The University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law is well represented at this year’s Association of American Law Schools (AALS) annual meeting in San Francisco, Jan. 7-11, with multiple speakers, moderators, and an award recipient.
Assistant Professor Tiffany Yang this week receives the Section on Civil Procedure Junior Scholarship Honorable Mention Award for her article “The Prison Pleading Trap,” published in the Boston College Law Review. Yang is also a speaker for a session on prison law.
“Professor Yang’s work on prison litigation is creative, beautifully written, thoroughly researched, timely, and compelling,” said Professor Leigh Goodmark, associate dean for research and faculty development at Maryland Carey Law. “We are thrilled to see others recognize what we have long known—that she is an outstanding scholar.”
Yang has been on the Maryland Carey Law faculty since 2023. She writes about procedural barriers to civil rights protections, the inequities of law, and social change. Her work, which situates the law within broader histories of community organizing and movement building, often interrogates these inquiries through the lens of prisoners’ rights litigation.
In “The Prison Pleading Trap,” Yang argues that the Prison Litigation Reform Act, particularly the act’s exhaustion provision, obstructs the pathways to judicial relief for incarcerated people suffering injustices behind prison walls. She considers a range of potential solutions, ultimately calling for transformative change including a commitment to decarceration.
The Association of American Law Schools organized the 2025 annual meeting around the topic “Courage in Action.” In addition to Yang, several Maryland Carey Law faculty are serving as speakers and moderators this week at the conference:
Associate Professor Rabiat Akande is moderator for a session exploring the relationship and interconnections between Islamic law and social movements. Akande works in the fields of legal history, law and religion, constitutional and comparative constitutional law, Islamic law, international law, and (post)colonial African law and society.
Associate Dean/Associate Professor Kristina J. Alayan is a speaker for a session on recently revised ABA standards affecting academic law libraries. Alayan is associate dean for library & technology, overseeing all aspects of library and technology operations and services at Maryland Carey Law.
Professor Chaz Arnett is a speaker for a session exploring how people of color disproportionately suffer privacy infringements, with a focus on how surveillance, tracking, and data mining intensify the racialized privacy regime in the U.S. Arnett holds expertise in the areas of criminal procedure, race and technology, juvenile law, and education law.
Visiting Assistant Professor Asees Bhasin is a speaker for a Hot Topic Program on the impacts of criminal abortion laws. Bhasin is a Donald Gaines Murray Fellow at Maryland Carey Law. Her research focuses on critical evidence law, race and the law, reproductive justice, and the intersections between these fields.
Professor Kathryn Frey-Balter is a speaker for a session on pedagogical innovation. Frey-Balter is director of Maryland Carey Law’s innovative Lawyering Program.
Associate Professor Sarah Lorr is a speaker for a session on navigating, challenging, and transcending law school faculty hierarchies and is a moderator and a speaker for panels on family and juvenile law. Lorr’s research focuses on disability law and family regulation, specifically how substantive legal doctrine and ostensibly neutral standards subordinate poor, nonwhite, and disabled parents in the family regulation system.
Assistant Professor Aadhithi Padmanabhan is a presenter for a session highlighting immigration law scholarship. Padmanabhan is director of Maryland Carey Law’s Federal Appellate Immigration Clinic. Her research involves deportation and detention, with a focus on how administrative law principles are developed, modified, and applied in the immigration context.
Professor Maneka Sinha is a speaker for a session on the expansion of law enforcement power to act on suspicions, frequently to the disadvantage of underprivileged groups. Sinha leads Maryland Carey Law’s Criminal Defense Clinic as well as the only Forensic Defense Clinic in the nation. Her research interests explore the intersection of forensic science evidence and outcomes in criminal cases.
Professor Matiangai Sirleaf is a speaker for a session on international criminal law and a speaker on a panel exploring how African perspectives inform and shape how we understand international human rights. Sirleaf holds expertise in areas including public international law, international human rights law, global public health law, international criminal law, post-conflict and transitional justice, and criminal law. Her current research projects are focused on race and the histories of international human rights and health inequality and the law.
Maryland Carey Law Dean Renée Hutchins Laurent is in the second year of her three-year term on the AALS Executive Committee. She emphasizes the value of the law school’s involvement with the association.
“I take great pride in Maryland Carey Law’s engagement with and recognition from AALS,” said Laurent. “The annual meeting is an invaluable opportunity to join together with our colleagues in the academy to advance excellence in American legal education.”
The Association of American Law Schools, founded in 1900, is a nonprofit association of 175 member and 19 fee-paid law schools. The association serves law schools as an institutional member organization and as the learned society for individual law school faculty.