Faculty Highlights

October 2015

Professor Cynthia Alkon presented “Hard Bargaining in Plea Bargaining: When do Prosecutors Cross the Line?” at the 9th Annual AALS ADR Works-in-Progress Conference, which she co-organized with Professor Peter Reilly, at Texas A&M School of Law (Oct. 23-24, 2015).

Associate Professor Sahar Aziz presented “The Racial Muslim,” at the Religion and the Law Symposium at Florida International University School of Law (Oct. 23, 2015).

• Presenter at the conference theme plenary session “Critical Constitutionalism:  Deconstructing the Legitimacy of State Institutions” at LatCrit 2015: Twentieth Anniversary Conference in Anaheim, Calif. (Oct. 1-3, 2015).


• Keynote Speaker for “Strategies for Identifying and Minimizing Harassment Risks in a 21st Century Workforce” at the Equal Employment Advisory Council Fall Compliance Conference in San Antonio (Oct. 13-15, 2015).


• Served as a panelist:
  
  • “Understanding Cultural Differences in Mediation” at the Texas Mediators Credentialing Association Annual Conference in Austin (Oct. 17, 2015).
  • “Islam in the Workplace Panel Discussion: A Postscript to the Supreme Court Ruling EEOC v. Abercrombie & Fitch Stores, Inc.” at Texas A&M University San Antonio (Oct. 7, 2015).
• Participated in media interview with Al Jazeera English, “Egyptian Court Orders Release of Hosni Mubarak’s Sons” (Oct. 12, 2015).

Associate Professor Mark Edwin Burge presented his forthcoming article, “Apple Pay, Bitcoin, and Consumers: The ABCs of Future Public Payments Law,” at the Michigan State University College of Law Junior Faculty Workshop (Oct. 23, 2015).

Professor Irene Calboli was elected to the American Law Institute (Oct 2015).

• Invited to act as expert by ECAP III (the EU-ASEAN Project on the Protection of Intellectual Property Rights implemented by the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market) and led a series of seminars on the “Control of Geographical Indications of Origin” in Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam (Fall 2015).


• Invited to speak at the “The Present and Future of GI Protection in the EU” workshop organized by the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition in Berlin (Oct. 29-31, 2015).


• Published the article “Geographical Indications of Origin at the Crossroads of Local Development, Consumer Protection, and Marketing Strategies” in the International Review of Intellectual Property and Competition Law (peer reviewed) (Oct. 12, 2015).


• Co-authored (with professor Daniel J. Gervais of Vanderbilt Law School) a policy paper, “Socio-Economic Aspects of Geographical Indications,” for the Worldwide Symposium on Geographical Indications organized by the World Intellectual Property Organization in Budapest, Hungary (Oct. 20-22, 2015).

Professor Celestina Contreras moderated the panel discussion during the Domestic Violence Awareness Luncheon sponsored by the Family Law Student Association at Texas A&M School of Law (Oct. 28, 2015).

Professor Gabriel Eckstein was invited to present “Framework of Surface and Groundwater Legal Systems in the Southwest” at the Water Acquisition and Management for Oil and Gas Development Conference organized by the Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Foundation and the Institute for Energy Law in Houston on April 7-8, 2016.

Professor Susan Fortney was appointed as a member of the Supreme Court of Texas Professional Ethics Committee (Oct. 1, 2015). The Committee issues advisory opinions in response to ethics-related questions posed to the Committee.

Professor Michael Z. Green published an article, “Just Another Black Boy from the South Side of Chicago: Overcoming Obstacles and Breaking Down Barriers to Improve Diversity in the Law Professoriate,” in Volume 31 of the Columbia Journal of Gender & Law (Oct. 14, 2015).

• Presented his work-in-progress paper, “Protected Workplace Speech Versus Harassment and Bullying,” on the Labor, Work, and the Workplace panel at the LatCrit 2015: Twentieth Anniversary Conference in Anaheim, Calif. (Oct. 2, 2015).

Professor William Henning served as a panelist for "Understanding Remedies,” a program sponsored by the New England School of Law in Boston. His presentation was titled “Remedies under UCC Articles 2 and 2A” (Oct. 1, 2015).

