Professor Tanenhaus in The New York Times

The Boyd School of Law is very pleased to announce that Professor David S. Tanenhaus (right) had his Op-Ed, "The Roberts Court's Liberal Turn on Juvenile Justice" published in today's The New York Times.

According to Professor Tanenhaus, "The Supreme Court’s decision this week [in Miller v. Alabama] to ban mandatory life sentences without the possibility of parole for offenders younger than 18 is an emphatic rejection of the 'get tough' juvenile justice policies of the 1980s and 1990s, which punished children as if they were adults. Writing for the majority, Justice Elena Kagan's clear statement not only recognized the political and biological principle that children are different from adults but at last also inscribed it into constitutional law."

Professor Tanenhaus currently serves as Professor of History and Chair of the History Department at UNLV, the James E. Rogers Professor of History and Law at Boyd School of Law, and Editor of Law and History Review, which Cambridge University Press publishes as a quarterly on behalf of the American Society for Legal History. Since coming to UNLV in 1997, Professor Tanenhaus has taught courses on American legal and constitutional history, the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, children and society, and introductory surveys of U.S. History.

Professor Anderson to Receive State Bar of Nevada Medal of Justice

The Boyd School of Law is very pleased to announce that Professor Rachel Anderson (right), along with Kathleen J. England, Beau Sterling, and the Las Vegas Chapter of the National Bar Association, will be honored by the State Bar of Nevada with the Medal of Justice for their work in creating the February 2012 issue of the Nevada Lawyer.

The February 2012 issue of the Nevada Lawyer presented comprehensive, state-wide research on the experience of African-American lawyers and the history of civil rights in Nevada. Feature stories include Professor Anderson's "Timeline of African-American Legal History in Nevada (1861-2011)," Claytee D. White and Geralda Miller's "Charles L. Kellar: Legal Trailblazer in Nevada," Professor Joanne L. Goodwin's "Nevada Civil Rights Act of 1965," Richard F. Boulware's "Dedicated to Excellence: National Bar Association, Las Vegas Chapter," and Geralda Miller's "Bar None: Pioneer African-American Lawyers in Northern Nevada."

The Nevada Lawyer is the official publication of the State Bar of Nevada, has a circulation of approximately 10,000, and is sent to all Nevada judges and attorneys admitted to practice law in Nevada. The members of the February 2012 issue's Steering Committee included Professor Anderson; Richard F. Boulware, Assistant Federal Public Defender, LVNBA Past President (2009-11); Senator Richard Bryan, Shareholder at Lionel Sawyer & Collins, former Nevada Attorney General, Governor, and U.S. Senator; Kathleen J. England, Civil Rights Lawyer, Past President of the State Bar of Nevada, former Member of the State Bar Board of Governors, and LVNBA Member; Professor Joanne L. Goodwin, Associate Professor of History and Director of the Women's Research Institute of Nevada, UNLV; U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert J. Johnston, Nevada Lawyer Editorial Board Member; Professor Kay P. Kindred, Professor of Law, Boyd School of Law, and LVNBA Member; Geralda Miller, Reporter for the Reno Gazette-Journal; Guy Roch, Retired State Archivist for the State of Nevada; Beau Sterling, Managing Member of Sterling Law LLC and Nevada Lawyer Editorial Board Member; and Claytee D. White, Historian and Director of the UNLV Oral History Research Center and Past President of the Southwest Oral History Association.

Professor Anderson is a graduate of Reed High School in Sparks. She joined the faculty in 2007, bringing expertise in Business Law, Civil Rights, Corporate Governance, Human Rights, Law and Social Change, and Private International Law. At Boyd, Professor Anderson teaches Business Organizations, Human Rights, and International Business Transactions, and her recent scholarship has appeared in prominent journals such as Denver University Law Review, Hastings Women's Law Journal, and Michigan State Journal of International Law.

Professor Marouf in the Las Vegas Review-Journal

The Boyd School of Law is very pleased to announce that Professor Fatma Marouf had her Op-Ed, "No Human Being Is 'Illegal,'" published in today's Las Vegas Review-Journal.

According to Professor Marouf, "Last Saturday, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists hosted a panel discussion on the use of the term 'illegal immigrants.' As a participant on that panel, I write to stress that the term 'illegal immigrants' - used by the Review-Journal and endorsed by The Associated Press - is inaccurate, misleading and dehumanizing."

Professor Marouf currently serves as Associate Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Immigration Clinic at Boyd School of Law. She joined the faculty in 2010, bringing expertise in Immigration Law, International Human Rights Law, and Refugee Law. Her scholarship has appeared in prominent journals such as Yale Law and Policy Review, American Journal of International Law, The Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, and Harvard Human Rights Journal. Professor Marouf is a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Law School.

