News featuring a faculty member
Dating to his days in practice, Professor Ralph Brubaker has long held an interest in mass torts and bankruptcy that has developed into a rich and rewarding scholarly career. He shared his expertise in a feature interview on the Bloomberg Intelligence FICC Focus podcast, speaking in depth about what makes bankruptcy so appealing to defendants and corporate tortfeasors’ persistent efforts to exploit Chapter 11 protections.
Chicago’s “bubble ordinance” is meant to protect patients from harassment or unwanted solicitation any time they are within a 50-foot radius from the entrance of a medical facility. Protesters’ escalating behavior, particularly in front of facilities that provide abortion services, has led Ald. Bill Conway (34th) to propose a quiet zone in these areas. Professor Lena Shapiro, director of the First Amendment Clinic, spoke to Block Club about this issue and the balance necessary to maintain the right to protest with protections for patients.
“The internet never forgets” is a popular saying used as a way to warn individuals against sharing too much information on social media. However, when something is removed from social media, is it a violation of an individual’s First Amendment rights? Director of the First Amendment Clinic, Professor Lena Shapiro, joined WGN’s “Let’s Get Legal” to discuss this, the Biden administration and public platforms, and more.
Commenting on the Supreme Court case 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, Professor Lena Shapiro writes that the decision is an “unexpected champion for First Amendment liberties.” Her opinion article, written for the Student Press Law Center, pushes back against the narrative that the decision—in which the Court sided with a website designer who refused to create websites for same-sex couples, citing religious convictions—will allow individuals a license to discriminate. To the contrary, she writes, the decision is “about the freedom not to speak when the message doesn’t resonate with one’s beliefs.”
In the past year, advances in artificial intelligence have made the technology more than a curiosity. Today, AI chatbots can participate in logical conversations or write code and image-creation software can create hyperrealistic “photos” from a simple prompt. While these tools can be a great benefit to users, they exist in a gray area of law school academic policies and honor codes. Professor Patrick Keenan spoke about his class policy regarding generative AI use and how he aims to help students understand the tools without abusing them.
When an individual is nominated to a spot on the Supreme Court, the confirmation process requires a remarkable amount of background work. In fact, it is common for each piece of published material ever produced by the candidate to be scrutinized during confirmation, requiring a number of experts to assist the elected representatives in the process. On the Lost in the Stacks podcast, Professors Pia Hunter and Jason Mazzone share engaging and humorous stories of their work assisting in the confirmation of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.
The First Amendment Clinic, led by Professor Lena Shapiro, is listed among the counsel on an amicus brief submitted to the Supreme Court in the case of O’Connor-Radcliff v. Garnier. The case, one of two regarding social media that will be heard by the Court next term, centers on whether a governmental body (in this case a school board) violates individual First Amendment rights by blocking users on social media. The brief, which was submitted by First Amendment Clinics from law schools at Arizona State, Duke, and Vanderbilt in addition to Illinois, argues that public access to government social media accounts is most protective of First Amendment freedoms.
In an August 28th letter to the editor of The Washington Post, bankruptcy expert and professor Ralph Brubaker strongly condemned the Purdue Pharma settlement plan. He wrote:
“There are eminently feasible, well-trodden means of rendering justice for massive iniquity, which can and will produce much better (and actual) settlements for victims, if the Supreme Court repudiates the kind of ad hoc, designer justice system for the wealthy of which the Purdue deal is emblematic.”
Professor Jennifer Robbennolt and 2023 graduate Sam Barder have co-authored a paper titled “Optimistic Overconfidence: A Study of Law Student Academic Predictions.” Their findings, which indicate that a majority of incoming law students are wildly overconfident, drew the attention of Reuters, ABA Journal, and Above the Law.
Speaking to Reuters, Robbennolt suggested there may be several factors contributing to the optimism of new students.
“They are coming into a totally new environment,” Robbennolt said. “They don’t have much information about the tasks they will be asked to do and the kind of thinking they will be asked to do. They don’t know much about their peers.”
Read commentary about the paper at Reuters and ABA Journal.
Professor Jacob Sherkow has co-authored a paper, “Regulating Direct-to-Consumer Polygenic Risk Scores,” that was published in JAMA. In the paper, the authors argue that polygenic risk scores, which are used to predict risk factors for particular conditions using genetic data, require better government regulation.