2023: Vanderbilt Law Faculty Thought Leadership

Vanderbilt Law faculty published important research and impactful opinion pieces and were featured as expert commentators in testimony, interviews, podcasts, and media interviews throughout 2023; check out some of the highlights below.

Newly Released Books

• Ganesh Sitaraman’s book, Why Flying Is So Miserable and How to Fix It, was released in November.
• Daniel Gervais’ first novel, Forever, a legal sci-fi story, was released in summer 2023.

Opinion Pieces

• Daniel Gervais and John Nay, “AIs Could Soon Run Businesses,” — The Conversation. Oct. 26.
• Farhang Heydari, “If the Feds Are Serious About Police Reform, They Should Stop Encouraging Bad Policing” – The Hill, Aug. 31
• Ganesh Sitaraman and Ramsay Eyre, “The Government Can Get It Right on AI” – Politico, Oct. 10.
• Ganesh Sitaraman, “Airlines Are Just Banks Now”—The Atlantic, Sept. 21.
• Francesca Procaccini and Nikolas Guggenberger, “Angry about the Supreme Court? Blame Congress” — Los Angeles Times, July 5.
• Ganesh Sitaraman, “A Simpler Way to Regulate TikTok”—Politico, June 18.
• Joni Hersch, “Pay Attention to Charter School Expansion Push in Tennessee,” —The Tennessean, May 8.
• Jennifer Shinall, “Tennessee Abortion Law Is Stopping Me from Having More Children,” — Los Angeles Times, March 16.
• Morgan Ricks and Lev Menand, “Scrap the Bank Deposit Limit,” — Washington Post, March 15.

Impactful Research

• The Fitzpatrick Matrix, developed by Brian Fitzpatrick and Brooke Levy ’22, was adopted for use in calculating claims for attorneys’ fees in federal court.
• Lisa Bressman’s article, “Statutory Interpretation from the Inside,” co-authored with Abbe Gluck, was cited by Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett in her concurrence in Biden v. Nebraska.
• Ingrid Brunk’s amicus brief in Halkbank v. U.S., submitted with William Dodge, was cited by Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch in his concurring opinion.
• Morgan Ricks was featured in a New Yorker interview with John Cassidy, “The Old Policy Issues Behind the New Banking Turmoil,” March 13.
• The Yale Journal on Regulation hosted a symposium focused on Networks, Platforms, and Utilities, a new law school casebook co-authored by Morgan Ricks and Ganesh Sitaraman with Shelley Welton and Lev Menand.

Testimony

• Yesha Yadav testified before the Senate Banking Committee on the cryptocurrency meltdown.
• Ingrid Brunk testified to the European Central Bank about central bank immunities and international sanctions at the 2023 ECB Legal Conference.

Podcast Episodes

• Yesha Yadav discussed her research indicating that U.S. treasury bills may be more fragile than we know in a Planet Money podcast released Dec. 11.
• Farhang Heydari joined other legal scholars to discuss “AI and Police Surveillance” in an episode of the NPR program 1A on Feb. 23.
• Joseph Fishman discussed the current state of copyright law and a music infringement case on Talks on Law.
• Ingrid Brunk was featured on the Lawfare podcast, “Halkbank Hits the Supreme Court,” on Jan. 18.
• Jennifer Shinall discussed her research on the economic impact of workplace protections for pregnant workers and the protections provided by the recently passed Pregnant Workers Fairness Act in a Dec. 11 Planet Money podcast.
• Jennifer Shinall talked about potential solutions to weight-based employment discrimination in a subscriber-only Economist podcast released Jan. 5.

Expert Interviews

• Yesha Yadav discussed the Binance settlement and the future of the crypto industry with finance journalist Talia Kaplan of CNBC on Nov. 9.
• Yesha Yadav discussed the cost of not enacting crypto regulation at CoinDesk’s State of Crypto 2023 event in Washington, D.C. on Oct. 26.
• Francesca Procaccini discussed the line between free speech and witness intimidation under First Amendment in an Aug. 26 CNN interview.
• Rebecca Allensworth discussed the government’s landmark antitrust case against Google with the PBS Newshour’s Geoff Bennett and Cecelia Kang of the New York Times and on NPRs All Things Considered on Sept. 11, in a CNN Business interview on Sept. 10.

