WUSTL School of Law News

Drones may violate international law

Kelly Wiese Niemeyer — 2013-05-23 00:00:00

Sadat

As President Obama gives a speech on national security — including defending U.S. use of drones to combat terrorism — Leila Sadat, JD, international law expert and professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis, argues that such targeted killing by unmanned planes may violate international humanitarian law. Legalities aside, she also questions whether it promotes U.S. interests abroad.

Sadat wrote about the subject in her article, “America’s Drone Wars,” published in the Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law.

Sadat notes that drone strikes have become a major part of U.S. military strategy and counterterror operations, but writes that the U.S. use of drones raises several troubling legal questions, such as what is the legal foundation for government use of lethal force and whether drone strikes are considered acts of aggression against other countries. She finds that the Obama administration largely continued the policy and legal rationale of former President George W. Bush regarding drones.

The U.S. argues there are no geographical constraints in the war on terror, Sadat writes, but adds that most authorities reject that idea.

“The process used by the executive branch to determine who and when to target human beings for death can be summarized in two words: ‘trust us,’” she wrote in the article.

But while she believes the administration is cautious, mistakes still can occur, and innocent civilians get killed, raising legal, political and diplomatic worries for the U.S.

“Some of these ‘mistakes’ end up as YouTube videos … which serve as recruitment devices for al-Qaeda and its associates, and fuel anti-American sentiment in areas where drones are operating,” Sadat wrote.

Sadat recently was appointed a special adviser on crimes against humanity for the International Criminal Court. She also is director of WUSTL’s Whitney R. Harris World Law Institute and the Henry H. Oberschelp Professor of Law.

To review the full article, visit here.

IRS investigation spotlights need for Inspectors General

2013-05-16 00:00:00

An executive branch Inspector General played a critical role in exposing the IRS's practice of targeting Tea Party groups, says Kathleen Clark, JD, anti-corruption expert and professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis.

Clark

“Inspectors General can work internally to investigate alleged wrongdoing, gain access to sensitive documents and information, and report their findings both internally and to Congress and to the public,” Clark writes in a recent post on the Legal Ethics Forum blog.

“As we see with the IRS controversy, an Inspector General investigation can cause heads to roll. Perhaps that's why some government agencies have been without an Inspector General for a very long time - measured not in months, but in years.” Clark notes that the State Department has been without an Inspector General for more than five years.

Washington University School of Law’s Women’s Law Caucus announces International Women’s Day awards

2013-05-15 00:00:00

The Washington University School of Law Women’s Law Caucus (WLC) recently gathered with faculty, alumni, judges and attorneys to honor the organization’s 40th anniversary and to observe the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day.

The combined celebration featured brief remarks by Terry O’Neill, president of the National Organization of Women, and the announcement of a project exploring women’s history at the law school.

As part of the annual celebration, the WLC also presented the International Women’s Day honorary awards. Introducing this year’s recipients, Jennifer Bame, WLC vice president and chair of the International Women’s Day Committee, said:

“Each of these honorees is a remarkable individual who has made unique contributions to the advancement of women. Each of these honorees demonstrates what is possible for all of us students here at Washington University School of Law. And, each sets an example for us to follow.”
 
The 2013 International Women’s Day honorees are:

Bunny and Charles Burson, for their many contributions to the law school, including generous support for the Burson Fund, which assists students and student groups, including the Women’s Law Caucus. Charles Burson also is a senior professor of practice at the law school.

Phyleccia Reed Cole, JD ’99, associate general counsel at Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville, Illinois;

Micah Myles Hall, JD ’03, founder of the Hall Law Firm in St. Louis, former president of the Mound City Bar Association, and collaborating attorney for the law school’s Race, Education & the Law course;

Marty Neville Hereford, JD ’96, partner and program director for the Advancement of Women at Armstrong Teasdale in St. Louis;

Kendra Howard, JD ’01, administrative law judge at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in St. Louis, treasurer of the Mound City Bar Association, and externship supervising attorney;

Allison Schreiber Lee, JD ’96, attorney at Paule, Camazine, Blumenthal PC and adjunct professor at the law school;

Karen Warren, managing attorney of the Health & Welfare Unit at Legal Services of Eastern Missouri, co-coordinator of the Elderlaw & Estate Planning Project, and externship supervising attorney; and

Misty Watson, JD ’06, attorney at Danna McKitrick PC, volunteer lawyer at Legal Services, and co-coordinator of the Elderlaw & Estate Planning Project.

International Women’s Day is an annual event founded a century ago to advance women’s suffrage and equality. The observance still serves as “a rallying point for international efforts for women’s rights and gender equality,” Bame said.

For more information and photos from the event visit: http://law.wustl.edu/news/pages.aspx?id=9696

Washington University teams each win $50,000 Arch Grants in startup competition

Beth Miller and Melody Walker — 2013-05-14 00:00:00

Four startup companies with ties to Washington University in St. Louis have received $50,000 each in the Arch Grants 2013 Global Startup Competition designed to stimulate and support the early-stage entrepreneurial community in St. Louis.

The winning companies are: Sparo Labs, a medical device company founded by two engineering undergraduate students; Juristat, a software company that targets litigators and founded by three alumni; LipoSpectrum LLC, a life science company providing R&D labs with advanced biological lipid-analysis co-founded by an Olin Business School Executive MBA alumnus; and MMBiosensing LLC, which invented a new method of detecting the bio-markers of heart attack and founded by a WUSTL postdoctoral research associate.

The companies were among 20 companies chosen from 40 finalists, trimmed from more than 700 entrants, vying for the $50,000 grants of unrestricted funds. The grants also come with networking and mentoring opportunities and other free services, including legal, accounting, marketing, cloud computing and mentoring support.

Recipients also get access to St. Louis’ angel investment network, the opportunity to be a part of the downtown St. Louis startup community and an opportunity for a $100,000 follow-on grant from Arch Grants.

The win is the latest in a string of awards for Sparo Labs, headed by Andrew Brimer and Abigail Cohen, who are both graduating May 17 from the School of Engineering & Applied Science with bachelor’s degrees in mechanical engineering and biomedical engineering, respectively.

In April, the team won $25,000 in the engineering school’s inaugural Discovery Competition. In February, the team won $30,000 in the 2013 Olin Cup Competition sponsored by the Skandalaris Center for Entrepreneurial Studies. Last summer, the team won first place in two national engineering competitions, resulting in $15,000 in prizes.

Brimer and Cohen have spent nearly two years developing the product and a prototype that empowers patients to quantitatively track and proactively manage asthma, cystic fibrosis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder and other respiratory diseases via seamless integration with smartphones, tablets and computers — ultimately implementing low-cost diagnostic and monitoring spirometry worldwide.

Most spirometers cost between $1,000-$2,000, making them unaffordable for hospitals and clinics in the developing world. However, the Sparo Labs device costs about $8. The low cost could allow health-care providers in developing countries to purchase the spirometers, which are specially designed for accuracy and durability despite their price.

Sparo Labs has filed for a patent and is preparing the product for clinical trials and FDA approval.

Juristat collects electronic lawsuit case data from state and federal court databases. The company uses a proprietary system to index this data into a single dynamic searchable database. Its product can provide more than 150 unique pieces of litigation intelligence, such as the probability of success on motions and appeal or metrics of an attorney’s experience within a practice area or specific court. Users can then quickly search and produce predictive models allowing lawyers to design the best litigation and marketing strategies.

Juristat was co-founded by CEO Drew Winship, JD, formerly a trial lawyer for the Brown & James law firm and an alumnus of Washington University School of Law; Robert Ward, a developer for Beck Automation; and Jordan Woerndle, an analyst for the Neuroinformatics Research Group at the School of Medicine and an alumnus of the School of Engineering & Applied Science. Kent Syverud, JD, dean of Washington University School of Law, is on the advisory board for Juristat.

LipoSpectrum LLC co-founder and CEO Milind Sant, with a doctorate in organic chemistry and an executive MBA from Olin Business School, is employing patented technology developed at Washington University in this bioscience company. The technology, called Multi Dimensional Mass Spectrometry Shotgun Lipidomics (MDMS-SL), provides enhanced, state-of-the-art lipid analysis from biological samples of all types, including plants, animals and humans. Many fields can benefit from detailed molecular level lipid analysis, including cardiovascular, diabetes, obesity, cancer, autoimmune and neurological diseases, nutrition, agriculture and bio-fuel (algae).

MMBiosensing LLC, founded by Amos Danielli, a postdoctoral research associate in the lab of Lihong Wang, PhD, in the School of Engineering & Applied Science, has invented and patented a proprietary method of detecting the biomarkers of a heart attack with significantly higher sensitivity and greatly reduced testing time compared to competitors. The company is developing the technology into a point-of-care device that will greatly reduce emergency room wait times and costs to patients and providers, and improve patient outcomes. The company also won $50,000 in the 2013 Olin Cup competition.

The company’s leadership staff – Abu Abraham, Robbie Garrison, and F. Gabriel Santa Cruz – are all graduates of the Olin Business School.

Supreme Court decision closes loophole in Monsanto’s business model

2013-05-13 00:00:00

The Supreme Court’s unanimous opinion in Bowman v. Monsanto holds that farmers who lawfully obtain Monsanto’s patented, genetically modified soybeans do not have a right to plant those soybeans and grow a new crop of soybeans without Monsanto’s permission. “The Court closed a potential loophole in Monsanto’s long-standing business model, prevents Monsanto’s customers from setting up ‘farm-factories’ for producing soybeans that could be sold in competition with Monsanto’s soybeans, and it enables Monsanto to continue to earn a reasonable profit on its patented technology,” says Kevin Collins, JD, patent law expert and professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis

Collins

Collins’ comments on the loophole in Monsanto’s business model and the legal controversy with the Bowman v. Monsanto decision follow:

Soybean loophole

Monsanto invented a genetically modified soybean that is resistant to a particular herbicide, glyphosate. This agricultural technology poses an unusual challenge for Monsanto insofar as Monsanto seeks to use patent protection to profit from its invention.

Unlike most technologies, soybeans are to some extent self-replicating: the process of planting genetically modified soybeans leads to the creation of more genetically modified soybeans which, if planted, can generate yet more genetically modified soybeans, etc. To profit from farmers’ use of the patented soybeans year after year, Monsanto must prevent farmers from saving the soybeans harvested from a first crop and replanting them as a second crop.

In large part, Monsanto achieves this goal by requiring farmers who purchase the patented soybeans from Monsanto to sign a technology licensing agreement that contractually forbids the farmers from saving and replanting the harvested soybeans in future growing seasons. However, this contractual solution leaves a loophole that Bowman sought to exploit. Farmers who have signed the technology agreement regularly sell their soybean crops to a grain elevator that, in turn, regularly sells the soybeans for human or animal consumption.

Bowman went to a grain elevator, purchased Monsanto’s genetically modified soybeans, and planted them in his fields. Bowman was not under any contractual obligation to Monsanto; he did not sign a technology licensing agreement when he purchased the soybeans. He therefore argued that he had the right to re-plant the soybeans he purchased and to grow a new crop. This is the potential loophole in Monsanto’s ability to prevent the saving and replanting of its patented soybeans that the Supreme Court closed in Bowman v. Monsanto.

Legal controversy

More technically, the legal controversy in Bowman arises from the convergence of the unusual technological capacity of patented soybeans to self-replicate when planted and the patent doctrine of exhaustion.

The exhaustion doctrine states that an unrestricted sale of a patented article exhausts the patentee’s rights with respect to that article.

When a consumer buys a patented good—say, a vacuum cleaner—in an over-the-counter transaction, the consumer may use the vacuum cleaner for its intended purpose of cleaning without infringing the patent. However, the exhaustion doctrine is limited in that the purchase of the vacuum cleaner does not give the patent owner the right to make a second vacuum cleaner.

This limit on the exhaustion doctrine is an intuitive one: it is necessary for a patent owner to continue to earn a profit on a patented technology throughout the full term of a patent.

Bowman’s argument hinges on the fact that the clean distinction between a normally exhausted right to use a patented good for its intended purpose and a normally not-exhausted right to make new patented goods collapses when the patented technology is a self-replicating soybean.

The normal and ordinary way in which a farmer uses a soybean (planting it) necessarily makes new soybeans (the harvested crop). Bowman argued that his right to use the purchased soybeans therefore entailed a right to make new soybeans.

The Supreme Court disagreed, holding that the exhaustion doctrine did not give Bowman the right to purchase the patented soybeans at the grain elevator, plant them, and grow a new crop. The Court’s reasoning relied primarily on the fact that there are many ways to use soybeans that do not require self-replication (e.g., using the soybeans for human or animal consumption).

Sant named co-director of IP/Nonprofit Law Clinic

2013-05-14 00:00:00

Sant

Geetha Sant, JD, soon will become co-director of Washington University School of Law's Intellectual Property & Nonprofit Organizations Law Clinic.

She will begin her duties July 1, succeeding Peter H. Ruger, JD, who will retire June 30. Sant also will serve as a lecturer in law.

Sant is a former adjunct professor for the Master of Arts in Nonprofit Management program at Washington University in St. Louis’ University College. She earned a law degree from WUSTL in 1989. For more information, visit here.

Law professor Martin installed as Nagel Chair

2013-05-09 00:00:00

Jerry Naunheim

Andrew D. Martin, PhD, vice dean at Washington University School of Law, delivers his address, “Institutional Empiricism in the 21st Century,” during his installation as the Charles Nagel Chair of Constitutional Law and Political Science.

Andrew D. Martin, PhD, vice dean at Washington University School of Law, recently was installed as the Charles Nagel Chair of Constitutional Law and Political Science.

This professorship honors Martin’s work as both a professor of law and a professor of political science in Arts & Sciences. He also serves as the founding director of the Center for Empirical Research in the Law. Since 2000, when he joined the Washington University faculty, Martin has mentored nearly 20 doctoral students and received the Outstanding Faculty Mentor Award in 2011 from the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences.

In addition, he is a principal of Principia Empirica LLC, an analytics consultancy that provides empirically grounded recommendations to businesses, law firms, government agencies and nonprofits. With an expertise in the study of judicial decision making, and a special emphasis on the U.S. Supreme Court and the lower federal courts, Martin also works extensively in the field of political methodology and applied statistics.

“Andrew has become a giant among scholars and professors of constitutional law and political science,” said Kent Syverud, dean of the law school and the Ethan A.H. Shepley Distinguished University Professor, during the installation ceremony. “His dozens of articles are careful, rigorous and insightful. They’ve come to define the standard for empirical studies of courts in the United States and in the world.”

In addition to Syverud, Barbara A. Schaal, PhD, dean of the faculty and Mary-Dell Chilton Distinguished Professor in Arts & Sciences, offered remarks during Martin’s installation as the Nagel Chair. Lee Epstein, PhD, Provost Professor of Law and Political Science and the Rader Family Trustee Chair in Law at the University of Southern California, introduced Martin after a welcome by Edward S. Macias, PhD, provost and the Barbara and David Thomas Distinguished Professor in Arts & Sciences.

