Memphis Law | Summer 2022 by University of Memphis

ML MEMPHIS LAW MAGAZINE | SUMMER 2022

President

Bill Hardgrave

Executive Vice President for University Relations Tammy Hedges

Dean

Katharine T. Schaffzin

Executive Editor Ryan Jones

Contributing Writers Ryan Jones DeShun Harris

Photography

Wendy Adams Justin Fox Burks Ryan Jones

Art Direction and Design

University of Memphis Division for External Relations

Published by

The University of Memphis Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law 1 North Front Street Memphis, TN 38103 901.678.2421 memphis.edu/law To submit story ideas, letters to the editor, alumni updates or for other MLrelated inquiries, please contact executive editor Ryan Jones at rjones1@memphis.edu.

The University of Memphis does not discriminate against students, employees or applicants for admission or employment on the basis of race, color, religion, creed, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, disability, age, status as a protected veteran, genetic information or any other legally protected class with respect to all employment, programs and activities sponsored by the University of Memphis. The following position has been designated to handle inquiries regarding non-discrimination and anti-harassment policies: Director for Institutional Equity/Title VI Coordinator, oie@memphis.edu, 156 Administration Building, 901.678.2713. The University of Memphis policy on nondiscrimination can be found at https://memphis.policytech.com/dotNet/documents/?docid=430. The University of Memphis Magazine (USPS-662-550) is published four times a year by the Division of External Relations of the University of Memphis, 308 Administration Building, Memphis, TN 38152-3370. Periodical postage paid at Memphis, TN 38152. UOM588-FY2122

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Dean’s Letter

News + Events

8 A Fierce Force for Good — Lupita Martinez (Class of 2022) By Ryan Jones Photography by Wendy Adams Our student profile focuses on Memphis Law 3L Lupita Martinez and her journey to be a source of change in the world. Her journey as a mother, law student, volunteer, leader and future attorney has taken her down a unique road, but it is her experiences that inspire her dreams to help those in need.

14 Blazing a Trail — A New Monument Rises Behind Memphis Law By Ryan Jones For years, the promenade behind the law school has been a sleepy yet peaceful space full of Memphians taking advantage of the greenspace and paved trail running the length of the bluff overlooking the Mississippi River. But this spring a new monument was installed that will bring many more downtown residents, tourists and law students looking to take in a bit of history alongside the panoramic views.

18 The Roots of Food Deserts By Ryan Jones Photography by Justin Fox Burks We examine the concept of food deserts and the unique legal history behind their root causes. From redlining to racism, food deserts have their beginnings in the policies, laws and economics of cities across America. We look at what factored into their creation and proliferation, as well as ways to combat them going forward.

Fighting to be First: A Profile of a Changemaker

By Ryan Jones Photography by Wendy Adams ML spotlights Tannera Gibson (JD ’08), the first female African American president of the Memphis Bar Association and first female African American partner at Burch Porter & Johnson in Memphis, Tenn. Learn more about the unique experiences that shaped her into the leader, fighter and advocate that she is today, as she strives to make the legal landscape in Memphis more equitable for all.

36 Pillars of Excellence Returns with a Strong Foundation T his year will see the return of one of the biggest events in the Memphis legal community. The Pillars of Excellence dinner will take place on August 20, 2022, after several years off due to the pandemic. Learn more about the event’s history and special efforts to help law students and the legal community.

40 Alumni Notes 44 Visiting Faculty Bring Their Vision to Memphis Law Photography by Wendy Adams

50 Faculty Accomplishments 53 A New Bar Takes Shape By Professor DeShun Harris A detailed look at the changes coming to the Bar exam and how Memphis Law and our students are uniquely positioned for success as a result.

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Dean's Letter

s this semester has progressed, I’ve found myself reflecting upon the impact change can bring. Change is unnerving and uncomfortable and, in many cases, unavoidable. But with reflection and intentionality, change can spur progress and innovation.

As you’ll read about in more depth later in this issue, the Bar exam itself is about to undergo a radical change after several years of study. For some, this change may shake the foundations of their curricula and success. However, at Memphis Law, we believe we’re ahead of the curve. We are looking forward to embracing this change and showcasing the ways in which our students are ideally suited to meet the challenges of the new Bar, which will focus on practical lawyering skills. At Memphis Law, we have always prioritized practice-ready instruction over teaching to a test. We applaud the efforts of Bar examiners to identify better ways to assess these learned legal skills. For years, our externship program and legal clinics have not only been some of our biggest strengths, but also central components of our partnerships with the legal community. The experiential learning that our program highlights has instilled in our students some of the best realworld knowledge and skills possible, and I am excited to see these handson lessons give our students an exciting advantage on the new Bar. New changes and developments can also be found amongst the research and work being done by our talented law school professors. We’ve had two visiting faculty members with us this year whose work directly reflects some of the changes possible in our society today. Even though their topics of choice may at times be sensitive or controversial to some, the ability to have them work with us at Memphis Law has been an incredible opportunity for our students and community.

Dr. Darrell Jackson, our visiting Herff Chair of Excellence, joined us this semester from the University of Wyoming College of Law. While here, Dr. Jackson has focused his work on critical race theory in an immersive academic environment with a combination of courses, faculty scholarship workshops, community partnerships and collaborations. He also partnered with the Memphis Bar Association and the Center for Excellence in Decision Making to host an incredibly successful symposium earlier this spring. “Critical Race Theory: Truth, Lies and the Law” featured national experts and important voices from across the country.

The conversations and partnerships facilitated by Dr. Jackson have been invigorating, and it’s my hope that we’ll continue exploring this subject for years to come. Another exciting visiting professor with us this semester was Dr. Leanne DeSouza-Kenney. She joined the law school as our Fulbright Canada Chair Research Chair in Race & Health Policy. Her work in Memphis and at the law school has focused on researching health disparities across vulnerable non-white populations in the United States and Canada. Her research will help provide a detailed understanding of the landscape of health inequities within and between the U.S. and Canada, emphasizing the key health disparities of maternal and child health, chronic disease and access to healthcare before and during COVID-19. In an urban community like Memphis, which has both an incredible healthcare and hospital network and some of the starkest divides in health outcomes and chronic disease, her work has proven to be an invaluable tool in driving change throughout Memphis and Canada. I am certainly excited to see where it leads, both here and elsewhere going forward. And finally, the University of Memphis finally achieved a hardearned goal and is receiving well-deserved recognition. The University of Memphis was recently designated as a Carnegie R1 University by the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. We are one of only three universities nationally to successfully move from R2 to R1 status this year, designating us as at the highest level of research across universities. The law school itself continues to add to the robust and diverse scholarship and research being done throughout the University of Memphis, and I am proud of our contributions to the University’s research community, including in the areas of health law, neighborhood preservation and diversity and inclusion. The direction of our entire University’s future progress will be driven by this change to Carnegie R1 status, and it would not have been possible without so many individuals, both within and outside of our University community, embracing the possibilities of change. I can’t wait to see what fruits these changes bear as the law school continues to build upon our many accomplishments and student success stories in 2022. Sincerely,

Dean Katharine T. Schaffzin 2

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News + Events MEMPHIS LAW TEAM WINS FIRST PLACE IN ABA TAX LAW COMPETITION The Memphis Law student team of Holden Branscum and William Gebo won first place in the American Bar Association’s 21st Annual Law Student Tax Challenge. The contest is designed to give students an opportunity to research, write about and present their analyses of a real-life tax planning problem. The championship team was coached by Professor William Kratzke.

U.S. TREASURY DEPUTY DIRECTOR WALLY ADEYEMO VISITS MEMPHIS LAW

VOLUME 53 OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MEMPHIS LAW REVIEW EDITORIAL BOARD The editorial board for Volume 53 of the University of Memphis Law Review has been announced. It is as follows: Editor-in-Chief Paden Hemphill

Business & Media Editor Ryan Verhegge

Symposium Editor Alex Daichman

Managing Editor Sarah Claxton

Research Editor Hailey Townsend

Senior Articles Editor Daniel Riley

Articles Editors Austin Hord Davis Howard Ian Reagan Tierany Parson Dominique DeFreece

Notes Editors Scott Cheadle Wai-Lin Danieley Kenneth Groce April Huntoon Denise Lee Hallie Robison Thomas Davis Nakota Wood Diana Pope

Senior Notes Editor Ryan Rosenkrantz

Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Wally Adeyemo visited Memphis Law in March to visit with law students and community leaders and praised the efforts of Memphis and Shelby County’s utilization of Emergency Rental Assistance Programs and funding. As part of his visit, he took the time to meet with Memphis Law students that have been involved in rental assistance and eviction prevention efforts during the pandemic. He also hosted a community roundtable discussion with both Memphis and Shelby County mayors, as well as community leaders, government officials and program participants to discuss the relief efforts across the Mid-South.

CLINICAL TRAINING PROGRAM IN U.S. NEWS TOP 50 Memphis Law's Clinical Training Program has been ranked as a Top 50 (#46) program in the 2023 U.S. News & World Report rankings. It is also ranked as a Top 25 (#21) program amongst public law schools.

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2022-23 LAW SCHOOL ALUMNI BOARD MEMBERS NAMED CRITICAL RACE THEORY SYMPOSIUM: TRUTH, LIES AND THE LAW The University of Memphis School of Law and visiting Herff Chair of Excellence Dr. Darrell Jackson, alongside the Memphis Bar Association and the Center for Excellence in Decision Making, presented this virtual symposium in February. The overwhelmingly successful symposium explored a number of issues related to CRT, with several panels of legal experts from across the country examining the use of CRT to evaluate promises of reconstruction; the intersection of property law and critical race theory and how they relate to decisions about urban redevelopment and gentrification; rights and obligations in the areas of education, technology and healthcare; and how the CRT battle is being fought in Memphis and more broadly in Tennessee.

DIVERSITY AND PRE-LAW WEEK 2022 This year’s Diversity and PreLaw Week, “Bridging the Gap: Inspiring Connection in a Divided World,” took place in late February and explored the ways lawyers and legal environments can connect our community and bridge the “gaps” that exist between various sectors through embracing differences, justice, youth programming, healing, storytelling, service and advocacy. The week’s events

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OFFICERS E. Todd Presnell – President John I. Houseal – President-elect Edward L. Brundick III – Past President BOARD OF DIRECTORS: Sarah Atkinson W. Preston Battle Sam B. Blair, Jr. Edward L. Brundick III Natalie M. Bursi Allison T. Gilbert Rett Hixson John I. Houseal R. Hunter Humphreys R. Hunter Humphreys, Jr. Jennie D. Latta

were co-sponsored by the National Civil Rights Museum and the Ben F. Jones Chapter of the National Bar Association. The weeklong program featured a keynote address from Deborah Archer, president of the American Civil

Andre B. Mathis E. Todd Presnell Niel Prosser Terrence Reed Joseph W. Smith Edward L. Stanton, III William Terrell Marcy E. Walker Shea S. Wellford Danielle M. Woods Jon A. York

Liberties Union (ACLU) at the National Civil Rights Museum where she discussed her extensive career as a civil rights attorney and leader, as well as what is on the legal horizon for civil liberties and bridging gaps in justice through contemporary advocacy.