New Programs

• The Weaver Program in Law, Brain Sciences, and Behavior was established with a $3.85 million endowment from the Weaver Foundation.
• Vanderbilt University launched the Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator, led by law professor Ganesh Sitaraman.
• The Vanderbilt Project on Prosecution Policy, led by newly appointed Research Professor Alissa Heydari, launched in December to focus on prosecution in the South.

Professional Honors

• Matthew Patrick Shaw received the Steven S. Goldberg Award from the Education Law Association.
• W. Kip Viscusi was named to the inaugural cohort of the Southern Economic Association’s Distinguished Fellows.
• Francesca Procaccini delivered the Harry Lee Wakefield Distinguished Lecture in Public Affairs.

Selected Published Research

Journal Articles

• Amanda Rose discussed her forthcoming article, “A Hard Look at Portfolio Primacy Theory as a Financial Rationale for SEC-Mandated ESG Disclosure” (Columbia Business Law Review) in a post on the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance 2.
• Lauren Sudeall published two articles, “Disaster Discordance: Local Court Implication of State and Federal Eviction Prevention Policies During the COVID-19 Pandemic,” co-authored with Elora Lee Raymond of Georgia Tech and Philip M.E. Garboden of the University of Chicago (Georgetown Journal on Poverty Law and Policy), and “Creating a People-First Court Data Framework,” co-authored with Charlotte Alexander of Georgia Tech (Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review).
• Daniel Gervais’ article “Artificial Intelligence and InterSpecific Law,” co-authored with John Nay of Stanford, was published in Science and featured in TechXplore.
• B. Ruhl’s article “Overcoming ‘The Greens’ Dilemma’ – How to Build a Climate-Friendly Infrastructure Quickly Enough to Meet Climate Goals,” co-authored with James Salzman of UCLA Law, was published in the Emory Law Journal.
• Nicole Langston’s California Law Review article, “Discharge Discrimination,” painted a stark picture of how inequities in the U.S. Bankruptcy Code result in inconsistent debt relief.
• Kip Viscusi’s article, “The Hierarchy and Performance of State Recycling and Deposit Laws,” co-authored with Caroline Cecot, JD/PhD’14, of Scalia Law, was published in the Vermont Journal of Environmental Law.
• Kip Viscusi’s co-authored paper with Elissa Philip Gentry, JD/PhD’16, “The Misapplication of the Major Questions Doctrine to Emerging Risks,” is forthcoming in the Houston Law Review.
• Yesha Yadav’s paper, “The Failed Promise of Treasuries in Financial Regulation,” co-authored with Pradeep Yadav of the University of Oklahoma, was published in the Southern California Law Review.
• “Representative Rulemaking,” coauthored by Jim Rossi and Kevin Stack, was published in the Iowa Law Review.
• “Payments and the Evolution of Stablecoins and CBDCs in the Global Economy,” a report co-authored by Yesha Yadav with Jose Fernandez da Ponte and Amy Davine Kim, addresses the potential of stablecoins and CBDCs to address financial inequalities and inefficiencies in the U.S. payment system.
• Joni Hersch’s article, “Gender, Race, and Job Satisfaction of Law Graduates: Intersectional Evidence from the National Survey of College Graduates,” is forthcoming in the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies.
• Robert Mikos’ article, “Legalization Without Disruption: Why Congress Should Let States Restrict Interstate Commerce in Marijuana,” co-authored with Scott Bloomberg, was published in the Pepperdine Law Review.
• Michael Vandenbergh’s comment, “Feasible Climate Migration,” was published in Nature Climate Change.
• Paige Skiba’s article, “Time to Repay or Time to Delay? The Effective of Having More Time Before a Payday Loan Is Due,” co-authored with Susan Payne Carter, Kuan Liu, and Justin Sydnor, was published in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics.
• Owen Jones’ paper, “Using an Evolutionary Approach to Improve Predictive Ability in the Social Science: Property, the Endowment Affect, and Law,” coauthored with Sarah Brosnan, was published in Evolution and Human Behavior.
• Tracey George’s article, “Some Are More Equal Than Others: U.S. Supreme Court Clerkships,” co-authored with Albert Yoon and Mitu Gulati, was published by the University of Virginia School of Law.

White Papers

• Morgan Ricks’ white paper, “Rebuilding Banking Law: Banks as Public Utilities,” co-authored with Lev Menand, was released by the Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator.