Chris Sagers, the James A. Thomas Professor of Law, has participated in a number of recent symposia. He will appear in February at a conference hosted by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the University of Kentucky School of Law, entitled Inframarginalism & Internet, which focuses on the impacts of market competition on inequality. His presentation will be based on his book, United States v. Apple: Competition in America.  

He also participated in symposia in widely read antitrust periodicals, including a discussion in Competition Policy International of the report on Big-Tech Monopoly produced by the House of Representatives, and another in the European journal Concurrences, on antitrust enforcement in the Biden administration. 

Chris Sagers, the James A. Thomas Professor of Law, recently spoke with the New York Times, Publishers’ Weekly, and the industry journal Modern Retail about new antitrust allegations against Amazon in the long-running antitrust saga of electronic books. Sagers is an authority on those matters, having written about them in his book United States v. Apple: Competition in America. 

Professor Kevin O’Neill is quoted an article on First Amendment Watch on whether Donald Trump’s January 6 exhortation to his followers was an act of incitement that falls within the unprotected boundaries of Brandenburg v. Ohio — a 1969 Supreme Court decision that denies First Amendment protection to advocacy of imminent lawless action.

Professor O’Neill concludes that Trump is vulnerable to an incitement prosecution. He states, “Trump’s remarks were an incitement within the unprotected boundaries of Brandenburg — because he dispatched his followers directly and immediately to the Capitol, and he did so for a specific unlawful purpose: to interrupt the counting of electoral votes.” 

First Amendment Watch, an online news and educational resource about First Amendment issues, is a project of the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University.

Howard Katz made a presentation at the AALS annual conference. He gave advice about teaching at a session on January 8 sponsored by the New Law Professors section that was attended by nearly 250 people. Howard continues to serve on the executive committee of the New Law Professors section.

Howard serves as Legal Educator-in-Residence at the Law School.

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