Five Vanderbilt Law professors–Lisa Bressman, Rebecca Allensworth, Kevin Stack, Chris Slobogin and Jenny Diamond Cheng–received 2018 Hall-Hartman Awards for Outstanding Teaching at an awards presentation April 19.
Hall-Hartman Awards are based on a student poll administered by the student-led Vanderbilt Bar Association. The annual awards, which recognize excellent teaching of both first-year and upper-level classes, are given to one professor in each of Vanderbilt’s three first-year sections; to two professors who taught upper-level courses, with separate categories for large classes with 30 students or more and classes with fewer than 30 students; and to one lecturer in law or adjunct professor.
Hall-Hartman Awards are a longstanding Vanderbilt tradition recognizing faculty whose teaching is deemed outstanding in each first-year student section and for large and small upper-level elective courses. The awards are named in honor of former professors Donald J. Hall and Paul Hartman, both of whom spent their academic careers at Vanderbilt and were revered for their teaching.
“These awards are coveted and hard to win because we have so many outstanding teachers on our faculty,” Dean Chris Guthrie said. “Professors cherish this recognition because it comes directly from the students they’ve taught this year.”
Lisa Bressman, who holds a David Daniels Allen Distinguished Chair in Law, was recognized for her first-year Regulatory State course by Section A of the Class of 2021. Bressman co-authored, with Vanderbilt colleagues Edward Rubin and Kevin Stack, The Regulatory State, the textbook for Vanderbilt’s first-year course. She served as the law school’s associate dean for academic affairs from 2010 to 2016 and was co-director of Vanderbilt’s Regulatory Program from 2006 to 2010. Professor Bressman is a nationally renowned scholar in administrative law and statutory interpretation. She ranks among the top 10 most-cited scholars in the area of public law for the period from 2013 to 2017 in the most recent Leiter Score scholarly impact rankings.
Rebecca Allensworth, professor of law, was recognized by Section B of the Class of 2021 for her first-year Contracts class and for her upper-level course seminar, The Jurisprudence and Scholarship or Richard Posner. Professor Allensworth was a law clerk for Judge Posner, who sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Her work on occupational licensing has been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court and has received the 13th annual Jerry S. Cohen Memorial Fund Writing Award for groundbreaking antitrust scholarship.
Kevin Stack, who holds the Lee S. and Charles A. Speir Chair in Law, was recognized for his first-year Regulatory State course by Section C of the Class of 2021. Stack co-authored, with Vanderbilt colleagues Lisa Bressman and Edward Rubin, The Regulatory State, the textbook for Vanderbilt’s first-year course. He served as the law school’s associate dean for research from 2008 to 2010 and again from 2012 to 2015. Professor Stack has served as a member of the Council of the Administrative and Regulatory Practice Section of the American Bar Association and is a public member of the Administrative Conference of the United States.
Chris Slobogin, who holds a Milton R. Underwood Chair in Law, was recognized for his upper-level Criminal Procedure class. Slobogin directs Vanderbilt’s Criminal Justice Program. He has authored more than 100 articles, books and chapters on topics relating to criminal law and procedure, mental health law and evidence and is one of the five most cited criminal law and procedure law professors in the country over the past five years, according to the Leiter Report, and one of the top 50 most cited law professors overall from 2005-2015, according to Hein Online.
Lecturer in Law Jenny Diamond Cheng was recognized for her course in Education Law. Cheng studies the political and legal treatment of families and children. Her research examines the boundaries between legal childhood and adulthood, and she has written extensively about the minimum voting age.