Faculty Events

Winston College of Law Faculty Events

Throughout the academic year, the University of Tennessee Winston College of Law hosts a number of events that feature scholars in the legal profession. 

The goal of these events is to enhance the intellectual life of the law school and provide a venue for dialogue among faculty members and between our faculty and outside scholars. Doing so helps us maintain an environment that challenges and enhances critical areas of law and society.

Events include:

Distinguished Speaker Series 2026-2027

February 4, 2027

ANDREW M. PERLMAN

Vice President for Academic Innovation, Suffolk University
 Dean and Professor of Law, Suffolk University Law School

Dean Andrew Perlman is a nationally recognized voice on the future of legal education and law practice. National Jurist has twice named him one of the 20 most influential people in legal education. He has served in leadership roles with the American Bar Association, including as a member of the Advisory Council for the ABA’s Task Force on Law and Artificial Intelligence. Dean Perlman has also focused on national and local reform efforts, ranging from issues of access to justice to alternate paths to bar admission. He is co-author of Civil Procedure: A Coursebook and numerous articles and essays on legal ethics, professional conduct, and more. Perlman is a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Law School, and he received his L.L.M. from Columbia Law School.

February 12, 2027

Richard L. Rose Lecture Featuring

L. SONG RICHARDSON

Chancellor’s Professor of Law, University of California, Irvine School of Law

Song Richardson is the Chancellor’s Professor of Law at University of California, Irvine School of Law. A visionary leader, Professor Richardson is the former Dean at UC Irvine and has served as president of Colorado College. Professor Richardson returned to UC Irvine in 2024, where she continues her trailblazing, interdisciplinary scholarship in the areas of criminal law, criminal procedure, and law and social science. Her articles and essays have been published in Harvard Law Review, George Washington Law Review, Iowa Law Review, California Law Review, Yale Law Journal, Texas Law Review, and more. Professor Richardson has been recognized with the Association of American Law Schools Derrick Bell Award and the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association’s Trailblazer Award. The Thurgood Marshall Bar Association in Orange County, California, established the L. Song Richardson Legacy Award in her honor to recognize individuals who make extraordinary impacts in the legal community. A graduate of Harvard University and Yale Law School, she is a classically trained pianist who has twice performed with the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

February 26, 2027

GILBERT KING

Author

Author Gilbert King was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his book Devil in the Grove (2012), the story of NAACP attorney (and future Supreme Court Justice) Thurgood Marshall’s efforts to find justice for “the Groveland Boys,” wrongly convicted defendants in Jim Crow-era Florida. King’s newest book, Bone Valley (2025), returns to central Florida to investigate a 1987 murder conviction. The work uncovers the corruption and flawed legal defense that left a man serving a lifetime sentence in prison after another man confessed. King is also the writer and host of the award-winning Bone Valley podcast, produced with Lava for Good. He has written about issues of race, civil rights, and access to justice for numerous publications, including The New York Times, the Washington Post, and Atlantic.

March 4, 2027

THALIA GONZÁLEZ

Professor of Law and James Edgar Hervey ’50 Chair of Litigation
UC Law San Francisco

Thalia González is one of the country’s leading scholars in the areas of restorative justice, education law, juvenile justice, and adultification bias. Her research has been published in Boston College Law Review, Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, American Law Review, and more. Professor González received the National Association of Community and Restorative Justice Award in 2022 and has received grant funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Grantmakers for Girls of Color, and Annie E. Casey Foundation. She is co-chair, ABA Criminal Justice Section Alternative Dispute Resolution & Restorative Justice Committee and director of UC LAW SF’s Center for Racial and Economic Justice. A graduate of Arizona State University, she earned her J.D. from Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law.

April 22, 2027

CATHERINE M. SHARKEY

Segal Family Professor of Regulatory Law and Policy
New York University School of Law

Professor Catherine Sharkey is an often-quoted scholar in the fields of torts, products liability, administrative law, and class actions. She is a Senior Fellow of the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS) and a member of its Roundtable on Artificial Intelligence in Federal Agencies. A past Guggenheim Fellow, Professor Sharkey is the 2026 recipient of the Prosser Torts Award from AALS. She co-authored Business, Defamation, and Privacy Torts (2025) and Cases and Materials on Torts, 13 ed. (2024), and her writings have been published in dozens of academic journals. She is a graduate of Yale University and Yale Law School and, as a Rhodes Scholar, received a Master of Science in Economics for Development, with distinction, from Oxford University’s Magdalen College.

Distinguished Speaker Series Archives

The University of Tennessee’s Winston College of Law Faculty Colloquium Series brings to campus legal scholars from across the country to discuss their scholarship in a colloquium setting.

Contact Associate Dean for Faculty Development and Professor of Law Zack Buck (zbuck@tennessee.edu) for more details. 

2025 – 2026

  • Brandon Garrett, David W. Ichel Distinguished Professor of Law, Duke University School of Law
  • Brooke Coleman, Fredric C. Tausend Professor of Law, Seattle University School of Law
  • Jamal Greene, Dwight Professor of Law, Columbia Law School
  • Rebecca Roiphe, Joseph Solomon Distinguished Professor of Law, New York Law School
  • Daniel Hemel, John S. R. Shad Professor of Law, NYU School of Law
  • James Forman Jr., J. Skelly Wright Professor of Law, Yale Law School

 

2024 – 2025

  • Ruth L. Okediji, Jeremiah Smith, Jr., Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
  • Barbara L. McQuade, Professor from Practice, University of Michigan Law School
  • Allison K. Hoffman, Professor of Law, University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School
  • J.B. Ruhl, David Daniels Allen Distinguished Chair in Law and the Joe B. Wyatt Distinguished University Professor, Vanderbilt University Law School
  • Paul A. Lombardo, Regents’ Professor and Bobby Lee Cook Professor of Law, Georgia State University College of Law
  • Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean and Jesse H. Choper Distinguished Professor of Law, University of California Berkeley School of Law

2023 – 2024

  • Christopher S. Yoo, John H. Chestnut Professor of Law, University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School
  • Brad Desnoyer, Clinical Professor of Law, Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law
  • Jared Ellias, Scott C. Collins Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
  • Teresa Wynn Roseborough, Executive Vice President – General Counsel & Corporate Secretary, The Home Depot
  • Eric Segal, Georgia State University College of Law, Ashe Family Chair Professor of Law
  • Leticia Saucedo, Martin Luther King Jr. Professor of Law, University of California Davis School of Law
  • Steven A. Drizin, William M. Trumbull Clinical Professor of Law, Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law

 

2022 – 2023

  • Michael J. Gerhardt, Burton Craige Distinguished Professor of Jurisprudence, University of North Carolina
  • Mark Nevitt, Associate Professor, Emory University School of Law
  • W. Bradley Wendel, Edwin H. Woodruff Professor of Law, Cornell Law School
  • Gina Gail S. Fletcher, Professor of Law, Duke Law School
  • Edward B. Foley, Charles W. Ebersold and Florence Whitcomb Ebersold Chair in Constitutional Law; Director, Election Law at Ohio State, Ohio State University

 

2021 – 2022

  • Melissa Mortazavi, Second Century Presidential Professor and Professor of Law, University of Oklahoma College of Law