On July 13, 2016, Professor Emeritus Steve Steinglass made a presentation to 120 + municipal and county judges at an Ohio Judicial College program for the Association of Municipal/County Judges oh Ohio. The presentation was on Ohio Constitutional Revision and the Judiciary: Past, Present, and Future.

In addition, Professor Emeritus Steinglass published an article on state constitutional law.  The most recent issue of the Ohio State Law Journal, volume 77, number 2 (2016) contains articles on state constitutional law, expanding on a 2015 symposium on the topic. The issue includes Constitutional Revision: Ohio Style, written by Steven H. Steinglass, Dean Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, and current Senior Policy Advisor of the Ohio Constitutional Modernization Commission. This article focuses on the history of constitutional revision in Ohio, and specifically on expansion of the methods for making revisions.

Constitutional Revision: Ohio Style begins with the Northwest Ordinance and 1802 Ohio Constitution, and reviews the path to statehood along with changes in the methods of constitutional revision later adopted in Ohio’s current constitution. The article then examines changes resulting from the Progressive-Era Constitutional Convention of 1912, and changes over the last century including the use of initiatives and constitutional revision commissions.  The article is available here:

Steinglass, Constitutional Revision–Ohio Style (OSLJ 2016) copy

Professor Matthew Green participated in the bi-annual Gender, Work & Organization Conference at Keele University in the UK. The title of Professor Green’s presentation was LGBT Employment Discrimination in the United States post-Obergefell v. Hodges.

Leon M. and Gloria Plevin Professor of Law Browne Lewis gave a public lecture on physician-assisted suicide at the Mitchell Library in Glasgow, Scotland. Professor Lewis’ presentation focused on the evolution of the “right to die” movement in the United States. Currently, physician-assisted suicide is legal in California, Montana, Oregon, Vermont and Washington. Twenty-five assisted suicide bills were defeated in 2015 and fifteen have already been introduced in 2016. Professor Lewis highlighted the shortcomings of American physician-assisted suicide laws and suggested ways to amend those laws in order to protect vulnerable patients. Professor Lewis’ lecture was sponsored by Friends At The End (FATE), a nonprofit organization that focuses on end- of-life issues.

Professor Joseph Mead was co-counsel on the successful challenge to the Republican National Convention protest zones. The case was brought by the ACLU of Ohio on behalf of Citizens For Trump, Organize Ohio, and the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless. After a federal judge declared the City’s restrictions to be unconstitutional, the parties agreed on new rules that respected the rights of protesters and the homeless. Elizabeth Bonham, a 2015 graduate of Cleveland-Marshall, also worked on the case as a staff attorney for the ACLU of Ohio. The case has received extensive national and local coverage.

Heidi Gosovitz Robertson, the Steven W. Percy Distinguished Professor of Law, published a column in Crain’s Cleveland Business entitled “Local jurisdictions should worry about Munroe Falls’ latest drilling court fight.”  The column is available here.

Professor Majette gave two presentations at the 2016 ASLME Health Law Professors Conference hosted by Boston University School of Law. First, on June 3, 2016, she presented her work-in-progress “The ACA’s New Governing Architecture and Innovative State Delivery System Reform Initiatives” during the ACA Session on Health Care Consolidation, Competition, and Prices. Second, Professor Majette also served as a Table Host-Discussant at the Jay Healey Plenary Session: Innovations in Health Law Teaching on June 2, 2016.

Leon M. and Gloria Plevin Professor of Law Browne Lewis participated in the Law and Society Annual Meeting in New Orleans. Professor Lewis served as the Chair of a panel on the regulation of biotechnology. That panel’s participants included scholars from Brazil and the United Kingdom. Professor Lewis also contributed to a bioethics panel. Professor Lewis’ presentation was on physician-assisted suicide and vulnerable patients. In her presentation Professor Lewis recommended amendments to the current physician-assisted suicide statutes that would protect the interests of patients who are vulnerable because of factors other than their terminal illnesses. Those factors include race, age, socio-economic status, and disability.

Associate Dean Mark Sundahl published an op-ed in Space News on June 9th encouraging the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (UNCOPUOS) to acknowledge the legality of recent U.S. federal legislation that guarantees to U.S. asteroid mining companies the right to assert ownership over any natural resources they are able to extract from asteroids. Multiple U.S. companies, most notably Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries, have already made significant investments to prospect and eventually mine valuable resources, such as platinum, from near Earth asteroids. Some delegations from UNCOPUOS, including Russia and Brazil, have alleged that the U.S. violated international law by enacting this legislation in light of the prohibition in the Outer Space Treaty against national appropriation of celestial bodies. In the op-ed, Dean Sundahl explains how the weight of academic and industry opinion on this issue is clearly on the side accepting asteroid mining as a legal act that does not amount to appropriation of a celestial body. He also discusses the importance of giving companies clarity on this issue in order to provide the level of investor confidence that will be required to fund these expensive ventures. The op-ed can be found here.

On Friday, June 10, 2016, Heidi Gorovitz Robertson, C|M|Law’s Steven W. Percy Distinguished Professor of Law, moderated a panel at the Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association’s 2016 Great Lakes Symposium at the City Club of Cleveland. The panel, Great Lakes Restoration and Recreation, included panelists Chris Korleski, Director, Great Lakes National Program Office, U.S. EPA (and former Director, Ohio EPA), Joel Brammeier, President and CEO, Alliance for the Great Lakes, and Rose Fini, Chief Legal and Ethics Officer, Cleveland Metroparks.

On June 9, Professor Doron Kalir attended a White House Briefing on Judicial Nominations. The briefing included updates by Neil, Eggleston, Counsel to the President, and other top WH officials regarding Supreme Court and other federal courts’ vacancies.
The White House briefing was part of the American Constitutional Society (ACS) 2016 National Convention. Professor Kalir serves as the Faculty Advisor of Cleveland-Marshall’s ACS Student Chapter, as well as a Board Member of the ACS Northeast Ohio Lawyer Chapter.
Students William Gutermuth, ACS Student Chapter President, and William Hrabnicky, Chapter Vice President, attended the Convention as well, which featured addresses by Vice-President Joe Biden, Senator Elizabeth Warren, Labor Secretary Tom Perez and many other top officials.
The Northeast Ohio Lawyers’ Chapter, led by Michael Meuti of Baker, won the ACS National Chapter of the Year award.