Albertus Accolades

October 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.

Richard Alderman lectured in Montreal at the University of Quebec’s summer school in Consumer Law and Policy and participated on a PhD tribunal at the University of Cantabria in Santander, Spain. Professor Alderman submitted his 2016 update for The Lawyers’ Guide to the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act (LexisNexis), and the 2016-17 edition of Consumer Credit and the Law (Thomson Reuters). He also has been asked to deliver a talk to the staff of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as part of their “visiting professor” program, and is working with the mayor of Santa Fe on a local “People’s Law School."   

Leonard Baynes gave the welcoming remarks at the Class of 1991 Reunion held at the River Oaks Country Club on September 10. On September 12, Dean Baynes received the Higher Education Excellence in Diversity Award (“HEED”) on behalf of the Law Center. Dean Baynes gave a presentation at the law firm Latham & Watkins September 14 and on September 16 he welcomed attendees at the Third Annual Houston Conference on Oil & Gas Investment Arbitration at the Four Seasons Hotel. On September 20, Dean Baynes gave welcoming remarks and presented an Honorary Alumnus Certificate to Mayor Sylvester Turner at the UHLAA Diversity & Inclusion Committee Alumni Breakfast with City of Houston Mayor Turner. The next day, Dean Baynes welcomed guests at the Alumni/Upper Level Mentoring Program Kickoff. On September 25 Dean Baynes hosted, with Professor Craig Joyce, the “Here we go Again” Party -Astros vs. Mariners. Lastly, on September 27, Dean Baynes gave welcoming remarks and introduced the Law Center’s six new faculty hires at the Alumni & Friends Reception: Taste of Houston.

Janet Beck is serving her third year on the Texas Board of Legal Specialization Immigration and Nationality Law Exam Committee. She spoke to a group of parents, through the Houston Bar Association Speakers Bureau, on immigration topics at Youngblood Intermediate Family Center.

Johnny Rex Buckles has accepted an offer to publish his most recent paper, The Sexual Integrity of Religious Schools and Tax Exemption, with the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy. Professor Buckles presented this paper in September at Regent University School of Law’s 2016 Conference of Religiously Affiliated Law Schools. This paper has also been selected for presentation at the 2017 Federalist Society Annual Faculty Conference, to be held as part of the annual meeting of the Association of American Law Schools in January.

Dave Fagundes presented an essay in progress, Against ‘IP’, at the Intellectual Property Scholars Conference (IPSC) at Stanford Law School and at the Savannah Law Review's "American Legal Fictions" Symposium. He presented another work in progress, Property, Sharing and Happiness, at the Texas Legal Scholars conference at SMU Law School and as part of the South Texas College of Law’s visiting speaker series. Dave also participated in a workshop on the Psychology and Sociology of Intellectual Property at Stanford Law School, where he led a discussion session, “What We Can Learn from IP-Free Zones."  

Janet Heppard made a presentation about the Role of the Amicus at the Pro Bono Amicus training held on September 30 which was sponsored by the ABA’s Children’s Immigration Law Academy (CILA). In addition, Professor Heppard spoke about Family Law at the People’s Law School held at the Law Center on October 1. On September 13, Professor Heppard participated in the public meeting of the Advisory Committee on Private International Law where there was a discussion about the work the committee is doing related to the Hague Conference on Private International Law including procedural exceptions to recognition and enforcement of foreign orders and authentication of documents as they relate to parentage and surrogacy.

Tracy Hester presented his draft article, Subject Exceptionalism in Statutory Interpretation, at the Vermont Law School Environmental Colloquium on September 23. He moderated this fall’s first UH Energy Symposium on the Clean Power Plan on September 20, presented his initial research results on the legal consequences of direct air capture of CO2 at Arizona State University’s Closing the Carbon Cycle workshop on September 30 in Tempe, AZ, and then participated in the ABA environmental section’s Council meeting in Denver on October 8 to report on its new Law Professor Committee (which he co-chairs this year with Professor Robin Craig). On October 4, he spoke on the upcoming legal issues facing energy providers at the BNA Energy Summit in Houston, and he traveled to Austin on October 6 and 7 to help draft the upcoming report on shale energy impacts by The Academy on Medicine, Engineering and Science of Texas. Finally, on October 14, Professor Hester moderated the annual Texas Water Law and Endangered Species symposium as part of the EENR Speaker Series.

