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

December   2007

 

 

Aaron Bruhl completed two entries for the Encyclopedia of the Supreme Court; the entries cover ”Subject Matter Jurisdiction” and “Abbott Labs v. Gardner.” With UHLC colleague Seth Chandler, he co-authored an interactive computer demonstration illustrating the concept of supplemental jurisdiction. It is available at http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/SupplementalJurisdiction/

 

Seth Chandler has published eleven new law-related demonstrations over the past several months that are available at http://demonstrations.wolfram.com  They are:

  1. Measures of Node Prominence on a Network
  2. The Coase Theorem
  3. Stable Marriages
  4. Akrasia
  5. Supplemental Jurisdiction (co-authored with Aaron Bruhl)
  6. A Spatial Dynamic Jury Model
  7. Visualizing Legal Rules: Battle of the Forms
  8. Visualizing Legal Rules: A Homicide Case
  9. Tail Conditional Expectations
  10.  Pay the Points?
  11.  The Purpose of the Law

 

He has also published three demonstrations not particularly related to law:

 

  1. Randomly Reducing Objects to Spheres
  2. Iterative Polygon Simplification
  3. Genealogy Graphs from XML

 

Prof. Chandler also attended a meeting of the Texas Health Care Policy Council in November in Austin.

 

Barbara Evans discussed “HIPAA Privacy Rule Reform Alternatives for Research Use of Human Biological Materials and Health Data” at the Roundtable on Personalized Medicine, Privacy, and Ethics in Washington, D.C. on November 7. She also has been serving on the Oversight Task Force of the Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Genetics, Health, and Society, which issued its report and recommendations for federal oversight of genetic testing. Prof. Evans served as lead author for the chapter on regulatory oversight systems for genetic testing and was a contributing author to chapters exploring specific oversight mechanisms for ensuring the analytical validity, clinical validity, and clinical utility of genetic tests.

 

Victor Flatt guest lectured in November at Rice University in the Environmental Health Program where he discussed the relationship between environmental health and environmental law and policy. Professor Flatt also spoke at the University of North Carolina Law School in November on air toxics. He appeared at the only EPA public hearing on air toxics and will submit comments on the EPA’s new proposal. Professor Flatt is also one of the UH Professors asked to speak campus-wide on Focus the Nation Day, January 31, regarding climate change. His article on climate change legislation has been posted on the Northwestern University Law Review Colloquy.

 

Lonny Hoffman spoke in November to the American Constitution Society on “The Closing of the Courtroom Doors: Latest Twists”; attended a conference at the University of Pennsylvania School of Law on the Class Action Fairness Act; and attended a UHLC alumni reception in New York City. Professor Hoffman also completed a draft of “Pre-suit Discovery: A Tool for Overcoming Formal and Informal Barriers to the Courthouse”, an article which was solicited by and will appear in Litigation, the journal of the American Bar Association. He continued work on another, short, paper solicited by the South Texas Law Review as part of its upcoming symposium on the Texas Supreme Court’s decision in Harmar v. Coca-Cola.

 

Peter Hoffman gave the following presentations:

 

“Effective Witness Preparation” at UH CLE “The Jury Trial” in Houston and Dallas on August 16 and 23, 2007

 

“Recent Developments in Evidence” before the Galveston Bar Association on September 27, 2007

 

“Educating Advocates:  The Annual Conference on the Art, Science and Skill of Advocacy Instruction” at Stetson University College of Law on November 16, 2007.  The conference was presented as “Learning from the Nation’s Top Advocacy Professors.”  Hoffman spoke in two of the plenary sessions and in one of the breakout sessions.

 

He also directed or taught in the following litigation skills programs and courses:

 

Provided training to the Securities and Exchange Commission in New York City on October 29 and 30, 2007 on the taking of testimony in investigatory proceedings.

 

Program Director for NITA’s Trial Skills in the Juvenile and Family Courts Program held at the Law Center on November 10 and 11, 2007.

Team Leader for NITA’s Rocky Mountain Regional Deposition Program on December 6 – 8, 2007 at NITA’s National Education Center in Louisville, Colorado.

 

In addition, Prof. Hoffman will be providing training in teaching advocacy skills to the Elon University Law School’s advocacy faculty on December 16, 2007 in Greensboro, North Carolina.

 

In 2008, Prof. Hoffman will be teaching a four-week negotiations course in Florence, Italy in May and June as part of the University of San Diego’s study abroad program. He will also serve as Program Director for NITA’s National Trial Skills Program to be held on July 12 -26, 2008 in Louisville, Colorado.

 

Craig Joyce was reappointed to the Board of Editors of H-LAW, the Humanities Social Sciences On-Line discussion network of the American Society for Legal History.

 

Joan Krause spoke with the Wall St. Journal on November 15 regarding fraud in Medicare and Medicaid managed care programs.

 

Douglas Moll has submitted his manuscript for the publication, “Iconic Cases in Corporate Law,” edited by Jon Macey of Yale Law School. Professor Macey invited Professor Moll to submit a chapter on the well-known close corporation case of Donahue v. Rodd Electrotype. Professor Moll is also continuing to work on his treatise on closely held corporations (with Robert Ragazzo).

