In early November, Prof. Ray moderated a panel on arbitrating cybersecurity and data privacy issues at the American Society of International Law’s Midyear Meeting Practitioner’s Forum.

In addition, the Seton Hall Law Review invited Prof. Ray to present his draft article Pandemic Privacy at its annual Symposium. The Review will publish the article next Spring.

Professor Ray is the Leon M. and Gloria Plevin Professor of Law and Director of CM Law’s Center for Cybersecurity and Privacy Protection.

The Future of Privacy Forum invited Professor Brian Ray to speak in October on a panel discussion on digital contact tracing at Privacy & Pandemics: Responsible Uses of Technology and Health Data During Times of Crisis — An International Tech and Data Conference.

Professor Ray was also asked to participate in drafting a workshop report, which will be prepared and used by the National Science Foundation to help set direction for Convergence Accelerator 2021 Workshops, speeding the transition of convergence research into practice to address grand challenges of national importance.

Professor Ray is the Leon M. and Gloria Plevin Professor of Law and Director of CM Law’s Center for Cybersecurity and Privacy Protection.

Professor Heidi Gorovitz Robertson was one of six speakers at the 20th Annual Great Lakes Water Conference “Water in the Courts” on Friday, November 6, 2020.  The conference is sponsored by the Legal Institute of the Great Lakes at the University of Toledo Law School. 

Robertson’s presentation — “Waters of the United States 2020 and its Legal Challenges” — addressed US EPA and the US Army Corps of Engineers’ latest version of the definition of “waters of the United States” under the federal Clean Water Act.  The definition has enormous consequences with respect to federal regulatory jurisdiction over discharges of pollution into U.S. surface waters and has been controversial for decades.  The “Navigable Waters Protection Rule” (NWPR) became effective in most of the country on June 22, 2020 and is the culminating step in the Trump Administration’s multi-year project to repeal and replace Obama Administration regulations defining “waters of the United States” and, by extension, limiting the scope of waters subject to federal jurisdiction. In particular, the NWPR implements a narrow definition of these jurisdictional areas, as indicated in President Trump’s February 28, 2017 Executive Order directing the EPA Administrator to consider interpreting “navigable waters “consistent with Scalia’s opinion in [the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2006 decision] Rapanos v. United States.”  

Legal challengers to the new rule insist that the agencies’ creating a rule consistent with Scalia’s opinion was inappropriate because Scalia’s opinion was a plurality, not a majority, and relied on a concurrence by Justice Kennedy to reach a majority.  Both the Executive Order and the resulting definition of “waters of the United States” ignore the Kennedy concurrence, which had been reflected in the 2015 (Obama Administration) iteration of the rule.

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.

Yesterday, Nov. 4, the Supreme Court heard Oral Argument in Fulton v. City of Philadelphia. Professor Doron Kalir was quoted extensively by Business Insider about the case. As Professor Kalir explained, the case pitted the interests of same-sex couples, who wish to be considered for foster parenting much like any other couple, with the interests of a catholic foster parenting service, which refused to acknowledge the right of same-sex parents to be foster parents. The city of Philadelphia refused to continue its contract with Catholic Social Services, and they sued. 

This clash — between the right to equality guaranteed by the 14th Amendment, on the right hand, and the right to free exercise of religion, guaranteed by the 1st Amendment — is “as big as they come in terms of legal battles,” explained Professor Kalir. Kalir was concerned that some of the gains earned by LGBTQ persons in Obergefell — which recognized the constitutional right to same-sex marriage — will be scaled back by the new case. 

To top that clash — which the Court has previously entertained, but refused to resolve, in Masterpiece Cakeshop (2018) — petitioners also asked the Court to overrule Employment Division v. Smith, a seminal 1990 case that defined the relation between general-applicable laws and their possible interference with free exercise of religion. Such overruling would place the newest Justice on the Court, Justice Amy Coney Barret, in the challenging position of possibly overruling one of the major opinions authored by her mentor, Justice Scalia, in her very first case on the Court. 

The interview can be found here:
https://www.insider.com/supreme-court-heard-lgbtq-rights-and-religious-liberty-case-2020-11

Professors Milena Sterio and John Plecnik participated as panelists in a webinar on November 4 on the topic of U.S. Presidential Elections.  The webinar was organized and hosted by Professor Matej Avbelj, New University, Faculty of Government and European Studies (Slovenia).  This webinar was part of the two-year bilateral research project between the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law and New University, Faculty of Government and European Studies.

Professor Christa Laser’s forthcoming article, Equitable Defenses in Patent Law, 75 U. MIA. L. REV. 1 (2020), is in the top ten most downloaded patent law articles this week. A draft of her article is available here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3686120.

We are pleased to announce that Cleveland-Marshall College of Law has entered into a 3+3 partnership with Rust College, an HBCU in Holly Springs, Mississippi. Founded in 1866, it is the second-oldest private college in the state and is one of ten historically black colleges and universities founded before 1868 that is still operating.

Over the last several years, Cleveland-Marshall College of Law has created an internal 3+3 program at Cleveland State University and entered into external agreements with Lake Erie College, the University of Findlay, Ursuline College, Notre Dame College, Mercyhurst University (in Pennsylvania), Trine University (in Indiana), Hiram College, Marietta College, Wagner College (in New York), and now Rust College.

Eligible students matriculating under a 3+3 agreement can graduate with both their undergraduate and law degrees in six rather than seven years of full-time study (or its equivalent), saving both time and money for the student. In effect, the first year of law school does double duty, both completing the fourth year of undergraduate study and serving as the first year of law school.

Professor Milena Sterio delivered a guest lecture to students at the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law, in a class called “Lawyers Creating Change.”  Professor Sterio spoke about the recent lawsuit, in which is a co-plaintiff, against the Trump Administration and its sanctions of the International Criminal Court.  Professor Sterio focused on how as lawyers we can influence legal and/or policy change.

Professor Milena Sterio participated in International Law Weekend 2020, one of the most prestigious national-level conference in International Law, organized by the American Branch of the International Law Association (ABILA).  Professor Sterio moderated two sessions: on October 22, she moderated a session on “Women in International Law,” and on October 23, she moderated a session on “Teaching International Law.”  

Professor Sterio is a member of the ABILA Board of Directors and she co-chairs the ABILA Teaching International Law Committee.

Professor Heidi Gorovitz Robertson and Cleveland-Marshall 2L Isaac M. Bleich have published Toledo’s Doomed Lake Erie Bill of Rights and the Future of Environmental Protection, as a Featured Article in the October issue of the Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Journal.  You may access the CMBA Journal’s October edition here: https://indd.adobe.com/view/06937daf-ff6c-45c2-8caa-a2dd9ed6ffc1.  Robertson and Bleich’s article is on pages 18-19. 

It explains that the Lake Erie Bill of Rights, known as LEBOR, is an example of the growing trend of local jurisdictions adopting community bills of rights (CBRs) — assertions of rights in defense of nature and in nature itself.  Although these CBRs are generally believed to be unenforceable, their continued proliferation belies a frustration with the ability of existing environmental laws to protect the environment and citizens’ efforts to look elsewhere for effective tools. 

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.