News + Events

DEAN KATHARINE SCHAFFZIN TAKES PART IN WHITE HOUSE EVENT ON EVICTION PREVENTION University of Memphis Law School Dean Katharine Schaffzin joined fellow deans from across the country earlier this semester for a virtual White House event celebrating schools that responded to the Attorney General’s call to action to address the pandemic’s housing and eviction crisis. During the event, the White House announced that response to the call for action was “swift and wide.” Memphis Law was among the 99 law schools that joined in the effort, with our law school also being one of the first schools in the nation to tackle the eviction crisis at the beginning of the pandemic, even prior to the Attorney General’s call to action.

ALTERNATIVE SPRING BREAK 2022 The 13th annual Memphis Law Alternative Spring Break took place in March and featured a number of innovative tracks for law students to take part in as they provided pro bono legal assistance to Memphians in need. ASB students contributed nearly 2,150 training and project hours and helped hundreds of clients in need. The featured tracks were: • Public Defender – Mental Health Project focused • Street Law – a collaboration with Crosstown High School • Immigration and Expungement • Eviction – a collaboration with Neighborhood Preservation, Inc. • Fair Housing and Testing • Wills and Estates

PROFESSOR KATY RAMSEY MASON RECEIVES 2022 AALS AWARD Memphis Law Professor Katy Ramsey Mason was selected as the recipient of the 2022 Community Service Award given by the AALS Section on Law, Medicine and Health Care. She was recognized at the 2022 AALS Annual Meeting in January.

OBERGEFELL SPEAKS AT LAW SCHOOL OUTLaw, our student organization focused on LGBTQIA+ issues, presented its inaugural Spring Speakers Series in April, where they welcomed Jim Obergefell, the lead plaintiff in the 2015 U.S. Supreme Court case, Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized same-sex marriage nationally, and his attorney, Al Gerhardstein.

• LGBTQIA+ – focused on name changes for the transgender community A particularly unique track new to this year’s event was the Name Change/Gender Marker Track. Working with Mid-South Immigration Advocates Attorney Elizabeth McClellan, participating students prepared name change petitions for 35 Tennessee residents. The students helped 11 of the clients file petitions in the Shelby County Probate Court, where filing fees were covered in their entirety with funds raised by the law school student organization OUTLaw. Students also worked on a name change “how to” packet for use by OUTMemphis. Additionally, participating students worked with Legal Aid of Arkansas to assist 19 additional clients seeking name and gender marker changes.

PROFESSOR STEVE MULROY ELECTED TO AMERICAN LAW INSTITUTE Memphis Law Professor Steve Mulroy was recently elected to the American Law Institute. The American Law Institute is the leading independent organization in the United States producing scholarly work to clarify, modernize and improve the law.

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PRELAW MAGAZINE RECOGNIZES MEMPHIS LAW WITH SEVERAL AWARDS The University of Memphis School of Law received several awards in the spring issue of preLaw Magazine. The school was named a “Best Law School for African Americans” and included among the top schools on the magazine’s “Diversity Honor Roll” for 2022. They also named UofM Law a “Top Trial Advocacy School” and “Top Law School for Tax Law.”

PRINCETON REVIEW HIGHLIGHTS MEMPHIS LAW FACULTY In its 2022 “Best Law School” rankings, the Princeton Review listed the University of Memphis law school faculty in the Top 50 list of law school professors for teaching and accessibility.

MEMPHIS LAW ALUM ANDRE MATHIS NOMINATED TO SIXTH CIRCUIT Memphis Law alumni, adjunct professor and Moot Court team coach Andre Mathis ('07) was nominated by President Joe Biden to serve on the United States Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.

LAW REVIEW 2022 SYMPOSIUM The University of Memphis Law Review hosted a successful virtual symposium entitled, “Competition in the 21st Century: Can Existing Antitrust Laws Govern a 21st Century Digital Economy?” The program featured experts from across the world, giving international perspectives and expertise to a timely and interesting topic.

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News + Events

1 SHOW CAUSE PODCAST SUCCESSFULLY GROWS The law school launched its first podcast, “Show Cause,” last fall. Since then, it has steadily grown in listenership and topical coverage. It is available on all standard podcasting platforms. Here’s a summary of the first eight episodes.

BLSA THURGOOD MARSHALL MOOT COURT TEAM WINS REGIONALS The Memphis Law Black Law Students Association team of Briana Butler Bridgeforth and Alexxas Johnson came in first place in the 2022 Southern Regional Thurgood Marshall Moot Court Competition. The team’s coaches were Andre Mathis, Aurelia McBride and Will Perry.

ABA NATIONAL APPELLATE ADVOCACY TEAM WINS REGIONAL COMPETITION The ABA National Appellate Advocacy Competition team of Hailey Townsend and Win Duncan (with Kylie Ronnow on brief) was a champion in the (virtual) Chicago region and competed at Nationals in early April. The team went undefeated in the region, beating both Belmont teams and teams from Chicago-Kent, Vanderbilt and Northwestern. They were coached by professor and director of advocacy, Barbara Kritchevsky.

- Episode 1: What’s in a Name (Image & Likeness)? Discussing NIL with Professor Lynda Black & Dr. Adam Walker. - Episode 2: Preservation Partners – Featuring Professor Danny Schaffzin and Steve Barlow, co-directors of the Neighborhood Preservation Clinic. - Episode 3: In the Zone – Featuring Josh Whitehead and covering all things quirky about Memphis zoning and urban planning. - Episode 4: A Mulroy Moment – Featuring Professor Steve Mulroy discussing his many academic and worldly pursuits. - Episode 5: The Long & Winding Road of the Pervis Payne Case – Featuring Professor Daniel Kiel. - Episode 6: Pandemic Parenting – Discussing life as a young attorney and parent during the COVID-19 pandemic with attorney Sarah Stuart (’16). - Episode 7: Taiwan, China & the U.S. – A Crisis In-Waiting – Professor Ronnie Gipson adds his international law expertise to a growingly complex and timely issue. - Episode 8: A Moment for Marriage - Behind the Scenes of Obergefell v. Hodges with Professor Regina Hillman.

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A FIERCE FORCEfor

GOOD L U P I TA M A R T I N E Z – C L A S S O F 2 0 2 2

By Ryan Jones

ou would be hard-pressed to find a student as dedicated to helping communities and individuals in need as Memphis Law 3L Lupita Martinez.

She has spent countless hours volunteering for community initiatives like the Tennessee Innocence Project, our very own Neighborhood Preservation Clinic’s Rent & Utility Assistance Program, the law school’s Alternative Spring Break program and volunteering at the Shelby County Public Defender’s Office as a student intern. It’s for all of that service and more that she was the recent recipient of the 2021 Memphis Bar Association Champion of Justice Award for her pro bono efforts in Memphis. She’s somehow also found time during law school to serve as a student justice on the Honor Council, become a member of the Moot Court Board, work as a graduate assistant in

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the Office of Diversity & Inclusion, serve as the regional representative for Region 10 of the Hispanic National Bar Association and serve as the vice president of the Hispanic Law Student Association (HLSA) at Memphis Law. And if that was not enough to keep her busy, she is also the mother of an 11-year-old girl. Originally from California, Lupita relocated to Memphis with her mother at the age of 13. With family already located in the city and within the Hispanic community, she quickly established new roots here and began to feel at home. It didn’t take long for the spirit of Memphis to inspire her to become a force for change. “I’ve always loved Memphis, the rich history of it, especially the aspects of the civil rights movement and Martin Luther King, Jr.’s work here,” said Lupita of her introduction to the city she now calls home.

PHOTOS BY WENDY ADAMS

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“Learning about that history as a teenager in California and then moving here and seeing it in real life, I think that has been a huge part of my trajectory throughout my life and a big reason I plan on staying in Memphis after law school and building my life and career here.” Because Lupita came from a less advantageous upbringing, she was forced to take a nontraditional route to her dreams. But it’s never deterred her in the slightest. After high school, she attended Southwest Tennessee Community College where she obtained her associate degree in paralegal studies. She felt called to serve others through the law and she quickly put herself on the path to make an impact and learn as much as she could. “Since I didn’t have the connections that most people did, I had to go out and make those myself,” said Lupita. “That’s when I decided to start working as a receptionist and interpreter at a local law firm, while taking classes for my degree at night.” That job as a legal secretary and interpreter grew until she was managing the daily operations of the firm where she was employed. After wrapping up her degree at Southwest, Lupita’s career soon progressed into full-time paralegal positions at a number of law firms over the next several years. In the process of raising her daughter and working as a full-time paralegal, she began to refine her vision of what she wanted her career to be and where she wanted it to take her. “I felt like I was on the front lines and serving as a paramedic to the attorneys who were the soldiers fighting out there every day,” Lupita said. “I figured out that I wanted to be a part of it. I wanted to fight. I discovered that this is how I wanted to make an impact. “I felt a calling. This is where I felt fulfilled.” It wasn’t long before that calling took her to law school. She enrolled at the University of Memphis School of Law in fall 2019 and never

looked back. Lupita found opportunities to serve individuals and communities in need at every turn and somehow still maintained the ability to be a top-flight student, and dedicated mother. As a 1L, one of her first projects was to set up an impactful event focused on “crimmigration” during her time as a representative in the Hispanic Law Student Association. Seeing a glaring hole in legal services in this area — and as someone who has made it a mission to focus on Hispanic and immigration-centered issues — she took it upon herself to plan an event centered around the need. For those not familiar with the term, crimmigration is where two areas of law — criminal and immigration — converge. Up until the 1980s, citizens and non-citizens were mostly punished alike for crimes, regardless of citizenship status. But at this point, criminal and immigration law began to mingle together. Suddenly, a noncitizen with criminal charges faced possible immigration penalties as well. In today’s political climate, the focus and reaction to these types of issues seem to be continually changing. According to Lupita, that’s why it’s all the more important to have up-to-date legal counsel in these areas and why she took on such a challenge even though she’d just started law school. Making the beginning of her law school experience even more challenging, the COVID-19 pandemic began that same 1L year, but Lupita did not let that deter her from her call to serve. Her first pandemic project saw her immediately immerse herself in pro bono work with the Tennessee Innocence Project as part of the law school’s Alternative Spring Break program with the law firm of Bass, Berry & Sims. She was the only 1L student chosen to take part in the project, where she conducted legal research and assisted on post-conviction issues, innocence claims and the crucial role pro bono attorneys play in advocating for the incarcerated innocent. As she’s quick to point out, Lupita has often had to make her own connections and

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opportunities. And with the pandemic as part of the equation, the situations for new collaborations and advancement were even more important but harder to come by.

memorandums regarding immigration-related collateral effects that applied to non-citizen clients — a topic she has maintained being passionate about throughout her legal journey.

