June 9, 2026

Faculty Scholarship: Spring 2026

Each year, Southwestern faculty regularly contribute to ongoing scholarly conversations, create new legal knowledge, and enhance the legal profession by publishing works in diverse forums. We highlight shorter works like Op-Eds and blog entries in our monthly faculty appearances posts. Longer works like books, book chapters, and articles and essays published in legal journals require considerable time from start to finish, so we reserve announcements highlighting these lengthier pieces for two or three specially designated postings each year. Below are brief write-ups for the most recent substantial scholarly works published by Southwestern faculty within the last six months. 

Christopher Cameron, Standard Deviations: The Origins of Affirmative Action at the Harvard Law Review, 59 UC Davis Law Review 2837 (2026) (invited Symposium Article)

This Article is the first to document the history of affirmative action and its evolution into Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) at the Harvard Law Review (HLR). It is also the culmination of 25 years of Chris’s professional life work, combining historical research with events of which Dean Kevin R. Johnson and Chris have personal knowledge. The Article situates HLR’s controversial adoption of race-conscious membership criteria in the late 20th Century—a policy development in which Chris and Dean Johnson participated—between two other sets of historical events: the American legal education reform movement and the rise of the student-edited law review in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, and the decline of affirmative action and the subsequent attack on DEI by the Trump Administration in the early 21st Century.  

Ande Davis, Inventing New Devils: Seeing Through the Futility of Anti-Critical Race Theory Laws, 17 Northeastern University Law Review 225 (2026)

In this Article, Ande examines the anti-critical race theory laws passed by states since 2021, demonstrating their scant relation to the actual tenets of critical race theory. Ande then highlights instances of popular media consumed by children, teens, and young adults over the last several decades that incorporate ideas from critical race theory. These examples demonstrate that, even assuming they successfully erased critical race theory from schools, these laws do little to effectively "shield" children from learning about CRT's ideas and tenets. Given this futility, the Article ultimately exposes and critiques the true intent animating recent legislative efforts: to engender public animus toward public schools in the latest tactic toward pushing privatization and school vouchers.

Meera Deo, The Legal Academy: Past, Present, and Future, 59 UC Davis Law Review 2943 (2026) (invited Symposium Article)

In this Article, Meera draws on original empirical research to share findings on previous experiences of law faculty (“The Past"), including research participants’ reflections on former UC Davis School of Law Dean Kevin Johnson as a mentor and leader. This Article represents the first instance in which Meera has analyzed a specific person in her research, which could only happen here because Dean Johnson has been so instrumental to the transformation of the legal academy that many research participants mentioned him by name and unprompted. She then uses data from the 2025 administration of the SELFS survey of law faculty (which Southwestern faculty and staff took in 2025 along with 19 other law schools) to share current experiences (“The Present”)—particularly those related to belonging, discrimination, and satisfaction. The Article ends with SELFS findings on faculty attrition and concerns about next steps (“The Future”) in legal education, suggesting targeted outreach to maintain representation.

Meera Deo, Resisting Overcompliance, 94 UMKC Law Review 715 (2026)

While university officials focus on whether to comply with new and potentially extralegal political directives, the more nuanced questions ask at what level to comply and whether to comply at all. In this Essay, Meera assesses compliance with federal anti-DEI directives by introducing “resisting overcompliance” as a guiding framework. Her piece provides a detailed framework that specifies the need to first determine what the law requires; then, consider whether to comply with or resist relevant directives (especially when facing extralegal mandates); and, finally, if choosing to comply, determine what level of compliance is appropriate. The framework also provides guidance on actions that remain permissible within the current legal and political landscape.

Andrea Freeman, The Roots of Credit Inequality, 49 Seattle University Law Review 25 (2025)

In this Article, Andrea documents the history of debt oppression throughout U.S. history. This oppression began when settlers enslaved Africans and Indigenous people, treating them as property to be bought and sold for economic and personal benefit. When enslavement became illegal, new economic systems and laws that included sharecropping, Black Codes, and Jim Crow kept Black people in servitude. Laws that prohibited enslaved people from owning property or selling goods to white people evolved into restrictions on Black people’s occupations and market participation, both formal and informal. Segregated access to credit and different credit terms and conditions in retail, housing, and government loans played a large part in maintaining racial wealth gaps throughout the 20th Century. Andrea argues that this system is a vestige of slavery that violates the Thirteenth Amendment, and the laws and policies that uphold a segregated credit system harming Black, Indigenous, and Latine consumers violate the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.

