Professor and Associate Dean Milena Sterio was elected Co-Chair of the International Criminal Law Interest Group at the American Society of International Law.  She will serve a two-year term as Co-Chair.  Professor Sterio just completed a two-year term as Co-Chair of the American Society of International Law-Midwest Interest Group, and she is also a member of the Steering Committee of the Women in International Law Interest Group at the American Society of International Law.

Professor Karin Mika was a brief grader for the Capital University Child Welfare and Adoption Law Moot Court Competition. In addition, Professor Mika presented at the 17th Annual Rocky Mountain Regional Legal Writing Conference, held at Arizona State, Sandra Day O’Connor School of Law on March 10-11.  The title of her presentation was “The Evolving Classroom:  How Technology Has Changed Our Students and Ourselves.”

Professor John Plecnik

Professor John Plecnik was awarded a bilateral grant from the Public Research Agency of the Republic of Slovenia in partnership with Professor Jernej Letnar Černič, Professor Matej Avbelj and Assistant Lecturer Dejan Valentinčič of the Graduate School of Government and European Studies in Ljubljana, Slovenia.  The grant will support an international faculty and research exchange between Cleveland State University and the Graduate School of Government and European Studies to discuss the “Constitutional and Legal Aspects of Real Estate Taxes—what Slovenia Can Learn From the U.S.”

Professor Plecnik’s research focuses on the intersection of taxation and public policy.  His work on the fundamental fairness and constitutional limits of taxation was recently highlighted by the Office of Research at Cleveland State University with a “Featured Researcher” video.  Professor Černič’s research focuses on political systems as well as constitutional law, international law, human rights law and administrative law.  Professor Avbelj’s research focuses on democracy and the rule of law with an emphasis on European Union law.  Assistant Lecturer Valentinčič’s research focuses on comparative constitutional law, international law and human rights law.

To fulfill their grant project, Professor Plecnik and his Slovenian colleagues will visit each other’s schools this fall for approximately a week.  They will give a series of presentations and guest lectures on their latest research to faculty and students.

On Tuesday, March 21, Clinical Professor of Law Doron Kalir appeared on Tim Farley’s POTUS Talk, a Sirius-XM morning radio talk show, to discuss Day 1 of Judge Gorsuch nomination hearing. During the 13-minute interview  Kalir discussed issues ranging from the exercise of the so-called “nuclear option,” (eliminating the possibility of filibuster),  the similarities between Judge Gorsuch and Justice Alito, and the possible effect of Director Comey’s testimony on the confirmation hearings. 

Professor and Associate Dean Milena Sterio published a blog post entitled ‘Somali Pirates Are Back?” on Communis Hostis Omnium, an academic blog dedicated to discussions of maritime piracy.  In this post, Professor Sterio discusses the recent successful piracy attack on Aris 13, an oil tanker which had been sailing from Djibouti to Mogadishu.  This piracy attack was the first successful attack in 2017 and it may signal a return of Somali pirates.

Professor Heidi Gorovitz Robertson’s article, When States’ Legislation and Constitutions Collide with Angry Locals:  Shale Oil and Gas Development and its Many Masters, was just published in the William and Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review (Volume 41, Issue 1, Fall 2016).

Professor and Associate Dean Milena Sterio was quoted in an article by Al Jazeera entitled “Six years on: ‘Syria is an accountability-free zone,” available here.  Professor Sterio’s quotes are reproduced below:

Moving forward, the opposition “can demonstrate that it has international law on its side – that its position is legally correct and that Assad may be violating international law,” said Milena Sterio, professor of international law at the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law in the US state of Ohio.

“At some point, leaders become too ‘rogue’ and too isolated that it hurts them in the international community. The hope is to corner Assad, to isolate him politically and to get him to realise that if he wants any hope of participation in international relations and in the international community on behalf of Syria, he must negotiate with the opposition in good faith,” Sterio told Al Jazeera.

Professor Lolita Buckner Inniss’ article, Lolita K. Buckner Inniss, “Tricky Magic: Blacks as Immigrants and the Paradox of Foreignness,” 49 Depaul L. Rev. 85 (1999), was cited in an article published by the Washington Post, by Professor Eugene Volokh (of the Volokh Conspiracy blog), entitled Slaves as immigrants, from Ben Carson and the academy [UPDATE: and President Obama].  Professor Volokh, whose article discusses Secretary Ben Carson’s recent commentary about slaves as immigrants, cites Professor Inniss’ article as an example of academic scholarship which has already discussed slavery in terms of immigration.  He quotes the following passage from Professor Inniss’ article:

A. Slavery as Immigration

Immigration has been defined as the moving across national frontiers, as opposed to moving within borders. Immigration has also been defined as a history of alienation and its consequences — “broken homes, interruptions of a familiar life, separation from known surroundings, the becoming a foreigner and ceasing to belong.” These definitions have traditionally been applied to entrants from Europe and later, Asia. Blacks were often either explicitly or implicitly excluded from definitions of immigration, dismissed as being merely “imported slaves” whose movement lacked the complexity of later immigration to the Americas, or deemed unwilling victims of conquerors. Notwithstanding these pronouncements, black arrivals to the Americas had all the attributes of immigrants. In fact, they created the immigrant paradigm: arrivals with alien languages, cultures and customs, who enter at the bottom-most social and economic levels and labor tirelessly.