She saw media coverage about the availability of federal funds to aid families in need of rent and utility assistance. But she knew that there was a disconnect between the organization issuing the funds and the attempts to notify non-citizens across the country.

“I learned a lot about the basics of how court works while working at the PD’s office,” Lupita said. “But I was also able to put together a document that showed immigration consequences to be aware of for non-citizen clients of the office. The issue was flagged already, but it wasn’t being explained fully, so I broke down the statute and laid it out for the office so the PDs could better defend their non-citizen clients.”

“I took the initiative to reach out to Professor Steve Barlow and the Neighborhood Preservation Clinic because I saw the news about these federal funds, but I knew that the Hispanic community didn’t know anything about it, or have access to it, especially if the information was not in Spanish,” said Lupita. “So, I wanted to open up those doors and make sure the Hispanic community could have some sort of access to the funds, too.” Lupita arranged to serve as a pro bono volunteer working with the clinic to translate into Spanish the entire rent and utility program’s website, as well as the entire process of requesting aid, so more applicable Hispanic community members could take advantage of the program. Her law school journey kept going and eventually things went from virtual to back to in-person work. Her desire to keep fighting for those in need of legal assistance didn’t stop just because law school went back to in-person learning, however. In the summer prior to her 3L year and during the fall 2021 semester, she went to work as a student intern at the Shelby County Public Defender’s Office. As part of her duties there, she operated under a limited practice license to help represent indigent defendants by conducting in-custody and out-of-custody client interviews and investigated defenses. She also saw firsthand what the day-to-day tasks of a public defender entailed, assisting on fact investigations, entering dismissals and depositions and researching and drafting

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My primary goal in life and law is to make a difference and be a force for good by doing my part to make the world a better place for my daughter. Lupita’s time as a student at Memphis Law is nearing its conclusion. But as someone who has steadily kept her goals directly in mind along every stage of her journey, it is not surprising that she has already plotted out what she’ll focus on next. “Crimmigration was already my passion coming into law school,” Lupita noted. “And it has just gotten solidified since then!” In fact, school is not even done yet and she’s

transitioning her academic work to realworld application with the hope that it will carry over into the next phase of her career. “Last semester, I wrote a seminar paper on the crimmigration gap and how ICE holds violate constitutional rights,” she said. “So, I’m looking at that same focus area going forward. I don’t think there is enough representation about these problems in the Hispanic community, so I’m hoping to bring those issues more into the light. “My hope is to be one of the experts in the crimmigration arena. It’s very new, but it’s what I’m passionate about,” Lupita noted as she reflected on her future. “Over the course of my 10 years of being a paralegal up until now, I’ve seen these things firsthand and the clear pathway from these issues to the problems that I want to address.” It’s Lupita’s journey that makes her unique. It’s what makes her a fighter and a survivor. It's what drives her to help others. It’s what makes her an amazing mother and stand-out law student. It’s those many years of working at law firms as a paralegal, learning about a side of the business many don’t see until much later. It’s her exposure to a segment of the community that, despite making up a huge portion of our population, is often overlooked by those not already a part of the Hispanic community. It’s all of those things that will ultimately lead to her making an impact, wherever and however she wants, after law school. But there’s always one item ahead of all the others for this “Champion of Justice.” “My primary goal in life and law is to make a difference and be a force for good by doing my part to make the world a better place for my daughter,” Lupita said. If her record of service and impact is any indication, she’s already done just that. But there’s always more to achieve. That’s why she’ll always keep going.

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BLAZING A Trail

A NEW MONUMENT RISES BEHIND MEMPHIS LAW

By Ryan Jones

or years, the promenade behind the law school has been a sleepy, yet peaceful, space full of Memphians taking advantage of the greenspace and paved trails running the length of the bluff overlooking the Mississippi River. But this spring a new monument was installed that will bring many more downtown residents, tourists and law students looking to take in a bit of history alongside the panoramic views.

The new monument honors trailblazers of the women’s suffrage movement from Shelby County who participated in nonviolent efforts to win the right to vote for American women. In the larger context of the national movement, Tennessee itself was vitally important to the suffrage cause, as it was the final state to ratify the 19th Amendment, with which women won the right to vote. The design of the monument features six busts sculpted by noted Tennessee sculptor Alan LeQuire, along with a sculptural depiction of the “100 Year March,” a 70-foot long series of 9-foot tall wall panels representing women marching for their rights from 1918 to 2019.

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Attached to these wall panels are etched glass portraits and bios of individuals who were instrumental in the women's suffrage movement. “This monument is going to be great for heritage tourism. We wanted to focus on those who were instrumental in the suffrage movement, as well as those women whose political careers were made possible by the suffragists’ victory,” said Paula Casey, chair of the Memphis Suffrage Monument Committee.

“When people come here to celebrate this history and to acknowledge the accomplishments of these people, I hope that they will realize how hard-fought that vote was,” said Casey. “This is something that is beautiful, informative, educational — and it should give Memphians a sense of pride.”

This is something that is beautiful, informative, EDUCATIONAL — AND it should give Memphians a sense of pride."

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Equality Trailblazers Honored with Busts:

Rep. Joe Hanover

House floor leader who kept pro-suffrage votes together, an ally of Carrie Chapman Catt, attorney, humanitarian

Mary Church Terrell Suffragist, champion of racial and gender equality

Ida B. Wells

Journalist, anti-lynching campaigner, later suffragist

Marion Griffin

Charl Ormond Williams A nationally known educator who coordinated state ratification efforts, stood by Gov. Roberts when he signed ratification papers

Rep. Lois DeBerry

irst female Speaker Pro F Tempore in Tennessee legislature, 40 years of public service

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irst woman to practice law in the State F of Tennessee, the first woman elected to state House

Lide Smith Meriwether

Early suffragist who had national recognition

Equality Trailblazers Honored with Etched Portraits and Narratives in Glass:

Lulu Colyar Reese

Alma H. Law

Later suffragist located in Nashville in 1920

First woman to serve on Shelby County Quarterly Court, served until her death in 1947

Maxine Smith

ivil rights legend, NAACP Executive Director, C registered large numbers of women to vote

Minerva Johnican irst black female on County Commission and F City Council, ran for city mayor in 1987, was a nationally recognized Criminal Court Clerk

Frances Grant Loring

omen’s rights and civil rights activist, W marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a founding member of the Association for Women Attorneys, Metropolitan Inter-Faith Association

Happy Snowden Jones

ounding member of the Panel of American Women, helped avert F second sanitation workers’ strike, the first donor to this monument, a feminist philanthropist who was the benefactor of The Perfect 36: Tennessee Delivers Woman Suffrage book, e-book and audiobook

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THE ROO T S OF

FOOD DESERTS

BY RYAN JONES

OR MOST INDIVIDUALS READING THIS ARTICLE, IT IS NOT DIFFICULT TO FIND FRESH AND HEALTHY FOOD.

In Memphis, one can drive along Poplar Ave. from downtown all the way to Collierville and find fullscale grocery stores within a one-to-two-mile radius of one another along the entire route. But if you were to venture north or south, into areas like South Memphis, Orange Mound, Binghampton, North Memphis, Whitehaven or Frayser, you’d face a much more difficult task in finding anything resembling a full-service grocery store. You’re more likely to discover streets packed with fast food options, dollar stores with limited fresh food inventory and a plethora of corner stores packed with cold cuts, junk food, alcohol and an assortment of overpriced loaves of bread and gallons of milk. These areas of town are what have become known as “food deserts,” communities that have poor access to healthy and

PHOTOS BY JUSTIN FOX BURKS

affordable foods. They are usually concentrated in low-income and historically marginalized areas throughout the country, with issues of longtime systemic racism, racial residential segregation, poor access to transportation and economic inequality woven into the history of these barren food landscapes. A recent study by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) says that 39.4 million Americans live in low-access communities, or communities in which at least a third of the population live in a food desert. The families living in these areas are 2.28 times more likely to have to travel further distances to supermarkets than middle-class families, a problem which is exacerbated when many of these families do not have access to a car or are dependent on unreliable public transportation. Even further, Black people are 2.49 times and Latinx people are 1.38 times more likely than white people to live in neighborhoods without access to a full-service grocery store. The story is no different here in the Mid-South.

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n Memphis, which is approximately 62% African American, the situation plays out about as you’d expect. The USDA interactive atlas and map shows various overlays of food insecurity, access issues and other key demographics of a certain city or county in America. Examining this map, it is clear to see that the city’s poorest zip codes are also the most food insecure. They are in the deepest food deserts in the region, with less means to escape. The latest report from Feeding America, a national hunger-relief organization, shows that 115,980 residents in Shelby County were classified as food insecure in 2019 (the last year of data collection), which means that about 12.4% of the population faced a “lack of access, at times, to enough food for an active, healthy life for all household members and limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate foods.” Even more striking, the child food insecurity rate in Shelby County from this report comes in at 19.8%, meaning there are more than 46,000 children in Shelby County suffering from food insecurity at the time of this report. But it’s about more than just food. In Memphis, and across the country, these food deserts equate to life and death. A healthier diet and lifestyle mean, generally, a longer life. In impoverished neighborhoods located in food deserts, fresh food and a healthy diet are often more dream than reality, which means these residents are facing a variety of health problems as a result.

“FOOD SECURITY SHOULD BE THE BEDROCK OF SOCIETY'S FUNCTION." -DR. LEANNE DESOUZA-KENNEY 20

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In the wealthiest part of the greater Memphis region, people live on average 13 years longer than in the poorest communities.

One of the largest combination of reasons food deserts exist, in Memphis and across the country, deals with race, economics and public policy.

Should access to fresh and healthy foods really be a debate over whether it is a privilege or a human right? Should the profits of a grocery store and the food industry take precedence over the lives of impoverished citizens?

The (Not so) Thin Red Line

HOW DID WE GET HERE? This is a deceptively complex question and one that has a number of equally complex answers. Talking about food deserts involves touching on everything from food insecurity, cultural norms, economics, capitalism, race, education, public policy, antitrust matters and business practices, just to start with. Food deserts are at the complex intersection between poverty, food inaccessibility, systemic racism and health.