The Nagel Chair was established through a bequest from Daniel Noyes Kirby in 1945. It honors Charles Nagel, Kirby’s longtime friend, law partner and fellow lecturer at Washington University School of Law. Nagel was a member of the Missouri House of Representatives from 1881 to 1883, a member of the Republican National Committee from 1908 to 1912, and U.S. secretary of commerce and labor in the cabinet of President William Howard Taft from 1909 to 1913.

To read more and watch a video of the installation visit here.

JERRY NAUNHEIM

Martin is congratulated by his daughter, Olive.

Broadway star Norbert Leo Butz May 9

Liam Otten — 2013-05-03 00:00:00

The Tony Award-winning Broadway star Norbert Leo Butz will headline a benefit concert for The Angel Band Project at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, May 9, at WUSTL’s 560 Music Center.

A St. Louis native, Butz made his Broadway debut as Roger Davis in Rent in 1996 and twice won the Tony for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical for Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (2005) and Catch Me if You Can (2011).

Joining Butz will be a band of professional musicians from New York, Seattle and St. Louis. All proceeds will go toward funding a pilot music therapy program for sexual violence survivors.

The Angel Band Project began in 2009, following the murder of Butz’s sister, Teresa, by an intruder who broke into the Seattle home she shared with her partner, Jennifer Hopper. Soon thereafter, musician friends and family of both women recorded a benefit album, with proceeds dedicated to survivors of sexual violence.

“Music has the power to heal,” said Angel Band co-founder Rachel Ebeling. “There’s a reason we put on our favorite album for comfort or a pick-me-up when we’re feeling low. Given the fact that someone is sexually assaulted every two minutes in the U.S., we are using the therapeutic power of music as a healing tool for survivors of sexual assault in their journey toward healing.”

Butz has just wrapped up the pre-Broadway run of Big Fish in Chicago. Big Fish will debut on Broadway in October.

Other projects include the film Dan in Real Life with Steve Carrell, Juliette Binoche and Dane Cook; and the indie film Higher Ground with Vera Farmiga. He recently played himself in an episode of the NBC musical drama Smash.

Tickets are $25-$100 and are available through MetroTix. The performance is sponsored by the OUTLaw, a student-run LGBT awareness, advocacy, support and social group in WUSTL’s School of Law; and by Edward Jones, Webster University and Crawford-Butz Insurance Agencies, among others.

The 560 Music Center is located in University City, at 560 Trinity Ave. For more information, visit www.angelbandproject.org.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtngmqBOk1s

New faculty join Brown School, Law School

2013-04-22 00:00:00

Several new faculty members have joined the Brown School and the School of Law at Washington University in St. Louis this academic year. Below are details about their backgrounds.

Brown School

Derek Brown, PhD, is an assistant professor.
Brown teaches courses in the Master of Public Health curriculum. Brown is also a scholar in the Washington University Institute for Public Health, a faculty affiliate in the Center for Violence and Injury Prevention, and senior research fellow at Duke Global Health Institute’s Center for Health Policy and Inequalities Research. Brown is conducting research on the economics of child maltreatment, in particular among Medicaid populations using an innovative linkage of Medicaid claims and survey data. Begun with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) support, he continues this work as co-investigator of major grants from the National Institute of Mental Health and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. His research has appeared in numerous peer-reviewed journals such as American Journal of Preventive Medicine, Child Abuse and Neglect, Preventive Medicine and Vaccine. Brown is an active member of the CDC’s “Healthy People 2020” work group guiding federal health surveillance on health-related quality of life.

Sheretta Butler-Barnes, PhD, is an assistant professor.
Previously, Butler-Barnes was a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow at University of Michigan’s School of Education affiliated with the Center for the Study of Black Youth in Context. She conducted research on how individual-level factors connected to black youths’ cultural backgrounds (for example, racial identity beliefs and religiosity) and ecological risk and resources (such as community violence, family and peer support) influence their achievement and psychological well-being outcomes. She also was a research assistant with North Carolina Central University’s African American Faith Communities Project. In this role, she investigated ways that faith communities support families and how families teach their children about their cultural heritage, examining such constructs as racial identity, racial socialization and theological orientation within black Protestant faith communities.

Amy A. Eyler, PhD, is an assistant professor.
Her research interests include cancer prevention, health education and behavior, as well as health politics and policy. Eyler conducts research as part of the Prevention Research Center (PRC) in St. Louis. She is principal investigator and coordinator of the Physical Activity Policy Research Network, integrating the work of 10 research sites studying the nature and extent of physical activity policy in a variety of settings. She is responsible for evaluation activities for core PRC projects and serves as collaborative investigator on cancer prevention and dissemination grants while procuring external research funding. Eyler received the Article of the Year Award in 1998 for Health Education and Behavior. Her most recent research has been featured in the American Journal of Health Education, Physical Education and Health and Health Politics Policy Law, among others. Eyler also has been tapped to edit and update the chapter on exercise and fitness in each new edition of the long-running introductory health text Access to Health.

Michal Grinstein-Weiss, PhD, is an associate professor and is associate director of the Center for Social Development.
Grinstein-Weiss is a leading expert and researcher in the asset-building field and is an influential voice in the design of innovative savings policies, both in the United States and internationally. She is the leading researcher of the Refund to Savings initiative, the largest savings experiment in the United States, and is principal investigator of the first federal evaluation of the U.S. Department of Education’s GEAR UP program. Grinstein-Weiss also serves as a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, as a research associate for the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland and as a fellow for the Center of Community Capital. She previously was an associate professor at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Molly Metzger, PhD, is an assistant professor.
Metzger’s research explores the ways in which public policies interact with social structure and developmental factors to shape cities and lives. Metzger’s work focuses on affordable housing policy, racial segregation and the deconcentration of poverty in American cities. Her recent work includes a community-based participatory research project in which she partnered with residents of the Julia C. Lathrop Homes, the last major public housing on Chicago’s north side.
Her work also extends to other areas of social welfare, including education policy and early childhood development. She has contributed to the growing body of literature demonstrating the long-term health benefits of breastfeeding, particularly with regard to preventing obesity. And while working at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy Studies, she managed data collection for an early-childhood intervention based at 35 Chicago Head Start sites. She has experience with Chicago’s urban poverty as a researcher, service provider and citizen and uses that experience in her research and teaching.

David A. Patterson, Silver Wolf (Adelv unegv Waya), PhD, is an assistant professor.
Patterson has provided clinical, addiction-related services for more than 15 years and currently is an associated researcher with the University at Buffalo’s Research Institute on Addictions and the Buffalo Center for Social Research. His research focuses on barriers to best-practice implementation in human services organizations, specifically investigating worker and organizational characteristics and their roles in adopting proven practices. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism has funded his research. Patterson’s other research focus is on Native American health and wellness, particularly on issues related to college retention. Some of his funded work has been directed toward adapting a Native American-specific HIV/AIDS risk reduction intervention. He is an Indigenous HIV/AIDS Research Training fellow and collaborates with University of Washington’s Indigenous Wellness Research Institute.

Zorimar Rivera-Núñez, PhD, is an assistant professor.
Rivera-Núñez teaches courses in the Master of Public Health program.
Previously, Rivera-Núñez completed post-doctoral training with the National Academies Research Associateship Program at the Environmental Protection Agency in Cincinnati. As part of this training, she examined exposure assessment tools related to drinking-water contaminants. This research has applications to epidemiological studies of adverse health outcomes. She also participated in forums to provide technical assistance on community based-efforts. In addition, she was part of a team examining how best to evaluate cumulative risk at the community level. At the University of Michigan, Rivera-Núñez was awarded a National Cancer Institute fellowship under the Comprehensive Minority Biomedical Branch to investigate urinary arsenic species as biomarkers of arsenic exposure through drinking water. She also participated in air pollution research projects such as “Air Pollution, Inflammation and Preterm Birth in Mexico City.” Rivera-Núñez is interested in the temporal and spatial variation of environmental contaminants and the effects of those contaminants on women’s and children’s health.

Jean-Francois Trani, PhD, is an assistant professor.
Previously, Trani was a senior research associate at the Leonard Cheshire Disability and Inclusive Development Centre in the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at University College London. His work lies at the intersection of mental health, disability, vulnerability and poverty, with a focus on conducting research that informs policy and service design for individuals living in conflict-affected fragile states and other low-income countries, such as Afghanistan, India, Nepal, Sierra Leone and Sudan (Darfur). For example, Trani's research has contributed to the policy papers of the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Public Health in Afghanistan regarding disability issues. Trani's research has been funded by a number of organizations, including the U.K. AID/Department for International Development, European Commission, U.N. Mine Action Center in Afghanistan, Handicap International, UNICEF and the World Bank.

School of Law

Goldburn P. Maynard Jr., JD, is a visiting assistant professor of law.
Maynard is a rising scholar in tax law and trusts and estates. His co-authored article in the Tulane Law Review, “To Pay or Delay: The Nominee’s Dilemma under Collection Due Process,” won the John Minor Wisdom Award for best lead article in the volume. Before joining the law faculty, he served as an estate tax attorney for the Internal Revenue Service in Oakland, Calif. He also was a tax associate at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom in Chicago. At the University of Chicago Law School, he was a staff member of the University of Chicago Law Review. He served as an intern at the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois and at the AIDS Legal Council of Chicago. Following law school, he earned his LLM in taxation with honors from Northwestern University School of Law. Maynard is a member of the Illinois bar.

Elizabeth Sepper, JD, is an associate professor of law.
Sepper is a health law scholar whose work explores the interaction of morality, professional ethics and law in medicine. Her most recent article, forthcoming in the Virginia Law Review, challenges the standard account of the role of conscience in health-care delivery, which limits conscience to medical providers who refuse to deliver controversial treatments. She also has published in the areas of human rights, women’s rights and international health law. Her articles have appeared in the Texas International Law Journal, University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Law and New York University Law Review. She has clerked for Judge Marjorie Rendell of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and practiced at Human Rights Watch and at New York University School of Law’s Center for Human Rights and Global Justice.

Andrew F. Tuch, SJD, is an associate professor of law.
Tuch is an accomplished scholar in the fields of corporate law, securities regulation and the regulation of financial institutions, especially investment banks. His scholarship has appeared in the Virginia Law Review, as well as in peer-reviewed journals in the United Kingdom and Australia. His article “Multiple Gatekeepers” was named among the "Ten Best Corporate and Securities Articles of 2011" by Corporate Practice Commentator. He earned an SJD degree from Harvard Law School, where his research was twice awarded the Victor Brudney Prize for the Best Paper in Corporate Governance. Tuch clerked for Justice G.L. Davies of the Queensland Court of Appeal, practiced corporate law at Davis Polk & Wardwell in New York and London, and was a member of the law faculty at the University of Sydney. Tuch is a member of the New York bar and is qualified to practice in Australia, England and Wales.

Push for corporate board diversity set to increase in the U.S. due to European pressure

Jessica Martin — 2013-04-22 00:00:00

As Germany prepares to mandate quotas for female participation on major corporate boards, the United States is feeling the pressure to improve board diversity, says Hillary A. Sale, JD, corporate governance expert and professor of law at Washington University School of Law.

Sale

After years of little growth, the percentage of women directors on U.S. Boards remains at 12 percent.

"There are a lot of studies out there showing that diverse groups perform better, and there’s no reason to think that isn’t also true in the boardroom. I’ve certainly heard directors say it. I’ve also heard CEOs say it."

Sale is currently working with colleagues at the Olin Business School to research the best way to measure the impact of diversity on a corporate board.

http://youtu.be/YcOj9BV9Sys

Hillary Sale, JD, corporate governance expert and professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis, discusses the growing pressure to improve diversity on corporate boards. Sale works with DirectWomen, a national program designed to develop and position an elite group of exceptional senior women lawyers for service as directors of major U.S. Corporations.

She also holds a leadership role with DirectWomen, a national program designed to develop and position an elite group of exceptional senior women lawyers for service as directors of major U.S. Corporations.

‘Be a sponge’ and other advice to help students succeed at summer internships

Steve Givens — 2013-04-23 00:00:00

As students begin to leave campus for the summer, many will head off to internships, hoping to add to their classroom experiences and enhance their future opportunities by immersing themselves in the real world of work.

It’s a great way to spend the summer, said Mark Smith, Washington University in St. Louis’ associate vice chancellor for students and director of the Career Center, but to get the most out of the experience, it’s imperative that students have a clear plan.

“An internship can be the start of a great career, a way to make some money, a way to find out what you really like — and don't like — a way to confirm and fulfill your passions,” Smith said. “But you need to have a plan and the people you work with and for need to know about it.”

Essentially, Smith said, it comes down to these questions: What do you want to know about yourself, the industry in which you are working, and the function you are performing? And what can you can learn by the end of the summer and incorporate into your career planning and course choices when you return?

Smith offers four tips that will help make a summer internship more meaningful and productive.

1. It’s essential to communicate upfront to your supervisors what kinds of experiences you want to have before the end of the internship.

“Don't assume that the people you are working with will automatically know what you want,” Smith said. “You need to communicate the learning experiences and exposure you'd like to get in this very short time frame. Don't let past interns determine your summer. Your needs and goals are unique to you. Be professional, be clear, and don't give up. Most everyone at your firm is inclined to want to see you have a positive experience. Let them know what that experience looks like from your perspective.”

2. Find informal ways to meet others within the organization.

“Grab some coffee with folks you don't work directly with,” Smith said. “Set up lunches every week with people who are interesting to you, outside of your area. People love to talk about their work and careers — their achievements, their challenges, where they want to go next, and what they would recommend to you. By doing these things you will stand out, build a network of associates, and most importantly, learn what you need to know about where you want to direct your career passions when you return to school.”

3. Set high expectations and make the most of the experience, especially in the first four weeks.

“Be a sponge,” Smith said. “Do more than expected. Contribute in ways outside of the scope of the role they gave you. It will open opportunities that they, and you, hadn't considered at the beginning of your program. If you don't do this at the start, and you wait for the internship to evolve, you won't optimize your learning experience.”

4. Keep a journal and ask yourself questions such as:

• Do I really like working for this size of an organization?
• Is this type of organization the best way to start off my career?
• Would I want to spend eight hours a day working with people who do this kind of work?
• Would I be happy starting my career in a rigid culture that pays well, but which doesn't offer me the personal independence I am used to?
• Is it critical to get a graduate degree to be promoted in this industry?
• Where do those around me get their personal and professional satisfaction?
• How do professionals in this organization keep up with all the new developments?
• How do you get promoted in this industry?
• Which are the best organizations in this industry? Why are they the best?

Smith emphasizes that upfront planning and hard work are the keys to a successful internship.

“Every summer thousands of interns realize, too late, what they could have experienced, if they only communicated at the beginning what they wanted, and given 110 percent from Day One,” he said.

Increasing surveillance a dangerous reaction to Boston bombings, says privacy law expert

2013-04-23 00:00:00

In the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings, some people are calling for an increase in surveillance cameras throughout U.S. cities.

