Faculty File

News Briefs From Around The Law School

Publications

Michael Abramowicz published Predict-ocracy: Market Mechanisms for Public and Private Decision Making (Yale University Press, 2008); “The Uneasy Case for Patent Races over Auctions,” 60 Stanford Law Review 803 (2008); and “The Danger of Underdeveloped Patent Prospects,” 92 Cornell Law Review 1065 (2007).

John Bessler published “In the Spirit of Ubuntu: Enforcing the Rights of Orphans and Vulnerable Children Affected by HIV/AIDS in South Africa” in Volume 31 of Hastings International and Comparative Law Review (2008).

Don Braman published “Whose Eyes are You Going to Believe? Scott v. Harris and the Perils of Cognitive Illiberalism” in Volume 122 of the Harvard Law Review, with Dan M. Kahan, Yale University Law School, and David A. Hoffman, Temple University James E. Beasley School of Law, in March. His article “The Self-Defensive Cognition,” co-written by Kahan, was published by the American Criminal Law Review.

Neil H. Buchanan published “How Realistic is the Supply/Demand Equilibrium Story? A Simple Demonstration of False Trading and its Implications for Market Equilibrium” in Volume 37, Number 1 of Journal of Socio-Economics (2008).

Paul Butler’s The Future of Freedom, which is about criminal justice reform, will be published in 2009.

W. Burlette Carter’s “The Age of Innocence: The First 25 Years of the NCAA” from the Vanderbilt Sports and Entertainment Law Journal has been cited in a new book, The Forward Pass: The Play that Saved Pro Football (2007) by Philip L. Brooks.

Steve Charnovitz published “The ILO Convention on Freedom of Association and its Future in the United States” in the January issue of the American Journal of International Law. His study of the accession process in the World Trade Organization was published as a book chapter in WTO in Ten: Governance, Dispute Settlement and Developing Countries (Juris Publishing, 2008). He also wrote “The WTO as an Environmental Agency” as a chapter in Institutional Interplay. His Biosafety and Trade was published by the United Nations University Press in 2008.

Brad Clark’s forthcoming publications are: “Judicial Lawmaking and the Role of Structure in Constitutional Lawmaking,” Volume 96 California Law Review; “Constitutional Compromise and the Supremacy Clause” and “The Procedural Safeguards of Federalism”, Volume 83, Notre Dame Law Review. “Process-Based Preemption” will appear as a book chapter in Preemption Choice: The Theory, Law and Reality of Federalism’s Core Question (Cambridge University Press, 2008).

Danielle Conway-Jones published a new casebook, Licensing Intellectual Property: Law and Application (Aspen, 2008) with Robert Gomulkiewicz and Xuan-Thao Nguyen. She also published the 2007 Supplement to Intellectual Property, Software and Information Licensing: Law and Practice (BNA, 2006) with Gomulkiewicz and Nguyen. While visiting at GW Law as the E.K. Gubin Professor of Government Contracts Law, Conway-Jones and Steven Schooner published “Emerging Policy and Practice Issues” for the 2007 West Government Contracts Year in Review Conference.

Lawrence Cunningham published a new edition of his book The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America. His review of John Coffee’s book, Gatekeepers, appeared in Volume 40 of British Accounting Review. He has two forthcoming articles: “The SEC’s Global Accounting Vision: A Realistic Appraisal of a Quixotic Quest” in Volume 87 of North Carolina Law Review and “Rediscovering Board Expertise: Legal Implications of the Empirical Literature” in a symposium volume of Cincinnati Law Review. A different version of the latter will appear as a chapter in Troy Paredes’s book, The New Corporate Governance.

Phyllis Goldfarb has two pieces forthcoming in 2008: “Cause Lawyering” in the New Oxford Companion of Law (2008) and “Rape” in the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. She was a content reviewer for Prentice Hall Publishing Co. on their middle school text Forensic Science to be released in 2009.

Susan Karamanian’s “Beyond Courts: Harmonizing Practices and Principles in North America Through Investor-State Arbitration” appeared in 2 Norteamerica 161 007.