The largest item to come out of that crosssection of reasons is “redlining.” And you can’t talk about the history of redlining without mentioning segregation. These two concepts, almost more than any other, have contributed to the creation and proliferation of food deserts on a national scale. The concept of redlining was a racist practice used mostly by government agencies and banks to deny services, most notably mortgages, in majority Black inner-city neighborhoods. The practice made Black homeownership difficult by targeting certain communities as being too risky to invest in. “If it was deemed to be a neighborhood where they did not want to encourage investment, it was considered hazardous and colored red on a map,” said Ennis Davis, an urban planner at the organization Modern Cities. “Essentially, across

the U.S., every majority-Black neighborhood in a city at that point in time became red.” It started in the 1930s with policies and organizations formed under President Roosevelt’s New Deal. The policies continue to influence living patterns, business spending and location and poverty trends today. In 1933, the FDR presidential administration established the Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) to provide low-interest mortgages. The HOLC incorporated racially discriminatory criteria into its lending requirements and deemed those living in racially or ethnically

mixed neighborhoods “too risky” for loans. In subsequent years, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and the Veteran’s Administration (VA) also adopted lending standards based on the ones used by the HOLC. The FHA developed an infamous tool called the Underwriting Manual of the Federal Housing Administration, which specifically said that “incompatible racial groups should not be permitted to live in the same communities,” and “if a neighborhood is to retain stability, it is necessary that properties shall continue to be occupied by the same social and racial classes.”

“Redlining” as a term comes from the work done by the HOLC and the federal government, as they developed maps of every metropolitan area in the entire country and color-coded them to indicate where it was safe to insure mortgages. Anywhere African Americans lived, and anywhere African Americans even lived nearby, were colored red to indicate to appraisers that these neighborhoods were too risky to insure mortgages. They’d been redlined. Examining these maps today shows just how overtly racist they were.

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One redlined neighborhood deemed “hazardous” gives the reason as “Infiltration of: Negroes.” Another summary for a neighborhood in Richmond, Va., with a B- rating reads as “Respectable people but homes are too near negro area.” "This is considered the most exclusive, or swank, section in Springfield," says the entry for one of the city's two A-classified neighborhoods. "The area is high restricted" — meaning it enforces strict rules barring nonwhite people from buying houses there.

he HOLC map for Memphis even has category designations showing where “Negro Slum Clearance Projects” were located throughout the city, in order for appraisers to knowingly avoid those areas. Overlaying this 1940s Memphis redline map with the most impoverished zip codes of today also shows that these redlining efforts had a generational effect on resident’s poverty levels.

Robert Nelson, director of the Digital Scholarship Lab at the University of Richmond, was one of the designers of the digitization project that uploaded all HOLC redline maps and converted them to online interactive maps on a website that embeds all archived documents on a single map of the USA. Selecting a specific city reveals the archived HOLC map images and zooming in shows a color overlay over a modern map with street names and building outlines. As a result of redlining, families of color "couldn't avail themselves of what is arguably the most significant route to family and personal wealth-building in the 20th century, which is homeownership," according to Nelson. Redlining is frequently cited by scholars examining American inequality, and it was highlighted by Ta-Nehisi Coates in his recent "Case for Reparations" piece in The Atlantic. "Neighborhoods where black people lived were rated "D" and were usually considered ineligible for FHA backing," he wrote. "Black people were viewed as a contagion. Redlining went beyond FHA-backed loans and spread to the entire mortgage industry, which was already rife with racism, excluding Black people from most legitimate means of obtaining a mortgage." Without access to FHA-insured mortgages, he writes, black families who sought homeownership were forced to turn to predatory and abusive lenders.

Aside from some improvements to the downtown and midtown areas, much of the area’s marked as hazardous or “definitely declining” on the redline maps are still entrenched in poverty today.

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“Studies have indicated that there are often biases against opening stores in communities of low-income and minoritized individuals based on a perception of lower profit margins,” according to Brad Shugoll, associate director of service and leadership at the Wake Forest Office of Civic and Community Engagement.

“FAMILY PUBLIC HOUSING INCREASINGLY BECAME A MINORITY RELOCATION PROGRAM, WHILE GOVERNMENT SUBSIDIES BROUGHT HOME OWNERSHIP AND SUBURBAN MOBILITY WITHIN THE REACH OF THE WHITE MIDDLE CLASS." - ARNOLD HIRSCH “This has amounted to structural racism and what some have called ‘supermarket redlining.’” Urban Renewal & Bad Zoning Additional federal and local government policies and regulations continued to influence the patterns of minority settlement throughout cities in the U.S. even after the New Deal. In an effort to fight “white flight” out of cities and into the suburbs in the 1950s, the Housing Acts of 1949 and 1954 were passed. Both of these Acts touted an “urban renewal” policy and signed off on funding to clear slums and build public housing. In urban centers across the country, the implementation of these policies meant that predominantly Black neighborhoods were being razed and cleared. In order to gain the federal funding to get rid of their “slums,” these cities had to guarantee affordable replacement housing for the displaced residents. This all-toooften meant that local authorities constructed multiunit projects that were packed with residents at an extremely high density. Cities placed majority African American public housing projects in African American neighborhoods, conforming to the racist sentiments of the time.

These federally funded and locally administered urban renewal policies became representative of the starkly different treatment of Black and white populations by the government. “Family public housing increasingly became a minority relocation program, while government subsidies brought home ownership and suburban mobility within the reach of the white middle class,” noted Arnold Hirsch in his work, "Searching for a ‘Sound Negro Policy’: A Racial Agenda for the Housing Acts of 1949 and 1954."

oning policies were another contributing factor to the continued segregation and isolation of these marginalized communities, resulting in further removal from quality food sources, equal education opportunities and career advancements. These zoning policies predated the urban renewal movement and contributed to the segregation patterns we still see in existence today. After the U.S. Supreme Court found that discriminatory zoning practices were unconstitutional in the case of Buchanan v. Warley, where the Court held unanimously that a Louisville city ordinance prohibiting

the sale of real property to Blacks in whitemajority neighborhoods or buildings and vice versa violated the Fourteenth Amendment's protections for freedom of contract, cities turned to implicit ways of zoning against minorities. Many enacted ordinances that restricted home occupancy to nuclear families only, in order to discourage minorities more likely to live with extended family members. Some cities also started to restrict multi-family homes from being built in order to discourage low-income residency. Zoning ordinances have, and continue, to function as a way to influence the racial makeup of communities across the country. There is a clear pattern in the history of our country of public policies and private discrimination shaping segregated living patterns. These patterns also show a strong correlation not only to the access to educational and employment opportunities, but ultimately to the health and nutrition of those living within these communities. Numerous studies have shown that lowincome and minority neighborhoods, many of which have been shaped by these redlining and segregation-based zoning policies over

the years, are much less likely to have access to large supermarkets and fresh foods. But these food deserts were not created by redlining and zoning policies alone. As those problems persisted, grocery stores themselves underwent an evolution that has in turn left impoverished communities searching for answers. From Urban to Suburban – Where Did the Grocery Stores Go? The Federal policies that drastically influenced the living patterns of minorities in cities across the country also affected the development of grocery stores in those same communities. As more and more middle-class white families moved out of urban centers to the suburbs, many businesses such as supermarkets moved with them. These businesses moved along the same geographical paths in order to take advantage of this middle-class spending, which consisted mainly of white families due to the redlining and zoning policies of years past.

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FOR LARGE CORPORATIONS, THEY GO INTO THE WEALTHIER NEIGHBORHOODS WHERE THEY CAN MAKE A LOT OF MONEY.” - ELENA DELAVEGA

The retail model for an urban grocery store and a larger suburban market proved to be drastically different. Upon relocating outside of traditional urban centers, these supermarkets shifted from a model that provided products through small, specialized stores like meat markets, bakeries and produce stores, to a model that brought together many, many different products all under one roof. This evolution of the supermarket came as a result of very inexpensive suburban land and very pro-business suburban zoning practices. In 1950, the average supermarket size was approximately 25,000 sq. ft. Fast forward to today and grocery stores are typically looking at 40,000 to 45,000 square feet of land space in order to attain the volume and mix of products necessary to keep a store competitive in pricing. As these suburban supermarkets grew in size over the years, they were able to capture more and more of the suburban market. In contrast, city-centered supermarkets were more ELENA DELAVEGA expensive to

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maintain and by the mid-90s, with a few exceptions, inner-city markets were “virtually abandoned by leading chains,” according to research published in Economic Development Quarterly. “For large corporations, they go into the wealthier neighborhoods where they can make a lot of money,” said Elena Delavega, a professor of Social Work at the University of Memphis, specializing in policy and global poverty, Memphis poverty, wages, taxes and social inequality. “They are more interested in having a lot of big profits than serving a community.” The economic advantages to these larger suburban supermarkets were immediately evident. They were able to cultivate a great deal of buying power and get large quantities of goods at lower prices. Additionally, some of these chains were so large that they were able to produce their own products in-house, meaning they could sell those at even steeper discounts while still keeping a high profit rate. They even had the advantage of complex logistical infrastructure and networks, which helped the larger chains and stores better forecast demand and plan their inventories accordingly. Meanwhile, city-based supermarkets were faced with higher land costs, stricter residential vs. business zoning laws, noise regulations, pollution regulations and all around less businessfriendly policies compared to the suburbs.

Another issue compounding problems for citybased groceries is commercial redlining and hesitancy of insurance companies to provide coverage to businesses located in Black or minority neighborhoods. According to research conducted by Economic Development Quarterly, businesses continue to suffer from the inability to get loans in the inner city “because of the limited attention that mainstream banks paid them, historically.” Additionally, these inner-city businesses often face higher than average insurance rates because of perceived or actual crime in urban areas. Many cities also have outdated policies in place that make it harder for urban grocery stores to open in areas encompassed by food deserts. For example, many cities have zoning ordinances that set higher requirements for parking for supermarkets relative to other businesses. This higher parking requirement in densely populated cities where land is more scarce makes it even harder for a supermarket to become a reality, combined with the other factors involved. Even where space is available, the increased parking requirement may be too expensive since new stores may be required to purchase land to accommodate more parking than would be justified by the demand. That’s a lot for small urban grocery stores to compete with. Which leads us to situations that we see in impoverished neighborhoods across cities like Memphis. Corner stores, gas stations and convenience stores serving as communities’ only fresh food options.

These types of stores are not burdened by higher parking requirements and other factors, but the price neighborhoods pay is less fresh food, perishable items or healthy options.

MODERN-DAY MEMPHIS CLOSURES Grocery stores are always hot topics of discussion in Memphis. Articles about the mere hint of a new grocery store are always some of the most read, clicked and shared across all local media platforms. As of this writing, a longawaited grocery store, though smaller than a big-box retailer, is finally opening in downtown Memphis in the upscale South Main neighborhood to an incredible amount of media attention and fanfare.

respective communities for years, with the Lamar location operating since 1985, replacing another nearby store that had opened in 1954. At the time, Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland shared the disappointment of area residents, saying, “I'm disappointed by Kroger's decision to close two stores in Memphis. But these neighborhoods are no less important than any other neighborhoods in our city, and citizens who live there absolutely deserve access to a quality grocery store.”

