Albertus Accolades

June 2017

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 a public service on May 4 at Second Baptist Church honoring the life of Richard ‘Racehorse” Haynes (‘56) who passed away April 28, 2017. The following day, Dean Baynes hosted a farewell reception to highlight the leadership and accomplishments of Associate Dean Marcilynn Burke and celebrate her becoming the dean at the University of Oregon School of Law. On May 12, Dean Baynes participated in the Spring 2017 University-wide Commencement ceremony of the University of Houston. He joined President Renu Khator and other distinguished platform faculty and guests at TDECU Stadium. The commencement speaker was actor, businessman, and former governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Dean Baynes presided over the 2017 graduation ceremony of the University of Houston Law Center on May 13 and awarded 237 Juris Doctorate degrees and 74 LL.M. degrees to culminate the Law Center’s 67th Convocation ceremony, which was held at NRG Arena in Houston, TX. Meredith Attwell Baker (’94), Cellular Telephone Industries Association (CTIA) President and CEO delivered the convocation address. Dean Baynes gave a presentation at the law firm of Bracewell LLP to kickoff the annual 100% Challenge Campaign on May 15.The campaign reaches out to alumni at law firms, corporations, and other organizations to secure participation in giving back to the Law Center. On May 18, Dean Baynes gave presentations at the UH Law Alumni Board Meeting and UHLAA Annual Meeting & Celebration. Both events were held at the Petroleum Club of Houston. Dean Baynes met with members of the advance team of the Texas Supreme Court and UHLC faculty and staff on May 22 to begin planning the Court’s visit to the UH Law Center. The Court will hold oral arguments at the Law Center in the fall.

Janet Beck (along with her colleague Rosemary Vega and Summer Clinic law student Alina Fisher) provided over a dozen legal consultations to individuals at the Honduran Consulate in Houston. The consulate had reached out to the UHLC Immigration Clinic to request our assistance in this venture. Professor Beck also served as a panelist on immigration matters at Universal Church. Other panelists were representatives from HPD, Tahirih Justice Center, RAICES and a private attorney. Over 200 people were in attendance.

Barbara Evans spoke about individual data access rights at a June 12-13 workshop entitled “Patients as Partners in Research,” hosted by the Broad Institute of Harvard/MIT, the Biden Cancer Initiative, and the Emerson Collective. She delivered the MedGen Seminar at the University of Washington’s Division of Medical Genetics on June 16, discussing regulatory alternatives for in vivo somatic gene editing products for use in genomic surgeries using CRISPR-Cas9 RNA-protein complexes. On June 28-30, she attends the kick-off meeting for the NSF-funded I/UCRC BRAIN study of non-invasive machine/brain interfaces, an industry/university research collaboration co-led by the UH and Arizona State departments of Electrical and Computer Engineering. She had fun teaching Biotech Law in the UH Pipeline Program on June 8. Professor Evans has just been awarded a grant by FDA/Harvard Catalyst to study public health and research uses of FDA’s Sentinel System data network. She is conducting studies funded by NIH’s LawSeqTM project (Susan Wolf, Ellen Clayton, and Frances Lawrenz, PIs) and Clinical Sequencing in Cancer project (Gail P. Jarvik, PI). She is on the work team for a recently-awarded NIH study of mobile health data headed by Mark Rothstein and Kevin Patrick, MD. Professor Evans sent four works to the printer early in June: a co-authored National Academies report on regulation of future biotechnology products; two book chapters (on genomic data commons and big data systems in health care); and one medical journal article on genomic data privacy. She also submitted first drafts of two book chapters (on health data privacy and transparency topics) and two law-review-length pieces (a LawSeq study of individual data access and a study of FDA regulation of genome surgery products). This summer, she is co-editing a volume compiling papers presented at the May 2017 Harvard Petrie-Flom Annual Conference, which focused on transparency in health care.  

Dave Fagundes attended the 8th annual meeting of the Association of Law, Property & Society (ALPS) at the University of Michigan. There, he presented “Nudge-Proof: The HUD No-smoking Regulations,” a working paper co-authored with Jessica Roberts. He also attended the ALPS Board of Directors meeting. Dave also published a review of Mark Rose’s book, Authors in Court: Scenes From the Theater of Copyright, in the American Journal of Legal History. 

