Faculty Focus is a monthly publication documenting the activities,
accomplishments, and honors of the University of Houston Law Center
Faculty.
July 2014
Editor, Katy Stein Badeaux, kastein@central.uh.edu
Previous editions of Faculty Focus can be accessed here.
Janet Beck was the Discussion Leader on a panel
regarding Asylum law at the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA)
annual national conference in Boston. She also was the Morning Coordinator for
four panels on immigration litigation in federal court. Based on
instructions from AILA, she announced the name of the University of Houston Law
Center Immigration Clinic 5 times to the audience, i.e. before each panel. The
conference was attended by, approximately, 3,500 immigration lawyers who attended
panels on a variety of different topics in immigration law over the course of 3
½ days.
Meredith J. Duncan attended the American
Association of Law Schools Workshop for New Law School Teachers in Washington,
D.C. from June 18th through 21st and spoke on the topic of “Designing 1L
Courses and Classes to Maximize Student Engagement and Learning.” She also
served as a small group moderator throughout the conference. From June 25th
through 27th, Professor Duncan attended Northwestern University Law School’s
conference What the Best Law Teachers Do where she presented “Teaching
Deliberately — From Course Design to the Classroom and Beyond.”
Barbara Evans’ July publications include a
chapter on unconsented use of personal data in The Future of Human Subjects
Research Regulation (I. Glenn Cohen & Holly Fernandez Lynch, eds.),
released by MIT Press on July 16; an article in the July print issue of the Nature
journal, Genetics in Medicine, http://www.nature.com/gim/journal/v16/n7/index.html; and a
just-released book about ethics guidelines for trips to Mars and asteroids,
written by an IOM Committee on which she serves, http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=18576. Along
with three medical geneticists, she submitted an article
assessing challenges genomic laboratories will face after the October
6 compliance date for recent HIPAA and CLIA amendments. Her abstract on
First Amendment problems with FDA regulation of genomic interpretation services
has been chosen for the October symposium of the Petrie-Flom
Center at Harvard Law School and the Food & Drug Law Institute. She
collaborated this month with researchers at four leading medical schools
to submit three federal grant proposals. She participated in teleconferences to
plan a law-themed program for a national meeting of geneticists, to
explore applicability of FDA's investigational device regulations to basic
genomic research, and to discuss appropriate standard-setting for
bioinformatics algorithms used in gene sequencing. Her work with the Texas
Medical Center’s Clinical Research Design Team wrapped up recently but the team
will meet with the Greater Houston Partnership’s Health Care Biomedical
Research Committee in coming weeks. She was invited to join a
multi-institutional group on IRB-related issues hosted at the UT Center for
Clinical Research and Evidence-Based Medicine. She has been invited to act as
the facilitator for an Autumn meeting of a special
task force that is designing large data and informatics infrastructure to
support next-generation health and life sciences research at a sister public
university. Professor Evans’ work is featured this month on the Suffocated
Science blog http://suffocatedscience.com/, curated
by Dr. Simon N. Whitney at Baylor College of Medicine.
Geoffrey Hoffman was interviewed by news outlets
concerning various immigration-related matters. Interviews included News 92 FM,
KRLD Radio & Texas State Radio Network, CBS Radio/Dallas Ft. Worth, and
Houston Newsmakers, KPRC-TV Local 2 - Houston. Professor Hoffman's post was
published on the Immigration Professors' blog under the title, "Dear David
Brat: What do you think Jesus would have done about Immigration Reform?"
An article about Professor Hoffman appeared in the Daily Cougar concerning an award received from AILA.
Professor Hoffman was also interviewed by KTRH radio 740 AM about the
humanitarian border crisis. Professor Hoffman’s op-ed piece U.S. Needs
Compassion for Immigrant Children was published in the Houston Chronicle.
Steve Huber (Emeritus) is the 2014 co-recipient of the
Frank Evans Award for lifetime achievement, awarded by the Alternative Dispute
Resolution Section of the State Bar of Texas. The co-recipient is Wendy
Huber, a former Chair of the ADR Section, and a sometime adjunct professor
at the Law Center (as well as at Rice University and Pepperdine Law School).
The award was presented at the State Bar Convention in Austin. Steve is about
to wind up 5+ years as Editor of (and frequent contributor to) Alternative
Resolutions, the quarterly journal of the ADR Section. He continues to
serve the co-editor of the American Arbitration Association’s annual Yearbook
on Arbitration & the Law, together with Ben Sheppard. The AAA
provides funding for three Law Center students each year. These Arbitration
Scholars (a fancy title costs nothing) have done excellent work, and the
experience has enhanced their marketability. Since retiring, Steve has also
found activities outside the law to keep him busy. He is a member of the Vestry
at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church (and the Secretary thereof), as well as the
Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Bellville Housing Authority. A
particular pleasure is having time to read books and articles that are
unrelated to work.
