Faculty News
for October, 2012
October 31, 2012
Professor Jane Kirtley was a guest on The Jordana Green Show on WCCO radio during the 9 p.m. hour, discussing the differences between political speech, hate speech, incitement to violence, and true threats in the context of the case of a Rochester man who has suspended an empty chair (symbolizing President Obama) from a noose hanging from a tree in his yard and who claims his actions are protected by the First Amendment.
Read Jane Kirtley's Faculty Profile
October 30, 2012
Professor Susan Wolf, an elected member of the National Academies' Institute of Medicine (IOM), serves on an IOM committee that has issued recommendations for the world's largest tissue repository, "Future Uses of the Department of Defense Joint Pathology Center Biorepository." This collection of over 7 million tissue specimens has its origin in the Civil War with the creation of the Army Medical Museum, later the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP). Specimens in the collection have played a key role in pathology and biomedicine, including decoding the genetic sequence of the 1918 influenza virus, determining that aspirin given to children can cause Reyes' Syndrome, and developing more effective body armor for U.S. troops. The committee's report "proposes a series of protocols, standards, safeguards, and guidelines that could help to ensure that this national treasure continues to be available to researchers in the years to come, while protecting the privacy of the people who provided the materials and maintaining the security of their personal information." The report has significant implications for biorepositories around the world.
Read Susan M. Wolf's Faculty Profile
October 29, 2012
Professor Myron Orfield was quoted in a ProPublica article entitled "Living Apart: How the Government Betrayed a Landmark Civil Rights Law." Orfield discussed efforts by George Romney to implement the Fair Housing Act of 1968. He praised Romney's approach and noted that when Romney's proposal were were rejected by the Nixon Administration, it was a lost opportunity for more open housing in the United States.
Read Myron Orfield's Faculty Profile
October 29, 2012
Professor Michele Goodwin will give a lecture at the Petrie-Flom Center at Harvard University on October 29, 2012, on her forthcoming article "Fetal Protection Laws: Moral Panic and the New Constitutional Battlefront." Goodwin's lecture and article examine criminal regulations of pregnancy through "maternal conduct laws" and "fetal protection laws." Goodwin posits that these laws are arbitrarily enforced, rely on faulty moral norms and justifications, and are at odds with Sixth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendment values.
Read Michele Goodwin's Faculty Profile
October 27, 2012
Professor Jennie Green will participate in the 91st annual International Law Weekend on October 25-27, 2012, in New York City. Green will be a panelist at a session entitled "Perspectives on Crimes of Sexual Violence in International Law." The panel will analyze major trends and offer assessments of current statutes, precedents and procedures at the major criminal tribunals. The speakers will also address the incorporation of international norms into domestic law, as well as the difficulty of balancing the interests of the victim with maintaining the presumption of the defendant's innocence.
Read Jennie Green's Faculty Profile
October 26, 2012
Professor Susan Wolf was quoted in a Science article entitled "Neuroethics: When a Brain Scan Bears Bad News." Wolf said that
"although clinicians have a legal 'duty to care' for their patients, scientific researchers are not legally bound or professionally trained to
interpret brain scans diagnostically." The article reports on a meeting held last week of "28 prominent neuroscientists, clinicians, ethicists, and lawyers in Washington, D.C., to hash out new guidance as part of a working
group sponsored by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other U.S. and Canadian agencies." Wolf, who has led ground-breaking projects funded by NIH and now the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation on the return of results and incidental findings to research participants, participated in the meeting.
Read Susan M. Wolf's Faculty Profile
October 24, 2012
Professor JaneAnne Murray was quoted by Reuters in an article about the sentencing of Rajat Gupta, the Wall Street titan convicted after trial of insider trading crimes. Noting that the sentencing judge must balance Gupta's serious breaches of trust with the breadth of his philanthropic activities, Murray said these extremes gave the sentencing Shakespearean overtones.
Read JaneAnne Murray's Faculty Profile
October 19, 2012
Professor Michele Goodwin presented her forthcoming article on the limits of statutory rape law at the Wisconsin Law Review Symposium, which honored Professor Neil Komesar, the founder of the "Comparative Institutional Analysis" framework and also included presentations by Bill Eskridge, Edward Rubin, Wendy Wagner, and Victoria Nourse. Goodwin's presentation analyzed statutory rape laws as they have been applied to consensual adolescent relationships. She noted that prosecutorial discretion in enforcing statutory rape laws create "legally untenable, absurd results that frequently impose legal and extra-legal burdens" on convicted minors. Goodwin's article will be published in the April 2013 edition of the Wisconsin Law Review.
Read Michele Goodwin's Faculty Profile
October 19, 2012
Professor Amy Monahan was interviewed for WCCO's "Good Question" segment regarding the current state of pensions for U.S. workers. The question was triggered by the exchange between the presidential candidates during the October 16 debate regarding their respective pensions.
Read Amy B. Monahan's Faculty Profile
October 17, 2012
Professor Claire Hill was a panelist at the inaugural conference of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's Office of Credit Ratings, "The Credit Rating Industry and Regulatory Reforms." The Office of Credit Ratings was formed as part the Dodd-Frank Act's credit rating agency reforms.