Professor Scharf's Latest Article Forthcoming in The Georgetown Journal of Gender and the Law

The Boyd School of Law is very pleased to announce that Professor Rebecca Scharf's latest article, "Psychological Parentage, Troxel, and the Best Interests of the Child," is forthcoming in The Georgetown Journal of Gender and the Law.

The abstract for "Psychological Parentage" provides: "This Article explores the many ways children are harmed by the law’s failure to ensure that the bonds they have developed with their psychological parents are not broken; it therefore proposes ways that courts can better protect children from the psychological harm of having an individual who has acted as their parent permanently removed from their life. It suggests that what is needed is a framework that allows continued contact by 'psychological parents' with whom children have formed attachments without unnecessarily intruding on the fundamental liberty interest of parents at issue in Troxel v. Granville– that is, 'the interest of parents in the care, custody, and control of their children.' Such a framework would not only bestow standing on a psychological parent to petition for visitation, but also grant standing for the child himself to petition for visitation with a psychological parent.

"In the landmark Troxel v. Granville case, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Washington state third party visitation statute allowing any person to petition for visitation at any time as 'breathtakingly broad,' but failed to articulate a clear standard under which third parties could petition for visitation, if at all. Without such a provision, however, thousands of children across the country face the frightening possibility that their legal parents may suddenly and permanently remove a psychological parent from their lives, often causing tremendous hardship to the child.

"Although other scholarship has focused and critiqued Troxel’s failure to articulate a clear standard for third party visitation, this article focuses much more on the social science and psychological research related to the attachments children form with these 'psychological parents' and the risk of significant harm to the child when those attachments are broken, often permanently. Set against this background, it serves to highlight the urgency behind ensuring that courts provide an avenue for both third party psychological parents and the children affected by the potential severing of those attachment bonds, to petition for legal visitation which would allow that bond to continue.

"Thus, what is needed is a provision that allows both children and third parties standing to petition for visitation when that third party meets the qualifications to be deemed a psychological parent. Furthermore, once the court has found that there is standing, it would then still make a separate determination as to whether to grant visitation. In doing so, in recognition of the legal parent’s Constitutional rights as a parent, the court would employ a rebuttable presumption that the parent’s wishes are in the best interests of the child. In assessing, however, whether the petitioner has rebutted the presumption, the court would be required to make specific findings of fact as to the psychological harm the child would likely suffer should visitation be denied and all contact with the psychological parent cut off. Only by requiring the court to specifically focus on this specific potential harm, rather than merely engaging in a generalized 'best interest of the child' analysis, will the child’s interest in not having the attachment bond with the psychological parent severed be protected."

The article's full citation is: Rebecca L. Scharf, Psychological Parentage, Troxel, and the Best Interests of the Child, GEO. J. GENDER & L. (forthcoming 2012).

Professor Scharf joined the faculty at Boyd School of Law in 2004, bringing expertise in Family Law and the Lawyering Process. She has taught a range of courses, including Lawyering Process I, Lawyering Process II, Family Law, Privacy, Publicity & Defamation, Advanced Advocacy: Supreme Court Docket, Advanced Advocacy: Appellate Court Docket, Advanced Advocacy: Pre-Trial Litigation, Judicial Writing, and Legal Drafting. Professor Scharf is a graduate of Brandeis University and Harvard Law School.

Juvenile Justice Conference Scheduled for Spring 2013

The Boyd School of Law is very pleased to announce that Professor David S. Tanenhaus (right), together with Frank Zimring, William G. Simon Professor of Law and Wolfen Distinguished Scholar at UC Berkeley School of Law, will host a conference, "Juvenile Justice--Choosing the Future," on April 11-13, 2013, at UNLV.

The conference will include sessions on disconnecting the school-to-prison pipeline; the relationship between immigration policy and juvenile justice; the significance of brain science for youth policy; and the behavioral and legal issues involving juvenile sex offenders. At the concluding session, Professors Zimring and Tanenhaus will outline the priorities and models for legislative change. The presenters' papers will be published in a volume that Professors Zimring and Tanenhaus are editing for their new book series with New York University Press on Youth, Crime, and Justice.

Professor Tanenhaus currently serves as Professor of History and Chair of the History Department at UNLV, the James E. Rogers Professor of History and Law at Boyd School of Law, and Editor of Law and History Review, which Cambridge University Press publishes as a quarterly on behalf of the American Society for Legal History. Since coming to UNLV in 1997, Professor Tanenhaus has taught courses on American legal and constitutional history, the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, children and society, and introductory surveys of U.S. History.

Boyd Faculty Honored at Annual Law & Society Meeting

As reported in the June 2012 edition of Road Scholars, Professors Rachel Anderson, Ruben Garcia, Michael Kagan, Ann McGinley, Terry Pollman, Jeff Stempel, and Stacey Tovino attended the 2012 International Conference on Law & Society in Honolulu, HI.

