Professor Dennis Keating has been commissioned by the History Press to write a
book on Cleveland’s Tremont neighborhood. In his research, he will be
referring to the role in its revitalization played by the Tremont West
Development Corporation, whose current director Cory Riordan is an MUPDD, Levin College of Urban Affairs,
alumnus.

Professor Lolita Buckner Inniss served as the keynote speaker at the 8th Annual Lutie Lytle Black Women Law Faculty Writing Workshop at the University of Wisconsin Law School on June 28, 2014.

Lutie Lytle is a national organization for supporting the scholarly work of black women law professors. Members of the organization are some of the most renowned and prolific scholars in the legal academy. Since the workshop began, participants have published 29 books, 44 book chapters, and over 400 articles.

Professor Inniss was also awarded the 2014 Lutie Lytle Outstanding Scholar Award, an honor reserved for a member whose scholarly work and mentorship of developing scholars makes her a model for the organization and for the legal academy in general.

Dean and Professor of Law Craig Boise was quoted in “The Atlantic” on August 19, in an article entitled “The Tax Dodge That Has Plagued the U.S. for More Than a Decade.”

The article addressed the recent resurgence of offshore corporate inversion transactions and it is available here.  

Professor Kevin O’Neill was interviewed and quoted by the Wall Street Journal on Public Protest Law, on August 14, 2014, in an article entitled “Ferguson Arrest Focuses Attention on Rights of Protesters.”  The protests in question stem from recent demonstrations in Ferguson, Missouri, sparked by the police shooting of an 18-year-old unarmed man. 

The Wall Street Journal article is available here.

C|M|LAW and Levin College of Urban Affairs Professor Heidi Gorovitz Robertson posted “Mandatory pooling and unitization protect landowner rights too,” in Crain’s Cleveland Business’ Energy Report, on June 20, 2014.

In this post, Robertson writes that as a property professor, she was initially intrigued (read: alarmed!) by the very idea that a state agency, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, could decide that a landowner had no choice but to have drilling occur horizontally under his or her land. The agency’s powers of mandatory pooling and unitization allow this.  That sounded like an obvious violation of one of property law’s most sacred, although limited, rights — the right to exclude non-owners from your land. Traditional property law principles also dictate that when you own land, one of the rights that comes with that ownership, with some limited exceptions, is the right to decide how the land is used.  But in Ohio — and in most other states, too — a state agency can override an individual landowner’s decision to exclude a driller. They can only do it certain circumstances, but it sounded like a complete contravention of the right to exclude others from one’s property. It also sounded like a violation of landowners’ right to use property as they choose — here, the right not to have it drilled.

The point of Robertson’s post is to show that the state’s use of its mandatory pooling and unitization authority, although it appears to violate the property rights of some landowners — those who wish to prevent drilling from occurring beneath their land, supports the “right to use” held by neighboring landowners who do wish to have the mineral rights beneath their land developed.  The reason for this lies in state and best practices-imposed spacing and acreage requirements for drilling sites.  Assuming most landowners who control mineral rights to an area do want their land drilled, without the state’s mandatory pooling and unitization authority, one dissenting landowner could prevent the others from using their land as they choose– because without their land, an area would be too small or misshapen to be productive. Both of these concepts, although they apply in different circumstances, protect the correlative rights of the landowners (or mineral rights holders) who want to develop the resource. They favor the right of some landowners to develop their land or mineral rights over the rights of others not to develop their own.

Professor Robertson’s post is available here.

Chris Sagers, James A. Thomas Distinguished Professor of Law, was quoted in the New York Times on August 9 concerning the collapse of two pending mergers among major media entities–the acquisition of the Time-Warner entertainment group by Rupert Murdoch’s Fox enterprise, and the acquisition of T-Mobile by Sprint. Professor Sagers shared his thoughts on whether the mergers were dropped on fears of antitrust intervention, and whether their failures were to be welcomed.

An online version of the article can be read here.

Cleveland-Marshall Professor of Law Patricia J. Falk published “Because Ladies Lie”: Eliminating Vestiges of the Corroboration and Resistance Requirements from Ohio’s Sexual Offenses in the Cleveland State Law Review (62 Clev. St. L. Rev. 343 (2014)).  

Professor Matthew Green presented at the SEALS Annual Meeting in Amelia Island, Florida, on August 3.  Professor Green participated in a workshop on Labor and Employment Law entitled “Title VII at 50: What Needs to Change?”  This roundtable workshop focused on what changes were needed about Title VII in order to make it more effective for those it was designed to protect.  

Professor and Associate Dean Milena Sterio participated in a Workshop on International Criminal Law at the Southeastern Association of Law Schools Annual Meeting in Amelia Island, Florida, on August 1.  Professor Sterio’s remarks focused on different strategies regarding teaching International Criminal Law.