The University of Houston Law Center is part of the global network of law schools with significant ties to the international legal community. Our professors are in the top ranks of scholars who publish articles in international journals, teach classes at foreign schools, and host visits by researchers who travel to the Law Center to complete their projects.
Recent international activities and initiatives pursued by our faculty include the following:
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Richard Alderman Lecturer at law schools in England, Portugal, Serbia, and New Zealand. Visiting Faculty Member at The University of Tokyo, LaTrobe University in Australia, and Toin University in Japan. USAID Consultant on new Vietnamese consumer protection law. Guest Speaker at conferences in New Zealand, Japan, South Africa, India and England. International Publications include journals published in law journals in Serbia and Nigeria. Hosts a bi-annual International Conference for consumer law professors that attracts participants from many different countries. Hosted visiting scholars from England, Japan, and India through an ongoing program sponsored by the Center for Consumer Law. |
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Seth Chandler Lecturer at the University of British Columbia Law School in Vancouver, Canada on comparative issues in Canadian and United States Long Term Care Insurance in November 2010. He also gave the opening keynote address at the 10th International Mathematica Symposium in July of 2010 and spoke in Beijing, China on “A Program in Law and Computation.” |
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Barbara Evans Panelist for Canadian Institutes of Health Research-funded project to develop consensus guidelines for the ethical conduct and ethics review of cluster randomized, controlled clinical trials (2011); a panelist on Consensus Conference to Generate Ethics Guidelines for Cluster Randomized Trials, November 28-30, 2011 in Ottawa, Canada. Speaker on Clinical Translation of Pharmacogenomics under the U.S. Food & Drug Administration Amendments Act of 2007, at the University of Toronto 2011-2012 Health Law, Ethics and Policy Seminar Series on November 24, 2011. |
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Patricia Gray Guest Lecturer on “Responding to Public Health Emergencies” at Hunan Normal University in Changsha, Hunan Province, China, December, 2005. |
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Tracy Hester Presenter Private Claims for a Global Climate: U.S. and Indian Litigation Approaches to Climate Change and Environmental Harm in India that was accepted for publication by the Journal of the Indian Law Institute. He traveled to Delhi, India on July 23 to present the paper at ILI’s International Conference on Global Environment and Disaster Management. While in India, he met with the Supreme Court of India, the Central Bureau of Investigation (India’s FBI) and the Indian Law Institute. In March 2011, he met with the University College of London, Oxford University, and the U.K. Department of Energy & Climate Change to discuss environmental law issues arising from climate engineering projects. Organizer of a meeting on June 14-16 in Montreal, Canada with NAFTA’s Commission for Environmental Cooperation to begin a research project on cross-border enforcement issues. The project will culminate in a report in May 2012. Professor Steve Zamora helped organize both the meeting and project under the auspices of NACLE. Lecturer: In November, he will teach a week-long environmental and energy law course in Lisbon. |
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Lonny Sheinkopf Hoffman Lecturer at the University of Paris (Naterre) on discovery in federal and state courts in the United States and has been invited back to give a similar set of lectures in April 2011. Faculty lecturer, “The Allocation of Jurisdiction in the American Federal System,” American Law Institute-American Bar Association, Program on the American Judicial System at Renmin University, Beijing, China (June 7-9, 2006) Published paper (in connection with China conference), The Allocation of Jurisdiction in the American Federal Judicial System and Treatment of Interjurisdictional Conflicts in Developing American Law and Its Impact on China (ALI-ABA 2006) [prepared for American Law Institute/American Bar Association conference at Renmin University, Beijing, China (June 7-9, 2006)], full text available at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=901473 Named as Fulbright Senior Specialist Candidate on the Fulbright Senior Specialist Roster, selected by the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board, the Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs of the Department of State, and the Council for International Exchange of Scholars for a five-year period beginning April 2002. Faculty Lecturer, “Current Developments in Class Actions, Federal Subject Matter Jurisdiction, Supplemental Jurisdiction, Removal, Personal Jurisdiction, and Venue” and “Interrelationship of State and Federal Litigation,” American Law Institute-American Bar Association, Civil Practice and Litigation Techniques in Federal and State Courts (St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, March 2007). Faculty Lecturer, “Interrelationship of State and Federal Litigation” and “Sanctions Under Federal Law”, American Law Institute-American Bar Association, Civil Practice and Litigation Techniques in Federal and State Courts (San Juan, Puerto Rico, January 2005). |
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Craig Joyce Lecturer in May and June 2011 at the Institute for Chinese Law and Business in Beijing, China, under the auspices of St. Mary’s School of Law at Beihang University. Beihang bills itself as the MIT of China (with the difference that it added a law school in 2001). He also taught a survey of U.S. intellectual property law and was nicknamed jé“m, or “Benevolent Presence,” by his students. He will return to teach in the 2012 Institute.
