Albertus Accolades

January 2016

Editor, Katy Stein Badeaux • Access previous editions of Albertus Accolades here.

Albertus Accolades is a monthly publication documenting the activities, accomplishments, and honors of
the University of Houston Law Center faculty and staff.

Leonard Baynes attended the Provost’s Holiday Lunch for the Dean’s Council on December 3. On December 4, Dean Baynes attended the UHLC faculty/staff holiday party, where he and UHLC Pipeline Program Manager Kristen Guiseppi sang to celebrate the holiday season. On December 5, Dean Baynes attended the UHLC Holiday Coffee. Dean Baynes attended the Greater Houston Partnership Elected Officials Reception on December 9 at Hotel ZaZa. On December 11, Dean Baynes attended the Faculty Open House hosted by President Khator at The Wortham House. Dean Baynes gave the welcoming remarks at the American Immigration Lawyers Association workshop entitled “Immigration Advocacy” on December 15. The next day Dean Baynes visited and gave an overview of the Law Center to the attorneys at Reed Smith, LLP. Dean Baynes attended the HisBA-MABAH Joint Annual Holiday Party on December 17 at Cle Houston. On December 22, Dean Baynes had lunch with former UH Board Chair Nelda Blair in The Woodlands.

Barbara Evans has been elected to membership in the American Law Institute. Her four-year appointment to the National Committee for Vital and Health Statistics, a statutory body that advises the Secretary of HHS on privacy and health IT issues, was confirmed on December 29. She spoke in the AALS BioLaw Session on January 8. A blizzard cancelled the January 22 Vanderbilt Law symposium where she was to speak about genomic data access/ownership, but the papers will appear in a forthcoming symposium issue. She will participate via WebEx in a snowed-out Institute of Medicine Hearing Health Care Committee meeting on January 26. She contributed a chapter on Genomic Data Commons to Governing Medical Research Commons (Katherine Strandberg, Brett Frischmann, and Michael Madison, eds., Cambridge University Press, forthcoming) and a chapter co-authored with Eric M. Meslin on Biospecimens, Commercial Research, and the Elusive Public Benefit Standard to Specimen Science: Ethics and Policy Implications (Suzanne M. Rivera, Barbara E. Bierer, Holly Fernandez Lynch, I. Glenn Cohen, eds., MIT Press, forthcoming). Professor Evans prepared a commissioned paper for the National Academy of Sciences based on her speech at the December Gene Editing Summit. She filed two sets of comments in the proceeding to amend federal research regulations at 45 C.F.R. pt. 46, subpt. A and co-authored a Discussion Paper about the changes for the National Academy of Medicine’s Perspectives. Professor Evans has been added to  the research team for the National Science Foundation-funded Building Reliable Advances and Innovations in Neurotechnology (BRAIN) Center, an industry/university collaboration led by the UH Cullen School of Engineering and the Fulton School of Engineering at Arizona State University. Her abstract was selected as the first speech for the 2016 Annual Conference on Big Data, Health Law, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School’s Petrie-Flom Center in May.

Tracy Hester was named to the Shale Environmental Health & Safety Task Force of The Academy of Medicine, Engineering and Science of Texas, and he joined its opening meeting on December 17 in Austin. On January 8, he spoke on a panel on classroom experiential learning approaches at the AALS annual conference in New York City. He testified on EPA’s proposed new environmental justice regulations at its public hearing in Houston on January 12, and he participated in the Texas OneGulf Board of Director’s meeting with Professor Steve Zamora in Austin on January 19.

Geoffrey Hoffman served as a co-host (with Ruby Powers, Esq.) of the AILA Media and Immigration Advocacy CLE, where presenters discussed a variety of issues relating to social media and advocacy. Dean Baynes attended a luncheon for the presenters and other distinguished guests following the CLE. Professor Hoffman authored an Amicus Curiae brief in support of three interlocutory appeals in conjunction with the University of Pittsburgh concerning denials of law student appearances involving Cornell law students. The blog post regarding the appeals and amicus is available here. Professor Hoffman has been invited to speak on immigration topics in the next few months at various events sponsored by AILA, Neighborhood Centers and also TSU Law School. Professor Hoffman represented UHLC at the membership committee meeting of the Houston Immigration Legal Services Collaborative held this month at South Texas College of Law. Professor Hoffman also served as co-counsel in a petition for review before the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals with Baker Botts attorneys, following a partial remand of an asylum case involving a juvenile respondent by the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA). Professor Hoffman has also been selected for the Cougar Chairs Leadership Academy. Lastly, Professor Hoffman was interviewed by news outlets concerning the grant of certiorari by the U. S. Supreme Court in Texas v. United States.

