Category: Faculty News

sandra sperino

Nov. 10, 2025

Professor Sperino presents on employment discrimination law

Last month, Professor Sandra Sperino gave a presentation on recent changes in employment discrimination law to judges and law clerks in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York. She also discussed two recent Supreme Court cases and their far-reaching implications for the structure of employment discrimination law as part of the Alabama Bar Association’s Labor and Employment Section annual CLE.

ben trachtenberg with Jinyoung Hong and San Won Lee

Nov. 4, 2025

Professor Trachtenberg lectures his way through Asia

Professor Ben Trachtenberg spent the end of October giving lectures in Seoul, South Korea and Tokyo, Japan. In Korea, Professor Trachtenberg spoke at Seoul National University on the topif, “Grand Juries in the United States: A Real or Illusory Check on Prosecutors?” In Tokyo, Professor Trachtenbeg spoke to law faculty at Sophia University on “The Current Situation and Challenges of Legal Education in the United States.”…

a gold neural network inside a black head

Oct. 30, 2025

Law and Learning in the Age of AI

by Tanner O’Neal Riley Artificial intelligence is changing the world faster than most professions can keep up. At the University of Missouri School of Law, however, it’s not an afterthought — it’s a foundation. As part of a pioneering group of law schools integrating AI into legal education, the University of Missouri and Mizzou Law are positioned as an “AI-forward institution.” From chatbot tutors to negotiation simulations powered by large language models, the technology transforming the legal industry is also transforming how Mizzou Law students learn. The goal: give students hands-on experience with ethical and effective AI use that is…

david gamage

Oct. 29, 2025

“Billionare tax” designed by Mizzou Law professor added to California ballot

A tax reform measure designed to tax the ultra wealthy in order to help fund Medicaid has been added to the ballot in California. The measure was developed by Professor David Gamage along with co-designer Professor Darien Shanske of the UC-Davis School of Law. The measure proposes a one-time, emergency 5% tax on billionaires in the state of California. The funds would be used to help prevent a statewide healthcare system collapse and to stop emergency rooms from closing their doors due to pending cuts to federal Medicaid funding.  “With federal tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy now squeezing health…

jayne woods

Oct. 24, 2025

Professor Woods featured on California Appellate Law podcast

Few lawyers and LRW instructors write and think more about Artificial Intelligence than Professor Jane Woods of Mizzou Law, who offers this most important AI advice: If you haven’t read the case, don’t cite the case. The Boies Schiller Cautionary Tale: That would have saved Boies Schiller’s bacon. We discuss the high-profile Scientology/Masterson appeal, and whether the Court of Appeal is going to strike plaintiff’s respondent’s brief because of the Boies Schiller attorneys hallucinated cases and otherwise wrong legal citations. AI’s Ideal Applications: Most effective AI uses include drafting standard legal sections, style polishing, fact organization, and processing large…

rocky rhodes

Oct. 23, 2025

Professor Rhodes publishes new constitutional law book

Professor Charles “Rocky” Rhodes and his co-author, Professor Renee Knake Jefferson, have published a new constitutional law book, “Constitutional Law: Foundations, Interpretations, and Commentaries,” through West Academic. Rhodes’ text melds the story of constitutional historical development with modern resulting doctrine by interspersing foundations chapters throughout the book detailing the development of constitutional law across typical doctrinal categories before thoroughly studying the resulting modern doctrine in detail. The book incorporates author commentaries and frameworks that introduce carefully selected and edited Supreme Court cases and explanatory materials. The book includes all the topics typically covered in constitutional law required courses…

erika lietzan presenting at berkely policy institute

Oct. 21, 2025

Professor Lietzan presents on pharmaceutical evergreening

Professor and Associate Dean Erika Lietzan spoke at a conference hosted by the EIRA Initiative and the Berkeley Policy Institute.  At the conference, entitled “Bringing Medicines to Life: How IP Impacts Innovation in the Life Sciences,” Professor Lietzan presented a new book chapter entitled “Evergreening’s Empirical Chasm.”  For more than two decades, policymakers have been told that pharmaceutical innovators companies engage in a practice that is called, disparagingly, “evergreening.” The basic idea is that companies introduce new versions of their drugs that have later expiring patents or regulatory exclusivity. This way, the claim goes, the companies effectively…

renee henson

Oct. 17, 2025

Prof. Henson presents on AI at Midwestern law conference

Professor Renee Henson presented her forthcoming article, Artificial Intelligence, Judicial Evolution, and Insurance (Boston University Law Review), at the Central States Law Schools Association 2025 Conference hosted at the University of Kansas Law School.”…

lietzan presents in Dijon

Oct. 16, 2025

Professor Lietzan presents at two French conferences

Earlier in October, Professor Erika Lietzan spoke at the University of Burgundy in Dijon, France at a conference on the Regulation of Innovative Medical Therapies.  She presented an overview of U.S. regulation of cellular therapies, engineered tissue products, and gene therapy, and talked about how U.S. regulation differs from EU regulation of these products.  The next day, Professor Lietzan spoke on the same topic at a much larger conference, known as Innovative Therapies Days, which took place in Besancon, France.  Professor Lietzan writes extensively about U.S. regulation of biological products, and has published before on how U.S. and EU…

sandra sperino

Oct. 15, 2025

Professor Sperino publishes new edition of employment discrimination book

Professor Sandra Sperino has published a new edition of her book, “The Law of Employment Discrimination, 2nd Edition) through West Academic. Sperino’s book provides comprehensive treatment of the major federal employment discrimination statutes, focusing on Title VII, the ADEA, the ADA, the PWFA and Section 1981. It discusses who is liable for discrimination and the people the statutes protect from discrimination. The book extensively explores the frameworks for analyzing discrimination, including frameworks for individual disparate treatment, pattern or practice, harassment, disparate impact, and retaliation. One chapter focuses on religious accommodation and another chapter focuses on disability and pregnancy…