But for all of the topic’s popularity and recent success stories, there have been numerous sad stories of closures and increased food insecurity in the past several years that only highlight the still timely and relevant issue of food deserts here.

s recently as 2018, Kroger closed two of its local stores in two of Memphis’ majority African American neighborhoods within weeks of each other. The location in the Southgate shopping center in South Memphis closed in February 2018, immediately followed by the closing of the location on Lamar Ave. in Orange Mound. At the time, Kroger announced that the two stores had losses of nearly $4.8 million over the past three years. Both locations had served their

He even pointed to a recent success story in another impoverished, majority African American neighborhood as a model for success. Sadly, that too would succumb to the realities of modern-day supermarket realities before too long, leaving another food desert in its wake. Just before those Kroger locations closed, the Binghampton community was rejoicing about the long-awaited opening of its first full-service grocery store after a decade-long search.

The Save A Lot supermarket was the anchor tenant in a brand new development at the prominent corner of Tillman and Sam Cooper Blvd. and a success story for the neighborhood and the Binghampton Development Corporation. It ended Binghampton’s longtime status as a food desert and was hailed as a success across the board. But the good times didn’t last long. Sadly, just a few years after it opened, the building that housed the grocery store is empty once again. The cause was reportedly a nationwide restructuring of the Save A Lot company, but the subsequent difficulties in finding a replacement store showcase just how difficult the task can be to service this community with another supermarket. The Binghampton Development Corporation and its team entertained 25 potential prospects, went into actual negotiations with several grocers, but ultimately an agreement that worked for all parties could not be reached. Real estate expert Shawn Massey with the Shopping Center Group pointed out two big challenges the community faced when trying to fill the supermarket vacancy. Speaking to the Daily Memphian, Massey noted that the first issue was shrinkage. The average grocery store operates on a 1-2% margin, he said. Additionally, the recent labor shortage due to COVID-19 meant that there was a fear of not finding enough workers to fill the jobs at any new store.

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Essentially, he concluded that food store companies believe there’s a greater risk of opening a store in a community like Binghampton compared to a suburban community like Collierville or Germantown. Opening in one of those areas looks like a safer option to the business due to higher household incomes there, as well as the safety perception between the two areas. So, the community is once again labeled as a food desert, with their closest grocery store located more than a mile and a half away and a 30-minute walk for many of the area residents without reliable transportation.

HOW CAN WE FIX IT? There is no easy fix for the issue of food deserts in Memphis or in cities across America. A number of creative approaches to help increase the ability of minority communities to obtain fresh, affordable and healthy food have been developed. But many of them offer only a temporary or surface-level fix, while the underlying issues of structural racism that discourage investment in and the serving of minority communities persist. To really solve the food desert problem, it will take change from a number of different avenues. Challenges to resident segregation, commercial redlining practices and government policies that perpetuate the disparities in food access to low-income, minority neighborhoods all must be considered. Outside-the-box funding and policy ideas on a national level can help usher in generational change. Food insecurity in itself is complex, but importantly, when food insecurity exists, it is both a symptom and consequence of the absence of upstream social protections," said Dr. Leanne De Souza-Kenney, the University of Memphis visiting Fulbright Canada Research Chair of Race & Health Policy. "Currently, solutions that occur in response to food insecurity are temporary and limited such as farmers markets and food banks.

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These solutions are necessary, but must be recognized as short-term, seasonal and not designed to eradicate the source of the problem. In contrast, ‘upstream’ solutions that are sustainable will ensure education, living wages, a built environment that supports infrastructure for transportation to grocers and a cultural paradigm shift to truly believe that a society is only as healthy and prosperous as its most vulnerable groups. An Unexpected Tool – Antitrust Law Antitrust regulatory tools are probably not the first thing that comes to mind when thinking of ways to help address the food desert crisis across the country. However, some legal scholars have begun to re-examine our country’s food desert situation as a failure of the free market, which traditional antitrust laws are intended to protect. This may in fact be one of a number of new tools in the fight for food desert elimination, especially on the supply side of the problem. One notable antitrust scholar, UC Irvine Law School professor Christopher Leslie, believes that once food deserts are more widely seen as a failure of the competitive market, it will follow that the government should employ antitrust law and policy to help remedy the problem of food deserts in communities. In a recent talk at the Yale Law School Big Ag & Antitrust Conference, professor Leslie notes that what he calls “scorched earth” policies are an issue where antitrust law enforcement could have a big impact on the elimination of food deserts.

“Many food deserts are the result of a premeditated strategy by supermarket chains to deprive certain neighborhoods of grocery stores,” said Leslie. He notes that there are two main types of covenants involving grocery stores and their landlords or shopping center owners. One is commonplace and involves a grocery store negotiating leases with commercial landlords and demanding an “exclusivity covenant,” which prevents the landlord from opening another grocery store in the same complex. The second type of covenant is one he believes deserves much more attention, especially from an antitrust perspective with the goal of helping eliminate food deserts. “Lack of space is the critical barrier to entry for supermarkets in cities,” he said. “One major reason that appropriate space is unavailable is that major supermarket chains use restrictive covenants that forbid their sold property from being used as a grocery store for decades to come.” He has dubbed these “scorched earth” covenants and believes that they have created and preserved food deserts across the country. These "scorched earth" covenants are put in place by grocery stores in order to prevent competition for their other stores that are in driving distance of the closed location. The big problem with this is that they are viewed through the lens of the ability of all citizens and customers to drive or have access to reliable transportation. The "scorched earth" policies work to push area residents into driving to supermarket’s other, often suburbanlocated, stores.

But they fail to take into account the many residents without cars or access to transportation. These residents are then left with no way to easily access fresh and healthy foods. A food desert is created as a result, especially in many of these urban areas with highly impoverished minority populations.

nother grocery industry practice that perpetuates food deserts is known as “going dark.” It refers to a situation where a grocery store in a shopping center closes but keeps on paying rent to the landowner in order to abuse their exclusivity contracts prohibiting the landlord from opening up another grocery store in their complex. Again, the intent by the grocery store is to eliminate competition and force customers to visit their other stores, while all too often creating a food desert in their wake. Professor Leslie argues that both "scorched earth" covenants and the practice of “going dark” should be viewed as standard anticompetitive tactics that restrain free trade. The problem, he stated, is that these sorts of claims have not succeeded, due in large part to judges typically defining relevant geographic markets incorrectly.

“MANY FOOD DESERTS ARE THE RESULT OF A PREMEDITATED STRATEGY BY SUPERMARKET CHAINS TO DEPRIVE CERTAIN NEIGHBORHOODS OF GROCERY STORES.” - CHRISTOPHER LESLIE “When analyzing antitrust claims against supermarket restrictive covenants, courts treat the relevant geographic market as the metropolitan area, meaning the entire city and surrounding suburbs,” noted professor Leslie. “For over 60 years, courts have been reluctant to define geographic markets as narrowly as neighborhoods, because judges assume that all consumers have cars.” As is surely clear by this point, this definition does not take into account the reality for many residents in inner-city neighborhoods or povertystricken communities that food deserts are prevalently located. Professor Leslie recommends that courts begin to allow the definition of food deserts to inform how they define the relevant geographic markets in an antitrust case. Doing so would create more opportunities for new grocery stores to open up in underserved markets and

potentially help eliminate food deserts. He also suggests that antitrust regulators should take aim at these restrictive “scorched earth” covenants to help encourage supermarkets to re-enter a market. By using antitrust regulation to remove some of the restrictive barriers and harmful practices utilized by major supermarket chains, could supermarkets have an easier road of entry into underserved markets? It’s an interesting tool in the toolbox. Increased Opportunities for Minority Investment Another avenue of improvement deals with the failure of lenders and retailers to invest in businesses in low-income communities of color. There are several efforts that have been carried out across the country in recent years to attempt to dismantle some of the elements of structural barriers to investment in communities with food deserts. Pennsylvania established the Fresh Food Financing Initiative (FFFI), a statewide financing program designed to attract supermarkets and grocery stores to underserved urban and rural communities. It is a public/private partnership that provides grants of up to $250,000 and loans ranging from $25,000 to $7.5 million for the costs associated with predevelopment. This includes costs like land purchasing and financing, equipment financing, capital grants for project funding gaps, construction finance and workforce development. Over the course of a decade, the program provided funding for 88 fresh-food retail projects in Philadelphia. Former President Obama established the Healthy Food Financing Initiative during his presidency. It is a partnership between the Departments of Treasury, Agriculture and Health and Human Services, which allocates $400 million to rid the nation of food deserts by bringing grocery stores offering fresh fruits and vegetables and

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other healthy choices to underserved communities. It also aims to create and preserve quality jobs and to revitalize low-income neighborhoods by building a more equitable food system that supports the health and economic vibrancy of all citizens.

“FULL-SERVICE GROCERY STORES ARE CRITICAL TO THE QUALITY OF LIFE AND THE HEALTH OF THESE NEIGHBORHOODS.” - REID DULBERGER In 2021, at least $4 million was available for innovative food retail and food system enterprises that sought to improve access to healthy food in underserved areas. Grants ranged from $20,000 to $200,000. Some Success in Memphis For all of the struggles Memphis faces in regard to food deserts, there are a few glimmers of success in recent years, thanks in part to more economic development funding and incentives from city leaders. After the Kroger in Orange Mound closed in 2018, residents were obviously distraught about their food situation. For more than a year, area residents waited for a new grocery store to open in the area. Finally, in December 2019, Superlo Foods opened in the former Kroger location, with vital assistance from the Economic Development Growth Engine (EDGE), the official economic development agency for the City of Memphis and Shelby County Government. EDGE gave Superlo a loan to operate in the former location in Orange Mound as part of the funding arrangement. “Neighborhoods need good food choices,” said Reid Dulberger, president and CEO of EDGE. “Fullservice grocery stores are critical to the quality of life and the health of these neighborhoods.” 28

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Dulberger said an EDGE committee signed off on giving Superlo a $100,000 loan, along with the $100,000 they received from the City of Memphis. In addition to the help from EDGE, Kroger itself was vital in the entire operation coming to fruition. Kroger donated their building to Superlo, a property valued at over $500,000. Statistics from EDGE show nearly 100,000 people live within a 3-mile radius of the new store with a median household income of a little more than $31,000, and the federal government considers the spot severely distressed.

“If we don’t build the housing we need, we’re not going to get grocery stores, because they’re not willing to afford to be there,” said Rashun Austin, president and CEO of The Works, Inc., a nonprofit community development corporation serving South Memphis. “They already have these thin margins. Whether they can afford it or not, we can pretend that private businesses are charitable, but that’s not how capitalism works.” Those larger issues are the harder hurdle to overcome.

With the assistance of several different entities, and a bit of luck, these area residents once again have access to fresh food and an opportunity at a healthier life as a result.

Ultimately, we come to something like a giant circle. Poverty begets poverty. Systemic problems contribute to poverty; poverty contributes to food insecurity; food insecurity to health and education struggles; health and education struggles to employment struggles; employment struggles to poverty.

