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

Editor, Katy Stein kastein@central.uh.edu

Previous editions of Faculty Focus can be accessed here.

February 2013

Zachary Bray’s article, The New Progressive Property and the Low-Income Housing Conflict was published at 2012 B.Y.U. Law Review 1109.

Aaron Bruhl and a team of UHLC students are now covering the Fifth Circuit for the American Bar Association’s Media Alerts on the Federal Courts of Appeals Project. Launched by the ABA in order to enhance public awareness and understanding of the role of the federal appellate courts, the Project provides reporters, lawyers, educators, and the public with timely and accurate analysis of newsworthy and legally significant cases. This semester’s students are Julie Goodrich, Ward Goolsby, Brandon Hindmarsh, and Louis Holzer. More information on the Project, and examples of the team's summaries, can be found at http://www.americanbar.org/groups/justice_center/federal_judicial_improvements/mediaalerts.html.

Patricia Gray spoke to the School of Community and Preventive Health at UTMB on “Issues with Mental Health Reporting and Gun Violence” on February 3 and on “Legislative Impacts on the Practice of Medicine” at Baylor Medical School's Surgery Grand Rounds on February 13.

Jim Hawkins spoke on February 2 on "Payday Loans, Frauds, and Other Scams" at the inaugural session of The Gavel Series, a free community-based legal education series sponsored by the College of Juvenile Justice & Psychology at Prairie View A&M University.

Geoffrey Hoffman appeared on the Channel 2 program Houston Newsmakers, discussing recent proposals on immigration reform. The interview can be viewed online at: http://www.click2houston.com/news/Feb-10-NBA-All-Star-weekend-Immigration-diversity/-/1735978/18459636/-/hews4r/-/index.html. Professor Hoffman also appeared on the KTRK program Viva Houston discussing immigration reform. An archived video of the segment is available online at: http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?section=resources/lifestyle_community&id=6669790. Additionally, Professor Hoffman appeared on KPFT FM 90.1 in a 30-minute interview which aired Sunday, January 20 at 7PM; the 2 segments included 15 minutes on free speech and deportation; and the second 15 minutes related to Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). The link for the archived show is as follows: http://archive.kpft.org/mp3/kpft_130120_190001col.mp3. On February 13, 2013 Professor Hoffman met with DHS officials at the DHS Civil Rights & Civil Liberties Houston Area Roundtable. Professor Hoffman’s guest post on the Immigration Professor’s blog, entitled “President Obama's Vision of Immigration Enforcement … and Now Reform” was published on February 18, 2013. The post can be viewed here:  http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2013/02/guest-post-geoff-hoffman-.html.

Craig Joyce submitted the manuscript of “Centered: The Third Decade of Houston Law Review,” the latest in his series of decade-by-decade historical essays on HLR’s first fifty years. The prior two episodes, “Driven” and “Carry on Boldly,” are now in print. Joyce also was reappointed to the Editorial Board of H-LAW, the Humanities Social Sciences On-Line discussion network sponsored by ASLH.

Sapna Kumar presented her article Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Genetic Information at the Albany Law School 2013 Scholarship and Teaching Development Workshop.

Jim Lawrence will be on the teaching faculty for Emory Law School’s Kessler-Eidson Trial Techniques Program. The program takes place the first week of May and participation is required for all rising 3Ls at the school.

Peter Linzer, on February 23, 2013, will moderate a panel on Contract Boilerplate at the Eighth International Contracts Conference (KCON-8) at Texas Wesleyan Law School (which, BTW, claims the approval of its affiliation with Texas A&M is almost a done deal). The panel will consist of Margaret Jane Radin of Michigan, Oren Bar-Gill of NYU, Jean Braucher of Arizona, and David Horton of UC-Davis. Three of the panelists have new books out that relate to the topic, and, impelled by the necessary preparation, Linzer has agreed to write an article on contracts for Law and Social Inquiry, a publication of the American Bar Foundation.

Jacqueline Lipton’s article (with Mary Wong), Imperatives of Private Arbitration in International Intellectual Property Disputes, was published at 24 Singapore Academy of Law Journal 978 (2012).

Susan D. Maples, Andrews Kurth Energy Scholar, will be teaching for two days on upstream contract law, economics, and policy at the Khazar University in Baku, Azerbaijan on March 8-9, 2013.

Douglas Moll spoke at the 35^th Annual Conference on Securities Regulation and Business Law in Austin on February 8.  He was an invited panelist on the shareholder oppression doctrine.  Professor Moll was also invited to attend George Washington University’s Junior Faculty Workshop as a senior commentator on a paper involving closely held companies.

