Professor Milena Sterio has been advising the government of Sudan on transitional justice issues, and in particular on the future establishment of the Special Court for Darfur and the Transitional Justice Commission for Sudan.  Professor Sterio has been working on this project as a consultant for the Public International Law and Policy Group; this project is funded by the United Kingdom’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office. 

Professor Milena Sterio presented at the 2021 AALS Annual Meeting.  On January 7, Professor Sterio was a presenter on a session entitled “How to Pick an International Law Casebook?” which was sponsored by the International Law section.  On January 9, Professor Sterio moderated a session on “New Voices in National Security Law.” 

At the AALS Annual Meeting, Professor Sterio was elected Chair of the National Security Law Section.  In addition, she serves on the Executive Committee of the International Law, International Human Rights Law, and Women in Legal Education sections.

Professor Christa Laser’s paper, “Certiorari in Patent Cases,” was just published in AIPLA Quarterly Journal. The paper has been listed in several SSRN top ten lists, including Judges and Federal Courts & Jurisdiction. The article can be downloaded here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3728706. The citation is Christa J. Laser, Certiorari in Patent Cases, 48 AIPLA Q.J. 569 (2020).

Clinical Professor of Law Doron Kalir was asked by The Fulcrum, in light of Black Wednesday’s events on Capitol Hill, to provide a short explanation as to basic legal concepts such as Sedition, Insurrection, Treason, and the 25th Amendment. 

Separately, Professor Kalir blogged on Your Witness, the Law School’s newest forum for exchanging ideas – hosted by professors David Forte and Kevin O’Neill – about the Supreme Court’s recent expansion of the Ministerial Exceptions, and the risks it may portend to workers in general, and to LGBTQ workers in particular. 

On January 6, 2021, Professor Heidi Gorovitz Robertson presented her current research project at the 2021 AALS Annual Meeting’s State and Local Government Law and Natural Resources and Energy Law Joint Program, Co-Sponsored by Agricultural and Food Law and Environmental Law.  The program was titled, “Considering Obstacles to State and Local Laws about Environmental Sustainability.”  Robertson’s presentation was titled “Global Lessons on the Rights of Nature: How the World Might Help U.S. Local Governments Protect the Environment.”  She was selected to participate on this panel through a competitive call for papers.

Robertson was re-elected to the Executive Boards of both the AALS Section on Environmental Law, and the AALS Section on Natural Resources and Energy Law.

Robertson is the Steven W. Percy Distinguished Professor of Law at C|M|LAW, and Professor of Environmental Studies at the Levin College of Urban Affairs.

Professor Deborah Geier has published the 2021 edition of her textbook, “U.S. Federal Income Taxation of Individuals.” In an effort to reduce student cost, Professor Geier publishes this textbook with CALI (Computer-Assisted Legal Education) as both a free e-textbook (in pdf, ePub, and Mobi formats) and as a print-on-demand hard copy (at cost) for approximately $35.

In addition to incorporating new law and all inflation adjustments, this 2021 edition incorporates new economic data and charts, one of which shows that income inequality between 2015 and 2020 (with the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act enacted in 2017) worsened more after taxes and transfers were taken into account than before taxes and transfers. In other words, the tax law had the effect of worsening income inequality between 2015 and 2020 compared to a no-tax world. The Congressional Budget Office issued this data last December (2019) just before the new year, so it does not incorporate the likely exacerbation of this trend during the pandemic.

You can download the free e-textbook or order the print-on-demand copy from this link: https://www.cali.org/books/us-federal-income-taxation-individuals

Professor Heidi Gorovitz Robertson has been appointed an Associate Editor on the ABA Probate and Property Magazine.  The magazine has 4 associate editors and 1 senior editor for the property side, and the same again for the probate side.  Each side has one of the 4 associate editors coming from academia — and for the property side, that is now Professor Robertson.   

C|M faculty and C|M alumni in real estate or probate-related practice areas interested in publishing in the magazine should contact Professor Robertson at any time.  You may access the ABA’s Property and Probate Magazine here: https://www.americanbar.org/groups/real_property_trust_estate/publications/probate-property-magazine/

Professor Robertson is C|M|LAW’s Steven W. Percy Distinguished Professor of Law and Professor of Environmental Studies at the Levin College of Urban Affairs.

Professor Brian Ray, with co-author Professor Jane Bambauer (University of Arizona), have published “Covid-19 Apps are Terrible — They Didn’t Have to Be,” on the prominent Lawfare blog. The paper was also featured in a companion Lawfare Podcast, in which Professor Alan Rozenshtein (University of Minnessota) discussed the topic with Professor Ray and Professor Bambauer.

In the paper, Professors Ray and Bambauer explain how state and federal governments, as well as private companies, “prioritiz[e]d a fetishized notion of individual privacy over collective public health,” resulting in a series of decisions that made digital contact tracing extremely ineffective in the United States. They observe, “[t]he reluctance to leverage communications technologies to stem the spread of the novel coronavirus was so strong and so pervasive that the COVID-19 apps in operation today are underpowered and undersubscribed by design.” They conclude with lessons to improve preparedness for a future public health crisis.

Professor Ray is the Leon M. and Gloria Plevin Professor of Law and director of the Center for Cybersecurity and Privacy Protection

Professor Jonathan Witmer-Rich has published an op-ed on Cleveland.com titled “All coercive state interrogations, including of juveniles, have constitutional due-process protections.” The op-ed criticizes a recent Ohio Supreme Court case, In re M.H., in which the Court held that the confession of a juvenile to a child protective services officer was voluntary. According to the Court’s plurality opinion, a confession can be rendered involuntary only when a police officer conducts the interrogation. Thus no matter what the child protective services investigator does during an interrogation, a resulting confession is always voluntary simply because the interrogator is not a police officer. Professor Witmer-Rich criticized this rule as inconsistent with fundamental principles of liberty and due process.

Professor Witmer-Rich is the Joseph C. Hotetler–Baker Hostetler Professor of Law and the Associate Dean for Academic Enrichment.

Chris Sagers, the James A. Thomas Professor of Law, spoke with a variety of media in recent weeks over the several antitrust lawsuits filed in rapid succession against Google and Facebook, including Bloomberg news and the websites Protocol and Global Competition Review. 

Sagers also spoke with Global Competition Review about an unusual concurring statement by Justice Brett Kavanaugh in a matter in which the Supreme Court rejected review.