shackles: Electronic Surveillance and the Adultification of Juvenile Courts” in Northwestern Law's Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology.

Read "Virtual Shackles: Electronic Surveillance and the Adultification of Juvenile Courts" on SSRN.

Additional Publications

Jessie Allen published her article, “Doctrinal Reasoning as a Disruptive Practice,” in the University of Chicago's peer-reviewed Journal of Law and Courts.
Vivian Curran edited a special issue of the American Journal of Comparative Law with her colleague, Franklin A. Gevurtz, which has been published at volume 66.
Vivian Curran’s article, “U.S. Discovery in a Transnational and Digital Age and the Increasing Need for Comparative Analysis,” has been published in a symposium issue on new trends in discovery at 51 Akron L. Rev. 857 (2017).
Vivian Curran’s article, “The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act’s Evolving Genocide Exception,” will be published at 23 UCLA J. Int’l L. & For. Aff. (forthcoming 2019).
Greer Donley’s article, “The Broken Medicare Appeals System: Failed Regulatory Solutions and the Promise of Federal Litigation,” was published at 28 Health Matrix 269 (2018).
Josh Galperin’s co-authored article, “Food Localization: Empowering Community Food Systems through the Farm Bill,” was recently published by the Journal of Food Law and Policy
Josh Galperin published “No Farms No Food? A Response to Baylen Linnekin" at 45 Fordham Urb. L.J. 1141 (2018).
Jasmine Gonzales Rose published “Racial Character Evidence in Police Killing Cases,” at 2018 Wis. L. Rev. 369 (2018),
Matiangai Sirleaf’s article, “Responsibility for Epidemics,” was accepted for publication in volume 97 of the Texas Law Review.

NYU Press publishes The Future of Tech is Female by Douglas Branson

Douglas Branson, the W. Edward Sell Chair in Law at Pitt Law, published his latest book, The Future of Tech is Female: How to Achieve Gender Diversity, with NYU Press (July 2018).
Branson, an expert in corporate governance, has published 23 books. His newest book, The Future of Tech is Female, focuses on the problem of hostile environments toward women at tech companies, as well as in computer science and STEM programs at universities. Branson spoke to Scott Jaschik of Inside Higher Ed, noting, "what looms large is evidence of hostile environments: posters and photos of scantily clad women on the wall, lower pay for women, nerd-type environments dominated by young men with poor hygiene and poorer attitudes toward women in their midst."

Speaking Engagements

Kevin Ashley presented several research seminars and invited talks at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, the Institute of Theoretical Informatics, and the Institute of Philosophy with support from the German Academic Exchange Service. He also presented “Semantic Analysis of Legal Texts: Challenges and Opportunities” at the Technical University of Munich Department of Informatics, and gave invited talks at the Doctoral Research Group in “Digital Law” at the University of Heidelberg Faculty of Law and the University of Ulm.  In addition, Ashley presented “Legal Liability of Autonomous Systems and Implications for Norms-based Systems: An Overview,” at the Dagstuhl Seminar on Normative Multi-Agent Systems, and a keynote address entitled, “Applying Text Analytics in the Legal Domain: Possibilities and Problems,” at the Conference on Legal Aspects of Data Science held at Tilburg University in the Netherlands. Finally, at the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology, Ashley presented a talk on “Legal Text Analytics or How Law Meets AI; Opportunities and Challenges.” 
Mary Crossley presented her paper, “Bundling Justice: Medicaid’s Support for Housing,” at the Annual Health Law Professors Conference sponsored by the American Society of Law, Medicine, & Ethics and hosted by the Case Western Reserve University School of Law on June 9.
Vivian Curran organized, introduced, and chaired a session, “Remembering Patrick Glenn,” at the 20th annual Congress of the International Academy of Comparative Law in July in Fukuoka, Japan, to commemorate both the life and work of Glenn, one of the great comparatists of the 20th century.
Josh Galperin recently delivered an invited talk entitled, “Why Food Law?” on food law and policy to an interdisciplinary symposium hosted by the University of Sao Paulo. Galperin also spoke at the annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America about his recent article, “Trust Me, I’m a Pragmatist: A Partially Pragmatic Critique of Pragmatic Activism," and presented a work in progress tentatively titled, “Pennsylvania Gas: Takings, Trusts, and Judicial Temperaments,” at the annual Natural Resources Teachers Workshop of the Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Foundation.
David Harris presented a program on mitigating implicit bias for judges and lawyers at the Pennsylvania Bar Institute’s Criminal Law Symposium for 2018, in Harrisburg on June 8. He also held implicit bias training sessions for the Allegheny County Public Defenders Office, reviewing the latest science on implicit bias and its influence on the delivery of public defense services. Harris served on a panel reviewing cases for the Pennsylvania Innocence Project in July. 
Michael Madison presented, “Governing University Knowledge Commons,” at the University of Haifa Faculty of Law’s Center for Cyber Law and Policy in Haifa, Israel on May 17.
Matiangai Sirleaf presented her emerging idea, “Disposable Bodies of Color: Experimental Trials & the Racial Economy of Treatment,” at the University of Colorado Law School at a workshop focusing on International Law & Racial Justice held in August.Sirleaf presented her draft, “Responsibility for Combating Highly-Infectious Diseases,” at the National University of Singapore Faculty of Law, Aug. 3-4 on a panel focusing on Globalization and International Justice at the Third World Approaches to International Law Conference, and also at the 12th Annual Lutie A. Lytle Black Women Law Faculty Writing Workshop & Writing Retreat in July, where it was selected for an intensive session and was paired with an editor from the Yale Law Journal.