Whitney Werich Heard began her work with the UHLC Pre-Law Pipeline Program. She is advising students on personal statements and diversity statements by providing multiple rounds of written feedback and individual conferences.

Geoffrey Hoffman will participate as a speaker in the Maryland Journal of International Law’s Fall 2017 Symposium, “The U.S. Mexico Relationship in International Law and Politics,” on October 20. In June, Professor Hoffman was interviewed for a Texas Standard piece regarding the recent ruling of a San Antonio federal judge. The judge found that the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office violated the rights of a Mexican citizen when he was held in jail on an immigration detainer after his criminal charges were dismissed. Audio of the interview is available here. Professor Geoffrey Hoffman was quoted in a Law360 article discussing why the Supreme Court’s recent citizenship ruling is a blow to the plenary power doctrine. He also appeared on KPFT’s Coming to America program on June 13 to discuss the problems with Texas Senate Bill 4. Audio of the interview is available here. Professor Hoffman wrote a piece published on LexisNexis’ Immigration Legal News Room site, noting the importance of Matter of X, a recent Board of Immigration Appeals decision. Professor Hoffman also accepted an invitation to speak in New Orleans on June 24th, at the American Immigration Lawyers Association Annual Conference at the panel “Asylum 101: Protecting Refugees in the United States.” On June 26, Professor Geoffrey Hoffman was quoted in two San Antonio Express-News articles regarding SB 4, the Texas immigration bill that was signed into law last month. The next day, Professor Hoffman was interviewed for an NPR news piece regarding the implementation of SB 4 in Texas, and the proposed injunction brought by the City of San Antonio. Hoffman was also quoted in a Law 360 article commenting on U.S Supreme rulings on immigration-related cases this past term. On June 30, Professor Hoffman was quoted in a Daily Cougar article regarding the Houston City Council’s vote to join other local municipalities in the lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the Texas’ controversial new immigration law. Lastly, Professor Hoffman also spoke to students in the Pipeline Program about immigration law and practice during this busy month.

Renee Knake was invited to speak about Deborah Rhode’s recently published book Women and Leadership at the Law and Society Annual Meeting in Mexico City on June 22.

Rick McElvaney spoke to the Dress for Success program’s participants on housing, consumer, and debt collection issues. He was also interviewed by Channel 13 for two consumer news stories. The first on stopping marketer’s telephone calls. The second on stopping unwanted credit card and insurance mail offers.

Douglas Moll submitted the manuscript for the 2017 edition of his Business Organizations Statutory Supplement. He is presently working on the second edition of his Concise Hornbook on Business Organizations. Professor Moll was also admitted as an international member of the University of Barcelona’s Consolidated Research Group on Corporate Governance. The Columbia Law School Blue Sky Blog also solicited a blog post on Professor Moll’s recent article, The Duty of Care of Bank Officers and Directors (with Julie Hill).

Sarah Morath advised students in the Pre-law Pipeline Program at UHLC on personal statements and diversity statements.  Her proposal, The Effectiveness of Private Animal Welfare Governance, was accepted to be part of the 2018 AALS Animal Law Section panel on “Corporate Transparency, Accountability, and Animal Welfare.” Papers will be published in The Journal of Animal and Natural Resource Law.

Nathan Neely did not run another marathon but was invited to present at the Law School Admission Council’s 2017 Annual Meeting and Educational Conference. The presentation, “The Campus Visit: A Strategy Comparison,” was, reportedly, well received and assisted admission officers across the country to evaluate the strategies employed when prospective students visit. 

Michael A. Olivas hosted the 24th annual IHELG Houston Higher Education Roundtable, this being a year in which the workshop focused on Higher Education Law; it alternates with Higher Education Finance. The Roundtable is a three day program to work with a half-dozen pre-tenured faculty across disciplines whose research focus is higher education. He attended a research program at the Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, and was interviewed by the reporters and editors in the DC headquarters of InsideHigherEd. He will be on faculty development leave in Fall, 2017.

