Professor Heidi  Gorovitz Robertson has been invited to participate in the Fifth Annual Environmental, Natural Resources, and Land Use Law Scholars Workshop, hosted by the Loyola University Chicago School of Law. Nine scholars are invited each year to engage in a multi-day workshop, writing retreat, and works-in-progress symposium. 

Robertson will be working on a paper about the way Ohio (and perhaps other) agencies value stakeholder comments in their decision-making processes — in particular, she will be thinking about how agencies should weigh the volume of comments against their value.

Robertson is the Steven W. Percy Professor of Law at CSU|Law and Professor of Environmental Studies at the Levin College of Public Affairs and Education, Cleveland State University.

Professor Heidi Gorovitz Robertson has published an article titled, Who owns a space rock that landed in a privately owned Swedish forest? in the Real Estate Law Journal, a Thompson Reuters peer-reviewed publication.  The article is available at 54 Real Est. L.J. 47 (Summer 2025).

The article abstract provides:

Questions pertaining to property rights in natural resources have moved beyond the areas above and beneath Earth’s surface to outer space itself. In November 2020, an iron meteorite fell from the sky and landed randomly on privately owned forest land, outside of Enköping, Sweden. Two geologists entered the land, found the meteorite and removed it from the land. The landowner did not challenge the geologists’ right to walk or explore his land, but he believed they had illegally removed the meteorite. Sweden’s longstanding customary right of public access to privately owned land (allemansrätt) means that persons other than the landowner have the right both to enter the land and to collect and remove some natural resources from it. This usually is explained with examples of visitors removing wild berries or mushrooms. A visitor cannot take away cultivated crops or items that are the “immovable” property of the landowner.

What about a meteorite? A meteorite is not much like a cultivated crop. But neither is it much like a wild growing berry. Is it an object that is the personal or immovable property of the landowner? It certainly was not such propertybefore it landed randomly on the landowner’s forest. Did it become the landowner’s property merely by arriving there from outer space?

The Uppsala, Sweden, district court (a trial court) held that, the meteorite was a moveable object, thus more like wild berries than cultivated crops. This meant that, under the right of public access (allemansrätten), the geologists were entitled not only to enter the land, but also to remove the rock. The landowner appealed.

The Svea Court of Appeals overturned the lower court holding that meteorites are ‘immovable property’. This court said that because the iron meteorite landed on property that also contains iron, the meteorite could not easily be distinguished from the land. Hence, although the geologists were allowed to enter the land, they were not entitled to remove the meteorite.

In the context of the Swedish courts’ decisions applying allemansrätten to the recovered meteorite, this article will consider whether a space rock that lands on private land should be the immovable property of the landowner, whether it should be moveable property and thus available to be taken by visitors, or whether another theory of property ownership would better apply. It will consider and apply classic theories of property ownership such as the first possession, fruits of labor, utilitarian, civic republicanism, and personhood theories.

Upon petition by the geologists, the case currently is under review by the Supreme Court of Sweden.

Professor Robertson is the Steven W. Percy Professor of Law at CSU|Law and Professor of Environmental Studies at the Levin College of Public Affairs and Education, Cleveland State University.

Douglas Meal, adjunct professor of law at CSU|LAW, has published an article titled “Rethinking Negligence Claims in Cyberattack Class Actions: Teachings of the Third Torts Restatement Regarding Actionable Injury.” The article was published in August 2025 in Volume 26 of the Sedona Conference Journal. The Sedona Conference is a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank that convenes leading experts from the bench, bar, academia, and industry to discuss complex and emerging legal issues, including a Working Group on Data Security and Privacy Liability.

In the article, Professor Meal argues that US courts have to date failed to provide a coherent answer as to whether cyberattack class action members have suffered an “actionable injury.” Courts “have employed differing analytical frameworks, and arrived at disparate conclusions, regarding what sorts of cyberattack-caused injuries are actionable in negligence.” Drawing on the principles in the Third Restatement of Torts, he argues that “the injuries typically alleged in a cyberattack class action . . . [are] non-actionable in common-law negligence.” Accordingly, Professor Meal concludes that insofar as courts follow the Third Restatement of Torts, “in particular the series’ principles regarding actionable injury in common-law negligence, claims based on common-law negligence should, and will, cease to be viable in cyberattack class actions.”

As part of the CSU|LAW Center for Cybersecurity and Privacy Protection, three CSU law students — Kyndal N. Hutchison, Taneisha M. Fair, and Amanda Borngen — provided research assistance to Professor Meal for the article. Professor Meal teaches a course in Cybersecurity Litigation at CSU|LAW.

Professor Matt Green has published an article in Attorney at Law Magazine titled “White Man’s Burden: Ames and the War on DEI.” In the article, Professor Green discusses the Supreme Court’s recent opinion in Ames v. Ohio Dep’t of Youth Services, which addressed the issue of “members of a majority group, say, white, heterosexual men, bear a heavier evidentiary burden to prove a claim of employment discrimination than members of a minority group.” In the Ames decision, Professor Green writes, “the U.S. Supreme Court held that burden is inconsistent with Title VII’s text and the Court’s precedent.”

Professor Green explains the relevant principles of Title VII at issue in the Ames decision, as well as analyzing the Court’s reversal of the Sixth Circuit. He also discusses the broader legal context, noting that the Ames decision may be used by opponents of DEI initiatives.

Professor Green then argues that “[d]espite the backlash, merely labeling a program as DEI does not mean it violates antidiscrimination laws,” in part because “DEI has no uniform meaning.”

Professor Green observes that “because Ames makes alleged reverse discrimination cases easier for plaintiffs to litigate, employers facing claims may opt to curtail or cancel DEI initiatives rather than risk prolonged, costly litigation even for claims that might ultimately fail on the merits.” 

Professor Heidi Gorovitz Robertson served as a reviewer for the Fulbright Commission’s Fulbright Specialist program in the 2025 Cycle 4 evaluations.  Robertson has served as a reviewer for applicants to the specialist roster for many years.  She is the Steven W. Percy Professor of Law at CSU|Law and Professor of Environmental Studies at the Levin College of Public Affairs and Education.

Professor Mehtab Khan has been appointed to the Advisory Board of The Public Interest Corpus project, which is “focused on developing large-scale, high-quality AI training data from the world’s memory organizations to serve the public interest.” The Public Interest Corpus is a project of the Authors Alliance and Northeastern University with support from the Mellon Foundation. The Advisory Board includes leading national experts on AI, information science, and the role of libraries as information repositories.

On June 6, Professor Mehtab Khan spoke at the 2025 BIO Conference, held at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. Professor Khan was part of a panel titled, “The Next Phase of AI and Biography,” discussing how generative AI is changing “how biographies are researched, written, and safeguarded.”

Legal Educator-in-Residence Howard E. Katz made several presentations at the Southeast American Law Schools Association (SEALS) annual conference at Amelia Island, Florida.  On July 29, Prof. Katz was on a panel whose topic was “Designing Your Course Package”, as part of the Aspiring Law Teachers Workshop. He made two presentations as part of the Newer Law Teachers Workshop: on July 30 the topic was “Teaching Fundamentals: Designing an Effective Core Law School Course”; on July 31st the topic was “Constructing and Grading Exams to Enhance Assessment and Learning.”