Laird Kirkpatrick published, with a co-author, the sixth edition of Evidence Under the Rules, a course book in use at more than 100 law schools. He and his co-author have also published the 2008 supplement to their six-volume treatise Federal Evidence (3d ed. Thomson/West, 2007) as well as the second edition of their Black Letter Outline on Evidence.

Orin Kerr had articles published in the Stanford Law Review, University of Chicago Law Review, and the Green Bag. He also wrote the petition for certiorari in a Fourth Amendment case, Pearson v. Callahan, that the Supreme Court granted in March.

Dean Frederick M. Lawrence published “The Evolving Federal Role in Bias Crime Law Enforcement and the Hate Crime Prevention Act of 2007” in the Stanford Law & Policy Review.

Sarah Lawsky’s “Fairly Random: On Compensating Audited Taxpayers,” is forthcoming in 41 Connecticut Law Review (2008). “Money for Nothing: Charitable Deductions for Microfinance Lenders,” 61 SMU Law Review, is forthcoming in 2008.

Cynthia Lee’s article “Cultural Conver-gence: Interest Convergence Theory Meets the Cultural Defense” was published in the Arizona Law Review. Her article “The ‘Gay Panic’ Defense: The Importance of Making Sexual Orientation Salient” was accepted for publication in UC Davis Law Review. She also completed a chapter on “Hate Crimes and the War on Terror,” which will be published later this year in Frederick Lawrence’s treatise on hate crimes.

Chip Lupu and Bob Tuttle published “Instruments of Accommodation: The Military Chaplaincy and the Establishment Clause” in the West Virginia Law Review and “Ball on a Needle: Hein v. Freedom from Religion Foundation and the Future of Establishment Clause Adjudication” in the Brigham Young University Law Review.

Thomas D. Morgan’s 2008 Selected Standards on Professional Responsibility, with Ronald D. Rotunda, was published by Foundation Press.

Sean Murphy’s article “Protean Jus ad Bellum” is forthcoming in Veröffentlichungen des Walther-Schücking-Instituts für Internationales Recht an der Universität Kiel (Duncker & Humblot, Berlin). His chapter “Are States Obliged Under International Law to Open Their Courts for the Vindication of Treaty Rights?” is forthcoming in The Role of Domestic Courts in Treaty Enforcement: A Comparative Study (Derek Jinks & David Sloss, Cambridge University Press).

Dawn Nunziato’s article “Technology and Pornography” was published in Brigham Young University Law Review.

Scott Pagel’s lecture “The Literature of Witchcraft Trials: Books & Manuscripts from the Jacob Burns Law Library,” delivered as the third annual Tarlton Law Library Rare Book Lecture at the University of Texas, was published as a pamphlet in the Tarlton Law Library Legal History Series.

Catherine Ross has published “A Stable Paradigm: Revisiting Capacity, Vulnerability and the Rights Claims of Adolescents” in Law, Mind & Brain, edited by Michael Freeman (Ashgate); “Children’s Religious Expression in School: A Comparative Treatment of the Veil and Other Religious Symbols in Western Democracies” in Competing Paradigms: Rights and Responsibilities Towards Children, edited by Martha Fineman and Karen Worthington (Ashgate); and encyclopedia entries “Foster Care” and “Parens Patriae,” with Naomi Cahn, in the Chicago Companion to the Child (University of Chicago Press).

Steven Schooner published the third edition of his co-written Government Contracts Reference Book: A Comprehensive Guide to the Language of Procurement. In addition, Schooner and Chris Yukins’s co-written article, “Incrementalism: Eroding the Impediments to a Global Public Procurement Market,” appeared in Volume 38 of the Georgetown Journal of International Law.

Michael Selmi’s “Interpreting the Americans With Disabilities Act: Why the Supreme Court Rewrote the Statute and Why Congress Did Not Care” was published in the April 2008 issue of The George Washington Law Review. His review of the 2006-07 Supreme Court’s employment and labor cases, “A Quiet But Revealing Term,” was published in the winter issue of the Employee Rights and Employment Policy Journal.

Dinah Shelton published Regional Pro-tection of Human Rights (Oxford University Press, 2008) as well as “Reparation for Indigenous Peoples: The Present Value of Past Wrongs” in Reparations for Indigenous Peoples: International and Comparative Perspectives (Federico Lenzerini, ed., Oxford University Press, 2008).