Tom Oldham is in the process of trying to have a
Fulbright visit to the University of Sydney approved by the Fulbright office as
a senior specialist. Funding from the University of Sydney has been obtained,
and he is now dealing with the Fulbright office. If anyone is curious about
this process Professor Oldham should know more about it in a few months.
Michael A. Olivas attended the AALS New Law
Teachers Workshop, participating in teaching and scholarship programs for the
Faculty of Color. He also served on a panel at the National Association of College
and University Attorneys, reviewing the SCOTUS cases this term that affected
higher education. He also briefed a number of reporters on a N.Y. State bill
that would expand benefits for immigrants in that state, and was featured in a Texas
Lawyer story about his NPR station radio show, The Law of Rock and Roll.
The show’s second year Classes will expand to a number of stations nationally,
beginning in September.
D. Theodore Rave was invited to Yale Law School to
present his recently published article, Settlement, ADR, and Class Action
Superiority, on September 19 as part of the Quinnipiac-Yale Dispute
Resolution Workshop. Also, on June 19, he presented a draft of his paper, Fiduciary
Voters?, at
the American Constitution Society's Schmooze on Election Law in Washington,
D.C.
The Florida Tax Review just published Recent
Developments in Federal Income Taxation: The Year 2013 by Professor
Emeritus Ira B. Shepard (with University of Florida Professor Martin J.
McMahon, Jr. and U.C. Davis Professor Emeritus Daniel L. Simmons). In light of
the addition of South Texas College of Law Professor Bruce A. McGovern and the
retirement of Simmons (who is eight years younger than Shepard), in future
years Shepard’s co-authors will be Professors McMahon and McGovern. Shepard
would also like to retire but his congenital inability to refuse speaking
invitations precludes his doing so. For example, on September 4th he will be a
panelist on a joint program of the International Tax Forum of Houston and the
Houston Region of the International Fiscal Association on “Tax Ethics and
Inversions”; for the record, this topic has no relationship to the
presentations he made last year on same sex marriage.
Sandra Guerra Thompson attended a meeting of the Board
of Directors of the Houston Forensic Science Center, of which she is a member,
on July 11th. Professor Thompson was also quoted in a Houston Chronicle article regarding a criminal case in
which a government employee who falsified her résumé was charged with
government record-tampering.
Ronald Turner has been appointed to the American Bar
Association/United Nations Development Programme’s
Project On An Anti-Discrimination Legislation Proposal
for Jamaica. The project will review an anti-discrimination legislation
proposal to benefit the rights of populations vulnerable to HIV/AIDS as well as
discrimination against other key groups including women, children, and the
poor. He has also agreed to participate in the City of Houston’s
municipal grievance process. On July 15 he discussed the Declaration of
Independence with participants in the Great Book discussion held at the Evelyn
Rubenstein Jewish Community Center. His recent publications include On
Substantive Due Process and Discretionary Traditionalism, 66 SMU Law Review
841 (2013); On Neutral and Preferred Principles of Constitutional Law, 74 University of Pittsburgh Law
Review 433 (2013); Disparate Treatment: Justice Clarence Thomas’s
Conspicuously Nonoriginalist Affirmative Action
Jurisprudence, 19 Texas Journal on Civil Rights & Civil Liberties
251 (2014); Title VII, the Third-Party Retaliation Issue, and the “Plain
Language” Mirage, 5 Alabama Civil Rights & Civil Liberties Law
Review 77 (2013). He has submitted his invited article When the
Court Makes Title VII Law and Policy: Disparate Impact and the Journey from Griggs
to Ricci, to be published in the St. John’s Law Review’s
forthcoming Title VII At 50 symposium issue, and his
article On Free, Harmful, and Hateful Speech will be published by the Tennessee
Law Review in 2015. His article The Way To
Stop Discrimination On The Basis Of Race . . . will be published in Volume
11 of the Stanford Journal of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. He has
also commenced work on a new West Publication book entitled Employment Discrimination,
as well as the 8th edition of Employment Discrimination Law:
Cases and Materials (with Arthur B. Smith, Jr. and Charles B.
Craver, LexisNexis forthcoming 2015).
Bret Wells published a comment in Tax Notes
entitled Corporate Inversions ad Whack-a-Mole Tax Policy, 143 Tax
Notes 1429 (June 23, 2014).