Chris Sagers, James A. Thomas Distinguished Professor of Law, has been selected as a speaker for the 2016 AALS Annual Meeting in New York City.  Professor Sagers will present on a panel entitled “Perspectives on Anti-Trust Law” on January 9, 2016, from 2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.

On September 9th, Professor Pamela Daiker-Middaugh served as the Moderator for a lively CLE Discussion on the landmark Obergefell v. Hodges U.S. Supreme Court case which struck down the ban on same sex marriage. The CLE took place at the Cleveland City Club and was sponsored by the William K. Thomas American Inn of Court.

Professor and Associate Dean Milena Sterio presented on September 18 at the Frederick K. Cox International Law Center 25th Anniversary Conference/American Branch of the International Law Associations’ ILW/Midwest 2015, at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law.  This conference was entitled “New Beginnings, Resets and Pivots: The International Legal Practice of the Obama Administration,” and Professor Sterio spoke on a panel entitled “The Obama Administration’s Legacy with respect to Crisis and Conflict in the Middle East-Plenary Panel.”

The panel was moderated by Tony Ganzer, host and producer at WCPN/90.3, and other panelists included Professor Paul Williams, American University Washington College of Law, David Stewart, Georgetown Law School, Greg Noone, Navy JAG Reserve and Director of the Fairmont STate University National Security and Intelligence Program, and Michael Scharf, Dean at Case Law School and Director of the Cox Center.

Heidi Gorovitz Robertson, Steven W. Percy Distinguished Professor of Law, will be speaking as part of the AALS’s Arc of the Career Program on a panel entitled “The AALS In Spite of Itself: How to Use the AALS for Professional Development Even If It Sometimes Makes You Mad.” This program is scheduled for Saturday, January 9 from 8:30-10:15 a.m. during the AALS 2016 Annual Meeting. The other panelists in this program include former C|M|LAW faculty member David Snyder (American), Stephen Ware (Kansas), and Christina Wells (Missouri).

This session will take on some of the difficulties the AALS presents for many faculty members. The idea is to help faculty overcome the problems of the AALS and to use the organization to advance their careers. Panelists will discuss strategies to address some of the difficulties, for example a culture of insiders, political correctness, scholarly faddishness, hierarchy, and bureaucracy. The goals are to help the people whom the AALS power structure seems to ignore, to allow them to feel less alone, to move them amicably past the problems, and thus to learn more about their fields, to have their ideas heard, to make contacts, and to advance their careers. Also, panelists will discuss how the AALS might improve itself for the benefit of all of its members.

Professor and Associate Dean, Milena Sterio, has been selected as a panelist, from a competitive call for paper proposals, for the 2016 AALS Annual Meeting.  Professor Sterio will present on a panel entitled “Increasing Author Diversity in Legal Scholarship: Individual and Institutional Strategies.” The panel will take place on Saturday, January 9, from 3:30 pm- 4:45 pm at the AALS Annual Meeting in New York City.  Professor Sterio’s remarks will focus on increasing gender diversity in legal scholarship.

Professor Heidi Gorovitz Robertson

Heidi Gorovitz Robertson, Steven W. Percy Distinguished Professor of Law, has published an article with Crain’s Cleveland Business, entitled “Ohio cities may have a new way to control oil and gas drilling within their borders.”  The article, available here, discusses a recent Franklin County Court of Common Pleas decision to uphold an earlier decision by the Ohio Oil and Gas Commission, which had voided an order allowing Cutter Oil to drill oil within North Royalton city limits.  In light of the Franklin County Court decision, the city of North Royalton, as well as other Ohio municipalities, may have a stronger voice regarding drilling permits and operations taking place within such municipalities’ geographic limits.  Professor Robertson had already published multiple articles and opinion pieces with Crain’s Cleveland Business on similar topics.

On September 3rd, Associate Dean Mark Sundahl delivered a paper at the University of Coimbra, the oldest university in Portugal. Dean Sundahl’s paper was delivered in response to a paper by Prof. Alberto Maffi of the University of Milan regarding the nature of maritime finance in ancient Athens. The presentation was part of “Symposion 2015” a biennial conference that gathers the leading scholars in the field of ancient Greek Law for four days of papers and debate on various legal issues. Dean Sundahl’s paper focused on the Athenian practice of requiring lenders to share in the risk of the debtor when financing trade missions throughout the Mediterranean. Drawing on the rationale underlying similar practices in Islamic law, Dean Sundahl suggested that the requirement to share risk compelled lenders to avoid high-risk ventures and ensure the efficient placement of capital.

On Thursday, September 10, Professor Alan Weinstein presented a CLE session for the Northeast Ohio Law Directors Association on the U.S. Supreme Court’s June decision in Reed v. Town of Gilbert, AZ, involving local sign regulations. Professor Weinstein discussed both the doctrinal and practical implications of the Reed case and advised that local governments would need to balance exposure to legal risk with retaining effective sign regulation as they seek to bring their sign regulations into compliance with the new requirements set out in the Reed decision.

Craig Boise, Dean and Joseph C. Hostetler – Baker Hostetler Chair in Law, was appointed to the newly created Cleveland Community Police Commission.  The Commission is court-mandated and is part of several reforms that were specified in the agreement signed between the United States Department of Justice and the city of Cleveland in May 2015.  The purpose and mandate of the Commission is to make policy recommendations to the Cleveland police chief on policies and practices that can help strengthen relations between officers and the communities they protect.

Over two hundred individuals had applied to become members of the Commission, and Dean Boise is one of ten individuals selected by a selection panel.  Dean Boise will serve a four-year term on the Commission. The appointees were announced in a swearing-in ceremony held in the Cleveland City Hall rotunda on September 8; two photographs from the swearing-in ceremony are available below.