Craig Joyce was reappointed to the Editorial Board of Journal of Supreme Court History, sponsored by the Supreme Court of the United States, and began his 29th consecutive year of service. Professor Joyce also was reappointed as chair of the American Society for Legal History’s Standing Committee on the Annual Meeting, which he has led since 1998.

Jessica Mantel attended AALS in New York. She workshopped her article, Tackling the Social Determinants of Health: A Central Role for Providers, at the Works in Progress for New Health Law teachers. Professor Mantel also was elected to an at-large position for the AALS section on Law, Medicine, and Health Care.

Douglas Moll has submitted the manuscript to West Academic Publishing for his casebook, The Law of Business Torts and Unfair Competition:  Cases, Materials, and Problems (with Colin Marks). Professor Moll will be speaking in February in Dallas at the 2016 Conference on Securities and Business Law. He will be speaking on fiduciary duties in corporations. Professor Moll was also reelected to the Executive Committee of the AALS Section on Agency & Unincorporated Business Associations.

Tom Oldham was hosted by Australian National University and the University of Sydney from November 27-Dec. 12, 2015 as a Fulbright Senior Specialist. A new edition of his textbook, Texas Marital Property Rights, is now available from Carolina Press.

In Santa Fe, Michael A. Olivas conducted a workshop for the New Mexico State Supreme Court justices, judicial clerks, and other legal staff on the developments in Fisher v. University of Texas. He also published the Teacher’s Manual (in e-format) to his higher education law casebook, released in 2016 in its fourth edition. In NYC at the AALS Annual Meeting, he chaired the Law and Film Series programs, and after the meeting, conducted an immigration workshop on employment authorization and state occupational licensing at LatinoJustice/Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Educational Fund (PRLDEF). He also briefed reporters on various legal developments in immigration, higher education, and entertainment law. He also published Legal Resources in Immigration and Higher Education: Data and Materials on Undocumented and “DACA-mented” Students, 21-1 Bender's Immigration Bulletin 2 (January 1, 2016).

D. Theodore Rave has been invited to present a draft of his paper, Institutional Competence in Fiduciary Government, at Duke Law School as part of the Fiduciary Law Workshop on June 17-18.

Jessica L. Roberts’ article Limiting Occupational Medicine Evaluations Under the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act, co-authored with Mark Rothstein and Tee Guidotti, was published in the American Journal of Law & Medicine (available here). Also in January, Professor Roberts responded to the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for the Common Rule with Valerie Gutmann Koch. Their letter is available here. Professor Roberts and Professor Koch also published a short online essay on the topic in the Yale Journal of Law & Technology (available here). This month Professor Roberts discussed the NPRM and her work on healthism and Medicaid on episode 40 of the popular podcast The Week in Health. Finally, Professor Roberts accepted a position as the Chair-Elect of the AALS Disability Law Section and started tweeting. Please follow her at @jrobertsuhlc. She is lonely.

Sandra Guerra Thompson gave a talk on prosecutorial standards at the pretrial bail hearing at the AALS Annual Meeting in New York City on January 7. She also accepted an appointment as Chair of the Criminal Justice Committee for Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner’s transition team. The Criminal Justice Institute, which she directs, hosted a major symposium entitled, “Police, Jails, and Vulnerable People: New Strategies for Confronting Today’s Challenges” on January 22nd at the UH University Center Theatre. She has accepted a position as a contributing blogger for the award-winning Grits for Breakfast blog about Texas criminal justice, as well as Forensics Forum, a blog on crime labs created by University of Virginia Professor Brandon Garrett. In her new role as blogger, she has posted several posts on Texas criminal justice issues. She was also quoted in Fox News and ABC News regarding the Waco biker case, and the Houston Chronicle and Houston Press on the county’s efforts to reduce its pretrial detention rate. She was also quoted on the OZM Media website in an article regarding the Houston Forensic Science Center, of which she is a member of the Board of Directors.

Jacqueline Weaver participated in the Workshop for Law Professors on the Economics of the Rule of Law in Florida on December 11-14. This is one of several Law & Economics Workshops offered by the Henry G. Manne Program in Law and Economic Studies. Several sessions focused on the role of the rule of law in economic development and tied into her work on the UH Global Energy Development and Sustainability Certificate program that she has worked on with professors from many other UH colleges. The certificate program will launch its first set of courses in April and May 2016.