Albertus Accolades

June 2019

Editor, Robert N. Clark, Reference/Research Librarian

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 Houston Bar Association’s 2019 Minority Opportunities in the Legal Profession (MOILP) annual summer luncheon held at the Hyatt Regency Houston hotel on June 5. Dean Baynes along with members of the Global and Graduate Programs team attended a welcome reception for admitted students on June 6 in the Hendricks Heritage Room. On June 12, Dean Baynes hosted a luncheon with Austin-area alumni at the Roaring Fork in Austin and provided a progress report on the new building. He also hosted the 2019 Austin Alumni & Friends Reception in conjunction with the State Bar of Texas Annual Meeting at the JW Marriott Austin hotel on June 13, and delivered welcoming remarks and a presentation highlighting achievements of the Law Center’s 2022 goals, including an update about the new building. Over 75 faculty, alumni, staff, and friends gathered to network, celebrate, and support the Law Center’s continued commitment to excellence.

On June 14, Dean Baynes was a panelist at the 2019 ABA Deans’ Workshop in Denver. His plenary session titled, “Leading on Climate and Culture: Inclusion and Wellness” focused on the critical role deans play in leading efforts on matters of wellness, diversity, and inclusion through policy-making and by example and how one can generate change within an institution. Dean Baynes hosted a dinner reception on June 17 with Denver-area alumni at Kourier Kitchen in Denver, and updated them on the new building. He attended a meet and greet reception with UHLC PreLaw Pipeline Scholar II students on June 20. On June 21, he taught the UHLC PreLaw Pipeline Program student class on Race and the Law. He joined in the five-year celebration of the UHLC PreLaw Pipeline Program by giving opening remarks before a Diversity Panel at a luncheon at Ouisie’s Table on June 25. On June 27, he joined Provost Paula Short and Dean Ian Holloway of the University of Calgary at a meet and greet with UHLC PreLaw Pipeline Scholars in the Hendricks Heritage Room. Dean Baynes was a guest lecturer in Professor Megan Davis’ Bar Exam workshop class on June 30.

The Wolfram Function Repository has reviewed and published several functions developed by Seth Chandler for general use and to serve as an adjunct to his forthcoming book on data analysis: these include JoinMost, JoinRest, Terse, MapReduceOperator, CorrespondingIntegers, and ResetDataset.

Leah Fowler published a blog post about medical-legal partnerships with Jessica Mantel on Baylor College of Medicine’s PolicyWise Blog. Leah also presented data from an MLP research project at the annual ASLME Health Law Professors conference in Chicago. Additionally, she had an abstract accepted at the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities (with Claire Horner). Finally, she is pleased to announce that she is co-author on a paper recently accepted to Health Promotion Practice about the public health impact of web- and application-based access to birth control. This is especially exciting because the first author is a medical student she co-mentored with a colleague at Baylor College of Medicine (Stephanie Morain, also a co-author).

Alissa Gomez had an article accepted for publication in the Fall 2019 issue of The Second Draft. The article is entitled, “Learning to Love Pro Bono: A Practical Recipe for Engaging Law Students,” and it discusses the student-practitioner pro bono event that the LSS Department held in April 2019.

Christopher Heard presented on “Essential Resources for Entrepreneurs” at the Next GEN ENERGY X Innovation & Entrepreneurship Program for University of Houston and Texas Southern University students on June 7.

Janet Heppard volunteered on June 15 at a veteran’s outreach clinic in Katy, where she interviewed and advised veterans with various legal issues. The clinic was sponsored by the Houston Volunteer Lawyers. 

Geoffrey Hoffman accepted an appointment by the American Bar Association president as a member of the Commission on Immigration for a one-year term commencing with the adjournment of the 2019 Annual Meeting. The ABA Commission on Immigration directs the Association’s efforts to ensure fair treatment and full due process rights for immigrants, asylum-seekers, and refugees within the United States. Professors Geoffrey Hoffman and Michael Olivas were among the legal scholars who signed a letter to Michael Bailey, United States Attorney, District of Arizona in opposition of re-prosecution of Dr. Scott Warren on harboring and conspiracy charges following the mistrial occasioned by a hung jury earlier this month. Professor Hoffman was quoted in an article available on DallasNews.com (Dallas Morning-News), commenting on the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to take up the Trump administration’s challenge to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program during its next term.

