LSU Law kicked off its Fall Faculty Speaker Series at the LSU Paul M. Hebert Law Center with Professor Jamila E. Jefferson of the University of Kansas School of Law on August 15 and announced its remaining lineup of guest speakers for the Fall semester.
Professor Jefferson, who joined KU Law’s faculty in 2022, presented a cross-cultural training workshop. The faculty speaker series will resume on Tuesday, Sept. 17, when LSU Law alumnus and Texas A&M University School of Law Professor Christopher Odinet (’10) returns to the Law Center to present.
The esteemed group of speakers and lecturers will cover a variety of topics, including digital assets, international justice, and energy democracy. The lectures will take place in the Tucker Room at 12:30 p.m. and are open to LSU Law faculty and invited guests.
Upcoming Speakers
Professor Christopher Odinet (’10), Texas A&M University School of Law
Tuesday, Sept. 17 | Digital Assets—Debt Tokens
Professor Christopher Odinet is a professor of law and the Mosbacher Research Fellow at Texas A&M University School of Law. His research includes commercial finance, consumer finance law, digital asset/crypto transactions and regulation, and property law. He is also an affiliate professor of finance at the Texas A&M University Mays School of Business.
He is the author of Foreclosed: Mortgage Servicing and the Hidden Architecture of Homeownership in America (Cambridge University Press, 2019) and has co-authored several casebooks on secured credit and real estate finance.
Prior to joining the faculty at Texas A&M, Professor Odinet served on the faculties of the University of Iowa College of Law, University of Oklahoma College of Law, and Southern University Law Center. He was an associate at Phelps Dunbar LLP in Baton Rouge for three years before entering academia. He earned both his bachelor’s degree and J.D. from LSU.
Professor Alan Mygatt-Tauber, Seattle University School of Law
Thursday, Oct. 17 | Medellín & International Justice – The Rights of Non-Citizens
Professor Alan Mygatt-Tauber, an adjunct professor at Seattle University School of Law, is the author of Medellín v. Texas: International Justice, Federalism, and the Execution of Jose Medellín, in which he examines the complexities of how a united republic that respects the dual sovereignty of its constituent parts struggles to comply with its international obligations.
Professor Mygatt-Tauber serves as Counsel of the Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command, Northwest, where he practices in a variety of areas, including government contracts, ethics, personnel, and fiscal law. He has written and advocated on the application of the Constitution outside the United States.
Professor Mygatt-Tauber received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Oregon, his master’s degree from The University of South Carolina, and his J.D. from The George Washington University School of Law.
Professor Kristen van de Biezenbos, California Western School of Law
Thursday, Oct. 24 | The Energy Economy
Professor Kristen van de Biezenbos teaches and writes on energy law, environmental law, and sustainability. Her research is focused on the community-level impacts of energy projects and environmental justice issues, as well as on electricity law and the legal dimensions of deep decarbonization.
A Louisiana native, Professor van de Biezenbos had a mixed transactional and litigation practice in New Orleans prior to joining academia. Most recently, she was on the faculty at the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada where she received the excellence in teaching award from the Energy & Environmental Engineering Students Society.
Professor van de Biezenbos joined the California Western Law School Faculty in 2023. She received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, her master’s degree from the University of New Orleans, and her J.D. from Tulane University School of Law.
Past Speakers
Professor Jamila E. Jefferson, University of Kansas School of Law
Thursday – Friday, Aug. 15-16 | Cross-Cultural Training-Cultural Competency
Professor Jamila E. Jefferson serves as the University of Kansas School of Law’s inaugural Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging and is an Earl B. Shurtz Research Professor of Law. She joined KU Law’s faculty in 2022. Professor Jefferson previously taught at Wayne State University School of Law and the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law.
Her work harnesses critical race methodologies, focusing in part on the use or threat of police action against members of disfavored groups. In her recent article, “#LivingWhileBlack: Blackness as Nuisance”—published in the American University Law Review and featured in the New York Times—Professor Jefferson examines both historical and modern attempts of distorting property law concepts like nuisance and trespass to exclude Black Americans from spaces racialized as “white” and how these efforts arise from discomfort with racial integration and perceived Black physical mobility.
Professor Jefferson is a graduate of Harvard Law School and Harvard College. She practiced law in the District of Columbia and her hometown of New Orleans before entering academia.