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Al Lucas Scholar-in-Residence at the University of Houston Law Center for eight weeks, beginning Oct. 3, 2011. He is an expert in Canada's energy and environment laws and will be helping the Energy Management and Policy group of colleges (largely Law, Business and CLASS) develop conferences on the controversial X-L Keystone Pipeline, on oil sands and other key issues during his stay here. |
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John Lunstroth Participant in the annual conference of the International Intelligence Ethics Association in March 2011 at Nuffield College, Oxford, which was co-sponsored by the Oxford Intelligence Group. At the conference there was a former Home Secretary and other senior government, military, and intelligence officials from UK, USA, France, Germany, RSA, and other countries, and an assortment of academics from 19 countries. Lord Butler, who conducted the “Butler Review,” an inquiry into the intelligence relating to UK’s decision to invade Iraq as part of the U.S.-led coalition in 2003, was the plenary speaker. |
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Ray Nimmer Speaker at a program on Copyright Law in Canada in March 2011. Lecturer in Lisbon where he taught a course in Contracts in January 2011 and will teach a similar course in Lisbon in September-October. |
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Thomas Oldham Presenter at the International Society of Family Law conference in Lyon France in July 2011. He discussed regulation of premarital agreements in the United States. Visiting scholar for a week at Australian National University in the summer of 2010, where he conferred with a colleague in Canberra and officials with the Australian Office of Child Support regarding issues relating to the enforcement of child support orders. Visiting Scholar in Residence, Australian National University, May 2009 Conference Participant in Cambridge, England, addressing different approaches toward premarital and postnuptial agreements in a number of developed countries, June 2009. |
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Michael A. Olivas Convenor of the EU/UK/US Higher Education Scholars Study Group on Mobility, see http://www.law.uh.edu/ihelg/eustudy/homepage.html Lectured and consulted widely on immigration- and education- related subjects, and litigated and served as an expert witness on cases arising from immigration and citizenship topics, including Day v. Bond, where the client (the State of Kansas) won in the Tenth Circuit. New developments and papers on these issues are posted to a website maintained by the Institute for Higher Education Law & Governance at www.law.uh.edu/ihelg. Hosted a postdoctoral scholar from Spain at the Law Center during 2006-07 academic year: Prof. Dr. Jose L. Garcia Garrido of the Facultad de Educacion, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Madrid at the Law Center during the 2006-07. The Institute for Higher Education Law & Governance has sponsored 22 postdoctoral fellow visits since its inception in 1982. Organized a study group of 10 international scholars who regularly exchange papers and research on EU college residency/benefits issues. The group includes legal and economics scholars in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany, and the United States, and a 2008 conference is currently being planned. Its webpage is: www.law.uh.edu/ihelg/eustudy Other International Activities: He made a presentation entitled Developments in 529 Prepaid Tuition Plans (PTP) and College Savings Plans (CSP) since 2003, September, 2010, at Center for Social Security Studies (CSSS) of Wuhan University, Wuhan, PRC (UHLC/IHLEG Monograph 10-5), available at: http://www.law.uh.edu/ihelg/monograph/10-05.pdf. He also participated in International Association of Law Schools conference in Buenos Aires, March, 2011. |