Peter Smith’s article “Textualism and Jurisdiction” will be published in the Columbia Law Review.

Daniel J. Solove’s book Understanding Privacy was published by Harvard University Press in May. His article “‘I’ve Got Nothing to Hide’ and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy” was published in 44 San Diego Law Review 745 (2007). His article “Data Mining and the Security-Liberty Debate” will be published later in 2008 by the University of Chicago Law Review.

Ralph Steinhardt will publish the second edition of his casebook International Civil Litigation: Cases and Materials on the Rise of Intermestic Law (Lexis-Nexis/Mathew Bender). His article “Soft Law, Hard Markets: Competitive Self-Interest and the Emergence of Human Rights Responsibilities for Multinational Corporations” will be published in the Brookyln Journal of International Law.

Edward Swaine published “Taking Care of Treaties” in the March 2008 issue of Columbia Law Review. The transcript of a debate in which he participated on the subject of the domestic incorporation of International Court of Justice decisions was also published in the Georgetown Journal of Law and Public Policy.

Amanda Tyler presented her article “Suspension as an Emergency Power” in March at Harvard Law School. The article is forthcoming in the Yale Law Journal.

Art Wilmarth published two op-ed essays proposing reforms in the regulation of financial institutions, which appeared in American Banker on Feb. 1 and March 28. His article “Subprime Lending Crisis Confirms Wisdom of Separating Banking and Commerce” will be published this summer in the Banking and Financial Services Policy Report (Aspen).

Christopher Yukins’s article “Are IDIQs Inefficient? Sharing Lessons with European Framework Contracting” was accepted by the Public Contract Law Journal. He published two pieces on China’s accession to the WTO Government Procurement Agreement: “Promises to Keep: Bid Challenges and China’s Accession to the WTO Government Procurement Agreement” and “China’s Accession to the WTO Agreement on Government Procurement: Issues for the U.S. Procurement Community,” 5 International Government Contractor 9 (February 2008).

Awards & Honors

John Bessler’s Writing for Life: The Craft of Writing for Everyday Living (2007) was named a Midwest Book Awards finalist and a ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year finalist.

Don Braman received the 2007 PASS (Prevention for a Safer Society) Award for his book Doing Time on the Outside. In April, Braman was appointed by D.C. Councilmember Phil Mendelson as a member of the D.C. Sentencing and Criminal Code Revision Commission.

Neil H. Buchanan was elected to the National Academy of Social Insurance.

Danielle Conway-Jones served as the 2008 Godfrey Visiting Scholar at the University of Maine School of Law.

Carol Izumi received the Community Service Award from the Asian Pacific American Bar Association Educational Fund. The charitable arm of the APA Bar Association, AEF organizes programs to assist law students with career development and awards public interest stipends for law students to work at nonprofit organizations. The award was presented at AEF’s annual benefit dinner in March.

Susan Jones received the Advocate for Justice Award from the University of the District of Columbia David A. Clarke School of Law in May 2007.

Susan Karamanian was named a member of the board of directors of the Friends of the Law Library of Congress.

Joan Meier received an award for Outstanding Leadership from Justice for Children in December.

Thomas D. Morgan received the New York State Bar Association’s Sanford D. Levy Professional Ethics Award (2008) for his lifetime contributions to scholarship in legal ethics.

Catherine Ross has been named a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton for 2008–09. She will spend her sabbatical year at the Institute working on a book on pluralism and the clash over rights in public schools.

Ralph Steinhardt was appointed a senior fellow at Yale Law School for Spring 2008 while on sabbatical from GW Law. He also was appointed to a panel of legal experts by the International Commission of Jurists on its Project on Corporate Complicity in International Crimes.

Dalia Tsuk Mitchell in January attended the meeting of the American Historical Association to receive the Littleton-Griswold Prize for her book Architect of Justice: Felix S. Cohen and the Founding of American Legal Pluralism (2007). The Littleton-Griswold Prize is given annually for the best book in any subject on the history of American law and society.

