Each month, we share notable updates—including presentations, publications, panels, and other accomplishments—from Utah Law faculty members.
Associate Professor Daniel Aaron
- Media appearances
- Quoted in Stat News, “AI could soon renew prescriptions without clinician help. Should the FDA make sure it’s safe?” (Feb. 3, 2026).
Professor RonNell Andersen Jones
- Media appearances
Professor Teneille Brown
- Presentations/panels
- Presented to the Texas Forensic Psychiatry Consortium on neuroimaging and forensic science (Feb. 13, 2026).
- Appointments
- Appointed president of the board of Co-Equal Utah, a non-partisan nonprofit seeking to keep the judiciary independent in Utah.
- Legislative/judicial engagement
- Testified before the Senate law enforcement committee on various bills related to undermining judicial independence.
- Media appearances
- Quoted in Associated Press, “Defense seeks to block videos of Charlie Kirk’s killing in murder case, claims bias” (Feb. 3, 2026).
- Quoted in The New York Times, “Tyler Robinson’s lawyers press to remove prosecutors from Kirk murder case” (Feb. 3, 2026).
- Quoted in The Guardian, “Charlie Kirk killing: Key Utah prosecutor denies conflict of interest (Feb. 3, 2026).
- Other accomplishments
- Teaching a health law class for medical students with Professor Leslie Francis.
Professor Paul Cassell
- Publications
- Submitted for publication “Dead But Not Forgotten” with Peter Reilly.
- Paul G. Cassell, “Democraticizing Criminal Justice Through Victims Rights,” NYU Democracy Project (Feb. 5, 2026) with Steven J. Twist.
- Presentations/panels
- Testimony before the Advisory Committee on the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure (Jan. 22, 2026).
- Appointments
- Appointed co-director of the University of Utah’s Initiative on Federalism, Law, and American Governance.
- Legislative/judicial engagement
- Argued before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in In re Ryan (Feb. 5, 2026).
- Testified in Support of S.J.Res. 1 before the Utah Senate Judiciary Committee (Jan. 30, 2026).
- Media appearances
- Quoted in CNN, “A prosecutor’s 18-year-old child was there when Charlie Kirk was shot. Is that a conflict of interest?” (Feb. 2, 2026).
- Quoted in ABC 4, “‘Releasing private info about victims can have life-altering consequences’: Utah law professor defends Epstein’s victims amid accidental identity release” (Feb. 2, 2026).
- Quoted in Deseret News, “We searched the Epstein files for Utah connections. Here’s what we found” (Feb. 11, 2026).
- Quoted in National Law Journal, Law 360, Newsday and others regarding Boeing Case Argued (Feb. 6, 2026).
Professor Jorge Contreras
- Presentations/panels
- Featured speaker and paper at IP Colloquium, Vanderbilt Law School, Nashville, TN (Feb. 2026).
- “Solving for Agreement,” Faculty Workshop, University of Oregon Law School, Eugene, OR (Feb. 2026).
- Presented paper at Works in Progress in IP, Boston University, Boston, MA (Feb. 2026).
- “Honoring the Gift: A Share-Alike Approach to Free Access to Seeds and Collaborative Futures” (panelist), People, Plants and the Law Online Lecture Series (online, Feb. 2026).
- “Solving for Agreement,” BYU 8th Annual Winter Deals Conference, Park City, UT (Feb. 2026).
- Moderated panel for Utah State Bar IP Section, Utah IP Summit, Salt Lake City, UT (Feb. 2026).
Professor Brigham Daniels
- Media appearances
- Quoted in ABC 4, “‘We need bold progress’: Great Salt Lake Project highlights legislative efforts to restore the lake” (Feb. 13, 2026).
Lecturer Professor Amos Guiora
- Presentations/panels
- “Collaborators and Enablers of the Crimes of Communism,” Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation (Feb. 20, 2026).
- “Cults as Attention Markets: Racketeering, Actorless Threats, and Identity Polarization,” The Good Men Project (Feb. 11, 2026).
- “Enablers and Bystanders in the Holocaust,” Kennedy Junior High School, Salt Lake City, UT (Feb. 9, 2026).
- “Bystanders and Enablers: The Holocaust and Contemporary Anti-Semitism,” Congregation Kol Ami, Salt Lake City, UT (Feb. 8, 2026).
- “International Law—The Conflict in Gaza,” Illinois Institute of Technology Chicago-Kent College of Law, Chicago, IL (Feb. 3, 2026).
- “Holding Enablers Criminally Accountable,” Office of the Arizona Attorney General, Phoenix, AZ (Feb. 2, 2026).
