Faculty News

May 2019

Carol Goforth

Professor Goforth published a solicited article in the Capco Institute’s Journal #49: Alternative Capital Markets. In the article, titled “Crypto is Money, Property, A Commodity, and a Security, All at the Same Time,” she explains that the first crypto assets were designed as replacements for fiat currency, and as such, the label ‘cryptocurrency’ made sense. As innovators have developed additional functionality for crypto, it no longer makes sense to assume that all crypto are the same. Nonetheless, regulatory authorities in the United States continue to lump them together, but grouping does not mean that the agencies agree on how to classify crypto.

In an effort to fit the assets into existing regulations, crypto in the U.S. is being simultaneously treated as money, property, a commodity, and a security. Goforth concludes that the state of affairs has led to conflicting and overlapping regulations, which are not likely to be harmonized unless and until regulators accept that not all crypto are the same and that they should not be regulated monolithically.

Donald Judges

Professor Judges has announced his retirement from the University of Arkansas effective Sept. 15. He has been a member of the School of Law faculty since 1989 and vice provost for distance education and head of the Global Campus since 2017. He was appointed interim associate vice provost for distance education in 2015. Judges became interested in distance education when the law school developed its online track for the LL.M. Program in Agricultural and Food Law.

Christopher Kelley

Professor Kelley joined other members of the ABA Section of International Law for the 2019 ABA International Legal Exchange (ILEX) trip. Kelley co-chaired the planning (and was the inspiration behind) the week-long trip to Chisinau, Moldova; Kyiv, Ukraine; and Minsk, Belarus, which included ILEX delegates and University of Arkansas School of Law School alumni Anne Ross (J.D. ’16) and Madeleine Goss (J.D. ’19). ILEX trips are designed to foster understanding and cooperation among attorneys worldwide. In each city, the ILEX delegates met with U.S. embassy officials, and local governmental ministers and officials, as well as local judges, lawyers, law professors, and law students.

Mark Killenbeck

Professor Killenbeck served as “cup bearer” at first annual Honors Senior Common Room Induction Ceremony on May 7. The somewhat farcical ceremony was created and hosted by University of Arkansas Honors College Dean Lynda Coon, her staff, and recent visiting scholars. Killenbeck taught an Honors College Signature Seminar titled “Free Speech” during the fall 2018 semester.

Tamla Lewis

Associate Dean Lewis was elected to the National Association of Law Student Affairs Professionals board of directors as the South Region representative. NALSAP is the professional home for student affairs professionals who work in the law school environment. The organization supports its members by advocating on behalf of the profession, providing professional development opportunities (including an annual conference), offering resources on best practices, and fostering a community that enhances the personal and professional success of its members.

Cynthia Nance

Dean Emeritus and professor Nance was featured, along with the Hon. Sarah S. Vance of the U.S. District Court - Eastern District of Louisiana and Teresa Wilton Harmon of Sidley Austin LLP, in a video created by the American Law Institute touting the benefits of attending the organization’s annual meetings. This year’s meeting was held in Washington, D.C., May 20-22. Watch “Attending the 96th Annual Meeting.”

Uché Ewelukwa Ofodile

Professor Ewelukwa Ofodile participated in the Innovate Rights: New Thinking on Business and Human Rights Conference 2019 held May 14-16 in Sydney, Australia. The conference brought together local and global leaders from business, civil society, government, and academia to explore innovations in business and policy, opportunities for business to play a greater role in improving human rights and practical solutions to rights challenges faced by industry. Ewelukwa Ofodile presented a paper titled, “Financial Technologies (Fintechs), Business, and Human Rights: Costs, Benefits and Challenges.” Her article “Djibouti Signs the ICSID Convention: The Big Question is Why?” was posted on Kluwer Arbitration Blog (KAB) on May 30. KAB is a publication of Kluwer Law International.

Jordan Blair Woods

Professor Woods has published “Religious Exemptions and LGBTQ Child Welfare” in Vol. 103 of the Minnesota Law Review. In the article, he considers how broad religious exemptions involving child welfare affect LGBTQ youth in the child welfare system.

“Unaccompanied Youth and Private-Public Order Failures,” an article published in Vol. 103 (2018) of the Iowa Law Review, has been awarded a 2018 Dukeminier Award. This is the second consecutive year that Woods has received the award, which recognizes the best law review articles published

each year on sexual orientation and gender identity issues. The article contains a discussion of family-centered child welfare and juvenile justice laws and describes how the laws push LGBT youth into homelessness.

Woods’ article “Youth, Equality, and the State” has been selected for the 2019 Harry Krause Emerging Family Law Scholars Workshop, a forum to take place on June 15 in Chicago. The workshop provides an opportunity for four family law scholars, who have been in tenure-track positions for seven years or less, to present scholarship and receive feedback from senior scholars in the field. The workshop is sponsored by The Family Law and Policy Program at the University of Illinois College of Law, in conjunction with Notre Dame Law School, Chicago-Kent College of Law, Brooklyn Law School, the University of Minnesota School of Law, and the University of South Carolina School of Law. Workshop participants are selected through a competitive application process.