 

Gerry Moohr, on unpaid leave from the Law Center, completed several projects and began some new ones. She submitted final page proofs to West for her forthcoming book,” The Criminal Law of Intellectual Property and Information.” She continues to work on the teacher’s manual for that book. With Joseph Cook, Paul Marcus, and Linda Malone, she also completed a revision of “Criminal Law,” the sixth edition of a first year casebook, and finished the teacher’s manual. Professor Moohr’s latest article to be published this month by the American Criminal Law Review (Georgetown) is, “Bad Apples and Bad Trees: Considering Fault-Based Criminal Liability for Complicit Corporations.” The article considers using accomplice liability principles, rather than respondeat superior, as a basis for corporate criminal liability. Another article, “On the Prospects of Deterring White Collar Crime,” which was published by the Journal of Business and Technology Law (Maryland), was listed as a top ten SSRN download. She has accepted an invitation to write an article for a special issue of The Champion, published by the National Association of Defense Lawyers, on changes in federal fraud laws effected in recent judicial decisions and proposed legislation. She will speak in March 2008 at the ABA institute of white-collar criminal law on federal laws that criminalize the misappropriation of intellectual property.

 

Brent Newton just submitted four entries for publication in the next edition of The Encyclopedia of the United States Supreme Court (Macmillan, forthcoming in 2008). They are “Retroactivity”, “Substantive Due Process”, “The Eighth Amendment”, and “The Supreme Court’s Professional Baseball Cases.”

 

Michael A. Olivas delivered two papers at the recent Annual Meeting of the Association for the Study of Higher Education (on Teaching Higher Education Law as a Field of Study and on Colleges after the Patriot Act). He Participated in the University of California/California State Universities/California Community Colleges Intersegmental Convocation (speaking on the DREAM Act), and met in Chicago with the ABA Council/Special Committee on Security of Position. He also serves as a member of the AALS Executive Director Search Committee, over and above serving on the AALS Executive Committee. His Foundation Press Book, Education Stories, was published in December:

http://westacademic.com/Professors/ProductDetails.aspx?tab=6&productid=137588

 

Jordan Paust presented a paper “Human Rights, Self-Determination, and the Right to Participate in a Democracy” during an international conference in Mexico City, Two Decades of Electoral Justice in Mexico, celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Electoral Court of the Federal Judiciary of Mexico, Nov. 21-24, 2007. He submitted a paper on “Medellin, Avena, the Supremacy of Treaties, and Relevant Executive Authority,” that was requested for a symposium issue of the Suffolk Transnational Law Review (2008). His article, “In Their Own Words: Affirmations of the Founders, Framers, and Early Judiciary Concerning the Binding Nature of the Customary Law of Nations” has been accepted for publication by the U.C. Davis Journal of International Law and Policy (2008). Professor Paust has also been recognized as one of the top ten International Law (public and international economic) scholars in Brian Leiter’s list of most frequently cited law professors in the United States for 2000-2007. On Dec. 5-7, Professor Paust was a distinguished participant during a working conference at Northwestern School of Law on Responsibility to Protect and the International Criminal Court: America’s New Priorities.

 

Sandra Guerra Thompson was interviewed by Azteca TV, the Houston Chronicle, and the Pasadena Citizen regarding the defense of property defense in the shooting of two burglars by a neighbor who lived next door. She was also quoted in the Houston Chronicle on the government’s civil forfeiture case brought against the estate of former Enron executive, Ken Lay.

 

Ronald Turner’s article, “Gonzalez v. Carhart and the Court’s ‘Women’s Regret’ Rationale,” will be published in a forthcoming issue of the Wake Forest Law Review; his article, “The Voluntary School Integration Cases and the Contextual Equal Protection Clause,” will be published in the Winter 2008 issue of the Howard Law Journal; and his review of Rhetoric, Religion, and the civil Rights Movement (Davis W. Houck and David E. Dixon, eds., 2006) has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Law and Religion. Professor Turner will also speak at and serve as a commentator on the papers presented in the December 14, 2007 plenary session of the Civil Rights and Race Symposium hosted by the Constitutional Law Center at Howard University’s School of Law.

 

Greg Vetter presented at the 45th Annual Conference on Intellectual Property Law held by the Institute for Law and Technology at the Center for American and International Law in Plano, Texas, on November 12. His topic was Patent Licensing for Free and Open Source Software. He presided at the IPIL Institute’s 14th Annual Katz-Kiley Lecture where he had arranged for Professor Clarisa Long of Columbia Law School to present, “The Political Economy of Intellectual Property Law,” on November 8. Additionally, he arranged for Patricia Judd, the Director of International Copyright Enforcement with the Association of American Publishers, to present on the topic of International Copyright Law Enforcement under the IPIL Institute’s practitioner lectures series.

 

Jacqueline Weaver presented a lecture to the University of St. Gallen Postgraduate Program Executive M.B.L.-HSG hosted by the University of Texas at Austin on November 9 on the topic of “The Future of the Traditional Petroleum-Based Economy.” The Executive Masters in European and International Business Law (M.B.L.-HSG) is a postgraduate law course of study by the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland, one of the top European Universities for the study of European and International Business Law. She also submitted her manuscript for a State Bar of Texas project analyzing twenty landmark oil and gas cases. The State Bar of Texas will publish a special book for all members of the Oil and Gas Section, analyzing why the twenty cases are landmarks and whether the cases will continue to be used in future oil and gas jurisprudence.

 

Stephen Zamora participated in a bi-national meeting of experts of the U.S.-Mexico Border Project of the Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University, held on December 8. Research carried out under the project will produce policy analyses and recommendations on key issues affecting the U.S.-Mexico border.