Faculty Focus is a monthly publication documenting the activities, accomplishments, and honors of the University of Houston Law Center Faculty.

September 2012

Editor, Katy Stein kastein@central.uh.edu
Previous editions of Faculty Focus can be accessed here.

Erma Bonadero, in commemoration of Constitution Day and in association with the Houston Bar Association, traveled to Stafford Elementary to read to its 4th and 5th grade classes. The book she read, If I Ran for President (by Catherine Stier and illustrated by Lynne Avril) provides an entertaining and simplified, yet accurate, explanation of our country’s election process. After the readings, the book was donated to the school library. 

Seth Chandler has been invited to testify before the Texas Joint Interim Committee to Study Seacoast Territory Insurance in Austin this September.  He will present arguments against a proposed statewide catastrophe pool that would surcharge all insureds without regard to geography and in favor of modifications to the Texas Windstorm Insurance Association that should improve its financial stability and fairness.

Barbara Evans’ article, “Institutional Competence to Balance Privacy and Competing Values: The Forgotten Third Prong of HIPAA Preemption Analysis” will appear in volume 46 of the U.C. Davis Law Review (2013), http://ssrn.com/abstract=2141566. Her chapter, “In Search of Sound Policy on Nonconsensual Uses of Identifiable Health Data,” will appear in The Future of Human Subjects Research Regulation (L. Glenn Cohen, ed., M.I.T. Press, forthcoming 2013). Her article, “Bioethics in the Age of Statutes,” will appear in Symposium: Imagining the Next Quarter Century of Health Care Law, volume 10 of the Indiana Health Law Review (2013). Her essay, “Would Patient Ownership of Health Data Improve Confidentiality?” appeared in volume 14 of the American Medical Association Journal of Ethics: Virtual Mentor, 724-733 (September 2012), available at: http://virtualmentor.ama-assn.org/2012/09/pfor1-1209.html. In July, her chapter, “Legal Trends Driving the Clinical Translation of Pharmacogenomics,” was published in Principles of Pharmacogenetics and Pharmacogenomics (Russ B. Altman, David A. Flockhart & David B. Goldstein, eds., Cambridge University Press, 2012). The Institute of Medicine’s recent study, Ethics and Scientific Issues in Studying the Safety of Approved Drugs (August 2012) cited Prof. Evans’ forthcoming article, “The Ethics of Postmarketing Observational Studies of Drug Safety Under Section 505(o)(3) of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act,” in volume 38 of the American Journal of Law & Medicine (forthcoming 2012), http://ssrn.com/abstract=2021986. The Food and Drug Administration recently issued a report, Strengthening Our National System for Medical Device Postmarket Surveillance (September 2012) addressing recommendations of the IOM committee on which Prof. Evans served in 2010-2011. 

Jim Hawkins will present his paper “Selling ART: An Empirical Assessment of Advertising on Fertility Clinics’ Websites” at Indiana University Maurer School of Law as part of the Assisted Reproductive Technology Roundtable on September 28. The paper will be published in the Indiana Law Journal.

Tracy Hester spoke on The Legal Consequences of Climate Attribution at a symposium on Attribution of Weather and Climate Extremes at Oxford University on September 12-14, 2012. The symposium was sponsored by the British Consulate, Oxford University and the UK Department of Environment and Climate Change. 

Geoffrey Hoffman conducted a training for volunteer attorneys and participated in the subsequent outreach on Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals held at Neighborhood Centers, Inc. in Houston in late August. Professor Hoffman has been invited to co-author a book chapter on the criminalization of immigration law. The book will be published in the spring 2013.  Professor Hoffman has been invited to speak at a CLE on Immigration Litigation in Miami Florida in October 2012. On September 5, 2012, Professor Hoffman addressed a group of students on the implications of deferred action for childhood arrivals at the UHLC. Professor Hoffman participated in a presentation to UH system students at the University Center relating to deferred action on September 6, 2012.

Lonny Hoffman's article, “Rulemaking in the Age of Twombly and Iqbal,” was accepted for publication by the U.C. Davis Law Review.  He has begun work on his next paper, which concerns use of veil piercing for jurisdictional purposes after the Goodyear and McIntyre decisions.  He will present an early version of that paper at a conference later this fall at the University of Pennsylvania Law School.  

