Faculty News
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Prof. Murray Quoted in Star Tribune Article About Fraud Trial Involving Former Executives of Starkey Laboratories
January 13, 2018Prof. JaneAnne Murray was quoted in an article in the Star Tribune discussing the upcoming criminal fraud trial involving executives of Starkey Laboratories. Murray noted that trials of high-level corporate executives are rare for several reasons, in part because such complex cases require a significant prosecutorial investment over several years, and in part because the potential sentencing exposure encourages guilty pleas. Moreover, until recently, D.O.J. charging policies did not prioritize prosecutions of individuals in cases of corporate wrongdoing. Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates changed that policy in 2015 and Murray points out that the Starkey indictments came on the heels of that new policy.
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Star Tribune Quotes Prof. McGeveran on Trademarks and Branding
January 12, 2018The Star Tribune quoted Professor William McGeveran concerning a settlement in trademark litigation between Minnesota-based insurer HealthPartners and the national warehouse chain Sam’s Club. McGeveran explained that trademark cases often end in confidential settlements involving very small changes in the use of a name or logo.
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Prof. Orfield Quoted in New York Times About Changes in Civil Rights Policies at HUD
January 5, 2018Professor Myron Orfield was quoted about the effects of the Trump administration’s decision to delay the enforcement of Obama Adminstration fair housing rules. “Residential segregation is at the heart of racial inequality in the country,” said Orfield. “There’s no real way to deal with disparities between black and white people without dealing with residential segregation.”
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Law360 Quotes Prof. Cotter on Recent “FRAND” Patent Case
January 5, 2018Shortly before Christmas U.S. District Judge James Selna published the public redacted version of his 115-page opinion in TCL Communication Technology Holdings, Ltd. v. Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson, the latest in a series of cases spanning the globe addressing the question of how to calculate a “fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory” (FRAND) royalty for patents that are essential to the use of technical standards widely used in the telecommunications industry. An article in the January 4 issue of Law360 titled “4 Things to Know About the Latest FRAND Rate-Setting Case” quotes Professor Tom Cotter for his views on various aspects of the case. Cotter notes, among other things, that “the meaning of nondiscriminatory could be a very significant issue in the Federal Circuit. … If the court comes back with a definitive judgment about what that means in the FRAND context, it could have important consequences.”
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Prof. Shen’s Research on Inequality and War Cited in London Review of Books
December 28, 2017Professor Francis Shen’s research on inequality, American military casualties, and the 2016 election of Donald Trump was quoted in a London Review of Books essay by Jackson Lears. Shen’s study, co-authored with Professor Douglas Kriner of Boston University, showed that even controlling in a statistical model for many other alternative explanations, there is a significant and meaningful relationship between a community’s rate of military sacrifice and its support for Trump. Shen and Kriner’s model suggests that if three states key to Trump’s victory—Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin—had suffered even a modestly lower casualty rate, all three could have flipped from red to blue and sent Hillary Clinton to the White House.
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Prof. Chomsky Discusses Trials Following the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862
December 26, 2017Professor Carol Chomsky was quoted in an article in NetNewsLedger commenting on the trials of Dakota held after the U.S.-Dakota War in 1862. Thirty-eight Dakota men were hanged in Mankato, Minn. on December 26, 1862, after military commission trials conducted starting in late September that year. “The trials of the Dakota were conducted unfairly in a variety of ways. The evidence was sparse, the tribunal was biased, the defendants were unrepresented in unfamiliar proceedings conducted in a foreign language, and authority for convening the tribunal was lacking. More fundamentally, neither the Military Commission nor the reviewing authorities recognized that they were dealing with the aftermath of a war fought with a sovereign nation and that the men who surrendered were entitled to treatment in accordance with that status.” As noted in the NetNewsLedger article, the Dakota 38 were remembered on December 26, 2017 in an annual ride, conducted as part of efforts “to overcome the traumas of colonization, Indian Residential School, and the continued issues with addiction to alcohol and drugs.”
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Prof. Klass Quoted in Energywire on U.S. Department of Energy Role in Clean Line Electric Transmission Project
December 13, 2017Professor Klass was quoted in an article reporting on the U.S. Department of Energy’s role in partnering with a merchant transmission line company, Clean Line Energy Partners, to build a transmission line to transport wind energy from Oklahoma through Arkansas to Tennesee called the “Plains and Eastern Clean Line.” This is the first time the Department of Energy has used its authority under the Energy Policy Act of 2005 to partner with a private company to build a transmission line. Clean Line sought the federal partnership after Arkansas regulators denied Clean Line’s request for a siting certificate to build the line through the state. The litigation that has followed will clarify the extent to which the Energy Policy Act of 2005 grants authority to the Department of Energy to override a state denial in these circumstances.
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Prof. Hasday Discusses Sexual Harassment Law on WCCO Radio
December 10, 2017Professor Jill Hasday discussed the law governing sexual harassment and mandatory arbitration clauses on WCCO’s News and Views with Roshini Rajkumar.
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Prof. Chan Quoted in Star Tribune About Increase in Arrests and Deportations in Minnesota and Nearby States
December 8, 2017Professor Linus Chan was quoted in a Star Tribune article about immigration arrests in Minnesota and surrounding states increasing by two-thirds and deportations jumping by more than half this past fiscal year under the Trump administration’s tougher enforcement approach. The St. Paul office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested 4,175 people in Minnesota, the Dakotas, Nebraska, and Iowa during the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30. Of those detained, 73 percent had criminal convictions, compared with 87 percent of the immigrants the agency arrested the year before.
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Prof. Wolf Appointed to NIH Advisory Panel for TOPMed
December 4, 2017The Director of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has appointed Professor Susan Wolf to the External Advisory Panel for TOPMed, the Trans-Omics in Precision Medicine Program. TOPMed is a large-scale national program generating whole genome sequencing and other ‘omics data on over 100,000 participants. TOPMed is the major precision medicine activity at NHLBI and complements the federal “All of Us” Precision Medicine Initiative.