General News

Director of Diversity, Equity and Community to be endowed in honor of Robert Belton

Feb. 25, 2021—Belton was a pioneering scholar of labor and employment law and the law school’s first tenured African American professor. The position of Robert Belton Director of Diversity, Equity and Community will be endowed by an anonymous donor this year

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Ashton Andrews ’22 and Molly Gray ’22 win the 2020-21 Bass Berry & Sims Moot Court Competition

Feb. 23, 2021—Aaron Bernard ’22 and Emily Webb ’22 are Moot Court finalists, with Emily Detiveaux ’22 honored for Best Oralist and Peter Byrne ’22 and Caylyn Harvey ’22 for Best Brief.

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Matthew Fitzgerald ’20 wins 2020 Adm. John S. Jenkins Writing Award from National Institute of Military Justice

Feb. 11, 2021—The award recognizes the best paper written by a law student on a military justice topic. Fitzgerald’s essay, “Thank Me for My Service: An Ethics Oversight in DoD Social Media Policy,” will be published in the Harvard National Security Law Journal.

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Criminal Justice Clinic Fellow Joshua Stanton works with students to represent criminal defendants in challenging times

Jan. 28, 2021—Stanton works with Associate Dean for Clinical Affairs Sue Kay ’79 to supervise students in the Criminal Justice Clinic as they represent indigent clients during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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“They, Them and Theirs,” Harvard Law Review article by Jessica Clarke, wins the Dukeminier Awards Michael Cunningham Prize

Jan. 28, 2021—Clarke’s article has been reprinted in the UCLA Law Dukeminier Awards Journal, which annually recognizes the best legal scholarship on sexual orientation and gender identity issues.

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Allaire Urban Karzon, pioneering VLS professor, dead at 95

Jan. 27, 2021—A trailblazing attorney whose career combined teaching and practice, Professor Karzon became the first tenured woman professor at Vanderbilt, where she taught tax law.

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JETLaw Note by Ramon Ryan ’21 wins ABA’s 2020 K. William Kolbe Writing Competition

Jan. 18, 2021—Ryan’s Note, “The Fault in Our Stars,” addresses environmental review of commercial satellite launches. The award, sponsored by the ABA’s Infrastructure and Regulated Industries Section, recognizes the best paper addressing specific industries providing important services.

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Acclaimed novelist Dinaw Mengestu to speak at Vanderbilt’s 2021 MLK Day commemorative event

Jan. 12, 2021—The virtual event, "At Home in the World: Place, Identity and the American Dream," will be hosted by Chancellor Daniel Diermeier and moderated by Clinical Professor of Law Karla McKanders.

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General News


Samiyyah Ali ’16 joins Biden White House team as deputy associate counsel

Jan. 11, 2021—Ali will serve in the Office of the White House Counsel. She most recently served as a trial litigator at Wilkinson Stekloff in Washington. Before entering private practice, she was a law clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, for Judge Sri Srinivasan of the D.C. Court of Appeals and for Judge Amul Thapar on the Eastern District of Kentucky.

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Samar Ali ’06 (BS’03), joins VU faculty as research professor in political science and law

Jan. 11, 2021—Ali is a research professor in political science and law and co-director of the Unity Project with John Geer, Ginny and Conner Searcy Dean of the College of Arts and Science, and Jon Meacham, Vanderbilt’s Carolyn T. and Robert M. Rogers Professor of the American Presidency.

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U.S. tech infrastructure vulnerable to attack: op/ed by Ramon Ryan ’21

Jan. 4, 2021—Ryan is editor-in-chief of the Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology. His Jan. 4 opinion piece in The Tennessean addresses the need to prepare for and take action to prevent attacks on the physical infrastructure supporting our telecommuncations systems.

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George H. Cate Jr. ’51 (BA’49), Nashville’s first vice mayor, dead at 92

Dec. 22, 2020—After winning the Founder's Medal, Cate practiced law for more than 60 years and served as the city's first vice mayor under Mayor Beverly Briley. He retired in 2014. In 1984, he received the John C. Tune Public Service Award, an honor given to the Nashville Bar Association member who has shown the highest degree of dedication to the betterment of the community.

