Professor Marketa Trimble's recent guest blog post at Eric Goldman's Technology & Marketing Law Blog concerns a copyright case that the U.S. Supreme Court has scheduled for oral arguments on October 29, 2012.
Professor Trimble explains that "although the focus of the controversy [in Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons] has been on distinguishing between foreign-made and U.S.-made copies, the key policy question in the decision should rather be which principle of copyright exhaustion the United States should adopt for all copies: the principle of international exhaustion or the principle of national exhaustion. ... The question is, whether the Supreme Court could both 1) abandon the distinction between copies based on their place of manufacture, and 2) make a conscious policy choice between the principles of national and international exhaustion. It might seem that the constraints of the language of the Copyright Act would preclude an interpretation that would lead to taking the two steps simultaneously."
The post is available here.
Thursday, October 25, 2012
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Boyd Bar Pass Results for July 2012
Overall Pass Rate:
The Nevada overall pass rate was 69% and includes both attorneys and students. In comparison, in July 2011, the NV overall pass rate was 63%, while in February 2012, the Nevada overall pass rate was 63%.
The Boyd overall pass rate was 76% (94/124) and includes both first-timers and repeaters. In comparison, in July 2011, Boyd's overall pass rate was 81% (87/108), while in February 2012, Boyd's overall pass rate was 67% (30/45).
First time Student Takers:
The Nevada pass rate for first-time takers: 77% In comparison, in July 2011, the Nevada pass rate for first-time student takers was 79%, while in February 2012 the Nevada pass rate for first-time student takers was 67%.
The Boyd pass rate for first-time takers was 79% (89/113). In comparison, in July 2011, Boyd's pass rate for first-time takers was 87%, while in February 2012 Boyd's pass rate for first-time takers was 78%.
Repeat Takers:
The Nevada pass rate for repeating student takers was 40%. In comparison, in July 2011, the Nevada Pass rate for repeating student takers was 22% and in February 2012, the Nevada pass rate for repeating student takers was 34%.
The Boyd pass rate for repeating student takers was 45% (5/11). In comparison, in July 2011, the Boyd pass rate for repeating student takers was 50% and in February 2012, Boyd's pass rate for repeating student takers was 50%.
Many thanks to Stacy Shiroma, Pramate Churchville, and DeShun Harris for helping me crunch these numbers.
Jennifer Carr, Director, Academic Success Program
Sunday, October 21, 2012
Professor Lazos Publishes Latest Book Chapter in Presumed Incompetent
Holding Back Women and Minorities: The Perils of Doing Gender and Race in the Classroom," in Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for Women in Academia (Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs et al. eds., Utah State University Press).
Presumed Incompetent is a pathbreaking account of the intersecting roles of race, gender, and class in the working lives of women faculty of color. Through personal narratives and qualitative empirical studies, more than 40 authors expose the daunting challenges faced by academic women of color as they navigate the often hostile terrain of higher education, including hiring, promotion, tenure, and relations with students, colleagues, and administrators. The narratives are filled with wit, wisdom, and concrete recommendations, and provide a window into the struggles of professional women in a racially stratified but increasingly multicultural America.
At Boyd, Professor Lazos serves as the Justice Myron Leavitt Professor of Law. A constitutional law and critical race scholar, Professor Lazos has written exhaustively on how constitutional norms can accommodate a new American reality that is increasingly multicultural, multiracial, and multiethnic. These articles have appeared in respected journals such as the Indiana Law Journal, Maryland Law Review, Ohio State Law Journal, Oregon Law Review, and Tulane Law Review.
Professor McGinley Places Latest Law Review Article in the Hofstra Labor and Employment Law Journal
"Beyond the Water Cooler" analyzes the multitude of issues concerning employees' use of social media outside of work and the clash between employers' interests in maintaining effective management control and the employees' interests in free speech. The article makes recommendations about how to interpret the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) to protect employee speech that furthers democracy in the workplace, and proposes a new federal statute that protects employee speech that goes beyond the concerted activity protected by the NLRA. "Beyond the Water Cooler" also considers the right of individuals to be protected from illegal harassment at work and the role that employers play in this protection. Finally, the article recognizes employers' interests in maintaining efficiency, good relations among workers and consumer respect for their products.
