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

September 2014

Editor, Katy Stein Badeaux, kastein@central.uh.edu

Previous editions of Faculty Focus can be accessed here.

Richard Alderman published the 2014 edition of Alderman’s Texas Consumer Law: Cases and Materials [Imprimatur Press], submitted the 2014 supplement for The Lawyer’s Guide to the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act [LexisNexis] and the manuscript for the 2014-15 edition of the two volume Consumer Credit and the Law and the two volume Consumer Protection and the Law [with Pridgen, Thomson/West]. Professor Alderman also gave the keynote presentation at an international roundtable on consumer arbitration at Brunel University in London, and spoke on the Deceptive Trade Practices Act and Arbitration at the State Bar Advanced Commercial and Consumer Law Conference. Additionally, Professor Alderman’s Chapter on American consumer law appears in La Protección Jurídica de los Consumidores en el Espacio Euroamericano, published by Comares.

Janet Beck spoke on “Immigration Issues Affecting Nonimmigrants and Immigrants,” at the invitation of former UHLC Immigration Clinic student, Temitope Siyanbade, at the House on the Word, a Nigerian congregation, in Houston. On August 16, Clinical Professor Beck, along with Professor Geoffrey Hoffman, supervised 30 students at the UHLC 1L Outreach for DACA applicants organized by We Own the Dream.

Since Darren Bush’s last faculty focus update, he has been in the press numerous times concerning matters relating to: the Supreme Court granting cert. on an antitrust case involving energy companies and state antitrust laws, the Department of Justice’s antitrust case against American Express, and an amicus brief to which he is a signatory in the North Carolina State Board of Dental Examiners v. Federal Trade Commission case pending before the Supreme Court. He is also currently happily using his antitrust casebook (coauthored with John Flynn and Harry First), now out in print. He hopes to complete a teacher’s manual for the casebook by December. In addition to teaching Statutory Interpretation and Regulation this summer, he also continued working on an article challenging the D.C. Circuit’s interpretation of the Tunney Act. Finally, Professor Bush participated this summer in numerous kung fu exhibitions and tournaments, including the Legends of Kung Fu and Taiji Legacy tournament in July. He continues to try to perfect his double-edged sword and crescent knives forms.

Barbara Evans was notified on September 15 that two of her recent grant proposals, one on genomic data access and one on health data privacy, will receive federal funding. She addressed the Second Thematic Conference on Knowledge Commons at NYU Law School on September 5. In coming weeks, she has been invited to speak at an NIH meeting, the Petrie-Flom/FDLI law symposium, a meeting on health data infrastructure for the state of Maryland, the Public Responsibility in Medicine and Research (PRIM&R) annual meeting, and a NASA meeting on genomics in human spaceflight.

Tracy Hester’s article, Restating Environmental Law, was accepted for publication by Environmental Law, the nation’s most senior environmental law journal.  He was also appointed by the EPA to its National Advisory Committee on NAFTA environmental issues, and he was included in the 2014 edition of Best Lawyers in America in the specialty of environmental law.  On September 4, he chaired the Board meeting of the Texas Environmental Research Consortium to discuss upcoming ozone policy issues and research needs for Texas.

Geoffrey Hoffman was quoted in the Houston Chronicle August 27, August 15, and August 14, on various immigration-related topics. He spoke on UAC asylum at the South Texas College of Law. In early September his piece The Immigration Court Is A Legal Paradox was published online by JURIST, available at http://jurist.org/forum/2014/09/geoffrey-hoffman-immigration-court.php. Professor Hoffman volunteered at a DACA clinic held Saturday, September 13 at the Ripley Center on Navigation Blvd., where he met with DACA applicants as well as supervised 4 students. Additionally, Professor Hoffman was interviewed by KUHF 88.7 news for a story on immigrant children.

Craig Joyce published LAW REVIEW: The First Fifty Years of Hous. L. Rev. (2014) (with Matthew Hoffman), the only book-length history of a U.S. law review.

Ellen Marrus was quoted in a Houston Chronicle article discussing the Harris County family courts placing documents from Child Protective Services cases online and how this could place abused children and their caretakers at risk. Professor Marrus participated in the first week long "boot camp" for juvenile defenders at Georgetown University Law Center and conducted four lessons and facilitated many small group sessions. She also provided juvenile public defenders in Memphis, TN with the final of four training sessions that were mandated from a consent decree between the Department of Justice and Shelby County. Professor Marrus, along with Professor Sacha Coupet from Loyola (Chicago) and a distinguished fellow with the Center for Children, Law & Policy at UHLC, completed the book Children, Sexuality, and the Law, to be published by NYU Press April 2015

Rick McElvaney was interviewed for two Telemundo 47 Houston evening news broadcasts that aired on Tuesday, August 26 and Wednesday August 27, regarding purchasing real property by Contract for Deed. The O’Connor’s Property Code Plus 2014-2015 (Jones McClure), which Professor McElvaney co-authored, is now out. It is in its Tenth edition.