The Boyd School of Law is very pleased to announce that Professor Addie Rolnick (right), received an honorable mention at the Conference for the 2011 Article Prize for her recent article, "The Promise of Mancari: Indian Political Rights as Racial Remedy," published in Volume 86 of the NYU Law Review. Professor Rolnick joined the Boyd faculty in fall 2011, bringing expertise in Criminal Law and Procedure, Critical Race Theory, Indian Law, and Juvenile Law.

Boyd was well represented at the Conference. Professor Rachel Anderson presented her paper, "Corporate Citizenship in Corporate Governance: Possibility or Pipe Dream?" as part of a Corporate Law and Human Rights panel. During an Author Meets Reader session, Professor Ruben Garcia discussed his new book out of NYU Press, Marginal Workers: How Legal Fault Lines Divide Workers and Leave Them without Protection. Professor Garcia also presented a paper relating to workplace citizenship during a Collective Labor Law and Worker Participation session. Professor Michael Kagan presented his paper, "We Live in a Country of UNHCR: The UN Surrogate State as an Alternative Basis for Refugee Rights," as part of a Regulating Immigrant Rights: Comparative Perspectives session. Professor Ann McGinley chaired a panel entitled, "Gender from a Multidimensional Perspective: Masculinities Theories and Law," presented her paper entitled, "Because of Sex," commented on Ruben Garcia's Marginal Workers during Garcia's Author Meets Reader session, and commented on Susan Stiritz's "Hooking Up as a Neoliberal Practice" during a Feminist Legal Theory Collaborative Research Network panel. Finally, Professor Jeff Stempel participated in a roundtable entitled, "Power Grab: The Diminishing of Parties' Authority and Effectiveness through Procedures and Otherwise."

Boyd Faculty Honored at 15th Biennial Conference of the Legal Writing Institute

As reported in the June 2012 edition of Road Scholars, several Boyd faculty members, including Linda Berger, Jennifer Carr, Linda Edwards, Sara Gordon, Lori Johnson, Terry Pollman, and Rebecca Scharf, recently participated in the 15th Biennial Conference of the Legal Writing Institute (LWI) in Palm Desert, CA.

The Boyd School of Law would like to extend special congratulations to Professor Rebecca Scharf (right) who served as Co-Chair of the Conference's Program Committee. With a membership in the thousands and a Biennial Conference attendance of over 600, the LWI is an extremely large professional organization and Professor Scharf did a wonderful job chairing the Program Committee, including preparing the 89-page Conference Program.

Special congratulations also are due to Professor Linda Berger, who was elected in April 2012 to the position of LWI President Elect, and to Professor Terry Pollman, who was elected Assistant Editor in Chief of the Journal of the Legal Writing Institute and to the board of the Association of Legal Writing Directors. Additional congratulations are due to Professor Sara Gordon, whose presentation on schema theory and jury instructions was very well received, and to Professors Linda Berger, Linda Edwards, and Terry Pollman, who presented on scholarship and legal writing to a standing-room only crowd. Congratulations, Boyd colleagues!

Professor Rapoport Quoted in The Wall Street Journal

As reported in the June 2012 edition of Road Scholars, Professor Nancy Rapoport spoke at a public meeting at the Office of the U.S. Trustee (UST) within the Department of Justice (DOJ) about her research on attorney fees in large Chapter 11 bankruptcy cases. The Wall Street Journal recently covered the topic of attorney fees as well as the public meetig at the UST, quoting Professor Rapoport in the process.

As background, the DOJ has grown increasingly restless with attorney fees, which have exceeded $1,000 per hour, paid by companies going through bankruptcy reorganization. The DOJ has advocated an overhaul of the way in which attorneys are paid in bankruptcy cases, and the UST has specifically proposed that law firms make additional disclosures, including fee comparisons between what their firms charge in specific bankruptcy cases and what they charge in other matters (including the highest, lowest and average hourly rates for each). In The Wall Street Journal's recent coverage of the issue, Professor Rapoport was quoted as saying that the proposal is a "'marked improvement' over current attorney fee rules but still lacks teeth. 'Without some well-defined consequences, there's simply no incentive for professionals to take the time to comply.'"

Road Scholars (June 2012)

The Boyd School of Law is pleased to release the June 2012 edition of Road Scholars.

Road Scholars provides monthly information about the speaking engagements and conference participation of Boyd faculty members. During June 2012, Boyd faculty members will attend conferences and give invited talks, guest lectures, and panel presentations in Asheville, NC, Boston, MA, Boulder, CO, Chicago, IL, Denver, CO, Eagan, MN, Hempstead, NY, Honolulu, HI, New York City, NY, Palm Desert, CA, San Antonio, TX, St. Paul, MN, and Washington, DC.

The archives of Road Scholars may be accessed here.