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Robert Palmer By May 2008, approximately 2 million frames will be accessible, covering a time period of 1218 to 1360. He also spent 16 weeks in London, England, in 2011 to develop the Anglo-American Legal Tradition (AALT) / WAALT websites. Completing a large research project that is making the O’Quinn Law Library at the Law Center a unique on-line provider of English legal records covering a period of approximately five centuries. The Anglo-American Legal Tradition project includes a statistical analysis of the relationship between law and society ca. 1200-1607. The project requires significant time in the UK National Archives in London, England, and it will eventually provide web access to the main series of legal records between 1218 and 1650. By May 2008, approximately 2 million frames will be accessible, covering a time period of 1218 to 1360. |
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Jordan Paust Lecturer on race-based affirmative action and international law at the International Institute of Human Rights annual study session in Strasbourg, France, July 13 and 15, 2010. Panelist on U.S. Perspectives on the Need for Taiwan’s Admission to the United Nations, Taipei, Taiwan, Sept. 14, 2007 International publications include: Beyond the Law: The Bush Administration’s Unlawful Responses in the “War” on Terror (Cambridge University Press 2007) Terrorism as an International Crime, in International Cooperation in Counter-Terrorism 25-31, 252-256, 270-71 (Giuseppe Nesi ed., Ashgate Pub., U.K. 2006) Commentary on Non-State Actors: Their Role and Impact on the Fragmentation of International Law, in Unity and Diversity in International Law 335-338 (Duncker & Humblot Pub., Berlin 2006) Essay, Self-Defense, Laws of War, and Human Rights, 81(2) Die Friedens-Warte 81-85 (Journal for International Peace and Organization) (Germany 2006) |
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Jacqueline Lang Weaver Visiting Professor responsible for a five-week course on international petroleum transactions coordinated through Seton Hall University Law School Summer Program Abroad, Cairo, Egypt, Summer 2007. She was also a Visiting Professor at Universidade Católica Portuguesa’s Global LL.M. in International Business Law, Lisbon, Portugal, in May, 2011, teaching a course in International Petroleum Transactions. In addition, she was a Visiting Professor at Universidade Católica Portuguesa’s Global School of Law in Lisbon, Portugal, April 28 – May 8, 2010. Lecturer at a joint University of Houston – Universidade Católica Portuguesa Global School of Law Advanced Legal Studies Program for Sonangol attorneys in Lisbon, Portugal, Sept. 2011 on Petroleum Conservation Law, Cross-Border Petroleum Development, Oil Spill Conventions and Anti-Bribery Laws. She also taught a Short Course on “Sustainable Development in International Petroleum Contracts and Practice” for the LL.M. program in Petroleum Law at the Universidade Agostinho Neto in Luanda, Angola from May 5–10, 2011. While in Luanda, she spoke to the Legal Department and other technical professionals in the headquarters of Sonangol, the national oil company of Angola on “The Deepwater Horizon Spill: Causes, Consequences and Cures.” In 2010, she taught a Short Course on “Commercial Frameworks: Concessions, PSAs, Tax-Royalty, Risk Service, and Hybrids” in the International Oil and Gas course at Chulalongkorn University’s LL.M. (Business Law) Program, Bangkok, Thailand, August 8-11, 2010. She also presented Short Courses on U.S. Oil and Gas Law and on International Petroleum Transactions for the joint UHLC– Católica Global School of Law Advanced Legal Studies program for Sonangol attorneys in Lisbon, Portugal in Sept. 2010. Visiting Professor responsible for a two-credit course on international energy contracts at the University of Houston’s Bauer School of Business Executive MBA Program in Beijing, January 2007. Students included executives working with Sinopec and CNPC. Visiting Professor responsible for a five-week course on international petroleum transactions coordinated through Seton Hall University Law School Summer Program Abroad, Cairo, Egypt, Summer 2007. |