Professor Browne Lewis

C|M|LAW’s Leon and Gloria Plevin Professor of Law, and Director of the Center for Health Law and Policy, Browne Lewis, has been selected for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Public Health Scholar-in-Residence program.  The recently launched fellowship program was designed to bring the expertise of legal scholars to assist public health agencies in tackling pressing health issues. The program helps to improve the teaching and scholarly work of the academicians through field experience and provides public health agencies access to legal experts. Professor Lewis is one of six scholars, nationwide, selected for this program. She will focus on current state and federal preemption issues regarding local government regulation of the labeling, marketing and sale of small cigars. She will be working with both the Cleveland Department of Public Health and the Shaker Heights Department of Public Health.

For more information, see:

http://www.rwjf.org/en/about-rwjf/newsroom/newsroom-content/2013/05/innovative-program-embeds-law-professors-at-health-departments.html?cq_ck=1369233450599

Professor Heidi Gorovitz Robertson

C|M|LAW Professor and Associate Dean Heidi Gorovitz Robertson has published Applying Lessons from the Gulf Oil Spill to Hydraulic Fracturing, at 63 Case Western Res. L. Rev. 1279 (2013).  In this article, Robertson notes that Ohio is moving quickly towards hydraulic fracturing of horizontal wells and some argue it has insufficiently considered and managed that rush in light of the potentially disastrous, albeit unlikely, consequences of groundwater contamination, explosion at wells or drilling sites, depletion of freshwater supply as high volumes are used in fracturing, and disposal of contaminated flowback water. Similarly, although drilling for oil from deep water rigs was neither a new idea nor a new technology when the Macondo well blew out on April 20, 2010—killing 11 people, spewing tons of oil in the Gulf of Mexico, and sinking a $50 million drilling rig—most deep water wells that preceded it had not been drilled quite so deeply into the seafloor. Many of the technologies employed there were untested at such great depths, and regulation and enforcement had not kept pace with the advances in technology. This Article considers just a few of the lessons identified through government and other studies that followed the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. It considers how those lessons might be applied to Ohio’s regulation of hydraulic fracturing in the hope that Ohio can avoid some of the same mistakes that arguably paved the way for the blowout in the Gulf.  In particular, this Article discusses three areas of potential concern: agency structure and responsibility, inadequacies in research or follow though, and emergency planning and preparedness for disaster.

You may read the article at:

http://law.case.edu/journals/LawReview/Documents/63CaseWResLRev4.10.Article.Robertson.pdf

Professor Kevin F. O’Neill

C|M|LAW alumnus Patrick J. Charles & C|M|LAW Professor Kevin Francis O’Neill, have published Saving the Press Clause from Ruin: The Customary Origins of a “Free Press” as Interface to the Present and Future in 2012 Utah L. Rev. 1691.  Based on a close reading of original sources dating back to America’s early colonial period, this article offers a fresh look at the origins of the Press Clause. Then, applying those historical findings, the article critiques recent scholarship in the field and reassesses the Press Clause jurisprudence of the Supreme Court. Finally, the article describes the likely impact of its historical findings if ever employed by the Court in interpreting the Press Clause.

You may download the full text here:

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2012563

Legal Writing Professor Karin Mika

C|M|LAW Legal Writing Professor Karin Mika recently made two presentations on the teaching of legal writing.  The first presentation, Using Color Coding to Teach Legal Analysis and Cogent Writing, took place at the Southeastern Regional Legal Writing Conference, April 26-27, 2013 (John Marshall of Atlanta Law School, Savannah Branch).  The second presentation, Memo Writing in Technicolor, took place at the Rocky Mountain Regional Legal Writing Conference, March 22-24, 2013 (University of Colorado at Boulder Law School).  Memo Writing concerned her theory that color coding segments of a memo could help students understand the order of how a memo should be written.  She demonstrated by using good color-coded memos as compared to not-so-good color -coded memos to demonstrate how students could self-assess their work using visuals.

In Legal Analysis and Cogent Writing, Professor Mika demonstrated how color-coding particular analytical paragraphs could give students visual cues on the structure of legal analysis.  She also demonstrated how highlighting various portions of sentences within a paragraph (e.g., active voice, linking transitions, parallel structure) gave insight into how a well-structured, easy-to-read paragraph would look in color when it had all the proper parts.

