Professor Jonathan Witmer-Rich was interviewed on Channel 5 News, for a segment regarding the use of police body cameras which will be broadcast on January 30. An article based on the same interview is available here (Legal expert says police departments need policies about governing body camera use; retaining video).
C|M|LAW’s Steven W. Percy Distinguished Professor of Law, Heidi Gorovitz Robertson, was quoted in an article, Opposition Mounts vs. Medina County pipeline, by Dan Shingler, on page 4 of last week’s Crain’s Cleveland Business. Shingler’s article quotes a blog post Robertson wrote for Crain’s Energy Report, The fight over a proposed pipeline route in Medina will be a test of the system, available here.
Chris Sagers, the James A. Thomas Distinguished Professor of Law, organized and wrote an amicus brief on behalf of himself and twenty-five other prominent professors of antitrust and sports law, supporting the plaintiffs in O’Bannon v. NCAA. In that case, a plaintiff class of student athletes won Sherman Act injunction against NCAA rules precluding them from sharing in certain licensing revenues. The brief supports plaintiffs in the NCAA’s appeal before the Ninth Circuit, arguing that the trial court adequately explained a finding of liability under the so-called “rule of reason” standard.
O’Bannon, a much discussed and controversial case, is important both because it represents a potentially ground-breaking development in student athletes’ long effort to share in some part of the several billion dollars in revenue they help generate each year, and also on technical grounds, because it was the almost unheard-of rule-of-reason case reaching plaintiff victory on the full merits. On appeal, the Ninth Circuit could make significant new law.
In addition to Sagers, twenty-five other scholars of antitrust and sports law signed, including professors from Harvard, NYU, North Carolina, Notre Dame, U.C. Irvine, the University of Florida, the University of Texas, and Wisconsin.
The brief is available here: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2557234
Professor Patricia J. Falk
Professor Patricia Falk was quoted in a news story for NBC News, entitled “‘I Wanted Justice’: Con Victim Turns Focus to Changing Rape Law.” The news story reports on the case of New Jersey resident Mischele Lewis, who was fraudulently induced to marry a con-man, “with a roster of ex-wives and children.” In the wake of this case, a New Jersey assemblyman introduced a bill before the New Jersey legislature, which would criminalize sexual assault by fraud.
Professors Falk and Jed Rubenfeld (Yale Law School) were asked to opine about the proposed New Jersey law. Professor Falk supports the criminalization of sexual assault by fraud, but recognizes that “[t]he biggest problem at the heart of this dilemma is drawing the line” and ask “[h]ow far down the road toward these kinds of lies should a criminal lie extend?” Professor Rubenfeld opposes laws which attempt to criminalize sex by deception, because he worries that such laws would be overbroad, unenforceable, vague, and potentially unconstitutional. Both Professors Falk and Rubenfeld has already engaged in an academic debate on the issue of rape-by-fraud, in a series of articles published by the Yale Law Journal Online, available here.
Chris Sagers, the James A. Thomas Distinguished Professor of Law, recently served as Editorial Chair and principle author of a new publication from the ABA Antitrust Section, Handbook on the Scope of Antitrust (more details here). The scope of antitrust–the law governing when antitrust does and does not apply to given conduct–is itself a large, complex, and highly controversial body of law. Sagers is widely recognized for his work on the issue, and in particular for his conceptualization of the dozens of individual rules and doctrines that go to the question of scope as comprising one, coherent body of law. His contribution to this particular publication was recognized by the Section, by his identification on the book’s cover as Editorial Chair (a rarely bestowed recognition, as ABA works are typically published anonymously).
Professor Candice Hoke
Professor Candice Hoke’s article, co-authored with Lorrie Faith Cranor (Carnegie Mellon University) and Pedro Giovanni Leon and Alyssa Au (both from the University of Pittsburgh), was published by the I/S Journal (a journal of law and policy for the information society, published at the Moritz College of Law at Ohio State University).
Professor Hoke’s co-authored article, entitled “Are They Worth Reading? An In-Depth Analysis of Online Trackers’ Privacy Policies,” is available here. Professor Hoke had previously presented a version of this article at a Privacy Law Scholars’ conference at George Washington University Law School in June 2014.
Professor Heidi Gorovitz Robertson
On Friday, January 16, 2015, C|M|LAW’s Steven W. Percy Distinguished Professor of Law, Heidi Gorovitz Robertson, published a blog post on Crain’s Cleveland Business’ Energy Report. The post was titled New York will ban hydraulic fracturing through a review requirement Ohio lacks. In it, Robertson wrote about the environmental review process carried out in New York state under that state’s Environmental Quality Review Act. The Act is known as a “little NEPA” law because it is largely modeled on the federal law, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). New York’s law is a little different from the federal law, in an important way. Like the federal law, it requires state agencies to study the environmental impact of their actions before they take those actions. But unlike the federal law, New York’s version also requires the agencies to act on what they learn and to make decisions that will reduce or eliminate the adverse environmental impact. New York agencies undertook environmental review as required under their “little NEPA.” What they learned led them to administratively ban hydraulic fracturing.
Professor Jonathan Witmer-Rich
Professor Jonathan Witmer-Rich was interviewed by WCPN/ideastream, for a story that aired on January 22, regarding the use of police body cameras and possible privacy issues (“Cleveland Must Balance Transparency, Privacy as it Equips Cops with Cameras”). The story and the audio clip are available here.
Professor Heidi Gorovitz Robertson
On January 13, 2015, C|M|LAW’s Steven W. Percy Professor of Law, Heidi Gorovitz Robertson, was appointed by Gates Mills’ Mayor Shawn Riley, and the Gates Mills Village Council, as an inaugural commissioner in a newly created regional commission. The Regional Commission was convened and organized in Gates Mills to study and address issues concerning shale oil and gas exploration and development in the region. Robertson was invited to co-chair the commission’s committee on legal and legislative issues. The Regional Commission includes land conservancy representatives, experts in science, finance, and law, local government representatives, public safety officials, and others. Its mission is to consider legal, political, educational, sociological and legislative issues of concern to Gates Mills Village and the broader region within the Marcellus, Utica, and other geological formations, and to recommend prudent and legal actions.
C|M|LAW Associate Dean Mark Sundahl has just published an article entitled “The Cape Town Convention and the Law of Outer Space: Five Scenarios” in the Cape Town Convention Journal. The Journal is published jointly by Oxford University and the University of Washington. The paper explores the intersections between the new Space Assets Protocol to the Cape Town Convention and the existing body of space law. The article can be accessed on the Journal website here: http://cdm15895.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/journal
Dean Sundahl was also recently reappointed by Anthony Foxx, the U.S. Secretary of Transportation, for a second two-year term on the FAA’s Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee (COMSTAC). The COMSTAC advises the FAA regarding new regulations to ensure the continuing competitiveness of the U.S. space launch industry.
CSU Law Faculty 