Professor Sandra Kerber recently participated in Judge4Yourself interviews of judicial candidates running for Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court in the May Primary. The candidates’ ratings will be released prior to the absentee ballots being available. The ratings are based on the candidates’ answers to the comprehensive questionnaires that are used to vet the individual’s judicial qualifications.

Professor Carole Heyward served on the planning committee for Externships 9: Coming of Age that was held at the University of Georgia’s Law School on March 9-11, 2018. In addition to serving on the planning committee, Professor Heyward participated in a panel discussion titled Training Fieldwork Supervisors: Foundations and Innovations — An Empirical View.

Professor and Associate Dean Milena Sterio is serving as a peer reviewer for the Yale Law Journal.  Professor Sterio is reviewing a piece entitled “From Catalonia to California: Secession in Constitutional Law.”

Chris Sagers, the James A. Thomas Professor of Law, appeared this week on “Air Talk,” a public affairs program on KPCC, a National Public Radio affiliate covering Los Angeles and Southern California with nearly a million listeners. During the segment , Sagers debated Curt Hessler, a lecturer in antitrust and communications at the UCLA School of Law, about the government’s antitrust challenge to the pending merger of AT&T and Time Warner, Inc.

Professor Jonathan Witmer-Rich is the principal drafter of the Report and Recommendations of the Cuyahoga County Bail Task Force. The report, released on March 16, 2018, calls for significant reforms to the way courts across Cuyahoga County set bail and conditions of pretrial release. According to the report, the courts “should transition from a bail system based on bond schedules, which vary widely from one court to the next, to a centralized, consistent, and comprehensive system of pretrial services initiated immediately after arrest.” The report notes that setting bail through bond schedules often results in the unnecessary detention of defendants simply because they are too poor to afford bond. Instead of bond schedules, the report recommends that courts “assess each defendant’s risk of non-appearance and danger to the community using a uniform risk assessment tool. If money bail is considered, courts should evaluate each defendant’s risk of non-appearance and ability to pay, and then tailor money bail accordingly.” The report also calls on Cuyahoga County to invest in centralized pretrial services, which will enable the courts to conduct individual assessments of each defendant, also also provide monitoring and oversight of defendants who are released pretrial. The Bail Task Force has been studying Cuyahoga County’s bail systems for over a year. The Report and Recommendations reflect current best practices in bail and pretrial release, and are consistent with bail reforms that have been enacted around the country in recent years.

The Report has received significant media coverage: for the Plain Dealer story regarding the Report, click here; for the Ideastream report, click here; for the WKSU story about the Report, click here.

Chris Sagers, the James A. Thomas Professor of Law, published an article this spring in a widely read academic journal on antitrust matters, the Antitrust Bulletin, concerning the recent resurgence of antitrust in popular politics. He argues that, though renewed popular interest is very encouraging, certain deep structural problems complicate antitrust that must be addressed before increased enforcement is even very politically plausible, and before it can again be a policy of consistent and lasting effectiveness.

His paper, “#LOLNothingMatters,” appears at 63 Antitrust Bull. 7 (2018).

Chris Sagers, the James A. Thomas Professor of Law, spoke with Bloomberg  about the U.S. Senate bid of Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley. Of particular interest has been the fact that Hawley, a red-state Republican, has founded his bid on antitrust rhetoric of a noticeably populist character, and as state AG has brought an aggressive state-law antitrust challenge to Google.

Sagers also spoke with Business Insider  about a new announcement by Amazon that it will no longer carry the “Nest” line of smart-home products. Nest, a division of Google’s parent Alphabet, Inc., is expected increasingly to compete directly with wired-home products produced by Amazon itself, as Amazon recently acquired a smart-home company called Ring. Some have suggested that Amazon’s decision could invite antitrust scrutiny.

On March 10, Professors Deborah Geier and John Plecnik joined several C|M alumni for a 3-hour CLE program hosted by the C|M Law Alumni Association on the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Professor Geier presented, “The TCJA: Context, Philosopy, and What Could Have Been.” Professor Plecnik provided an overview of significant changes affecting individuals under both the income and estate taxes. The event succeeded in raising nearly $4,000 in scholarship dollars for C|M students.

On March 13, 2018, Clinical Professor of Law Doron Kalir presented at the Ohio Supreme Court’s first-ever statewide Dispute Resolution Conference. The presentation, entitled “Restricting Access to Court Through ADR Clauses – Considerations, Policies, and Practices,” mainly considered a series of recent Supreme Court cases refusing to allow plaintiffs access to courts, referring them instead to mandatory arbitration proceedings.