The Faculty Lounge

Call for Papers: Law and Rurality Workshop

The Rural Reconciliation Project at the University of Nebraska College of Law, along with the University of South Dakota Knudson School of Law, will host a workshop this fall for scholars whose work engages with the law and its relation to rural people and places. The workshop will be held via Zoom on Friday, November 14, 2025, from approximately 9 am until 4 pm CST, with the final schedule to be determined after participants are selected. 

This workshop provides a forum for scholars of diverse disciplines and career stages to share and receive feedback on in-progress research that addresses or investigates themes of law and rurality, including legal issues viewed through the lens of rural experience, rural geography, or rural-urban difference. We also anticipate at least one incubator session for scholars to receive feedback on more nascent ideas. 

In order to be included, participants will be expected to commit to attend the full day of Zoom sessions and read and comment on other works in the workshop.

Submission Process and Related Deadlines

If you are interested in workshopping an in-progress paper or presenting an incubator idea, please submit a title and abstract to Hannah Haksgaard at [email protected] no later than Friday, August 29, 2025. Indicate on your abstract whether you will be workshopping a draft or want to present at an earlier-stage incubator session.

Workshop drafts will be due October 31, 2025, so they may be circulated to other participants. Those presenting at an incubator session need only submit a final abstract or short outline.

We are also happy to consider participation by particularly interested scholars who do not seek to present. If you wish to attend the workshop – either as a general participant or as a commentator – please also e-mail [email protected] by August 29, 2025, with some background and context about your proposed engagement (i.e., area of expertise, whether you would like to participate as a formal discussant or general workshop member, etc.).

Kitty Wells

After so many decades of enjoying the music of women like Dolly Parton, Loretta Lynn, and Tammy Wynette, it is almost hard to realize that there were virtually no female country music stars until Kitty Wells released "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels" in 1952. Born Ellen Muriel Deason, Wells paved the way for Patsy Cline, whose first hit was "Walkin' after Midnight" in 1957.

Wells wasn't the first woman with a country hit. Patsy Montana released "I Want to Be a Cowboy's Sweetheart" in 1934 as lead vocalist with the Prairie Ramblers. But Wells as the first woman to achieve sustained stardom, and the first female country vocalist to release a solo LP, in 1956, with Kitty Wells' Country Hit Parade. 

"It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels," an answer song to Hank Thompson's "The Wild Side of Life," was considered boldly risque at the time, with its suggestion that a woman might get even with a cheating man. She went even more risque (for the '50s) with "I Don't Claim to Be an Angel," in which they lyrics asked her sweetheart to "forget about my past." Many, perhaps most, of her later songs were typecast in the jilted lover, heartbreak, three-chords-and-the-truth genre, more than occasionally toward the illicit side.

Call for Expressions of Interest: Feminist Legal Studies Roundtable, Pace University Downtown (NYC) Campus, June 16, 2025

The Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University, Albany Law School, the U.S. Feminist Judgments Project, and the Feminist Judgments International Research Collaborative of the Law and Society Association invite expressions of interest in participating in the inaugural Feminist Legal Studies Roundtable to be held on June 16, 2025, at Pace University’s downtown campus in Lower Manhattan.

This roundtable seeks to bring together a group of up to twenty self-identified feminist scholars (whatever that means to you) to workshop ideas and papers at any stage of formation. All participants will be engaged in legal scholarship that relates in some way to women, gender & sexuality studies; critical race theory; or related fields. We invite participants to present any work, at any stage of development, on a topic of their choice that is related in some way to feminist legal studies, broadly understood.

More details after the fold.

Congestion And The Deceased Donor Waiting List

From Al Roth's Market Design Blog:

The deceased donor waiting list for kidneys to transplant is congested: offers, which take time to evaluate, are often rejected, while cold ischemia time accumulates.

 Here's a paper just published in Transplantation, in which we suggest new ways to detect organs that will be hard to match, and which might therefore be expedited through the allocation process (to get more quickly to patients who will accept them).

