Due to last week’s closure of Law School facilities, this year’s SBA Debate has moved online. We asked the two SBA campaigns ten questions—many of them submitted by you! Read below to see what they had to say.

The American Constitution Society and Federalist Society hosted “Scalia/Ginsburg Clerk Conversations” on Wednesday, February 28. At the event, Professors Scott Ballenger ’96 and Rachel Bayefsky discussed their exeriences clerking on the Supreme Court for Justices Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, respectively. The event was held in collaboration with the Charlottesville Opera, which will present the opera Scalia/Ginsburg on March 28 and 29 at Grisham Hall at St. Anne’s-Belfield.

On Monday, February 24, Stanford Law Professor Pamela Karlan delivered the 2025 McCorkle Lecture to an audience of students and faculty in Caplin Pavilion. Karlan titled her lecture “Unaccountable” and discussed how structural forces have undermined the political accountability of all three branches of the federal government. “We are in the midst of a crisis of accountability,” she warned.

LawTech was the topic of discussion for the day on Friday, February 22, at the Law School. In the morning, the Virginia Journal of Social Policy & the Law (VJSPL) hosted a symposium on Artificial Intelligence featuring professors from both the Law School and the Undergraduate University.

The presentation centered on what Matwyshyn calls "exploit machina problems," a reference to 2014 sci-fi thriller, Ex Machina and a piece of code that takes advantage of a vulnerability (an “exploit”). The term aptly foreshadows the premise of the article—that broken technologies in conjunction with broken governance can cause irreparable harm, sometimes at scale.

With journal tryouts officially starting this weekend, and so many conflicting pieces of advice out there, it can feel a bit overwhelming. On top of that, there have been plenty of events to help guide you through the process, so you're probably hearing a lot of different takes on what you should be doing. Here’s a couple of extra tips and tricks to help you get through the upcoming weekends:

Lambda Law Alliance hosted its Spring Day in the Life event this past Thursday, February 13. The event featured panels, networking opportunities, and dinners with visiting attorneys from a number of participating firms.

Virginia Law Review Online and Lambda Law Alliance co-sponsored a symposium entitled “Justice in Transition: The Legal, Cultural, and Political Frontiers of Gender-Affirmative Care.” The event featured over a dozen speakers who weighed in on the history of transgender medical interventions and the increasingly popular bans on gender-affirming care.