The other major Kroger closure in Memphis in 2018 also hit an impoverished community extremely hard, but once again Memphis has seen some good luck come in when it was needed most.

It is imperative to recognize that individuals are not necessarily at fault for falling into or getting trapped in the cycle of poverty, but that their situation may be a product of failures within larger systems.

Several months after the Kroger in South Memphis closed, local grocery chain Cash Saver opened in the same Southgate Shopping Center and has been successful in the years since.

It’s clear to see that there is not one answer to solving America’s food desert problem. But with more awareness of the problems and issues behind the root causes of food deserts, cities across the country may be able to plant the seeds of healthier communities going forward.

Cash Saver did extensive research into whether their store could be profitable in the area. That research examined the number of homes, age ranges of residents and the median income of those in the area. The Cash Saver team also examined Kroger’s profit margins and they felt confident that they could improve upon them. Again, the entity that came in to provide the vital assistance needed to put the project over the finish line was EDGE, which provided much needed financial incentives that helped lower Cash Saver’s risk in opening the new store. But despite the stores’ individual success, South Memphis leaders are adamant that the root causes of food deserts in Memphis must be addressed before any long-term change can happen. They point to neighborhood revitalization as one of the key issues at play.

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Fighting A PROFILE to be OF A

First: CHANGEMAKER

TANNERA GIBSON (JD ’08)

annera Gibson tells a story about an interaction with an older and established attorney from early in her career that highlights the misconceptions and biases that minority attorneys regularly have to overcome.

“I spoke to a general counsel years ago about why minority attorneys weren’t receiving the same opportunities as other lawyers, because our work was just as good and we’d accomplished just as much,” she said. “And he was really honest with me. I think it was sort of an epiphany for him, and he said ‘It just wouldn’t occur to me because I would look at you and think we had nothing in common and nothing to talk about. That’s just the assumption I would make by looking at you.’ But I really appreciated his honesty, and he went on to say how he would make the effort to be more intentional about things after our conversation.” That’s the sort of outlook and mindset that she hopes to hammer away at as she steps into her role as the first African American

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female to become president of the Memphis Bar Association. It won’t be the first time she’s embarked upon a path full of challenges though. And it’s her unique experiences that have enabled Tannera to find success where others have struggled. To begin with, her route to law school was not your typical journey, but it did teach her a lot about herself and the importance of different experiences. She grew up in Memphis, living in several predominately African American neighborhoods throughout the city. Her experiences there helped to shape her, but they also made her aware of the many cultural biases that limited her from gaining even more advantages and opportunities in general. She saw “others coming from a more affluent background” throughout her life and it “sometimes produced feelings of inadequacy and self-doubt,” she noted when asked by the Tri-State Defender recently.

PHOTOS BY WENDY ADAMS

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So, a group of us got together and decided to do something for ourselves while also recognizing an amazing and sometimes overlooked Black graduate of the law school.” “Obviously, I was able to work through that. But things shouldn’t be like they are just because they have always been that way. Change is good.” She feels that it’s those types of experiences that have given her a greater awareness of the benefits of diversity and how it will help improve the Mid-South legal community going forward. After graduating from White Station High School, Gibson attended the University of Memphis and obtained her bachelor’s degree in computer science. “It took me a while to figure out what I wanted to do,” Gibson said. “I was good at math and logic, so I majored in math and thought maybe I’d teach. Eventually, I settled on computer science and got my degree in that.” She went on to get a good job in the field and worked in that sector for several years, but ultimately, she was unhappy with it and knew she needed a career change. But it’s an intimidating about-face to start over when you’re 27 years old. “I was just doing what I was good at, but I didn’t like the work,” she said. “It was just something to do, and I was so unhappy and so unfulfilled. But I kept having this draw to go to law school. It had always been a thing for me, but I kept

thinking, ‘I’m too old. I don’t want to be 30 years old coming out of law school and starting over.’” But her brother gave her some words of wisdom and encouragement to stick with it. “You’re gonna be 30 either way. You can be 30 doing what you want to do, or you can be 30 and still be unhappy.” So, she did it. She enrolled in law school at 27 with no real guidance or mentors and at a time when there was a smaller percentage of law students who looked like her on campus. In a way though, her unique experiences helped her find success. “I think the fact that I was a little bit older was helpful,” Gibson noted. “I’d already had some life experiences, so I was kind of grounded and knew that I was there to do something that I wanted to do for the rest of my life.” Perhaps it was that level of experience and focus that led her to help co-found what has been one of the most successful legacy events at the law school. Gibson was one of several African American law students that started the Kenneth M. Cox Ceremony, honoring diverse and minority graduates of the law school every year.

“At the time in my class, we did not have a lot of minority students involved in things like Law Review or Moot Court or anything,” said Gibson. “We were graduating with no cords and no specific items recognizing diversity. So, a group of us got together and decided to do something for ourselves while also recognizing an amazing and sometimes overlooked Black graduate of the law school.” That ceremony is still held each year at the law school, honoring the legacy of Kenneth Cox himself, while also helping recognize our diverse graduates and in a way, helping memorialize the legacies of the ceremony’s co-founders as well. While still in law school, she also planted the seeds for the success that she would find years later. She found herself working over the summer as a law clerk at the local firm Thomason Hendrix (now Thomason, Hendrix, Harvey, Johnson and Mitchell), where she met attorney Bruce McMullen. That was the beginning of one of the more important, and impactful, mentoring relationships of Gibson’s personal and professional life. “We routinely went to lunch to discuss her challenges navigating the legal field as a minority female lawyer," McMullen told the Memphis Business Journal in an interview. "I gave her honest, straight-forward advice and constructive guidance. I have mentored many young lawyers and not everybody is receptive to constructive criticism, but she had a unique ability to embrace my advice and use it as a tool to succeed." It's that organically grown mentoring relationship that she hopes to recreate with law students as part of a new program she has planned as MBA president. “I’m not a fan of traditional mentoring programs,” Gibson said. “To the extent that they expose you to people you may need to know, I think they are okay, but mentorship needs to be so much more organic than that.

MEMPHIS L AW | SUMMER 202 2

I think students need to hear the truth and they need to hear what’s real. When it’s forced, I’ve never had a successful mentor match work out like that.” Her program will attempt to teach students the skills they may not necessarily learn in the classroom in order to better take advantage of those organic situations as they arise.

“In this particular program, I really want students to come out ready for the real world,” Gibson said. “I’ve talked to business owners, general counsels, hiring managers and everyone involved in my program will be the individuals who have the authority to actually hire students. And I’ve gotten great buy-in so far.”

It’s a program intended to reflect the diversity of the real world and will consist of professionals from all backgrounds and higher levels of authority. She wants students to hear what the reality of practice is all about and these are the people who can give them that. The program will also help students see how diversity is represented in today’s legal environment and help them confront the reality that there is a drastic lack of actual diversity there. “I think students need to hear the truth and they need to hear what’s real,” Gibson noted. “I don’t really want to hear what organization you were president of or what your GPA was. It’s important to have the sorts of hard conversations that we’ll be able to facilitate.” She will be focused on letting students hear from a large and diverse group of very successful people with a good deal of power and authority telling students what they need to do to be successful. And maybe from that group, some organic mentoring relationships will develop, but it’s not going to be your standard mentoring program. In other words, she plans to surround Memphis Law students with successful people and allow

UNIVERSIT Y OF MEMPHIS

the organic relationships to develop, while also helping them learn some of the innate skills that law school does not always teach, such as how to run a business or develop your own client base and other vital things to a successful young attorney’s career. In reality it was these sorts of skills and relationships that ultimately led to her to being named the first African American female at Burch, Porter and Johnson several years ago. Another huge first in a series of important “firsts.” But there’s no reason the Mid-South legal community should just now be seeing these sorts of firsts, at the Bar or at local area firms. And people in leadership positions like hers have to play an active role in educating other attorneys here about different viewpoints. “Diverse leadership brings diverse experiences and diverse perspectives to the legal community,” she said. Her hope as MBA president is that we will have people from all levels of the legal community involved in actively talking about these topics on a regular basis. “I think if you create an environment that doesn’t feel judgmental or accusatory and be purposeful about who delivers these messages of diversity, then they can actually be heard,” Gibson said. She’s doing her part to make sure that, though she may be the first African American female in many areas, she is not the last. Gibson is setting the tone for a diverse future in the Memphis legal community. And clearly, everyone is starting to listen.

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PILLARS of

EXCELLENCE

RETURNS

WITH A STRONG FOUNDATION

UNIVERSIT Y OF MEMPHIS

he last time the Memphis legal community had the opportunity to attend the University of Memphis Law Pillars of Excellence Dinner was in 2019. That event, the 10th such celebration, was hosted at FedExForum with a record crowd of more than 750 attendees. Honored that night were six outstanding Pillars of Excellence, with the Bobango family named as “Friend of the Law School.” Each honoree had a scholarship established in their name and accepted their award to their favorite musical song, with a special highlight of the evening coming in the form of an appearance by Jimmy Smits, star of the locally filmed, NBC TV show Bluff City Law, who had recently been made an honorary Memphis Law alum. On Saturday, August 20, of this year at FedExForum, law school friends, alumni and the Memphis legal community are invited to the triumphant return of the Pillars of Excellence Dinner. This year, the University of Memphis Law School Alumni Chapter will honor the stellar accomplishments of Lee J. Chase, David J. Harris, Honorable Janice M. Holder, Allie J. Prescott and Honorable Diane K. Vescovo. All the honorees are a wonderful example of strong legal minds, unquestioned integrity, excellent mentoring skills and they each demonstrate the highest degree of professional conduct. This year’s “Friend of the Law School” is Bill Nixon, the architect for the new law school building in Downtown Memphis, who with his team orchestrated an award-winning restoration of the Federal Post Office building into one of the best law school facilities in the country.

In recent years, scholarships have been established in the honorees’ names to attract the best and brightest law students to Memphis Law. This is one of the most rewarding aspects of putting on such a massive event and one that helps plant the seeds for the ongoing success of so many future Memphis Law graduates. Community leaders, friends and others have made donations and gifts to establish endowments to support the law school and leave lasting legacies for the honorees. The 2019 honorees’ scholarships garnered a record-setting $150,000 donated on their behalf. Looking back, the history of Pillars shows a great deal of growth year-over-year, thanks to the hard work of the law school alumni chapter. In August 2004, the law chapter held its inaugural annual dinner drawing 250 alumni, faculty and friends of the law school, more than twice the highest attendance at any of the previous annual luncheons. Building on that success, the chapter hosted its second dinner, renamed the Striving for Excellence in the Law in 2005. Keynote speaker, Congressman Harold Ford, Jr., entertained a crowd of more than 300 attendees. In 2007, the Chapter hosted the fourth annual dinner and created the Pillars of Excellence Award honoring attorneys from “America’s Greatest Generation” who made significant civic and professional contributions to the practice of law. A record crowd of more than 650 joined in celebrating 16 attorneys as Pillars of Excellence who had practiced law for more than 50 years.

