C|M|LAW’s Leon and Gloria Plevin Professor of Law, Browne Lewis, has been invited to serve as a visiting scholar with the Vulnerability and the Human Condition Initiative and Feminism and Legal Theory Project at Emory Law School.  She will be at Emory from March 7 to March 17, 2013.  While at Emory, she will work with Rabbi Broyde, a Professor in Emory’s Center for Law and Religion, on the issue of Jewish Law and assisted reproduction and will  make several presentation to the law faculty and students.

The U.S. Secretary of Transportation has appointed Mark J. Sundahl, C|M|LAW Associate Professor and Associate Dean for Administration, to the Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee (COMSTAC).  The COMSTAC advises the Federal Aviation Administration regarding new regulations governing private space activity.  The work of the COMSTAC helps to develop regulations that ensure safety during commercial launch operations and policies that support the international competitiveness of the U.S. commercial spaceflight industry.  The membership of the COMSTAC consists of senior executives from the commercial space transportation industry; state and local government officials; representatives from firms providing insurance, financial investment and legal services for commercial space activities; and academics.  Prof. Sundahl will be serving a two-year term on the committee.  More information regarding the COMSTAC can be found here: http://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/ast/advisory_committee.

Chris Sagers, C|M|LAW’s James A. Thomas Distinguished Professor of Law, recently participated on a panel at a conference entitled “In re Books:  A Conference on Law and the Future of Books” (http://www.nyls.edu/centers/harlan_scholar_centers/institute_for_information_law_and_policy/events/upcoming_conferences/in_re_books) held at the Institute for Information Law & Policy at New York Law School.  Professor Sagers, who teaches and writes about antitrust law, spoke about the Justice Department’s pending antitrust suit against the Apple computer corporation and several publishing firms, who are alleged to have fixed the prices for electronic books.  He explained his view that while the suit exposes some apparent ironies in antitrust policy, the ironies are only apparent and not real.

A video webcast of Professor Sagers’ presentation (at 3:04- 3: 18) is available at: (http://www.nyls.edu/centers/harlan_scholar_centers/institute_for_information_law_and_policy/events/upcoming_conferences/in_re_books/webcast)  It has been featured in media coverage (http://paidcontent.org/2012/10/26/do-book-publishers-deserve-special-treatment-anti-trust-experts-say-no/).

Associate Dean Sundahl and the ICJ Judges

C|M|LAW Associate Professor and Associate Dean Mark J. Sundahl served as the co-coordinator of the 55th Annual Colloquium on the Law of Outer Space earlier this month in Naples, Italy.  This Colloquium involves leading experts in the field of space law who delivered more than 60 papers in five sessions.  The topics included the commercial use of outer space, the application of public international law to space activities, and the use in court of evidence derived from satellite systems.   Sundahl presented a paper at the Colloquium on the intersection of existing space law with the provision of the newly adopted Space Assets Protocol to the Cape Town Convention which governs asset-backed finance of satellites and other space assets.The Colloquium also hosts the World Finals of the Manfred Lachs Space Law Moot Court Competition which is judged by three sitting judges of the International Court of Justice.  Dean Sundahl is pictured here with the three members of the International Court of Justice who attended the Colloquium: Judge Xue Hanqing (China), Judge Leonid Skotnikov (Russian Federation), and, to the left of Dean Sundahl, Judge Joan E. Donoghue (United States).

C|M|Law hosted the October meeting of the Cleveland eDiscovery Roundtable on October 17, 2012.  The group was formed by C|M|LAW Professor Brian Ray and Tim Opsitnick, founder and CEO of the eDiscovery firm JurInnov, in response to interest generated by a conference on eDiscovery at the Law School last fall.  The Roundtable is an informal group of attorneys, in-house counsel, judges and eDiscovery experts who meet monthly to discuss current issues and best practices in electronic discovery and data management.  The October meeting focused on a report of potential changes to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, an initiative to integrate electronic discovery processes into broader data management, and pn plans for organizing eDiscovery training/information events for local judges and attorneys.

The Roundtable’s next meeting will be on Wednesday, November 28, 2012, at C|M|Law.  Anyone interested in attending or joining the group can contact Brian Ray at brian.ray@law.csuohio.edu.

Professor Browne Lewis

C|M|LAW Professor Browne Lewis has been invited to be a visiting scholar for the first 2 weeks in July at the Hastings Center for Bioethics and for the last 2 weeks in July at Yale University’s Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics.

The Hasting Center is an independent, nonpartisan, and nonprofit bioethics research institute located in Garrison, New York.  The Hastings Center hosts scholars from around the world to research ethical issues in the areas of health, medicine, law, and the environment as they impact individuals, communities, and societies.  The Visiting Scholars Program permits scholars to conduct research on issues in or related to bioethics.  As a part of the program, the scholars work with the Hastings Center’s staff and make presentations.  As a visiting scholar at the Hastings Center, Professor Lewis’ research will focus on the ethics of harvesting the gametes of dead people.

Yale’s Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics has a teaching and research program that is broader than most bioethics programs.  Research at the Yale Center focuses on biomedical ethics, environmental ethics, animal ethics, the ethics of scientific research, business and professional ethics, and ethics issues relating to new technologies.  The Yale Center hosts scholars at Yale’s campus in New Haven.  The program permits scholars to conduct research and to interact with Yale faculty in several disciplines.  As a visiting scholar at Yale, Professor Lewis’ research will focus on the ethics issues that relate to new reproductive technologies.

There are more than 70 vacancies on the federal bench. It can take over eighteen months to fill a judicial vacancy.  Civil cases can take more than four years to resolve.  Although both major political parties agree that these facts present a crisis in the federal court system, they disagree over who is to blame.   C|M|LAW Professor Chris Sagers joined the The Civic Commons discussion on the subject.

The Civic Commons program was broadcast on WCPN 90.3 FM and is available here: http://theciviccommons.com/radioshow/crisis-in-the-courts

Former Governor of New Mexico and Libertarian Party candidate for President, Gary Johnson, has filed an antitrust law suit in federal court in California arguing that the major political parties have monopolized politics.  He argues that the Democrats, the Republicans, and the Commission on Presidential Debates have conspired to exclude other candidates in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act.

To read Sagers’ comments, click here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-sagers/gary-johnson-antitrust-pl_b_1917570.html