Claire Duggan The Federalist Society and American Constitution Society hosted professor Amanda Tyler (center) and former Assistant Attorneys General Eleanor Dean Acheson, JD ’73, and Rachel Brand for a discussion on judicial nominations titled “Judicial Confirmations: Behind the Curtain of the Ginsburg, Breyer, Roberts, and Alito Confirmations—A Conversation with former Assistant Attorneys General Eleanor Dean Acheson and Rachel Brand.”

Activities

Neil H. Buchanan has founded a section on Law, Society, and Taxation within the Law & Society Association. He also chaired the AALS Tax Section session at the annual meeting in New York, “Interdisciplinary Reasons to Recalibrate the Equity/Efficiency Balance in Tax Analysis,” in January. Buchanan is a frequent contributor to the “Dorf on Law” blog (www.michaeldorf.org) and appeared on CNBC’s Street Signs in January, where he discussed the Wesley Snipes criminal tax evasion trial.

Paul Butler presented draft chapters of his book on criminal justice reform, The Future of Freedom (forthcoming 2009) at various law schools, including Northwestern University School of Law and Harvard Law School. He also presented on prosecutorial ethics at the ABA Ethics Centennial Symposium.

In March, Naomi Cahn presented a paper on the need for a mandatory donor registry at a conference at DePaul Law School on “Reproductive Technology and the Need to Develop a Voluntary Donor Registry.” Also in March, she spoke on “Red Families v. Blue Families” at the New American Foundation, and she also presented “Lifting the Floor: Race, Sex, and Education” at the University of Baltimore’s Feminist Legal Theory and Feminisms conference. At the annual meeting of the American Society of International Law in April, she was elected co-chair of the Women in International Law Interest Group. In May, she spoke on a panel on the Hill on transparency in the oil, gas, and mining industries sponsored by “Publish What You Pay.”

Brad Clark presented “Domesticating Sole Executive Agreements” at Harvard Law School in September. He also presented “The Procedural Safeguards of Federalism” at Notre Dame Law School in October as part of a symposium examining the implications of his 2001 article, “Separation of Powers as a Safeguard of Federalism.” Clark also presented “Process-Based Preemption” at Georgetown University Law Center in March.

As the 2008 Godfrey Visiting Scholar at the University of Maine School of Law, Danielle Conway-Jones delivered a lecture titled “Indigenizing Intellectual Property Law,” which was based on her research in Australia as a Fulbright Senior Scholar at La Trobe University Faculty of Law and Management. In October 2007, she presented “Challenges for Oversight over Framework Agreements” at a conference “Oversight over Public Procurements: European and International Perspectives” at the University of Paris 1, Pantheon Sorbonne in Paris.

Lawrence Cunningham presented “The SEC’s Global Accounting Vision” to a joint workshop at Yale Law School and Yale School of Management in March and to the Business Associations Section at the Association of American Law Schools’ Annual Meeting in January. He also presented “Rediscovering Board Expertise” to the 21st Annual Corporate Governance Symposium at University of Cincinnati Law School in March. He testified before the U.S. Treasury Department’s Advisory Committee on the Auditing Profession in December and presented “Rules and Principles in Standard Setting” to the staff of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board in February. He was appointed to a three-year term on the Association of American Law Schools’ Curriculum Committee.

Christy DeSanctis is an invited speaker at this summer’s Legal Writing Institute Conference in Indianapolis. She will speak about her involvement with West and Foundation Press in creating a new “interactive” legal writing textbook, scheduled to be released in 2009.

Roger Fairfax presented “Outsourcing Prosecutorial Discretion” at the Mid-Atlantic Criminal Law Research Collective workshop at GW Law and at the Mid-Atlantic People of Color Legal Scholarship Conference at the University of Maryland School of Law. Fairfax made a presentation on victim-offender mediation during the fall meeting of the ABA Criminal Justice Section.

In May Jack Friedenthal visited Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, as a member of a team to evaluate the Architecture Department of the American University of Sharjah, which is applying for candidacy as an accredited school of architecture in the United States. He is a member of the National Architectural Accreditation Board and is one of four people on the team.