Finally, Professor Mika has been appointed Treasurer of the AALS Teaching Section.

Opinio Juris has published the following post by C|M|LAW Professor Milena Sterio in which she discusses a recent French Court of Appeals case on the potential liability of French companies for their participation in a West Bank building project:

http://opiniojuris.org/2013/05/08/guest-post-french-companies-may-build-in-the-west-bank-an-assessment-of-the-versailles-court-of-appeals-case/

Professor Deborah Geier

C|M|LAW Professor Deborah Geier participated in a Lincoln-Douglas-style debate on Corporate Tax Reform at the ABA Section of Taxation meeting held in Washington, D.C., on May 9-10. Professor Joshua Blank from NYU organized the panel and served in the role of Speaker of the House. In addition to Professor Geier, the three debaters were Professor Adam Rosenzweig (Washington University at St. Louis), Professor Omri Marian (University of Florida), and David Miller (partner at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft of New York and adjunct Professor at Columbia). Three resolutions were debated: (1) “Be it resolved that the United States should impose a corporate income tax,” (2) Be it resolved that, assuming integration is desirable, the best way to achieve it is by exempting dividends from taxation in the shareholders’ hands,” and (3) “Be it resolved that, assuming the United States imposes a corporate income tax, it should lower the statutory rate below 35% in a revenue-neutral way.” The debate was lively, and the audience participated during cross-examination periods.

Professor Browne Lewis

C|M|LAW’s Leon and Gloria Plevin Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Health Law and Policy, Browne Lewis, was quoted in the Plain Dealer in an article, MetroHealth joins Cleveland Clinic and University Hospitals with policy to not hire tobacco users, by Ellen Jan Kleinerman, on April 29, 2013.  The article described the MetroHealth system’s decision not to hire smokers after June 1, 2013.  According to a MetroHealth representative, refusing to hire smokers is a move that follows a national trend to “to encourage healthier life styles, increase worker productivity and lower health-care costs.”  In this decision, MetroHealth follows the Cleveland Clinic and University Hospitals, which have both adopted this policy, along with a growing number of employers across the country.  Professor Lewis acknowledges that smokers are not a protected class in terms of employment discrimination, but argues that “[e]ven if it’s legal, it’s bad public policy. Where do you draw the line? Is the next step not hiring obese people or people who drink alcohol?  It makes more sense to use other incentives to get people to stop smoking instead of just closing the gates.” 

To read the article, see:

http://www.cleveland.com/healthfit/index.ssf/2013/04/metrohealth_joins_cleveland_cl.html

C|M|LAW Professor and Associate Dean Heidi Gorovitz Robertson published a blog post in Crain’s Cleveland Business on May 3, 2013, titled Ohio laws allow drillers access to land, at times over landowner objections.  The post concerns conflicting values in property rights that arise through the application of Ohio’s oil and gas laws in Ohio’s quickly developing shale oil and gas industry.  The basic point is that while some property owners think they get to decide whether drilling will occur beneath their land, under Ohio’s mandatory pooling and unitization laws, that is not the case.  Ohio oil and gas laws place the correlative rights of neighbors — the neighbors’ right to development the natural resource– above the individual property owner’s right to prevent drilling.

To read Robertson’s post, click here:

http://www.crainscleveland.com/article/20130503/SHALEBLOGS/305039995

C|M|LAW Associate Professor and Associate Dean Mark Sundahl participated on a panel regarding the arbitration of space-related disputes at the Spring Meeting of the ABA International Law Section on April 25th in Washington, D.C.  As commercial and governmental activity in space increases, the need to resolve disputes arising from space activity has also grown.  The adoption of a new treaty regarding the finance of space assets and the advent of private human spaceflight will likely add to the number of arbitrations.  In 2011, the ICC Permanent Court of Arbitration adopted new Optional Rules for the Arbitration of Disputes Relating to Outer Space Activities in order to provide a new rule set tailored to the idiosyncratic features of space law and transactions involving satellites and launch services. The panel explained the nature of these new rules and the benefits of choosing this rule set when arbitrating space-related disputes.