Faculty
Focus is a monthly publication documenting the activities, accomplishments, and
honors of the University of Houston Law Center Faculty.
Editor,
Katy Stein Badeaux,
Previous
editions of Faculty Focus can be accessed here.
December 2013
Julian Cardenas conducted a workshop on International Investment Treaties
and Transnational Petroleum Law at Weatherford International, Houston, on
December 6. The program included training on applicable law in transnational
petroleum contracts and the review of arbitral jurisprudence in the petroleum
industry, in light of the existence of a transnational legal order of the
petroleum sector, the lex petrolea.
Barbara Evans’ article on minimizing liability risks under the recent
American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics guidelines for return of
results from genome and exome sequencing is featured
in the December print issue of Nature’s
Genetics in Medicine. Her article,
Seven Pillars of a New Evidentiary Paradigm, 85 Notre Dame Law Review
419 (2010) was cited in a brief that former FDA Commissioners Donald Kennedy
and David A. Kessler filed with the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this year as
Amici Curiae in support of the respondent in Mutual Pharmaceutical Co. v. Bartlett. In December, Professor Evans completed a White
Paper (with co-authors Deven McGraw and Kristen Rosati) examining privacy compliance in randomization
studies using a large health data network, and she is contributing sections to
the report of the Institute of Medicine’s Committee on Ethics Principles and
Guidelines for Health Standards for Long Duration and Exploration Spaceflight.
On December 3 she attended a meeting with leadership of the Harris Health
System/Harris County Hospital District hosted by the UH Division of
Research. On December 7, Professor Evans
and co-authors Wylie Burke and Gail Jarvik submitted
revisions of their article, Return of
Results: Research vs. Clinical Care, to the American Journal of Medical
Genetics. Professor Evans’
forthcoming article, Mining the Human
Genome after Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, is
scheduled to appear online ahead of print in Genetics in Medicine by
mid-December, and she has been invited to prepare an article on a related topic
for a special issue on next-generation sequencing to appear in the Journal
of Law, Medicine & Ethics.
Tracy Hester’s article, A Matter of Scale: Regional Climate
Engineering and the Shortfalls of Multinational Governance, was published in Carbon
& Climate Law Review. He was also voted chair of the Texas Environmental
Research Consortium for 2014 and attended the Fall
meeting in Baltimore as a member of the Council of the ABA’s Section on
Environment, Energy & Resources.
Geoffrey
Hoffman was interviewed by KUHF’s Houston Matters. The audio clip is
available at http://www.houstonmatters.org/segments/segment-a/2013/12/04/how-immigration-policy-affects-houston.
Professor Hoffman’s work on a BIA appeal which resulted in a
remand based on particular social group was recognized by Lexis Nexis – Legal Newsroom: http://www.lexisnexis.com/legalnewsroom/immigration/b/insidenews/archive/2013/11/21/bia-on-social-group-ghana-unpub.aspx. Professor Hoffman was also quoted in
article available on CNBC.com regarding comprehensive immigration reform: http://www.cnbc.com/id/101215012.
Craig
Joyce and Douglas Moll prepared
the once-every-seven-years ABA Reaccreditation Self-Study Report, which was
approved by the faculty unanimously.
Ray
Nimmer made a presentation to the Faculty at the Brandeis School of Law
at the University of Louisville on November 14 on the “Future of Legal
Education.” He also delivered the
Stallings Lecture, open to the bar, the faculty and
students in Louisville, on “Intersection of Commercial and Intellectual Property
Law and Practice”. The paper on which
this speech was based will be published by the Louisville Law Review. Former Dean Nimmer also participated
in drafting an amicus brief filed in the Second Circuit in Viacom International, Inc. v. YouTube, Inc., with three other
academics. His 80 page update to his Information
Law book was completed and submitted to the publisher. He participated in a meeting of the Academic
Advisory Committee (of which he is member) of the Motion Picture Association of
America on November 1.
Michael
A. Olivas presented “A Primer on Latino Civil Rights Litigation in Texas,
Post WWII” at a UH/Houston Metropolitan Research Center Conference, President
John F. Kennedy, LULAC, and the Mexican American Vote on November 20.
Jordan
Paust submitted the Teachers’ Manual for Paust, Bassiouni,
Scharf, Sadat, Gurule, Zagaris, International Criminal Law (4th ed. 2013)
to Carolina Academic Press.
Barbara Stalder and Janet
Heppard presented at the AFCC regional meeting in
Kansas City, Missouri on the effects of parental prescription drug abuse on
child custody matters.
Sandra
Guerra Thompson, in her capacity as Director of the Criminal Justice Institute,
organized a federal sentencing symposium at the Law Center on November 14-15.
The symposium will produce an introductory article and five law review articles
by five of the top federal sentencing academics and a former chair of the
United States Sentencing Commission. These pieces will be published in
the spring in a special edition of the Houston Law Review, which co-sponsored the event. The
program included commentary by many leading local federal practitioners
including two federal district court judges, as well as the Federal Public
Defender and the Chief of the Criminal Division at the U.S. Attorney’s Office
and the Chiefs of the Appellate Divisions of both of those offices. On
December 3rd, Professor Thompson was quoted in an article on the FOX Business website on the practice of using shaming punishments
to deter bad driving.