“This would be a mistake,” says Neil M. Richards, JD, privacy law expert and professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis. “It would be dangerous to our civil liberties, and it would be bad policy.”

Richards

Richards gives his personal reaction to the Boston bombings and offers three reasons why increasing the number of surveillance cameras would be an unnecessary response to recent events in a CNN opinion piece, "Surveillance State No Answer to Terror."

“Being constantly observed might make us feel slightly safer, but this would be only an illusion of safety,” he writes.

“History has shown repeatedly that broad government surveillance powers inevitably get abused – whether by the Gestapo, the Stasi, or our own FBI, which engaged in unlawful surveillance and blackmail of ‘dangerous’ people like Martin Luther King, Jr.”

Read the full article at http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/23/opinion/richards-surveillance-state/index.html.

Symposium: Finding humanity in advanced dementia, April 27

2013-04-17 00:00:00

Rebecca L. BarNard

A Polaroid self-portrait hand-reworked by Rebecca L. Barnard, an artist, eerily foreshadows her oncoming illness, diagnosed 14 years later.

The Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology Program of Washington University in St Louis will host a symposium “Finding Humanity in Advanced Dementia” Saturday, April 27.

In this symposium, experts in the fields of patient care, psychology, philosophy, medicine, neuroscience, and a family caregiver discuss the effect of severe cognitive loss on people with dementia and those who care for them and seek to discover ways to honor the dignity of individuals coping with Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias.

Greg ruffing/redux

In December 2007, Richard Rubin and his wife, Beck (pictured above), already diagnosed with early-onset dementia, attended a lecture on “Cognitive Loss and Ethics” in Baltimore.

The young speaker asked whether a woman, faithful to her husband all her life, who started an affair in her nursing home, should be stopped. “Should you honor the wishes of a person in the early stages of dementia after she ceases to be a person,” the speaker asked.

Beck whispered to Richard, “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” and left the room.

A year later, Richard was struggling to keep Beck at home despite progressing dementia. In a moment of desperation, he tried to force her to take anti-psychotic medication. She backed away from him and slammed her head into the wall phone, which crashed to floor. Holding her head, she wailed, “Oh, Sweetie. Oh, Sweetie, I'm just a person! I'm just a person.”  

Richard Rubin will be the first speaker in the symposium “Finding Humanity in Advanced Dementia.”

The symposium will begin with a personal perspective presented by Richard M. Rubin, PhD, a lecturer in philosophy in University College (see sidebar).

Peggy Szwabo, PhD, a mental health consultant, then will discuss dementia caregiving from a clinical perspective.

She will be followed by Jason Karlawish, MD, professor of medicine, medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania, and by Agnieszka Jaworska, PhD, associate professor of philosophy at the University of California at Riverside.

John C. Morris, MD, the Harvey A. and Dorismae Hacker Friedman Distinguished Professor of Neurology and director of the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, and Marcus E. Raichle, MD, professor of radiology, neurology, neurobiology and biomedical engineering, both at Washington University in St. Louis, will discuss biological aspects of dementia, and Raichle will present a case history from his own family.

All of the speakers, together with Rebecca Dresser, JD, the Daniel Noyes Professor of Law and professor of ethics in medicine at WUSTL, will take part in a panel discussion, and Carl Craver, PhD, professor of philosophy in Arts & Sciences at WUSTL, will deliver concluding remarks.

The symposium, which runs from 1 to 7:30 p.m. in Wilson Hall, Room 214, on the university’s Danforth Campus, is free and open to the public. Seating is limited, so pre-registration is enouraged. To register, email: wustldementiasymposium@gmail.com.

Futher details and additional resources for people struggling with dementia can be found at: https://pages.wustl.edu/dementiasymposium.

President signs bill to limit STOCK Act’s web-based publication of employees’ financial information

2013-04-15 00:00:00

On Monday, April 15, President Obama signed legislation rolling back the disclosure requirements of the STOCK (Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge) Act, which would have required creation of a searchable, sortable database for the annual financial interest forms of 28,000 executive branch employees as well as highly paid Congressional staff. These forms contain detailed information about employees’ assets, outside income and gifts.

Clark

Former national security officials raised security concerns about this publication requirement. Current employees filed a lawsuit, resulting in a federal court ruling that publishing such information on the web would violate employees’ right to privacy. At the end of March, the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) issued a report critical of the plan to post employees’ information on the web.

“Both the court and NAPA recognized that federal employees have a legitimate right to privacy regarding their personal financial information,” says Kathleen Clark, JD, government ethics expert and professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis. Clark has co-authored a chapter on the STOCK Act in the forthcoming International Handbook on Transparency. The NAPA quoted from Clark’s chapter in its report.

“The STOCK Act would have established an unprecedented level of transparency for federal government officials,” Clark said. “It would have created a tool -- a searchable, sortable database -- that could help nongovernment organizations track financial trends among federal employees.” With this new legislation, Congress drastically reduced the number of officials whose forms will be published on the internet and removed the mandate for a searchable, sortable database.

Senate votes to limit STOCK Act’s web-based publication of employees’ financial information

2013-04-12 00:00:00

On Thursday, April 11, the Senate voted to roll back the STOCK (Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge) Act, limiting the web-based publication of government employees’ personal financial information. This action comes in response to a federal court ruling that such publication violated employees’ right to privacy and a critical report by the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA).

“The court recognized that the federal employees have a legitimate right to privacy regarding their personal financial information and ruled that the federal government failed to identify a compelling government interest that would justify posting that personal information on the internet,” says Kathleen Clark, JD, government ethics expert and professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis.

The STOCK Act would require Internet posting of the annual financial interest forms for 28,000 executive branch employees. Financial interest forms detail information about assets, outside income and gifts. The Senate bill would limit such posting to elected officials, congressional candidates, and Senate-confirmed presidential appointees.

Clark

The National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) recently issued a report mandated by Congress on the STOCK Act. The report includes Clark’s findings on the STOCK Act:

“For legislators the primary function of these forms is political accountability: assisting the public in assessing whether the financial interests of elected legislators are politically acceptable. Legislators stand for reelection on a regular basis, and their constituents can take into account whether the financial interests of a member (or a nonincumbent candidate) are acceptable when deciding how to vote,” writes Clark in a chapter on the STOCK Act in the forthcoming International Handbook on Transparency.

To read the complete NAPA report visit:
http://www.napawash.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/STOCKactFinal.pdf

Are human genes patentable?

Jessica Martin — 2013-04-11 00:00:00

On April 15, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, a case that could answer the question, “Under what conditions, if any, are isolated human genes patentable?” Kevin Emerson Collins, JD, patent law expert and professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis, believes that layered uncertainties make this case an unusually difficult case in which to predict the outcome.

During the early 1990s, Myriad Genetics made important scientific discoveries related to mutations in the BRCA 1 and BRCA 2 genes, which are biomarkers for increased risk of breast and ovarian cancer. Based on this work, Myriad sought, and obtained, patent protection for “isolated” DNA molecules that embody these sequences.

The Supreme Court’s opinion in Myriad will determine whether Myriad’s gene patents are valid or, alternatively, whether they were improperly issued from the beginning.

“The legal controversy centers on patent law’s ‘products of nature’ doctrine—a doctrine that prevents the patenting of newly made products that do not display a ‘marked difference’ from naturally occurring products,” Collins says.

“A perfectly circular section cut out of a leaf of a newly discovered plant may be technically new at the time that it is first made -- and it may be socially useful if the leaf contains chemicals that are natural wound healers, but it’s likely an unpatentable product of nature because there is no marked difference between the newly created product and the naturally occurring product.

http://youtu.be/IVzBmAlpB8M

Kevin Emerson Collins, patent law expert and professor of law at Washington University inSt. Louis, discusses the Myriad Genetics case before the Supreme Court. This case could answer the question, "Under what conditions, if any, are isolated human genes patentable?" Collins believes that layered uncertainties make this case an unusually difficult case in which to predict the outcome.

“Importantly, the Myriad gene patents only encompass DNA molecules in an ‘isolated’ state, separate from the remainder of the chromosome in which they exist in a human body, and they thus describe molecules that were technically new when Myriad first made them.”

The question before the Court is whether the structural and functional differences between naturally occurring DNA molecules and DNA molecules in an isolated state is sufficiently significant to constitute a “marked difference” and to sanction the patenting of the isolated DNAs.

Behind the legal controversy is an economic controversy that may (or may not) influence the Supreme Court’s pronouncement on the products of nature doctrine. “The social costs of the exclusive rights to inventions granted by patents are normally justified by the incentives that patents provide for self-interested entities to invest in research and development and generate the socially valuable inventions,” Collins says.

However, under some circumstances, there are legitimate concerns that the incentive-based benefits of patents may not outweigh these costs.

“One function of the products of nature doctrine is to ensure that the basic tools of scientific and technological work are not constrained by claims of patent rights and remain free for all to use as inputs into future research,” says Collins.

“To the extent that isolated genes are essential technological and scientific building blocks, the costs of Myriad’s gene patents in the form of slower innovation in the future may be so great that they will outweigh the benefits of the patent-induced incentives that speed up the creation of the isolated genes themselves.”

The verdict

Collins says it is difficult to predict how the Supreme Court will decide this case because of three compounded uncertainties.

First, the Supreme Court has to date not offered a clear legal framework for identifying products of nature, so it is unclear how high a hurdle the markedly different standard will prove to be.

Second, it is unclear how strongly the Court’s legal determination will be influenced by the underlying economic concerns about the privatization of the building blocks of technological progress.

Third, the relationship between the Supreme Court and the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals—the court that authored the opinion below in Myriad—is not likely to lead to much of any deference.

“Recent Federal Circuit patent decisions have been poorly received by the Supreme Court,” Collins says. “The Federal Circuit upheld the patentablity of these genes, but, given recent history, this is not much of an indicator as to Supreme Court will handle this case.”

Filibuster abuse destabilizes government and is unconstitutional

2013-04-11 00:00:00

Filibuster has become a popular tool for legislators. “Republicans have held the U.S. Senate hostage despite their minority status and losses in the last election,” says Merton Bernstein, emeritus professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis.

“Indeed, the threat of a filibuster enables the minority to exact concessions that the electorate had already rejected in several elections. This sabotage of the democratic process not only shuts down the legislative process, short circuits the confirmation of presidential nominees, but also threatens large foreign purchases of U.S. bonds that lower interest rates for federal, state and business borrowing.”

Bernstein

Bernstein, former counsel to U.S. Senator Hubert H. Humphrey and Legislative Assistant to Senator Wayne L. Morse, says that the supermajority requirements of Senate Rule XXII, which guides filibusters, are unconstitutional and must be fixed.

“Rule XXII’s supermajority requirements violate the command of Article 1, section 3 and its successor, the Seventeenth Amendment, that ‘each Senator shall have one vote,’" Bernstein says.

“Moreover, Article V of the Constitution, governing its amendment, provides ‘that no state, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage [vote] in the Senate.’ The one-vote and equal suffrage provisions make clear that each senator's vote must be the equal of every other senator's vote, otherwise the votes of senators in a successful minority would be worth more than the votes of senators in a defeated majority. Thus, Rule XXII's two supermajority requirements, to impose cloture and to amend the supermajority provision, violate the Constitution's one vote per senator provision.”

Read more in Bernstein’s recent Huffington Post piece, “Senate Filibuster Riot Destabilizes Government, Imperils Foreign Purchase of U.S. Bonds, Violates the Constitution,” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/merton-bernstein/filibusters-run-riot-dest_b_3054097.html?utm_hp_ref=email_share

Sherraden moderates panel discussion on poverty alleviation at Clinton Global Initiative University

Leslie Gibson McCarthy — 2013-04-06 00:00:00

Joe Angeles

Michael Sherraden (right) moderates the panel discussion on poverty alleviation. Law student Kailey Burger is at left.

Michael Sherraden, PhD, the Benjamin E. Youngdahl Professor of Social Development at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, moderated a panel discussion April 6 at the sixth annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative University (CGI U).

The session was titled “Poverty and Promise in America’s Rust Belt” and was held in Umrath Hall on the Danforth Campus.

Sherraden, founder and director of the Brown School’s Center for Social Development (CSD) and known for his pioneering work on asset building for low-income people, moderated a panel that included Karen Freeman-Wilson, mayor of the city of Gary, Ind.; Kailey Burger, a third-year student at Washington University School of Law; and Annis Stubbs, executive director, Teach For America-Detroit.

"This was an incredible opportunity for the university community and I was honored to be a part of it," Sherraden said. "The energy on campus — both at this session and throughout the weekend — was palpable."

The 75-minute session included some viable suggestions for the approximately 200 students who packed into Umrath Lounge. The CGI U partipants heard the panel talk about everything from how to inspire volunteers, to how they overcame challenges such as funding and working in a neighborhood that might look different and feel different than anything they’ve experienced before.

One suggestion came from Burger, who returned to the WUSTL campus from an internship in New York, talking about her project, the Marshall-Brennan Constitutional Literacy projects. Burger stressed to the students the importance of having a plan.

“You have to come up with a real plan that’s going to work,” Burger said. “The last thing residents want is to hear a few ideas, take them out to lunch, then you leave. … You need to say, ‘Here’s what I see us doing together.’ ”

Burger also said her group found focus groups helpful.

“You want to make sure you’re not just providing services, but providing them in a way they feel tied to it and are growing the community together.”

Wilson-Freeman addressed the question of inspiring a group to work together.

“It’s one thing for me to jump off a cliff, because my name was on the ballot, but it’s another thing for 15 people to jump off with you,” she said. “So I tried to create a sense of responsibility. I told them ‘all of us came from the city and we were able to build lives based on the fact we went to public schools here; we had adults who made investments in us and we achieved success. Who’s doing that now?'

“I need you to help me and create the same – or better – atmosphere that we grew up in so we can create the same opportunities.”

After the panel forum, students held table discussions to help put the ideas into action as Sherraden and the panelists circulated among them.

Prior to the session, two CGI U projects were honored,including a WUSTL-based project called D*Serves (Design Serves), in which Brown School student De Andrea Nichols was called out for her project.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services chief counsel to give Tyrrell Williams Lecture April 11

2013-04-04 00:00:00

Legomsky

Stephen H. Legomsky, JD, DPhil, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services chief counsel, plans to discuss the evolving topic of immigration law at Washington University in St. Louis Thursday, April 11.

Legomsky will present the 2012-13 Tyrrell Williams Lecture, “Immigration and the Role of the Government Attorney.”

Legomsky, the John S. Lehmann University Professor, is on leave as a faculty member of Washington University School of Law.

Legomsky is an internationally recognized expert in U.S., comparative and international immigration and refugee law and policy.

Following the Obama administration’s major reform efforts, Legomsky is serving as principal legal adviser to the agency that will implement the central components of the proposed comprehensive immigration legislation.

His lecture is at 4 p.m. April 11 in Anheuser-Busch Hall. Law School Dean Kent Syverud, JD, and U.S. District Judge Jean Hamilton, JD, also will make remarks.

