As part of Cleveland-Marshall’s Transformative Dialogues series, Professor David Forte joined Professor Jonathan Adler of Case Western Reserve Law School on a panel discussing “Justice Scalia’s Quest–and Bequest” on April 20, 2016.

Professor Forte has been named the Garwood Visiting Professor in the Department of Politics at Princeton University for the Fall semester of 2016.  In addition, he will be Research Fellow in the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton throughout the academic year.

Finally, the Federalist Society Blog has published David Forte’s commentary, Religious Liberty after Scalia.  The commentary is available here.

Professor Pamela Daiker-Middaugh

Professor Pamela Daiker-Middaugh was elected to the Board of Trustees of the Cleveland-Metropolitan Bar Association (CMBA).  Professor Daiker-Middaugh will serve a two-year term; she will be sworn in at the June 3 CMBA’s Ninth Annual Meeting at the Huntington Convention Center of Cleveland.

Leon and Gloria Plevin Professor of Law Browne Lewis presented a paper at the ABA Section on International Law Spring Meeting in New York. Professor Lewis discussed the ways in which advances in assisted reproductive technology have caused babies to be treated like commodities. She pointed out that courts resolve custody disputes involving children conceived “naturally” relying on family law principles. However, when the disputes involve children conceived using reproductive technologies, courts usually apply contract law without considering the best interests of the child. For example, an Ohio woman filed a breach of warranty case instead of a negligence case when a sperm bank fertilized her eggs with sperm from the wrong donor.

Professor Patricia Falk’s article, Husbands Who Drug and Rape Their Wives:  The Injustice of the Marital Exemption in Ohio’s Sexual Offenses, has been published in 36 Women’s Rights Law Reporter (Rutgers School of Law Newark) at 265-309 (Spring/Summer 2015).

Heidi Gorovitz Robertson, C|M|Law’s Steven W. Percy Distinguished Professor of Law, served as Advising Scholar, and was also quoted in the story Rig the System, Pt. 2 – Fair Fight for a Fair Court, by Jonathan Hirsch, on The Life of the Law podcast.  It is available here: http://www.lifeofthelaw.org/2016/04/rig-the-system/  The Life of the Law is funded by the Open Society Foundations, the Law and Society Association, the Proteus Fund, the  Ford Foundation, and the National Science Foundation.

Professor John Plecnik was quoted in Tax Notes on April 15, on the debate on whether tax return preparers are preying on low-income taxpayers by taking too much of their earned income tax credits in fees.

Professor Plecnik’s quote is reproduced below:

But John T. Plecnik of Cleveland State University’s Cleveland-Marshall College of Law said the return preparation companies play a part in diminishing the EITC’s value. “Fraud is one issue with the plan, but capture is another,” he said. “Tax return preparers indisputably capture a large share of refundable credits, like the EITC, for themselves.”
 
“If we fail to deliver the dual benefit and incentive of the EITC to the working poor, there is no point to the expenditure,” he added.

The full article is available here: Tax Notes, Plecnik, April 14, 2016

Professor and Associate Dean Milena Sterio published a blog post entitled “The Rights of Juvenile Suspects under International Law” on Rights! blog.  In this post, Professor Sterio discusses rights that juvenile suspects have, upon becoming a subject of any criminal proceeding, under international human rights law.  The post is available here.

Rights! is an academic blog devoted to the discussion of human rights law and practice, based out of the European Inter-University Centre for Human Rights and Democratisation.

Professor and Associate Dean Milena Sterio presented at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City on April 14, at a conference entitled “Puerto Rico, the Debt Crisis, and Self-Determination: Exploring Paths to Decolonization.”  Professor Sterio presented on the topic of “Self-Determination: The Legal Framework.”  The conference was organized and co-sponsored by the The Institute For Multicultural Communications Cooperation and Development, Inc. and The Center For International Human Rights, John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

Heidi Gorovitz Robertson, Steven W. Percy Distinguished Professor of Law, has accepted an offer of publication for her article, When States’ Legislation and Constitutions Collide with Angry Locals: Shale Oil and Gas Development and its Many Masters.  This article will be published in Volume 41 of the William and Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review, in the Fall 2016 issue.