Jeffrey A. Williams, 1980 - 2006

Over the weekend of August 28th, our good friend and fellow sports law blogger Jeffrey A. Williams died suddenly of a subdural hematoma. He was only 26. A graduate of Columbia Law School and Columbia University, Jeff was a second-year attorney at the prestigious New York City law firm Milbank Tweed Hadley & McCloy, where he worked primarily on mergers, acquisitions, and other aspects of corporate governance. You may remember Jeff from his wonderful guest posts on Sports Law Blog, as they astutely examined the interaction of race, sports, and the law. For instance, he discussed the Duke lacrosse scandal (5/4/2006 & 5/7/2006), race and the NFL Draft (5/7/2006), liability of the fan who started the Pistons-Pacers fight in 2005 (5/7/2006), masculinity and boxing (5/4/2006), and World Cup politics (6/18/2006).

Jeff was also a prolific scholar, publishing three law review articles in the last year and a half. They were Flagrant Foul: Racism in 'The Ron Artest Fight,' 13 UCLA Entertainment Law Review 55 (2005), Re-orienting the Sex Discrimination Argument for Gay Rights after Lawrence V. Texas, 14 Columbia Journal of Gender and Law 131 (2005), and The Equal Application Defense, University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law (forthcoming, 2006). I strongly recommend that you download Jeff's Ron Artest law review article, as it is a great read and one that I use extensively in my teaching materials.

I know Jeff had aspirations of one day becoming a fellow sports law professor, and he undoubtedly would have achieved them. The sports law community has lost a great guy, a great friend, and an extremely promising young scholar. May he live on through his outstanding published writings and may God bless his family at this most difficult time.

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