Faculty Focus is a monthly
publication documenting the activities, accomplishments,
and honors of the University of Houston Law Center Faculty.
October 2009
Aaron Bruhl spoke at the Appellate
Advocacy Seminar sponsored by the Bar Association of the Fifth Federal Circuit;
the program was held October 8 in New Orleans. He joined with several other statutory
interpretation professors in submitting an amicus brief in Kucana v. Holder, which is set to be argued
in the United States Supreme Court next month.
Gavin Clarkson had a paper accepted at
the 2009 Workshop on Information Systems and Economics. “The Social
Efficiency of Fairness,” co-authored with MIT Economist Marshall Van
Alstyne, suggests a cooperative game theoretic approach to valuing intangible
assets contributed to a collaborative venture so as to increase the likelihood
that agreements to engage in such ventures actually happen. This paper has
its origins in research Dr. Clarkson did on valuation models for traditional
knowledge in the international IP regimes. Separately, Dr. Clarkson also presented
tribal finance research at the 66th Annual Convention of the National Congress
of American Indians.
Barbara Evans appeared before the Institute
of Medicine in September to discuss policy challenges in developing large-scale
data infrastructure to implement recent amendments to the Food, Drug, and
Cosmetic Act. She was named to a panel that is conducting a two-year NIH-funded
study, entitled Protecting Privacy in Health Research, which aims to develop
specific recommendations for reform of the HIPAA Privacy Rule. She attended the NIH Pharmacogenomics
Research Network's Scientific and Steering Committee Meeting in Boston on
Oct. 14-15. She participated in various activities of the Duke Clinical and
Translational Sciences Institute's external advisory board. She is the keynote
speaker for a gathering of 80 academic, industry, and government leaders on
Oct. 26-27 to develop A Research Agenda
for Privacy and Security of Healthcare Technologies, which will be presented
to U.S. government agencies. Her chapter entitled “Ethical and Privacy
Issues in Pharmacogenomic Research,” in Pharmacogenomics: Applications to Patient
Care, Second Edition (American College of Clinical Pharmacy, 2009) went
to the printer. She completed a chapter, “Legal Trends Driving the Clinical
Translation of Pharmacogenomics,” for Principles of Pharmacogenetics and Pharmacogenomics
(Russ B. Altman, David A. Flockhart, and David B. Goldstein, eds., Cambridge
University Press, forthcoming 2010). Prof. Evans and a team of four physicians
and scientists coauthored an abstract, "Sink or Swim: Are we considering all
the factors essential to the success of pharmacogenetics in personalized medicine?"
which was chosen as the Public Policy Forum for the 2010 annual meeting of
the American Society of Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics.
Jim Hawkins’ paper “Doctors
As Bankers: Evidence from Fertility Markets” was accepted for a presentation
at the Canadian Law and Economics Association Conference. He presented the
paper on October 3rd in Toronto, Canada..
Julie Hill’s article “Bailouts
and Credit Cycles: Fannie, Freddie, and the Farm Credit System” has
been accepted for publication by the Wisconsin
Law Review. The article will
also be presented at the AALS Annual Conference in January.
Lonny Hoffman was elected to The American
Law Institute (ALI) in September 2009. His article, “The Peculiar Case
of James Vasilas,” was published in the Texas
Journal of Consumer and Commercial Law. In addition, Professor Hoffman
has spent nearly one million hours reviewing applicants for faculty positions,
in connection with his work on the appointments committee. This work continues,
unabated, with no end in sight.
Peter Hoffman has agreed to write the
Fourth Edition of The Effective Deposition
and has completed work on the 2010 Texas Rules of Evidence Handbook.
He participated as a Faculty Member in the Mayer Brown Deposition Program,
held in Chicago June 24-26, and as a Team Leader for the Pacific Coast Regional
Deposition Program, held at the Chapman School of Law in Orange County, CA,
July 30-August 1. Prof. Hoffman spoke on witness preparation for the UH CLE
program, The Jury Trial, August 8, in Houston and August 12, in Dallas. He
was a Team Leader for the Northwest Regional Deposition Program, held at the
Seattle University Law School, August 11-13, and the Program Director and
Team Leader for the Greer, Herz Deposition Program, held in League City, TX,
August 20-22. He was also a Faculty Member in an SEC program, Taking Testimony,
in Washington, D.C. on September 17-18.
Craig Joyce began work on the Eighth
Edition of Copyright Law, which
remains the #2 most-adopted casebook in the LexisNexis product line (and #1
among casebooks in elective courses).
Sapna Kumar presented as a member
of a panel addressing administrative law issues in intellectual property at
the Southeastern Association of Law Schools conference in August. She recently
presented “Expert Court, Expert Agency,” a paper concerning the
relationship between the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and
the International Trade Commission, at the Seventh Annual Works in Progress
Intellectual Property conference at Seton Hall University School of Law.
