Congratulations to C|M|LAW Professor Michael Borden.  He was selected, by a vote of the C|M|LAW student body, as “Faculty Member of the Year!”

Congratulations, also, to Ms. Holli Goodman, Administrative Assistant to the Dean.  The students chose her as “Staff Member of the Year.”

Professor Alan Weinstein

C|M|LAW Professor Alan Weinstein’s article, co-authored with Brian Blaesser, The Court’s 2012 Takings Cases, was published in 41 Real Estate L.J. 512 (2013). In this article, they discuss the three takings cases before the U.S. Supreme Court this term and predict that in St. Johns River Water Management Dist. v. Koontz, 77 So. 3d 1220 (Fla. 2011), cert. granted, 133 S. Ct. 420 (2012), arguably the most important of the cases, the Court will reject the claim that the Nollan/Dolan exactions test should be extended to apply to proposed conditions on development in addition to conditions that have actually been imposed.

In addition, Professor Weinstein’s article, The Ohio Supreme Court’s Perverse Stance on Development Impact Fees and What To Do About It, was published in 60 CLEV. ST. L. REV. 655 (2012).  In that article, he argues that the Ohio Court’s rulings that development impact fees are lawful when enacted by municipalities but unlawful when enacted by townships is indefensible both legally and from a policy perspective and that the Ohio legislature should act to remedy the situation by enacting enabling legislation authorizing both municipalities and townships to impose development impact fees and specifying the parameters and standards for such fees.

C|M|LAW Legal Writing Professor Karin Mika has published Privacy in the Workplace: Are Collective Bargaining Agreements a Place to Start Formulating More Uniform Standards? in the Willamette Law Review.   The article suggests that current laws regarding privacy in the workplace are inadequate in dealing with technological advances that blur lines between online communication behavior that is work related and non work related.  The article further suggests that most employers have the advantage as far as scrutinizing what their employees do online because there are few prohibitions on what an employer may scrutinize.  Employers, furthermore, do not really have the incentive to change anything regarding their scrutiny because vagueness gives employers more of an advantage in determining what behaviors are inappropriate and subject to discipline.  The article argues, however, that this might not continue to be so advantageous for employers because more and more employees are suing employers for violations of privacy or for wrongful discharge stemming from violations of online privacy.  The article then suggests that it would be beneficial if employers had clearer rules for online behavior, but that it may only be through collective bargaining that some of these rules could be established.  The article asserts that if unionized personnel took the initiative to protect their own online privacy rights through a collective bargaining process, this trend might carry over into the private employer realm as private employers (and employees) would begin to see the benefit if having clear rules regarding what are prohibited work related online communications.

On March 18, 2013, C|M|LAW Professor Alan Weinstien was one of three speakers in a National Teleconference on Regulating Adult Entertainment Businesses presented by the International Municipal Lawyers Association (IMLA). The other speakers were Eric Kelly and Connie Cooper, who have written extensively on the topic. The teleconference was moderated by Professor Dan Mandelker of Washington University in St. Louis.