Phyllis Goldfarb served on the Scholarship Committee of the AALS Section on Clinical Legal Education for 2007–08. This entailed organizing panels and working with authors to present works-in-progress at the annual Clinical Legal Education workshop in May, and helping to establish a nationwide mentoring network for emerging clinical scholars. Goldfarb also wrote and produced a short film, “A Clinic Runs Through It,” featuring the work of the Jacob Burns Community Legal Clinics during her first months at GW Law. In October, she participated with a group of law faculty in a preparation session for Steven Bright prior to his argument to the Supreme Court in the capital case of Snyder v. Louisiana. In March, Goldfarb spoke at GW Law on the panel “How to Become a Law Professor.”

Tanya K. Hernandez presented “Sexual Harassment Reporting and the Definition of Class” at the AALS Workshop on Gender and Class in January. In February, Hernandez spoke at American University Law School Colloquium on “Legal Cultures of Racial Hierarchy and Identity in the Americas”; at Pace Law School Faculty Colloquium on “Affirmative Action in Brazil”; and gave the Morgan State University Public Lecture “The Legalization of White Settler Communities in Latin America.” In March, she spoke at the Rutgers University Women’s Studies Symposium on “The Power of Examining the Mutual Construction of Race and Gender.” At the Fordham University Law School Faculty Colloquium in April, she presented “The Role of the State in the Regulation of Race in Latin America.”

Laird Kirkpatrick presented the Culverhouse Chair Visiting Professor Lecture on “The Constitutional Right of Confrontation” at Stetson University College of Law in St. Petersburg, Fla., in March. In May, he participated as a member of the evidence drafting committee of the National Conference of Bar Examiners.

Sarah Lawsky presented “Money for Nothing: Charitable Deductions for Microfinance Lenders” at the Critical Tax Theory Conference at Florida State University in April. She also presented “Probably? Understanding Tax Law’s Uncertainty” at the University of Connecticut Tax Lecture Series in November and the NYU Colloquium on Tax Policy and Public Finance in February. Lawsky also presented this paper at the Law and Society Association meeting in Montreal in May and at the Junior Tax Scholars conference at NYU in June.

Cynthia Lee presented her paper “The ‘Gay Panic’ Defense: The Importance of Making Sexual Orientation Salient” at the Law and Society Meeting in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, in May. She currently serves as chair of the AALS Criminal Justice Section. In this capacity, she is working with other members of the Criminal Justice Section to plan a professional development workshop in 2010.

Chip Lupu and Bob Tuttle presented their paper on the chaplaincy and the religion clauses to the annual meeting of the National Conference on Ministry to the Armed Forces in January. In March, they presented their forthcoming paper on adjudicating disputes between clergy and congregations at a Federalist Society conference on law and religious institutions. Lupu and Tuttle were invited to write a paper for the White House Conference on the Faith-Based and Community Initiative. The paper will be published in a compendium of research on that subject, and they will deliver the paper at the White House Conference in June.

Maeva Marcus presented a paper in September at the law school of the University of Lund, Sweden, “The Lost Decade of Supreme Court History”. She was invited to give a paper, “John Marshall Was Not the First Chief Justice,” in November at the annual meeting of the American Philosophical Society. Both papers will be published.

Michael Matheson testified at three hearings of the House Foreign Affairs Committee in January and February on security commitments and agreements with Iraq. He presented on interrogation of detainees to the American Society of International Law in November, as well as on the International Law Commission to the U.S. State Department Advisory Committee on Public International Law in March. He led a group of GW Law students in a visit to the State Department in February.

Joan Meier reports that the Domestic Violence Legal Empowerment and Appeals Project (DV LEAP) in December hosted the First Biennial Symposium on Domestic Violence Law & Policy at GW Law. The topic of the symposium was “Custody and Abuse Litigation and the Supreme Court”. DV LEAP is developing a set of “Best Practices” based on the symposium for distribution around the country. In January, Meier delivered two presentations in Connecticut on custody, abuse, child protection, and parental alienation. In March, DV LEAP co-authored a Supreme Court amicus brief in Giles v. California, a case concerning whether and when a defendant forfeits his confrontation rights after killing the witness. Also in March, Meier presented a lecture on “Making the Record for Appeal” to the D.C. Bar Pro Bono Training on Domestic Violence cases.

Thomas D. Morgan presented a program on organization and discipline systems for an independent legal profession during a visit to Washington by leaders of the Iraqi and Kurdistan Bar Associations. He was also a panelist on the Tennessee Bar Foundation’s program “Feeling Conflicted? The Experts Opine and Prescribe” conducted in Nashville, Tenn.