Geoffrey Hoffman was interviewed by news media concerning Donald Trump’s deportation plan. His blog was turned into an article for Salon.com, published here. He was interviewed by Law360 relating to the Board of Immigration Appeals’ decision ruling that criminal copyright infringement was now a crime involving moral turpitude. Professor Hoffman has been selected to be a peer reviewer for Columbia University Press on an upcoming book project. Professor Hoffman's mentoring piece about the UHLC immigration clinic appeared in the Sept/Oct. Houston Lawyer magazine. Professor Hoffman also filed an amicus brief with the Board of Immigration Appeals in collaboration with the American Immigration Council.

Craig Joyce hosted the 31st edition of the Annual “Here We Go Again” Party for faculty, staff, and their families.

Renee Knake spoke at the Annual Institute on Intellectual Property Law on October 6, discussing her recent Bloomberg essay on data analytics and legal ethics. Her article Shortlisted, co-authored with Professor Hannah Brenner, was accepted for publication by the UCLA Women’s Law Journal.

David Kwok attended a meeting hosted by the Consulate General of Mexico to discuss their legal research initiative. He also presented a paper, “The public wrong of whistleblower retaliation,” to the law faculty at the University of Mississippi as part of a faculty exchange program. Professor Kwok also discussed the same paper at the South Texas College of Law October 21.

Jacqui Lipton presented on October 12 a workshop on legal issues for creative artists to the Stegner Fellows at the Creative Writing Department at Stanford University, Palo Alto.

Rick McElvaney spoke on the topic of Consumer Law to the Fundamentals of Good Credit class sponsored by the Credit Coalition. He also spoke at the HBA Commercial and Consumer Law Section’s monthly meeting on the topic of Updates in Landlord and Tenant law.

Douglas Moll attended the University of Alabama’s Bank Director and Officer Responsibilities Symposium where he presented his paper on the duty of care of bank directors and officers (with Professor Julie Hill). Professor Moll’s blog post on Minority Oppression in the LLC was reprinted in the LLC and Partnership Reporter (the newsletter of the ABA Committee on LLCs, Partnerships and Unincorporated Entities). Professor Moll was also interviewed for the Business Divorce Roundtable podcast on the subject of minority oppression in the LLC. The podcast can be accessed here. In September, Professor Moll also submitted the manuscript for the 2016 edition of his treatise on Closely Held Corporations (with Robert Ragazzo). Along with finishing up his Alabama Law Review article, Professor Moll is currently working on the 13th edition of his West Academic casebook, The Law of Business Organizations:  Cases, Materials, and Problems (with Jon Macey).

Sarah Morath will present the following programs at the One-Day Legal Writing Workshops in December: Different [Key]strokes for Different Folks: Preparing Practice-Ready Millennials to Confront the Demands of Online Legal Research, at the Legal Writing Institute (LWI) One-Day Workshop, University of Texas, Austin, TX (with Katherine Brem and Whitney Heard) and Quizzes in the Classroom, Legal Writing Institute (LWI) One-Day Workshop, Tulane University Law School, New Orleans, LA (with Elizabeth Shaver, Akron).

Jeff Newberry argued before the Texas Thirteenth Court of Appeals on behalf of the appellant in Jerry Hartfield v. State, No. 13-15-00428-CR on September 14. On September 23, he appeared on Houston Matters answering questions about part 1 of the Fair Punishment Project’s look at America’s Outlier Death Penalty Counties.

Michael A. Olivas gave the 2016 Justice Robert D. Rucker Lecture at Valparaiso University Law School: “How Did We Get Here? Undocumented Lawyers and Occupational Licensing.” He also conducted a UHLC lunch workshop sponsored by the Entertainment Law Student Organization, featuring several new Classes of his Law of Rock and Roll, on the KANW NPR station.

D. Theodore Rave spoke on a panel at the Law Center about American Women’s Fight to Vote sponsored by the Association of Women in Law, American Constitution Society, Sports & Entertainment Law Organization, and the WGSS Student Group on October 5. On October 14, Professor Rave attended the first meeting of the Consulate General of Mexico’s Working Group on Legal Matters. And on October 21, Professor Rave presented a draft of his article Closure Provisions in MDL Settlements at Fordham Law School as part of the Civil Litigation Ethics at a Time of Vanishing Trials Colloquium, sponsored by the Stein Center for Law and Ethics. The article will be published in the Fordham Law Review next year.

