Bench & Bar May/June 2025

COLUMNS

ARNOLD , MCNEAL NAMED INAUGURAL FACULTY SCHOLARS OF THE YEAR T he Brandeis School of Law has announced its inaugural 2024 Faculty Scholars of the Year, Dr. Tony Arnold and Dr. Laura McNeal. Dr. Arnold, Boehl Chair in Property and Land Use, was recognized for his article Environmental Justice, Resilience Justice, and Watershed Planning , published in the William & Mary Environmental Law & Policy Review . Dr. McNeal, Professor of Law, was recognized for her article Integrating the Marketplace of Ideas: A New Constitutional Theory of Protecting Students' Off-Campus Online Speech , published in the Stanford Law Review. Dr. Arnold's article is a seminal work that brings together three streams of scholarship: environmental justice, watershed planning and governance for resilience, and resilience justice. It presents a new, systematic approach to equi table planning in response to the growing national concern for environmental justice and community resilience in watershed planning. This scholarship creates a novel legal framework for understanding the intersection of environmental justice and adaptive resilience. Dr. McNeal's article offers a path toward safeguarding students' First Amend ment rights to engage in expressive activities, political and symbolic speech off-campus through the adoption of a new constitutional standard, the Inte grated Contextual Disruption Test (ICD). The proposed standard strikes the necessary balance between a school's regulatory interest in maintaining an environment conducive to learning and the competing value of student free speech rights. Brandeis School of Law Dean Melanie Jacobs worked with the Dean's Advisory Committee to establish the Faculty Scholars program and with the Awards Committee to select the first recipients. “Drs. Arnold and McNeal are recognized by their peers as academic leaders who demonstrate significant achievement,” Jacobs said. “Their scholarship rep resents the kind of groundbreaking advocacy that is the goal of the Brandeis School of Law.”

DR. TONY ARNOLD BOEHL CHAIR IN PROPERTY AND LAND USE, 2024 FACULTY SCHOLAR OF THE YEAR.

DR. LAURA MCNEAL PROFESSOR OF LAW, 2024 FACULTY SCHOLAR OF THE YEAR.

42 may/june 2025