Faculty Focus is a monthly publication documenting the activities, accomplishments, and honors of the University of Houston Law Center Faculty.

May 2004 

Johnny Rex Buckles has accepted an offer of publication for his most recent article, Reforming the Public Policy Doctrine, from the University of Kansas Law Review.

Marcilynn A. Burke, at the end of January presented her work-in-progress, Klamath Valley and Cappuccino Cowboys: The Rhetoric of the Endangered Species Act and Why it  (Still) Matters at the Mid-Atlantic People of Color Legal Scholarship Conference’s 2003 Annual Meeting hosted by the University of Baltimore School of Law. Also in January she was awarded support for her next research project, tentatively entitled Whiskey’s for Drinking; Water’s for Fighting: Environmental Flows Enter the Fray from the New Faculty Research Program in the amount of $6,000.00. Professor Burke accepted an offer of publication for the Klamath Valley and Cappuccino Cowboys piece in March from the Duke Environmental Law and Policy Forum with publication scheduled for this summer. She also presented this article as part of the Visiting Faculty Seminar series at the Louisiana State University’s Paul M. Herbert Law Center in April.

Darren Bush attended the 2004 Antitrust Colloquium at the Loyola University of Chicago where he presented his article co-authored with Salvatore Massa entitled Rethinking the Potential Competition Doctrine. The article will be published in the Wisconsin Law Review. His op-ed piece, Towing the Line, appeared on the front page of the Outlook section of the Houston Chronicle on April 25th. It raised legal and economic issues concerning the Mayor of Houston's Mobility Plan. On April 28th, KPFT Radio interviewed Professor Bush regarding the Mayor's Plan. On May 2nd Mayor White "addressed" Professor Bush's arguments in a Houston Chronicle op-ed titled "My Towing Reforms Will Get Traffic Moving". Professor Bush is preparing a response, arguing in part that the Mayor's op-ed piece did not seriously address a single concern raised by Professor Bush's editorial.

David R. Dow addressed Leadership Houston on April 8th on the subject “Is the Death Penalty Constitutional Yet Immoral?” He accepted an offer from Beacon Press to publish Struck By Lightning: People and Principle on America’s Death Row. His essay, Can the Military be Trusted to Protect Our Rights? appeared in the online magazine Nth.com, (May 2004)(available at http://www.nth.com) and his essay The Supreme Court’s “Rule-of-Four” in Death Penalty Cases appeared in The National Law Journal, May 10, 2004. The Texas Innocence Network hosted the 2004 National Innocence Conference in Austin, Texas on April 23, 24 and 25. More than 200 people from more than thirty states attended. The Texas Innocence Network reached its goal of not losing any money. At the Conference, Professor Dow gave two presentations: “Pursuing Claims of Actual Innocence in Collateral Litigation and Clemency Proceeding,” and “Investigative Strategies for Locating Evidence of Actual Innocence.”

 

Victor B. Flatt presented his paper on environmental rights, This Land is Your Land at a faculty colloquium at the University of Utah, S.J. Quinney College of Law in April. An op-ed article that he wrote on the relation of gay marriage to the Brown v. Board of Education, that he wrote was published recently in the Salt Lake Tribune.

 

Michelle Foss participated in the U.S. Agency for International Development seminar on Public Understanding and Participation at the Energy Symposium, Cape Town, South Africa on March 16th – 18th . She was a table discussion leader for the Honors College Great Conversations on March 31st and presided over a session with Chairman Pat Wood, U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and Lic. Francisco Salazar, President, Energy Commission, and Chamber of Representatives, Mexico, at the North American Forum  for Integration Conference on Energy Security in Monterrey, Mexico on April 1st. Dr. Foss also spoke at the Energy Security annual meeting in Dallas on April 6th, and spoke at the Federal Energy Bar Association annual conference LNG workshop, Washington, D.C. on April 28th and testified before the U.S. House-Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality, on ultra deep oil and gas, in Washington, D.C. on April 29th.