- “Converging Fields: Hybrid Warfare as a Cross-Disciplinary Imperative,” Arizona State University Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law Conference, Tempe, AZ (Jan. 30-31, 2026).
- “International Law The Conflict in Gaza,” NYC Bar Association Council on International Affairs, (Jan. 28, 2026).
- Media appearances
- Quoted in KUTV regarding U.S.-Iran tensions (Feb. 19, 2026).
Associate Professor Mackenzie Heinrichs
- Media appearances
- Quoted in the Star Tribune, “Asylum seekers, who came to U.S. legally, navigate unexpected ICE detainments” (Feb. 18, 2026).
Professor Jason Iuliano
- Media appearances
- Quoted in Business Insider, “Not enough student-loan borrowers know about this way to get rid of their debt” (Feb. 3, 2026).
Professor Laura Kessler
- Publications
- Book chapter titled “Fairy Tales and Family Law: The Myth of Progress in American Family Law” was accepted and will appear in the Oxford University Press Handbook on Families and the Law (Alice Margaria & Noam Peleg, eds.).
- Awards
- Awarded a Fulbright Distinguished Scholar Fellowship for project “Reproducing the State: Family Law and Religion in Israel, the U.S., and Beyond.” The project explores the contested place of religion in family law in both countries, family law’s place in constituting national identities, and the everyday strategies citizens use to resist laws they perceive as unjust.
- Other accomplishments
- Developed a new course (a research seminar) for the law school: “Women, War, Peace & Law.” Course examines the role of women and feminist movements in democracy building, conflict resolution, and peace.
Associate Research Professor Beth Parker
- Media appearances
- Quoted in ABC 4, “‘We need bold progress’: Great Salt Lake Project highlights legislative efforts to restore the lake” (Feb. 13, 2026).
Research Professor John Ruple
- Media appearances
- Quoted in Center for Western Priorities, “What gutting the Council on Environmental Quality means for public lands” (Feb. 13, 2026).
- Quoted in The Salt Lake Tribune, “Utah wants more control over federal lands. Here’s how lawmakers are advancing the fight.” (Feb. 26, 2026).
- Quoted in The Salt Lake Tribune, “Mike Lee turns rarely used law against Grand Staircase-Escalante” (Feb. 27, 2026).
Professor Matthew Tokson
- Publications
- Matthew Tokson, “Artificial Intelligence and the Anti-Authoritarian Fourth Amendment,” 27 U. PENN. J. CONST. L. 1067 (2025).
- Matthew Tokson, “Decentering Property in Fourth Amendment Law,” 92 U. CHICAGO. L. REV. 705 (2025) with Michael C. Pollack.
- Matthew Tokson, “The Reality of the Good Faith Exception,” 113 GEORGETOWN L. J. 551 (2025) with Michael Gentithes. Cited in In re Search of One Device and Two Individuals Under R. 41, 2025 WL 1587991 (D.D.C. May 6, 2025).
- Presentations/panels
- “What Does the Law Say About Minneapolis?,” Big 12 Law Schools Conference (Feb. 2026).
- “Technology, Surveillance, and Device Tracking in the 2020s: Frontier Issues in Fourth Amendment Law,” Albany Law School, Albany NY (Feb. 2026).
- “Privacy at the Perimeter: The Fourth Amendment and the New Surveillance State” (panelist), 2025 Allen L. Poucher Symposium, University of Florida Levin College of Law, Gainesville, FL (Oct. 2025).
- “Trespass and Fourth Amendment Originalism,” Advanced Topics in Privacy Seminar, U.C. Berkeley Law School, Berkeley, CA (Sept. 2025).
- “Developing Technology and the Fourth Amendment,” 18th Annual Conference of the National Association of Appellate Court Attorneys (July 2025).
- “Automation and the Anti-Authoritarian Fourth Amendment,” University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law Symposium (Jan. 2025).
- Media appearances
- Quoted in KUER, “In Utah and elsewhere, habeas petitions are the tool used to fight ICE detentions” (Feb. 20, 2026).
- Quoted in FOX-KSTU in a segment on Trump’s executive order on AI regulation (Dec. 10, 2025).
- Quoted in Associated Press, “Months after a man was killed at a ‘No Kings’ march in Utah, his wife still seeks answers (Oct. 29, 2025).
FOX-KSTU - Quoted in FOX-KSTU in a segment on Eighth Amendment competency ruling in Ralph Menzies execution case (Aug. 29, 2025).
- Quoted in CBS-KUTV in a segment on potential thwarted mass shooting at Utah’s “No Kings” protest (June 17, 2025).
- Interviewed on Courthouse News Sidebar Podcast, “Electric Sheep” (May 13, 2025).