Faculty Colloquium Speaker Series

The University of Arkansas at Little Rock William H. Bowen School of Law is proud to host a faculty colloquium speaker series that brings national scholars to the law school community monthly to discuss their cutting edge research and latest publications that are impacting the law both nationally and internationally. Bowen Law faculty will read and comment on works-in-progress that are presented and different constituencies of the law school community are invited to participate including student groups, alumni organizations, practitioners and judges.

Fall 2022 speakers

photo of Professor Carliss ChatmanCARLISS CHATMAN – August 26, 2022

Carliss Chatman is an Associate Professor of Law at Washington and Lee School of Law, where she teaches an array of business law, commercial law, and ethics classes. Her scholarship interests are in the fields of corporate law, ethics, and civil procedure. Professor Chatman’s scholarship is largely influenced by 11 years of legal practice in complex commercial litigation, mass tort litigation and the representation of small and start-up businesses in the United States and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. As a result, her scholarship is intersectional with a focus on issues at the heart of commercial litigation: the interplay of business entities, government and natural persons. Professor Chatman delivered remarks on her UCLA Law Review piece The Soft-Shoe and Shuffle of Law School Hiring Committee Practices.

Professor Kristin HenningKRISTIN HENNING – September 26, 2022

Kristin Henning is the Blume Professor of Law and Director of the Juvenile Justice Clinic and Initiative at Georgetown Law, where she supervises law students and represents youth accused of delinquency in the D.C. Superior Court. She writes extensively about race, adolescence, and policing and has a book just published with Penguin Random House,  THE RAGE OF INNOCENCE: HOW AMERICA CRIMINALIZES BLACK YOUTH. Professor Henning has also trained state actors across the country on the nature and scope of racial bias and how it operates in the juvenile and criminal legal systems. She also worked closely with the McArthur Foundation’s Juvenile Indigent Defense Action Network to develop a 41-volume Juvenile Training Immersion Program (JTIP), a national training curriculum for juvenile defenders.

photo of Professor Caprice RobertsCAPRICE ROBERTS – October 24, 2022

Caprice Roberts is a Professor of Law at the Louisiana State University Paul M. Hebert Law Center. She joined the LSU Law faculty in 2022 teaching Constitutional Law, Federal Courts, and Remedies. She recently served as Special Attorney to the United States Senate Judiciary Committee and has taught at George Washington University Law School, Florida Law and West Virginia University College of Law, amongst others.  Throughout Professor Roberts’ academic career, she has devoted scholarly and teaching attention to proper judicial role and the advancement of the law of remedies. She recently completed the new edition of the seminal treatise Dobbs & Roberts’s Law of Remedies and has published the ninth edition of a leading Remedies casebook with Doug Rendleman, as well as a coauthored casebook in Federal Courts with Michael Allen and Michael Finch.

photo of Professor Angela AddaeANGELA ADDAE – November 18, 2022

Angela Addae is an Assistant Professor at the University of Oregon School of Law, where she teaches in the areas of Civil Rights Law, Social Enterprise Law, and Race & the Law.  Her current research examines how municipal redevelopment policies affect neighborhood institutions in urban settings. Professor Addae engages in advocacy work through her service on the executive board of the Oregon Chapter of the National Bar Association and the Oregon Commission on Black Affairs. Her publications include: “Pathways to Sector Selection: A Conceptual Framework for Social Enterprises.” 28 Nonprofit Management and Leadership 348 (2018), and “Challenging the Constitutionality of Private Prisons: Insights from Israel,” 25 Wm. & Mary J. of Race, Gender, and Social Justice 527 (2019)

Spring 2023 speakers

Jon OsakiJon Osaki – January 26, 2023

Jon Osaki is an award-winning filmmaker who has directed and produced promotional, educational, narrative, and documentary films. His initial interest in film grew from his desire to share the stories of the Japanese Community Youth Council, where he has served as Executive Director since 1996. Over the past few years, he has had films screened at film festivals and community events across the country. As a filmmaker, Jon views this genre as the next step in his lifelong pursuit of social justice and equity.  Jon Osaki will speak to the faculty as part of the faculty colloquium and will then screen his award-winning documentary film “Reparations” for the law school and university community.

photo of Professor John Taylor – February 27, 2023

John E. Taylor is the Jackson Kelly Professor of Law at West Virginia University College of Law, where he teaches Constitutional Law I, Criminal Procedure I, Criminal Law, Torts I, Education Law, and a seminar on the law of church and state. Professor Taylor writes primarily about First Amendment issues in the public schools. He was named Professor of the Year for the College of Law in 2017, and he received the College of Law’s Significant Faculty Scholarship Award in 2006 for his article entitled Using Suppression Hearing Testimony to Prove Good Faith Under United States v. Leon. Professor Taylor has served as Interim Dean of West Virginia University Law and has been a visiting Professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law.

