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

David Harris Delivers University of Pittsburgh's

Provost's Inaugural Lecture 

Professor David Harris 
Professor David Harris delivered the Provost’s Inaugural Lecture, "Police Body Cameras: From Accountability to Betrayal," on Oct. 25, in celebration of his appointment as the Sally Ann Semenko Endowed Chair and Professor of Law.
This appointment recognizes his extensive research and scholarly activities over the course of his career that have made him one of the nation’s 20 most-cited criminal law faculty. Harris has spoken about racial profiling, police-community relations, and police accountability at the White House and testified multiple times in Congress.
Harris’ podcast Criminal Injustice kicked off its sixth season this fall. The show continues to attract listeners, with a new high of more than 71,000 downloads. 

MIT Press publishes Our Selfish Tax Laws: Toward Tax Reform
That Mirrors Our Better Selves 
by Anthony Infanti

Tax law: not just a pocketbook issue but a reflection of what and whom we value.
Anthony Infanti, the Christopher C. Walthour, Sr. Professor of Law at Pitt Law, published his latest book, Our Selfish Tax Laws: Toward Tax Reform That Mirrors Our Better Selves, with MIT Press (Oct. 2018). 
In Our Selfish Tax Laws, Infanti takes a broad view of U.S. tax law, considering not just how taxes affect us individually, but how the tax system reflects our culture and society. He finds that American tax laws validate and benefit those who already possess power and privilege, while starkly reflecting the lines of difference and discrimination in American society based on race, ethnicity, socioeconomic class, gender, sexual orientation and gender identity, immigration status, and disability. 

Selected Additional Publications

Professor Mary Crossley published a chapter “Parental Autonomy, Children with Disabilities, and Horizontal Identities," in The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Disability (David T. Wasserman and Adam Cureton, eds.).  
Professor Mary Crossley published an article “Bundling Justice: Medicaid’s Support for Housing,” in the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics. In the article, she considers a justice-based argument for making Medicaid funds available to pay for supportive housing for homeless persons in the same fashion that those funds are used to support housing for nursing home residents.
Professor Greer Donley’s article, “Regulation of Encapsulated Placenta,” will be published in the Winter 2019 issue of Tennessee Law Review (86:2).            
Linda Tashbook’s article, "The Trouble with Troubles: Sources for Questions about Law and Mental Health," was published in Public Libraries, the peer-reviewed journal of the Public Library Association.

