Long-time former C|M|LAW Professor and Interim Dean Lizabeth Moody (Dean, Stetson) was recently named one of 25 finalists for National Jurist’s 25 Most Influential in Legal Education. The list also includes Brian Tamanaha (Professor, Washington University), Erwin Chemerinsky (UC-Irvine), and Kyle McEntee,( Co-founder, Law School Transparency).
To see the rest of this, click here: http://www.nationaljurist.com/content/25-finalists-named-most-influential-legal-education
C|M|Law Professors Chris Sagers and Doron Kalir filed a brief in support of certiorari in an important antitrust matter, and were joined by sixteen preeminent professors of antitrust law from around the country, including law and economics faculty members from Harvard, Stanford, NYU, Berkeley, Fordham, Notre Dame, the University of Iowa, the University of Wisconsin, and others. In the decision below, McCray v. Fidelity National Insurance Company, [http://www.ca3.uscourts.gov/opinarch/103576p.pdf] the Third Circuit held that antitrust plaintiffs could not challenge a price-fixing conspiracy among title insurance companies in Delaware, because that state had set up a regulatory system to oversee title insurance rates. But plaintiffs alleged that the Delaware regulator engaged in no actual review of those rates, and that it had neither authority nor resources to provide any relief to injured rate payers. The Third Circuit found those facts irrelevant, believing it appropriate to apply the so-called “filed rate” doctrine–a rule originating in the early 20th century and reflecting the policy concerns of Progressive-era economic regulatory regimes. The Professors’ Amicus Brief argues that, while this now disfavored doctrine has been applied down to the latter day in various contexts, the Supreme Court has never found it to bar federal remedies with respect to state-filed rates, and that so to hold creates a serious theoretical conflict with certain other of the Supreme Court’s antitrust case law.
Sagers organized the group of amici and drafted the brief, and Kalir joined him in signing. The brief was also signed by a prominent public policy advocacy group, the American Antitrust Institute.
The full brief is available here [http://antitrustinstitute.org/~antitrust/sites/default/files/McCray%20Final%20File%20Copy%20as%20Filed.pdf].
C|M|LAW Professor Jonathan Witmer-Rich and C|M|LAW student Brendan Heil published a Op-Ed piece in today’s Cleveland Plain Dealer. Titled Keep DNA evidence private, their article appears in a written pro/con debate in the Sunday opinion pages responding to the Ohio Supreme Court’s recent decision in State v. Emerson. According to Witmer-Rich and Heil, in Emerson, the Court held that ‘the Fourth Amendment does not protect an individual’s personal DNA profile.’ In the Court’s words, “[a] person has no reasonable expectation of privacy in his or her DNA profile extracted from a lawfully obtained DNA sample.” Witmer-Rich and Heil argue that the Court unnecessarily eroded DNA privacy for Ohio citizens. The Plain Dealer, upon receiving the piece, solicited a response from Jacob S. Sherkow (a fellow at the Center for Law and the Biosciences at Stanford Law School), linked below. Although the Plain Dealer will not be publishing responses, Witmer-Rich and Heil respond below to Sherkow’s piece.
To read Witmer-Rich and Heil’s article, please click here: http://www.cleveland.com/opinion/index.ssf/2012/12/keep_dna_evidence_private_jona.html
To read the other side of the debate, written by Jacob Sherkow (Stanford), please click here: http://www.cleveland.com/opinion/index.ssf/2012/12/dna_profiles_vs_sequences_jaco.html
In response to Sherkow, Witmer-Rich and Heil offer the following:
First: Had the Ohio Supreme Court reasoned the way Sherkow did–clearly distinguishing between a limited “DNA profile” and broader types of DNA information, and making clear it was only the former that enjoyed no Fourth Amendment protection–it would have been more plausible and less alarming. The decision used much broader logic than Sherkow does, and thus has potentially broader implications than his (more reasonable) opinion. That’s partly why we called the opinion not only “startling” but “unnecessary,” i.e. the case could have been affirmed on much narrower grounds.
Second: Sherkow’s argument is that we need not worry about the government using our DNA profile, which “only” identifies us and does not represent the entire DNA sequence. This suggests that there should be no objection to the government requiring everyone in the country to submit a sample to a national DNA database, so long as only the profile is used and not the sequence. If you find this troubling, you should find something troubling about Sherkow’s view.
C|M|LAW Legal Writing Professor Karin Mika has published an article in the Cornell Human Resources Review, an on-line publication of Cornell’s Graduate School of Industrial Labor Relations. The article, The Benefit of Adopting Comprehensive Standards of Monitoring Employee Technology Use in the Workplace, addresses employee privacy and employer monitoring of employee use of workplace technology.
