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

March 2010

Editor, Dan Baker djbaker2@central.uh.edu

Erma Bonadero recently attended the “Externships 5 Conference” at the University of Miami School of Law, the fifth national conference of legal externships. The focus of the meeting was on change and how externships respond to and advance changes in the legal profession, in legal education, and in the economy. She was recently appointed to serve as a member of the Law Advisory Board for “CHILDREN AT RISK,” a nonprofit organization that drives change for children through research, education, and influencing public policy. Prof. Bonadero was also recently a speaker at the Association of Women Attorneys of Houston’s annual Law Student Reception where she advised female law students who were interested in non-traditional legal careers.

Aaron Bruhl’s latest article, titled "Deciding When To Decide: How Appellate Procedure Distributes the Costs of Legal Change," was accepted for publication in the Cornell Law Review. Prof. Bruhl recently presented the paper at a conference for junior faculty members in the West/Southwest region hosted by Arizona State University.

Meredith J. Duncan's and Ronald Turner's new casebook, Torts:  A Contemporary Approach, is in page proofs and scheduled to be published in Summer 2010. Prof. Duncan's op-ed "Race Still Has Role To Play in a Post-Racial America" appeared in the Houston Chronicle on Saturday, March 6, 2010.

Barbara Evans wishes to thank Professors Ron Scott, Cynthia Marietta, and Gavin Clarkson for their rave-review guest appearances in her classes to share the latest developments on electronic medical records, embryonic stem cell policy, and litigation over genetic research with the Havasupai tribe. Prof. Evans’ article “Seven Pillars of a New Evidentiary Paradigm: The Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act Enters the Genomic Era” was published this month as the lead article in Notre Dame Law Review at 85 NDLR 419 – 524, available at http://www.ndlawreview.org/current/index.php. Her article “Authority of the Food and Drug Administration to Require Data Access and Control Use Rights in the Sentinel Data Network” appeared this month at 61 Food & Drug Law Journal 67 – 112. Her “Issue Brief: Appropriate Human-Subject Protections for Research Use of Sentinel System Data” was published by the Engelberg Center for Health Care Reform at the Brookings Institution. Prof. Evans has been invited to serve on the Institute of Medicine's Committee on the Public Health Effectiveness of the FDA 510(k) Clearance Process, which will conduct a review of FDA's thirty-year-old medical device regulations (see http://www.iom.edu/Activities/PublicHealth/510KProcess.aspx for additional information). Prof. Evans was appointed to the three-member Privacy Panel for the Mini-Sentinel data network which is being implemented by Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute under contract with FDA (see http://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsroom/PressAnnouncements/ucm196968.htm for additional information). Since January, she has served on the Planning Committee for the FDA Sentinel Initiative Meeting Series convened by the Engelberg Center at Brookings under sponsorship of FDA. Prof. Evans is on the panel for the Public Policy Session at the annual convention of the American Society of Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics in Atlanta on March 18. Her proposal on Governance Models to Enhance the Legitimacy and Public Acceptability of Decisions to Allow Nonconsensual Use of Data Held in Large Health Information Networks advanced to the finals of the Greenwall Foundation's Faculty Scholars Program in Bioethics, and she submitted a detailed research proposal on March 10 and wishes to thank April Moreno, Diana Smith, Jason Gregory, Kelli Cline, and Dean Nimmer for their help in completing the application. She spoke at the Mayo Clinic/AAAS/Food & Drug Law Institute/Arizona State University conference, Personalized Medicine in the Clinic, in Phoenix on March 9. She met with the Mini-Sentinel Privacy Panel in Washington on March 8. She was lead speaker on human-subject protection issues at the meeting, Legal Issues in Active Medical Product Surveillance, convened by the Engelberg Center and FDA on March 8. She attended the IOM 510(k) Committee's first meeting in Washington on March 1-2. She participated by teleconference in the External Advisory Board of Duke University’s Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute on Feb. 25 -26. She continues to serve on the multidisciplinary panel that is conducting a National Cancer Institute-funded study of reforms to the HIPAA Privacy Rule. She was invited to serve on the Monographs Advisory Board of the Food & Drug Law Institute. She was invited by the Office of Civil Rights at the US Department of Health and Human Services to provide input on new data de-identification standards required by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The grandson of Prof. Evans’ cat, Seraphina, earned a top-ten ranking among American tabby males at a big cat show and Prof. Evans is reveling in being related to feline royalty.

Adam Gershowitz’s article, “12 Unnecessary Men: The Case for Eliminating Jury Trials in Drunk Driving Cases,” has been accepted for publication in the University of Illinois Law Review.

Jim Hawkins’ article “Regulating on the Fringe: Reexamining the Link Between Fringe Banking and Financial Distress” was accepted for publication in the Indiana Law Journal. He was invited along with a handful of academics to participate in a conference on fringe banking at the US Treasury entitled "Creating a Research Agenda for Small Dollar Credit" on March 4th. In February, he guest blogged on the popular commercial law blog Credit Slips (http://www.creditslips.org/).

Geoffrey Hoffman represented the UH Immigration Clinic on 2/17/2010 at the annual meeting of AILA/EOIR to discuss current issues and problems with the Immigration Court system. Prof. Hoffman raised several issues relating to problems with the asylum clock in the immigration courts. Following the meeting, Prof. Hoffman also met with approximately 10 local attorneys to discuss immigration and the federal courts.