• Attended attended a meeting of the Uniform Law Commission’s Drafting Committee to Revise the Model Tribal Secured Transactions Act (MTSTA), of which he is a member, in Scottsdale, Ariz. (Oct. 3-4, 2015).


• Attended a meeting in Vienna, Austria, with the United States Department of State delegation to Working Group VI of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL), of which he is a member, to develop a model law on secured transactions for developing countries (Oct. 12, 2015).


• Chair of the Uniform Law Commission’s Drafting Committee on a Wage Garnishment Act, which met in Falls Church, Va., on (Oct. 23-24, 2015). The act will thoroughly modernize the law governing wage garnishments, resolve complex choice-of-law issues that arise in the context of multistate employers, reduce costs by removing the procedures from the courts to the extent possible, and provide employees with a robust notification of their rights and sufficient time to act to protect their interests before wage withholding begins.

Professor Charlotte Ku, associate dean of International Programs, presented “The Elements of Legitimacy: The State and the United Nations System” to the Creating a Workable World Conference at Humphrey School of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota (Oct. 10, 2015).

Professor Huyen Pham, associate dean of Faculty Research and Development, was interviewed by Law360 for the article, “7 Immigration-Related Cases that May See High Court Action” (Oct. 14, 2015).

Associate Professor Peter Reilly presented his article, “Incentivizing Corporate America to Eradicate Transnational Bribery Worldwide:  Federal Transparency and Voluntary Disclosure under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act,” at the 9th Annual AALS ADR Works-in-Progress Conference, which he co-organized with Professor Cynthia Alkon, at Texas A&M School of Law (Oct. 23-24, 2015).

Professor Frank Snyder gave an invited lecture “Marijuana Legalization and the Rule of Law” at the Regional Convention of Students for Liberty (SFL) at the University of Texas in Austin (Oct. 17, 2015). SFL is a worldwide coalition of student libertarian groups on college campuses.

Professor Neil Sobol, director of Legal Analysis, Research, and Writing, presented his work-in-progress, “The Need for a Federal Fair Assessment and Collection of Criminal Justice Debt Act,” at the Central States Law Schools Association Annual Scholarship Conference at the University of Toledo College of Law (Oct. 10, 2015).

Associate Professor Saurabh Vishnubhakat was an invited discussant at the 2015 Academic Research Symposium on patent valuation, hosted by the George Mason University School of Law Center for the Protection of Intellectual Property  (Oct. 29–30, 2015).

• Presented his forthcoming article, “The Field of Invention,” at the Michigan State University College of Law Junior Faculty Workshop (Oct. 23, 2015).

Associate Professor Gina Warren was the faculty advisor for the Texas A&M Journal of Property Law symposium The Blunt Truth: Looking at the Effects of Marijuana Law on Property Interests held at Texas A&M School of Law (Oct.16, 2015).

• Invited speaker for “Water and Energy Implications of the Clean Power Plan,” at the Water and Energy Conference, Rice University's Baker Institute (Oct. 14, 2015).


• Invited participant for the Water-Energy-Food Resource Nexus Initiative at Texas A&M University (Oct. 8, 2015).


• Invited presenter of “Small Hydropower, Big Potential” at The Colloquium on Environmental Scholarship, Vermont Law School (Oct. 3, 2015).

Professor Peter Yu, along with his colleagues at the Center for Law and Intellectual Property, organized the Inaugural Texas A&M Intellectual Property Scholars Roundtable at Texas A&M University School of Law (Oct. 9-10, 2015).

• Chaired the panel "Opportunities and Challenges for U.S.-China Film Co-Production and Other Media" at the 4th Annual U.S.-China Intellectual Property Conference at U.C. Berkeley School of Law (Oct. 8, 2015).


• Presented "Digital Copyright Enforcement Measures and Their Human Rights Threats" at the Conference on Social Responsibility of Intellectual Property Rights Holders organized by the Intellectual Property Law Centre at the University of Pretoria in South Africa (Oct. 2, 2015).


• Presented "Towards the Development of a User-Friendly Copyright Regime in Hong Kong" at the First International Copyright Seminar organized by the College of Law at the University of South Africa (Oct. 1, 2015).


• Yu's op-ed "How China’s Exclusion from the TPP Could Hurt Its Economic Growth" was published in Fortune (Oct. 19, 2015).