Albertus Accolades

July 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 Law Foundation Board Meeting on June 9 where he gave an overview of the Law Center’s recent activities. On June 13, Dean Baynes hosted Star Jones (’86) at a private dinner and introduced her at a meet and greet with Pipeline Program Students. Dean Baynes attended and welcomed guests at a “power networking event" in partnership with the National Association of Professional Women (NAPW) on June 14 with Star Jones. On June 15, Dean Baynes taught “Race and the Law” as part of the Law Center’s Pre-Law Pipeline Program. Dean Baynes welcomed guests at the Law Center’s Alumni & Friends Reception at the 2016 State Bar of Texas Annual Meeting on June 16. Dean Baynes also welcomed guests and spoke at the Alumni & Friends Reception: Taste of Houston at Holley’s Seafood Restaurant and Oyster Bar on June 22. On June 30, Dean Baynes gave an overview of the Law Center's recent activities and events at the Law Alumni Association Board Meeting.

Janet Beck (along with Josephine Sorgwe) supervised UHLC Immigration Clinic students (Ivonne Escobar, Gabriella Cole, Nneka Morah, Jordan Gonzalez and Soo Choi) at the Southwest Family Residential Center (a detention center for women and children from Central America) in Dilley, Texas (southwest of San Antonio). The students did a fantastic job helping prepare 73 women and 3 adolescents for their interviews with USCIS Asylum officers. A lot of the women cried as it was the first time since they had arrived in the U.S. that someone had listened to them about their harrowing experiences of violence- both domestic and gang-related- in their home countries. Two 3-year old boys told their mothers: “No llore mami” (don’t cry mommy) as they wiped tears from their mothers’ faces. The students worked a total of 22 hours from Friday afternoon to Sunday afternoon. Professor Ann Webb, from the UH Graduate School of Social Work, brought 5 social work students who did a great job serving as interpreters. UHD undergrad student, Edith Aldaba, who works in Michael Olivas’ office and also works in the Immigration Clinic, was also a great interpreter.

Emily Berman appeared on the Ben Hall Legal Hour on Houston’s KCOH radio in the wake of the shooting in Orlando to discuss proposed restrictions on terrorism-related speech on social media.  

Erma Bonadero has been appointed as a member of the Houston Lawyer Committee by the Houston Bar Association for 2016-2017.

Dave Fagundes presented his draft paper, Buying Happiness: Property, Acquisition & Subjective Well-Being, at the 2016 Annual Meeting of the Association for Law, Property & Society (ALPS) at Queens University in Belfast, and attended the ALPS Board of Directors meeting. Dave also served as an invited commentator at the 7th Annual Junior Scholars in Intellectual Property (JSIP) workshop at the Michigan State University College of Law. Finally, Dave attended the UHLC IPIL’s annual Santa Fe symposium on Authorship in America (and Beyond).

After his 30th anniversary class reunion at Columbia Law School on June 10-12 in New York City, Tracy Hester spoke at the Academy of Environmental Law’s Collegium on June 23 in Oslo, Norway about the emerging global role of environmental courts and tribunals and how they interpret environmental laws differently from general jurisdiction courts. This research provides the basis of his ongoing article on models of environmental statutory interpretation, which he will present at the Vermont Law School Environmental Law Colloquium in September 2016. He then participated in the Tenth Annual Advanced Conference on Natural Resource Damages in Santa Fe, New Mexico on July 14-15.

Geoffrey Hoffman was interviewed by Law360 for an article on this term’s Supreme Court decisions involving immigration. In the article Professor Hoffman comments on the rulings in Luna Torres v. Lynch and Mathis v. U.S. and their implications for immigrants. Professor Hoffman spoke on immigration relief at the YCMA Immigration Court Model Hearing Program at the ExxonMobil building on Fannin in downtown Houston. Professor Hoffman also attended the meeting of the Organizational Development Committee of the Houston Immigration Legal Services Collaborative. In addition, Professor Hoffman filed a reply brief in the Supreme Court in Sanchez v. Kerry, as co-counsel with Roberto Hinojosa.