Rhonda Wasserman cited in three amicus briefs submitted to U.S. Supreme Court in Frank v. Gaos

Rhonda Wasserman
Rhonda Wasserman’s article, “Cy Pres in Class Action Settlements,” 88 S. Cal. L. Rev. 97 (2014), was cited in three amicus briefs submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court in Frank v. Gaos. The brief filed by the United States cites the article for its discussion of the origins of cy pres in trust law and its recent use in class actions [Brief for U.S. at 16, 17, 19, 20, & 32, Frank v. Gaos (No. 17-961), 2018 WL 3456069 (July 16, 2018)]. The very last line of the brief quotes Wasserman’s recommendation that attorneys’ fees in class actions deploying cy pres be adjusted to “better align the interests of class counsel and the class.”
The brief filed by Lawyers for Civil Justice cites the article for its discussion of cy pres in class action settlements. [Brief for Lawyers for Civil Justice at 4, Frank v. Gaos (No. 17-961), 2018 WL 3456066 (July 13, 2018)].
The brief filed by the N.J. Civil Justice Institute cites the article for its recommendation regarding attorneys’ fees and its discussion of the Ninth Circuit’s approach to cy pres. [Brief for N.J. Civil Justice Institute at 9 & 15, Frank v. Gaos (No. 17-961)].

Faculty In the News

Douglas Branson penned an op-ed for Western Pennsylvania Healthcare News, “It’s the Lean In Era, Yet Business and Tech Still Fail to Hire and Promote Women.”
Philip Hackney published an op-ed in the New York Times, “Why the I.R.S. Should Go After Trump.”
David Harris testified before a hearing of the Allegheny County Council on Aug. 30, concerning a proposal to establish a civilian oversight authority for the more than one hundred independent police departments in the county that lie outside Pittsburgh.
David Harris commented on why a defendant facing the death penalty for murder would elect a non-jury trial, on WESA, Pittsburgh’s public radio flagship station on June 14 and 15.
Arthur Hellman was a guest on the 107th episode of the Los Angeles Daily Journal's podcast with reporter Nick Sonnenburg, discussing the Ninth Circuit's judges.
Michael Madison convened an online symposium about the future of legal education at Prawfsblawg, a leading law faculty blog, in March and April. Titled, “Law’s Futures,” the symposium was framed by an essay that Madison posted online in late December 2017 (and later distributed via SSRN), titled, “An Invitation Regarding Law and Legal Education, and Imagining the Future,” and was moderated by Dan Rodriguez, then Dean of Northwestern Pritzker School of Law. The symposium attracted more than 60 contributions from more than 25 contributors, from three countries, and roughly 60,000 words in all.
Michael Madison was a featured guest in a podcast titled, “Just Wanna Quilt,” produced by Tulane Law School Professor Elizabeth Townsend Gard. The podcast is part of a continuing research project and collective action focused on community-based craft work, creativity, and law. Madison’s research on knowledge commons is woven into its fabric.
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