Faculty Focus

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

September, 2006

Aaron Bruhl had three items accepted for publication recently.  A short piece on the new line-item veto proposal currently pending in Congress will appear in the Yale Law Journal Pocket Part, the online supplement to the Yale Law Journal.  His article on the judicial confirmations process

(available at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=648978) was accepted for publication in the Nebraska Law Review.  Finally, the Cornell Journal of Law & Public Policy has invited Prof. Bruhl to write a short response to an article appearing in an upcoming issue.

 

Darren Bush, along with professors Mark Bauer (Stetson), Peter Carstensen (Wisconsin), John Connor (Purdue), Shubha Ghosh (SMU), Max Huffman (Cincinnati) and Spencer Waller (Loyola Chicago) wrote a letter to the Chairs and Ranking Members of the Judiciary Committees of the House and Senate, arguing against the proposed legislation to reduce the number of gates at Love Field, create antitrust immunity for the signatories of the agreement behind the proposed legislation, and to restrict competition in the Dallas/Ft. Worth metropolitan area generally and Love Field specifically.  The letter was discussed in the Dallas Business Journal, the Ft. Worth Star Telegram, and the Dallas Morning News.  It was also the subject of discussion in Competition Law 360, an antitrust newspaper, as well as several antitrust blogs and blogs about Love Field.  Professor Bush also was interviewed on KRLD Radio on August 31 regarding the Wright Amendment.  The letter itself, meanwhile, is available http://www.antitrustreview.com/files/2006/08/Letter%20to%20Judiciary.pdf, among other places.  Professor Bush also wrote an op-ed piece on the issue, available at http://www.antitrustinstitute.org/recent2/526.pdf.  The op-ed piece was also covered in the Dallas Business Journal.

 

Victor B. Flatt's article "Gasping for Air: The Administrative Flaws of Federal Hazardous Air Pollution Regulation," has been accepted for publication in the Ecology Law Quarterly of the University of California, Berkeley.  His work on Houston Air Toxics, with faculty from Rice, Baylor Medical School, and the University of Texas Medical College at Galveston, will be released by the Houston Endowment in mid-September. Professor Flatt will also be featured in a web-cast from the University of Houston on gay marriage and the U.S. Constitution, on September 17th, U.S. Constitution Day. He has also been appointed to the Advisory Board of the Blaffer Art Gallery, the University of Houston's contemporary art museum.

 

Gidi presented lectures to law schools in Rio de Janeiro, Niterói, Bahia (Brazil) and Luanda (Angola). He also participated in an LLM alumni luncheon at the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Relations (Mexico City).

 

Leslie Griffin spoke about "The Ethics of Jimmy Carter," at the University of Alabama School of Law on August 28th. This semester she is teaching torts and professional responsibility at the George Washington University Law School in Washington, D.C. She also submitted the manuscript for her casebook, Law and Religion: Cases and Materials to Foundation Press on August 2nd.

 

Laura Hermer's article, A Moratorium on Intersex Surgeries?: Law, Science, Identity, and Bioethics at the Crossroads, will be published in 15 Cardozo J.L. & Gender.

 

Lonny Hoffman made additional revisions to two forthcoming papers: The 'Commencement' Problem: Lessons from a Statute's First Year (UC Davis L. Rev., forthcoming 2006) [a draft of the paper is available at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=881779]; and Access to Information, Access to Justice: The Role of Pursuit Investigatory Discovery (U. Mich. J. L. Reform, forthcoming 2006) [a draft of the paper is available at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=885820.  On August 15th, Professor Hoffman participated in a leadership telephone conference call in connection with his role as a member of the New Imprint Board of the ABA.  Also on August 15th, Professor Hoffman spoke to the student mentors and to the incoming 1Ls in the UHLC mentoring program.  On August 18th, he spoke to the UHLC Law Alumni Board about participating in the mentoring program.  On August 29th, he met separately with his student mentee group.  Professor Hoffman organized the Supreme Court Update, held on Friday, August 25th in the Frankel Room. 

 

Joan Krause was interviewed by Pharmaceutical Executive on August 18th regarding a story on Corporate Integrity Agreements.  She has also agreed to participate in a Kansas Law Review symposium on "The Massachusetts Plan and the Future of Universal Coverage," to be held in November 2006.

 

Peter Linzer will speak on November 7th on, "Thinking Outside Legal Boxes" at the McGeorge Law School of the University of the Pacific. Brochures to that effect are about to be sent out about its Distinguished Speakers Series. The appearance will have two parts.  He will speak to the students on his controversial 2001 Wisconsin Law Review article, Rough Justice: A Theory of Restitution and Reliance, Contracts and Torts, 2001 Wis. L. Rev. 695-775.  He will then present a paper to the faculty on the effect of technology on law, both private (e.g., should we rethink the law of form contracts in light of e-commerce?) and public (how technology has affected constitutional law (e.g., The Charles River Bridge Case, and the de facto overruling of the obscenity cases by the VCR and the Internet), and what its future impact will be.

 

Doug Moll and Robert Ragazzo have submitted the manuscript for their casebook, Closely Held Business Organizations:  Cases, Materials, and PROBLEMS to West Publishing.  The manuscript for the Teacher'S Manual has been submitted as well, and they are currently working on the statutory supplement.  Professor Moll has also been invited by the law schools of the University of Arizona and the University of Oregon to present a faculty enrichment lecture.  He will speak on minority oppression in the limited liability company setting.

