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.
Author Archives: CSU|LAW
Professor Robertson Moderates Panel at CMBA’s 2016 Great Lakes Symposium
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.
Professor Kalir Attends White House Briefing on Judicial Nominations
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 Sterio Presents at Law and Society Annual Meeting; Receives Stapleton Award for Faculty Excellence
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.
Professor Lewis’ Article Published by Tennessee Law Review
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.
Professor Davis Co-Authors Article on Drug Pricing and Medicare
Professor Mickey Davis co-authored an article entitled “Should Medicare be allowed to negotiate drug prices?” with Peter S. Arno, Senior Fellow and Director of Health Policy Research at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. The article was published in Volume 26, Number 20, of CQ Researcher, in its May 20, 2016 issue.
The article is available here: cqr20160520C
Sagers Publishes in New York Times on Staples/Office Depot Merger Loss
Chris Sagers, the James A. Thomas Distinguished Professor of Law, published a column in the New York Times’ daily business affairs blog DealBook concerning the Federal Trade Commission’s courtroom victory in challenging the merger proposed between the office supply chains Staples and Office Depot. Among other things, his column explores the defense team’s remarkable decision to rest in the case without putting on any evidence at all, and the legal consequences it may have had.
The article is available here.
Sagers Quoted in Wall Street Journal on Staples/Office Depot Merger Injunction
Chris Sagers, the James A. Thomas Distinguished Professor of Law, was quoted in the Wall Street Journal for his views on a litigation tactic that took the antitrust community only slightly less by surprise than did U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan’s decision to enjoin the $6.3 billion merger of office supply chains Staples and Office Depot. The defense team’s decision to rest their case without putting on any evidence was apparently unprecedented in a litigated merger case. While no one knows for sure, the decision appears to have been made on the basis of Judge Sullivan’s several, much-reported in-court statements casting doubt on the government’s evidence.
You can read the story here.
Professor Ray’s Book on Social Rights in South Africa Published by Cambridge University Press
Professor Brian Ray’s book, “Engaging with Social Rights: Procedure, Participation and Democracy in South Africa’s Second Wave,” has been published by Cambridge University Press. The Konrad Adenauer-Siftung Foundation will be sponsoring a South African launch of the book later this summer. A more detailed description of the book and its endorsements from the Cambridge University Press site, available here. The book description and some of the endorsements are reproduced below:
Engaging with Social Rights: Participation, Procedure and Democracy in South Africa’s Second Wave
With a new and comprehensive account of the South African Constitutional Court’s social rights decisions, Brian Ray argues that the Court’s procedural enforcement approach has had significant but underappreciated effects on law and policy and challenges the view that a stronger substantive standard of review is necessary to realize these rights. Drawing connections between the Court’s widely acclaimed early decisions and the more recent second-wave cases, Ray explains that the Court has responded to the democratic legitimacy and institutional competence concerns that consistently constrain it by developing doctrines and remedial techniques that enable activists, civil society and local communities to press directly for rights-protective policies through structured, court-managed engagement processes. Engaging with Social Rights shows how those tools could be developed to make state institutions responsive to the needs of poor communities by giving those communities and their advocates consistent access to policy-making and planning processes.
Reviews & endorsements
“Brian Ray’s book is a remarkably insightful and powerfully analytical contribution to the evolving scholarship on social (socio-economic) rights adjudication. Using the lens of the South African Constitutional Court – internationally renowned as a pioneer court on social rights – Engaging [with] Social Rights focuses on the Court’s more recent decisions, comparing and contrasting these with the better-known earlier decisions … charting how the Court has used procedural approaches and remedies to navigate the kinds of separation of powers concerns … that typically preoccupy courts in crafting their social rights adjudication doctrine and practice. Highlighting the potential of the Court’s procedural focus – especially the meaningful engagement remedy – in opening up space for democratic participation in the context of acknowledged failures of electoral politics, [this book] provides a convincing and comprehensive account of the promise and pitfalls of social rights adjudication in South Africa.”
Jackie Dugard, University of the Witwatersrand Law School
“Drawing upon his thorough knowledge of both South African case law and important social scientific analyses of the relation between courts and social change, Brian Ray offers valuable insights into how the South African Constitutional Court has developed a new mechanism for judicial encouragement of policies that advance social and economic rights. By connecting the doctrine of ‘meaningful engagement’ with broader accounts of courts and democratic politics, Ray makes an important contribution to comparative constitutional law as well as to the study of South African constitutional law.”
Mark Tushnet, William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
“The South African Constitutional Court has received international acclaim for enforcing socio-economic rights provisions in their Constitution. Brian Ray’s impressive, well-written, and learned book examines those cases and various views (criticisms and defenses) as well as the Court’s most recent ‘second wave’ of such cases. He proposes novel and sophisticated theories on how the Court should handle competing concerns such as separation of powers, the incredible poverty the nation faces, and various political considerations. This book is essential reading for all those who wish to keep up with the latest developments in the socio-economic rights area.”
Mark Kende, Director, Drake University Constitutional Law Center
Akron Repeals Panhandling Law
On Monday night, the Akron City Council voted unanimously to repeal its anti-panhandling ordinance. The law had been challenged in federal court on the grounds that it violated the First Amendment right to free speech by unconstitutionally limiting requests for help by the visibly poor. The litigation was brought on behalf of 3 homeless clients by Professors Joseph Mead and Doron Kalir, law students Katie Weber and Emily Mikes who were enrolled in the Cleveland-Marshall Civil Litigation Clinic, in cooperation with the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio.
CSU Law Faculty 