Faculty
Focus is a monthly publication documenting the activities, accomplishments, and
honors of the University of Houston Law Center Faculty.
July 2011
Editor, Dan Baker djbaker2@central.uh.edu
Previous editions of Faculty Focus can be accessed here.
Aaron
Bruhl's article on
"The Senate: Out of Order?" has been published in the Connecticut
Law Review. The article was prepared in connection with the Connecticut
Law Review's annual symposium; this year's symposium topic was "Is Our
Constitutional Order Broken? Structural and Doctrinal Questions in Constitutional
Law." All of the symposium contributions are available at http://connecticutlawreview.org/index.htm.
Barbara
Evans’ article, “Much
Ado about Data Ownership”, will appear in the Harvard Journal of Law &
Technology this Fall. She is a co-author, with Deven McGraw and Kristen
Rosati, of “A Model for Advancing Public Health and Protecting Privacy”, set to
appear next month in Pharmacoepidemiology & Drug Safety. Her
chapter, “Legal Trends Driving the Clinical Translation of Pharmacogenomics”,
in Principles of Pharmacogenetics and Pharmacogenomics (Russ B. Altman,
David A. Flockhart & David B. Goldstein, eds., Cambridge University Press)
recently went to press. Prof. Evans will be serving on the Expert Panel for a
Canadian Institutes of Health Research-funded project to develop guidelines for
ethical conduct of cluster randomized, controlled clinical trials. She is a
peer reviewer for the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality’s
publication, Registries for Evaluating Patient Outcomes (3d ed.) and
participated in a related conference on July 18. Prof. Evans was a member of
the program committee for the First International Health Privacy Summit held
June 13 at Georgetown Law Center and spoke about control of patient data in
health information exchanges. She spoke about public use of patient data at the
ASLME health law professors’ conference on June 11. Prof. Evans spoke about
legal issues in managing incidental findings in pharmacogenomic research at the
Duke Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy on June 8-9 and she spoke about
data ownership at the Greenwall Foundation Annual Meeting on May 23. She
continues to serve on the Institute of Medicine’s Committee on the Public
Health Effectiveness of the FDA 510(k) Process, which is preparing its report
for publication soon.
Patricia
Gray, Director of
Research for the Health Law & Policy Institute, presented “Ethics and the
Practice of Medicine in the Era of Social Media” at the 60th Annual Pediatric
Review and Update held in Galveston on June 18. She also presented a
legislative update for members of the Houston Bar Association Health Law
Section on July 13. Prof. Gray, who served in the Texas House of
Representatives from 1992-2003, has recently been recognized in two
retrospective reviews of former state legislators. Texas Monthly
included her in their Best Legislators Hall of Fame interviews in the July
issue. Capitol Insider included her in their decade all star list of
Texas House members for the 1990s. She hopes this does mean that she
is past history and about to fade into the sunset.
Julie Hill presented her article, “Bank Capital
Regulation by Enforcement: An Empirical Study”, at the Law and Society
Association’s annual meeting in San Francisco.
Geoffrey
Hoffman spoke in San
Diego on June 16 at the annual conference of the American Immigration Lawyer's
Association, specifically representing the UH Immigration Clinic at the meeting
on hot topics and current trends sponsored by the Detention Watch
Network/American Immigration Council. Prof. Hoffman attended a meeting of
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials at the USCIS Houston
District Office on June 27, discussing the impact of the Secured Communities
program. On June 29, Prof. Hoffman was quoted in an article in the Houston
Chronicle, entitled “Cornyn presses Napolitano over immigration case
dismissals,” available at http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/chronicle/7631394.html. Prof. Hoffman’s op-ed on
prosecutorial discretion was published in the Sunday edition of the Houston
Chronicle on July 10 and is available online at http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/outlook/7646502.html. Previously, it was the subject of a
guest-post in the ImmigrationProf Blog, available at: http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/.
Sapna
Kumar was appointed
to the 2012 Planning Committee for the AALS New Law School Teachers Workshop,
the Pretenured People of Color Law School Teachers Workshop, and the Workshop
on Clinical Education. She traveled to Washington D.C. to serve as a group
leader for the 2011 New Law School Teachers Workshop and to begin planning next
year's workshops.
Jessica
Mantel spoke on a
panel at the ASLME's Health Law Professor Conference at Loyola of Chicago Law
School on June 11. The panel discussed accountable care organizations under
health care reform.
Rick
McElvaney spoke at
the HAY Center on Consumer Law to a group of counselors who assist foster care
children. Prof. McElvaney spoke at the State Bar of Texas Annual Convention to
the Consumer and Commercial Section on New Laws Affecting Consumer Law (2011).
Prof. McElvaney also presented the portion of the Kaplan Texas Bar Review Class
dealing with Consumer Law.
Tom Oldham’s review of a book by Fay Botham
about the history of US laws barring interracial marriage was published in the Journal
of Law & Religion (Vol. 26, no. 2 [2010-11]).
Michael A.
Olivas gave a lecture
on “Academic Freedom and Internal Forces Upon the Curriculum” at an AALS
curriculum workshop in Seattle, June 12. On June 13, he addressed graduates
from the Graduate School of Education, UC-Riverside, and gave the commencement
address. On June 16, he spoke on Hernandez v. Texas to the Appellate
Section of the Houston Bar Association, and on June 26-27, he taught sophomore
prelaw students in the UH Prelaw Institute. On June 28, he submitted testimony
to the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary’s Subcommittee on Immigration,
Refugees and Border Security, in support of the DREAM Act: http://www.law.uh.edu/news/summer2011/0628Olivas.html.
Jacqueline
Weaver taught a
course in international petroleum to 12 lawyers from Sonangol, the national oil
company of Angola, at the Law Center for 8 days in June. The lawyers are in the
Advanced Legal Studies program taught by professors from UHLC, Catolica Law
School in Lisbon, and Kings College.
Bret Wells’ article entitled “New Schedule UTP:
Uncertain Tax Positions in the Age of Transparency” came out in print at 63 Baylor
L. Rev. 392 (2011). Prof. Wells testified by invitation at a hearing of the
Subcommittee on Select Revenue Measures of the House Ways & Means
Committee. The hearing focused on tax reform and its impact on foreign
investment in the United States. The House Ways & Means Committee’s online
link for the hearing, along with Prof. Wells’ prepared written testimony, can
be found at http://waysandmeans.house.gov/Calendar/EventSingle.aspx?EventID=247219.