Albertus Accolades

May 2015

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.

Janet Beck served as panelist for the day-long Physicians for Human Rights Workshop Introduction to Forensic Documentation of Trauma: Evaluating Immigrant Survivors of Torture and Ill Treatment. A total of 80 physicians (including psychiatrists), psychologists and social workers attended.

David R. Dow received the 2015 Torch of Liberty award from the Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association at the HCCLA’s annual banquet on May 14. An excerpt from his memoir, The Autobiography of an Execution, was reprinted in Hablar Derecho: Dialogos Entre La Narrativa y El Derecho, jointly published by ITAM University and Editorial Porrua. (This publication was facilitated by the estimable Professor Stephen Zamora.)

Geoffrey Hoffman participated in a meeting with USCIS Director Leon Rodriguez at the Houston Endowment downtown who met with more than 20 non-profits assisting immigrants in the Houston area.

Craig Joyce, the Andrews Kurth Professor of Law, announced Andrews Kurth LLP as the new sponsor of IPIL’s Spring Lecture, beginning in 2016. The Inaugural Lecturer for the AKSLs will be Mark Lemley, the William H. Neukom Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and the Director of the Stanford Program in Law, Science and Technology.

Sapna Kumar hosted the UHLC Administrative Law Workshop last month, featuring the Hon. Judge Sentelle of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. The workshop focused on issues at the intersection of intellectual property and administrative law. It brought together several rising stars in the field, and offered scholars commentary from Professors Greg Vetter (UHLC), Kristin Hickman (U. of Minnesota), and Jack Beerman (Boston University).

David Kwok’s piece, A Fair Competition Theory of the False Claims Act, was accepted for publication with the Nebraska Law Review.

Tom Oldham has been asked by John Eekelaar, the dean of English family law, to contribute to a book he is organizing regarding recent developments in family law in England and the United States. Eekelaar has asked 10 authors from the United States and 10 from England and Scotland to contribute to the volume. Professor Oldham will write a chapter regarding family property in the United States.

Michael A. Olivas moderated a panel at the WIPLA event at UHLC on April 24 (The Music Scene in Houston, with Particular Emphasis on the Rise of Spanish-Language Music and Media). He published Response to Rafael I. Pardo, ‘The Undue Hardship Thicket: On Access to Justice, Procedural Noncompliance, and Pollutive Litigation in Bankruptcy,’ 66 Florida Law Review Forum 1 (2015), available here, and turned in the final manuscript to Carolina Academic Press of his forthcoming casebook, The Law and Higher Education: Cases and Materials on Colleges in Court (4th ed., with Amy Gajda). He taped several radio interviews and spoke with several reporters on developments in higher education law, immigration law, and entertainment law.

Jordan Paust was the speaker on The International Criminal Court during the UNA/USA “Know Your UN” Series in Houston on the evening of May 14.

D. Theodore Rave presented his paper Fiduciary Voters? at the Fiduciary Law Workshop at BYU Law School on May 22, and again at the Law & Society Association Annual Meeting in Seattle on May 28.

Jessica L. Roberts was named a 2018 Greenwall Faculty Scholar in Bioethics. The associated grant will fund her research on the legal implications of genetic ownership for the next three years.  Alex Long reviewed her forthcoming article in the William and Mary Law Review, Protecting Privacy to Prevent Discrimination, on JOTWELL, available here. Lastly, the New York Times interviewed Jessica regarding her thoughts on a pending genetic privacy case.

Barbara J. Stalder presented with Janet Heppard at Texas Poverty Law Conference in Austin Texas in April 29. The topic was How Trauma Affects Children in High Conflict Divorce and Custody Cases. Barbara J. Stalder and Janet Heppard organized in conjunction with CLE Director Robert Johnson a Friday CLE at UHLC on May 1 titled Family Law 101. Barbara presented on domestic violence and Janet presented on termination and adoption. Professor Stalder was also accepted into the American Academy of Experts in Traumatic Stress. 

Greg Vetter presented for the Houston Intellectual Property Law Association (HIPLA) on the topic of Teva v. Sandoz: Patent Law’s Mixed-Mode Claim Construction Regime, on May 15. He also opened the ceremonies for World IP Day on April 24, an event co-hosted and co-arranged by the Law Center’s Institute for Intellectual Property and Information Law (IPIL) in collaboration with various local and national stakeholders.

Jacqueline Weaver spoke at the Inaugural Oil and Gas Law Conference on Key Legal Issues in Oil and Gas Law: A Caribbean Perspective, sponsored by the University of the West Indies and its new Oil and Gas program on April 30 and May 1. Her topic was Offshore Safety after Macondo: Status, Challenges and Opportunities to Cooperate. A former LLM student in the EENR program, Alicia Elias-Roberts is now Vice-Dean of Outreach for UWI and assembled a first-rate group of speakers, both national and international, from industry, government and academe, to inaugurate what will be an annual program. The after-conference weekend was spent bird watching at a nature sanctuary in the mountains and a swamp with scarlet ibises. 

Bret Wells presented Revisiting §367(d) in Light of IP Migration Strategies: How Treasury Took the Bite Out of §367(d) and What Should be Done About It to the Houston Business and Tax Law Journal’s Annual Symposium on April 16.

Allison Winnike was a panelist on the Ethics in Medicine Forum discussions on Immunizations in Private Practice and Immunizations and Public Health at the Texas Medical Association’s TexMed 2015 conference in Austin on May 1. On April 9 she was named co-chair of the Resources, Repository, and Curation Committee for the Immunization Law and Policy Collaboration at their national strategic planning meeting in Austin. During March and April she brought students from her Health Legislation & Advocacy II course to Austin to testify for telemedicine legislation drafted by the students before the Texas House Committee on Public Health. Two of the three student bills passed the Committee, one of which later passed the Texas House by a 141-0 vote. In June she will give a presentation on Health Legislative Drafting and Advocacy during the Innovations in Teaching session at the 38th Annual Health Law Professors Conference sponsored by the American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics and the Saint Louis University School of Law. The presentation will focus on lessons learned from teaching the innovative new courses Health Legislation & Advocacy I and II. 

Kellen Zale’s article Sharing Property was accepted for publication in the Colorado Law Review.  She presented the article at the annual meeting of the Association for Law, Property and Society at the University of Georgia on May 1. She was also an invited panelist at Arizona State University’s Sustainability Conference of American Legal Educators on May 8, where she presented on the topic of Is the Sharing Economy a Sustainable Economy?