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

August 2010

Editor, Dan Baker djbaker2@central.uh.edu

Previous editions of Faculty Focus can be accessed here.

Richard Alderman submitted the manuscript for the 2011 edition of Consumer Protection and the Law and Consumer Credit and the Law, a four-volume set published by Thomson/West. He also was elected to serve a five-year term on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Consumer Policy. He taught a course in American Consumer Law to 61 international LLM students at LaTrobe University in Melbourne Australia. Dean Alderman and the Center for Consumer Law hosted a delegation of eight dignitaries from Vietnam on a fact-finding mission for input regarding their country’s proposed consumer protection law. In March, Dean Alderman was sent by USAID to Hanoi to consult with the Vietnam government on the same law.

Aaron Bruhl’s article “When Is Finality . . . Final?” was accepted for publication by the Journal of Appellate Practice and Process (peer-edited). Prof. Bruhl spoke on a panel on the design of appellate courts at the Southeastern Association of Law Schools annual meeting.

Meredith J. Duncan moderated a panel on Innovative Teaching of 2nd and 3rd Year Law Students on August 3, 2010 at the Southeastern Association of Law Schools annual meeting. Additionally, her new casebook Torts: A Contemporary Approach, co-authored with Prof. Ron Turner, was published by Thomson/West.

Adam Gershowitz organized a criminal procedure panel at SEALS featuring Douglas Berman (Ohio State), Ron Wright (Wake Forest), and Corinna Lain (Richmond), and presented a paper "Is Texas Tough on Crime, But Soft on Criminal Procedure?".  On August 11th, he gave a workshop on "Warrantless Searches of Cellphones" to felony court judges as part of the Harris County Judicial Education Conference.

Jim Hawkins' paper “Regulating on the Fringe: Reexamining the Link Between Fringe Banking and Financial Distress” was selected for the fifth Conglomerate Junior Scholars Workshop, an online workshop for untenured business law professors. His paper will be discussed by four senior scholars August 25th at http://www.theconglomerate.org/junior_scholars_workshop/.

Julie A. Hill presented her paper “Ad Hoc Bank Capital Requirements” at the Southeastern Association of Law Schools Conference.

Geoffrey Hoffman spoke at the meeting of the Immigration Law Task Force, Texas State Bar, held at the Cabrini Center, Catholic Charities, on Friday, July 30, 2010. He discussed various topics including Carachuri, Padillla v. Kentucky, and recent Fifth Circuit case law involving immigration.

Sapna Kumar’s article “Expert Court, Expert Agency” has been submitted to law reviews. Her article “The Bilski Decision: What Does it Mean for the Future of Business Method and Software Patents?” will appear in the August 2010 edition of Computer Law Review International. A panel discussion that she participated in at the 2009 Southeastern Association of Law Schools Conference titled “An Uncomfortable Fit?: Intellectual Property Policy and the Administrative State”  recently published in the Marquette Intellectual Property Journal.

Douglas Moll spoke on “How to Obtain a Casebook Contract” at the SEALS conference in Palm Beach, Florida. He also completed the teacher’s manual for Jonathan R. Macey & Douglas K. Moll, Corporations Including Partnerships and Limited Liability Companies (11th ed. 2010) (West Publishing).

Sandra Guerra Thompson completed work on an anthology of her students’ articles which she and two students are co-editing. The book is entitled, American Justice in the Age of Innocence, and it will be published by iUniverse Publishing (forthcoming 2010). The book addresses the causes of and remedies for wrongful convictions. Copies will be provided by the UH Law Center’s Criminal Justice Institute to the Timothy Cole Advisory Panel on Wrongful Convictions on which Prof. Thompson serves, as well as Texas legislators who will be considering major innocence legislation. The books will be available for sale on Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com. She also attended a meeting of the Timothy Cole Advisory Panel on Wrongful Convictions in Austin on August 12th. Prof. Thompson was a signatory on an amicus brief filed in the United States Supreme Court in the case of Thompson v. Connick. She authored an op-ed piece entitled, “Is it a New Era of Justice in Harris County?,” which appeared in the Houston Chronicle on August 5th.

Jacqueline Weaver taught a two-week course on “Oil and Gas: Production and the Environment” at the Vermont Law School in July and early August. She also completed the Teaching Manual for her 3 chapters in the third edition of Energy, Economics and the Environment by Foundation Press, which is now in print for Fall semester adoptions. It is Foundation's second-best selling casebook.