Insights From Refusal Patterns for Deceased Donor Kidney Offers, by Guan, Grace MS1; Neelam, Sanjit MS2; Studnia, Joachim MS2; Cheng, Xingxing S. MD, MS3; Melcher, Marc L. MD, PhD4; Rees, Michael A. MD, PhD5,6; Roth, Alvin E. PhD7; Somaini, Paulo PhD8; Ashlagi, Itai PhD1
Author Information
Transplantation ():10.1097/TP.0000000000005434, May 21, 2025 

American Tax Policy Institute Webinar 6/12/25 "Mission at Risk? Tax Exemption and the New Scrutiny of Nonprofits"

The webinar is free and open to the public with preregistraton, here.

Courtney Anderson Named Dean of Georgia State Law

Georgia State College of Law has announced that Courtney Anderson will be its next dean.  She has been serving as interim dean since July 2024.  Anderson, who holds a JD from Harvard, will take over on June 1.

No IVF For Single Women

In Italy. The FT has the story:

Italy’s constitutional court has upheld a long-standing ban on single women undergoing treatment for in vitro fertilisation, dealing a big setback to many who aspire to have babies amid the country’s deepening demographic crisis. Under existing rules, only heterosexual married couples are eligible for IVF in Italy, including in private clinics. This has forced many women who are single or in a same-sex partnership to travel to Spain or the UK for fertility treatments, a much costlier and more complicated endeavour.

But the constitutional court, in a separate ruling on Thursday, delivered a major victory to women in same-sex partnerships who have had children through IVF abroad, often with one partner providing the egg and the other carrying the pregnancy. Until now, Italy has recognised only the birth mother as legal parent, denying the other partner any rights over their own genetic children, or forcing them to go through a lengthy adoption process.  The court called such an approach unconstitutional and ruled that two women who undergo IVF together abroad, with each other’s consent, must both be recognised as the child’s legal parents.

 

“Under existing rules, only heterosexual married couples are eligible for IVF in Italy, including in private clinics. This has forced many women who are single or in a same-sex partnership to travel to Spain or the UK for fertility treatments, a much costlier and more complicated endeavour.”

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— Kim Krawiec (@kimkrawiec.bsky.social) May 22, 2025 at 8:00 PM

Hari Osofsky Stepping Down as Dean of Northwestern Law

Northwestern University has announced that Hari Osofsky will step down as dean of the law school this summer.  She will direct the Energy Innovation Lab and the Rule of Law Global Academic Partnership at Northwestern.

Women, Gender & the Law Emerging Scholar Award: Call for Submissions

Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University

The Elisabeth Haub School of Law is pleased to announce the competition for its annual Women, Gender & the Law Emerging Scholar Award.  This paper competition is open to all having with five (5) or fewer years of full-time law teaching experience as of July 1, 2025. The deadline for submissions is July 1, 2025.

The purpose of the award is to encourage and recognize excellent legal scholarship related to gender and the law.  The work chosen for the Women, Gender & the Law Emerging Scholar Award should make a substantial contribution to legal literature and reflect original research and/or major developments in previously reported research.

Papers will be reviewed on a blind basis by a committee comprised of members of the Haub Law full-time faculty with expertise in this area.  The winner of the competition will be invited to present the paper to selected students and faculty at Haub Law (located in White Plains, NY) during the 2025-2026 academic year, with reasonable travel expenses from within the continental U.S. paid, or via Zoom, as circumstances permit and by mutual agreement.

ELIGIBILITY:

• All persons who have held full-time teaching positions for five (5) or fewer full academic years as of July 1, 2025 are eligible for consideration. One does not have to be on the tenure-track or tenured to be eligible. Time as a VAP or Fellow does not “count against” the five (5) year clock.
• There is no subject-matter limitation for submissions, as long as the paper relates in some way to gender and the law.
• Jointly authored papers are accepted as long as each author independently meets the eligibility requirements.

PUBLICATION COMMITMENTS/LIMITATIONS:

• There is no publication commitment associated with the competition. 
• Papers are eligible regardless of whether they were published prior to submission date, are scheduled to be published after the submission date, or are not yet under submission.
• Each applicant is limited to one (1) entry.
• Papers considered in prior years’ competitions are eligible for resubmission.
• There are no page-length or word-count limitations.
• All publications (including scholarly articles, book chapters, legal briefs and other writings) are eligible for consideration.