Zachary D. Kaufman was invited to the White House on June 6 to advise the National Security Council on implementing the Elie Wiesel Genocide and Atrocities Prevention Act. Professor Kaufman was a lead architect of this new law while serving on the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow in 2016-17. Professor Kaufman's new article, “Legislating Atrocity Prevention” (forthcoming in the Harvard Journal on Legislation), analyzes the law. The article was submitted to the Congressional Record by Stanford Law School Professor Beth Van Schaack on June 13 at the U.S. House of Representative's Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission's Congressional hearing on "Pursuing Accountability for Atrocities." Professor Kaufman was hosted by Representative Jackie Speier on June 13 at her Congressional office in Washington, D.C., to advise on drafting the Harassment and Assault Response and Prevention at State (HARPS) Act, which combats sexual misconduct at the U.S. Department of State's headquarters and embassies. Professor Kaufman's advice drew from his research and recommendations in his new article, “Protectors of Predators or Prey: Bystanders and Upstanders amid Sexual Crimes” (forthcoming in the Southern California Law Review). Professor Kaufman was selected through a competitive process to participate from June 9-13 in the Bridging the Gap's 2019 International Policy Summer Institute (IPSI). IPSI, held at American University's School of International Service in Washington, D.C., is a five-day professional development program for faculty in the field of international affairs to hone their tools and expand their networks to produce and disseminate policy-relevant academic research. Professor Kaufman spoke on June 14 at the Embassy of the Republic of Rwanda in Washington, D.C., at an event co-sponsored by the American Bar Association's Section on International Law and the American Society of International Law to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda. Professor Kaufman's remarks drew from his new article, “Lessons from Rwanda: Post-Genocide Law and Policy” (forthcoming in the Stanford Law & Policy Review Online). Professor Kaufman’s new op-ed, “California Must Close Gap in Law on Reporting Sex Abuse,” was published as the lead op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle’s Sunday, June 23, edition. The op-ed drew from his research and recommendations in his article “Protectors of Predators or Prey: Bystanders and Upstanders amid Sexual Crimes.”

Renee Knake spoke on the topic of global innovations in the delivery of legal services and about her forthcoming book, Shortlisted: Women, Diversity, the Supreme Court & Beyond, to an audience of 450 at the Sydney Legal Tech and Innovation Festival, June 13-14. She delivered a keynote address on her work-in-progress The Duty to Innovate at RMIT University’s College of Business on June 18. That same day she also spoke at The College of Law Victoria about her Shortlisted book. From June 24-28, Professor Knake was hosted by Australian National University in Canberra as a visiting scholar, where she delivered a seminar again on her Shortlisted book and shared findings from her Fulbright research with justices on the High Court. She also spoke at the ANU Excellence and Gender Equality: Critical Perspectives on Gender and Knowledge in the Humanities and Social Sciences Conference on June 27.

Sapna Kumar presented her Fulbright research project at the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition's Patentrechtszyklus. Her presentation, "Technical Experts as Judges: What the United States Can Learn from Europe," examined Germany and Switzerland's use of technically-trained patent judges, and considered how the United States can increase technical expertise in patent litigation.

Peter Linzer will be giving his eighth annual Fourth of July talk on recent Supreme Court cases to the Houston Chapter of the Great Books Society. He will also again take part in the Law Center’s CLE program on the same topic, and usually discusses it on various radio and TV programs and newspapers. He is trying hard to complete The First Amendment and Beyond, the casebook he is writing with Professor Nicole Casarez. He is busy.

Alfonso Lopez de la Osa Escribano gave a conference on June 14 at the Autonomous University of Aguascalientes, Mexico, for the II Research Seminar at the Interinstitutional Doctorate in Law from ANUIES (Asociación Nacional de Universidades e Instituciones de Educación Superior) Center-Occident Public Universities, 2018-2021 promotion. The conference focused on “Comparative law methodology” and was given to an audience of 50 PhD students. On June 28 he attended the annual hearings and meeting of the Ecole Doctorale 67 he belongs to, at Aix-Marseille University (AMU) Law School, in France, to interview and award a number of three-year doctoral agreements (contrats doctoraux) to AMU PhD candidates.

Andrew Michaels published an article in Law360 on “How Much Deference Courts Owe to USPTO Guidance.” He also presented his article on “Implicit Overruling and Foreign Lost Profits” (forthcoming in the Boston University Journal of Science & Technology Law) at the Junior Intellectual Property Scholars Association conference at George Washington University Law School in Washington, D.C.

