Professor Heidi Gorovitz Robertson

C|M|LAW Professor and Associate Dean, Heidi Gorovitz Robertson, who holds a joint appointment at CSU’s Levin College of Urban Affairs, will be serving as the United States Reporter for a new project of the Common Core of European Private Law.  The Common Core projects, funded by the European Commission, the International University College of Turin (Italy) and others, examine aspects of European private law through the lens of carefully created case studies.  The purpose is to discover the commonalities in law among the European nations by applying a consistent set of facts to the laws of various countries. In applying the law of their country to the case studies, reporters are asked to apply three levels of analysis, so the research goes beyond the rote application of fact to a civil code or common law structure.  Reporters are asked to consider influences on the law of political, economics, geography, and other factors, and to make and discuss their predictions regarding outcome of the case studies.  Robertson will be participating in the Access to Commons project for the Common Core of European Private Law.  She was selected for this project based on her earlier work on public access to privately owned land for recreation, Public Access to Private Land for Walking: Environmental and Individual Responsibility as Rationale for Limiting the Right to Exclude, 23 Geo. Int. Envtl. L. Rev. 211 (2011).

Her article is available here:  http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1874046

To learn more about the Common Core Project, click here:  http://www.common-core.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=46&Itemid=34

C|M|LAW Legal Writing Professor Karin Mika presented “Angst, Technology, and Innovation” at the Legal Writing Institute One Day Workshop,  at the University of Oregon School of Law, on December 6, 2013.  She argued that today’s student is hindered by the angst of everyday life, which is exacerbated by always being connected to responsibilities by way of technology.  She suggested that innovation in the classroom should be retreating from technology and using more physical handouts to reinforce points made verbally or on screen.  She suggested that innovation in the classroom should involve doing more exercises that take students away from using technology.

Clinical Professor Emeritus Gordon Beggs was mentioned in the Penn Law Journal, the alumni magazine of the University of Pennsylvania Law School, for his connection to the closure of the Ohio State Reformatory, AKA the Mansfield Reformatory.   The Mansfield Reformatory was used in the filming of the Oscar-nominated movie,The Shawshank Redemption.  The prison, which was known for brutal conditions, includes a six story high, free-standing steel cell block, reportedly the largest in the world.  Working for the ACLU of Ohio, Beggs filed a federal lawsuit in 1978 seeking to close the prison.  The lawsuit led to the Boyd Consent Decree, which closed the Mansfield Reformatory.   

Professor Patricia J. Falk

C|M|LAW Professor Patricia J. Falk has published an essay, Not Logic, but Experience: Drawing on Lessons from the Real World in Thinking About the Riddle of Rape-by-Fraud, in YLJO, the Yale Law Journal Online.  Her essay is a response to an article by Jed Rubenfeld, The Riddle of Rape-by-Deception and the Myth of Sexual Autonomy, 122 YALE L.J. 1372 (2013), in which, according to YLJO  editors, “he argued for a new rape law principle that aims to unravel an intriguing riddle that he has posed about obtaining sex by means of deception.”  According to Falk, “Rubenfeld argues the legal system should not criminalize rape-by-deception because the notion that rape law vindicates the victim’s sexual autonomy is a myth that should be rejected. He proposes that we enshrine the right to self-possession, in place of sexual autonomy, as the guiding principle at the heart of rape law, likening rape under these circumstances to slavery and torture, and suggests that we only punish those who violate this right of self-possession. One result of this analysis is to resurrect the “much-maligned” force requirement as the defining, indispensable element of rape. He argues: “States may criminalize all sex-by-deception if they choose, but violent rape violates fundamental rights in a way that sexual deception doesn’t, offering a justification to states that choose to stick to the force requirement.”  In her responsive essay, YLJO editors write that Professor Falk  “. . . argues that Professor Jed Rubenfeld’s solution to the “riddle of rape-by-deception” goes too far in eviscerating the body of rape law that courts and legislatures have developed over the past decades. Falk suggests that eliminating nonconsent and foregrounding force is a mistake, and that it is instead critical to think more robustly about what meaningful consent and sexual autonomy might require.”

To read Professor Falk’s essay, click here:

http://www.yalelawjournal.com/criminal-law-and-sentencing/1223-not-logic-but-experience-drawing-on-lessons-from-the-real-world-in-thinking-about-the-riddle-of-rape-by-fraud

Professor Rubenfeld’s article is here:  http://www.yalelawjournal.org/images/pdfs/1153.pdf