The lecture is eligible for one Minimum Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) credit hour for attorneys in Missouri.

In September, Solicitor General Donald Verrilli Jr., JD, will give the Tyrrell Williams Lecture. Verrilli argued for the Obama administration in the case of National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, in which the U.S. Supreme Court last year generally found the Affordable Care Act constitutional.

For more information about the lecture and Legomsky, visit here.

Levin elected to American Law Institute

2013-04-03 00:00:00

Ronald Levin, JD, the William R. Orthwein Distinguished Professor of Law, has been elected to the American Law Institute (ALI), a national independent organization that focuses on producing scholarly work to clarify and modernize the law. Membership in the ALI is based on professional achievement and a demonstrated interest in improving the law.

Levin

Levin specializes in administrative law and related public law issues. He has testified before Congress on regulatory reform issues and published numerous articles and book chapters on administrative law topics, including judicial review, rulemaking, legislative reform of the regulatory process, the law of lobbying and legislative ethics. His co-authored books include a casebook, State and Federal Administrative Law, now in its third edition, and a student text, Administrative Law and Process in a Nutshell, now in its fifth edition.

Levin has been active in the ABA Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice for more than three decades and served as its chair in 2000–01. In 2011, the section recognized Levin for his commitment to its work with the Chair’s Award for Outstanding Volunteer Service. He also served as the ABA’s adviser to the drafting committee to revise the Model State Administrative Procedure Act. In addition, he is a public member of the Administrative Conference of the United States and currently chairs its Judicial Review Committee.

Levin joins a number of other Washington University law professors who are members of the ALI, including: Professors Susan Frelich Appleton (who also holds the office of secretary and serves on the ALI Council); Kathleen Brickey; Kathleen Clark; Michael Greenfield; Rebecca Hollander-Blumoff; Daniel Keating; Pauline Kim; Stephen Legomsky; Charles McManis; Kimberly Norwood; Laura Rosenbury; Leila Nadya Sadat; Hillary Sale; Dean Kent Syverud; and Dean Emeritus Dorsey D. Ellis Jr.

Founded in 1923, ALI produces influential Restatements of the Law, model statutes, and Principles of Law. Its publications are distributed widely and often are cited in court opinions. The organization defines its mission as “promoting the clarification and simplification of the law and its better adaptation to social needs; securing the better administration of justice; and encouraging and carrying on scholarly and scientific legal work.”

ALI honors alumnus

The Hon. William H. Webster, JD ’49, will receive the ALI’s Henry J. Friendly Medal. One of the ALI’s highest honors, the medal is awarded periodically to individuals who have made significant contributions to the law.

Webster

The medal is named in honor of Judge Henry Friendly, a former chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, who has been referred to as “the most powerful legal reasoner in American legal history.” Past recipients of the Friendly Medal include retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and the late New York University School of Law constitutional law scholar Ronald Dworkin.

A Washington University School of Law National Council member, Webster is a retired partner at Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy in Washington, D.C. He previously directed the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation; served as U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri; and was a judge on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri and on the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

In addition, Webster served as a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy in World War II and the Korean War. Among his many accolades are the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the National Security Medal. He currently serves as chair of the Homeland Security Advisory Council.

Additionally, Washington University has presented Webster with an Alumni Citation for contributions to the field of law, the William Greenleaf Eliot Award, and an honorary degree. At the law school, he has received the Distinguished Law Alumni Award, and the Webster Society scholarship program for law students committed to public service is named in his honor.

Political scientist Cohen to speak April 9

2013-04-03 00:00:00

Cohen

Author and political scientist Cathy Cohen studies American politics and particularly how they affect African-Americans, women and the LGBTQ community – never ignoring the intersections between these identity categories.

She will be on campus Tuesday, April 9, to give a provocatively titled lecture, “Race, Sex and Neoliberalism in the Age of Obama.”

Cohen, PhD, a political science professor at the University of Chicago, is also principal investigator for The Black Youth Project, a website focused on black youth and civic engagement, and the Mobilization, Change and Political and Civic Engagement Project, which investigates if and how the heightened political environment surrounding the 2008 presidential election will affect the political attitudes and behaviors of individuals in the United States.

Her lecture inaugurates the “Post-Race? Interrogations, Provocations & Disruptions Lecture Series.” A Diversity and Inclusion Grant from the Office of the Provost provides partial funding. Co-sponsors are the Department of Political Science in Arts & Sciences and the Law, Identity & Culture Initiative, an interdisciplinary project co-directed by Adrienne Davis, JD, vice provost and the William M. Van Cleve Professor of Law, and Rebecca Wanzo, PhD, associate professor of women, gender and sexuality studies.

For more information on Cohen’s speech, visit here. To learn more about the LIC Initiative, visit the law.wustl.edu site.

The dangers of surveillance - it’s bad, but why?

Jessica Martin — 2013-04-01 00:00:00

Surveillance is everywhere, from street corner cameras to the subject of books and movies. “We talk a lot about why surveillance is bad, but we don’t really know why,” says Neil Richards, JD, privacy law expert and professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis. “We only have a vague intuition about it, which is why courts don’t protect it. We know we don’t like it, and that it has something to do with privacy, but beyond that, the details can be fuzzy.”

Richards

Richards says that there are two real dangers of surveillance.
“It menaces our intellectual privacy and it gives the watcher a power advantage over the watched, which can be used for blackmail, persuasion, or discrimination,” he says.

Richards’ new article on the topic, “The Danger of Surveillance,” will be published in the next issue of the Harvard Law Review.

Richards says that there are four principles that U.S. law should embody to avoid the dangers of surveillance:

“First, we must recognize that surveillance transcends the public-private divide,” he says.

“Even if we are ultimately more concerned with government surveillance, any solution must grapple with the complex relationships between government and corporate watchers.

“Second, we must recognize that secret surveillance is illegitimate, and prohibit the creation of any domestic surveillance programs whose existence is secret.

“Third, we should recognize that total surveillance is illegitimate and reject the idea that it is acceptable for the government to record all Internet activity without authorization.

“Fourth, we must recognize that surveillance is harmful and should be considered as such in the courts.”

News of the article’s publication has been trending on Twitter. You can read the complete article at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2239412

Three challenges for the First Amendment

Jessica Martin — 2013-04-01 00:00:00

A group of some of the country’s top scholars in First Amendment law recently gathered at Washington University in St. Louis to discuss pressing challenges being faced by the first of our Bill of Rights. Three issues rose to the top of the list for Washington University’s first amendment experts: free expression in a digital age; impaired political debate; and weakened rights of groups.

John Inazu, Greg Magarian and Neil Richards, professors of law at Washington University in St. Louis, comment:

John Inazu
Breakdown of the rights of expressive groups

"One of the most important recent issues is the Supreme Court's unwillingness to recognize the distinctive rights of the First Amendment and the ways in which those rights complement and reinforce one another,” he says.

Inazu

“In a troubling trend, the Court increasingly collapses the rights enumerated in the First Amendment into a framework that emphasizes the moment of expression to the detriment of the background contexts from which expression emerges.

"For example, the Court's doctrine of expressive association focuses on whether groups further some other First Amendment purpose like speech or political or religious activity. Butmany associations exist for other than expressive purposes: dinner groups, bowling leagues, sororities, intramural spots teams, chess clubs. These groups may not appear to be explicitly 'expressive,' but they create a space where relationships foster, ideas form, and thoughts emerge."

Gregory Magarian
Impaired political debate

“First Amendment law plays a large role in enabling robust public political discussion,” he says.

”In particular, expressive freedom can help to generate dynamic political change. Current First Amendment doctrine, however, has many features that flatten political debate and impair dynamic change.

Magarian

“The Supreme Court's campaign finance and government speech doctrines, for example, constrain participation in political discussions while narrowing the range of ideas that those discussions take into account. Meanwhile, the Court ignores important threats to political dissent, such as law enforcement crackdowns on political activists and suppression of speech by nominally private authorities. In an age when our political discourse has grown both more acrimonious and less informative, we sorely need for the Court to reconsider its priorities and revise some essential doctrines.”

Neil Richards
Free expression in a digital age

“Perhaps the most important issue in First Amendment law right now is how we understand free expression in a digital age,” Richards says.

Richards

“The rise of social media, blogs, and other forms of digital expression have coincided with a decline in traditional media, particularly in the economic viability of newspapers. At the same time, our reading habits and other intellectual activities are being tracked, monitored, and analyzed by advertisers and government agencies. The challenge for First Amendment law will be to ensure that our cherished rights of free expression survive the transition to digital form without sacrificing the important ability of citizens to speak, write, and communicate freely and sometimes anonymously without fear of government or social reprisals.”

First Amendment law at Washington University in St. Louis

Washington University School of Law is home to some of the country’s top specialists in First Amendment law. Under the leadership of Inazu, Magarian and Richards, Washington University plans to make the “Washington University First Amendment Roundtable” an annual event.

Faces of Hope rally readies campus for Clinton Global Initiative University

2013-03-28 00:00:00

The Faces of Hope rally -- complete with drummers, video remarks by Chelsea Clinton and the announcement of Washington University in St. Louis' $30 million commitment to sustainability -- helped excite the WUSTL community as the campus prepares to host Clinton Global Initiative University (CGI U) April 5-7.

CGI U is an annual meeting bringing together students and youth, experts and celebrities to discuss and work to solve pressing global challenges. To learn more about CGI U, including student projects, events and related programming and the important work WUSTL faculty, students and staff are doing, visit cgiu.wustl.edu.

james byard

Students who have committed to completing projects as part of CGI U gathered at Washington University's Danforth University Center to showcase and explain their plans to WUSTL community members during the Faces of Hope rally and celebration. The rally was also a zero-net waste event, with students using laptops instead of posters to explain their ideas. To learn more about students' commitments to action, visit cgiu.wustl.edu.

james byard

Members of the Crash Band drum line and the WUSTL cheerleading squad provide a rousing start to the campus' annual Faces of Hope event celebrating civic engagement and community service by WUSTL faculty, students and staff. This year's event focused on projects students are developing as part of CGI U, from helping St. Louis youth improve their neighborhoods to installing a wind turbine in Nicaragua.

james byard

Washington University Executive Vice Chancellor for Administration Hank Webber announces the university's $30 million Energy Conservation Investment during the Faces of Hope rally. "The inspiring work of our faculty, staff and students is helping to solve pressing global issues," he said. Amanda Moore McBride, director of the Gephardt Institute for Public Service, and Student Union President Julian Nicks also made remarks. Nicks encouraged people to make small changes in their own lives, such as taking shorter showers, saying such steps added together can have a meaningful impact.

james byard

Students explain their CGI U projects to Amanda Moore McBride, right, chair of the WUSTL CGI U effort, during the Faces of Hope rally. About 200 WUSTL students have committed to completing projects that address one of CGI U's focus areas: education, environment and climate change, peace and human rights, poverty alleviation and public health.

james byard

Students make their pledges to sustainability during the Faces of Hope rally. The display offers a visible sign of the university's "Less is More" campaign, a new initiative that encourages individuals to take simple steps such as turning off lights when they're not needed and recycling as much as possible.

Winners of 26th annual book collection competition announced

2013-03-29 00:00:00

Top row, left to right: graduate student winners Sarah Sobonya and John Gauthier. Bottom row: undergraduate winners Brian Feldman and Lauren Henley.

When Carl Neureuther, a 1940 graduate of Washington University in St. Louis, set up an endowment in 1987 to support library collections, he was also ensuring support for something more: a lifelong love of reading.

He wanted to encourage students to read for pleasure — not just for class — and in addition to growing the University Libraries’ collection of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction, Neureuther’s gift created an annual essay contest that invites students to share stories of their own passion for reading and collecting books.

Twenty-six years later, the results are in for this year’s Neureuther Student Book Collection Essay Competition sponsored by Washington University Libraries. WUSTL students entered their essays into undergraduate and graduate categories, competing for prizes of $1,000 for first place and $500 for second place. Four volunteers recruited from among the faculty of Washington University and the St. Louis community judged the essays.

This year, Sarah Sobonya, a PhD candidate in anthropology in Arts & Sciences, won first place in the graduate category for her essay titled “Keeping Abreast of the Literature.” John Gauthier, a first-year law student, took second place in the graduate category with “Arturo Belano and the Storybook War.”

In the undergraduate category, senior Brian Feldman (philosophy-neuroscience-psychology and classics in Arts & Sciences) won first place for his essay “A Muse for Recollection: On Collecting Ancient Greek Textbooks.” Sophomore Lauren Henley (history in Arts & Sciences) took second place with “Asthmatic and Alone: How Books Became My World.”

The 2013 winning essays, as well as an archive of past ones, are available on the Libraries’ website. An exhibit celebrating the winners' book collections and essays also is on display in the lobby of Olin Library through early April.

University’s Commitment to Action brings $30 million to advance sustainability

Neil Schoenherr — 2013-03-27 00:00:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4R5GKfHUUg&feature=share&list=PLb9ODR3vzQJM-ZkBw7DngUgJU8enswKkw

Henry S. Webber, executive vice chancellor for administration, discusses the $30 million dollar sustainability commitment Washington University is making as part of its Clinton Global Initiative University efforts. The ambitious plan involves returning the university to 1990 emissions levels despite a doubling in size of the campus and its Medical School.

As part of its Clinton Global Initiative University efforts, Washington University in St. Louis has announced a major institutional commitment to action around the important issue of sustainability.

Webber

“Human health and environmental sustainability are inextricably linked,” said Henry S. Webber, executive vice chancellor for administration. “As a university community, one of the most important things we can do is consume less. Consuming less reduces greenhouse gas emissions; cuts down on fossil fuel consumption; and positively impacts air and water quality, public health, climate patterns, agricultural production and more.”

As such, Washington University is committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions 22 percent by 2020, reverting to 1990 levels.

To advance this goal, the university has established an Energy Conservation Investment of $30 million that will enable the university to accelerate investments in:

greater energy efficiency
improved heating and cooling
better waste management

Students, faculty and staff are committing to consume less as part of the university’s “Less is More” campaign.

Taking simple actions such as turning off lights and recycling as much as possible, combined with the institutional investment, will result in lower emissions and preservation of natural resources.

While the university has accomplished much in recent years to reduce its environmental impact, these commitments strengthen the institution’s resolve to push this initiative to the next level.

“Society expects great universities to provide leadership on critical social issues and to be very wise stewards of our resources,” Webber said. “Our sustainability work does both.

“We’re showing how as a $2.3 billion economic engine, we can significantly reduce our environmental impact, and we can do so in a way that’s also economically viable. That frees up resources to invest in our primary missions of teaching, research and patient care.”

Sustainability at WUSTL

Washington University in St. Louis is a national leader in sustainability, a core priority that runs through all aspects of the campus community, operations and the university’s work as a leading research and teaching institution.

The university already has made great strides in the area of sustainability. While the university’s square footage has more than doubled since 1990, to 11.5 million square feet from 5.7 million square feet, the university has reduced its overall energy usage by 4 percent during this time.