 

Leslie Griffin was quoted in the Dallas Morning News article, War Fears Spawned Supreme Court’s Biggest Losers on April 18th. The article was about the Guantanamo and enemy combatant cases that are before the Supreme Court. Her panel on human cloning was discussed in Science Café: Is human cloning wrong? in the West University Examiner on April 14, 2004.

 

Lonny Hoffman’s article, The Case Against Vicarious Jurisdiction was published in the most recent issue (April) of the University of Pennsylvania Law Review. He spoke on current trends in mediation at a meeting of the Inns of Court in Corpus Christi and as editor of The Advocate (quarterly journal published under the auspices of the Litigation Section for the State Bar of Texas which is sent to approximately eight thousand lawyers and judges around the state) he published the Spring 2004 issue of the Advocate. The issue is comprised of articles addressing the latest developments in civil litigation in Texas along with Professor Hoffman’s Editor’s Comments. In late April he attended a meeting of the Litigation Council for the Litigation Section of the State Bar of Texas in Galveston, Texas. He is also an ex officio member of the Council in his capacity as editor of the Advocate and he was interviewed by a reporter for National Law Journal concerning the subject of a new bill recently passed by the U.S. House of Representatives concerning complex litigation.

Professor Hoffman was honored to be named as one of the four recipients of the 2004 University Enron Teaching Excellence Awards.

 

Craig Joyce completed Intellectual Property: United States Law for Intellectual Property in the United States in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Legal History (forthcoming 2005). Professor Joyce also has been selected to write a chapter on the “theoretical underpinnings” of U.S. intellectual property law with co-authors from Chicago, Columbia, NYU, Georgetown, Boalt and Michigan.

 

Ellen Marrus’ article “That Isn’t Fair Judge:” The Costs of Using Prior Juvenile Delinquency Adjudications in Criminal Court Sentencing was published at 40 U. Hous. L. Rev. 1323 (2004). Professors Ellen Marrus and Irene Rosenberg have received a contract from Carolina Academic Press to publish a Juvenile Law Casebook. Professor Marrus will be speaking at the Third Annual Juvenile Defense Conference sponsored by the SW Juvenile Defender Center on May 22, 2004. Also Professors Marrus, Beassie, and Heppard will be leading small group discussions at the AALS Clinical Conference May 1-4, 2004.

 

Douglas Moll spoke on April 15th to the HBA Securities Litigation and Arbitration Section on “Shareholder Oppression in Texas” with Judge Sharolyn Wood.

 

Geraldine Moohr’s solicited article, Prosecutorial Power, White Collar Crime, and the Adversary System, will be published this summer by the Buffalo Criminal Law Review. She presented the paper to U.S. and German scholars in white collar crime at a two-day conference, “White Collar Criminal Law in Comparative Perspective” held on April 2-4, 2004 at the University of Buffalo Law School. Five U.S. and three German white collar specialists gave papers and led discussions in a workshop format.  This summer, Professor Moohr will present a paper at the SEAALS conference that analyzes the increasingly varied interpretations of the federal fraud statutes including mail and wire fraud by the federal circuit courts.

 

Ray Nimmer delivered a speech on “Licensing as Commercial Practice” at a Depaul University seminar in Chicago and a speech on “Financing Intangible Assets” at a program in Birmingham, Alabama, sponsored by the University of Alabama. He completed an article on  Privacy, Data Control and Transactional Law which will be published in a book produced by Stanford University Law School’s program on Information and Intellectual Property Law.

 

Michael A. Olivas was a busy boy at the end of the semester. At Ohio State University, he delivered two lectures, one on the law concerning college teaching and one on the effect of the USA Patriot Act on colleges; he also consulted on the OSU admissions response to Grutter. He also addressed the Texas Association of State University Attorneys in Austin, on recent developments in Title IX, both in college athletics and in sexual harassment cases. He also presented IRRIRA, The DREAM Act, and Undocumented College Residency at a national conference sponsored by Arizona State University; this paper will appear in the special issue of the Journal of College and University Law on “Colleges After 9/11”. He also wrote the Foreword to this special issue which is also online at (http://www.nd.edu/~jcul/patriot_act.html). In Austin he spoke at the UT-CLE on “Employment Law: Legal Developments in Hiring and Firing Faculty.