Craig Joyce 祝體仁 (“Benevolent Presence”)  returned to China as a visiting professor at the 2012 Summer Institute on Chinese Law and Business, sponsored by St. Mary’s University and Beihang University (a.k.a. the MIT of China) in Beijing.  Joyce also published the 2012 Cumulative Supplement to his best-selling Copyright Law casebook and began work on the casebook’s Ninth (since 1985) Edition.

Sapna Kumar has been admitted to practice before the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office as a registered patent attorney. She recently presented her article "The Accidental Agency?" to the Michigan State IP Fall Speakers Series.

Jacqueline Lipton published “Law of the Intermediated Information Exchange,” 64 Fla. L. Rev. 1337 (2012).

Gerry Moohr was invited to participate in a panel on teaching white collar crime at the 2013 SEALS conference. She is a reader for a Queensland University of Technology Ph.D. thesis that considers the criminal offenses of the Australian Copyright Act. Last spring, she reviewed a grant application of Professor Yehuda of the University of Haifa.

Dean Nimmer’s book, Data Privacy, Protection, and Security Law (with Holly K. Towle) was published this month, along with updates for five of his other books.

Michael A. Olivas presented The Growing Role of Immigration Law in Universal Higher Education: Case Studies of the United States and the EU, at the US-Oxford, UK Roundtable, New College, Oxford University. He also spoke on immigration and higher education issues at the University of Wisconsin, Platteville, and conducted a national webinar on the same subject for MAGNA, in Madison, Wisconsin. While at UW-P, he also conducted a faculty seminar on legal issues in the classroom. He also spoke with a number of national reporters on President Obama’s new policy of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and legal developments in several recent higher education and immigration cases.

Jordan Paust’s article, “Constitutionality of U.S. Participation in the United Nations-Authorized War in Libya,” has been published in 26 Emory International Law Review 43-67 (2012). He was quoted in In re Extradition of Azra Basic, 5:11-MJ-5002-REW (E.D. Ky. July 27, 2012), regarding the fact that states that broke off from the former Yugoslavia and their nationals remain bound by Yugoslavia’s treaty obligations as well as customary international law. He has agreed to write an essay for the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs by October and will appear on a panel addressing the U.S. and the International Criminal Court at Washington University St. Louis in November.

Jessica L. Roberts' article "'Healthism': A Critique of the Antidiscrimination Approach to Health Insurance and American Health-Care Reform" was published in Issue 4 of the University of Illinois Law Review's 2012 Volume. Professor Roberts was also selected to participate in a panel co-sponsored by the Sections on Law, Medicine & Health Care, and Employee Benefits and Executive Compensation during the AALS 2013 Annual Meeting.

Susan Sakmar, Visiting Assistant Professor, Energy Law Scholar, published her article on global shale gas development, “Rest of the World Learning From US Shale Gas Experience, Natural Gas & Electricity,” September 2012, Wiley Periodicals, Inc., available at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/gas.21629/full.  The Wiley article refers to Professor Sakmar’s law review article published by the Houston Journal of International Law, “Global Shale Gas Initiative:  Will The United States Be The Role Model For The Development of Shale Gas Around The World?,” 33 Hous. J. Int’l L. 369 (2011), available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1927593. Professor Sakmar will also chair two sessions at the CWC World Shale Oil & Gas Summit & Awards, September 18-21, 2012, in Houston, Texas: Session 8:  Environmental and Water Issues: Handling Concerns Among the Public and Stakeholders; and Session 9: Resourcing the Shale Industry: Filling the Talent and Equipment Gaps, www.world-shale.com. 

Barbara Stalder, clinic supervising attorney/professor, was appointed to the Burta Rhodes Rayburn American Inns of Court. 

Greg Vetter presented at The Franklin Pierce Center for Intellectual Property at the University of New Hampshire School of Law on Thursday, August 30, 2012.  His topic was Open Source and Free Software: Collaborative Licensing, Communal Development and Commercial Considerations.  

Jacqueline Weaver was invited to speak at the first International Oil and Gas Conference in Namibia, Africa, on September 6. Her topic was Avoiding the Resource Curse: Lessons for Namibia.  Over 250 attendees were at the conference which was also well attended by members of the Ministry of Energy and Mines and other government officials from the national oil company and development agencies.

Bret Wells published “Disposable Personal Goodwill, Frosty the Snowman, and Martin Ice Cream All Melt Away in the Bright Sunlight of Analysis,” 91 Neb. L. Rev. 170 (2012). On August 17, Professor Wells presented this paper in Dallas at the 29th Annual Advanced Tax Law Conference that was hosted by the Tax Section of the State Bar of Texas.