Sixty-eight percent of waste was diverted from landfills in 2012 and the university has amassed more than $109 million in avoided energy costs since 1990.

Washington University is the hub of an international laboratory, training leaders while creating and nurturing ideas aimed at forging a more sustainable future. Significant global partnerships are helping to address issues of energy, environment and sustainability through international collaborative research efforts.

For more information, visit sustain.wustl.edu. For more information about the Clinton Global Initiative University, visit cgiu.wustl.edu.

Faces of Hope campus rally to kick off Clinton Global Initiative University

Kelly Wiese Niemeyer — 2013-03-20 00:00:00

People around campus have been considering their personal commitments to action since it was announced that CGI U would be coming to Washington University in St. Louis. Above, engineering students Brittany Edwards, left, and Sara Fletcher are committed to alternative energy research. To view a gallery of commitments to action from WUSTL faculty, staff and students, visit the Washington University Facebook page.

Install a wind turbine in Nicaragua. Create a mobile app to help illiterate women in Pakistan access health and education information. Teach youth in distressed St. Louis neighborhoods leadership skills to improve their communities. Help people in China quit smoking. Get veterans to train horses for therapy use. Provide HPV vaccines to youths in Uganda.

These are just a sampling of the detailed and far-reaching projects Washington University in St. Louis students have committed to accomplishing as part of this year’s Clinton Global Initiative University (CGI U), which will hold its annual meeting on campus in April.

The Faces of Hope event on Wednesday, March 27, is an opportunity for the WUSTL community and friends to come together and get ready for CGI U.

UPCOMING CGI U PROGRAMMING:

6 p.m. March 25, January Hall, Room 110. Screening of Precious Knowledge documentary
2 p.m. April 5, Wilson Hall, Room 214. "Debt and Inequality" lecture, Louis Hyman, author of Borrow: The American Way of Debt. 3:30 p.m. April 6, Former President Bill Clinton and Stephen Colbert, host of The Colbert Report, hold the closing plenary session of CGI U.

- RSVP for Faces of Hope here.

- Stay tuned for watch party information.

- Visit cgiu.wustl.edu for the latest event and schedule updates.

Learn about more than 50 of the 118 projects that students have committed to for CGI U. Hear university leaders’ announcement of a major institutional commitment to action, and find out how you can be part of the WUSTL-CGI U effort that starts on campus next month.

Faces of Hope is an annual event at WUSTL, hosted by the Gephardt Institute for Public Service, that celebrates the faculty, staff and students’ civic engagement and community service. The rally provides a chance to learn more about particular service projects under way and network with like-minded community members.

Faces of Hope will run from 4:30-6 p.m. in the Danforth University Center’s first- and second-floor common areas. Attendees can support the WUSTL commitment by signing a pledge and choosing a giveaway item. To receive a giveaway, people must pre-register here by Friday, March 22.

Recognizing CGI U’s commitment to protecting the environment, the Faces of Hope gathering plans to be a zero-net waste and energy event.
The 200 students’ commitments address at least one of the five focus areas of CGI U: education, environment and climate change, peace and human rights, poverty alleviation and public health.

Here are just a few examples:

Claire Christensen, a senior majoring in economics in Arts & Sciences, aims to raise $10,000 to install a wind turbine in Sumu Kaat, Nicaragua. One turbine could provide 1,500 kilowatt hours of energy a year to 10 homes. Christensen plans events that would serve dual roles as fundraisers and educational efforts to teach people about climate change and the importance of sustainable development both in the United States and abroad.

Medical student Mengyang Sun plans to provide HPV vaccines, which protect against cervical cancer, to everyone, male and female, between 9 and 26 years old residing in Gulu District in northern Uganda. Cervical cancer is a leading cause of cancer-related deaths among women in developing countries. Rather than focusing on screening and early detection, as many efforts do, Sun’s project strives for cancer prevention through mass vaccination.

Closer to home, De Andrea Nichols, a graduate student in social work, proposes D*Serve, a program to empower young people in north St. Louis to turn around their neighborhoods by teaching them skills in design and civic leadership, offering lessons and projects in areas such as architecture, communications and public art.

To learn more about CGI U, including student projects, events and the important work WUSTL faculty, students and staff are doing today in CGI U’s five focus areas, visit cgiu.wustl.edu.

Co-sponsors for Faces of Hope are Dell Inc., WUSTL’s Office of Sustainability, Dining Services and Bon Appétit’s Eco-to-Go Program, and student initiatives Net Impact, Tote Green and the Student Union’s Green Events Commission.

The importance of groups: First Amendment expert testifies before United States Commission on Civil Rights

Jessica Martin — 2013-03-07 00:00:00

From a small informal social group to a large formal political organization, groups are an important part of American life. The Constitution protects the ability for individuals to form and participate in private groups of their choosing, free from state interference. But at the same time, some groups are in tension with antidiscrimination norms.

“The balance between the liberty of private, noncommercial groups and antidiscrimination principles may never reach a ‘peaceful coexistence,’ ” says John Inazu, JD, first amendment expert and professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis.

“But our constitutional commitments give us better and worse ways of attempting to strike that balance.

“At the very least, we should expect a constitutional discourse that openly acknowledges the various interests at stake in such decisions,” Inazu says. “ But we should also hope for the robust constitutional protection of pluralism that allows private groups to flourish and holds open the possibility of genuine political difference.

Inazu offered these comments as part of his invited testimony to the United States Commission on Civil Rights briefing on “Peaceful Coexistence? Reconciling Non-discrimination Principles with Civil Liberties.” The bipartisan commission was established by the Civil Rights Act of 1957 to inform the development of national civil rights policy and enhance enforcement of federal civil rights laws. The briefing is scheduled for March 22 at the commission’s headquarters in Washington, D.C.

"We must extend broad protections not only to formal, political, expressive groups but also to groups that are informal, pre-political, and organized for other than expressive purposes,” Inazu says.

“Without these protections, the grand experiment of permitting genuine political difference comes to an end,” he says. “ Because while some political expressions occur spontaneously, most do not."

View Inazu’s complete testimony here.

Washington University School of Law launches national semester-in-practice externship

2013-03-06 00:00:00

Beginning in fall 2013, Washington University School of Law will offer the Semester-in-Practice Externship, an innovative program that empowers second- and third-year law students to gain hands-on professional experience anywhere in the country. Through the externship program, students will earn academic credit by spending a semester working full time for a nonprofit, government, or in-house corporate law office in the location of their choice.

“Washington University School of Law continues to proactively respond to the challenging job market our students face by creating innovative programming like the Semester-in-Practice Externship,” said Kent Syverud, JD, dean and Ethan A.H. Shepley Distinguished University Professor.

“Our students tell us that our existing comprehensive clinic and externship programs are the No. 1 reason they chose Washington University School of Law. Having established our reputation as one of the highest ranked law schools in the nation in clinical education, Washington University School of Law is taking the next logical step by expanding our clinic and externship opportunities coast-to-coast.”

The law school’s clinic and externship programs already in place in Washington, D.C., New York, St. Louis, and abroad are among the most comprehensive programs available, added Robert Kuehn, JD, LLM, associate dean for clinical education and professor of law. However, because of their popularity, these unique opportunities are always in high demand, year after year.

“For the 2012–13 academic year, we were oversubscribed for the 70 available spots in our four existing U.S.-based out-of-town externships, with the D.C. and New York externship courses being particularly popular,” Kuehn said.

“The Semester-in-Practice Externship will open up new opportunities and help address growing student interest in semester-long experiential learning opportunities outside the St. Louis area, including in Chicago and Los Angeles. Students will be able to literally design their own professional practice experience.”

Students in the new Semester-in-Practice Externship will work directly with an attorney/field supervisor and will receive oversight at the law school from a faculty supervisor. The rigorous program will provide direct professional training, while serving students’ diverse geographic interests.

The school’s Career Services Office, which proactively partners with students in their professional development and job placement goals, reports that the current class of first-year Washington University law students has identified more than 40 different cities as their first choice for post-graduation employment.

“The Semester-in-Practice Externship will facilitate students in obtaining critical practical experience in their desired geographic location, which in turn, will be an important part of their professional portfolio in seeking employment post-graduation,” said Janet Laybold, JD, associate dean of admissions, career services and student services. “It also will provide valuable contacts as our students work to expand their professional network during law school.”

Student externship experiences in D.C., New York lead to jobs

Third-year law student Joe Franklin stressed the benefits of the coveted Congressional & Administrative Law Externship, one of the nation’s oldest law school Clinical Education Programs on Capitol Hill.

“There is no substitute for work experience in D.C. if your goal is to be an attorney for the federal government,” said Franklin, who will work for the Food and Drug Administration’s chief counsel’s office after earning a J.D. this May. “The D.C. Clinic provides a combination of relevant coursework, networking opportunities and, most importantly, the chance to work full time in a high-profile agency office. I have no doubt that my work at the FDA during the D.C. clinic let me demonstrate that I would be an excellent candidate for a job with the counsel’s office.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3JtBUgiji4Third-year Washington University School of Law student Joe Franklin discusses his interests in IP law and his experiences in the D.C. clinical education program.

Similarly, recent graduate Ramsey Mesyef, JD ’12, said his experience as one of the first students in the law school’s New York City Regulatory and Business Externship provided critical real-world experience.

“Washington University’s New York externship was an invaluable part of my legal education,” said Mesyef, who is works as an associate, Control Room Compliance, for Goldman Sachs.

“In this competitive market, the combination of real-world legal training and built-in networking opportunities was a true capstone to the law school experience that prepared and equipped me for the job search and the next step in my career,” he continued.

“The faculty facilitated seminar-style, in-depth learning, which encompassed both real-world case studies and guest speakers who breathed life into the subject matter. The exposure to practicing attorneys and practical, skills-oriented curriculum also helped me identify the direction I wanted to take after graduation and put me in an ideal position to pursue it.”

Brief background on experiential learning opportunities

The Semester-in-Practice Externship will further the robust offerings in Washington University School of Law’s Clinical Education Program, which has long been recognized as offering one of the most comprehensive experiential learning opportunities in the nation.

The program’s seven client-based law clinics give Washington University law students the opportunity to serve, with law school faculty, as members of professional teams representing clients in real cases. An additional eight formalized externships offer professional legal opportunities in the St. Louis area, Washington, D.C., New York, Delaware and Virginia.

International externship opportunities are available through the International Justice & Conflict Resolution Field Placement, which focuses on international courts, tribunals and conflict resolution organizations. Additionally, students can pursue summer experiential opportunities throughout the United States and in Africa and other countries, as part of the school’s Summer Public Interest Law Program.

Kuehn noted that the new Semester-in-Practice Externship will greatly expand students’ ability to pursue experiential learning opportunities with a much wider range of legal mentors. “It is a perfect fit with our goal of partnering with our students for their professional success in whatever place they choose to start their careers,” he said.

For more information on Washington University School of Law’s Clinical Education Program’s 15 unique professional practice opportunities, visit http://law.wustl.edu/clinicaled/index.aspx.

REINS Act would severely impair ability to implement laws

2013-03-06 00:00:00

There is little on which the two houses of Congress and the president can find compromise these days, with the sequester a vivid symbol of this polarization. And gridlock in government would only worsen if the proposed REINS Act moves forward, said Ronald M. Levin, JD, administrative law expert and professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis.

Under the proposed Regulations From the Executive in Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act, an administrative agency that seeks to issue a major rule would need to obtain an affirmative vote from both the House of Representatives and Senate. At least for now, the two houses have wide ideological differences, Levin said. “The effect of the act would be that no agency could promulgate a major rule on any controversial subject. The administrative process would be severely impaired.”

A regulation with at least a $100 million impact is considered a “major rule.” Several of the rules that will implement the Affordable Care Act will meet this definition.

Levin

Levin recently testified on the REINS Act before the House Subcommittee on Regulatory Reform, Commercial and Antitrust Law.

“Under the REINS Act, the dysfunction that now afflicts Congress in the enactment of laws would spread to the implementation of the laws,” he said.

“If the act were enacted this year, this interference with the rulemaking process would affect a Democratic administration, but in the long run we will have both Democratic and Republican presidents, and this act would pose a major barrier to any president’s ability to pursue the policies that he or she was elected to promote,” Levin said.

Read Levin’s full testimony here.

View the complete House hearing at http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/29749426. Levin’s testimony begins at 47:30.

CGI U announces 2013 speakers; new CGI University Network to fund student commitments

2013-03-05 00:00:00

Among the featured speakers:

Chelsea Clinton, board member, William J. Clinton Foundation; Stephen Colbert, host and executive producer of ‘The Colbert Report’ on Comedy Central; Hawa Abdi Dhiblawe, founder, the Dr. Hawa Abdi Foundation; Jack Dorsey, co-founder and CEO, Square Inc.; co-founder and executive chairman, Twitter Inc.; Salman Khan, founder and executive director, Khan Academy; Michael Sherraden, founding director, Center for Social Development and the Benjamin E. Youngdahl Professor of Social Development at Washington University in St. Louis; Jada Pinkett Smith, actress and advocate, Don’t Sell Bodies; and Muhammad Yunus, chairman, the Yunus Centre, will speak on pressing global challenges at CGI U 2013, to be held April 5-7 at Washington University in St. Louis.

For a full list of speakers visit http://news.wustl.edu/news/Pages/25060.aspx. For more information visit: http://cgiu.wustl.edu.

Former President Bill Clinton and Chelsea Clinton announced the program and featured participants for the sixth annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative University (CGI U) to be held at Washington University in St. Louis April 5-7.

CGI U will bring together more than 1,000 college students worldwide with innovators, thought leaders and civically engaged celebrities to make Commitments to Action to address the most pressing challenges facing their campuses and communities in areas such as education, environment and climate change, human rights, poverty alleviation and public health.

More than $400,000 in funding will be available for students to carry out their commitments made at CGI U, primarily through the newly established CGI University Network of 33 colleges and universities that have committed to support, mentor and provide seed funding to student innovators and entrepreneurs from their respective schools.

“The schools that have joined the CGI University Network are supporting student commitment-makers to create positive change across the globe,” said Bill Clinton. “This year, CGI U will bring together more than 1,000 college students representing all 50 states and six continents to explore concrete ways to build a better tomorrow. I look forward to working with the young leaders who come to Washington University in St. Louis this April with their enthusiasm and their ideas.”

“It’s inspiring to witness the power of CGI U students, whose energy, ideas, optimism and determination continually expand the possibilities for public service,” said Chelsea Clinton, who serves on the board of the Clinton Foundation. “By joining an extraordinary community of young people, thought leaders and experienced entrepreneurs, students attending CGI U 2013 will have the opportunity to make real contributions and forge connections that last a lifetime.”

Washington University in St. Louis was chosen to host this year’s CGI U because it is recognized as an international leader in preparing young people to address the world’s most pressing challenges.