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Family and Friends of Hon. Kenny W. Armstrong

Following that successful 2007 dinner, the Chapter board established the criteria for selecting honorees and renamed the event as the Pillars of Excellence Dinner in 2011. Since its inception, the Pillars of Excellence Dinner has attracted an average of 500 attendees and has raised more than $400,000 in scholarship support. This annual celebration is a tremendous opportunity to honor outstanding and well-deserving pillars of the legal community, establish scholarships in their honor, help attract top law school students and leave a legacy for each Pillar.

UNIVERSIT Y OF MEMPHIS

2019

Pillar Guests

2018

2019

Photo Left to Right: R. Hunter Humphreys, John A. Bobango, Lisa Bobango, Richard Glassman, Hon. Bernice B. Donald, Hon. Robert L. “Butch” Childers, Connie Lewis Lensing, Charles T. Tuggle Jr.

This year’s return of the Pillars of Excellence Dinner gives the Memphis legal community a tremendous opportunity to once again honor some of the most outstanding Pillars in Memphis, as well as directly impact the success of the law school and its students, by helping establish scholarships in their honor. The legacy established by this dinner is a gift all its own. We hope to see you there. Tickets and table sales are available for purchase at alumni.memphis.edu/pillars2022. Tables of 10: $1,700. Individual tickets: $180. Contact Gremesha Crump at gcrump@memphis.edu or 901.678.1782 for more information.

2019

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Alumni Notes

’68

’81

Judge Richard P. McCully recently retired from the bench and has since been volunteering with the Dunwoody, Georgia, Police Department.

’73

Steven Douglas was included in the 2022 edition of The Best Lawyers in America in the areas of Bankruptcy and Creditor Debtor Rights/Insolvency and Reorganization Law and Litigation – Bankruptcy. He also received inclusion on the list for “Lawyer of the Year” in Memphis. Douglas

M. Anderson Cobb was included in the 2022 edition of The Best Lawyers in America in the areas of Corporate Law, Personal Injury Litigation – Defendants and Real Estate Law.

Charles C. Drennon III, was included in the 2022 edition of The Best Lawyers in America in the areas of Corporate Law and Mergers and Acquisitions Law.

Steven Hal Jones has been included in Marquis Who’s Who and celebrated for his dedication to the field of Law.

’82

’74

James D. Wilson was included in the 2022 edition of The Best Lawyers in America in the area of Medical Malpractice Law – Defendants.

’75

Jerry O. Potter was included in the 2022 edition of The Best Lawyers in America in the areas of Medical Malpractice – Defendants and Personal Injury Litigation – Defendants. Potter

’76

James L. Kirby was included in the 2022 edition of The Best Lawyers in America in the areas of Commercial Litigation, Construction Law, Medical Malpractice Law – Defendants and Medical Malpractice Law – Plaintiffs.

The Illinois Second District Appellate Court upheld a lower court decision written by Judge William J. Borah, a case of first impression, when it held that Meggan Sommerville’s sex is “unquestionable female” and Hobby Lobby unlawfully discriminated against her based on her gender identity.

Judge John Campbell was recently appointed by Tennessee Governor Bill Lee to the Court of Criminal Appeals, Western Section in Jackson, Tenn.

’84

Paul Sacco retired from 37 years of practicing law and from judgeships in two Colorado cities where he sat on the bench for over 27 years. Sacco founded a startup company known as MerryBack.com where he devotes his passion to helping alleviate back pain and reduce unnecessary surgeries.

Kirby

Edward J. McKenney, Jr., was included in the 2022 edition of The Best Lawyers in America in the areas of Employment Law – Management, Litigation – Municipal and Municipal Law. He also received inclusion on the list for “Lawyer of the Year” in Memphis. McKenney, Jr.

UNIVERSIT Y OF MEMPHIS

’85

Barbara B. Lapides was included in the 2022 edition of The Best Lawyers in America in the area of Municipal Law.

’86

’95

Carol Chumney recently published her book, “The Arena: One Woman’s Story,” about her experiences as a woman in the political arena in the City of Memphis, the State of Tennessee and beyond.

David Peel recently published his first novel, “The Treasure of Solomon.”

Peel

Chumney

’88

G. Rice Byars, Jr., was included in the 2022 edition of The Best Lawyers in America in the area of Trusts and Estates.

’96

Kevin Snider, of Snider & Horner, PLLC, cocreated the Law at Lunch series as a result of COVID-19 preventing some in-person legal clinics. Each week he appears virtually to answer legal questions from viewers on Facebook.

Snider

’89

’98

W. Timothy Hayes, Jr., was included in the 2022 edition of The Best Lawyers in America in the area of Medical Malpractice Law – Defendants.

Allison T. Gilbert was included in the 2022 edition of The Best Lawyers in America in the area of Real Estate Law.

’99 ’92

Steve Maroney has been appointed by Tennessee Governor Bill Lee as Chancellor of Tennessee’s 26th Judicial District, which consists of Chester, Henderson and Madison Counties.

Jonathan T. Martin was included in the 2022 edition of The Best Lawyers in America in the areas of Litigation – Insurance and Medical Malpractice Law – Defendants.

’01

Philip Smith has been named the chairman and CEO of the Memphis-based legal and consulting firms, Gerrish Smith Tuck. The firms exclusively represent financial institutions across the country. Philip previously served as president.

’93

W. Bradley Gilmer was included in the 2022 edition of The Best Lawyers in America in the area of Medical Malpractice – Defendants.

J. Matthew Kirby was included in the 2022 edition of The Best Lawyers in America in the area of Workers Compensation – Employers. He also received inclusion on the list for “Lawyer of the Year” in Memphis.

Karen S. Koplon was included in the 2022 edition of The Best Lawyers in America in the areas of Litigation – Insurance and Medical Malpractice Law – Defendants.

MEMPHIS L AW | SUMMER 202 2

Alumni Notes

William J. Wyatt was included in the 2022 edition of The Best Lawyers in America in the areas of Insurance Law, Litigation – Labor and Employment, and Medical Malpractice Law – Defendants.

’04

William Blaylock has been named the chief hearing officer of the Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development’s Unemployment Appeals Tribunal. He has been with the department since 2007.

Kannon C. Conway was included in the 2022 edition of The Best Lawyers in America in the area of Personal Injury Litigation – Defendants.

’08

Mary Lee has been promoted to deputy general counsel for the Tennessee Commission on Aging and Disability. Prior to that, she served as the director of policy, contracts and compliance for the Division of Long-Term Services and Supports within TennCare.

’04

Chandley Hayes-Crawford has taken an education leave of absence from her job as a senior asst. city attorney at the City of Memphis to pursue an LL.M. in Corporate Law at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.

Lee

’09

Michelle Bliss has started a new role as a senior consultant in human capital for Deloitte Consulting in Baltimore, Md. She spent the last four years as the training and internship coordinator at the Maryland Department of Transportation State Highway Administration in the Office of Highway Development.

Erin Shea of Snider & Horner, PLLC, co-created the Law at Lunch series as a result of COVID-19 preventing some in-person legal clinics. Each week she appears virtually to answer legal questions from viewers on Facebook. Shea

’05

Thomas R. Greer recently obtained a $9.33 million jury verdict against Cracker Barrel in January 2022.

Greer

’11

C. Grace Whiting was recently selected as the executive director of the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys (NAELA).

Tricia M. Y. Tweel was included in the 2022 edition of The Best Lawyers in America in the area of Trusts and Estates.

’12 ’06

Russell Hayes recently joined the law firm of Martin, Tate, Morrow & Marston, P.C.’s Memphis office.

Christy Stigler was named as Middle Tennessee State University’s assistant to the president for institutional equity and compliance.

Abigail Webb was included in the 2022 edition of The Best Lawyers in America in the areas of Insurance Law and Personal Injury Litigation – Defendants.

Hayes

Kasser

UNIVERSIT Y OF MEMPHIS

’13

Jake Kasser has been promoted to a member of the law firm of Glankler Brown, PLLC.

Princess Woodard was selected as a 2021-2023 Family Law Fellow by the American Bar Association. Additionally, she was chosen as a 2021 “Best of the Bar” honoree by the Memphis Business Journal.

’18

William “Gil” Buie IV, associate attorney at Miles Mason Family Law Group, PLC, was selected to the Super Lawyer’s 2021 Tennessee Rising Stars list.

Woodard

George Scoville has been named an “Attorney for Justice” by the Tennessee Supreme Court and Access to Justice Commission for his pro bono service in 2021, the second consecutive year that he received this recognition.

’14

Jayniece Harris has joined the law firm of Pickford Law, PLLC.

Harris

Freeman Terrell

Rebekka Freeman Terrell was recently sworn in as the chief administrative officer to the Shelby County Criminal Court Clerk’s Office by Judge Lee Coffee. Terrell previously served at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center and as an assistant district attorney. In addition to her professional endeavors, she is also an active volunteer with Big Brothers Big Sisters and the Junior League of Memphis.

Scoville

’19

Johnathan Hutton recently transitioned to a Vault 10 firm, Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP in New York City, N.Y., as a tax associate focusing on private equity and structured financial products for banks.

Hunter Shepard has joined the law firm of Herrin, McPeak & Associates in Johnson City, Tenn. Prior to joining the firm, Shepard was a judicial law clerk for the Hon. Thomas R. Frierson II, on the Tennessee Court of Appeals, Eastern Section in Knoxville, Tenn.

Lee Whitwell was recently appointed the chief litigation attorney for the Shelby County Attorney’s Office, where he now oversees all civil litigation for the county. Shepard

’15

’20

Lacy Ward McCormick recently received her certification as a Colorado master angler.

Brian Rees has begun working on the Emergency Rent Assistance Program at Neighborhood Preservation, Inc., where he is assisting on spearheading the Right to Counsel Program for Renters in Memphis.

Joseph W. Smith has been appointed co-vice chair of the Tennessee Bar Association Family Law Section’s Executive Committee.

Rees

Smith

’17

Justin Mantell was recently named real estate counsel for ExchangeRight, a fully integrated national real estate investment firm.

