West publishes The Future of Press Freedom
An award-winning scholar, Sonja R. West recently published The Future of Press Freedom: Democracy, Law, and the News in Changing Times (Cambridge University Press) with RonNell Andersen Jones.
The book is described as an “incisive analysis of emerging threats to press freedom, from technological and economic disruptions to eroding public trust, while proposing innovative legal and policy solutions. The volume tackles cutting-edge issues like artificial intelligence in news production and the evolving definition of ‘the press’ in the digital age.”
Specializing in constitutional law, media law and the U.S. Supreme Court, West’s scholarship includes approximately 30 articles appearing in prominent law journals such as the Harvard Law Review, the California Law Review, the UCLA Law Review, the Michigan Law Review and the Northwestern Law Review. Her most recent article is “Abandoning Press Freedom” in the Iowa Law Review.
This past year, she delivered presentations to audiences across the country at the University of Chicago, Columbia University, the University of Connecticut, the University of Utah and Yale University as well as abroad at the University of Oxford and the University of Sheffield.
She is a two-time winner of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication Stonecipher Award for Distinguished Research on Media Law and Policy and the recipient of the National Communication Association Haiman Award for Distinguished Scholarship in Freedom of Expression. For 2023–24, she served as a senior visiting research scholar at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University.
A former U.S. Supreme Court judicial clerk, West holds the Otis Brumby Distinguished Professorship in First Amendment Law, a post shared by the law school and the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication. She has been teaching at UGA since 2006.
Burch releases The Pain Brokers
Drawing on her expertise in the areas of mass torts and multidistrict litigation, Callaway Chair Elizabeth Chamblee Burch has authored a non-fiction investigative exposé that uncovers a complex, predatory scheme preying on women with faulty pelvic mesh implants.
The book, titled The Pain Brokers: How Con Men, Call Centers, and Rogue Doctors Fuel America’s Lawsuit Factory, and Burch have received positive reviews. One referred to Burch as “the Jane Goodall of complex litigation.” Another said, “Burch delivers a pulse-pounding legal thriller that hooks you from the start and leaves you gasping for air at the end. … Burch has done the nation a valuable public service by exposing a legal system rotten to the core.”
Burch is also the author of Mass Tort Deals: Backroom Bargaining in Multidistrict Litigation and the co-author of The Law of Class Actions and Other Aggregate Litigation. Additionally, her scholarship includes more than 40 law review articles and essays in respected journals, including the Columbia Law Review, the New York University Law Review, the Yale Law Journal Forum, the Cornell Law Review and the Virginia Law Review. She has delivered over 140 lectures at research institutions across the United States and abroad, and she is frequently cited by national and international news outlets.
A member of the law school faculty since 2011, Burch is the recipient of the American Law Institute Early Career Scholars Medal, the Zacharias Memorial Prize for Professional Responsibility Scholarship and the Mangano Dispute Resolution Advancement Award. Earlier this year, the School of Law student body presented her with the Ellington Award for Excellence in Teaching.
Ringhand authors We the Voters
Earlier this year, Caldwell Chair & Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professor Lori A. Ringhand published We the Voters: The Constitutional Choices That Shape America’s Elections (Stanford University Press).
One expert described the book as a “rare work that is thorough, accessible, and scholarly. The neophyte and expert alike will benefit from engaging with her marvelous account of how history shapes how we vote and debate voting.” Another stated that the title “powerfully describes how the Constitution and its history shape the major disputes in American democracy. … This account will educate and empower any reader who wishes to work towards a better American democracy.”
Ringhand, who joined the law school faculty in 2008, is a nationally known U.S. Supreme Court scholar who has published extensively on election law related issues. She is the author of more than 20 articles appearing in highly regarded law reviews and she has published three other books, including the award-winning Supreme Bias: Gender and Race in U.S. Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings. Her other recent scholarship includes: “The Regulation of Presidential Elections” in the Wisconsin Law Review and “Gender, Race, and Interruptions at Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings” in the American Political Science Review.
Over the past year, Ringhand shared her expertise on election law through presentations at Florida State University and the Association of American Law Schools Annual Meeting, and she provided expert media commentary to Georgia Public Broadcasting and CNN.
Ringhand has long been a leader on the UGA Law faculty, serving as associate dean for academic affairs from 2015 to 2018 and interim director of the Dean Rusk International Law Center for roughly 18 months. She is the recipient of UGA’s highest teaching honor, and she served as a Fulbright Distinguished Chair during 2019. Additionally, she was appointed to the Harmon W. Caldwell Chair in Constitutional Law earlier this year.
