Dean Lee Fisher received the Nonprofit Leadership Award from the Case Western Reserve University Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel School of Social Sciences on October 9, 2020.

Chris Sagers, the James A. Thomas Professor of Law, worked with Professor Mike Carrier of the Rutgers Law School to co-author a brief amicus curiae supporting the plaintiffs in the Supreme Court’s pending antitrust matter, NCAA v. Alston. The Alston plaintiffs are college athletes who successfully challenged the NCAA’s “amateurism” rules, convincing the lower courts that the rules should be modestly relaxed to limit their effect on competition for athletic talent. Over 60 professors of law, business, and economics from around the country joined the brief.  Among them was C|M|Law Professor Doron Kalir, a long time practitioner of antitrust law.

Dean Lee Fisher, together with Robert Taft and Jim Petro, have co-authored an op-ed in the Columbus Dispatch titled, “Former governor, attorneys general: Ohio death penalty broken, costly and unjust. It must be repealed.” Dean Fisher and Mr. Petro both served as Ohio attorney general, and Robert Taft is a former Ohio governor.

The authors explain that all three of them served in the Ohio legislature in the 1980s, some supporting the death penalty and one opposing. In the following years, however, their experiences with the administering the death penalty led them all to “understand this system’s grievous flaws and its outright failure to achieve the benefits we had intended.”

The authors make a number of points for why they all now support the repeal of Ohio’s death penalty. First, they note, “[w]e have learned there is no evidence the death penalty is a better deterrent than life imprisonment without parole.” Second, they observe that “the death penalty does not support the families of murder victims, but instead prolongs their pain and impairs the healing process.” They also explain that “our death penalty system convicts and nearly executes the innocent,” noting that nine death row convicts have been released from prison “after collectively serving 210 years for crimes they did not commit.”

The authors state they have also learned that the death penalty “is not applied fairly,” and “that race and place play an intolerable role in deciding who lives and who dies.”

Finally, they note that the death penalty does not save tax dollars, “because the death penalty costs far more than our other option of life imprisonment without parole.”

The authors conclude that “we have a broken and incredibly costly system that fails to protect or aid us in any way. It is time to retire Ohio’s death penalty.”

Professor Milena Sterio participated in the training of Libyan judges, prosecutors, and attorneys on transitional justice issues, such as best practices regarding domestic law provisions on displaced persons, on reparations, and on accountability.  Professor Sterio participated in her capacity as independent expert; the trainings were organized by a consortium of NGOs and led by the International Legal Assistance Consortium.  The trainings took place over several virtual sessions during February and March 2021.  

Chris Sagers, the James A. Thomas Professor of Law, made several recent appearances in academic symposia, podcasts, and the media.

He presented his views at a symposium of the George Mason Law Review entitled “Tech Platform Cases: Sound Enforcement, Politics, or Both?”, in which panelists discussed the flurry of recent U.S. and European antitrust actions against Big Tech platform firms.  And he appeared on a symposium sponsored by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the University of Kentucky College of Law, entitled Inframarginalism & Internet, organized to consider problems of wealth, power, and digital markets. Presenting on a panel called “The Meaning and Control of Bigness,” Sagers discussed a famous lawsuit against the Apple computer corporation, that happened to be the topic of his book United States v. Apple: Competition in America. 

He was featured on an episode of “Cybersecurity and Data Privacy: The New Frontier,” a new podcast of the American Bar Association, hosted by Jordan Fischer of the law firm Beckage and Drexel University School of Law. He discussed online data privacy and its significance as a problem in competition policy, and whether antitrust enforcement could be a solution to problems it poses. He also appears in an upcoming episode of the Mike Meltser Podcast with the prominent sports broadcaster Mike Meltser, to discuss the U.S. Supreme Court’s pending consideration of an antitrust case involving amateur athletics, called NCAA v. Alston.

Sagers also published the essay “A Proposed Pro-Labor Step for Antitrust” in Competition Policy International, with Russell Pittman, an economist at the U.S. Justice Department, and spoke with the National Journal about the opening of a new round of House Judiciary Committee hearings on antitrust reform legislation.

Professor Milena Sterio moderated an expert roundtable discussion on “Human Rights Documentation: An Insider’s View” on Feb. 26th. The expert roundtable was hosted by the Public International Law and Policy Group. A recording of the discussion is available here: Expert Roundtable: An Insider’s View of Human Rights Documentation — PILPG (publicinternationallawandpolicygroup.org)

Professor Milena Sterio is contributing a chapter to The Routledge Handbook on Self-Determination and Secession. The handbook will be published by Routledge in late 2021. Professor Sterio’s chapter focuses on the theoretical underpinnings of the legal principle of self-determination.

In addition, Professor Milena Sterio will serve as co-author of the third edition of the Wolters/Kluwer “Examples and Explanations: International Law” publication.  The third edition of this publication is expected at the end of 2021.  

Professor Michael Borden was recently appointed by Chief Judge Patricia Gaughan to serve on the Northern District of Ohio’s Advisory Group, a committee of attorneys who advise the court on various matters, including changes to the court’s Local Rules.  Professor Borden Chairs the Advisory Group’s ADR Committee.

Professor Christa Laser is one of the founding “Masters of the Bench” for the newly-created Kathleen M. O’Malley Inn of Court, a new Inn based in Cleveland focused on Intellectual Property issues and practice.  The Inn is named after the Honorable Kathleen M. O’Malley, who started her judicial career as a judge on the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, in Cleveland, and now serves as one of the twelve active Circuit Judges on the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.  The Federal Circuit has exclusive jurisdiction over most federal appeals involving intellectual property claims, among other areas of law.

Professor Christa Laser is presenting her work-in-progress article, “Rethinking Federal Circuit Exclusive Jurisdiction in Patent Law,” at two upcoming events. On February 19, she will present the paper at the 2021 Works-In-Progress Intellectual Property Conference. On February 24, she will present the paper at a Temple University seminar hosted by Professor Paul Gugliuzza.