Professor Milena Sterio met with a group of first-year Oberlin College students, on August 28, at the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law. The students were visiting Cleveland as part of their first-year orientation, and Professor Sterio held a mock class for the students on the topic of Somali piracy.
Category Archives: Faculty in the Media
Professor Sterio Presents at Humanitarian Law Dialogues in Chautauqua, New York
Professor Milena Sterio participated in the 13th International Humanitarian Law Dialogs, held in Chautauqua, New York, from August 25-27. Professor Sterio co-moderated a break-out session entitled “The Rising Tide? Grass-roots Efforts” along with Professor Paul Williams, American University Washington College of Law, on August 26. Professors Sterio and Williams also reported to all conference participants about the recommendations and conclusions reached during their break-out session on August 27.
In addition, Professor Sterio delivered the official introduction to the Katherine B. Fite Lecturer, International Criminal Court Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda, on August 26.
Professor Sterio serves as an Advisory Board member of IHL Dialogs, and has, in this capacity, participated in the planning of this year’s conference.
Professor Forte Publishes “The Faith and Morals of Justice Antonin Scalia”
Professor David Forte’s article, “The Faith and Morals of Justice Scalia,” has been published in the Intercultural Human Rights Law Review. In the article, Professor Forte explains Scalia’s fundamental view that “statutory and constitutional law” was fundamentally “positivistic,” with “validity derived from the will of the democratic electorate.” The article discusses Justice Scalia’s devout Catholicism, examining how parts of Justice Scalia’s Catholicism “might have accounted for his particular style of judging and why he believed that originalism and textualism were morally required of judges.”
The citation is David F. Forte, “The Faith and Morals of Justice Scalia,” 14 Intercultural Human Rights Law Review 68 (2019).
Katz Presents on Legal Education
In July, Legal Educator in Residence Howard E. Katz participated in the Wolters Kluwer Leading Edge conference on the future of legal education in Riverwoods, IL. He organized and chaired a session discussing “The First 100 Days: What Would You Do as a New Dean?”
In August, Mr. Katz made two presentations at the Southeast Association of Law Schools (SEALS) annual conference in Boca Raton, FL. He spoke about “Teaching Fundamentals: Designing an Effective Core Law School Course” as part of the Newer Law Teachers Workshop. He spoke about the Unified Field Theory of Legal Analysis (originally discussed in his book on law school teaching co-authored with Professor Kevin F. O’Neill) as part of a discussion group on “Giving Feedback in Large Classes.” He also participated in a c.v. review session for aspiring professors as part of the Prospective Law Teachers Workshop.
Professor Sundahl Featured on PRI on Space Law
Professor Mark Sundahl, director of CM|Law’s Global Space Law Center, was interviewed by PRI’s Marco Werman about the challenges of law enforcement in space. The discussion included questions of who has jurisdiction over crimes in space, how law enforcement might function on Mars or the moon, and regulation of new non-traditional space activities such as asteroid mining and private space stations. Professor Sundahl is directly involved in national and international work on formulating new legal frameworks for these and related space-law issues.
CM|Law is the only law school in the United States with a center dedicated exclusively to the study of the law of outer space.
Professor Sundahl Quoted Extensively in The New York Times on Space Crime
Professor Mark Sundahl, director of CM|Law’s Global Space Law Center, was featured in a New York Times story, “How a Bitter Divorce Battle on Earth Led to Claims of a Crime in Space.” The article centers on a “bitter separation” between NASA Astronaut Anne McClain and her spouse, Summer Worden.
According to the article, Ms. Worden noticed that Ms. McClain seemed to know about her spending habits, even though the two were estranged. After some investigation, Ms. Worden’s bank reported that her account had been accessed by a NASA computer network. Ms. McClain, who was serving on a six-month mission on the International Space Station (ISS), “acknowledged that she had accessed the bank account from space, insisting through a lawyer that she was merely shepherding the couple’s still-intertwined finances.”