This year’s program will address issues throughout CGI U’s five focus areas: Education, Environment and Climate Change, Peace and Human Rights, Poverty Alleviation, and Public Health through sessions including:

• Getting Off the Ground: Stories of Starting Up, in which a panel of budding and veteran entrepreneurs will share their personal stories, setbacks and key lessons in launching a business or organization;
• A Better Future for Girls and Women: Empowering the Next Generation, which will bring together practitioners and pioneers to explore the tangible ways in which young people can continue to build a better future for girls and women around the world; and
• Solutions Without Borders: Working With Unlikely Allies, which will convene notable entrepreneurs and policymakers who are proving the necessity of cooperation over conflict.

For the complete schedule, visit cgiu.org/meetings/2013/agenda.asp.

For more information on CGI U or the CGI University Network, visit cgiu.wustl.edu or cgiu.org. For inquiries, email cgiu@clintonglobalinitiative.org or call (212) 710-4492.

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Additional information:

CGI University Network
CGI University Network schools have agreed to provide more than $300,000 in total funding to CGI U student commitment-makers. Schools that have joined the CGI University Network to date include Alverno College; Arizona State University; Avicenne Private Business School; Babson College; Ben-Gurion University of the Negev; Brown University; the College of William and Mary; Cornell University; Duke University; Johnson C. Smith University; Middlebury College; Northeastern University; Rollins College; Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey; St. Cloud State University; Simmons College; Southern Methodist University; Parsons The New School for Design; the Ohio State University; the University of Chicago, Harris School of Public Policy; Tufts University; Tuskegee University; University of Arkansas, Clinton School of Public Service; University of Arkansas, Fayetteville; University of California, Berkeley; University of California, San Diego; University of Delaware; University of Houston; University of Miami; University of the Pacific; Washington University in St. Louis; Westfield State University; and Widener University.

Resolution Social Venture Challenge
In addition, the Resolution Project is offering $100,000 in seed funding for CGI U 2013 students through the Resolution Social Venture Challenge, a competition designed to support student-launched social ventures that are sustainable and have a measurable impact. Students selected to compete in the Social Venture Challenge will exhibit their commitments at CGI U and have the opportunity to pitch their ideas to a panel of judges. Winners will be announced at the end of the CGI U meeting.

Up to Us Competition
CGI U, Net Impact and the Peter G. Peterson Foundation launched the Up to Us Competition to increase financial awareness among young people. From Jan. 21–March 1, 11 teams of CGI U participants campaigned to educate and engage their campuses on America’s debt crisis and how it will impact their future. A $10,000 cash prize will go to the team with the winning campaign, to be announced at CGI U. The Up to Us Competition judges include Chelsea Clinton; former White House Chief of Staff and former Co-chair of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform Erskine Bowles; former U.S. Sen. and former Co-chair of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform Alan Simpson; and anchor of ABC’s “This Week” and “Good Morning America” George Stephanopoulos.

Commitments to Action
Building on the Clinton Global Initiative’s successful model of convening Fortune 500 CEOs, heads of state, the most effective NGOs and civil society to address the world’s most pressing challenges, President Clinton launched CGI U to engage the next generation of leaders from around the world. As with participants at all CGI meetings, CGI U students must make a Commitment to Action: a new, specific and measurable student initiative that addresses a pressing challenge on campus or beyond.

Media information
Press registration is now open to members of the media. To apply, complete the form at cgilink.org/YE3ZA5.

The deadline to apply for press credentials is 5 p.m. ET Tuesday, April 2. ET. Journalists may apply for credentials on site, but pre-registered media will be given priority. For questions about press registration, email: press@clintonglobalinitiative.org.

Follow us on Twitter at @CGIU and @ClintonGlobal or on Facebook at Facebook.com/CGIUniversity for meeting news and highlights. The event hashtag will be #CGIU.

SCOTUS oral arguments reflect indifference to constitutional grounding of Voting Rights Act

Jessica Martin — 2013-03-01 00:00:00

Magarian

The Supreme Court appears very likely to strike down the most important provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, says Gregory P. Magarian, JD, constitution law expert and professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis.

“This was an unusually revealing oral argument, because two justices asked questions that reflected both fundamental misunderstanding of the law and disturbing indifference to the constitutional grounding of the Voting Rights Act,” he says.

“Given that the two justices in question are the leading intellectual lights of the Court’s right-wing majority, and given that almost everyone expects both of them to vote to strike down Section 5, their statements from the oral argument deserve attention,” Magarian says.

Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act requires certain “covered jurisdictions” with histories of racial discrimination in voting, mostly in the South, to obtain “preclearance” from the U.S. Department of Justice before implementing any changes in election laws or procedures. Shelby County, Ala., has challenged Section 5 as beyond the scope of Congress’s power to enforce the constitution’s bar against racial discrimination in voting.

Magarian’s comments on the Voting Rights Act oral arguments follow:

Justice Antonin Scalia claimed that continued enforcement of section 5 amounted to ‘perpetuation of a racial entitlement.’

He asserted that congressional reauthorization of Section 5 reflects nothing more than fear of reprisals by the overwhelming political might of racial minority groups. That assertion reflects a misunderstanding of the Court’s constitutional role, from a justice who has often complained loudly about supposed acts of judicial activism by others.

First, Judges have no special competence to discern legislators’ motives. Indeed, Justice Scalia has spent his career attacking efforts by his colleagues to determine the purposes of statutes. His failure to take into account Congress’s careful consideration and debate when reauthorizing the Voting Rights Act exemplifies the very sort of incompetence he has assailed in other settings.

Second, even if Justice Scalia’s interpretation of Congress’s motive were correct, it would be legally irrelevant. The Supreme Court does not sit to second-guess Congress’s policy choices.

The word “perpetuation” in Justice Scalia’s comment embodies an even more disturbing attitude, because it presumes that Section 5 always has been a vehicle for racial entitlement.

For a Supreme Court justice to suggest that citizens of color in 2012 face no genuine discrimination in voting – that congressional efforts to prevent such discrimination amount to undeserved favorable treatment of black and brown people – is misguided enough. But for a Supreme Court justice to deny that racial discrimination in voting ever justified Section 5’s legal remedy is especially disheartening. One would have thought that we could all agree, at least, about the importance of acknowledging our country’s difficult and unfortunate history of racial disenfranchisement.

In addition to Justice Scalia’s comment, Chief Justice John Roberts during the argument suggested that the federal government’s continued support for Section 5 reflected a view that the South was “more racist” than the rest of the country. Like Justice Scalia, the chief justice was probing government motives that are none of the Supreme Court’s business. He was also giving voice to the right-wing lament that accusations of racism are worse than the thing itself.

If the Court this June wipes out the most important, successful weapon against racial discrimination in voting that our government has ever produced, Justice Scalia and Chief Justice Roberts will likely speak in bland legalese, if they say anything at all. We should remember, on that day, what they said this week, in the heat of argument; and we should ask ourselves whether our constitutional ideals of racial equality and universal suffrage deserve better stewards.

Conflict of interest rules must extend to government contractors, says ethics expert

2013-02-15 00:00:00

The American Bar Association’s House of Delegates recently adopted a resolution recommending that the federal government expand its protections against conflicts of interest among government contractors. The resolution was based in part on a report Kathleen Clark, JD, ethics expert and professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis, wrote for the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS).

Clark

“In recent decades, the federal government has greatly expanded its use of contractors to perform services, and spends hundreds of billions on services every year,” Clark writes.

“The government increasingly turns to contractors to accomplish its programmatic goals, and contractor personnel are now performing tasks that in the past had been performed by government employees.

“While an extensive array of ethics statutes and rules regulate government employees to ensure that they make decisions in the interest of the government rather than a private interest, only a few of these restrictions apply to contractor personnel.”

Clark notes that if a federal employee makes a recommendation on a matter that could affect her financial interest, she could be subject not only to administrative discipline but also to criminal prosecution. Contract employees in the same situation are usually not subject to any consequences.

“In fact, the government does not have any systematic way of even finding out when contractor personnel have such conflicts of interest,” Clark says.

“The personal conflicts of interest of contractor personnel are largely unregulated.”

Clark’s full report for ACUS is available at: http://www.acus.gov/sites/default/files/K-Clark-Final-Report.pdf. ACUS is an independent federal agency committed to promoting improved government procedures.

Read the ABA’s resolution at: http://www.abanow.org/2013/01/2013mm110a/

Restitution system for exploitative images of children highly problematic

Jessica Martin — 2013-02-11 00:00:00

Lawyers representing child pornography victims recently gained attention by seeking restitution from individuals convicted of viewing or downloading exploitative photos of the victims. The defendants in these cases did not participate in the creation of the original abusive images. “Although restitution seems like an appealing remedy for these victims, its imposition is problematic,” says Cortney Lollar, JD, law clinical faculty at Washington University in St. Louis.

Restitution in child pornography cases represents a dramatic departure from traditional concepts of restitution. Restitution is intended to force a defendant to surrender an unjust gain.

“The restitution being ordered in increasing numbers of child pornography cases does not serve this purpose,” Lollar says. “Instead, child pornography victims are receiving payments for having their images viewed.”

Lollar says that courts imposing restitution in these cases struggle to determine how much money a particular defendant owes for viewing child pornography. Determining what “unjust gain” any individual defendant has obtained from viewing a particular image is almost impossible. As a result, “most courts order defendants to pay a nominal amount to the victim, uncorrelated to a specific gain,” she says.

“In so doing, courts inadvertently endorse a ‘pay-per-view’ type system that further commodifies victims by requiring defendants to pay a fee for having viewed the images. Additionally, the legislature forces victims to revisit their abuse by sending notices every time a victim's image is located, even if some would prefer to opt out.”

Change is necessary

Lollar says that a better alternative to the current restitution system is the creation of a child pornography crime victims' compensation fund, an idea currently under discussion by the U.S. Department of Justice.

“Defendants would be ordered to pay a set fee into the fund; then, upon showing receipts, victims would be reimbursed for treatment received as a result of the offense,” she says.

“Using a fund rather than restitution would allow money to go toward treatment for all victims, rather than just the few who have sought legal counsel.”

Lollar notes that law enforcement and prosecution resources are focused far more on the people who are viewing and trading child pornography than individuals who are actually committing and recording the child sexual abuse.

“Restitution is rarely imposed in child sexual abuse cases, and the punishments received by those viewing and trading child pornography are greater than those received by individuals who are abusing children,” she says.

“The profiles and characteristics of the individuals who view child pornography are quite different from the characteristics of individuals who sexually abuse children. Child sexual abusers are typically people already known to the child, most often their family members or trusted adults known to the child. By way of contrast, most child pornography victims have never met the individuals who are viewing their images on a computer screen.

“Criminal justice resources should be focused more on identifying and ceasing child sexual abuse, without which there would be no child pornography,” she concludes.

Lollar further discusses this issue in “Child Pornography and the Restitution Revolution,” an article in the forthcoming issue of the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology. Full article available at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2123527.

Law struggling to catch up with use of drone technology, says privacy expert

2013-02-11 00:00:00

Charlottesville, Va. recently became the first town in the U.S. to pass an anti-drone resolution, calling for a restriction on the use of the unmanned surveillance vehicles.

“For drones, I think the problem is that they do have some legitimate law enforcement purposes, but they raise massive problems of invasion of privacy and government surveillance that we need to think through before we deploy drones in vast numbers in our skies,” says Neil Richards, professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis.

Richards

"The question of whether drones are legal in the U.S. would turn on whether their use to spy would be 'unreasonable' under the Fourth Amendment [which protects the public from unlawful searches]. The short answer to this question is that we don't know yet, because drones are so new that there really haven't been any cases on the question. But the Supreme Court has been hinting in other tech surveillance cases that it intends to give new surveillance technologies a close look, and it isn't willing to just rubber-stamp novel and potentially dangerous incursions on our civil liberties that such technologies pose."

Richards discusses the legal issues around domestic drone use in the current issue of WIRED UK: http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-02/07/charlottesville-bans-drones.

New opt-out proposal a ‘live and let live solution’ for contraception mandate

2013-02-01 00:00:00

The Obama administration has proposed letting religiously affiliated non-profit businesses and institutions opt-out of the contraceptive mandate of the Affordable Care Act.

"The Obama administration has bent over backward to accommodate the concerns of some religiously affiliated businesses,” says Elizabeth Sepper, JD, health law expert and professor of law at Washington University In St. Louis.

Sepper

"Religiously affiliated employers claim that they can't pay for contraception themselves, but don't want to interfere with their employees' private moral choices. If so, they should embrace the Obama administration's contraceptive rule as a live and let live solution."

Sepper says that it is only right that secular, for-profit businesses should have to play by the same rules as everyone else.

“In our legal system and our society, secular, for-profit businesses--like Hobby Lobby--don't exercise religion and must be regulated to protect their employees and the public. Any other rule would just mean corporations could force religious views on their employees, no matter what the employees' beliefs are."

Public Interest Law and Policy Speakers Series continues Feb. 7

2013-01-30 00:00:00

The Public Interest Law and Policy Speakers Series continues Thursday, Feb. 7, with Arlie Hochschild, professor emerita of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, on “The Outsourced Self: Intimate Life in Market Times.”

Hochschild

The yearlong Public Interest Law & Policy Speakers Series brings to Washington University nationally and internationally prominent experts in such areas as civil rights, racial justice, capital punishment, immigration, government public service and pro bono private practice.

The 2012-13 series features judges, lawyers, authors and academics with expertise in public interest law and policy.

Also featured in the speaker series this spring semester are: Professor Karen Brown from George Washington University Law School who will present “Tax and Development: Using Tax Law for Social Good — The Caribbean Example” Monday, Feb. 25, and Chris Wolf from the Future of Privacy Forum, who will present “Privacy: Does U.S. Law Provide Adequate Protection?” Thursday, March 28.

All three talks will be held at noon in the School of Law Bryan Cave Moot Courtroom (Anheuser-Busch Hall, Room 310). Lectures are free and open to the public.

For a full list of the 2012-13 speakers, visit http://law.wustl.edu/pilss/.

For more information, contact Karen L. Tokarz, JD, the Charles Nagel Professor of Public Interest Law & Public Service and director of the Negotiation and Dispute Resolution Program, at (314) 935-6414 or tokarz@wulaw.wustl.edu.

Work, Families and Public Policy series begins Feb. 4

2013-01-23 00:00:00

Faculty and graduate students from St. Louis-area universities with an interest in labor, households, health care, law and social welfare are invited to take part in a series of Monday brown-bag luncheon seminars to be held biweekly on the Danforth Campus at Washington University in St. Louis beginning Monday, Feb. 4, through Monday, April 15.

In its 17th year, the Work, Families and Public Policy series features one-hour presentations on research interests of faculty from local and national universities. The series is designed to promote interdisciplinary research.

Presentations will be from noon-1 p.m. in Seigle Hall, Room 348.

The series begins Monday, Feb. 4, with a lecture by Anne Winkler, PhD, professor of economics and public policy administration at University of Missouri-St. Louis. Her topic: “The Relationship Between the Housing and Labor Market Crises and Doubling-Up: An MSA-Level Analysis, 2005-2010.”

