Faculty Scholarship News

Charleston School of Law

Faculty Scholarly News

The faculty at Charleston School of Law are renowned nationwide for their research and scholarship. Below are publications of Faculty Scholarship from December 2024 and January 2025:

Constance Anastopoulo

  • Professor Anastopoulo’s article, Risky Business: What Every S.C. Lawyer Should Know about the Cloud, appeared in the January 2025 issue of S.C. Lawyer Magazine.
  • On January 28, Professor Anastopoulo was quoted in the UCLA newspaper The Daily Bruin in an article, Ensuring insurance: Homeowners insurance coverage reassessed amid LA wildfires.
  • On January 31, Professor Anastopoulo gave a CLE presentation titled, Balancing Efficiency with Legal Ethics: A Guide for Attorneys.

Katie Brown

  • Dean Brown was among the legal tech experts asked to give opinions in the article: What to Expect in 2025: AI Legal Tech and Regulation (65 Expert Predictions), by Oliver Roberts of The National Law Review’s Guest Contributors (NLR).
  • Dean Brown accepted an offer from the Journal of Law & Technology at Texas at the University of Texas School of Law to publish her article, Who is Shaping Technological Competence in ABA-Accredited Law Schools?

Abstract: Academic law librarians have been instrumental in shaping technology competence in ABA-accredited law schools. Law librarians, leveraging expertise in information management, research methodologies, and technological literacy, foster innovation in legal pedagogy. In formal credit-bearing classes and informal non-credit-bearing training, law librarians facilitate the integration of cutting-edge tools and empower their communities with digital skills. This Article emphasizes and highlights how law librarians promote hard and soft legal technology skills across the curriculum to assist law schools in developing a rigorous program of legal education per ABA Standard 301. The Authors draw upon case studies and data from their Legal Technology Longitudinal Study to shed light on the contributions of law librarians in developing technology competence at ABA-accredited law schools. Additionally, the Authors provide their definition for technology competence. They recommend legal educators adopt this definition to ensure law schools create a rigorous program of legal education. Lastly, the Authors advocate that when law schools recognize, support, and actively include law librarian contributions throughout the curricula, they promote the cultivation of newly licensed lawyers who are prepared for the technological demands of the modern-day practice of law.

Suzanne Chapman

  • Professor Chapman’s article, Chess, Not Checkers: Attacking and Supporting the Credibility of Hearsay Declarants using Rule 806 was accepted for publication in Collective Wisdom: The Evidence Rules As Litigator Tools of the National Institute for Trial Advocacy (NITA). In the article, Prof. Chapman suggests that, in its plain language and in its ambiguities, FRE 806 provides opportunities to admit beneficial evidence at trial and suggests three strategic ways to use Rule 806, either as the proponent of the hearsay statement or as the party against whom the statement is being offered.

Margaret Lawton

  • Dean Lawton participated in a Statewide Strategic Convening of Public Interest Organizations held by the South Carolina Access to Justice Commission.  The Convening explored innovative approaches to bridge the justice gap and advancing access to justice for all South Carolinians.
  • In 2024, the “Road to Whren” article was also cited in:
    • Dicta Mines, Pretext, and Excessive Force: Toward Criminal Procedure Futurism, 112 Calif. L. Rev. 1007 (June 2024).
    • Computationally Assessing Suspicion, 92 U. Cin. L. Rev. 1008 (2024).
    • Filling the Potholes of Pretextual Traffic Stops: A Better Road Forward for Ohio, 72 Clev. St. L. Rev. 475 (2024).
    • Terry, Reasonable Suspicion, and An Officer’s Pre-Stop Behavior, 94 Miss. L.J. 45 (2024).
    • Search and Seizure: A Treatise on the Fourth Amendment, § 1.4(f): More on “pretext”: the effects of Whren, (6th ed. Nov. 2024 update).
    • Constitutional Rights of the Accused: § 3:5. Terry stops—When reasonable, 1 Constitutional Rights of the Accused (3d ed. November 2024 update).

Dylan Malagrinò

  • Dean Malagrinò executed an agreement with Thomson Reuters for his article, Constitutional Perspectives on Historic Preservation Law: Mediating the Balance Between Private Owners and Their Historic Properties, 91 Miss. L.J. 389 (2023) to be included in the anthology publication Zoning and Planning Law Handbook, an annual softbound publication containing law review articles published in the preceding year that Thomson Reuters selects because they “represent important contributions to the literature of zoning and land use law.”
  • The Naples Discussion Group (NDG) invited Dean Malagrinò to speak to the NDG at Florida Gulf Coast University later this year and to present his paper, Why Are We Still Debating Free(er) Trade?, 47 Fla. St. U.L. Rev. Online (2019).  With the new U.S. Administration, NDG asked Dean Malagrinò to present on tariffs—history, efficacy, what they are intended to accomplish, etc.

