Faculty Promotions
Professor Jennifer Bird-Pollan was promoted to Associate Professor and granted tenure. She joined the College of Law faculty in 2010, teaching Federal Income Tax, Estate & Gift tax, International Tax, Partnership Tax, Corporate Tax, and a Seminar in Tax Policy. She received her J.D. from Harvard Law School, where she was the articles editor for the Harvard Journal of Law and Gender, and her B.A. in Philosophy and French from Penn State University. Bird-Pollan also earned an M.A. in Philosophy from Vanderbilt University, where she is completing her Ph.D. Before law school she taught undergraduate philosophy courses at Vanderbilt and at Harvard College.
Prior to coming to UK, Bird-Pollan worked as an attorney in the tax department at Ropes & Gray in Boston, focusing primarily on partnership tax and non-profit tax law. She writes in the area of U.S. federal tax policy, with a focus on the federal wealth transfer taxes.
Bird-Pollan is the 2014-2015 Fulbright Visiting Professor at the Vienna University of Business and Economics and serves as the College of Law Senator to the UK Faculty Senate. She has spent the past several years assisting with the College of Law VITA program.
Professor Joshua A. Douglas was also promoted to Associate Professor and granted tenure. He is a leading election law expert. His research focuses on the constitutional right to vote, election administration, judicial interaction with the election process, and post-election disputes.
Douglas has published in top journals, including the Vanderbilt Law Review, George Washington Law Review, Indiana Law Journal, and the Election Law Journal. His article Procedural Fairness in Election Contests was a winner of the 2011-12 SEALS Call for Papers, and he has been cited extensively in major law review articles and case books in the field. He is also a co-author of a new Election Law case book (Aspen Publishers, 2014). In addition, his media commentaries have appeared in Reuters, Politico, Huffington Post, and Slate, and he has been cited in major newspapers such as the New York Times and the Washington Post. He is also a repeat guest blogger on PrawfsBlawg.
Douglas teaches Election Law, Civil Procedure, Constitutional Law II, and a seminar on Supreme Court decision making. Prior to law school, Douglas clerked for the Honorable Edward C. Prado of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and practiced litigation at the law firm of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld. Douglas earned his J.D. from George Washington University Law School, where he was an articles editor on the Law Review.
Douglas is involved in the local community, serving as President of his neighborhood association. He enjoys spending time with his wife and young daughter, training for marathons, watching baseball, and traveling the country and the world.
Beau Steenken was promoted to Librarian III, which is the equivalent of Assistant Professor.
Steenken joined the College of Law Library Faculty as a Reference Librarian in September 2010. Prior to coming to Kentucky, he spent the majority of his professionally formative years in Texas where he is a member of the bar and where he received a B.A. in History from the University of Texas at Austin, an M.A. in History from Texas State University-San Marcos, a J.D. from the University of Texas School of Law, and an M.S. in Information Studies from the University of Texas School of Information. He also holds an LL.M. in Public International Law from the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom.
Beyond his library duties, Steenken coordinates classroom instruction offered by librarians and teaches two sections of 1L Legal Research. He has published several pieces in AALL Spectrum, presents regularly at law librarian conferences (which are actually more fun than they sound), and is currently working on an e-book-multimedia hybrid legal research textbook to be released by eLangdell Press in 2015.