Faculty
Focus
Faculty
Focus is a monthly publication documenting the activities, accomplishments,
and honors of the
April,
2006
Marcilynn A. Burke presented “The Rhetoric of the Endangered Species Act and Why it (Still) Matters: Take 2” at the University of Florida Levin College of Law’s Public Interest Environmental Conference in March. She was invited to publish her remarks as an essay in the Journal of Ecology & Environmental Law and to speak on a panel at the 2006 Austin Bar Association/Austin Young Lawyers’ Association Bench Bar Conference. Her panel is entitled “This Land is My Land: The Kelo Decision and its Repercussions in Texas.”
Richard Dole’s article, Applicant Ad Hoc Waiver of Discrepancies in the Documents Presented Under Letters of Credit, 58 SMU L. Rev. 1453 (2005) has been reprinted in The 2006 Ann. Surv. Letter of Credit L. & Prac. 71-100 (Institute Internat’l Banking Law & Practice 2006).
John Jay Douglass was interviewed by La Voz, the Spanish language newspaper owned by the Houston Chronicle, on the problem of reapportionment in Texas in the mid-decade and its significance to Hispanic voters. He was also interviewed by KPST on same subject.
Victor Flatt was heard on NPR on March 28th, commenting about enforcement of environmental laws in Texas. Professor Flatt spoke on city controls of climate change in London on April 4th, and moderated a discussion of methods of getting the climate change message to the public. On April 5th, he met with the London Lord Mayor’s office to discuss their assistance with climate change issues in the City of Houston.
Gidi will present a paper on Comparative Civil Procedure at the Italy-US Conference on Comparative Law hosted by Pennsylvania State University and sponsored by the American Society of Comparative Law and the Italian Society of Comparative Law. He also received a grant from the University of Houston to further develop his research on class actions.
Leslie Griffin spoke to the Praeclarus Club on Friday, March 17th, about “The New Supreme Court.” She also spoke recently at two student lunch gatherings on “How to Speak about Religion in Public”: to the Muslim Law Students Association on March 1st and to the Society of Law and Politics on March 21st.
Craig Joyce published Lazy B and the Nation’s Court: Pragmatism in Service of Principle, in the Harvard Law Review. Professor Joyce, Associate Dean Victor Flatt and Director of the O’Quinn Law Library Spencer Simons attended the ABA’s workshop, “Bricks and Bytes,” on building new law school buildings.
Joan H. Krause’s column, Ethical Lawyering in the Gray Areas: Health Care Fraud and Abuse, was published in the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics.
Ellen Marrus presented a paper on how the developmental differences between teenagers and adults create a need for stronger procedural safeguards for youth when they are the subject of interrogation by law enforcement at a symposium co-sponsored by the MacArthur Research Network on Adolescent Development and Juvenile Justice, Temple Law Review, and Juvenile Law Center. Other presenters included members of the MacArthur Research Network including Professors Elizabeth Scott, Edward Mulvey, and Frank F. Fursetenberg; and the Jackson Reynolds Professor of Law at Stanford University Michael Wald. Professor Marrus was also one of the Nita Faculty for the training of family and juvenile law practitioners held at the University of Houston Law Center in February, and presented a workshop entitled “Children + Social Workers + Lawyers + Child Welfare System = Better Placements” at a child welfare conference sponsored by the University of Mississippi.
Douglas Moll spoke at Western New England College of Law (WNEC) in Springfield, Massachusetts on March 7th. He was invited by the WNEC Law and Business Center for Advancing Entrepreneurship to speak on the topic of oppression of LLC members. Professors Moll and Ragazzo also submitted the draft of their casebook, Closely Held Business Organizations: Cases, Materials, and Problems, to West Publishing.
Gerry Moohr has written a chapter for a book edited by Joan Heminway, The Legal Problems of Martha Stewart, to be published by Carolina Press this spring. Her chapter is called Navigating the Currents of White Collar Crime. In February, she gave her Inaugural Address, “What the Martha Stewart Case Tells Us About White Collar Crime.” The address will be published by the Houston Law Review. On April 22, she will participate in a round table on “The Criminalization of Corporate Law” at the University of Maryland Law School.