Selected Speaking Engagements

Professor Jessie Allen presented her paper, “Skeptical Sorcery,” at an international interdisciplinary conference held at the Australian National University in Canberra, AU on Sept. 1-22. The Conference, "After the Rule: Interpretation in Comparative and Cross-Cultural Perspective," explored “alternative ways of dwelling with law,” drawing on, among other things, religious, anthropological, and economic perspectives. 
Professor Chaz Arnett was selected to participate in the 6th Annual Junior Faculty Works in Progress Conference at Marquette University Law School on Sept. 10. Only eight junior faculty members from across the country are invited to participate each year. He presented his draft paper, From Decarceration to E-carceration.    
Professor Kevin Ashley presented an invited talk, “Legal Text Analytics: Opportunities and Challenges, Where Law and AI Meet,” at the Second International Congress of Law, Government & Technology, organized by University of Brasilia, and an expanded version of this talk at the Faculty of Law of the University of Sao Paulo in late Sept.
Professor Elena Baylis presented her work-in-progress, “Pluralist Hybrid Courts,” at an International Law Colloquium at St. John’s University School of Law on Oct. 24. This paper will be published as a chapter in the Oxford Research Handbook on Global Legal Pluralism (Paul Schiff Berman, ed., Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2018).                  
Professor Ronald A. Brand led a three-day training session for professors and coaches of Vis International Arbitration Moot teams from law schools from throughout the Middle East on Oct. 25-27. The program was held at the Carthage University Faculty of Legal, Political, and Social Sciences of Tunis.
Professor Ronald A. Brand spoke on “New Challenges in the Recognition and Enforcement of Judgments” at the Nov. 15 symposium on "The Continuing Relevance of Private International Law and Its Challenges" at the New York University School of Law Center for Transnational Litigation, Arbitration, and Commercial Law.
Professor Vivian Curran gave a presentation on “A Critique of Comparative Law” at the Sixth Annual roundtable of Comparative Constitutional Law, Montpelier, VA, on Oct. 7-8. She also spoke about being a Privileged Insider/Outsider in Comparative Law at Washington and Lee Law School.
Visiting Associate Professor Josh Galperin presented his essay, Pennsylvania Gas: Trusts, Takings, and Judicial Temperaments, at the 9th Annual Colloquium on Environmental Law at Vermont Law School, the nation’s top-ranked environmental law program, on Sept. 22.         
Visiting Associate Professor Josh Galperin spoke at Harvard Law School about his work-in-progress, The Life and Death of Administrative Democracy. This talk was part of the inaugural conference of the Academy of Food Law & Policy, on Oct. 5.   
Professor David Harris spoke at Yale Law School’s national conference for the Media Freedom and Information Access (MFIA) Clinic on Oct. 12. Harris participated in a panel on law enforcement transparency and accountability. The conference gathered journalists, academics, media lawyers and advocates from around the country.    
Visiting Professor Jacqui Lipton participated as a discussant in a multi-disciplinary forum, “Coordinating the Future Agenda at the Intersection of Law and Technology,”  hosted by the University of Florida Levin College of Law Program in Intellectual Property Law on Oct. 18-19.         
Professor Matiangai Sirleaf delivered a keynote speech at Kenyatta University in Nairobi, Kenya on Sept. 21. The conference was entitled, “20 Years Since the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court: The Status of International Rule of Law, and Access to International Criminal Justice in Africa.” Sirleaf spoke on "Regionalizing International Criminal Justice."
Professor David Thaw presented his article, “Hacking Democracy,” which was accepted for the Second Annual Northwestern-Penn-Stanford Junior Faculty Forum for Law and STEM, at Northwestern University’s Pritzker School of Law on Sept. 28-29.  
Professor David Thaw delivered a keynote address on Nov. 1, entitled, “Transforming a Digital Generation: How the Economic and Legal Implications of Blockchain Will Reshape Society,” at Seoul National University’s conference “AI & Blockchain: International Symposium on the 4th Industrial Revolution.”   
Professor Rhonda Wasserman spoke at a program sponsored by the Philadelphia Bar Foundation entitled, “The Changing Cy Pres Landscape,” on Oct. 30. The program was timed to coincide with the United States Supreme Court’s argument in Frank v. Gaos (17-961). Wassermans article, Cy Pres in Class Action Settlements, 88 So. Cal. L. Rev. 97 (2014), is cited and quoted in several of the briefs filed in the case.

David Hickton cited as expert on Pennsylvania's
Election Security 

Professor David J. Hickton, '81
Founding Director of the University of Pittsburgh Institute for Cyber Law, Policy, and Security, David J. Hickton, ’81, has been quoted extensively regarding his work as co-chair of the Blue Ribbon Commission on Pennsylvania’s Election Security, an independent, non-partisan commission studying Pennsylvania’s election cybersecurity.
Hickton told the Associated Press that the Commission’s members felt strongly that, “you need to start beginning now to acknowledge that we have vulnerable voting machines here in Pennsylvania.” And Hickton told Newsweek, “Cybersecurity experts say confidence in voting-machine security is misplaced. You can’t bury your head in the sand and say these machines are safe because you lock them in a closet before the election.”  Hickton’s editorial, Foreign Election Influence Is Still a Huge Problem in America. Here’s How We Can Stop It,” was published in Time magazine.

Selected Additional Faculty In the News

Visiting Associate Professor Josh Galperin was quoted in several recent Yale Daily News articles about the Senate hearings on the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to serve on the United States Supreme Court.   
Visiting Associate Professor Josh Galperin was quoted in an article published by the New Food Economy about the largely pro-regulatory agenda of President Trump’s Food and Drug Administration.
Professor David Harris explained the decision of Chicago Police Officer Jason Van Dyke to testify in his trial for the murder of Laquan McDonald, a young black man shot 16 times by Van Dyke in the Oct. 3 issue of the New York Times.  
Professor David Harris assisted in the analysis of the data on stops and searches of Latino drivers on Interstate 5 by LA Sheriff’s Department Deputies in the Los Angeles Times
Professor David Hickton was quoted in the New York Times article, U.S. Accuses North Korea of Plot to Hurt Economy as Spy Is Charged in Sony Hack, on Sept. 6.
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