Jessica Moeller

  • On January 10, Dean Moeller created and presented a half day seminar on Elder Financial Exploitation: A Practioner’s Guide and held a panel discussion; the presentation and panel discussion have been recorded and are being replayed for CLE credit throughout the month of January and February through PINNACLE.
  • Also, in January, Dean Moeller’s proposal entitled Engaging Digital Era Students in Client Centered Communication, which is based on the Interviewing, Counseling, and Negotiations course she created was accepted by the Global Legal Skills committee, and Dean Moeller has been invited to speak at the Global Legal Skills Conference in Brno, Czechia at the end of May.
  • Dean Moeller’s course proposal “International Child Advocacy” has been approved and she has been invited to teach in The Hague, Netherlands this July through Stetson Law’s International Study Abroad program.

This course will explore how various countries respond to the idea of Child Rights, with a specific focus on children involved in Criminal Justice Systems, either as youth offenders, victims, or as children of abuse and neglect. There are 196 countries that have signed the UNCRC which has 54 articles that cover all aspects of a child’s life. Arguably – some of these very articles may come into conflict with separate jurisdictional statutes, codes, and common law interpretations. This course will explore those tensions, and ask students to consider how their own jurisdiction could benefit or hinder child welfare by making adjustments.

Melanie Regis

  • Professor Regis’s course proposal “The Right to Remain Silent: Comparing the Use of Confessions in the United States and Spain” has been approved and she has been invited to teach in Madrid, Spain this June through Stetson Law’s International Study Abroad program.

The goal of this weeklong course is to have students understand the fundamentals regarding confessions and self-incrimination in the United States and then compare those protections to guarantees under the Spanish Constitution and international human rights conventions. The course will begin with discussions on the due process voluntariness doctrine in the United States, and cases involving use of both psychological and physical torture to obtain confessions, including Spano v. New York and Brown v. Mississippi. The course will then shift to the groundbreaking case of Miranda v. Arizona in the United States and subsequent cases clarifying the circumstances in which Miranda can be invoked and waived. The course will address the Spanish Constitution and international human rights conventions and confessions. The course will wrap up with a discussion on interrogation techniques used in both the United States and Europe in addition to reforms to prevent false confessions. Students will read excerpts from law review articles, news articles and other sources, including short video clips to reinforce the material the students are reading.

Jean Steadman

  • Professor Steadman accepted an offer from Creighton Law Review to publish her article, Are Body Brokers Just the Modern Body Burkers? Tracing the Acquisition and Sale of Donated Bodies and the Lack of Effective Regulation.

Abstract: Donated bodies are essential to the advancement of medical and scientific research, discovery, which may ultimately save many lives in the future. However, the supply and demand for donated bodies is often inharmonious. Thus, bodies have over the years been acquired through illegal and questionable means and then sold or leased. Those who used illegal and often murderous means of acquiring bodies for medical research have been referred to as body Burkers and criminal laws were passes to not only regulate but end these practices. Today, those who acquire, sell, and lease donated bodies are called body brokers and they exist and operated in a largely unregulated world. This Article reviews the history of the body acquisition business by voluntary, involuntary means, illegal activity and ultimately unscrupulous activity that falls into a grey unregulated area. This Article explores current legal regulations for the donation of bodies for medical and scientific purposes and the exclusion of any regulatory framework to include body brokers who acquire donated bodies and then sell them often without the consent or knowledge of the donor’s families. It traces the lack of effectiveness of the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act and state laws in policing modern body brokers activities. It posits two solutions: expand existing federal regulations to encompass body brokers or approve new federal legislation that creates uniform regulatory supervision of body brokers; consider new and possibly radical solutions to fill the void of body broker regulation through the extension and application of contract law to body broker transactions. This Article concludes that, without new meaningful regulation of body brokers, we have made little legal progress from the early days of grave robbing and murderous body Burkers because today’s body brokers continue to commit atrocious acts on donated bodies with impunity.

  • In December 2024, Professor Steadman published an article, Transactional Law Derby in S.C. Lawyers Weekly.
  • Professor Steadman accepted invitation to be a presenter at a National Business Institute seminar: The Contract Strategist’s Guide to Complex Deal Drafting and Negotiations: Preserving the Parties Relationship in the Event of a Breach to be held in Spring 2025.
  • Prof. Steadman accepted an invitation to be a discussion panelist: How to be Friendly without being Friends with Your Students at SEALS Summer 2025.  Also, Prof. Steadman accepted an invitation to be a mentor for new professors, participating in mentoring sessions, CV review sessions, and job talk sessions and mock interviews at SEALS Summer 2025.

Nancy Zisk

  • Professor Zisk’s presentation to the South Carolina Bioethics Committee (presented in November 2024) on “Personhood and Reproductive Health” has since been selected by the South Carolina Medical Association for presentation to the South Carolina Medical Association. The subject of the presentation is the state of abortion care in South Carolina and the extent to which the Dobbs decision may affect and is affecting health care for women across the country.

FACULTY SCHOLARSHIP ARCHIVES

CAMPUS NEWS

Alumni lead Professional Series event
February 5, 2025
Spring 2025 Clinics Info Session
January 31, 2025
Learning the Law beyond the U.S.
January 22, 2025

Children’s Hospice Day

Children’s Hospice Day is Monday, February 10 to raise awareness and funds for hospices that treat children with life-limiting illnesses.

Mindful Mondays

Mindful Mondays will be held at 12:00 p.m. on February 10 at 12:00 p.m. in Room 221. Lawyers Helping Lawyers will provide practical tips for putting mindfulness into action.