Raymond Nimmer was the lead speaker at the annual meeting of the World Information Technology Law Association in Zurich, Switzerland, speaking of international privacy law. He also was the featured speaker at a meeting of the National Hispanic Law Association in Seattle, speaking on Electronic Commerce Law.
Tom Oldham spoke to the law faculty at Santa Clara University School of Law in March on using video conferencing to conduct classes at more than one location simultaneously and the 37th supplement to his book Divorce, Separation and the Distribution of Property has been published.
Michael A. Olivas presented material from his forthcoming book on the Hernandez v. Texas case at the University of New Mexico Law School, and gave a short presentation on a forthcoming piece about the Ft Bend case in 1945 concerning Macario Garcia (a Medal of Honor winning vet who was refused service in a Richmond restaurant and was arrested for the incident; the state of Texas dropped the charges when Walter Winchell took up the matter in his popular radio show and newspaper column) at a conference at the University of Texas, on Mexican American veterans in the WWII period. He will publish a chapter on the case in a forthcoming book. He also chaired the ABA/AALS inspection team concerning Rutgers-Newark Law School.
Irene Rosenberg spoke on Jewish criminal law at the 6th Conference of Religiously Affiliated Law Schools held on March 30th-April 1st at Baylor Law School.
Richard Saver was quoted in a Christian Science Monitor article on March 9th concerning the role of the chief financial officer (CFO) under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. The story ran as background to the testimony of CFO Andrew Fastow in the Enron trial. Professor Saver also was quoted in a Houston Chronicle article on March 11th concerning a malpractice lawsuit against Baylor College of Medicine, involving an undiagnosed parasitic infection, in which published medical journal articles by Baylor faculty about the unusual case helped undermine Baylor’s defense.
Sandra Guerra Thompson gave a talk on criminal justice issues for a class at Pearland High School on March 23rd. She was also quoted on March 3rd and March 22nd in Houston Chronicle articles about the trial of the people responsible for the deaths of the immigrants who died in a truck in Victoria.
Don Tomlinson presented a half-day seminar on March 23rd to a group of about 150 judges in Athens, Georgia, at the Georgia Institute for Continuing Judicial Education on the University of Georgia campus. The seminar, on media relations and media law in relation to judges and courtrooms, was co-presented by the Honorable Steve Smith, Judge, 361st Judicial District, Brazos County, Texas.
Ronald Turner and Michael Green of Texas Wesleyan University School of Law will be presenting their paper Gilmer and the Civil Rights Act of 1991 at Fifteen: Is There Any Role for Unions in Employment Discrimination Arbitration? at the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service’s Thirteenth National Labor-Management Conference which will be held in Chicago, Illinois in August of this year. Their invitation to participate in the conference was the result of a competitive process in which the selection committee considered a large number of proposals before selecting a limited number to participate in the program. In addition, Professor Turner served as a judge in the quarterfinal round of the Thirteenth Annual Judge John R. Brown Admiralty Moot Court Competition, sitting on a panel which included Professor Leslie Griffin.
Joseph Vail’s book, Essentials of Removal and Relief-Representing Individuals in Immigration Proceedings was published and released by the American Immigration Lawyers’ Association on March 22nd. He also spoke and moderated a panel on immigration court proceedings at the Spring Conference for the American Immigration Lawyers’ Association on March 24th in Washington, D.C.
Greg Vetter presented at the University of Washington School of Law conference “Beyond the Basics: Advanced Legal Topics in Open Source and Collaborative Development in the Global Marketplace” held on March 21st by the Shidler Center for Law, Commerce & Technology. Professor Vetter discussed the intersection of patent law and open source software development and moderated a panel on that topic. He co-hosted with Professor Paul Janicke a town hall meeting held at the Law Center on March 22nd by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) to discuss the PTO’s proposed new rules for patent applications and continuations with the Houston Intellectual Property bar. He co-chaired with Professor Craig Joyce the Third Annual Baker Botts Lecture on March 28th, "Patents in a Changing Economy," presented by the Honorable Arthur J. Gajarsa of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Professor Vetter presented his essay Open Source Licensing and Scattering Opportunism in Software Standards at the Boston College Law Review symposium Owning Standards (http://www.bc.edu/schools/law/lawreviews/symposia) held on March 31st by the Emerging Enterprises and Business Law Program at The Boston College Law School. The essay will be published in the Boston College Law Review symposium