Professor Alan Weinstein

C|M|LAW and Levin College of Urban Affairs Professor Alan Weinstein organized and served as a participant on a panel entitled “The Content-Neutrality Issue in Sign Regulation” at the 2014 American Planning Association (APA) national conference in Atlanta, Georgia, on April 30, 2014. Other panelists included Brian Connolly, a planner/attorney in Denver, Colorado, and Randall Morrison, an attorney in San Diego, California. The session focused on the conflicting views of content-neutrality among the U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeals, with the speakers favoring the more liberal approach taken in the Third, Fourth, Sixth and Ninth Circuits as opposed to the stricter approach in the Eighth and Eleventh Circuits.

C|M|LAW Professor Gwen Majette and Associate Dean and Professor Heidi Gorovitz Robertson participated in the Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association’s Medical-Legal Summit at Cleveland’s Global Center for Health Innovation on April 12, 2014.  Professor Majette served as a panelist addressing the bio-ethical issues of physician interactions with drug and device companies in the context of the Physician Payment Sunshine Act.  Associate Dean Robertson introduced a showing of a film,”Bringing Henrietta to Life,” which was a creative commentary on the award-winning book by Rebecca Skloot, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.  The film was intended to highlight the ethical and legal issues presented in Skloot’s book and to serve as a catalyst for discussion.  The film was a joint project of students and faculty from CSU’s College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, in particular,the Departments of English, Drama, Communications, and Dance. Joining Dean Robertson as panelists were C|M|LAW Health Law students Linda Herman and Blair Barnhart-Hinkle.

C|M|LAW Professor Gwen Majette has begun a two-year term as an at-large member of the AALS’ Law, Medicine,and Health Care executive team.  As a member of this group, she will help set the agenda for the section, including helping plan the section’s events at the AALS Annual Meeting.

On Tuesday, March 18, 2014, C|M|LAW Professor Gwen Majette served as a panelist for a program entitled, “The ACA, the Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing But the Truth” at the 14th Annual Symposium of the Washington Bar Association’s Judicial Council.  The symposium is organized by members of the judiciary and targets the judiciary, attorneys, and the public.  The other panelist included the Executive Director of the DC Exchange, the Director of Federal and Family Advocacy for AARP, the Director of State Issues for the American Hospital Association, and the Director or Clinical Transformation and Delivery at the Center for Health Care Reform at Brookings who previously worked in the White House on health care reform matters.

On Thursday, March 27, C|M|LAW Professor Gwen Majette served as the moderator for a panel entitled “Health Care Disparities: The role of Title VI Past, Present and Future” at a conference on role of the law in reducing health care disparities.  The conference, “Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired: Putting an End to Separate and Unequal Health Care in the United States 50 Years After the Civil Rights Act of 1964”, was held at Case Western Reserve University Law School and drew an interdisciplinary group of leading scholars and governmental officials.  The goal of the conference was to put together an action plan to eliminate health disparities in the Midwest and in Ohio, in particular.

C|M|LAW Legal Writing Professor Karin Mika presented “Flipping the Assignment and the Theory of Desirable Difficulty” at the University of Las Vegas, on March 29, 2014, at the Rocky Mountain Regional Legal Writing Conference.  She presented the same paper on April 25, 2014, at the Southeast Regional Legal Writing Conference.  Mika’s presentations covered her endeavors to use rewriting poorly written memos and motions as the basis of assignments rather than having the students write memos and motions from scratch.  The theory is that students are less able to critique their own writing than others’ writing, and thus, rewriting a poorly written memo or motion is more difficult than writing something from scratch and may provide more of a pedagogical benefit to first year students.