Faculty Focus is a monthly publication documenting the activities, accomplishments, and honors of the University of Houston Law Center Faculty.
John Jay Douglass provided common sense election law commentary during a second interview with KTRH radio. He also gave interviews with Channel 2 and 13, as well as answering a number of press media questions from press associations in France and Las Vegas. He appeared on KHOU-TV, Ch.11 to give expert commentary on election law issues during a political news special that aired on November 16.
David Dow was a panelist at the first capital punishment symposium series, held at the University of Texas on November 10, 2000.
Sandy Gaines will be giving three presentations in November. On Nov. 14, he will speak at the 30th Anniversary Symposium of the Universidad Panamericana Faculty of Law on the subject: "NAFTA, the Environment, and Mexico: The Challenge and the Opportunity for Change from New International Institutions." On Nov. 17, he will participate in two panels at a symposium on Civil Society Participation in NAFTA at the University of Toronto. He will talk about environmental issues in investor-state arbitrations under NAFTA Chapter 11, and later participate in a panel discussion on the general theme of NAFTA reform to enhance civil society participation.
Ellen Marrus brought the Juvenile Defender Leadership Summit to the UH Law Center October 27 - 29th. This event attracted over 250 participants to the law center from every state and the District of Columbia. In addition, along with Judge Veronica Morgan-Price and Attorney Carlos Garcia, she spoke at one of the sessions. The workshop was entitled Challenging Juvenile Defenders to Address Diversity and Cultural Competency. Professor Marrus also assisted in the investigation for the report, Selling Justice Short: Juvenile Indigent Defense in Texas, and was interviewed by the Houston Chronicle on November 1 for a front page article regarding the posting of juvenile sex offenders' information to the Internet. On November 16th, she appeared on the television show, Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, to discuss juvenile justice issues.
Douglas Moll presented his current article, "Reasonable Expectations v. Implied-in-Fact Contracts: Is the Shareholder Oppression Doctrine Needed?" at the Law & Entrepreneurship Conference on October 20 in Portland, Oregon. He will be presenting his paper, "Shareholder Oppression in Texas Close Corporations: Majority Rule Isn't What it Used to Be," to the Corporate Counsel section of Houston Bar Association later this month.
Professor Jordan Paust delivered part of a paper entitled "Universal Jurisdiction and Responsibility: A Survey of Current, Impending, and Potential Cases" at a conference on the Princeton Project on Universal Jurisdiction (Nov. 10-11) at Princeton University.
Professors Irene Rosenberg and Yale Rosenberg, together with co-author Bentzion Turin, UHLC Class of 2000, published "Murder by Gruma: Causation in Homicide Cases Under Jewish Law," 80 Boston U.L.Rev. 1017 (2000). The Professors Rosenberg (sans Turin) had their essay entitled "Of Miranda and Homely Brides: Imperfect Rules for an Imperfect World" accepted by the American Journal of Criminal Law for publication in spring 2001. Professor Irene Rosenberg (sans Yale) published "The Supreme Court, the Fourth Amendment, Dan the Public Schools: An Ominous Mixture," 36 Crime. L. Bull. 360 (September-October 2000), and had her essay entitled "Florida v. JAL. and the Fourth Amendment Rights of Juvenile Delinquents: Peekaboo!" accepted for publication by the University of Cincinnati Law Review.
Professor Robert Schuwerk moderated a panel discussing multi-disciplinary practice issues for law firms and accountant consulting firms serving intellectual property clients at the 16th Annual HIPLA/UH Institute of Intellectual Property Law.
Ira B. Shepard made two presentations on legal ethics to the Houston Chapter of the American Corporate Counsel Association's Woodlands retreat on November 3rd. The presentations were: 1) "Warning Jonah Before Throwing Him Overboard: Duty of Corporate Counsel to Notify A Constituent That S(he) Represents The Corporation, Not the Constituent"; and 2) "Ethical Rules Governing Lawyers, Roosters And Other Professionals Relating To Inappropriate Relationships With Clients, Subordinates, Colleagues, And Others." He moderated a panel discussion (including U.S. Tax Court Judge Juan F. Vasquez, IRS lawyer Bernie Nelson, and tax litigator Larry Campagna) on "Presenting Your Best Case Before The Tax Court" on November 8th at the Second Annual Corporate & Taxation Law Society Lecture at UH Law Center. He also spoke on "Recent Developments in Federal Taxation" to the Wednesday Tax Forum in Houston.
Jacqueline Weaver was quoted in the Houston Chronicle on September 23 on the politics of using the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to lower oil prices. She was also quoted in the Chronicle on October 1 regarding the important role of the Texas Supreme Court in creating a body of oil and gas jurisprudence in the 1930s. She also submitted a case update for the ABA's "Energy and Natural Resources Litigation Committee Newsletter".
She also presented a half-day seminar on Conservation Regulation for the Short Course on Oil and Gas Law sponsored by the Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Institute and the Southwestern Legal Foundation on October 20th in Houston. She was also interviewed by the Associated Press for an article on how the presidential candidates differed on energy policy.
Steve Zamora, Seth Chandler, and Sandy Gaines attended a curriculum development workshop in Tucson, Arizona at the end of October. This was the first workshop organized by NACLE - the North American Consortium on Legal Education - and funded by a grant from the U.S., Canadian and Mexican governments. Diane O'Brien, the NACLE coordinator at the University of Houston (which serves NACLE secretariat) also attended the workshop. The workshop brought together 24 professors from the 9 member law schools of NACLE, to exchange ideas about how to incorporate North American comparative law issues into our courses, so that students can have more exposure to cross-border legal problems and solutions. More specific curriculum development (CD) workshops will be funded in the future, to bring together experts working in the same subject matter in different countries. Next year, CD workshops will be held in the areas of health law (Seth Chandler is coordinating this one), environmental law and family law, for the purpose of developing modules that can be used by law professors in Canada, Mexico, and the U.S. For more information on NACLE, see the new web site at http://www.nacle.org