SUBMISSION:

• We will accept submissions for the Emerging Scholar Award from June 1, 2025, through July 1, 2025. The winner will be announced by August 30, 2025.
• To participate, please email your work, redacted as necessary to preserve anonymity (for the blind judging process), as a portable data file (PDF) to Judy Jaeger, Senior Staff Associate, at [email protected] with the subject line “Emerging Scholar Award.”
• Please include in the body of the email your name, institutional affiliation and confirmation that you meet the eligibility requirements.
• Unredacted or late papers will not be considered.

More details after the fold.

 

Hiring Announcement: Jacksonville University College of Law

From a recent email message:

Jacksonville University College of Law

Job Title: Assistant/Associate/Professor of Law

Department: College of Law

Position Reports to (Position Title): Dean of Faculty and Academic Affairs. College of Law

Effective Date: Fall 2025

Position Class Position: Exempt, Full-Time

Job Summary

Jacksonville University College of Law invites applications for multiple full-time, tenure-track or non-tenure track faculty positions to begin either in Fall or Winter of 2025, or Fall of 2026.

We are also reviewing applications for one- or two-year visitor positions at this time. As a newer law school with a steadily growing student body, we are hiring in all areas of expertise.

Particular needs include legal writing, appellate advocacy, tax, contracts and upper-level business courses, criminal law, evidence, trial advocacy and trial practice, trusts and estates, family law, bar preparation courses, and academic success. Flexibility in teaching across the curriculum, especially the 1L curriculum, and experience with the ABA accreditation process will be highly valued, as will appreciation and enthusiasm for the unique challenges and opportunities of building a new law school. Two to three years of full-time law teaching or the equivalent is preferred.

All positions require a JD or equivalent degree. The College of Law is a unitary faculty, and all candidates must show a commitment to excellence in teaching and service. Candidates for tenure-track positions should also show a record of, or substantial promise of, scholarly achievement.

Applications and any questions should be emailed directly to l[email protected]. Applications must include a cover letter, CV, and list of three references, should be submitted as soon as possible, and will be reviewed beginning May 1, 2025, and reviewed on a rolling basis thereafter. Applicants should specify the courses they would be interested in teaching, whether they are interested in a tenure-track or non-tenure track position, and whether they are seeking a full­ time position or a visitorship.

Massachusetts Reins In Trafficking Creep

At least for now. I had not been following Commonwealth v. Garafalo, but it is an interesting case in the latest battles over "trafficking creep" and the  Massachusetts Supreme Court recently weighed in. As Janie Chuang explained trafficking creep (along with exploitation creep) back in 2014:

The vagaries of this expansive definition have allowed diverse advocates to
opportunistically appropriate the “trafficking” label, such that what
trafficking is – is very much in the eye of the beholder. The definitional
muddle has also inspired promiscuous conflation of legal concepts, heated
battles over how best to address the problem, and an ever-changing
landscape of actors sharing in the fervor to abolish that thing we call
“trafficking.” 

The defendants in Garafalo responded to an online advertisement ostensibly offering sexual services for a fee (the advertisements were actually part of a sting operation). Interestingly, the advertisements went to great pains to depict the offerors as adult women not being trafficked. For example, the ads contained photos of adult women and described the women as "independent", "meaning -- as clarified in one text message exchange between the ostensible sex worker and one of the defendants -- that the woman was not affiliated with a "pimp" or "boyfriend."

Antony Page Steps Down as Dean of Florida International

Here is the message from Provost Elizabeth Béjar:

May 23, 2025

Dear members of the university community,

After leading the College of Law for the past seven years, Antony Page has completed his service as Dean and this summer will join the College’s full-time tenured faculty to reengage more directly with his academic and research interests. Under Antony’s leadership, the College of Law has continued its upward trajectory, achieving significant milestones and establishing itself as South Florida’s premier law school.

During Antony’s tenure, College of Law graduates earned the highest cumulative first-time bar passage rate of any law school in Florida and surpassed the 90% bar passage barrier on three separate occasions. The faculty has grown in stature to include experts in multiple areas, improving the curriculum's breadth while enhancing the college's scholarly impact, with faculty publications reaching scholars around the world.

