Professor Patti Falk was interviewed by Channel 5 (ABC affiliate) evening news on February 23, for a story on rape sentencing in Cuyahoga County (“A Plea for Justice: Cuyahoga County accused rapists spend, on average, just 5.3 years behind bars”).  The story, with Professor Falk’s interview, is available here.

Professor John Plecnik was selected by the CSU Office of Research as the “Featured Researcher” for February 2017.  News about Professor Plecnik’s selection, as well as the accompanying video, are available on the CSU website.

Chris Sagers, the James A. Thomas Professor of Law, wrote in the DealBook blog of the New York Times on February 14 about a report issued last week by the Federal Trade Commission. While the report was nominally just a technical study of the effectiveness of the commission’s merger remedies, Sagers asks what the report and some of its remarkable language says more broadly about federal merger policy and the Commission’s relations with its critics.

The article is available here.

C|M|LAW Professor Mark J. Sundahl has published an article regarding the procedural aspects of the ancient Athenian maritime commercial courts.  The piece was published in Symposion 2015, a book published by the Austrian Academy of Sciences collecting the papers presented at the 20th Symposium of the International Society for Greek and Hellenistic Legal History which took place in August 2015 in Coimbra, Portugal.

Professor Sundahl has also published an article describing the recent evolution of U.S. regulation of new space ventures including on-orbit servicing and refueling of satellites, private lunar missions, and asteroid mining.  The article examines how U.S. regulations are expanding along with new types of space activity and explores what degree of regulation is required in order to comply with international law.  Regulating Non-Traditional Space Activities in the Wake of the Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act was published in the Air & Space Law, a peer-reviewed journal published by Wolters Kluwer.

Professor Karin Mika was an essay grader for the Maltz Museum High School Essay Competition, “Stop the Hate.”

Professor Mika and Professor Emerita Barbara Tyler developed the problem that will be used in the near future for the CMBA Minority Clerkship program.

Finally, Professor Mika was a brief grader for the Frederick Douglass Moot Court Competition.

Professor and Associate Dean Milena Sterio participated in a one-day workshop at the NYU Center for Global Affairs on February 10, on the topic of “The Future of the Field of International Justice.”  All participants were asked to participate in three different discussions regarding the future of international criminal justice: a scenario where the International Criminal Court is the primary institution in international criminal law; a scenario where the ICC and hybrid tribunals are such primary institutions; and a scenario where the ICC and domestic war crimes chambers and tribunals are such primary institutions.  Participants included academics as well as representatives from various United Nations’ missions in New York, including the United Kingdom, Canada, Belgium, Ecuador, Japan, etc.

Professor John Plecnik was quoted in an article published in Tax Notes on February 7th, entitled 2017 TNT 24-2 Treasury May Lack Authority on Draft Trump Child Credit Order.  The portions of this article where Professor Plecnik is quoted are available below:

John T. Plecnik, a professor at Cleveland State University’s Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, said there are reasonable arguments on both sides of the debate over whether the IRS can require an SSN to claim tax credits without legislative action. Requiring an SSN could be deemed an appropriate way for the agency to use its authority to enforce tax laws, he said.

“On the other hand, one could argue that Congress knows how to require a Social Security number for claiming a tax credit when it wants to do so, given that it explicitly requires a Social Security number to claim the earned income tax credit under section 32(m) of the Internal Revenue Code,” he said. “In the absence of Congress doing the same for the additional child tax credit, you can argue that it chose not to require a Social Security number to claim that credit.”

. . . . . .

While the draft order would reduce the incentive for unauthorized immigrants to file returns because they would be less likely to receive refunds, it could substantially reduce tax credit fraud, Plecnik said. The order is “consistent with the ongoing crackdown” on such fraud, he said.

“To me, it indicates that President Trump, like presidents [George W.] Bush and Obama, is likely to continue the push for more enforcement activity in this area,” he said.

The full-text version of the article is available here: 2017-tnt-24-2-treasury-may-lack-authority-on-draft-trump-child-credit-order-_section-24-chil

Professor and Associate Dean Milena Sterio participated as moderator in a City Club of Cleveland event entitled “Understanding the Executive Order on  Immigration.”  The event was held on February 1 at the Happy Dog and it included Professors Joe Mead (CSU College of Urban Affairs and Cleveland-Marshall College of Law) and Jonathan Adler (Case Western Reserve University School of Law).  Audio and video of the event are available here.

In addition, Professor Sterio participated as moderator and discussant in the International Dispute Resolution Works-in-Progress conference at the University of Missouri Law School in Columbia, Missouri, on February 2-3.  The conference was sponsored by the American Society of International Law.