Professor Bennett Discusses Federal Judges with Springfield TV station

“Judges aren’t allowed to pick their own cases, except for the United States Supreme Court, which has some control over which cases it hears. But district judges, federal trial judges, they take the cases that are filed before them, and they decide the cases that they’re presented with, explained University of Missouri Law School Professor Thomas Bennett.” To view the whole story, visit: https://www.ky3.com/2022/05/12/fact-finders-examining-power-federal-judge/

Faculty Spotlight — Thomas Bennett

Starting a new job in the middle of a pandemic can be challenging at best. But when that job includes teaching students without ever meeting them face-to-face, “challenging” may be an understatement. For Professor Thomas Bennett, Mizzou Law’s newest faculty member, finally getting to step foot in a classroom this fall was a vast improvement over how he spent his first year teaching at Mizzou. Bennett, an associate professor of law and a Wall Family Fellow at the University of Missouri School of Law, began teaching at Mizzou in 2020 when most Mizzou Law classes took place over Zoom. Now…

Professor Bennett’s scholarship cited in U.S. Supreme Court decision

Professor Thomas Bennett’s scholarship recently was cited by Justice Clarence Thomas in a U.S. Supreme Court decision in TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez. “By declaring that federal courts lack jurisdiction, the Court has thus ensured that state courts will exercise exclusive jurisdiction over these sorts of class actions,” Justice Thomas wrote in his dissent. As noted in an article in The Wall Street Journal, “Supreme Court Pares Back Class-Action Suits,” and in Reuters, “State court will be next frontier for consumer class actions under federal law,” Justice Thomas’ dissent cited Professor Bennett’s paper “The Paradox of Exclusive…