Professor Joseph Mead was co-counsel on the successful challenge to the Republican National Convention protest zones. The case was brought by the ACLU of Ohio on behalf of Citizens For Trump, Organize Ohio, and the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless. After a federal judge declared the City’s restrictions to be unconstitutional, the parties agreed on new rules that respected the rights of protesters and the homeless. Elizabeth Bonham, a 2015 graduate of Cleveland-Marshall, also worked on the case as a staff attorney for the ACLU of Ohio. The case has received extensive national and local coverage.

Heidi Gosovitz Robertson, the Steven W. Percy Distinguished Professor of Law, published a column in Crain’s Cleveland Business entitled “Local jurisdictions should worry about Munroe Falls’ latest drilling court fight.”  The column is available here.

Professor Majette gave two presentations at the 2016 ASLME Health Law Professors Conference hosted by Boston University School of Law. First, on June 3, 2016, she presented her work-in-progress “The ACA’s New Governing Architecture and Innovative State Delivery System Reform Initiatives” during the ACA Session on Health Care Consolidation, Competition, and Prices. Second, Professor Majette also served as a Table Host-Discussant at the Jay Healey Plenary Session: Innovations in Health Law Teaching on June 2, 2016.

Leon M. and Gloria Plevin Professor of Law Browne Lewis participated in the Law and Society Annual Meeting in New Orleans. Professor Lewis served as the Chair of a panel on the regulation of biotechnology. That panel’s participants included scholars from Brazil and the United Kingdom. Professor Lewis also contributed to a bioethics panel. Professor Lewis’ presentation was on physician-assisted suicide and vulnerable patients. In her presentation Professor Lewis recommended amendments to the current physician-assisted suicide statutes that would protect the interests of patients who are vulnerable because of factors other than their terminal illnesses. Those factors include race, age, socio-economic status, and disability.

Associate Dean Mark Sundahl published an op-ed in Space News on June 9th encouraging the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (UNCOPUOS) to acknowledge the legality of recent U.S. federal legislation that guarantees to U.S. asteroid mining companies the right to assert ownership over any natural resources they are able to extract from asteroids. Multiple U.S. companies, most notably Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries, have already made significant investments to prospect and eventually mine valuable resources, such as platinum, from near Earth asteroids. Some delegations from UNCOPUOS, including Russia and Brazil, have alleged that the U.S. violated international law by enacting this legislation in light of the prohibition in the Outer Space Treaty against national appropriation of celestial bodies. In the op-ed, Dean Sundahl explains how the weight of academic and industry opinion on this issue is clearly on the side accepting asteroid mining as a legal act that does not amount to appropriation of a celestial body. He also discusses the importance of giving companies clarity on this issue in order to provide the level of investor confidence that will be required to fund these expensive ventures. The op-ed can be found here.

On Friday, June 10, 2016, Heidi Gorovitz Robertson, C|M|Law’s Steven W. Percy Distinguished Professor of Law, moderated a panel at the Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association’s 2016 Great Lakes Symposium at the City Club of Cleveland. The panel, Great Lakes Restoration and Recreation, included panelists Chris Korleski, Director, Great Lakes National Program Office, U.S. EPA (and former Director, Ohio EPA), Joel Brammeier, President and CEO, Alliance for the Great Lakes, and Rose Fini, Chief Legal and Ethics Officer, Cleveland Metroparks.

On June 9, Professor Doron Kalir attended a White House Briefing on Judicial Nominations. The briefing included updates by Neil, Eggleston, Counsel to the President, and other top WH officials regarding Supreme Court and other federal courts’ vacancies.
The White House briefing was part of the American Constitutional Society (ACS) 2016 National Convention. Professor Kalir serves as the Faculty Advisor of Cleveland-Marshall’s ACS Student Chapter, as well as a Board Member of the ACS Northeast Ohio Lawyer Chapter.
Students William Gutermuth, ACS Student Chapter President, and William Hrabnicky, Chapter Vice President, attended the Convention as well, which featured addresses by Vice-President Joe Biden, Senator Elizabeth Warren, Labor Secretary Tom Perez and many other top officials.
The Northeast Ohio Lawyers’ Chapter, led by Michael Meuti of Baker, won the ACS National Chapter of the Year award.

Professor and Associate Dean Milena Sterio presented on June 4 at the Law and Society Annual Meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana, on a panel entitled “Evaluating International Law’s Responses to the Humanitarian Crises of Our Time.”  Professor Sterio’s presentation was entitled “The Case for Resurrecting Humanitarian Intervention.”

In addition, Professor Sterio was the recipient this year of the Stapleton Award for Faculty Excellence, given each year to a Cleveland-Marshall faculty member by the Cleveland-Marshall Alumni Association. Professor Sterio received the award at the Alumni Association Annual Recognition Luncheon on May 26th.

Leon M. & Gloria Plevin Professor of Law Browne Lewis’ article entitled “You Belong To Me”: Unscrambling The Legal Ramifications of Recognizing a Property Right in Frozen Human Eggs, has been published in the Tennessee Law Review.  From the moment a parent brings a child home from the hospital, the parent claims an ownership interest in that child against everyone but the other parent. As a result, parents have a legal and moral obligation to financially and emotionally support their children unless they voluntarily terminate their parental rights. That obligation entitles parents to the freedom to raise their children with the least amount of governmental interference.  Society gives parents the space to rear their children because there is a presumption that parents will act in the best interests of their children. Generally, the availability and use of reproductive technology to conceive children provides people the opportunity to treat children like commodities. Most notably, a person is able to plan their idea of the “perfect” child or to reject one that he or she considers to be defective or unacceptable. Cryopreservation of eggs has given women even more reproductive freedom. Because of the increasing use of cryopreservation legislatures and courts will likely face the difficult task of deciding whether or not women should be able to treat their frozen eggs like any other personal property.