Faculty Focus is a monthly publication
documenting the activities, accomplishments, and honors of the University
of Houston Law Center Faculty.
Editor pro tem, Mon Yin Lung, mlung@central.uh.edu
Previous
editions of Faculty Focus can be accessed here.
June 2013
Geoffrey Hoffman spoke
at the 10th annual Federal Bar Association Immigration Law conference in
Memphis, Tennessee, on federal courts and immigration litigation. He provided
the opening remarks at the Joseph A. Vail workshop and then spoke on burdens of
proof in asylum, withholding and Convention Against
Torture cases. He also spoke on defensive asylum procedures in the immigration
courts.
Sapna
Kumar organized and ran the IPIL's annual symposium.
This year's symposium was titled "Intellectual
Property and Information Law in the Administrative State;" it included eight
top scholars writing in patent law and telecommunication.
Peter
Linzer posted a comment on the ContractsProfBlog
as part of an on-line symposium on Margaret Jane Radin’s
book, BOILERPLATE. He and Professor Nicole Casarez
have begun writing the manuscript of their casebook for Carolina Academic
Press, THE FIRST
AMENDMENT AND BEYOND:
SPEECH AND PRESS
IN THE TWENTY-FIRST
CENTURY. He is also writing an article on contracts of
adhesion for LAW AND
SOCIAL INQUIRY, a peer-edited publication of the
American Bar Foundation. Its title is “But It Isn’t Contract.” Ordinary
People, Form Contracts and the Charge of the Light Brigade.
Jacqueline Lipton presented "Open and
Closed Generic TLDs under ICANN's new gTLD
Process" at the 5th Annual Conference on Innovation and Telecommunications
Law in Glen Arbor, Michigan, on May 15, 2013. On May 30 she presented the following papers
at the Law and Society Annual Meeting in Boston: "The Hidden Social Costs
of ICANN's new gTLD Process" (with M. Wong) and "Online
Gripesites and ICANN's new gTLD
Program" (with M. Wong).
Jessica
Mantel presented her article "The Myth of the Independent Physician:
Implications for Health Law, Policy, and Ethics" at the Law and
Society Association's annual meeting in Boston on June 1st, and at the American
Society of Law and Medicine's Health Law Professors Conference at Seton Hall
Law School on June 8th.
Gerry Moohr
spoke on April 21, 2013, at Christ the King
Lutheran Church as part of the evaluation of the Social Statement prepared by
the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
Her topic was “Two or Three Things I Know About Federal Criminal Law”
(with apologies to
Godard). Its purpose was to invite
discussion as to whether there are “too many crimes and too much punishment,”
as Bill Stuntz suggested.
Thomas
Oldham’s book review of MARRIAGE
AT THE CROSSROADS (by Elizabeth Scott and Marsha
Garrison) has been accepted by the FAMILY
LAW QUARTERLY
for the Fall 2013 issue.
Michael A. Olivas hosted the 14th Houston Higher
Education Roundtable, which invited 5 junior faculty
to present papers for critique to a group of three national faculty. This year
feature Higher Education Law, while in alternating years, the focus is on
Higher Education Finance. He published Ask
Not For Whom the Law School Bell Tolls: Professor Tamanaha,
Failing Law Schools, and (Mis)Diagnosing
the Problem, 41 WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY (St.
Louis) JOURNAL OF LAW & POLICY 101-130 (2013). He also briefed more than a dozen reporters on the Fisher v. UT case and also on comprehensive
immigration reform
Jordan Paust prepared an essay entitled Obama’s
New “War” and Drone Targeting: The Wrong Paradigm and the Wrong Test for Self-Defence. It was
requested by editors of the AMSTERDAM LAW FORUM and will be published in
the on line journal later this year. He
also prepared a book chapter at the request of the editor: Armed Opposition
Groups, in THE OXFORD HANDBOOK ON NON-STATE ACTORS IN INTERNATIONAL LAW (Math Noortmann ed. 2014).
His essay Use of Military Force in
Syria by Turkey, NATO, and the United States has been published at 34 UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW 431-446 (2013).
Susan
Sakmar was interviewed for GL Noble Denton’s research
report on the impact of US regulatory reform on the oil and gas industry and
was quoted in the report, Reinventing Regulation: The impact of US reform on
the oil and gas industry, (http://www2.gl-nobledenton.com/reinventing-regulation),
which provides a snapshot of industry sentiment towards the new regulation
being introduced in the US. The report
explores the national and global impact of the reform on the oil and gas
sector, with particular focus on how it is affecting companies’ attitudes to
risk, cost and compliance, as well as their investment plans. She also gave a presentation on “Shale Gas and
the Social License to Operate” at a conference jointly organized by the
French-American Chamber of Commerce and the Norwegian-American Chamber of
Commerce, “The Shale Market: Challenges and Possibilities,” held at the
Petroleum Club of Houston, May 30, 2013, http://www.nacchouston.org/events/theshalemarket2013.
Spencer
Simons attended an OCLC Game Changers meeting in Dublin,
Ohio in May. OCLC, the worldwide library
cooperative, invited thirty leaders of law, medical, and corporate libraries to
discuss the challenges facing special libraries.
Barbara
Stalder was elected chair-elect of the HBA Animal Law
section.
Jacqueline Weaver reports that her coauthored book INTERNATIONAL PETROLEUM EXPLORATION AND EXPLOITATION AGREEMENTS has been translated into Mongolian.
Kellen Zale participated in a panel on "Citizen Involvement in Environmental Review and Regulation" at the Law and Society Annual Meeting in Boston in May 2013. She spoke on how the voter initiative can be better integrated with environmental review of land use decisions.