David Kwok participated in a live radio call-in program on Houston Public Media regarding retaliation against whistleblowers. He also presented a paper, Disentangling ‘Deep Pockets’ from a Media Deterrence Strategy in Federal Fraud Case Selection, at CrimFest 2016, hosted by the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York, NY.

Ellen Marrus attended and presented at the Arizona Public Defender Association conference in Tempe, AZ. This is the largest public defender conference in Arizona with hundreds of defenders from urban, rural, and tribal areas attending. Professor Marrus spoke about using adolescent development to help your client’s case from detention to disposition. In July the Center for Children, Law & Policy hosted the 15th annual Zealous Advocacy conference at the University of Houston Law Center. The conference focused on Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and Professor Marrus presented on ACEs and Juvenile Justice and two sessions on ethical issues in juvenile practice. Professor Marrus also presented in Monterey at the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges on Raising Race: Ensuring Minors are Treated Fairly in the Juvenile Justice System, Regardless of Race or Ethnicity and is presenting at Harvard at the North American Association for the Study of Welsh Culture and History by invitation from our Swansea University partners on a panel entitled “Human Rights for Children in Wales and the USA: different approaches, same intention?".

Douglas Moll was invited by Professor Wilson Huhn (Akron) to speak to his Business Organizations class. The class had read Professor Moll’s 2005 article entitled Minority Oppression and the Limited Liability Company:  Learning (or Not) from Close Corporation History, and Professor Moll was asked about whether the predictions made in that article had come to pass.  Professor Moll was “broadcast” to the class using WebEx technology and he fielded questions from Professor Huhn and his students for an hour. Professor Moll also guest blogged at the Business Law Professor Blog during June and July.

Sarah Morath presented at the 17th Biennial Legal Writing Institute Conference in July 2016 in Portland, Oregon. In May, Sarah was elected to the Editorial Board of Legal Writing: The Journal of the Legal Writing Institute. Earlier in the spring, she was appointed co-chair of the AALS Section on Legal Writing, Reasoning, and Research’s Nominations Committee. Her article The E-Comment: A Simple Exercise for Public Law Courses will be published this summer in Vol. 24 of Perspectives: Teaching Legal Research and Writing. She will be presenting as part of an Arc of Career panel at AALS in January 2017.

In an Albuquerque, NM recording studio, Michael A. Olivas has recorded six new shows for his NPR show, The Law of Rock and Roll. Classes No. 33-38 include: Happy, Happy Birthday, Baby; Copyright Infringement, Otra Vez; Beatles Law and Business; Law, Rock & Roll, and the Movies Vol. II; Remasters and Repackaging; and Law and Business of Bowie and Prince. Later in the Fall, he will return to the studio to record the six other 2016 shows. On the day SCOTUS announced its decisions in Fisher v. UT and U.S. v. Texas, he briefed many reporters and published two editorials: No More Bites of the Fisher Apple (Fisher) and The Supreme Court's Immigration Decision is a Tragedy that May be Short-Lived (U.S. v. Texas). He also spoke with Houston Public Media’s Florian Martin, available here.

D. Theodore Rave presented a draft of his paper, The Information-Forcing Role of the Judge in Multidistrict Litigation (with Andrew Bradt, UC Berkeley) at the 2nd Annual Civil Procedure Workshop at the University of Washington on July 14. He also was invited to contribute a chapter to a new book on Fiduciary Government (Evan Criddle, Evan Fox-Decent, Andrew Gold, Paul Miller & Sung Hui Kim, eds.) and to participate in a symposium at UCLA next June in connection with the book. Professor Rave was also a guest on Houston Public Media’s television show Red, White & Blue discussing the Supreme Court’s term. The episode aired July 1.

Jessica L. Roberts’s article, co-authored with Stephanie Morain and Leah Fowler, What to Expect When (Your Employer Suspects) You are Expecting, was accepted for publication by JAMA Internal Medicine.

The second edition of Spencer Simons’ text, Texas Legal Research, has gone to press. The text and the teacher’s manual will be available for adoption for Fall semester.

