Athenaeum Hotel, Chautauqua, NY, Site of IHL Dialogs

Professor and Associate Dean Milena Sterio participated in the 11th International Humanitarian Law Dialogs in Chautauqua, New York, from August 27th-29th.  Professor Sterio had served this past year on the Advisory Board of the Dialogs and had participated in organizing the conference.

Professor Sterio delivered the “Year in Review” lecture on August 29th, during which she focused on three significant events in international humanitarian law during the past year: the International Criminal Court’s Al Mahdi case (where the defendant was convicted of the crime of intentionally directing attacks against cultural and religious sites); the closing and legacy of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda; and the ongoing crisis in Syria, including the recent United States’ use of force against the Assad regime.

From left to right: Prof. Valerie Oosterveld; Andrea Gittelman (US Holocaust Memorial Museum); Prof. Milena Sterio; Prof. Megan Fairlie; Prof. Jennifer Trahan

In addition, Professor Sterio organized and co-moderated a porch session entitled “Victim-Driven Approaches to International Criminal Justice” on August 29th.  This porch session was co-sponsored by the Intlawgrrls and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and co-moderated by Professor Sterio and Andrea Gittelman.  And, as representative of the Intlawgrrls blog, Professor Sterio officially introduced International Criminal Court Judge and Baroness Christine Van den Wyngaert as the Katherine B. Fite Lecturer (this lecture is traditionally sponsored by Intlawgrrls).

Professor Sterio and Judge and Baroness Christine Van den Wyngaert

Katherine B. Fite was an American lawyer who graduated from Yale Law School in 1930 as one of only three women in the entire United States! She had a distinguished career as a lawyer at the United States Department of State, and was particularly known for having worked with Justice Jackson while he served as Chief Prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials.  Professor Sterio published a blog post on Intlawgrrls detailing the presence of female voices at this year’s International Humanitarian Law Dialogs; the post is available here.

Chris Sagers, the James A. Thomas Distinguished Professor of Law, appeared this week on the Wisconsin Public Radio current affairs program “Central Time,” to discuss potential antitrust action against the online retailer Amazon. You can hear a clip of the segment here.

On Tuesday, August 15, Professor Alan Weinstein was one of the three land-use law experts who discussed the Supreme Court’s latest “takings” ruling on a national webinar sponsored by the American Planning Association.  The case, Murr v. Wisconsin, saw the Court ruling 5-3 that a Wisconsin “lot merger” regulation was not an unconstitutional taking as applied to two contiguous parcels, one of which the owners wanted to sell while retaining the other. Rejecting the competing “bright-line rule” positions offered by the owners and the State of Wisconsin, Justice Kennedy announced a new multi-factor test to determine the extent of the appropriate “denominator” in takings claims involving merger provisions applied to contiguous parcels.  In his presentation, Professor Weinstein reviewed the facts and ruling in Murr, discussed the dissenting Justices’ criticisms of Kennedy’s test, and the implications of the Murr ruling both on how state and local governments regulate contiguous parcels and ways that owners of contiguous parcels may react to the ruling.

The other speakers were Nancy Stroud of the firm Lewis, Stroud & Deutsch, PL, and John Echeverria of Vermont Law School.

In addition, Professor Weinstein is currently in the top 10 % of authors on SSRN by all-time downloads.

Chris Sagers, the James A. Thomas Professor of Law

As antitrust issues come to be more and more in popular discussion, Chris Sagers, the James A. Thomas Professor of Law, has been busy discussing them with media around the country. He discussed the growing antitrust concerns surrounding Amazon with various outlets, including Forbes Magazine, Yahoo Finance, and the current-affairs website ATTN.  He also spoke about the pending merger of AT&T and Time Warner, Inc., with Bloomberg, and the state of competition in the airlines with a major daily paper in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Professor Karin Mika presented at the Biennial ALWD (Association of Legal Writing Directors) Conference held at the University of Minnesota, July 19-21.  The theme of the conference was, “What Unites and Divides Us.” The title of Professor Mika’s presentation was, “The Legal Writing Classroom in a Post-Trump (win) Presidency.”  In her presentation, Professor Mika discussed views on whether the divisions in our country should be discussed in the classroom and, if so,  how it should be done to avoid bias or being overly political.  She also discussed how the classroom atmosphere has or has not changed since the election, especially in relation to minorities (both teachers and students) who may feel intimidated by the current climate in the nation.  Finally, Professor Mika discussed whether there is liberal bias in colleges, and whether professors implicitly or explicitly encourage it in the classroom.

Professor Sterio at the Radio Bleu Touraine radio station, participating in “The Inquiry,” BBC Word Service

Professor and Associate Dean Milena Sterio participated as a panelist in a BBC World Service radio and online show “The Inquiry,” in an episode entitled “Who Gets to Have Their Own Country?”  According to the BBC description of this episode, available here:

You might think simple rules decide the creation of nation states. You’d be wrong.

There are plenty of people out there who want their own state – like in Iraqi Kurdistan and Catalonia, which both have independence referendums coming up. Yet the national governments in Baghdad and Madrid say the votes – whatever their outcome – won’t result in new countries. So how do you start a new country? Making sense of an atlas dotted with exceptions, special cases and lands in limbo, we ask: who gets to have their own country?

In addition, Professor Sterio was quoted in a BBC article on the same topic, entitled “How do you start a country,” available here.

SEALS Panel on the Trump Administration and Foreign Affairs and National Security Law Issues

Professor and Associate Dean Milena Sterio presented on a panel entitled “The Trump Administration and  Foreign Affairs and National Security Law Issues” at the Southeastern Law Schools’ Association (SEALS) Annual Meeting in Boca Raton, Florida, on August 5.  In addition, Professor Sterio presented, at the same conference, as part of a discussion group on overcoming bias threat and stereotypes in law school teaching on August 6.

Professor Deborah Geier has published “Indexing Basis for Inflation: The Intractable Problem of Debt” at 156 Tax Notes 507 (2017) in response to an earlier piece suggesting that asset basis of certain assets (but not others, including debt) be indexed for inflation in measuring taxable gain or deductible loss for Federal income tax purposes. Tax Notes is available online only to subscribers, but a pdf copy of the piece can be accessed here:

Tax Notes 7-24-2017