MEMPHIS L AW | SUMMER 202 2

UNIVERSIT Y OF MEMPHIS

ISION

V I S I T I N G FAC U LT Y B R I N G T H E I R

T O M E M P H I S L AW

MEMPHIS L AW | SUMMER 202 2

DR. DARRELL JACKSON VISITING HERFF CHAIR OF EXCELLENCE Memphis Law proudly welcomed Dr. Darrell Jackson as our visiting Herff Chair of Excellence in Law this semester. Dr. Jackson’s research interests surround supporting historically marginalized communities (HMC) as they struggle to obtain an equitable share of power within truly democratic societies. His theoretical framework utilizes critical race theory (CRT) at the intersection of three primary disciplines: law; education; and race, cultural or ethnic studies. Using counter-narratives from HMCs and legal analysis that suggests protecting those whose interests are often overlooked, he critically analyzes institutional status quo through research, writing, teaching, commentary and community service. While at Memphis Law, Dr. Jackson has focused his work on critical race theory in an immersive academic environment with a combination of courses, faculty scholarship workshops, community partnerships and collaborations and a critical race theory symposium. That special symposium, titled “Critical Race Theory: Truth, Lies & the Law,” was immensely successful and focused on critical race theory throughout a variety of disciplines, the educational academy and broader community, with topics ranging from voting, healthcare, housing, education and criminal justice and featuring national experts from across the spectrum. His intersession course focused on the history, present and future of critical race theory. While deeply analyzing CRT through a casebook, law review articles and leading treatises, students personally engaged (via Zoom) with nationally recognized CRT scholars. The course culminated with each student presenting and providing a paper that engaged CRT in a legal field where the student already demonstrated interest and expertise.

UNIVERSIT Y OF MEMPHIS

protecting those whose interests are often overlooked, he critically analyzes institutional status quo through research, writing, teaching, commentary and community service

MEMPHIS L AW | SUMMER 202 2

"There is a great story to tell in Memphis. It is one of the rural south, a progressive urban center and, at the same time, a familiar all-American and global citizen story that stands to impact everyone."

UNIVERSIT Y OF MEMPHIS

DR. LEANNE DESOUZA-KENNEY VISITING FULBRIGHT CANADA RESEARCH CHAIR IN RACE & HEALTH POLICY This semester saw the arrival of Dr. Leanne DeSouza-Kenney as our visiting Fulbright Canada Research Chair in Race & Health Policy. Her work in Memphis and at the law school has focused on researching health disparities across vulnerable non-white populations in the United States and Canada. Her research will help provide a detailed understanding of the landscape of health inequities within and between the U.S. and Canada, emphasizing the key health disparities of maternal and child health, chronic disease and access to healthcare before and during COVID-19. In an urban community like Memphis, which has such an incredible healthcare and hospital network, while also sadly containing some of the starkest divides in health inequities and chronic disease, her work will be an invaluable tool in driving change throughout Memphis and Canada. The Memphis and Canadian communities are excited to see her work progress, both here and going forward.

MEMPHIS L AW | SUMMER 202 2

FACU LT Y

Accomplishments Sonya Garza Professor Garza will join the faculty at Memphis Law as an assistant professor of law this fall. Lynda Black Professor Black was one of four invited speakers at a LEAD1 Virtual Forum entitled: “Looking Ahead: How Will NIL Affect Student-Athlete Academic Performance?” Additionally, she served as a member of the research team (Principal Investigator, Dr. Brennan Berg, associate professor in Sport Commerce at UofM) which was selected for a Communities of Research Scholars (CoRS) Research Award by the Division of Research & Innovation. The CoRS Program is designed to cultivate interdisciplinary collaboration. Professor Black's CoRS Program project is entitled, “Name, Image and Likeness in Tennessee: A Historic Policy Change for College Athletics.” Finally, Professor Black served as a visiting professor at the University of Mississippi Law School in spring 2022, teaching Secured Transactions.

Demetria Frank Professor Frank was recently appointed associate dean for Diversity & Inclusion.

UNIVERSIT Y OF MEMPHIS

Additionally, Professor Gipson recently had his article, “A Lasting Peace in Taiwan Requires Independence,” published in the February issue of Santa Barbara Lawyer Magazine. Professor Gipson also wrote about the precarious situation the United States faces with Taiwan, its sovereignty and the ever-increasing threats from China as a result in Attorney at Law magazine.

Jennifer Brobst Professor Brobst will join the law school as an assistant professor of law this fall.

Ronnie Gipson Professor Gipson presented at the Lawyer-Pilot Bar Association’s winter meeting in Tampa, Fla., earlier this year.

Regina Hillman Professor Hillman will be an assistant professor of law this fall, after serving as a clinical assistant professor of law since 2017.

D.R. Jones Professor Jones’ article, “Under the Umbrella: Promoting Public Access to the Law,” was published as the lead article in the University of Georgia’s Journal of Intellectual Property Law (fall 2021 issue). Professor Jones presented her latest scholarship at the Intellectual Property Scholars’ Conference held virtually in fall 2021. Professor Jones was also a participant at the Privacy Law Scholars’ Conference held virtually in 2021.

Boris Mamlyuk Professor Mamlyuk recently authored the following book chapters: Russian Sovereignty and Sovereign Anxiety in International Law, in "Tipping Points in International Law: Commitment and Critique" (Jean d’Aspremont, John Haskell, eds., Cambridge University Press, 2021). The Cold War in Soviet International Legal Discourse, in "International Law and the Cold War" (Matthew Craven, Sundhya Pahuja, Gerry Simpson, eds., Cambridge University Press, 2019).

Carrie Kerley Professor Kerley co-authored an article entitled, “Team-Building Lessons from Ted Lasso,” in the fall 2021 issue of All Things PLC Magazine.

Barbara Kritchevsky Professor Kritchevsky’s article, “Welcoming Lakeesha and Vincenzo to the Restaurant of Torts,” was recently published in the Nebraska Law Review.

Katy Ramsey Mason Professor Ramsey Mason’s most recent article, “Housing Injustice and the Summary Eviction Process: Beyond Lindsey v. Normet,” was recently published in the Oklahoma Law Review in the February 2022 issue. Additionally, she was selected as the recipient of the 2022 Community Service Award given by the AALS Section on Law, Medicine and Health Care. She was recognized at the 2022 AALS Annual Meeting in January.

MEMPHIS L AW | SUMMER 202 2

Faculty Accomplishments

Mary Morris Professor Morris joined the board of directors of the Community Legal Center, which provides civil legal services to those of limited financial means and people at risk, including those not served by other legal aid agencies. Additionally, she joined the board of directors at the Memphis Bar Foundation, which is the philanthropic arm of the Memphis Bar Association. Professor Morris also joined the executive committee of the Leo Bearman, Sr. American Inn of Court.

Steven Mulroy Professor Mulroy was elected as a member of the American Law Institute, the leading independent organization in the U.S. producing scholarly work to clarify, modernize, and otherwise improve the law.

Nicole Tuchinda Professor Tuchinda’s article, “Ending School Brutality,” was published in the William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender & Social Justice this spring.

2021-22 FACULTY AWARDS

D.R. Jones Recipient of the Patricia and Dan Murrell Ethics and Professionalism Teaching Award

Professor Mulroy recently published “Baby And Bathwater: Standing In Election Cases After 2020,” in the Dickinson Law Review. His book chapter, Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, was accepted for publication in the Oxford Handbook of Election Law for 2022.

David Romantz Professor Romantz was recently elected to the faculty senate of the University of Memphis. Additionally, he was named to the advisory board of the Public Safety Institute at the University of Memphis.

UNIVERSIT Y OF MEMPHIS

Ronnie Gipson Recipient of the Farris Bobango Faculty Scholarship Award

Danny Schaffzin Recipient of the MLK50 Faculty Service Award

Faculty Opinion/Editorial

A New Bar Takes Shape

ost attorneys vividly recall their experience with the Bar exam. Some might say (only half-jokingly) it is a form of PTSD. It generally involves spending two or three days in a facility with many other anxious test takers attempting to recall vague or nuanced rules on several essays and a couple hundred multiple-choice questions; and, for some, also completing a performance test (e.g., drafting a memo in 90 minutes). Along with the experience of the exam itself, most attorneys recall the weeks they spent preparing for it — hours of learning the rules, doing practice problems and stressing about the exam. Some attorneys have questioned why the test that determines whether or not they will be licensed to practice law does not mimic or test the skills they actually use in practice. Some attorneys have also questioned what is tested on the bar exam because certain subjects have never come up in their practice. The National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE), the entity that designs and distributes components of the Bar exam, has been listening to these criticisms for the last couple of years and using them to direct the creation of a new Bar exam. That new Bar exam, which the NCBE refers to as the next generation Bar exam or NextGen, is anticipated to arrive in 2026.

by Professor and Director of Bar Preparation DeShun Harris

It will test foundational skills and cover a smaller number of subjects. Seven skills will be tested and will include skills such as client counseling and advising, issue spotting and analysis and legal writing. Examinees will be tested on their knowledge of only eight subjects. It will eliminate testing of subjects like secured transactions or wills and estates, and test subjects such as torts, evidence and business associations. The NCBE will test examinees on concepts that are likely to come up often in practice, that are applicable to multiple areas of law and topics where ignorance could result in a risk to the public. Thus, the breadth and depth of coverage will be limited so that test takers don’t need to know “the exceptions to the exceptions.” The NCBE is still developing the structure of the test, but we already know it will move away from the structure of the traditional Bar exam. The new exam will be integrated so that knowledge and skills are blended rather than separated. It could provide the examinee with a client scenario and ask the examinee what she might advise the client to do first and provide them with a series of options to choose. Examinees could be asked to complete tasks through fill in the blank. They could be given the law and a hypothetical situation and asked to fill in parts of a pleading or contract based on what they know. The NCBE has indicated they are exploring a number of testing devices to evaluate the examinees practice-ready skills and knowledge.

The NCBE has also decided how and when the new Bar will be administered. The new exam will move away from being paper-based and become a computer-based exam. Examinees may go to a testing center or use their laptops at a facility managed by the jurisdiction. The exam will also continue to be administered twice a year. Memphis Law is already hard at work evaluating our curriculum to ensure our students are prepared for the changes. But this new focus on practice-ready skills and experience is something we’re uniquely prepared for thanks to our deeply rooted and innovative experiential learning program. Hands-on experience has been a strength of our program for years and our legal clinics and externship program have helped our students do more than just learn the basics of the law. Our graduates are leaving law school with a unique blend of legal advocacy, handson training and lessons from intensive learning environments. So as the new Bar exam takes effect, Memphis Law students will be ahead of the curve when it comes to being tested on these real-world skills. As they work to revamp the exam, the NCBE has indicated they will provide information along the way and provide prototype questions so that law schools can begin to make any necessary changes. We will be using this information so our students are ready for the new exam, but it’s exciting to know that our students are already gaining the real-world experience that the updated Bar will be testing for!

MEMPHIS L AW | SUMMER 202 2

PERIODICAL POSTAGE 1 North Front Street Memphis, TN 38103-2189

PAID

MEMPHIS, TN

Memphis Law | Summer 2022

Articles inside

A New Bar Takes Shape

Alumni Notes

Faculty Accomplishments

Visiting Faculty Bring Their Vision to Memphis Law

Pillars of Excellence Returns with a Strong Foundation

Blazing a Trail — A New Monument Rises Behind Memphis Law