Sarah J. Morath organized and presented “Creating Student Leaders” at the Association of Legal Writing Professors (ALWD) 2019 Biennial Conference at Suffolk University School of Law in May. Professor Morath, along with professors from the University of Washington School of Law, the University of North Carolina School of Law, Howard University School of Law, and the University of Baltimore School of Law, discussed how legal writing fellows and honors programs can help students develop the leadership skills employers seek. Before the conference, Professor Morath participated in the inaugural ALWD Leadership Academy designed to provide “an opportunity to focus on professional development in the context of the LWR community through exposure to leadership skills and theory.” Professor Morath was invited to present “Finding their Voices: Student Participation in Live Lawmaking” as part of a panel at the Association of American Law Schools in January 2020.

Nathan Neely wrapped up his service to LSAC’s Annual Meeting and Educational Conference work group for the 2019 Boston meeting. The theme was “Gateway to Justice.”    

In Santa Fe, New Mexico, Michael A. Olivas hosted two movie producers who are optioning his book, Colored Men and Hombres Aqui, about the 1954 SCOTUS Hernandez v. Texas case. They are hoping to finance and produce a feature film, based on the events of the case, the first civil rights case argued by Mexican Americans in the U.S. Supreme Court. Speaking of movies, he has agreed to curate and introduce the 1983 feature film El Norte for the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston in spring, 2020, in the series Films Houstonians Love; he will discuss the backstory to the Oscar-nominated film. On June 25, he gave a keynote address to college lawyers at the annual National Association of College and University Attorneys, “5 Easy Pieces, or Half Letterman: My Higher Ed Law Top Five and Why I Love This Field.” 

Teddy Rave attended the Fiduciary Law Workshop at Rutgers Law School in Camden, New Jersey on June 14-15. He also posted his forthcoming Georgetown Law Journal article, “It’s Good to have the “Haves” on Your Side: A Defense of Repeat Players in Multidistrict Litigation” (with Andrew Bradt), to SSRN.

Sandra Guerra Thompson spoke at a symposium at Northwestern Law School in Chicago on June 21. She gave a talk on her upcoming co-authored article entitled, “Solving Daubert’s Dilemma for the Forensic Sciences through Blind Testing,” which will be published in a symposium issue in the Houston Law Review. She co-authored the article with Adjunct Professor Nicole Casarez. Professor Thompson’s interview for the podcast by the Capital Center for Law & Policy of McGeorge Law School ranked in their top ten and is the eighth most downloaded podcast for the program. She spoke on the subjects of crime laboratory regulation and the Houston Forensic Science Center, as well as bail reform in Texas. On June 20, the Washington Post published the first of a series of five commentaries by Professor Thompson (and a group of other experts on forensic science regulation) as part of a published symposium organized by Radley Balko on how to fix forensic science. On June 25, she was quoted in a Houston Chronicle article discussing David Temple’s new murder trial. She commented on the potential benefit to the defense given the amount of time elapsed between trials as well as on prosecutors’ awareness of the repercussions surrounding the withholding of evidence.

Rosemary Vega, Clinical Lecturer, was on a legal panel for the UH Hobby School of Public Affairs: Deliberative Poll on Current and Future Immigration Policy, held on June 15.

Greg Vetter represented the Law Center at the Annual Gala on Saturday, March 30, where, during the University of Houston Law Alumni Association awards ceremony, he received the Law Alumni Faculty Distinction award. He organized the IPIL Advisory Council presentation, hosted by the University of Houston Law Center's Institute for Intellectual Property & Information Law (IPIL), on April 10, where Mr. Drew Hirshfeld, the Commissioner for Patents at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, presented to local IP attorneys and leaders. On Friday evening, April 12, he represented the Law Center at the diversity reception for admitted students. He represented the Law Center at the Dean’s award ceremony on Wednesday, April 17, representing IPIL for several awards to intellectual property law students. He represented the Law Center and IPIL at the April 18 dinner of The Honorable Nancy F. Atlas Intellectual Property American Inn of Court in Houston. On Thursday, June 7, he attended the Law Center’s admitted LL.M. student reception. He represented the Law Center and IPIL at the June 18 event of The Honorable Nancy F. Atlas Intellectual Property American Inn of Court in Houston. On Friday, June 14, as an invited presenter to provide commentary on a paper presentation, he spoke at a conference at Boston University School of Law honoring the scholarship of Professor Wendy Gordon, one of the most influential copyright and IP scholars of her generation.

Bret Wells presented on Section 45Q’s carbon sequestration tax credit as part of the UH Center for Carbon Management’s symposium on Monetization of Carbon on June 12. On June 13, Professor Wells provided a half-day training session on the International Tax Implications of the 2017 Tax Act to the Houston IRS-CPA Society at the Houston IRS Training Center in the Mickey Leland Federal Building. On June 20, he gave a morning presentation on the International Tax Implications of the 2017 Tax Act to the Portland Tax Forum.