Josephine Sorgwe supervised a team of 7 law students (Douglas Evans, Gabriela Hernandez, Caroline Ibrahim, Tong Jin, Diana Melendez, Tim Sullivan, and Jared Young) at a naturalization workshop hosted by Catholic Charities, where the students assisted lawful permanent residents in the preparation of naturalization applications. A total of 29 individuals were impacted by this workshop. Sorgwe also supervised three law students (Caroline Ibrahim, Karla Perez, and Tim Sullivan) and participated in preparing Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) applications for teenagers and young adults seeking immigration benefits from U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS). This event was organized by United We Dream. Lastly, she taught a course on Immigration Law at the People’s Law School hosted by the University of Houston Law Center.

Sandra Guerra Thompson was interviewed for a twenty-five minute podcast on her book, Cops in Lab Coats: Curbing Wrongful Convictions through Independent Forensic Laboratories. Professor Edward Cheng, of Vanderbilt Law School, hosts the evidence and proof podcast entitled, “Excited Utterance.” Professor Thompson’s interview was published on October 10th and is available here. Her book was also cited by the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology on September 22nd in connection with Houston’s independent forensic laboratory, the Houston Forensic Science Center (HFSC). She serves as Vice Chair of the Board of Directors for the HFSC. Dean Baynes and Professor Thompson produced a “Briefcase Radio” segment that aired on Houston Public Media in October, available here. Professor Thompson, as Director of the Criminal Justice Institute, hosted a meeting of the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention on October 15th. The Working Group is making only five stops in the United States to study a variety of issues pertaining to the criminal justice system. She gave invited testimony in Austin on September 21st at the Joint Hearing of the House County Affairs and Criminal Jurisprudence Committees regarding the public safety risks and effects on vulnerable populations and racial minorities from a money bail system. The Houston Chronicle quoted Professor Thompson proposing bail reform as a solution to the lack of room for juvenile prisoners in Harris County. Professor Thompson’s article, Do Prosecutors Matter?:  A Proposal to Ban One-Sided Bail Hearings, appeared in a symposium issue of the Hofstra Law Review. She presented the paper at the annual meeting of the Association of American Law Schools in January 2016. Professor Thompson also gave invited testimony on September 20th at a hearing of the House Committee on County Affairs regarding a recent study on racial profiling by the Texas Department of Public Safety.

Ronald Turner has been named to and will now serve as the A.A. White Professor of Law. His Howard Law Journal article Remembering Emmett Till was cited by Judge Damon Keith in Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless v. Husted, 2016 WL 4761326 (Sep. 13, 2016), wherein Judge Keith dissented from the court's rejection of Voting Rights Act and other challenges to certain provisions of Ohio election law. The eighth edition of his co-authored casebook Employment Discrimination Law: Cases and Materials has been published by Carolina Academic Press. His forthcoming publications include Justice Antonin Scalia's Flawed Originalist Analysis of Brown v. Board of Education, Washington University Jurisprudence Review; Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin and the Racegoating Dynamic of the Anti-Affirmative-Action Position, Harvard Journal on Racial and Ethnic Justice; and Justice Kennedy's Surprising Vote and Opinion in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, Wake Forest Law Review Online.    

Greg Vetter moderated a panel of four corporate intellectual property attorneys on the subject of Patent Litigation at the 32nd Annual Institute on Intellectual Property Law, held by IPIL and the Houston Intellectual Property Law Association (HIPLA) on October 6-8 in Galveston, Texas.

Gina Warren presented her scholarship, 1-Click Energy, at the 7th Annual Colloquium on Environmental Scholarship at Vermont Law School on September 24. This piece analyzes the increasing role of public-private partnerships as large private businesses like Apple seek to privately develop renewable energy projects, not just for their behind-the-meter use, but for wholesale sales into the grid.

Jacqueline Weaver was the key note speaker at the First Inter-American Regulators Dialogue on Friday October 7 at the UH Hilton. The conference featured top regulators of the hydrocarbons sector from Mexico, Brazil, Colombia and Texas.  Her talk was titled “The Role of the Regulator.” She also spoke at the Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Foundation’s Short Course on Oil and Gas Law on October 17 on two topics: The Nature of an Oil and Gas Lease, and Lease Duration.