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.

C|M|LAW Professor and Associate Dean Mark J. Sundahl was interviewed for CSU’s “Engaged” regarding his endeavors in space law.

See:
http://clevelandstate.tumblr.com/post/35633537079/q-a-dr-mark-sundahl-is-cleveland-states-rocket

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.