TBA Law Blog


Posted by: Stacey Shrader Joslin on Jun 18, 2025

The TBA Environmental Law Section has announced that Layton Coker, a student at the University of Tennessee Winston College of Law, has won the 2025 Jon E. Hastings Memorial Award Writing Competition. The judges reported that Coker’s essay, Paradise Lost: Environmental Justice Gaps in TVA’s Clean Energy Transition, was both timely and captured the spirit of the competition. Nashville School of Law graduate Emily Crawford's submission "Jarkesy, Juries and Justice: The Future of EPA Civil Penalties" was named runner up. Rounding out the competition were exceptional entries by University of Memphis Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law students Logan Hawkins and Owen King. The Environmental Law Section sponsors the annual writing competition to recognize the best legal writing by a Tennessee law student on a topic of state or federal environmental law. The juried competition is held in memory of Jon Hastings, one of the section’s founding members.