Professor Sandra Kerber

Legal Writing Professor Sandra Kerber has been reappointed to the Judicial Candidates Rating Coalition (JCRC).  The JCRC interviews judges to evaluate them for integrity, judicial temperament, diligence, and professional competence. The JCRC serves the voting community at large by disseminating information on judicial qualifications through the website Judge4Yourself.com.  Judge4Yourself educates Cuyahoga County voters about judicial candidates’ qualifications in an effort to eliminate the judicial “guessing game.” Judge4Yourself.com offers ratings for all the candidates running in contested races in every judicial election in Cuyahoga County.  It also provides biographies of each candidate.

Professor Matthew Green has been invited to join the Cleveland Employment Inns of Court.  The Cleveland Employment Inns of Court was formed in 2005 and is a Charter Member of the American Inns of Court and was organized to enhance the professional and ethical quality of legal practice.  The Inn holds educational programs and is a forum for discussion of its discipline.

Professor Jonathan Witmer-Rich

Professor Jonathan Witmer-Rich recently published “Interrogation and the Roberts Court” in the top-50 ranked Florida Law Review.  In this work, he argues that 5 cases decided under the Roberts court are reshaping and limiting the rules for the interrogation of suspects by the police.  In particular, the Court is limiting the rules that would have been protective of suspects rights.  In Kansas v. Ventris, Montejo v. Louisiana, Florida v. Powell, Maryland v. Shatzer, and Berghuis v. Thompkins, the Roberts Court has created, but not yet articulated, a new principle of ‘fair play’ in interrogations.  Witmer-Rich explains that the Warren Court was moved by the idea that suspects under interrogation are, by their circumstances, under compelling pressures from which the Court must protect them.  To do this, the Warren Court created the rules in Miranda and Massiah and others.  In contrast, although it mentions concern in its opinions for the relative strength of position between the interrogator and suspect, the Roberts Court does not seem similarly influenced it.  Instead, it presupposes that each suspect understands and is protective of his or her own rights.

Witmer-Rich approaches his analysis of this assertion, that the Roberts Court has moved away from the suspect protective Warren Court position, by evaluating, independently, the Roberts Court’s cases on the 5th amendment and the 6th amendment.  In his section on the 5th amendment, Witmer-Rich studies three opinions–Powell, Thompkins, and Shatzer–and describes how each decision illustrates the Roberts Court’s movement towards a ‘fair play’ principle.  In his section on the 6th amendment, he does the same with respect to two additional cases, Montejo and Ventris.

Ultimately, Witmer-Rich decides that the Roberts Court’s ‘fair play’ rubric is not a fair and adequate principle for organizing constitutional interrogation doctrine.  He explains that the Roberts Court, in moving away from the Warren Court’s assumption that suspects need and are entitled to protection of their rights, towards the assumption that suspects are fully capable, autonomous, informed agents who can protect their own interests, takes an important step backward in terms of real fairness.  The Roberts Court’s ‘fair play’ concept is not fair at all and fails to protect the constitutional rights of suspects against self-incrimination and the guarantee of assistance of counsel in criminal cases.

Professor Chris Sagers has signed an amicus brief submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court by a group of antitrust professors and scholars in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.  In this brief, the professors argue that the ministerial exception does not and should not be expanded to protect professional associations of clergy from antitrust scrutiny.  They argue that a broadly or loosely defined ‘ministerial exception’ could allow clergy to form agreements that would otherwise be condemned under the Sherman Act.  In particular, the group is concerned that certain professional organizations of clergy organize their labor markets through restraints that, absent First Amendment projections, would violate the Sherman Act, and that the ‘ministerial exception’ was not intended to facilitate or immunize such actions.  They argue that the ministerial exception was intended to apply to hierarchical religious organizations to avoid government intrusion into matters regarding employment of their clergy.  It was not intended to apply to all matters of employment, such as the employment rules imposed by professional associations and those imposed by independent congregations.

To read the brief, click here:
https://www2.law.csuohio.edu/newsevents/images/HosannaTaborAmicus.pdf