Professor Matthew Green presented at the Midwestern People of Color Legal Scholarship Conference in Havana, Cuba, on July 24th. His presentation topic was “LGBT Workplace Discrimination: Extant Protections & Issues on the Horizon.”

Browne Lewis, the Leon M. and Gloria Plevin Professor of Law presented on the impact that technology has on autonomy from the cradle to the grave and beyond.

On July 24, 2015, Professor Lewis presented at the Midwest People of Color Scholarship Conference in Havana, Cuba. Professor Lewis’ presentation was about the technology that permits patients to live longer. Unfortunately, that same technology causes terminally ill persons to spend more time experiencing severe pain and other side effects. Professor Lewis discussed the ethical and legal issues that may arise if physician-assisted suicide is made available to terminally-ill children in order to relieve pain and suffering. She discussed two main questions-Should the law permit physician-assisted suicide to be used to end the lives of minor children suffering from terminal illnesses? Should the minor child be included in the decision-making process? Currently, only five American states have legalized physician-assisted suicide. However, the procedure cannot be used to end the lives of terminally ill persons who are under the age of eighteen. Recently, Belgium removed the age restriction on physician-assisted suicide in order to permit parents to request lethal medication for their dying children.

On July 29, 2015, Professor Lewis presented at the Southeastern American Law Schools (SEALS) Annual Meeting in Boca Raton, Florida. In her presentation, Professor Lewis discussed the technology that make posthumous reproduction possible. The presentation consisted of an overview of Professor Lewis’ book on posthumous reproduction that is forthcoming from Routledge Press. According to Professor Lewis, the number of persons seeking to use the gametes of dead people to conceive children is increasing. Professor Lewis talked about the need to balance the reproductive rights of the dead with the best interests of the child conceived as a consequence of posthumous reproduction. Professor Lewis also spoke about human oocyte cryopreservation/egg freezing. Young women are choosing to freeze their eggs for future use to defer motherhood while they pursue their careers or wait to meet “Mr. Right”. Opponents of the procedure argue that the government should ban the use of human oocyte cryopreservation or restrict its availability to women of child-bearing years.

Professor and Associate Dean Milena Sterio’s paper proposal, entitled “Humanitarian Intervention ‘Exception’ and its Applicability to the Refugee Crises in Iraq and Syria,” was accepted through a blind peer review competitive process for the 2015 American Society of International Law Research Forum. The Research Forum will take place in Washington, D.C.., on October 23-24, and Professor Sterio will present her paper, along with other selected scholars.

Professor Karin Mika presented at the 5th Biennial Applied Legal Storytelling Conference, held at Seattle University School of Law from July 21-23rd, along with Terri LeClercq, retired from the University of Texas. Their joint presentation was called, Orange is More than the New Black : The Struggle and Some Success at Achieving Prison Reform.

The presentation also discussed the work of Terri Leclercq, who travels nationally bringing to light problems with prisons and why we should care about reform. Two years ago, she wrote the graphic novel “Prison Grievances: When to Write, How to Write.” The book, written for prisoners reading at a fifth grade level, teaches inmates about their rights and educates them about the court system. The book has become a major staple in many prison systems and was named one of Amazon’s top 100 books for 2014. A link to the book is available through Amazon here.

Chris Sagers, James A. Thomas Distinguished Professor of Law, was quoted in the national and trade press a number of times in recent weeks, as several major antitrust events drew public attention. He discussed the Justice Department’s investigation of airline price fixing with BuzzFeed News and the Wall Street Journal, an investigation arising from a controversial trade association meeting on which he had earlier commented for the New York Times.

Sagers also discussed the Apple computer corporation’s loss before a federal appeals court in the long running case against for fixing the price of ebooks, with Publishers Weekly, Global Competition Review (paywall) and Policy and Regulatory Report (paywall), as well as other antitrust problems facing Apple with Yahoo Finance.

David Forte’s essay, Religion and the Republic, a commentary on the case of Town of Greece v. Galloway (2014), has been published by the Witherspoon Institute’s Public Discourse. It can be accessed here: http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2015/07/14671/.

Professor Jonathan Witmer-Rich will be a guest on the Sound of Ideas (90.3 WCPN) on Wednesday, July 1, 2015, to discuss a recent decision from the United States Supreme Court concerning a case in Cuyahoga County. In Ohio v. Clark, decided June 18, 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Sixth Amendment’s Confrontation Clause did not prohibit the testimony of a preschool teacher, who testified at a Cuyahoga County trial that a three-year-old boy identified the defendant as his abuser. The young boy did not testify in the case, and the defendant argued that his lawyers should have been given some opportunity to ask the boy questions to test whether his statements were reliable. Professor Witmer-Rich will discuss how this local case impacts ongoing debates about the scope of the Confrontation Clause, and also discuss whether Ohio should put in place some procedure offering at least a limited right for defendants to ask questions of young children in these types of circumstances.

Heidi Gorovitz Robertson, C|M|LAW’s Steven W. Percy Distinguished Professor of Law, has criticized media interpretations of EPA’s recently released draft assessment on the impact of hydraulic fracturing on the water supply. Robertson previously commented on this topic in a Letter to the Editor of the Plain Dealer, and on Friday, published a short piece, EPA’s report on fracking has been given a positive spin by much of the media in Crain’s Cleveland Business’ Energy Report. In short, many news outlets portrayed EPA’s draft assessment report as concluding that fracturing is safe for the water supply. In fact, EPA’s report concludes that it does not yet have sufficient evidence to conclude that harm or risk is systematic or widespread. The report notes many limitations in the analyzed data, including the short duration of many studies.

Professor Robertson’s comments in Crain’s are available here:

http://www.crainscleveland.com/article/20150626/BLOGS05/150629876/the-epas-report-on-fracking-has-been-given-a-positive-spin-by-much

Professor Robertson’s Letter to the Editor is available here:

http://blog.cleveland.com/letters/2015/06/epa_letter_to_the_editor_3.html

On June 12-13, 2015, Heidi Gorovitz Robertson, C|M|Law’s Steven W. Percy Distinguished Professor of Law, was an invited speaker for the plenary session at the Common Core of European Private Law Annual Meeting at Gothenburg University’s faculty of Business, Economics and Law in Gothenburg, Sweden. Robertson’s talk, Access to Nature: Reducing inequality through public access to privately-owned land for recreation was part of the conference’s plenary panel on reducing inequality through access to commons.

Since 2013, Robertson has served as a United States Reporter for the Common Core of European Private Law project’s Access to Commons working group.

Leon and Gloria Plevin Professor of Law Browne Lewis presented at an international bioethics conference hosted by the Brocher Foundation in Geneva, Switzerland. Professor Lewis was on a panel discussing advances in assisted reproductive technology (ART). Professor Lewis explained how attempts to restrict the use of human oocyte cryopreservation could have legal consequences. For example, some persons have argued that frozen eggs should only be used by women of child-bearing age. Opponents are concerned about the health of the woman and the physical and emotional well-being of the resulting child. Some opponents contend that it is unethical for a young child to be forced to be a care-giver for an elderly parent. Nonetheless, a law that places an age-limit on a woman’s right to use her frozen oocyte to conceive a child would probably be challenged on constitutional basis. A law based solely on chronological age would be under and over inclusive because it would ignore the fact that some older women are in better physiological condition than their younger counterparts. In addition, if the law is not apply to similarly situated men, it could be successfully challenged on equal protection grounds.