Faculty News

Professor Duncan became a postulator in the process of canonizing his friend Ruth V. K. Pakaluk, a wife, mother, and influential pro-life advocate who passed away from cancer in 1998 at age 41.

Professor Lyness presented his work in progress “The (Limited) American Right to Roam” at the 16th Annual Colloquium on Environmental Scholarship at Vermont Law and Graduate School.

Leo Yu presented his new scholarship project – Racialized Allegiances – in two national conferences: LatCrit 30th anniversary conference in Denver, Colorado and the Critical Race Studies Conference in Los Angeles, California.

Professor Lyness was quoted in a recent RI PBS and The Rhode Island Current story on shoreline litigation.

Among a coalition of leading civil rights scholars, Leo Yu filed an amicus curiae brief with the Eighth Circuit in support of a constitutional challenge to Arkansas’s alien land laws that target Asian immigrants.

Professor Duncan talked about latest legal news of state-level restrictions on abortion medication with the National Catholic Register.

Professor Drew sat down with Providence Business News to talk about her recent acceptance of the Mass Bar’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

Professor Dwight Duncan was interviewed on the recent SCOTUS ruling siding with parents who sued a school board after they introduced “LGBTQ+-inclusive” storybooks into the elementary school curriculum and rescinded a policy allowing parents to opt out of such instruction.

Professors Leo Yu and Lisa Lucile Owens recently attended the 2025 Conference of Asian Pacific American Law Faculty (CAPALF) and Western Law Teachers of Color (WLTC), held in Honolulu, Hawai‘i.

Professor Dwight Duncan was interviewed by the National Catholic Register on the constitutionality of religious art in public spaces.

Professor Dwight Duncan was interviewed on latest SCOTUS decision blocking tax-payer funding to Oklahoma charter schools.

Professor Dwight Duncan was interviewed for his thoughts on papal name selection.

Associate professor to be celebrated by Massachusetts Bar Association on June 5, 2025

UMass Law Adjunct Professor Joseph Spadoni’s new article published in the Suffolk Journal of Trial & Appellate Advocacy takes a hard look at how racial bias continues to shape pretrial detention decisions in Massachusetts.

Professor Owens speaks at a statewide housing policy symposium hosted by the University of Maine School of Law to address Maine’s growing affordable housing crisis.

Professor Faisal Chaudhry gives book talks in the UK at the University of Oxford and the University of London.

The UMass Law Faculty Development Committee hosts the 7th UMass Interdisciplinary Legal Studies Colloquium at the UMass Club in Boston.

UMass Law Visiting Professor Brian Sirman moderated a session at the Preserving the Recent Past 4 (“PRP4”) conference.

Vyas Publishes in Tennessee Law Review on Why the Government Can Deepfake You

Professor Lisa Lucile Owens attended Boston College’s prestigious Junior Faculty Roundtable, where she presented her ongoing research on municipal housing reparations and strict scrutiny analysis.

Professor Vyas’ latest article argues that the law providing for a permanent cap on the House of Representatives is unconstitutional

Professor Lisa Owens presented her latest work “Revisiting Gender in Places of Public Accommodation” at the Northeastern Junior Scholarship Conference.

UMass Law Professor Geoff McDonald proposes ways to mitigate homelessness through legal advocacy and policy reform and outlines the public’s ethical obligation to address homelessness in the context of contemporary moral philosophy.

Associate Dean’s legal advocacy shapes Massachusetts alimony law

Professors Farber and Vyas presented their latest article titled “Truth and Technology: Deepfakes in Custodial Interrogations” at the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law Symposium

Professors Lisa Owens and Anna-Marie Tabor represented UMass Law at AALS.

Legal scholars bring expertise in civil rights, environmental law, and constitutional litigation

UMass Law hosts over 65 Academic and Bar Support faculty from across the country at the annual NECASP conference.

Professors Byra, Davis, Moor, and Spencer presented at the New England Legal Writing Conference on program redesign for the NextGen Bar Exam.

UMass Law Professor Anna-Marie Tabor advocates for accountability in pension buyout transactions in her recently published article, A Proposal to Enhance Participant Disclosures in Pension Annuity Buy-Outs.

Professor Owens recently published a new article in a special issue of Socius that explores how surveillance works in highly surveilled environments.

The UMass Law community celebrates Professor Faisal Chaudhry’s recently published book South Asia, the British Empire, and the Rise of Classical Legal Thought: Towards a Historical Ontology of Law.

UMass Law Librarian and Alumna Katelyn Golsby wrote a magazine article about developing and teaching a cannabis business law course while working as a law librarian at Florida International University.

Professor Geoff McDonald was interviewed on his thoughts of the recently signed Affordable Homes Act.

Professor Justine Dunlap authors a chapter on her experience creating a contemplative pedagogy faculty learning community at UMass Dartmouth.

The National Association of Woman Lawyers invited Professor Margaret Drew to participate in a discussion on the Supreme Court case, U.S. v. Rahimi on the NAWL podcast.

Professor Geoff McDonald was interviewed by MassLive on post-foreclosure evictions.

Professor Drew spoke with Human Rights students from Ghana during a weeklong program held at Harvard Law School.

