Heidi Gorovitz Robertson, C|M|LAW’s Steven W. Percy Distinguished Professor of Law, presented Current Issues in Shale Gas Development at the Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association’s 2014 Environmental Law Symposium on Wednesday, December 10, 2014. Robertson spoke about property rights, jurisdictional issues and local regulatory concerns regarding Ohio’s governance structure for shale oil and gas development.

On December 4, 2014, Professor Robertson was an invited participant at Let Fifty Flowers Bloom, a participatory symposium at Case Western Reserve Law School to provide comments and discussion on Professor Jonathan Adler’s draft book of the same name.

On December 4th, Professor Ken Kowalski presented at the National Labor Relations Board Region 8 Labor Law seminar at the Ritz Carlton in downtown Cleveland.

His presentation was entitled “Recent Supreme Court Decisions, Appellate Decisions and Related Topics in Labor and Employment Law.”

Clinical Professor of Law Doron Kalir gave two lectures on Israel at Case Western Reserve’s Siegal Lifelong Learning Program. The first lecture – “Israel: Still ‘Jewish & Democratic’?” – explored the historical, political, and legal circumstances that contributed to Israel’s definition as both Jewish and Democratic in its Basic Laws, and wondered whether such definition is still sustainable. The second, “What’s New(s) in Israel” reported on current political developments in Israel in light of the continued Gaza conflict, the growing economic disparity, and recent Supreme Court rulings regarding African asylum seekers. 

Professor and Associate Dean Milena Sterio will contribute the lead article for Suffolk University Law School Transnational Law Review’s summer 2015 symposium issue on refugees in the Middle East, and stability and instability amongst Middle Eastern countries.  Professor Sterio’s article will focus on humanitarian intervention in Syria and/or Iraq against the Islamic State (ISIS).  The article will be entitled: “Humanitarian Intervention Against ISIS.”

Professor and Associate Dean Milena Sterio participated in a panel discussion entitled “The Happy Dog Takes on the World: Gang Violence in Central America and the Causes of the Immigration Wave” on December 2.  The program was sponsored by the City Club of Cleveland, as well as the Cleveland Council on World Affairs.  The other participants included co-panelist Brian Stefan-Szittai from the Inter-Religious Task Force, and moderator Tony Ganzer from WCPN.

Professor Karin Mika has been appointed a peer editor for the ABA’s International Year in Review, an annual publication by the ABA reviewing developments in international law.  This year, Professor Mika will be editing the section on developments in African law.

Professor and Associate Dean Milena Sterio contributed two articles on the legal issues related to the United States’ use of drones to conduct targeted killings overseas.  The first article, “The Covert Use of Drones: How Secrecy Undermines Oversight and Accountability,” will be published in a special “drones” issue of the Albany Government Law Review (Albany Law School).  The second article, “Drones: A Proposal for Better Policy Guidelines,” will be published in the Wake Forest Journal of Law and Policy, also in a special issues on drones.

Professor Steve Lazarus spoke on Friday November 14, at the Supreme Court of Ohio Commission on Professionalism’s 3rd Annual Student-to-Lawyer Symposium titled “Preparing the Leaders of Tomorrow’s Changing Legal Profession” in Columbus, Ohio.  The Symposium was attended by lawyers, judges, students and professors from all over the state (and northern Kentucky).  Professor Lazarus spoke on the topic of “What is the ‘New Normal'” in the profession and specifically in the law schools.  For a more detailed report about this event, click here.

Professor Mickey Davis, with co-author Dana Neacsu, Librarian and Lecturer-in-Law at Columbia Law School, published an article entitled “The Many Texts of the Law” in volume 3-issue 2 of the British Journal of American Legal Studies (Birmingham City University).

According to the abstract: “This paper contends that event as jurists invoke the official canonic version of the legal test, it is in danger of being replaced for the jurist, as well as for the lay person, if it has not been substituted already, by some apocryphal, inauthentic or casual text.  We argue that in addition to the approximate nature of legal knowledge, the overuse of overedited and perverted casebooks, as well as the distribution of legal information among imperfect sources…. are largely responsible for this situation.”

Professor Lolita Buckner Inniss published a blog post entitled “Clarence Thomas, Bill Cosby, and the Absence of Memory” on her blog, Ain’t I a Feminist Legal Scholar Too? (“a blog that explores the relationship between blackness, feminism and feminist legal scholarship”).

In this post, Professor Inniss discusses the “absence of memory” regarding allegations of sexual misconduct against prominent public figures, such as Clarence Thomas and Bill Cosby, and concludes much more needs to be done to ensure the protection of women’s rights in the work place and elsewhere.