Professor Karin Mika will move up to President Elect for the AALS Teaching Methods Section starting in 2015.  In her capacity as Secretary of the Teaching Methods Section, Professor Mika prepared two newsletters, the latter of which is attached below and highlights the Cleveland-Marshall Solo Incubator (p. 13).  The newsletter also highlights multiple upcoming programs at the 2015 AALS Annual Meeting, including a program on “Adding Foreign and Comparative Law to Your Course,” at which Professor Milena Sterio will present (on January 3, 2015).

TMSection Fall 201415 Edition

Kevin O’Neill

On October 21, 2014, Professor Kevin O’Neill gave a presentation at the Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association on two important First Amendment decisions handed down by the Supreme Court last term: Town of Greece v. Galloway, 134 S. Ct. 1811 (2014) (upholding the power of local town councils to commence their public meetings with overtly sectarian prayers); and McCullen v. Coakley, 134 S. Ct. 2518 (2014) (striking down buffer zones around abortion clinics in Massachusetts).

Professor Heidi Gorovitz Robertson

C|M|LAW’s Steven W. Percy Distinguished Professor of Law, Heidi Gorovitz Robertson has written in Crain’s Cleveland Business’ Energy Report regarding the eminent domain process pertaining to a proposed interstate natural gas pipeline that would cross Ohio.  At present, NEXUS Gas Transmission is working towards burying a 3 to 5 foot pipeline across Medina county and elsewhere in Ohio.  Professor Robertson’s blog post in Crain’s is available here.

Professor and Associate Dean Milena Sterio’s Letter to the Editor (“C.I.A.’s brutal interrogation techniques nothing short of illegal torture”) was published by the Plain Dealer; the full text of the letter is available here.

On December 12, Professor John Plecnik joined ​Associate Dean & Professor Jonathan Entin of Case Law School in speaking to a U.S. State Department-sponsored delegation from Indonesia on American politics and constitutional law. This roundtable discussion was hosted by the Cleveland Council on World Affairs at Case Western Reserve University School of Law as part of the International Visitor Leadership Program, which is the U.S. State Department’s premier professional exchange program.

Professor and Associate Dean Milena Sterio published a blog post on Intlawgrrls entitled “Torture is Always Illegal, No Matter What Results It May Produce.”  In this post, Professor Sterio responds to the recently released Senate Intelligence Committee report (“Torture Report”) on enhanced interrogation techniques used by the C.I.A. post 9/11.  Professor Sterio argues that these techniques amounted to torture under both international law (the Convention Against Torture, and various courts’ interpretations of this Convention) as well as domestic law.  In addition, Professor Sterio argues in this post that the question of whether enhanced interrogation techniques produced valuable intelligence results is irrelevant, because even if such techniques did produce excellent intelligence information (which the Senate committee report proves they did not), such techniques are still illegal because they amount to torture, and should never be utilized.

C|M|LAW Assistant Professor Joseph Mead undertook pro bono representation of a former public school teacher who was removed from his position because a dairy farmer from the community complained about the school teacher’s vegan advocacy on Facebook.  In a letter to the school district, Professor Mead explained that the district’s action violates the guarantee to freedom of speech contained in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.  The letter demanded that the teacher be immediately reinstated, arguing that “Urging people to drink soy milk on Facebook is not a fireable offense” and “forcing those who teach future citizens to relinquish their citizenship rights has no support in law or policy.”   Professor Mead, who holds a joint appointment with the Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs, previously litigated constitutional cases for the United States Department of Justice, and is handling this case in cooperation with the ACLU of Ohio.

A copy of the letter can be accessed here.  Professor Mead was recently interviewed about this case; the interview and a  news story about the case are available here.  Several other local and  Chicago-based news and media outlets have picked up this story (available here, here and here).

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.”