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Christopher Slobogin honored with Vanderbilt University’s 2020 Harvie Branscomb Distinguished Professor Award

Dec. 21, 2020—The award recognizes creative research and teaching. Slobogin is an expert in criminal procedure who has authored more than 100 articles, books and chapters. He directs the Criminal Justice Program.

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Michael Vandenbergh, Jonathan Gilligan and Lou Leonard discuss how the U.S. can rejoin the Paris climate agreement

Dec. 21, 2020—In a co-authored opinion piece in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the authors discuss the need for a national climate change strategy based on the same sort of public-private collaboration that led to the rapid production of COVID-19 vaccines.

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Daniel J. Sharfstein appointed to the Dick and Martha Lansden Chair in Law

Dec. 18, 2020—Sharfstein is a legal historian whose work addresses race and citizenship in the United States. He is the author of two award-winning books, “The Invisible Line” and “Thunder in the Mountains,” and received a 2013 Guggenheim Fellowship.

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Brian Fitzpatrick appointed to the Milton R. Underwood Chair in Free Enterprise

Dec. 18, 2020—An expert in complex litigation, Fitzpatrick is most recently the author of The Conservative Case of Class Actions, a 2019 book published by University of Chicago Press.

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Bob Covington ’61, who taught at VLS for 46 years, dead at 84

Dec. 3, 2020—Covington was an expert in labor law who also published books and articles on evidence, insurance, legal method and legal education.

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Ashlee McFarlane ’09 profiled by Bloomberg Law

Nov. 16, 2020—McFarlane is now a partner at Gerger Khalil Hennessy & McFarlane in Houston. She represented Maurice Hall, a passenger in the car when George Floyd was stopped by police in Minneapolis who was himself arrested in Houston days after Floyd's death. McFarlane was a trial attorney with the criminal division of the U.S. Department of Justice before she entered private practice in 2018. She focuses on defending clients in federal procedings.

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Supreme Court Justice Neil M. Gorsuch discusses his work and judicial philosophy in a conversation with former clerk Tim Meyer

Nov. 13, 2020—Professor Meyer’s conversation with Justice Gorsuch was sponsored by the Cecil Sims Lecture Series. Meyer clerked for Gorsuch on the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals.

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James Danly ’13 elevated to chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission

Nov. 12, 2020—James P. Danly ’13 has been named chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Danly has served as one of five FERC commissioners, who are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate, since March 2020. Before being appointed to the FERC commission, Danly had served since 2017 as general counsel for FERC, where...

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Bill Hagerty ’84 (BA’81) wins Tennessee Senate seat

Nov. 5, 2020—Hagerty previously served as the U.S. ambassador to Japan. He won the Senate seat vacated by retiring Sen. Lamar Alexander.

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Ganesh Sitaraman discusses Supreme Court reform on The Ezra Klein Show

Oct. 21, 2020—Ezra Klein and Ganesh Sitaraman discuss proposals for Supreme Court reform, including Sitaraman's own proposal, in a conversation that covers such options as court-packing and term limits and more obscure proposals like the 5-5-5 balanced bench and a judicial lottery system.

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18 members of the Class of 2020 selected for Order of the Coif

Oct. 17, 2020—Members of the Order of the Coif are selected by faculty approval and represent the top 10 percent of their graduating class.

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Brian Broughman studies impact of financing arrangements on startups

Oct. 15, 2020—Broughman’s work at the intersection of law and economics explores how lawyers adapt traditional financing contracts to meet the needs of high-value startup companies and how financing influences startups’ futures.

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Worker Advocacy Practicum addresses “access to justice crisis” affecting low-wage workers

Oct. 15, 2020—Assistant Dean for Public Interest Spring Miller launches a new practicum through which students advocate for the employment rights of low-wage workers.

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