The remaining presentations are:

Feb. 18. Limor Golan, PhD, associate professor of economics in Arts & Sciences at WUSTL, on “Estimating the Returns to Parental Time Investment in Children Using a Life-Cycle Dynastic Model.”

March 4. Duncan Thomas, PhD, the Robert F. Durden Professor of Economics and professor of global health at Duke University, on “The Family After a Natural Disaster.”

March 18. Kristin Collins, JD, the Peter Paul Development Professor and professor of law at Boston University School of Law, on “Entitling Marriage.”

April 1. Paula England, PhD, professor of sociology at New York University, on “The Long-term Trend in Premarital First Births: Is it the Economy or Sex?”

April 15. Adina Sterling, PhD, assistant professor of strategy at WUSTL’s Olin Business School, on “Shared Education Affiliations and Workplace Relationships.”

Robert A. Pollak, PhD, the Hernreich Distinguished Professor of Economics in Arts & Sciences and in the Olin Business School, has been the lead organizer of the series for the past 16 years.

Co-organizer is Michael Sherraden, PhD, the Benjamin E. Youngdahl Professor of Social Development at the Brown School at WUSTL.

The series is sponsored by: the Wells Fargo Advisory Center for Finance and Accounting Research in the Olin Business School; the Brown School and the Center for Social Development; the Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Work and Social Capital in the School of Law; the Department of Economics in Arts & Sciences; the College of Arts & Sciences; and the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

The classroom is provided courtesy of the Department of Economics.

For more information, contact Pollak at (314) 935-4918 or pollak@wustl.edu; Sherraden at (314) 935-6691 or at sherrad@wustl.edu; or visit olin.wustl.edu/Events/Pages/default.aspx and search for the seminar by date.

Time to mandate flu vaccines for healthcare workers, says health law expert

2013-01-20 00:00:00

The widespread flu reports are a harsh reminder of the importance of influenza vaccines. This is particularly true for healthcare workers, says Elizabeth Sepper, JD, health law expert and professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis. “One-third of healthcare providers fail to protect themselves, their patients, and the public from influenza.”

Sepper

Sepper says that it is time for a national flu vaccine mandate for healthcare workers.

“Regulation ensures patients don't have to rely on the goodwill of particular institutions or providers,” says Sepper, who is also a faculty scholar in WUSTL's Institute for Public Health. “It also avoids the model of employer coercion of employees, and establishes vaccination as a professional obligation. “

Sepper’s related comments are published in the Harvard Law Bill of Health blog: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/billofhealth/2013/01/18/flu-vaccine-myths-and-healthcare-providers/

Q&A: Hillary Sale

Jessica Martin — 2013-01-22 00:00:00

Hillary A. Sale, JD, the Walter D. Coles Professor of Law and professor of management, talks with students. Sale is co-author, with John C. Coffee, of the leading casebook on federal securities regulation, and a recipient of the David M. Becker Professor of the Year Award.

Sale says some of the best moments about being a professor are when, after the class is over, students come and visit and remain in touch even after graduation. At WUSTL, she enjoys building collaborative relationships across campus. Sale is actively involved with the New York City Regulatory and Business Externship and a new entrepreneurship course embedded at a St. Louis tech incubator.

You’re known as one of the nation’s top scholars and teachers in corporate and securities law. What do you consider your main area of expertise?

I focus mainly on corporate governance, which typically is defined as the relationship between shareholders, officers and the board of directors. I look at corporate issues relating to these groups, with a focus, first and foremost, on the board of directors — how the board thinks, acts and manages its tasks.

Because I have a strong securities background, I also think about how federal law and state law interact to build the web of support that the directors need to do their jobs well.

How did you become interested in this field?

You know, it's interesting. Even in law school, I was interested in corporate governance, but I really didn't learn much about it until I was in practice with WilmerHale LLP. I did some work with corporate boards and some securities work, and just developed an endless fascination with it.

The board is the locus of power in a corporation in a really interesting way. It’s the place where strategy gets laid out, and there are all kinds of interesting questions that come up.

Securities law and corporate governance issues have been in the news quite a bit. People automatically think of Enron or, even more recently “Too Big to Fail.” What role have corporate boards played in these scandals?

Well, from the perspective of corporate governance, we’ve rocked from one crisis to the next. Even between Enron and 2008, we had stock options backdating, which is also a crisis in governance.

Can we blame the boards of directors for the financial crisis? I think not. What we had was a lot of bad decision-making, and we did not have enough regulatory structure in place to stop some of it.

And the fact is, we had some people who did bad stuff. It's all of those layers — a lot of incentives going in the wrong direction.

What do you think is next in this field? Could we move to too much regulation?

Well, right now it's an unknown, because so much of the regulation that's necessary to implement Dodd-Frank doesn't exist yet. Arguably, the SEC is way behind in promulgating regulations. On the other hand, the SEC is pretty darn busy. So, I find it hard, really, to blame them. But I think we'll see more financial regulations coming out now that the election’s over.

I think the crisis proves that some areas that were completely unregulated before do need regulation. The fact is, in some instances, if we had smarter regulations, we wouldn’t be where we are today.

Your interest in corporate boards goes beyond the classroom. Why have you taken on a leadership role with DirectWomen, [a national program designed to develop and position an elite group of exceptional senior women lawyers for service as directors of major U.S. corporations]?

Diversity and the corporate board is one of my great passions, and I do spend a lot of time on it. There are a lot of studies out there showing that diverse groups perform better, and there’s no reason to think that isn’t also true in the boardroom. I’ve certainly heard directors say it. I’ve also heard CEOs say it.

Measurement is a little more complicated though. I’m hoping to do some research with colleagues at Olin to try to get a grip on measuring the impact of diversity on a board.

I’ve been involved with DirectWomen since its first year in 2007, and I started organizing the Institute in 2008. I helped the founders think about the program content and recruit some of the leading academic voices on governance. We’ve helped a sizable group of women join major corporate boards.

Quick Bits

Outside of the classroom and boardroom, Sale enjoys spending time with her family, reading “novel after novel,” and cooking and playing poker.

Favorite author: St. Louis’ Curtis Sittenfeld

Favorite recipe: “I really like to open Bon Appetit and make something new and different each time.”

First Amendment weakens gun rights advocates’ insurrection argument

Jessica Martin — 2013-01-16 00:00:00

Many gun rights advocates have asserted that the Second Amendment – which protects the right of the people to keep and bear arms – serves a collective interest in deterring and, if necessary, violently deposing a tyrannical federal government.

“The strength of this assertion is significantly weakened by the power of the First Amendment,” says Gregory P. Magarian, JD, constitutional law expert and professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis.

Magarian

“We have spent almost a century developing the First Amendment as the main vehicle for dynamic political change. Debate and political expression is preferable to insurrection as a means of political change and our legal culture’s attention to the First and Second Amendments reflects a long-settled choice of debate over violent uprising.”

Magarian discusses the relationship between the First and Second Amendments in “Speaking Truth to Firepower: How the First Amendment Destabilizes the Second,” published in the current issue of the Texas Law Review.

“Embracing Second Amendment insurrectionism would endanger our commitment to protecting dissident political speech under the First Amendment,” he says.

“Sound consideration of the Second Amendment alongside the First leaves the individual right to keep and bear arms with questionable legal force.”

Read more at www.texaslrev.com/wp-content/uploads/Magarian-91-TLR-49.pdf

WUSTL’s Clark provides testimony on reforming D.C. government ethics standards

2013-01-16 00:00:00

Kathleen Clark, JD, government ethics expert and John S. Lehmann Research Professor of Law at Washington University in St. Louis, recently provided testimony to the District of Columbia’s Board of Ethics and Government Accountability on government ethics best practices.

Clark

Clark identified three key next steps for the District:

Evaluate which departments or functions pose the greatest ethical risk
Focus enforcement resources on significant violations, sending a message that ethics standards will now be enforced
Use the financial disclosure review process to promote ethics awareness

Read Clark's testimony at http://news.wustl.edu/news/PublishingImages/testimony-2013-01-10-b.pdf

Embedding with startups to study entrepreneurship

Neil Schoenherr and Melody Walker — 2013-01-15 00:00:00

Washington University’s business, engineering and law schools are collaborating on a new course in 2013 that will embed students in the center of the thriving entrepreneur community in downtown St. Louis.

Students will trade their campus classroom for working space at T-REx, a new St. Louis tech incubator that offers startup companies affordable offices in the historic Railway Exchange Building.

As part of the new course, Washington University students will engage in consulting projects for resident entrepreneurs at T-REx to better understand the inner workings of growing a business from the ground up.

“Student projects will range from revenue modeling and pricing strategies to marketing and competitive analysis,” says Clifford Holekamp, senior lecturer in entrepreneurship at Olin Business School. “The results will ultimately benefit both the startups and the students who are studying entrepreneurship.”

The course will be open to undergraduates and graduate students in Washington University’s business, engineering and law schools.

Holekamp and Ron King, PhD, director of Olin’s Center for Experiential Learning (CEL), will co-teach the course at the school’s office/classroom space at T-REx.

“This course is very unique at Washington University and nationwide,” explains King who is a senior associate dean and the Myron Northrop Professor of Accounting at Olin. “The students will work closely with the entrepreneurs, guided by faculty experts over the course of the semester. It’s a win-win situation for students and entrepreneurs.”

Of the 45 companies currently leasing space at the T-ReX incubator, many count Washington University alumni among their founders and employees. (See OlinBusiness magazine feature story on alumni at T-REx.)

Entrepreneurship courses are popular at Washington University and attract students from multiple disciplines. In fact, professors encourage students with diverse backgrounds and majors to form teams when planning a business.

Nick Benassi, associate dean at Washington University’s School of Engineering and Applied Science, collaborated on the design of the new course. “This innovative partnership with the business school is opening up exciting opportunities for our students to experience entrepreneurship firsthand and be a part of the thriving St. Louis startup community that is creating new ventures with global impact,” Benassi says.

The engineering school holds a competition for undergraduate students to promote the discovery of entrepreneurial solutions for global challenges.

Benassi sees the convergence of multiple disciplines around innovation and entrepreneurship as part of a larger and necessary trend of interfacing talents to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

“The law school is very excited to be a part of this initiative,” says Hillary Sale, JD, the Walter D. Coles Professor of Law at the law school and professor of management at Olin Business School. “We look forward to collaborating with our colleagues at the business and engineering schools to provide unique educational opportunities for our students to work with the growing entrepreneurial community in St. Louis.

“The partnership is another example of our commitment to professional practice opportunities for our students and underscores the benefits of developing critical skills while working in interdisciplinary teams.”

Pairings of student teams and companies will be announced at the start of the course this month.

Entrepreneurship at Washington University in St. Louis

Entrepreneur magazine ranked Washington University No. 5 in undergraduate programs and No. 6 in graduate programs. Degrees in entrepreneurship are offered at the undergraduate and graduate level in the business school; WUSTL’s Brown School offers a master’s degree in social entrepreneurship in conjunction with Olin Business School. A minor degree in entrepreneurship is an option for all undergraduates at WUSTL. The Skandalaris Center for Entrepreneurial Studies manages two annual business plan competitions: the Olin Cup for commercial ventures and the YouthBridge Social Enterprise and Innovation Competition. The School of Engineering and Applied Science launced its Discovery Competition this fall with the goal of promoting new and innovative solutions for real-world problems and allowing students to compete for financial resources that could help turn their ideas into businesses. The winning team will be awarded $25,000.

Faculty Achievement Award nominations sought

2013-01-16 00:00:00

Nominations are being accepted for Washington University’s annual Faculty Achievement Awards, known as the Arthur Holly Compton Faculty Achievement Award and the Carl and Gerty Cori Faculty Achievement Award.

The Compton Award is given to a distinguished member of the faculty from one of the six Danforth Campus schools and the Cori Award to a faculty member from the School of Medicine.

All full-time, active Washington University faculty members are eligible to receive the Faculty Achievement Award. Any full-time, active member of the faculty may submit a nomination to the Advisory Committee. The nomination packet should include:

• A nomination letter detailing the rationale for the nomination;
• The nominee’s curriculum vitae;
• Three supporting letters from individuals acquainted with the nominee’s contributions as a scholar/researcher and teacher.

The ideal candidates for the Faculty Achievement Award will show excellence in both the research and the service/teaching domains. While outstanding achievement in research and scholarship are weighed most heavily, the awardee must also show a strong record of service to the university and respected accomplishments in teaching, whether that be in the classroom, in mentoring or in other pedagogical capacities.

The deadline to submit nominations is Friday, Feb. 15. Submit nominations and supporting letters to Gerhild S. Williams, PhD, vice provost and associate vice chancellor, at Campus Box 1080 or by email at gerhildwilliams@wustl.edu.

The awardees will be announced this spring. The recipients will receive their awards and give presentations of their scholarly work during a ceremony in December. At the time of these presentations, the awardees will each receive a $5,000 honorarium.

Robert P. Mecham, PhD, a pioneering cell biologist, and Nancy L. Morrow-Howell, PhD, a leading national scholar in gerontology, received Washington University’s 2012 Faculty Achievement Awards during a Dec. 1 event.

Mecham, the Alumni Endowed Professor of Cell Biology and Physiology, received the Carl and Gerty Cori Faculty Achievement Award, and Morrow-Howell, the Ralph and Muriel Pumphrey Professor of Social Work at the Brown School, received the Arthur Holly Compton Faculty Achievement Award.

An Advisory Committee will review nominations and make recommendations to Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton, who, with the Faculty Senate Council, established the awards in 1999.

To see a list of the Advisory Committee members, click here.

To see a list of previous award recipients, click here.

Who pays? The wage-insurance trade-off and corporate religious freedom claims

2013-01-09 00:00:00

Corporations’ religious freedom claims against the Affordable Care Act’s contraception coverage mandate miss a “basic fact of health economics: health insurance, like wages, is compensation that belongs to the employee,” says Elizabeth Sepper, JD, health law expert and associate professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis. Sepper’s scholarship explores the interaction of morality, professional ethics, and law in medicine.

Sepper

“Study after study shows that employers pay in wages whatever they don’t pay in health insurance premiums. Most recently, a study of Massachusetts’ health reform found that firms offering health insurance pay wages lower by an average of $6,058 (nearly exactly the cost of annual health insurance premiums). Each employee’s actual “salary” is wages plus the employer share of the health insurance premium. So, when a corporation purchases a health insurance plan that its employees (and their family members) may or may not use to buy contraception, it is no more paying for contraception than it does when employees use their wages to buy it.”

Sepper continues the discussion on the Harvard Law Bill of Health blog: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/billofhealth/2013/01/02/who-pays-the-wage-insurance-trade-off-and-corporate-religious-freedom-claims/

“A View From the Federal Circuit: A Conversation With Chief Judge Randall R. Rader” Jan. 18

2013-01-08 00:00:00

The Hon. Randall R. Rader, chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, will offer his perspectives on the court Friday, Jan. 18, at Washington University in St. Louis.