UMass Law Professor Faisal Chaudhry investigates the legal history of colonial rule in South Asia from 1757 to the early twentieth century in his newly published book.

Professor Vyas presented at a conference on AI as a use case for blockchain technology.

UMass Law’s Erica Sylvia was invited to participate on a panel hosted by the Sturgis Library entitled: AI & You

UMass Law Associate Dean Shaun Spencer secured a Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decision preserving an alimony award that reflected the pattern of savings that the parties followed during their marriage.

UMass Law professors Lisa Owens and AnnaMarie Tabor present at Northeastern University

They will teach in the areas of consumer protection and criminal law and procedure

Professor McDonald was interviewed on the Purdue Pharma bankruptcy case, which brings attention to the opioid epidemic.

Judge George Phelan reflects on a busy 2023, while focusing on the year ahead.

UMass Law’s Shaun Spencer argued before the Mass. Supreme Judicial Court that the state’s alimony law should allow alimony awards that maintain patterns of savings that the parties followed during their marriage.

Professor Anna-Marie Tabor tells the U.S. Department of Labor’s ERISA Advisory Council why retirees need stronger benefit protections.

Professor Chaudhry presented his latest research on real estate taxation and affordable housing in Berlin.

UMass Law Professor Justine Dunlap joined the executive committee of the Massachusetts Access to Justice Commission.

With conversational and generative AI systems like ChatGPT on the rise, Professor Sylvia gave a talk on the ramifications of using artificial intelligence in the professional sphere.

Professor Owens recently published a new Article in a special issue of Frontiers in Sociology on Ethnography in the Open Science and Digital Age. The Article, Encountering Deception in Virtual Spaces: Guidelines for Virtual Ethnography, draws from an experience of deception in virtual fieldwork and considers implications for those designing methodologies for virtual ethnographies.

Duncan and Tocci publish a paper on the use of silence in legal history.

Professor Owens recently published a discussion-based activity she developed to help students learn more about the function and concepts of law and society. The exercise encourages students to build a new ‘court’ in the classroom which will adjudicate the excuses that students communicate to instructors.

Professor Owens was invited to serve as a judge in Harvard Law School’s inaugural mock trial tournament. The tournament brought together 24 mock trial teams from law schools across the country.

Professor McDonald published an article on bankruptcy solutions to homelessness in the Yale Law and Policy Review.

Professor Ralph Clifford submitted an amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court that argues that real estate tax foreclosure systems are unconstitutional.

On an expert panel called “Good Intentions vs. Good Laws: Why Housing Advocacy Matters”, Professor Lisa Lucile Owens discussed the Housing Choice Voucher Program and its strengths and shortcomings.

Professor Owens led a workshop to help local New Bedford entrepreneurs with the legal challenges of starting a business.

UMass Law Adjunct faculty member Judge George Phelan looks back on an accomplished year.

UMass Law Associate Dean Shaun Spencer informs emerging debates over the appropriate regulation of privacy, technology, and information policy

Professor Margaret Drew was invited to participate in a series of discussions hosted by the American Bar Association in honor of World Aids Day.

UMass Law’s Shaun Spencer presented on the EU-US Data Privacy Framework and the history of US surveillance regulation.

Professor Margaret Drew presented at Pepperdine Law School for the bi- annual Lextern National Conference.

Professor Hillary Farber presented her latest article at the International Workshop on Immigration Detention at the University of A Coruña, Spain.

Professor Margaret Drew attended the invitation-only ceremonial signing of a bill that eliminates child marriage in Massachusetts.

Professor Hasday presented his article, “Randomly Selected Representative Committees,” at the 33rd Stony Brook International Conference on Game Theory.

UMass Law Professor Justine Dunlap was appointed to the Massachusetts Access to Justice Commission by the SJC.

Professors Margaret Drew and Frances Rudko sat on an expert panel to take questions and provide answers to the south coast community on the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

UMass Law alumnus Senator Dennis Bradley awarded Professor Scharf an Official Citation of Congratulations on retirement.

UMass Law’s Shaun Spencer presented at an international symposium on social media regulation and the First Amendment.

UMass Law Professor Ralph Clifford co-published an article on computer programs as creative works.

Professor Farber was selected as one of Governor Baker’s appointees to the law enforcement body-worn camera task force.

UMass Law Librarians Wood and Peltz-Steele have co-authored an article explaining how to integrate low-cost, openly-licensed material into legal education.

Professor Dunlap named Spring '22 Faculty Fellow by UMass Dartmouth’s Office of Faculty Development.

Professor Dwight Duncan was featured in Mass. Lawyers Weekly to discuss the U.S. Supreme Court’s use of shadow dockets.

Professor Dunlap’s article details how a flawed approach to mandatory reporting under Title IX regulations can inhibit disclosure of sexual assault and in fact violate Title IX.

Professor Julie A. Baker joined William and Mary’s Professor Jennifer Franklin to lead a breakout session at Stetson Law’s national Educating Advocacy Teachers conference on techniques for teaching advanced appellate advocacy.

Professor Elizabeth McCuskey led an information session for Oregon’s Legislators devoted to the issue of ERISA preemption for states pursuing single-payer and public-option programs.

Professor McCuskey presented at the annual NCOIL conference, highlighting the potential for state-level health care reform.