Sean Murphy in April chaired a panel on “The Legacy of Iraq: Its Impact on International Law” at the American Society of International Law Annual Conference in Washington, as well as a panel at the Law School on “Corporations, Crimes, and Transnational Law” for a symposium on “Transnational Corporate Responsibility for the 21st Century.” In May, he lectured on the “Nature and Sources of International Law” at the U.S. Foreign Service Institute Training Program on “Fundamentals of International Law,” and represented Ethiopia at the final hearing on damages of Eritrea Ethiopia Claims Commission. In June, he presented a paper on “The Legality of Cross-Border Operations” at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, R.I.

Dawn Nunziato presented chapters of her forthcoming book, Freedom of Expression in the Twenty-First Century (Stanford University Press), at Vanderbilt Law School in March.

Peter Raven-Hansen spoke on “Internal Checks and Balances” for a panel on “The Separation of Powers and the War on Terrorism” at a St. John’s University School of Law Symposium on “The National Security Constitution: New Threats, New Rules?” in February. With Stephen Dycus and Bill Banks, he completed and submitted a manuscript for the teacher’s manual for the fourth edition of National Security Law (Aspen, 2007). He also served as advisor in the preparation of the problem and bench memo, and as faculty host, for the National Security Law Moot Court Competition, which was held at the Law School in February. He briefed and argued matters in a pending civil lawsuit by victims of terrorism under the Antiterrorism Act and Alien Tort Statute in the Eastern District of New York.

Catherine Ross continues to serve as chair of the Committee on the Rights of Children of the ABA Section of Individual Rights and Responsibilities. The committee successfully drafted an ABA Policy on Religion in Schools adopted by the ABA House of Delegates at the February meeting and provided responses to several draft acts circulated by NCCUSL. She presented “Assimilation of Second-Generation Turks in Germany” at “Turkey at the Crossroads” at American University Washington College of Law in January. In September, Ross presented “The Prisoner’s Dilemma: Child Support Obligations” at the Office of Child Support Enforcement in Washington. Also in March, she presented “Competing Claims: When do parents stop speaking for their children?” at the Fourth Annual Wells Conference on Adoption at Capital University Law School.

In October, Steven Schooner testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs, addressing “Is DHS Too Dependent on Contractors to Do the Government’s Work?” In December, he discussed “Debriefings: Best Practices at the United Nations Procurement Division Workshop on the Application of Internationally Accepted Best Practices for Debriefing Unsuccessful Vendors and Suppliers” in New York. In February, Dean Schooner presented “Too Dependent on Contractors? Minimum Standards for Responsible Governance” at Hofstra University Law School in Hempstead, N.Y., and served as a panelist at an Air Force Acquisition Lawyers conference. In March, he discussed “Suspension and Debarment: A Constitutional Due Process Quagmire?” at the National Suspension and Debarment Conference in Charleston, S.C., and moderated a panel on “The Battle After the Battle—Contractors Defend New Legal Onslaughts” at the ABA Public Contract Law Section Federal Procurement Institute in Annapolis, Md.

Michael Selmi presented a paper on low-income women during the plenary session of the Women and Law program at the annual meeting of the Association of American Law Schools. He was also elected chair of the Labor and Employment Relations Section and to the planning committee for a mid-year conference on work law. In April, he served as a panelist for a briefing sponsored by the Congressional Black Conference on mandatory arbitration agreements.

Dinah Shelton presented “Action and Reaction: Hierarchy, Advocacy, and the United Federal Courts in The Hague” in March. On April 4, she presented the Manatt/Ahn Inaugural Lecture at GW Law.

Peter Smith presented “Originalism’s Living Constitutionalism,” which he co-wrote with Thomas Colby, at the University of Texas Law School’s Colloquium on Constitutional and Legal Theory.

Daniel J. Solove gave presentations about his book The Future of Reputation at Google Inc., AOL, Drexel University College of Law, the Treasury Executive Institute, and Princeton University. He also gave presentations at Yale Law School and the International Association of Privacy Professionals 2008 Summit. He was a keynote speaker at the British Columbia Government’s Privacy and Security Conference and a panelist at the Congressional Internet Caucus. He also gave the Distinguished Lecture in Law and Technology at Case Western University School of Law. Solove also appeared on CSPAN’s Book TV and a feature about him was published in the March issue of Money magazine.