Antony’s leadership has led to a remarkable growth in the College’s reputation. Since 2018, no other law school in the nation has seen a greater improvement in its U.S. News & World Report lawyer reputation score, and only four schools have seen a larger increase in peer reputation scores. This fall’s incoming class will have the strongest academic profile in the College’s history.

The College of Law is now well positioned to search for its new Dean to build upon these strengths. I am thankful that Antony is committed to FIU’s success, and as he transitions toward a reinvigorated dedication to his teaching and scholarship, he will support the university and the Interim Dean to facilitate a seamless transition. We will commence a search for a new Dean of the College of Law at the beginning of the Fall 2025 semester.

During this time, I have asked Michelle Mason to serve as Interim Dean effective May 24, 2025.

Michelle has been serving as the College’s Senior Associate Dean for Experiential Learning and Associate Dean for Enrollment since 2014. She has been a dedicated member of its senior leadership since its founding, previously serving as Associate Dean for Admissions and Student Services, Senior Associate Dean for Enrollment Management, Student Development and Outreach, and Director of the FIU Law Center for Professionalism and Ethics. She also is a Faculty Fellow in the FIU Honors College. Her distinguished record of accomplishment includes launching multidisciplinary partnerships in new clinical programming, co-chairing the FIU Fostering Panther Pride Committee, and authoring or co-authoring more than $1.5M in successful grant proposals since 2010.

Before joining FIU, she earned both her B.A. and J.D. from Rutgers University and held key roles at Phillips Exeter Academy, Seton Hall University School of Law, and Vermont Law School. Previously recognized by the Daily Business Review as one of the Top 20 Women in the Law, her scholarly interests include civic engagement, ethics, and professionalism.

As we strive toward the next era of prosperity for our College of Law, please join me in thanking Antony for his outstanding tenure as its Dean. Please also join me in supporting and welcoming Michelle to her new role.

Sincerely,

Elizabeth M. Béjar, PhD
Provost, Executive Vice President, and Chief Operating Officer

Gaming Citations (Updated)

In the latest example of Goodhart's Law, a recent paper finds evidence that researchers are purchasing citations in order to boost their citation metrics. From the paper:

In this study, we analyze over 1.6 million Google Scholar profiles and identify instances of citation manipulation to boost an author’s citation metrics. In many cases, this was done through a previously undocumented practice of “citation purchasing”, where an author pays a small fee to a third party company which provides citations to the author in bulk. We confirm that this practice is possible by purchasing citations to a fictional author. This type of manipulation is of particular concern due to Google Scholar’s wide-spread use in scientist evaluation processes, which we confirm with a survey of faculty from top-ranked universities. Our findings bring to light new forms of citation manipulation and emphasize the need to look beyond citation counts.

Here is the paper. And here is the abstract:

Google Scholar is manipulatable

Hazem Ibrahim, Fengyuan Liu, Yasir Zaki, Talal Rahwan

Citations are widely considered in scientists' evaluation. As such, scientists may be incentivized to inflate their citation counts. While previous literature has examined self-citations and citation cartels, it remains unclear whether scientists can purchase citations. Here, we compile a dataset of ~1.6 million profiles on Google Scholar to examine instances of citation fraud on the platform. We survey faculty at highly-ranked universities, and confirm that Google Scholar is widely used when evaluating scientists. Intrigued by a citation-boosting service that we unravelled during our investigation, we contacted the service while undercover as a fictional author, and managed to purchase 50 citations. These findings provide conclusive evidence that citations can be bought in bulk, and highlight the need to look beyond citation counts.

Update 5/27: Derek Muller raised this concern about USNWR's Hein-based citation metrics back in 2019. 

Blast From The Past: Article Length (Updated)

Orin Kerr reminds us of the joint statement by law reviews, back in 2005, to limit article length. The plan, shall we say, didn't work :-)

Updated 5/26: Over at PrawfsBlawg, Howard Wasserman provides interesting anecdotes 

 

It was very promising, back in 2005, when a bunch of the top law reviews issued this statement. It appears to have been forgotten.

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— Orin Kerr (@orinkerr.bsky.social) May 20, 2025 at 9:40 PM