OU Law Welcomes Three New Faculty Members for Fall 2020

Contact: Rachel Egli
Director of Events and
Continuing Legal Education
Office: (405) 325-2011
r.egli@ou.edu

NORMAN — The University of Oklahoma College of Law is pleased to welcome three new faculty members. Professors Alex Pearl and Tracy Pearl join OU Law from Texas Tech University School of Law, and Professor Stacey Tovino comes to OU from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas William S. Boyd School of Law. Tovino began instruction during the summer 2020 session, and all three join the College of Law for the fall 2020 semester.

“We are thrilled to welcome our newest faculty members to the College of Law community,” said OU Law Interim Dean Katheleen R. Guzman. “Professors Alex Pearl, Tracy Pearl and Stacey Tovino are all award-winning scholars in their fields, bringing equally outstanding engagement and expertise to the classroom.  They join our faculty in continuing our mission of providing the highest quality education to our students while fostering an atmosphere of research and advancement in the study of law.”

An OU alumnus and enrolled citizen of the Chickasaw Nation, Alex Pearl is a nationally recognized scholar in the fields of water law, climate change law and policy, Indigenous legal/social issues, and statutory interpretation. His research focuses both on distinct concepts within these fields as well as intersectional issues that cross legal fields and social dynamics. One of his latest published articles correctly anticipated the outcome in the recent landmark Supreme Court case, McGirt v. Oklahoma, while other works have appeared in the Wake Forest Law Review, Utah Law Review, and the Yale Journal of Law and Policy.

For the past six years, he was the director of the Texas Tech University School of Law Center for Water Law and Policy, during which time he received the President’s Excellence in Teaching Award, the Hemphill-Wells Excellence in Teaching Award, the Alumni Association New Faculty Award and the 1L Professor of the Year Award.

Tracy Pearl is nationally recognized for her expertise on emerging technology and the law. She researches and writes about risk, regulation and tort law in the areas of driverless vehicles, the Internet of Things and other new forms of technology. Her scholarship also explores whether and how procedural rules impact due process and how courts treat novel societal issues. She has recently published articles in the Harvard Journal of Law & Technology and the William & Mary Law Review and been quoted in the Washington Post, Newsweek, and Consumer Reports.

While at Texas Tech University School of Law, she was a recipient of the Chancellor’s Council Distinguished Research Award, the highest research honor awarded within the Texas Tech University System; a President’s Excellence in Research Professorship; the Spencer A. Wells Award for Creativity in Teaching; and a Lubbock Chamber of Commerce Twenty Under Forty award.

Stacey Tovino is a nationally recognized scholar in the fields of health law, bioethics and the medical humanities and has particular expertise in the civil, regulatory, operational and financial aspects of health law. Her current research focuses on patient privacy and health information confidentiality, COVID-19 and the law, mental health law, and health technology and the law. An elected member of the American Law Institute, Tovino is formally trained in both law and the medical humanities. She is also a co-author of a recently released study in The Journal of the American Medical Association on grateful patient fundraising.

Prior to joining OU Law, Tovino served for a decade as the Judge Jack and Lulu Lehman Professor of Law and the founding director of the Health Law Program at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas William S. Boyd School of Law. In 2019, she received UNLV’s Top Tier Award, an honor bestowed on faculty members who demonstrate excellence in all five areas of UNLV’s Top Tier Mission, including research and external funding, teaching excellence and student achievement, academic health center growth, infrastructure and shared governance, and community partnerships. An enthusiastic teacher, Tovino earned law-school wide teaching awards in 2009, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2016, and 2020.