 

Laura Oren was selected by the Faculty Senate to serve on the Faculty Senate Commission on University Governance, a university-wide, eleven person commission. Her article surveying Civil Rights (Section 1983) law for last year will appear in the Texas Tech Law Review and her article on The Paradox of Unmarried Fathers and the Constitution: Biology “Plus” Defines Relations; Biology Alone Safeguards the Public Fisc, will appear in the William and Mary Journal of Women and the Law.

 

Jordan Paust agreed to the request of the Florida Law Review to respond to the Dunwody Distinguished Lecture in Law paper by Professor Viet Dinh at Georgetown. His essay on The History, Nature, and Reach of the Alien Tort Claims Act appears at 16 Florida Journal of International Law 249 (2004), and his article, Post-9/11 Overreaction and Fallacies Regarding War and Defense, Guantanamo, the Status of Persons, Treatment, Judicial Review of Detention, and Due Process in Military Commissions is forthcoming in 79 Notre Dame Law Review (2004). Professor Paust  also participated in radio and USA Today stories about the abuse of detainees in Iraq and elsewhere and has agreed to be a panel member at conferences in Italy and at the U.S. Naval War College in May and June. He also drafted two Amici briefs on behalf of International Law Professors and filed with the U.S. Supreme Court in the Hamdi and Padilla cases. Professor Paust was elected to the Executive Committee of the Lieber Society on the Law of Armed Conflict, of the American Society of International Law, and continues as Co-Chair of the International Criminal Law Interest Group of the American Society.

 

Nancy Rapoport is in Class XXII of American Leadership Forum and will soon be camping in Washington State to bond with her fellow classmates in June. She hopes that folks will be around later this summer to sign her body cast.

 

Irene Merker Rosenberg and Yale Rosenberg’s last article written together will be coming out shortly Of God’s Mercy and the Four Biblical Methods of Capital Punishment: Stoning, Burning, Beheading, and Strangulation, 78 Tulane L. Rev. 1 (2004).

 

Richard Saver’s article, Research Oversight From the Corporate Governance Perspective: Comparing Institutional Review Boards and Corporate Boards, will be published in the November 2004 issue of the William and Mary Law Review. Professor Saver also presented “Is There a Quality Gain to Gainsharing?” to the Health Law Section of the Houston Bar Association on March 10th.

 

Robert Schuwerk was quoted in the April 19th issue of the Texas Lawyer on referral fees.

 

Ronald Turner’s article, Traditionalism, Majoritarian Morality and the Homosexual Sodomy Issue: The Journey from Bowers to Lawrence will be published as the lead article in the November 2004 issue of the Kansas Law Review. His article The Too-Many Minorities and Racegoating Dynamics of the Anti-Affirmative-Action Position: From Bakke to Grutter and Beyond will soon be published by the Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly along with articles by University of Michigan Law School Dean Evan Caminker and other scholars. His New York University Annual Survey of American Law article, The Americans with Disabilities Act and the Workplace: A Study of the Supreme Cout’s Disabling Choices and Decisions is headed to the printer and will soon be available. In addition, his entry on federal age discrimination law and policy can be found in the just-published Encyclopedia of Retirement and Finance.

 

Joseph Vail was part of a panel presentation on April 22nd at a conference sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson Center and the Center for Immigration Studies. The topic was the “Unintended Consequences of Immigration Reform”. On May 21st he will be part of the faculty of the American Immigration Lawyers Association in Denver, Colorado for a conference on presentation of cases before the immigration court and on May 27th he will speak to the Fort Bend County Bar Association on the immigration consequences of criminal conduct.

 

Stephen Zamora attended a NACLE workshop in Mexico City dealing with the protection of the rights of indigenous people. The workshop which he and NACLE Coordinator Nita Jackson helped organize brought together experts from Canada, Mexico and the United States who teach and do research on the law of indigenous peoples. Despite the importance of the subject in the three countries, experts from Canada, Mexico and the United States have not collaborated in the past, and NACLE is working to provide a vehicle for discussing comparative indigenous rights law.