Professor Brian E. Ray

Professor Brian Ray has been selected by the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board to receive a 2012-13 Fulbright Scholarship. Beginning in January 2013, Ray will spend 8 months visiting both the Stellenbosch University and the University of the Western Cape in South Africa to conduct research on what several scholars recently have described as the “second-wave” social-rights decisions by the South African Constitutional Court and the roles that civil society, social movements and public-interest lawyers have played in those cases. Ray’s research will form the core of a book he has under contract with Cambridge University Press that is expected to be published in early 2014.

Both the University of the Western Cape and Stellenbosch University are home to leading research initiatives and/or centers focused on social rights. UWC has participated either directly or as amicus curiae in several leading social-rights cases and conducts cutting-edge, practical research on enforcement strategies for social rights, including publishing the well-respected ESR Review and conducting civil society training and mobilization programs. Stellenbosch’s strategic initiative Combating Poverty, Homelessness and Socio-Economic Disadvantage Under the Constitution combines well-regarded research, academic training and community legal services to discover ways to combat the severe social and economic disparities in post-apartheid South Africa using the new constitutional framework, including the social rights provisions. Ray will work with experts from both institutions as well as others in South Africa who have been involved in recent social-rights litigation and advocacy.

C|M|LAW Dean Craig Boise was recently named to On Being a Black Lawyer’s Power 100 list.  Joining him on that list are former C|M|LAW Professors and Associate Deans Linda Ammons, currently Dean of Widener University School of Law, and Frederic White, currently Dean of Texas Wesleyan Law School (and formerly Dean of Golden Gate University School of Law).

To read the write ups on these C|M Deans, see http://www.obabl.com/power100/#/30/

Professor John Plecnik

C|M|LAW Professor John Plecnik has been appointed a Trustee of the Willoughby-Eastlake Library System by the local school board.  He was sworn in on Monday, February 20, 2012, by Judge Vincent Culotta of the Lake County Court of Common Pleas and will serve for a term that continues through August 31, 2015.

C|M|LAW Professor and former Interim Dean Phyllis Crocker has accepted an offer to publish her essay The Paradox of Being an Interim Dean: The Permanent Nature of a Transitory Position in the Toledo Law Review.  The Toledo Law Review publishes a special issue each year on issues concerning law school deans.

C|M|LAW Professor Kevin F. O’Neill and C|M|LAW alum Patrick Charles have accepted an offer to publish their co-authored article Saving the Press Clause from Ruin: The Customary Origins of a “Free Press” as Interface to the Present and Future in the Utah Law Review.