His presentation, “A View From the Federal Circuit: A Conversation With Chief Judge Randall R. Rader,” including a panel discussion with members of local bar associations, takes place from 3-4:15 p.m. in the Bryan Cave Moot Courtroom (Anheuser-Busch Hall, Room 310); a reception will follow in the Janite Lee Reading Room.

The event, which is free and open to the public, is co-sponsored by the law school’s Intellectual Property & Technology Law Program, China Law Society and Charles & Bunny Burson Student Activities Fund. It is eligible for 1 MCLE credit in Missouri.

Panelists include Hon. Audrey G. Fleissig, JD, judge on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, Alan H. Norman, JD, partner at Thompson Coburn LLP in St. Louis, and Bryan Wheelock, JD, principal at Harness Dickey in St. Louis. Kevin E. Collins, JD, WUSTL professor of law, will serve as moderator.

Rader

Chief Judge Rader has served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit since 1990; he assumed the duties of chief judge in 2010. He previously served on the U.S. Claims Court (now the U.S. Court of Federal Claims), beginning in 1988.

The Federal Circuit is unique among the 13 Circuit Courts of Appeals. It has nationwide jurisdiction in a variety of subject areas, including international trade, government contracts, patents, trademarks, certain money claims against the U.S. government, federal personnel, veterans’ benefits, and public safety officers’ benefits claims.

Appeals to the court come from all federal district courts, the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, the U.S. Court of International Trade, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims.

Rader is the co-author of several texts, including the widely used textbook on U.S. patent law Cases and Materials on Patent Law and Patent Law in a Nutshell.

He has taught patent law and other advanced intellectual property courses at numerous law schools in the United States and abroad. Among his many accolades, he has won acclaim for leading dozens of government and educational delegations to every continent (except Antarctica), teaching rule of law and intellectual property law principles.

Before his appointment to the Court of Federal Claims, Rader served as minority and majority chief counsel to the subcommittees of the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary. From 1975 to 1980, he served as counsel in the House of Representatives for representatives serving on the Interior, Appropriations, and Ways and Means committees. He earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Brigham Young University in 1974 and a juris doctorate from George Washington University Law School in 1978.

To RSVP for the event, visit http://law.wustl.edu/faculty/forms/rsvpform.asp?BookingID=234714

Privacy law expert comments on Bork’s legacy

2012-12-19 00:00:00

Robert Bork was a major figure in the history of American law, and of the Supreme Court, says Neil Richards, JD, professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis and former law clerk for Supreme Court Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist. “His unsuccessful nomination to the Supreme Court in 1987 was really a watershed moment in the history of the Court, as it showed how politicized Court nominations had become, especially on issues of abortion.”

Richards

“There is a great irony to Bork’s death this week, a day after the House of Representatives voted to relax the privacy protections in the so-called “Bork Bill,” the federal law that protects the privacy of our video records,” says Richards, a privacy law expert.

“Bork rejected the right to privacy, so a cheeky reporter for the alternative Washington City Paper obtained his family’s video rental records and published them. The City Paper article turned up nothing salacious, but when the reporter threatened to repeat the trick with members of Congress, a horrified legislature passed the Video Privacy Protection Act, a tremendously important piece of privacy legislation protecting our movie-viewing records that is now under assault.”

Sadat appointed special adviser on crimes against humanity

Julie Kennedy — 2012-12-14 00:00:00

Leila Nadya Sadat, JD, the Henry H. Oberschelp Professor of Law at Washington University in St. Louis, added another international honor to her resumé recently when she was appointed special adviser on crimes against humanity by the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Sadat

Sadat, director of WUSTL’s Whitney R. Harris World Law Institute, is an internationally recognized expert in international criminal law, human rights and public international law.

ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda announced the appointment of Sadat and two other special advisers, Patricia Viseur Sellers and Diane Marie Amann, Dec. 12.

“I am proud that these three highly respected academics have agreed to serve the Office,” said Bensouda. “Patricia Sellers, Leila Sadat and Diane Marie Amann have a wealth of experience between them. I have no doubt their contributions to the work of the Office and the fight to end impunity for the world’s worst crimes will be invaluable.”

“I have been doing pro bono work for the ad hoc international criminal tribunals and the ICC for years, but to have the ICC prosecutor publicly acknowledge me as an expert on crimes against humanity is thrilling,” Sadat says. “This honor is not only a tribute to my work, but to the important work the law school and Washington University have accomplished over the past decade.”

As a special adviser, Sadat will help the ICC Office of the Prosecutor
formulate strategic policies and advise on questions about the scope of crimes against humanity. This is a new advisory position with a one-year term, renewable annually.

Sadat began writing about crimes against humanity with the publication of her first article in 1994 on the trial of Vichy collaborator Paul Touvier in France.

Touvier was a Nazi collaborator in Occupied France during World War II. In 1994, he became the first Frenchman to be convicted of crimes against humanity. Sadat has been involved in researching and writing about these crimes ever since.

As director of the Harris Institute’s Crimes Against Humanity Initiative, Sadat has been the key mover of the multiyear project to study the problem of crimes against humanity and draft a comprehensive convention addressing their punishment and prevention.

A proposed Crimes Against Humanity (CAH) Convention builds on the legacy of Nuremberg, the first major international criminal trial of Nazi war criminals.

Following the 1945 Nuremberg trials, the Genocide Convention was adopted in 1948. The next year, the Geneva Conventions were codified to address war crimes. However, a similar convention was not adopted for crimes against humanity — a category that includes murder, extermination, rape and torture.

In the decades that followed Nuremberg, the world community continued to see horrific acts perpetrated against citizens of the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda and other countries around the world.

The proposed convention will fill a critical gap in international law.

Sadat says the proposed CAH Convention is currently in a promotional and educational phase as it is circulated to governments, United Nations decision makers, academics and nongovernmental organizations.

As part of this effort, Sadat, along with Steering Committee members Ambassador Hans Corell, former U.N. undersecretary general for legal affairs, and ICC Judge Christine Van den Wyngaert, held an informational side session at the 11th session of ICC Assembly of States Parties at the Hague in November.

In addition, the International Law Commission will be discussing the possibility of elaborating a crimes against humanity convention this spring.

The estimated timeframe for the elaboration of an international convention is six to eight years, and “that is very optimistic,” Sadat says.
Sadat is director and co-founder of the Summer Institute for International Law and Policy at Utrecht University in the Netherlands.

Sadat’s award-winning publications include, among others, Forging a Convention for Crimes Against Humanity (2011) and The International Criminal Court and the Transformation of International Law (2002).

She is a vice president of the International Law Association, American Branch, and created and chaired its International Criminal Court Committee for many years.

She recently held the Alexis de Tocqueville Distinguished Fulbright Chair at the Université of Cergy Pontoise and has been a visiting professor at the Université de Paris I (Panthéon-Sorbonne) and Université de Paris II (Assas).

Law requiring Internet posting of executive branch employees’ financial information delayed

2012-12-10 00:00:00

On Dec. 7, President Barack Obama signed legislation to delay implementation of the STOCK (Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge) Act, which would require Internet posting of the annual financial interest forms for 28,000 executive branch employees.

Clark

Executive branch officials must list detailed information about their assets, outside income and gifts on these forms, which are then reviewed by ethics officials to help ensure compliance with federal conflict of interest standards.

“Posting these forms on the Internet will be a significant change for executive branch employees,” says Kathleen Clark, JD, the John S. Lehmann Research Professor of Law at Washington University in St. Louis. “These forms have been available to the public upon request, but logistical hurdles (such as requiring requesters to identify themselves and promise not to use the information for commercial purposes) has meant that few of these forms have been requested.”

Clark says an association of high-level employees filed a lawsuit to prevent online posting, arguing that it would violate their constitutional right to privacy. Others have expressed concern that such posting would enable foreign governments to identify U.S. intelligence agents. Congress responded to these security concerns by delaying implementation until April 15, 2013.

“Congress passed the STOCK Act in response to allegations that members of Congress engaged in insider trading,” she says. “Ironically, insider trading was already illegal, and the Act's requirement for Internet posting of executive branch employees' financial information will have no effect on insider trading by members of Congress.”

Clark made a presentation about the STOCK Act and this lawsuit by the Senior Executives Association in early December at the Annual Conference of the Council on Government Ethics Laws.

Clark is an expert on government ethics, legal ethics and whistleblowing law. She is associate reporter for the American Law Institute’s Principles of Government Ethics and recently served as Special Counsel to the Attorney General of the District of Columbia, drafting an ethics manual for the District’s 32,000 employees. She created and taught for 13 years a course on government ethics as part of the law school’s Congressional & Administrative Law Clinic in Washington, D.C.

‘Fiscal cliff’ would have major consequences, WUSTL leaders warn

Susan Killenberg McGinn — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 18:38:17 CST

If Congress and President Obama do not reach a compromise before the end of the year to avoid the ‘fiscal cliff,’ it will have major consequences on Washington University in St. Louis as well as other universities and colleges across the country, say WUSTL administrators.

Read Chancellor Wrighton's letter to the congressional delegation.

Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton and other Washington University administrators have been actively working to impress upon the country’s leaders and the public what billions of dollars in looming tax increases and spending cuts in 2013 would mean to Americans’ health and to the economy.

Wrighton recently sent a letter to Missouri’s congressional delegation, including U.S. Senators Claire McCaskill and Roy Blunt, as well as Illinois U.S. Senators Richard Durbin and Mark Kirk, expressing his concern if a compromise isn’t reached by the start of 2013.

In the letter, Wrighton wrote that “elements of the ‘fiscal cliff’ could impact our nation’s ability to educate the next generation of students, to provide life-saving cures and treatments to those in need, and to conduct the ground-breaking research necessary to maintain the nation’s continued leadership in science, scholarship, and innovation.”

Meanwhile, in an op-ed appearing in yesterday’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Larry J. Shapiro, MD, executive vice chancellor for medical affairs and dean of the Washington University School of Medicine, wrote that cuts to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) would be “devastating.”

Read full text of Dean Shapiro's commentary on potential “fiscal cliff” consequences.

“Some $600 billion of the planned cuts will come from non-defense programs, which will have dire consequences for our health and our economy,” Shapiro wrote. “That is because the cuts indiscriminately slash federal investment in medical research.

“This short-sighted solution to the nation’s deficit problem would significantly delay new, life-saving medical treatments. But what many people don’t realize is that the massive cuts also would put a chokehold on the creation of high-tech jobs and threaten U.S. global competitiveness.”

View a United for Medical Research (UMR) infographic detailing why looming cuts in research funds could put jobs and medical innovations at risk. Washington University is a founding member of UMR, which is one of several national research advocacy organizations.

Evan D. Kharasch, MD, PhD, vice chancellor for research and the Russell D. and Mary B. Shelden Professor of Anesthesiology, has formed a Research Leadership Working Group to help maximize the continued success of research at Washington University.

Read Vice Chancellor Kharasch’s comments on sequestration risks in the WUSTL Federal Funding Newsletter.

The team is tracking broad institutional and national research issues and assessing their potential impact on the schools, faculty and research at Washington University.

The group also is developing communications about issues critical to the research community, such as the ongoing fiscal cliff discussions in Washington, D.C.

Kharasch recently sent to the research faculty on the Medical and Danforth campuses the first in a series of communications on federal funding issues.

In the newsletter, Kharasch encouraged WUSTL scientists to let their elected officials know their feelings about sequestration – large cuts to discretionary spending – which would have the most immediate impact on federal research.

In Wrighton’s letter to Missouri and Illinois elected officials, he reiterated his concern about the impact potential spending cuts would have on research, medical care and financial aid.

“While it is important to take a comprehensive approach to addressing this fiscal morass,” he wrote, “it is vital that any solution protect those core investments and tax provisions that help educate students, provide quality healthcare, and promote research and development — all of which enable enhanced national security, increased entrepreneurship and private investment, and economic competitiveness.”

WUSTL School of Law News

Drones may violate international law

IRS investigation spotlights need for Inspectors General

Washington University School of Law’s Women’s Law Caucus announces International Women’s Day awards

Washington University teams each win $50,000 Arch Grants in startup competition

Supreme Court decision closes loophole in Monsanto’s business model

Sant named co-director of IP/Nonprofit Law Clinic

Law professor Martin installed as Nagel Chair

Broadway star Norbert Leo Butz May 9

New faculty join Brown School, Law School

Brown School

School of Law

Push for corporate board diversity set to increase in the U.S. due to European pressure

‘Be a sponge’ and other advice to help students succeed at summer internships

Increasing surveillance a dangerous reaction to Boston bombings, says privacy law expert

Symposium: Finding humanity in advanced dementia, April 27

President signs bill to limit STOCK Act’s web-based publication of employees’ financial information

Senate votes to limit STOCK Act’s web-based publication of employees’ financial information

Are human genes patentable?

Filibuster abuse destabilizes government and is unconstitutional

Sherraden moderates panel discussion on poverty alleviation at Clinton Global Initiative University

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services chief counsel to give Tyrrell Williams Lecture April 11​

Levin elected to American Law Institute

Political scientist Cohen to speak April 9​

The dangers of surveillance - it’s bad, but why?

Three challenges for the First Amendment

Faces of Hope rally readies campus for Clinton Global Initiative University

Winners of 26th annual book collection competition announced

University’s Commitment to Action brings $30 million to advance sustainability

Faces of Hope campus rally to kick off Clinton Global Initiative University

The importance of groups: First Amendment expert testifies before United States Commission on Civil Rights

Washington University School of Law launches national semester-in-practice externship

Student externship experiences in D.C., New York lead to jobs

Brief background on experiential learning opportunities

REINS Act would severely impair ability to implement laws

CGI U announces 2013 speakers; new CGI University Network to fund student commitments​

SCOTUS oral arguments reflect indifference to constitutional grounding of Voting Rights Act

Conflict of interest rules must extend to government contractors, says ethics expert

Restitution system for exploitative images of children highly problematic

Law struggling to catch up with use of drone technology, says privacy expert

New opt-out proposal a ‘live and let live solution’ for contraception mandate

Public Interest Law and Policy Speakers Series continues Feb. 7

Work, Families and Public Policy series begins Feb. 4

Time to mandate flu vaccines for healthcare workers, says health law expert

Q&A: Hillary Sale

First Amendment weakens gun rights advocates’ insurrection argument

WUSTL’s Clark provides testimony on reforming D.C. government ethics standards

Embedding with startups to study entrepreneurship

Faculty Achievement Award nominations sought

Who pays? The wage-insurance trade-off and corporate religious freedom claims

“A View From the Federal Circuit: A Conversation With Chief Judge Randall R. Rader” Jan. 18

Privacy law expert comments on Bork’s legacy

Sadat appointed special adviser on crimes against humanity

Law requiring Internet posting of executive branch employees’ financial information delayed

‘Fiscal cliff’ would have major consequences, WUSTL leaders warn

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services chief counsel to give Tyrrell Williams Lecture April 11

Political scientist Cohen to speak April 9

CGI U announces 2013 speakers; new CGI University Network to fund student commitments