Since this law has been used so rarely in our history, we had very little sense of what any of these terms meant, because none of them are defined by the statute," says Chris Mirasola, a national security law professor at the University of Houston Law Center.
Venezuela must maintain direct control over its oil assets, especially since it is not a U.S.-occupied territory, said Ted Borrego, a longtime attorney who teaches oil and gas contracts law at the University of Houston.
Seth J. Chandler | Foundation Professor of Law, University of Houston Law Center 2026 Prediction: Google enters the legal research market in a big way, harnessing its immense dataset. Midpage AI permits API access to its research capabilities; a model beats established human authors in a brief writing competition (a Deep Blue moment). Biggest Surprise 2026: There will be the equivalent of AIStudio or Claude Code, but for legal research and writing.
Kellen Zale, a University of Houston professor who teaches property law, land use and real estate, told Public Health Watch the new affidavit could be especially helpful for communities on Harris County’s industrialized east side. Areas with lower incomes and large populations of color are typically the places most burdened by industrial development, Zale said.
“The OLC opinion completely failed to address numerous recognitions of the founders, framers, and Supreme Court justices that the president and members of the executive branch are bound by international law,” Jordan Paust, professor emeritus at the University of Houston Law Center and former captain in the U.S. Army JAG Corps, told Truthout. “Further, the express constitutional duty is to faithfully execute the law — not to disobey law.”
Jack spoke with Chris Mirasola of the University of Houston Law Center about the President’s “protective power” to use the regular armed forces or the National Guard (if properly federalized) in the domestic sphere for the protection of federal property and functions. They discussed the origins and scope of the protective power, its relationship to the Posse Comitatus Act, why it was relevant in Trump v. Illinois, and the president’s prominent options for domestic deployment of the military (including using regular armed forces for a protective function) after Trump v. Illinois.
UH Law Professor Renee Knake Jefferson was recently quoted in the New York Times, explaining how amicus briefs are increasingly being used as a strategic litigation tool for a story about Greenpeace's legal battle with the pipeline company Energy Transfer.
UH Law Professor Sandra Guerra Thompson provided expert commentary and legal context to the AP, ABC News, and other news outlets for stories about the first criminal trial focusing on the delayed law-enforcement response in the 2022 school shooting in Uvalde.
