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

June, 2005

Johnny Buckles' article, Reforming the Public Policy Doctrine, has been published in Volume 53 of the University of Kansas Law Review.  Professor Buckles' updates to two chapters in the 2005 spring supplement to Estate Planning Law and Practice co-authored by George P. Mair and Harvard Law Professor David Westfall have also been published.

Professor Bush's article co-authored with Professor Betsy Gelb of the C.T. Bauer College of Business titled Marketing Meets Antitrust: Cautions for Dominant Companies will be published in the MIT Sloan Management Review's Summer 2005 issue.  MIT Sloan Management Review is one of the two leading peer-reviewed management journals in the country.  Along with Professor Harry First at NYU, Professor Bush is putting together a symposium for the University of Utah Law Review tentatively titled "Recurring Issues in Antitrust Enforcement:  20th Century Wine in 21st Century Bottles A Symposium in Honor of John J. Flynn."  Professor Bush will present a paper at the symposium titled "Nostradamus Looking Backward: The State Action Exemption in Deregulated Industries."   Professor Bush was also quoted in Hospital Mergers Could Raise Antitrust Issues, Houston Chronicle, May 19, 2005, at B5, regarding hospital mergers and acquisitions potentially under consideration in the City of Houston.  Finally, he submitted a short piece titled, in Essay on "Screening" for Market Power in Electricity Markets for an upcoming edition of Houston Energy Magazine. 

 

Richard Dole's article, Applicant Ad Hoc Waiver of Discrepancies in the Documents Presented Under Letters of Credit will be published in the October 2005 Southern Methodist Law Review.

 

David R. Dow's article, The Extraordinary Execution of Billy Vickers, co-authored with Law Center graduates Jim Marcus and Jared Tyler, and with Greg Wiercioch and Morris Moon, appeared as the lead article at 13 Wm & Mary Bill of Rts J. 521 (2004).  He read from his recent book, Executed on a Technicality, at the Brazos Bookstore in Houston on May 5th, and also read from and discussed the book at various venues in Washington, D.C., New York, Boston, Nashville, Chicago, Austin, and Fort Worth.  He spoke at the Federal Appellate Conference in Austin on ethical issues in post-conviction litigation.

 

Sandy Gaines is back from his year's visit at Lewis & Clark.  He has just been selected by the World Wildlife Fund as the writer of a synthesis report of seven studies now under way on the effects of trade on rural sustainable development and environment in different countries (China, Vietnam, India, Madagascar, South Africa, Mexico, and Chile).  This project will extend over the next 15 - 18 months.  The WWF is undertaking the project in conjunction with the World Bank, with funding from the Dutch government.  Professor Gaines co-authored a textbook on Trade and the Environment with Chris Wold and Greg Block which will be published and ready for adoption by the end of June from Carolina Academic Press.  A research report he drafted for the North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation's studies of the environmental effects of trade, "The Environmental Policy Implications of Investor-State Arbitrations under NAFTA Chapter 11," has been favorably peer-reviewed.  He will be finishing the report in the coming weeks and presenting it at a CEC-sponsored conference in Montreal to be held Nov 30th-Dec 1st.

 

Craig Joyce delivered his Inaugural Lecture as Andrews Kurth Law Center Professor of Law. He also completed the manuscript for the 2005-2006 Cumulative Supplement to his copyright casebook.

 

Joan Krause served as Program Chair for the 29th Annual Health Law Teachers Conference, hosted on June 2nd-4th by the University of Houston Health Law & Policy Institute and Baylor College of Medicine.

 

Tom Oldham co-authored amendments to the Texas Family Code and they will become law as of September 1st.

 

Bob Schuwerk gave two CLE presentations in April. On April 21st he participated in a panel on Enron for the HBA Joint Faculty Meeting and in a panel presentation on the new Texas Disciplinary Rules of Professional Conduct at the Houston Bench and Bar Conference in Galveston.

 

Sandra Guerra-Thompson presented a talk on American Guidelines Sentencing at the NACLE Conference in Halifax, Nova Scotia on May 18th. She gave an interview to Channel 11News for an in-depth story on regional drug task forces that appeared on May 22nd. She also gave an interview to the Dallas Morning Times on a pending Supreme Court case regarding racial discrimination in jury selection. She was recently re-elected as a member of the Board of Directors for the Hispanic Bar Association.  

 

Ronald Turner participated in a roundtable discussion of comparative labor and employment law in North America at the May 2005 North American Consortium on Legal Education conference in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and is indebted to Steve Zamora for his invitation to discuss labor and employment issues with scholars from Mexico and Canada.  He has been asked by the Secretariat of the North American Commission for Labor Cooperation to author a chapter on United States workplace discrimination law which will be published in the Commission's comparative labor law guide.  His recent publications include Title VII and the Inequality-Enhancing Effects of the Bisexual and Equal Opportunity Harasser Defenses, 7 U. Pa. J. Lab. & Emp. L. 341 (2005), and Traditionalism, Majoritarian Morality, and the Homosexual Sodomy Issue: The Journey from Bowers to Lawrence, 53 Kansas Law Review 1 (2004).      

Greg Vetter presented a discussion of software intellectual property issues as they relate to open source software to a group at the Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Science on May 10th.

Jacqueline Weaver was asked to submit an essay/article on national energy policy for a special issue of the Legal Times.  The article appeared in the May 16, 2005 issue of the Legal Times.

 

Steve Zamora attended, and helped organize, the annual meeting of the North American Consortium on Legal Education, which was held in Halifax, Nova Scotia, May 18th to 20th.  The theme of the meeting was:  "Comparing North America's Legal Regimes: Similarities and Differences, Cooperation and Conflict."  The three-day conference included sessions on comparative labor law, comparative criminal law, international trade law, comparative environmental and energy law, and comparative law of indigenous rights.  The conference also included presentations of award-winning student papers by students of NACLE member law schools;  the Law Center's Catherine Lavery presented an outstanding paper on property disputes of religious communities in Canada, Mexico and the United States.  University of Houston Law Center Professors Sandy Gaines, Sandra Guerra Thompson, and Ron Turner also made presentations at the conference.