The article notes that the ISS, run by space agencies from the United States, Russia, Japan, Europe and Canada, has “long-established procedures to handle any jurisdictional questions that arise when astronauts of various nations are orbiting Earth together.” The article then turned to Professor Sundahl, who observed “he was not aware of any previous allegation of a crime committed in space.” NASA officials likewise stated that they were “unaware of any crimes committed on the space station.” Professor Sundahl is quoted as stating, “Just because it’s in space doesn’t mean it’s not subject to law.”
Professor Sundahl also commented on the complexities raised by the discovery process in this context: “One potential issue that could arise with any criminal case or lawsuit over extraterrestrial bank communications, Mr. Sundahl said, is discovery: NASA officials would be wary of opening up highly sensitive computer networks to examination by lawyers, for example. But those sorts of legal questions, he said, are going to be inevitable as people spend more time in outer space.”
The article concludes as follows: “The more we go out there and spend time out there,” Mr. Sundahl said, “all the things we do here are going to happen in space.”
Professor Sundahl has written extensively on space law issues, and served on both domestic and international space law projects, such as the NASA Advisory Council Regulatory and Policy Committee, The Hague Working Group on the Governance of Space Resources, and the ICAO/UNOOSA Space Learning Group. He is a member of the Board of Editors of Air & Space Law and has served as the Assistant Executive Secretary of the International Institute of Space Law.
CM|Law is the only law school in the United States with a center dedicated exclusively to the study of the law of outer space.
Sagers Quoted in Washington Post on Apple and Antitrust
Chris Sagers, the James A. Thomas Professor of Law, was quoted in a Washington Post story about the Apple computer corporation and the problems posed by its control of the Apple App Store. Specifically, Apple has proposed new privacy and security rules for applications designed for children, raising again the concern that Apple’s dominance over mobile device software enables it to harm software developers and consumers.
Professor Sagers Quoted in American and Overseas Media on Various Antitrust Matters
Chris Sagers, the James A. Thomas Professor of Law, spoke with several media outlets in the past few weeks on ongoing antirust matters. He was quoted in an article in the Spanish paper El Pais of Madrid, on the apparent movement among Congress and U.S. regulators to take action against Big-Tech platforms, and what the future of that sector might be.
He also spoke with Vice Motherboard bout a new antitrust suit accusing a manufacturer of using Amazon’s marketplace rules to destroy its own small competitors. He was quoted in article in the subscription service Law360 on the surprising joinder of the state of Texas with what had been an exclusively Democratic group of state Attorneys General suing to stop the merger of T-Mobile and Sprint. And he spoke with the subscription newsletter FTC:Watch on the surprising and apparently growing conflict between the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission, the two federal agencies that enforce U.S. antitrust law.
Professor Sterio Presents on Multiple Panels at the Southeast Law Schools Association Annual Meeting
Professor Milena Sterio presented at the Southeast Law Schools Association (SEALS) Annual Meeting in Boca Raton, Florida. Professor Sterio presented on three different panels. On August 1, she presented on a panel entitled “A Fresh Look at Issues Facing International Criminal Trials: From Nuremburg to the Future of the ICC,” and on August 2, she presented her paper, “Women as Judges at International Criminal Tribunals” on a Works-In-Progress panel. She also participated as a discussant at a Discussion Group entitled “Differences and Preferred Teaching Methods in Legal Education from Around the World.” The Discussion Group was organized by the Global Legal Education Consortium, a sub-group of the SEALS organization.
Professor Sterio is the Charles R. Emrick Jr.-Calfee Halter & Griswold Professor of Law.
Sagers Quoted in LA Times on Grim Aftermath of AT&T/Time Warner Merger
Chris Sagers, the James A. Thomas Professor of Law, was quoted in a piece in the LA Times by business columnist David Lazarus, concerning the aftermath of the merger of AT&T and Time Warner, Inc. When the Justice Department unsuccessfully sued to stop the merger during 2018, the merging parties promised that their deal would not cause consumer prices to increase or increase their power in negotiating with other distributors and content providers. The presiding judge, in an opinion scathingly critical of the government’s lawsuit, found that economic injury from the deal was so unlikely as to be effectively impossible. And yet, in the year or so since the deal’s approval, the firm has in fact raised prices significantly and repeatedly, and has engaged in several bouts of the the “blackout” negotiation strategy that the court said would never occur.