 

Gerry Moohr finished a few writing projects over the summer.  Her book chapter, Navigating the Currents of Federal Criminal Law, will appear in Martha Stewart'S Legal Problems, edited by Joan Heminway and published by Carolina Academic Press.  The Houston Law Review will publish What the Martha Stewart Case Tells Us About Federal Criminal Law this fall.   An essay, On the Prospects of Deterring Corporate Crime will be published in the Journal of Business and Technology, a University of Maryland publication.  The essay grew out of a roundtable discussion held last spring that brought together white collar and corporate law specialists to discuss the criminalization of corporate law.  Professor Moohr is visiting at the University of Alabama School of Law, for the fall semester.

 

Michael A. Olivas has agreed to let two of his earlier articles be adapted for inclusion in the popular desk references published by the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officials (AACRAO)--The College Admissions Officer'S GUIDE and The Registrar'S Guide. The earlier articles appeared in the 2005 Journal of Law and Education (on prepaid tuition plans and Sec. 529 plans) and the 2004 Journal of College and University Law (the DREAM Act and international student admissions issues). He will also update the entries to include more recent developments. He also will publish a long entry on the Hernandez v Texas case in the SAGE volume, The Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society. His book "COLORED MEN" AND "HOMBRES AQUI": Hernandez v. Texas and the Emergence of Mexican American Lawyering was published by Arte Publico Press. In addition, his Teacher Manual for the third edition of his Carolina Academic Press higher education law casebook was also published in August.

 

Nancy Rapoport participated in one of twenty podcasts on the American Bankruptcy Institute World website this summer. She spoke as a legal ethics expert on the continuing fallout from the Enron scandal.

 

Robert Schuwerk submitted the update for the 2006 edition of the Texas Handbook of Lawyer and Judicial Ethics, published by Thomson West. He asks that each of you buy ten copies once they come out in December, and give them to the lawyers you believe to be most in need of ethical enlightenment. He requests, however, that you not send any copies to him.

 

Ira B. Shepard made his 27th annual presentation of "Recent Developments in Federal Income Taxation" to the Denver Tax Institute on July 20th. He made a presentation on the same subject to the Dallas Bar Association Tax Section on August 7th. In September, he will make presentations to the Houston Tax Roundtable, the Southern Federal Tax Institute (Atlanta), the State Bar of Texas Advanced Tax Law Course (Dallas) and the Wednesday Tax Forum. Also in September, he will complete his 33rd year of service as Special Advisor to the Southern Federal Tax Institute.

 

Don E. Tomlinson was quoted in the Texas Lawyer on August 14th in a weekly column entitled, "Atticus Finch Moments":  what made you first decide to be a lawyer. "In 1973, I was a television reporter in Little Rock, Ark. . .covering a hearing at the Arkansas Supreme Court... The case had everything-pure law and public policy, drama, great intellect and honest debate... Law, it was clear, was a high calling... I wanted "a more participatorial role than reportorial journalism would allow." Ive been a lawyer and a professor for 28 years now. And as Hank Williams Jr. once said: "People, if I die tonight, I have had a great time."

 

Ronald Turner's article, Ideological Voting on the National Labor Relations Board has been published at 8 U. Pa. J. Lab. & Emp. L. 707 (2006).  His article, The Juvenile Death Penalty and the Court's Consensus-Plus Eighth Amendment will be published in a forthcoming issue of the George Mason University Civil Rights Journal, and the Berkeley Journal of African-American Law and Policy will publish Cross Burnings and the Harm-Valuation Analytic: a Tale of Two Cases in its next issue.

 

Joe Vail gave a presentation on August 5th on asylum law for pro bono attorneys for the Houston Pro Bono asylum project. On August 15th, he spoke at a meeting on immigration reform sponsored by Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee and on August 21st, he was quoted in the Los Angeles Times on an asylum case involving a Congolese woman who had been tortured by the government and sought asylum in the United States.

 

Steve Zamora's op ed piece, ""Elecciones y Estado de Derecho" (Elections and the Rule of Law), was published on August 10th in Reforma, one of Mexico City's leading daily newspapers.  In the piece, he contends that the call for abandoning Mexico's electoral laws as a protest of electoral fraud, made by presidential candidate Andris Manuel Lspez Obrador, would undermine the efforts that have been made to improve respect for the rule of law in Mexico.  Also, Steve Zamora attended a luncheon for University of Houston alumni hosted by the Mexican Foreign Ministry, at the new Chancery of the Foreign Ministry in downtown Mexico City. Ambassador Arturo Dager, an LLM graduate of the Law Center and the Legal Adviser to the Foreign Minister, hosted the lunch.  In addition to two dozen UH law alumni in Mexico City, several other members of the Law Center community flew from Houston to attend the event - Professor Gidi; Lillian Flurry, Associate Dean for External Affairs; William Maynard, UH Law Alumni Association President, and his wife Judy; and Ann Ryan Robertson, a Law Center alumna (JD and LLM) who chairs the Law Alumni Association's special projects committee, which is charged with improving our communications with our foreign law alumni.

 

 

Harriet Richman - Editor