Andrew Gilden, Pleasure & Pain in Intellectual Property, 67 William & Mary Law Review 1 (2025)

Intellectual property produces pleasure. IP laws incentivize investment in popular culture, helping ensure the viability of entertainment industries and the steady production of our favorite shows, cherished brands, and beloved celebrities. Despite those realities, in this Article, Andrew shows that courts routinely undervalue pleasure and overvalue pain when resolving IP disputes. This “pleasure taboo” discourages honesty in litigation, disconnects IP doctrine from real world creative practices, and skews IP’s moral compass. Insults and derision emerge as archetypes of fair use and free speech, while fandom and joy become commodities for rightsholders to harvest and control. Moreover, by privileging pain over pleasure, IP law has limited the ability of marginalized groups—especially women, people of color, and queer people—to share their joy publicly.

Richard Jolly, Racial Justice through Peremptory Challenges, 105 Boston University Law Review 1787 (2025) (invited Essay)

In this invited response to Daniel S. Harawa's, Complicating Racial Justice Narratives: The Peremptory Elimination Debate, 105 Boston University Law Review 1731 (2025), Richard argues that eliminating peremptory challenges would diminish the procedural rights and autonomy of criminal defendants while doing little to remedy the underrepresentation of Black and other minority jurors. Drawing on the history and function of the peremptory challenge, Richard contends that racial justice is better served not by abolishing the device altogether, but by reclaiming it for the accused and eliminating prosecutorial peremptories.

Orly Ravid (contributing author), Entertainment Law Legal Concepts and Business Practices (2025-26 Ed., Thomson Reuters)

Since 2023, Orly has served as a contributor to this annually updated treatise covering entertainment industry related law. Topics include copyright, trademark, right of publicity, defamation, and an overview of the entertainment industry and business practices. Orly’s contributions appear throughout the treatise rather than in a specific article or chapter.  

Byron Stier, Judicial Review of Individual Punitive Damages Awards in Light of Aggregate Punitive Damages, 93 Tennessee Law Review 51 (2025)

In the last three decades, the Supreme Court has repeatedly clarified that punitive damages awards are personal. While juries may consider harm to others to assess the reprehensibility of a defendant's actions, each plaintiff must only be awarded that plaintiff's share of total punitive damages for a defendant's actions; otherwise, defendants face the risk of unconstitutional multiple punishments for the same conduct. Cognizant of the reality that juries may be confused about how to consider harm to others in punitive damages award deliberations, Byron addresses the multiple punishment problem by focusing on judges rather than juries. Byron proposes that, when a jury awards punitive damages to a plaintiff and other claimants also seek punitive damages based on related conduct, judges should consider whether a high punitive damages verdict is the result of an unconstitutional award of damages for harm to others. Byron argues that judicial review of individual punitive damages awards by consideration of aggregate punitive damages will assist and refine the Supreme Court's efforts to ensure that punitive damages awards remain within the bounds of due process.

John Tehranian, Controlling the Narrative: Copyright’s Derivative Rights Doctrine & Semiotic Disobedience in the Age of AI, 28 Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment and Technology Law 501 (2026)

In this Article, John argues that copyright’s derivative rights doctrine—long treated as a technical mechanism of market control—has operated as a powerful but underexamined tool of epistemic governance. As the doctrine’s scope has expanded, it has increasingly privileged dominant narratives while recasting resistive ones as acts of infringement. Drawing on historical and contemporary case studies, the Article demonstrates how derivative rights have been deployed to suppress what Sonya Katyal terms “semiotic disobedience.” In effect, the doctrine has rendered certain cultural symbols legally inviolable, thereby insulating prevailing ideologies from contestation by suppressing challenges to their authority. John ultimately proposes a recalibration of derivative rights, drawing inspiration from the compulsory mechanical licensing regime in music as a possible foundation for reform—an intervention made increasingly urgent by the rise of generative AI and the anticipated proliferation of derivative cultural production.

Dov Waisman, At Risk with No Benefit: Regulating Environmental Risks of Premature Death, 55 Environmental Law 619 (2025)