Douglas Moll submitted the manuscript for his article The Shareholder Oppression Provisions of the New Louisiana Business Corporation Act. The article was solicited by the Loyola Law Review as part of an issue on Louisiana’s new business corporation statute.

Michael A. Olivas rolled out the second year of his radio show (The Law of Rock and Roll) on NPR station KANW (89.1 FM), and shared several of the year 2 shows for the faculty and local guests. His most recent book Suing Alma Mater: Higher Education and the Courts (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013) was chosen as the 2014 winner of the Steven S. Goldberg Award for Distinguished Scholarship in Education Law. The award is given annually by the Education Law Association “in recognition of an outstanding article, book, book chapter, or other form of scholarly legal writing in the field of education law.”

Jordan Paust’s article Human Rights Through the ATS After Kiobel: Partial Extraterritoriality, Misconceptions, and Elusive and Problematic Judicially-Created Criteria has been published in 6 Duke Forum for Law and Social Change 31-59 (2014), available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=2486875.

D. Theodore Rave will present his recently published article, Settlement, ADR, and Class Action Superiority, 5 Journal of Tort Law 91 (2014), at Yale Law School as part of the Quinnipiac-Yale Dispute Resolution Workshop on September 19. Professor Rave was also invited to present a draft of his paper, When Peace Is Not the Goal of a Class Action Settlement, at the University of Georgia Law School as part of the Junior Faculty Federal Courts Workshop on October 10-11.  Professor Rave will be presenting the same paper in November at the NYU School of Law as part of their Center on Civil Justice’s conference on “The Future of Class Action Litigation: A View From the Consumer Class.”  Additionally, Professor Rave was invited to speak on a panel on gerrymandering at the Louisiana State University Law Center’s Voting Rights Symposium in January.

Jessica Roberts accepted an offer to publish her article Protecting Privacy to Prevent Discrimination in the William and Mary Law Review.

Sandra Guerra Thompson was interviewed on the Houston Public Radio show Houston Matters on August 8 regarding past efforts to revise marijuana penalties in Houston and throughout Texas. Audio is available at: http://www.houstonmatters.org/show/2014/08/08/rethinking-marijuana-possession-penalties-and-transitional-artifacts-houston-matters-for-friday-august-8-2014. She was also quoted in a Houston Chronicle article regarding the indictment of Governor Rick Perry on corruption charges. On August 11, she was interviewed by KHOU Channel 11 in Houston on the militarization of police equipment. On August 19, Professor Thompson gave a talk on scientific evidence and wrongful convictions at the meeting of the Laredo-Webb County Bar Association. An interview with KGNS TV in Laredo appeared that evening and the Laredo Morning Times published an article about speech on August 20. Professor Thompson commented on gubernatorial candidate Senator Wendy Davis’ proposal to eliminate Texas' statute of limitations on rape in a Houston Chronicle article on August 25. On September 12, she attended a meeting of the Board of Directors of the Houston Forensic Science Center, of which she is a member.

Ronald Turner's essay A Critique of Justice Antonin Scalia's Originalist Defense of Brown v. Board of Education will be published by the UCLA Law Review Discourse.

Jacqueline Weaver presented a speech on “International Petroleum Transactions: Reflections on Best Practices and Legal Reforms over the Past 25 Years;” at the Congress on Energy Law and Policy on August 8. This Congress inaugurated the Masters of Energy Law and Sustainability program at the law school of the Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León; Monterrey, Mexico.

Bret Wells' article entitled Revisiting §367(d): How Treasury Took the Bite Out of Section 367(d) and What Should Be Done About It has been accepted for publication by Florida Tax Review. On September 12, Professor Wells participated in a panel discussion hosted by the International Tax Policy Forum in Washington, D.C. The panel discussed the U.S. tax policy implications of corporate inversions, and Professor Wells' recently published article entitled Corporation Inversions and Whack-a-Mole Tax Policy was distributed as part of the conference materials.

Allison Winnike participated in the charter meeting of the Institute for Immunization Law & Policy in Houston with other academics and advocates interested in developing a repository for immunization law and policy research.  As a member of both the Texas Medical Board Enforcement Stakeholders group and Electronic Medical Records Stakeholders group, she attended their meetings in Austin to address regulatory issues. She was invited by the Network for Public Health Law to be a presenter on an Immunization Law and Policy webinar to be held in November.

Kellen Zale has been invited to participate in the Robert J. Farley Faculty Colloquium Lecture series at the University of Mississippi School of Law. She will be presenting her article The Government's Right to Destroy at the Colloquium on September 19. She will also be participating in a Scholars Workshop at the University of Mississippi, where she will present her current work-in-progress, Sharing Property.