Shaundra Lewis and Katherine Vukadin
presented “Focus: Teaching Legal Writing in the Age of Distraction”
at the Southeast Regional Legal Writing Conference hosted by Stetson University
College of Law on September 12, 2009. At the conference, they discussed how
to captivate and maintain students’ attention. Some of the techniques
they suggested included using YouTube video clips to set up legal problems
in writing assignments and final exams, and the possibility of using Twitter
in the classroom.
Rick McElvaney is one of the co-authors
of the new edition of the O’Connor’s
Property Code Plus (2009–2010), which is now available.
Douglas Moll has been asked by Professor
Jon Macey of Yale Law School to become a co-author of one of the leading Business
Organizations casebooks, Corporations Including Partnerships and Limited
Liability Companies. The book was originally written by Professor Robert
Hamilton of UT Law School. The 11th edition of the Macey and Moll casebook
will be available for Fall 2010 classes. Professor Moll will also serve as the
moderator for the Houston Business
& Tax Law Journal’s symposium on “Current Controversies
in Executive Compensation,” which was held on October 15.
Dean Nimmer spoke at a PLI Conference
on Intellectual Property Law in New York, on the topic of Protecting Content
in the Digital Environment.
Also, a SSRN
posting by Dean Nimmer received the following within a month of posting: Your
paper entitled, "Technical Standards Setting Organizations & Competition:
A Case for Deference to Markets" was recently listed on SSRN's Top Ten download
list for ERPN: Regulation.
Michael A.
Olivas held press briefings for
reporters on two different subjects: prospects for comprehensive immigration
reform (middling) and higher education cases currently before the courts.
He submitted his final manuscript to Harvard University Press for his 2010
book on Plyler and the schooling
of immigrant children—soon to be a major motion picture, starring Jimmy
Smits. He also published “What the ‘War on Terror’ Has Meant
For U.S. Colleges and Universities,” in Ronald G. Ehrenberg and Charlotte
V. Kuh, eds. Doctoral Education and the Faculty of the
Future (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009), [Ch. 17], 249-258. He
also published a review of Alejandra Rincon’s book, Undocumented Immigrants and Higher Education
(2009, LFR Press) in The Review of
Higher Education (2009).
Laura Oren, in celebration of Constitution
Day, presented “The Lasting Meaning of Brown v. Board of Education:
Does the Living Constitution Still Permit Race-Conscious Measures to Promote
Integration in Our Public Schools?” as part of the Houston Bar Association’s
2009-2010 West Loop Seminar CLE series, on September 17, 2009. According to
participants’ evaluations, the CLE was very well received.
She also presented
a quite different version to a very different audience, the Women’s
Group, First Unitarian Church: “The Equal Protection Clause and the
Lasting Meaning of Brown v. Board of Education,” on September 13, 2009.
This is a lively group that asks tons of questions.
Jordan Paust has a new op-ed on JURIST
on “What Obama Should Have Said: US Compliance with International Law,”
available at
http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/forumy/2009/10/what-obama-should-have-said-us.php
Professor
Paust also prepared a brief Amicus Curiae of the Human Rights Committee of
the American Branch of the International Law Association before the U.S. Court
of Military Commission Review in the case of United States v. al Bahlul [pdf
file]. He was also among those addressing U.S. Use of Drones in Pakistan
and claims of self-defense under the United Nations Charter on the European
Journal of International Law’s blog, available through www.ejiltalk.org.
Jacqueline
Weaver, on September 23, participated
as a panelist at a conference in Washington DC sponsored by Oxfam, Revenue
Watch and others on confidentiality provisions and transparency of international
petroleum contracts. Participants from the World Bank, NGOs, African development
banks and legislators from developing countries attended to discuss the release
of a new report “Contract Confidential.”
Jacqueline
Weaver and Steve Zamora
participated in a Curriculum Development Workshop held at the Mexican Foreign
Ministry in Mexico City, and organized by the North American Consortium on
Legal Education (NACLE). The
workshop brought together 54 law professors and students from NACLE’s
12 member law schools, to exchange ideas of concern to North American legal
scholars. UH law graduate Scott Childs (LLM 2009) was featured as one
of the winners of the NACLE student paper competition, and made an oral presentation
of his paper on cap and trade in Canada, Mexico, and the United States. Information on the workshop is at http://www.nacle.org/workshops/mexico-city-2009.html.
Steve Zamora was a featured speaker
at a conference on international law developments held in Mexico City on October
19 at the National University of Mexico (UNAM) and sponsored by the Mexican
Foreign Ministry. His presentation, in Spanish, dealt with the institutional
deficiencies of NAFTA and the challenges of North American integration.