Tom Oldham’s article about the Uniform Premarital and Marital Agreements Act, Would Enactment of the Uniform Premarital and Marital Agreements Act in All Fifty States Change U.S. Law Regarding Premarital Agreements?, was published in the Family Law Quarterly at 46 Fam. L.Q. 367 (Fall 2012). His work was cited in January by Collins v. Collins, 2013 WL 215924 (Va. Ap.) and In re Pendley, 2013 WL 141595 (W. D. Tex.).

Michael A. Olivas delivered a paper on the 40^th anniversary of the SCOTUS case Keyes v. School District No. 1 at a symposium conference sponsored by the Denver University Law Review, which will publish the conference presentations. He was reappointed to the Editorial Board of the Journal of College and University Law, a hybrid law review and refereed journal devoted to college law, published at University of Notre Dame Law School; he has served on the Editorial Board for over twenty years. As an Editorial Board Member of the Citizenship and Migration Studies Series at NYU Press, he assisted with the acquisition of a book on deferred action and prosecutorial discretion in immigration law. He published a recent article on the subject, Dreams Deferred: Deferred Action, Prosecutorial Discretion, and the Vexing Case(s) of DREAM Act Students, 21 William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal 463 (2012).

Jessica L. Roberts presented her paper "Healthism and the Law of Employment Discrimination" at the University of Miami School of Law Legal Theory Workshop on Monday, February 18.

Susan Sakmar presented a paper on “The Role of LNG in the Golden Age of Gas” at the Offshore Middle East (OME) Conference in Doha, Qatar, January 21-23, 2013. Participating in the OME conference offered a unique forum to highlight the work of UHLC’s Energy Law Scholars Program and also led to some contacts in a region that is looking to promote energy scholarship and collaborate with U.S. universities. The paper presented is the result of some of Professor Sakmar’s work on global gas markets and is directly related to the Shale Gas and LNG course she is teaching this spring at UHLC. The course explores the myriad of legal, policy and environmental issues pertaining to shale gas development as well as LNG markets and includes “hot” topics such as the prospects of the U.S. becoming one of the world’s largest LNG exporters – a dramatic shift from just a few when the U.S. was expected to become the world’s largest LNG importer! Professor Sakmar’s forthcoming book, Energy for the 21st Century: Opportunities and Challenges for LNG (Edward Elgar, Pub.) will be published this Spring 2013 and explores the dramatic transformation underway in global gas markets and the implications for countries around the world.

Sandra Guerra Thompson authored an op-ed piece on eyewitness identification procedures which appeared in the Houston Chronicle on January 15th. On February 1st, she spoke on panel exploring “The Evolution of Forensic Science and Exoneration Cases” at a Law & Media Seminar co-sponsored by the Houston Bar Association, the Society of Professional Journalists, and the Houston Press Club. She was quoted in the Texas Tribune on February 4th regarding a bill filed in the Texas Legislature to reform habeas corpus law to enable prisoners to bring petitions if their convictions are based on forensic science that is later determined to be invalid. On February 8th, she attended a meeting of the Board of Advisors of the American Law Institute’s “Model Penal Code: Sentencing Project” in Philadelphia.

Ronald Turner’s forthcoming articles include Ideological Voting on the National Labor Relations Board Revisited (With Special Reference to Decision-Bargaining Over Relocation Decisions), Houston Business and Tax Law Journal; On Neutral and Preferred Principles of Constitutional Law, University of Pittsburgh Law Review; and Steele and the Supreme Court’s Creation of the Union’s Duty of Fair Representation, Africana Studies: A Review of Social Science. He is completing work on an article entitled Due Process, Due Substance, and Discretionary Traditionalism and is working on the supplement to the seventh edition of Employment Discrimination Law: Cases and Materials (LexisNexis, with Arthur B. Smith, Jr. and Charles B. Craver) and the forthcoming Employment Law: Issues, Theories, and Realities (West Publishing, with Michael Green, Gerry Moohr, and Angela Onwuachi-Willig). In April and May he will deliver two lectures (“Race and the Constitution” and “The Constitution: Dead or Alive?”) as part of Rice University’s Suzanne M. Glasscock School of Continuing Studies course “The U.S. Constitution and Rights in America.”

Bret Wells presented "Tax Reform Implications for Small Business Owners" on January 29th as part of the UHLC Legal Excellence Speaker series. Professor Wells was interviewed by the Wall Street Journal for an article discussing the Eaton inversion transaction that appeared on January 19. On January 15, Professor Wells presented "Tax Reform: Nothing Certain but More Debt and Taxes" to the Wednesday Tax Forum.

Stephen Zamora participated as a keynote speaker at Fordham International Law Journal’s recent symposium, “Free Movement in North America: Is the EU a Model for NAFTA?” which took place at Fordham Law School in New York City on February 15, 2013. His presentation will be published in a forthcoming symposium issue of the Fordham International Law Journal.