The O’Quinn Law Library presented on June 2 "Essential Legal Information & Technology for Texas Lawyers," a free training workshop covering topics in  advanced Texas legal research, free and low cost legal resources, and the latest legal technology. With over 100 attendees, the program featured Katy Badeaux presenting ”Advanced Texas Legal Research,” Chris Dykes presenting “Free and Low Cost Online Resources for Lawyers” and Emily Lawson presenting “Legal Technology for Lawyers.” The librarians also participated in presenting guest lectures to students in the Law Center’s Pre-Law Pipeline Program. Chris Dykes (along with Professor Lauren Simpson) presented an “Introduction to Law.” Emily Lawson lectured on “American Legal Research Practice, and Chris Dykes and Katy Badeaux co-taught “Research Methods.”

Justice Sotomayor cited an amicus brief that D. Theodore Rave coauthored with a group of scholars from Berkeley, Cornell, Harvard, and Temple in her dissent in the Bristol-Myers Squibb v. Superior Court case on personal jurisdiction. Professor Rave also attended back-to-back conferences at UCLA School of Law from June 7-10: The Fiduciary Law Workshop and the Fiduciary Government Symposium, where he presented a draft of his book chapter, Two Problems of Fiduciary Governance, which is forthcoming in Fiduciary Government (Evan J. Criddle, Evan Fox-Decent, Andrew S. Gold, Sung Hui Kim & Paul B. Miller eds., Cambridge University Press). He also finished a draft of another book chapter, Fiduciary Principles and the State, and sent it off to the editors of the Oxford Handbook of Fiduciary Law, where it will be published after a conference at Harvard Law School in the fall.

In June, Lauren Simpson and Chris Dykes co-taught the Introduction to Law class in the Law Center’s Pre-Law Pipeline Program. Professor Simpson is also teaching Legal Writing in the Pipeline Program during June. Lauren Simpson continues her community service of educating about pollinators, their conservation, and the wildscapes supporting them. On June 8, Professor Simpson hosted the Garden Oaks Garden Club at her home’s 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). The attendees toured the gardens while learning about pollinator-supportive gardening. Additionally, Professor Simpson was interviewed for the Houston Audubon Society’s Bird-Friendly Communities program, to be broadcast in the near future. In the interview, Professor Simpson gives practical advice for creating and maintaining bird- and pollinator-friendly wildscapes. Finally, on June 26, Professor Simpson spoke at the Clear Lake City-County Freeman Branch Library to tweens about how they can save pollinators by gardening with native plants at home. Activities will include planting wildflower seeds from Professor Simpson’s wildlife-habitat gardens.

The tax faculty of the University of Houston Law Center (Paul Asofsky, Johnny Buckles, Bill Streng, Bret Wells and Denney Wright) hosted the 3rd Annual Texas Tax Faculty Workshop on Friday, May 19 at the University of Houston. Thirteen tax professors came to UH to discuss the scholarly works that are being pursued by the tax faculty in this state. Professors Buckles and Streng were designated commentators for two of the articles that were presented at the workshop. Professor Wells organized the event.

Gina Warren and co-author Kendra Sharp (Oregon State University) presented their research on science and policy of small hydropower development in Pakistan at the IWRA XVIth World Water Congress, Cancun, Mexico, May 29. Warren’s research was showcased in the Congress’ daily newsletter. Warren was invited to present her upcoming article, “Green Energy Athletics,” at the 8th Annual Colloquium on Environmental Scholarship, Vermont Law School, South Royalton, Vermont, September 23, 2017. She was also in the top 10% of Authors on SSRN by total new downloads within the last 12 months.

Bret Wells presented his article on “Allocation Wells: Lessor’s Remedies for Multi-Tract Horizontal Wells Drilled Without Pooling Authority” at the 4th Annual GDHM Land & Mineral Owner Seminar held in Austin, Texas on May 12.

Kellen Zale's article, Sharing Property, 87. U Colo. L. Rev. 201 (2016), was selected for inclusion in the 2017 edition of the Zoning and Planning Law Handbook (Thomson Reuters). On April 28, she presented to the Workshop on the Cambridge Handbook of the Law and the Sharing Economy hosted by Suffolk University, discussing her chapter on Scale and the Sharing Economy for the forthcoming book, Cambridge Handbook of the Law and the Sharing Economy (Cambridge University Press). On May 20, she presented a work-in-progress, The Tenant's Right to Share, at the Annual Meeting of the Association of Law, Property, and Society (ALPS) at the University of Michigan.