Read Claire Hill's Faculty Profile
October 12, 2012
Professor Jane Kirtley delivered a series of lectures on freedom of expression and freedom of the press, sponsored by the U.S. State Department, in Bishkek and Osh, Kyrgyzstan. Kirtley spoke to the general public at the "American Corners" at libraries in each city, was interviewed by several Kyrgyz news outlets, and lectured at several universities, including the American University in Central Asia, Osh State University, the Kyrgyz-Russian Slavonic University, and Bishkek Humanities University, as well as the Kloop Media Foundation which trains young journalists. Kirtley's Media Law handbook, in a Russian-language translation, was also distributed to attendees.
Read Jane Kirtley's Faculty Profile
October 12, 2012
Professor Dale Carpenter spoke on PBS's "Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly" show for an episode entitled "Minnesota Gay Marriage." Carpenter stated: "The fact that the amendment is just focused on the marital status itself is a reflection of a new reality, which is that much of the public accepts that same-sex relationships are legitimate and that they have legal needs but may not be ready to accept the title of marriage quite yet. I don't think that's a form of bigotry, I think that's a form of risk-averseness."
Read Dale Carpenter's Faculty Profile
October 12, 2012
Professor Steve Meili presented his research on refugee lawyers in the United Kingdom at a symposium entitled "Filling Power Vacuums in the New Global Legal Order" at Boston College Law School. Meili's symposium paper analyzed the way that lawyers representing asylum-seekers are expanding the boundaries of U.K. domestic law by pushing for expanded human rights-based protections for their clients. The paper is part of Meili's larger research project on the impact of international human rights treaties on asylum jurisprudence and practice in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. He is currently on sabbatical at Oxford University conducting research on the U.K. phase of that project.
Read Steve Meili's Faculty Profile
October 11, 2012
Professor Michele Goodwin's research on the constructions of parenthood was featured in a Co-operative News article entitled "Baby Co-ops as an Alternative to Foster Care." Goodwin and her forthcoming article, tentatively entitled "Baby Co-op: Rethinking The Nature of Families," were featured in the publication. Goodwin's article proposes an alternative to foster care in the United States. Her proposal seeks to address foster care's many issues by developing a system that would allow two to five adults "to gather together as a family through a legal partnership." These "parental civil unions" would allow adults—who lack the resources to adopt on their own—to come together to form permanent homes for children. Goodwin has developed a framework with detailed eligibility requirements, but she believes these "baby co-operatives" would benefit loving adults who wish to adopt, children who need a loving and stable home, and society as a whole. Goodwin's article will be published by the Illinois Law Review.
Read Michele Goodwin's Faculty Profile
October 8, 2012
Professor Richard Painter was quoted extensively in a Politico article on campaigning for the president's reelection by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius in Wisconsin. Her campaigning did not violate the Hatch Act, but Painter said that cabinet secretaries should refrain from partisan political activity and that both the president and Governor Romney should promise to scale back political activity of senior administration official's in the next administration.
Read Richard W. Painter's Faculty Profile
October 4, 2012
Professor Bruce Shnider participated in a Dorsey & Whitney seminar entitled "The Approaching Fiscal Cliff: Change or More of the Same?" The panelists discussed the pending federal budget crisis, and Shnider commented on pending and possible tax code changes.
Read Bruce Shnider's Faculty Profile
October 2, 2012
Professor Dale Carpenter spoke on WCCO News Radio on the marriage amendment, which goes before voters in November. In one piece, "Family Speaks Out In Support Of Marriage Amendment," Carpenter stated, "If the amendment fails there's no same sex marriage. If the amendment passes, there's no same sex marriage." He says there are hundreds of legal rights given to heterosexual couples that should also be afforded to same sex couples. "Family members are people in your immediate family. Your children and your spouse. And if you can't be married you're not a spouse," he said. In another WCCO piece, "What Happens If The Marriage Amendment Fails?" Carpenter said that because same-sex marriage is already illegal in Minnesota, the amendment is "like a triple bolt on a door that's already shut and locked twice."
Read Dale Carpenter's Faculty Profile
October 1, 2012
Professor Jennie Green participated in the American Society of International Law's "CLE Institute on Human Trafficking: Justice and Accountability." The course dealt with accountability and legal protections for victims of human trafficking. It also included a review of current U.S. federal regulations and enforcement, as well as civil and criminal remedies.
Read Jennie Green's Faculty Profile
October 1, 2012
Professor Perry Moriearty was appointed to the Board of Directors of the McKnight Foundation, a Minnesota-based nonprofit family foundation that seeks to improve the quality of life worldwide, encourage protection of the environment, and promote research through grantmaking, coalition-building, and policy reform. The 12-member board establishes the Foundation's grantmaking priorities. Moriearty teaches criminal law and race and the law, and co-directs the Child Advocacy and Juvenile Justice Clinic.
Read Perry Moriearty's Faculty Profile