Andy Spanogle participated in a conference on “Globalizing Secured Transactions” held in San Diego in March. He presented a paper on “The Secured Transactions Experience in Eastern Europe” and was a member of a panel on “Should Everyone Adopt UCC Article 9? Why Aren’t They Doing So?”. He took the position that they should not.

Ralph Steinhardt was a visiting scholar at Bogazici University in Istanbul, Turkey, and delivered four public lectures. In October, he presented “Four Regimes of Corporate Responsibility” at the Symposium on Corporate Human Rights Responsibility at Northwestern University Law School. In November, Steinhart presented “Hard Markets, Soft Law” at the Symposium on Corporate Liability for Grave Breaches of International Law at Brooklyn Law School in New York. In January, he presented “International Law in Domestic Courts” before the Judicial Advisory Board of the American Society of International Law, Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, presiding, in Washington.

Sonia Suter was an invited speaker at the Familial Searching and Genetic Privacy Symposium, which the FBI organized in March.

In February, Edward Swaine presented a paper at a symposium on the Supreme Court’s decision in Missouri v. Holland held, appropriately, at the University of Missouri School of Law. In March, he co-presented research on treaty law at the spring meeting of the Advisory Council on International Law at the U.S. State Department. In May, he and Sean Murphy co-hosted the second Potomac Foreign Relations Roundtable at GW. And later in May, he served as a legal expert and member of the U.S. delegation for meetings conducted by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE)’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights in Warsaw, Poland.

Dalia Tsuk Mitchell presented “Corporate Directors: Trustees, Representatives, Agents,” in April at the Legal History Colloquium at Harvard Law School and at the Legal History Workshop at Boston University School of Law. The article is part of a larger project Tsuk Mitchell is working on, tentatively titled “Corporate Law and the American Reform Tradition.” Also in April, Tsuk Mitchell presented a chapter from her book, Architect of Justice: Felix S. Cohen and the Founding of American Legal Pluralism, at a faculty workshop at Stanford Law School.

Bob Tuttle spoke on legal issues related to the military chaplaincy at a leadership meeting of U.S. Navy chaplains in Albuquerque, N.M., in March.

Art Wilmarth served as organizer and program chair for the annual program of the AALS Section on Financial Institutions and Consumer Financial Services at the annual meeting of the Association of American Law Schools in New York in January. The program topic was “The Subprime Lending Crisis: Causes and Consequences.” He will serve as the Section’s chair during 2008-09.

Christopher Yukins addressed a leading German procurement group, the “Forum Vergabe,” in January in Berlin to discuss U.S. efforts to regulate contractor compliance. In March, he hosted a colloquium on international contractor compliance at GW Law, with participation by Mark Pyman of Transparency International, United Kingdom, and Alice Eldridge, JD ’91, vice president, Lockheed Martin. He discussed “Contract Disputes Litigation” at the Sorbonne Conference “Oversight Over Public Procurement: European and International Perspectives,” in Paris. He also served as a panelist discussing “Outsourcing the Federal Government” at the ABA 2007 Administrative Law Conference in Washington.

Schoenbaum Files Amicus Brief in Exxon v. Baker Claire Duggan Visiting research professor Thomas J. Schoenbaum speaks with 1L students Karl Brozyna, Mike Ebell, and Steve Kirkwood on the steps of the Supreme Court after the Feb. 20 oral argument in Exxon v. Baker. Schoenbaum submitted an amicus brief on behalf of the Alaska plaintiffs that focused on admiralty and maritime law. Schoenbaum told the Anchorage Daily News: “Punitive damages are good policy for environmental disasters like this. They shouldn’t be used for ordinary negligence, but when there’s severe reckless behavior, it’s good deterrence against conduct that’s liable to cause environmental disaster. When the risk is great, the care should be correspondingly greater.” Ebell, a student hailing from Alaska who worked as a fisherman in his teens, is one of the approximately 33,000 plaintiffs in the case Exxon Mobil appealed more than 14 years ago.