Lauren Simpson will speak on a panel at the August annual conference of the Southeastern Association of Law Schools on a panel discussing how law schools may adapt to the new realities in legal education. The panel is part of a workshop for newer law teachers and will explore topics such as decreased enrollments and budgets, the ABA’s new standards, and differently prepared entering students.  In particular, Professor Simpson will share her experience in teaching collaborations and how such collaborations may be used to address the changing landscape of legal education. In April 2016, Lauren Simpson spoke in Lubbock at the Texas Pollinator Powwow, an annual pollinator-conservation conference. Her presentation, entitled “How I Came to Love the Syrphid Fly—from the Journal of a Citizen Scientist,” introduced the audience to this family of pollinating fly, explained its important role in pollination and garden health, and showcased its species’ beauty through photographs from Professor Simpson’s own home wildlife-habitat gardens, which are a Certified Wildlife Habitat (National Wildlife Federation), a Monarch Waystation (Monarch Watch, Waystation No. 10925), and a Certified Butterfly Garden (North American Butterfly Association). In September  2016, Professor Simpson will speak in Houston at the 18th annual Wildscapes Workshop, presented by the Houston Chapter of the Native Plant Society of Texas and co-sponsored by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.  In her presentation, entitled “From Wasteland to Wildscape: How I Transformed a Traditional Urban Landscape into a Pollinator Paradise,” Professor Simpson will share the story of how she created a pollinator-friendly home wildscape that has welcomed more than 30 species of butterfly and around 20 species each of bee and wasp—among many other pollinators. In early August 2016, Professor Simpson will speak in Houston at the monthly meeting of the Gulf Coast Texas Master Naturalist Chapter, the mission of which is “[t]o develop a corps of well-informed volunteers to provide education, outreach, and service dedicated to the beneficial management of natural resources and natural areas within their communities.” Professor Simpson will speak on the syrphid fly, explaining its important role in pollination and garden health and showcasing its species’ beauty through photographs from her own wildlife-habitat gardens.

Sandra Guerra Thompson taught Criminal Law in the UHLC’s Pipeline Program. She also attended the July Board of Directors meeting of the Houston Forensic Science Center on July 8th. She serves as Vice Chair of the Board. Professor Thompson attended the June 28th meeting of the Timothy Cole Exoneration Review Commission in Austin to discuss the need for improvement in the procedures used to obtain eyewitness identification evidence in criminal cases. She also attended planning meetings for the Greater Houston Coalition for Justice which will be hosting a series of symposia on “Solving the Crisis of Mass Incarceration.” Professor Thompson attended the July meeting of the Advisory Board for the Texas Judicial Council’s Criminal Justice Committee and also joined the Texas Indigent Defense Commission’s legislative workgroup. 

Greg Vetter was an invited participant and presenter at the conference on Patent Damages held on June 9-10, at the University of Texas School of Law. His presentation was a summary and commentary for the conference paper by Professor Tom Cotter, entitled Patent Damages Heuristics.

Bret Wells joined several other tax law professors in filing an Amicus Brief on July 1 in Altera v. Commissioner, Docket No. 16-70497 (9th Cir. Feb 23, 2016).  

Allison Winnike was awarded the American Public Health Association Law Section’s 2016 Early Career Award for Excellence in Public Health Law, given annually to an individual who demonstrates great promise as a future leader in the field of public health law and in recognition of her contributions to research, teaching and mentoring, practice and advocacy. On June 7, she delivered a speech on “Public Health Law & Ethics and Implications for Local Health Authorities” as part of the Texas Department of State Health Services’ High Consequences Infectious Disease Response Workshops in El Paso, Texas. She participated in the Temple University Policy Surveillance Program Summer Institute on policy surveillance and legal mapping techniques June 9 and 10. On June 16, she spoke to the Greater Houston Industrial Hygiene Council on “Legal Aspects of Public Health.”  She was a featured guest on legal issues related to the Zika virus preparedness and response at the State of Texas Active Response to Zika conference July 6 in McAllen, Texas. She delivered a presentation to Texas County Judges and local officials July 12, on “Preparing for Zika: Legal Issues for Texas County Officials,” during the State Coordination Conference Call hosted by Texas Department of State Health Services Commissioner Dr. John Hellerstedt and Assistant Commissioner for Regional and Local Health Services David Gruber.