Photo of Professor Stephen RamirezSTEVEN RAMIREZ – March 27, 2023

Steven A. Ramirez is the Abner J. Mikva Professor of Law and the Director of Business Law Center at Loyola University Chicago School of Law, where he teaches Business Organizations, Securities Litigation Seminar, and other business related classes. He has published extensively in the areas of law and economics, corporate governance and financial regulation. Prior to joining the law faculty at Loyola University of Chicago, he was on the faculty of Washburn University School of Law, Topeka, Kansas, where he was the founding director of the Business and Transactional Law Center. Before his career in academia, Professor Ramirez was a partner with Robinson Curley & Clayton, a Chicago litigation firm, specializing in corporate, securities and banking litigation. He also served as a Senior Attorney for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and as an Enforcement Attorney with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Professor Ramirez has published two books including THE CASE FOR THE CORPORATE DEATH PENALTY: RESTORING LAW AND ORDER ON WALL STREET and LAWLESS CAPITALISM: THE SUBPRIME CRISIS AND THE CASE FOR AN ECONOMIC RULE OF LAW, both with the NYU Press.

photo of Professor Atiba EllisATIBA ELLIS – April 24, 2023

Atiba Ellis is a Professor of Law at Marquette University Law School, where his research focuses on voting rights law with specific attention to how varying conceptions of the right to vote exclude voters on the margins. He has written about the economic entry barriers posed by voter ID laws, felon disenfranchisement laws, the theoretical effects of the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, the impact of the Supreme Court’s decision in Shelby County v. Holder, and related topics. Professor Ellis’s current research focuses on voting rights theory and how ideology affects the scope of the right to vote. He has also written on critical legal theory and legal history. Professor Ellis has previously served as a law professor at Howard University School of Law and West Virginia University College of Law.

Guest Lecturers 2022-23

DOROTHY BROWN – September 23, 2022
Antiracist Book Club Discussion – The Whiteness of Wealth

Professor Dorothy Brown, author of The Whiteness of Wealth, joined the Bowen Law School Faculty antiracist book club to discuss their faculty summer selection of her best selling book. Professor Brown is the Martin D. Ginsburg Chair in Taxation and Professor of Law at Georgetown Law. She is well known for her work in a variety of areas: the effects of tax policy by race, class, and/or gender; workplace equity and inclusion; and law school reform. She is author of both The Whiteness of Wealth and the path breaking Critical Race Theory: Cases, Material and Problems currently in its third edition, which applies a racial lens to foundational law school courses such as contracts, property, civil and criminal law and procedure. Professor Brown has appeared on CNN, MSNBC, and Bloomberg, and has written numerous opinion pieces addressing current events in the New York Times, The Atlantic, CNN Opinion, Washington Post, Forbes, National Law Journal and Bloomberg View to name a few. She currently teaches Fundamentals of Income Tax, Legislation and Regulation, Corporate Tax, Critical Race Theory and Tax Policy.

César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández – October 19, 2022
Hispanic Heritage Month Keynote Speaker

Professor César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández traveled to Little Rock from Mexico City to deliver the Hispanic Heritage Month Keynote Address at the William H. Bowen Law School. Professor García Hernández is the Gregory Williams Chair in Civil Rights and Civil Liberties at Ohio State University Moritz College of Law where he writes and teaches about the intersection of criminal and immigration law. He has published two books, Migrating to Prison: America’s Obsession with Locking Up Immigrants (2019), and Crimmigration Law (2015). His scholarly articles about the right to counsel for migrants in the criminal justice system, immigration imprisonment, and race-based immigration policing have appeared in the California Law Review, UCLA Law Review, BYU Law Review, Maryland Law Review, and Georgetown Immigration Law Journal, among others. He also publishes the blog crimmigration.com. Professor García Hernández analyses of policies affecting migrants regularly appear in media in the United States and abroad. He has published opinion articles in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, Time, and many other venues. Through hundreds of interviews, he has lent his expert analysis to journalists in Brazil, Canada, Germany, South Africa, and the United States.