Peter Hoffman was a Team Leader for the NITA Rocky Mountain Deposition Program, held in Louisville, CO, Dec. 3-5, 2009. Prof. Hoffman taught an Advanced Trial Advocacy course at Elon University Law School during the winter break and also consulted for several days with the Elon clinical programs. He conducted a program on taking and defending depositions for Bracewell & Giuliani, January 21-22, 2010. He was a Faculty Member for the NITA Trial Skills for Domestic Violence Lawyers Program, held in Dallas, Jan. 25-29, and the Program Director for the NITA Trial Skills for the Juvenile & Family Courts Program, held at UHLC, Feb. 6-7. He was also a Team Leader for the NITA Southeast Deposition Program, held in Raleigh, NC, Mar. 3-5, 2010, and the Program Director for the NITA Houston Deposition Program, held at UHLC, Mar. 15-17. Prof. Hoffman will speak on “Depositions” at the State Bar of Texas 4th Annual Spring Training: Winning Before Trial CLE Program, which will be held in Dallas on Mar. 25. In addition, Prof. Hoffman will be the Program Director and Team Leader for the South Carolina Bar Association’s Advocacy Teacher Training Program, to be held in Columbia, SC on Apr. 17, 2010, and a Small Group Co-Facilitator for the “Lawyering Courses Outside the Clinic” Working Group at the AALS Conference on Clinical Legal Education, which will be held in Baltimore, May 4-8, 2010. He will also be a Panelist on “Tempest in a Teapot or True Time of Change: Skills Education and the Legal Community” at Stetson University College of Law’s Conference on Educating Advocates: Teaching Advocacy Skills, May 26-28, 2010, and he has been appointed Program Director for the 2011 National Session of NITA’s Building Trial Skills Program.

Craig Joyce chaired the 2009 Baker Botts Lecture, headlined by Prof. Douglas Lichtman of UCLA, on “Pricing Patents: The RAND Commitment.”

Douglas Moll’s article, “Shareholder Oppression and ‘Fair Value’: Of Discounts, Dates, and Dastardly Deeds in the Close Corporation,” 54 Duke L.J. 293 (2004), was cited extensively by the court in Kaplan v. First Hartford Corp., 522 F. Supp. 2d 275 (D. Maine 2007), and was ultimately followed in the court’s granting of a buyout as of the date of the petition. Prof. Moll’s research has also been cited recently by the U.S. 2d Circuit Court of Appeals (2009 WL 3617808), the Supreme Court of Utah (220 P.3d 146), the Supreme Court of North Dakota (755 N.W.2d 432), the District Court of Appeal of Florida (976 So.2d 1234), and a bankruptcy court in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania (361 BR 422).

Tom Oldham has been named the issue editor for the Spring 2011 issue of the ABA Family Law Quarterly. The focus will be “Emerging Issues Pertaining to Child Support and Spousal Support.”

Michael A. Olivas delivered the Witten Lecture at the University of South Carolina, and was interviewed on prawfsblawg about legal developments in tenure and academic freedom: http://prawfsblawg.blogs.com/prawfsblawg/2010/02/the-prawfsblawg-interview-michael-olivas-on-the-future-of-legal-education.html (original interview). As evidence of how slow a news day it was, the Wall St. Journal law blog picked up the story, elaborated upon it, and declared: “In a fascinating post over at PrawfsBlawg, Jack Chin interviews University of Houston law professor Michael Olivas, an expert on higher education (and the owner of the best law professor beard we’ve ever seen, bar none.)”: http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2010/02/10/is-the-law-school-tenure-system-forever-with-us (WSJ). He also published a Review of Bruce A. Kimball, The Inception of Modern Professional Education: C. C. Langdell, 1826–1906, in the most recent issue of the Journal of Higher Education.

Jordan Paust is giving the Richard B. Lillich Lecture at Florida State University March 17th on “Self-Defense Targetings of Non-State Actors and Permissibility of U.S. Use of Drones in Pakistan,” a draft of which is online at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1520717, and it will be printed soon in FSU’s Journal of Transnational Law & Policy. On March 19th, he will also be a panel member during a conference at Tulane University School of Law and address “Ending the U.S. Program of Torture and Impunity: President Obama’s First Steps and the Path Forward,” which will become a paper published later in the Tulane Journal of International and Comparative Law. He will also participate on a panel on Remembering Tom Franck at the annual meeting of the American Society of International Law in Washington, D.C. March 26th, and will be on a panel on private actors in the international legal process at the International Law Student Association conference in Washington, D.C. on March 25th. Also, Prof. Paust’s latest op-ed, “Court-martial: A Third Option for Trying Al Qaeda and Taliban Detainees,” appeared on the JURIST Forum on March 12th: http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/forumy/2010/03/court-martial-third-option-for-trying.php.

Diana Velardo presented at a CLE Training for Pro Bono Attorneys on “U Visas and Issues relating to Immigration relief for Crime Victims”. The Pro-Bono Training was organized by Boat People SOS and YMCA and it was attended by over 70 attorneys interested in aiding victims of crimes on a pro bono basis. Diana also hosted the US State Department Delegation on Human Trafficking from the Republic of Kosovo, a program that brings together scholars from different countries to discuss effective solutions in the eradication of global human slavery. The delegates who chose to visit the UH Immigration Clinical Program were members of Parliament, Chiefs of Police and Professors.