Faculty News

Professor Susan Wolf will lecture at the University of Virginia's "Genetics, Ethics, and the Law" conference. Wolf will speak on "The Debate Over the Return of Results and Incidental Findings." Her current work on this is funded by NIH and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. As a funded investigator, Wolf also participates in the NIH/NHGRI Return of Results (RoR) Consortium, meeting the following day in Rockville, MD.

Read Susan M. Wolf's Faculty Profile

Professor Mark Kappelhoff will deliver the keynote address at the Federal Bar Association's 11th Annual Jack Mason Memorial Luncheon. Kappelhoff's speech will focus on the prosecution of federal civil rights violations.

Read Mark Kappelhoff's Faculty Profile

Professor Myron Orfield was a guest on WCCO News Radio's Chad Hartman Show to discuss why poverty is spreading to the suburbs here faster than almost anywhere else.

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Professor Kristin Hickman was quoted by Bloomberg BNA's U.S. Law Week, in an article entitled "Agency Deference Makes Strange Bedfellows As Justices Split on Jurisdiction Distinction," on the implications of the Supreme Court's decision in City of Arlington, Texas v. Federal Communications Commission, No. 11-1545.

Read Kristin Hickman's Faculty Profile

Professors Barbara Frey, Kathryn Sikkink, and David Weissbrodt and Law School alumnus Sam Heins ('72) were featured in a Pioneer Press article by Ruben Rosario entitled "Justice Achieved in Guatemala, Thanks to the Minnesota Protocol."

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Read Kathryn Sikkink's Faculty Profile
Read David Weissbrodt's Faculty Profile

Professor Jane Kirtley was interviewed by various media outlets for stories about the Department of Justice's subpoena of telephone records from Associated Press bureaus and individual reporters. She discussed the unprecedented scope of the subpoenas and how they fit with the Obama administration's pursuit of leakers of classified information. As Kirtley explained to the Washington Post, a federal reporters shield law, such as those proposed in 2009-11, would have required prior judicial review, "instead of DOJ unilaterally making that determination." Kirtley appeared on WHYY (Philadelphia) public radio's Radio Times show and on WCCO Radio's John Hines Show. Kirtley was also quoted by the Pittsburgh Tribune Review.

Read Jane Kirtley's Faculty Profile

Science published an article by Professor Susan M. Wolf, George J. Annas (Boston University), and Sherman Elias (Northwestern University) on a major controversy over how to handle incidental findings in medical genomic sequencing. Their article, entitled "Patient Autonomy and Incidental Findings in Clinical Genomics" argues that the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics (ACMG) made a serious mistake when it issued a practice statement in March insisting that clinical sequencing for any medical indication should add analysis of 57 extra genes to look for disease-causing variants, even if the patient does not want this and even if the patient is a child. Wolf et al. argue that the ACMG statement and its subsequent "clarification" in April reject long-established legal and ethical principles of patient autonomy and the "right not to know" unwanted genetic information. Wolf's article is accompanied by a response from Amy McGuire (Baylor College of Medicine) and colleagues, entitled "Ethics and Genomic Incidental Findings." Two of those authors were co-authors of the March ACMG statement. To read the article by Wolf, Annas, and Elias, as well as the reply by McGuire et al., visit http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/recent.

Read Susan M. Wolf's Faculty Profile

Professor Laura Thomas was interviewed by FOX 9 investigators on parent alienation in regards to divorces and custody battles. Thomas defined parent alienation as "...a sustained attack on a relationship."

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Professor Jane Kirtley appeared on a panel, "The New Media as an Advocate for Human Rights Reform in Colombia," at the 14th Annual Conference on Legal and Policy Issues in the Americas, held at the University of Florida Levin College of Law. The conference was sponsored by the law school's Center for Governmental Responsibility. The University of Florida received one of three USAID grants which it will use to create the Colombian Caribbean Human Rights Center at two law schools, Universidad del Magdalena in Santa Marta and the Universidad del Norte in Barranqulla. The other recipients of the USAID grants were the University of Minnesota and American University.

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Professor Bernard Levinson has co-organized a conference, entitled "Convergence and Divergence in Pentateuchal Theory: Bridging the Academic Cultures of Israel," to be held at the Israel Institute for Advanced Studies in Jerusalem on May 12-13, 2013. Presentations will be offered by 25 international scholars, drawn from the fields of Biblical Studies, Second Temple/Dead Sea Scrolls, and Jewish Studies, with extensive time for discussion and debate.

Read Bernard M. Levinson's Faculty Profile

Professor Richard Painter was quoted in a Washington Post article on leaks of market-sensitive information by Congressional staffers to hedge funds and other investors. Painter observed that these leaks contradict federal rules imposed on publicly traded companies. "In the corporate world, if you tell one analyst or one investor, you have to tell everybody," Painter said. "There's no reason the same restrictions shouldn't apply to government officials."

Read Richard W. Painter's Faculty Profile

Professor Dale Carpenter spoke with WCCO Morning host Dave Lee about the same-sex marriage legislation being voted on in St. Paul.

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Oxford University Press published a new book by Nancy Berlinger, Bruce Jennings, and Professor Susan Wolf on termination of life-sustaining treatment and care of the dying. This book is the result of a five-year process involving experts from across the country to revise and substantially expand The Hastings Center's groundbreaking guidelines on end-of-life care first published in 1987. Wolf served as principal author of those guidelines, used and cited widely, including by Justice O'Connor in the U.S. Supreme Court's Cruzan decision. The new guidelines fully revise and update the book, to address death and dying in an era of health care reform. The book now considers end-of life care for children, the role of disability, advances in palliative care, plus debates over assisted suicide and euthanasia. For more on The Hastings Center Guidelines for Decisions on Life-Sustaining Treatment and Care Near the End of Life, 2d ed. (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2013), visit www.hastingscenterguidelines.org and http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Medicine/PalliativeMedicine/?view=usa&ci=9780199974559.

Read Susan M. Wolf's Faculty Profile

Professor Tom Cotter launched a blog entitled "Comparative Patent Remedies," which will provide periodic updates and analyses of the law and economics of damages, injunctions, and other remedies for patent infringement within the world's major patent systems.

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Professor Richard Painter was quoted in The Nation in an article on private sector employers that give substantial termination bonuses to employees who leave to become Congressional staffers and take other government jobs. Painter observed that "[t]hese bonuses create a serious conflict of interest," and that "[i]n some instances it is the bonuses that allow these people to leave the private sector to work for Congress because the bonuses are needed to supplement the lower federal salary." He also observed that "This is a great strategy for 'planting' one's own alumni in key government jobs," because these staffers "are likely to have influence over matters that affect their previous employers."

Read Richard W. Painter's Faculty Profile

Professor D. Daniel Sokol was quoted in a Reuters article regarding Chinese merger control. China's antitrust system is only five years old but is increasingly a significant part of global antitrust M&A. Sokol commented on how industrial policy, rather than just consumer welfare, plays a role in Chinese antitrust merger policy. Sokol has undertaken the first-ever empirical study of Chinese merger control. Click here to read his working paper.

Read D. Daniel Sokol's Faculty Profile