It is available at: http://www.cornellhrreview.org/the-benefit-of-adopting-comprehensive-standards-of-monitoring-employee-technology-use-in-the-workplace/
C|M|LAW Professor Milena Sterio’s recently published book, The Right to Self-Determination Under International Law: “Selfistans,” Secession, and the Rule of the Great Powers (Routledge) was mentioned on the Volokh Conspiracy at:
On, November 16, 2012, the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia’s Appellate Chamber overturned a guilty verdict issued by the Trial Chamber against two Croatian generals accused of various crimes against the Serbian civilian population in Croatia during the civil war in the 1990’s. There has been much debate about the quality and analysis within the appellate decision, with some arguing that the decision underscores the political nature and orientation of the tribunal. For a brief article on the decision, see http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/hague-verdict-shows-it-is-good-to-be-criminal
Yesterday, C|M|LAW Professor Milena Sterio, an expert on international law, in particular concerning issues related to the international criminal tribunals and the former Yugoslavia, participated in an on-line debate on last week’s ICTY decision. The debate took place on the IntLawGrrls.com site. To read a brief description of the case, as well as the debate posts, click here: http://www.intlawgrrls.com/2012/11/gotovina-forum.html
Dr. Dennis Keating, a jointly appointed Professor at C|M|LAW and the Levin College of Urban Affairs, has co-authored an article on New Jersey’s Mt. Laurel fair share housing, Massachusetts’ Chapter 40B inclusionary housing, and Oregon’s growth management land use policy. The article, Defending Progressive State Housing and Land Use Policies – The fates of three venerable policies on fair share housing and sustainable land use can point the way for how to support similar efforts in other states, by Rachel G. Bratt, Dennis Keating, and Alan Mallach, appears in the Summer 2012 edition of Shelterforce magazine and is available here: http://www.shelterforce.org/article/2903/defending_progressive_state_housing_and_land_use_policies/.
C|M|LAW Associate Professor and Associate Dean Mark J. Sundahl has been invited to speak at the 19th Symposium of the International Society for Greek and Hellenistic Legal History which will take place in August 2013 at Harvard University. This biennial symposium gathers the leading thinkers in the field of ancient law to discuss their papers in closed sessions over four days. The symposium supports innovation in scholarship by allowing the invited participants a free choice of topics from their current areas of research. The proceedings of the symposium will be published by the Austrian Academy of Sciences.
C|M|LAW Professor Emeritus James T. Flaherty died in his home on November 6, 2012. He was 84 years old. Memorialized in a Plain Dealer article, James T. Flaherty was an innovator at Cleveland-Marshall College of Law: news obituary, by Grant Segall, November 16, 2012, Flaherty initiated programs at C|M|LAW that were national firsts for law schools.
According to the article, “[t]he pragmatic Flaherty encouraged aspiring lawyers to chat up law clerks and learn the judges’ idiosyncrasies. He also helped students learn while earning. He won federal funds for student work for the Cleveland Bar Association, city law department, Legal Aid Society, Juvenile Court, Internal Revenue Service and more.”
“This helps bridge the gap in legal education between theory and reality as well as give students the financial aid they need to stay in school,” Flaherty told The Plain Dealer in 1969.
Flaherty taught many law school subjects and published a treatise on Ohio domestic relations law. He led the law school’s first recruitment programs for women and minority students and initiated a summer law school preparatory program for minority students. He is remembered for hiring the school’s first minority and female professors.
In efforts to improve the practice skills of C|M students, Professor Flaherty created trial exercises and videotaped them for students. He gave students test questions similar to the questions they’d see on the Ohio bar exam, thereby helping C|M to become a leader in passing the exam.
He is fondly remembered for his story telling and his numerous letters to the editor of The Plain Dealer.
You may find the full PD article here: http://www.cleveland.com/obituaries/index.ssf/2012/11/james_t_flaherty_was_an_innova.html
You may find his obituary here: http://obits.cleveland.com/obituaries/cleveland/obituary.aspx?pid=160959461#fbLoggedOut
On November 16, 2012, C|M|LAW Professor and Associate Dean Heidi Gorovitz Robertson presented Applying (some) Lessons Learned from the BP/Gulf Coast Oil Spill to the Regulation of Hydraulic Fracturing in Ohio (and Beyond) at the Case Western Reserve Law Review Symposium. The symposium was titled “The Law and Policy of Hydraulic Fracturing: Addressing the Issues of the Natural Gas Boom.” Robertson spoke as part of the panel on “Hydraulic Fracturing and Associated Environmental Concerns.”
In October, Robertson presented an earlier version of this paper at the Vermont Colloquium on Environmental Scholarship. The resulting article will be published in the Case Western Reserve Law Review in 2013.
CSU Law Faculty 