Professor Gwendolyn Majette presented at the 2015 Annual Meeting of the Association of American Law Schools in Washington, D.C. on January 3.  Professor Majette presented on a panel entitled “Health Law Works-in-Progress,” which was organized by the Law, Medicine and Health Care section.

Professor and Associate Dean Milena Sterio presented at the 2015 Meeting of the Association of American Law Schools.  Professor Sterio presented on January 3, at a session organized by the International Law section, entitled “Adding Foreign and Comparative Law to Your Course: Guidelines, Materials, and Practical Advice for New Law Professors.”

In addition, Professor Sterio was elected Secretary of the International Human Rights Law section, and Treasurer of the International Law section.

Professor Mickey Davis, with co-author Peter Arno, published an op-ed entitled “The New Face of U.S. Health Care: $1,000 Per Pill.”  Davis and Arno argue in this op-ed that the federal government should also regulate pharmaceutical prices, for products developed through federal funding, because unregulated prices have been sky-rocketing and have precluded thousands of patients from benefitting from life-prolonging medications.  The op-ed is available here:

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/28171-the-new-face-of-us-health-care-1-000-per-pill

Professor Karin Mika presented at the Legal Writing One Day Workshop held at Miami School of Law on December 6th. The title of her presentation was “The Dreaded Assumption: How Failure to Accept Generational Differences Makes for Bad Teaching and Poor Learning.”

The focus of Professor Mika’s presentation was on the fact that law professors must be hyper aware of how different students are from students of yesterday and ourselves. Students come from many diverse cultural backgrounds than ever before, and the information age has made it so that students no longer relate to any of the same common references that could be made in a classroom setting even a decade ago. It is not so much that professors need to be attuned to pop culture, or even present their material in a visually entertaining manner, but do need to understand that changes in the world have made it so a lot of elements of law instruction considered to be common knowledge are simply not common knowledge. Professors need to take the time to explain the context for case references in a way that students can relate and must be more attuned than ever before to references that can be construed to be offensive or degrading. Professors also need to be attuned to the fact that the informational age has lessened everyone’s attention span and that, after a certain point, information conveyed by pure lecture can no longer be absorbed.

Professor Karin Mika will move up to President Elect for the AALS Teaching Methods Section starting in 2015.  In her capacity as Secretary of the Teaching Methods Section, Professor Mika prepared two newsletters, the latter of which is attached below and highlights the Cleveland-Marshall Solo Incubator (p. 13).  The newsletter also highlights multiple upcoming programs at the 2015 AALS Annual Meeting, including a program on “Adding Foreign and Comparative Law to Your Course,” at which Professor Milena Sterio will present (on January 3, 2015).

TMSection Fall 201415 Edition

Kevin O’Neill

On October 21, 2014, Professor Kevin O’Neill gave a presentation at the Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association on two important First Amendment decisions handed down by the Supreme Court last term: Town of Greece v. Galloway, 134 S. Ct. 1811 (2014) (upholding the power of local town councils to commence their public meetings with overtly sectarian prayers); and McCullen v. Coakley, 134 S. Ct. 2518 (2014) (striking down buffer zones around abortion clinics in Massachusetts).

Professor Heidi Gorovitz Robertson

C|M|LAW’s Steven W. Percy Distinguished Professor of Law, Heidi Gorovitz Robertson has written in Crain’s Cleveland Business’ Energy Report regarding the eminent domain process pertaining to a proposed interstate natural gas pipeline that would cross Ohio.  At present, NEXUS Gas Transmission is working towards burying a 3 to 5 foot pipeline across Medina county and elsewhere in Ohio.  Professor Robertson’s blog post in Crain’s is available here.

Professor and Associate Dean Milena Sterio’s Letter to the Editor (“C.I.A.’s brutal interrogation techniques nothing short of illegal torture”) was published by the Plain Dealer; the full text of the letter is available here.

On December 12, Professor John Plecnik joined ​Associate Dean & Professor Jonathan Entin of Case Law School in speaking to a U.S. State Department-sponsored delegation from Indonesia on American politics and constitutional law. This roundtable discussion was hosted by the Cleveland Council on World Affairs at Case Western Reserve University School of Law as part of the International Visitor Leadership Program, which is the U.S. State Department’s premier professional exchange program.