Professor McGinley currently serves as William S. Boyd Professor of Law at Boyd School of Law. Among dozens of other articles, book chapters, and forthcoming works, Professor McGinley is author of Masculinities and the Law: A Multidimensional Approach (with Frank Rudy Cooper), published by NYU Press in 2012, and Disability Law: Cases, Materials, Problems (with Laura Rothstein), the fifth edition of which was published by LexisNexis in 2010.
At Boyd, Professor McGinley teaches Torts, Employment Discrimination, Employment Law, and Disability Law, and publishes articles on gender, employment discrimination, and employment law.
Professor Blakesley Publishes Latest Article in the Criminal Law Bulletin
Professor Blakesley holds The Cobeaga Law Firm Professorship at Boyd School of Law. He received his J.D. from the University of Utah and his Master of Laws and his Doctorate (Doctor of the Science of Law) from Columbia University. He also received his M.A. in International Law & Diplomacy from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, and his B.A. from the University of Utah.
Professor Blakesley has written many books, including Terrorism And Anti-terrorism: A Normative And Practical Assessment (2006); Global Issues In Criminal Law (co-authored, Thomson West, 2007); The International Legal System: Cases and Materials (co-authored, Foundation Press 5th Ed. 2001 and earlier editions); Terrorism, Drugs, International Law And The Protection Of Human Liberty (1992) (Part of the Innovations In International Law Series, Developed and Run by Richard Falk, Princeton University); Louisiana And Comparative Family Law (a treatise, 1997); and Contemporary Family Law (co-authored three volume treatise of family law throughout the United States, 1988). Professor Blakesley's work has been cited by state supreme courts, federal courts and many nationally and internationally renowned scholars.
At Boyd, Professor Blakesley teaches courses in International Law, Comparative Law, Comparative Criminal Law, International Criminal Law, International Humanitarian Law, International Human Rights Law, Family Law, and Terrorism.
Professors Gross and McClure Represent Boyd at WestPac Annual Meeting
Professor Gross, who currently serves as Vice President and President-Elect of WestPac, as well as Chair of the Education Committee, arranged the program for the annual meeting. A founding member of the Law Library Faculty at Boyd, Professor Gross also serves as Reference and Collection Management Librarian at the Wiener-Rogers Law Library.
Professor McClure serves as Co-Editor of the WestPac newsletter (WestPac News) and as an ex-officio member of the WestPac Executive Board. Professor McClure joined Boyd's Law Library Faculty in 2009 and currently serves as Head of Research and Curriculum Services.
Thursday, October 18, 2012
Professor Garcia to Be Featured in Friday Law Talk
In Marginal Workers, published by NYU Press in early 2012, Professor Garcia argues that the increase of private sector workplace protections over the last century has resulted in a paradox -- workers today are more vulnerable than they have been in decades. This is even more true of workers who are especially at risk in the workplace, such as undocumented workers, temporary workers, noncitizens, workers of color, and women. Worse still, the groups who fall into these cracks in the legal system often do not have the political power necessary to change the laws for better protection.
In his Friday Law Talk, Professor Garcia will describe his theory of Marginal Workers and explain why human rights dialogue might be able to change attitudes about worker protections and provide better protection for marginal workers, and all workers, in the process.
Professor Garcia will be joined in his talk by two leading advocates of workplace justice in the Las Vegas area: D. Taylor, Secretary-Treasurer of the Culinary Workers Union Local 226, UNITE-HERE, AFL-CIO, and Africa Sanchez, Esq. Mr. Taylor will address the themes of the book in the context of his experience in the leadership of the largest private sector union in the hospitality industry for two decades. Ms. Sanchez, former general counsel of the Clark County Education Association, will apply some of the insights of the book to current controversies about the proper level of workplace protections for teachers and other government workers.
The Friday Law Talk, which will offer one continuing legal education (CLE) credit, will run from 4:00 to 5:15 p.m. on Friday, November 16, 2012, in Room 105 at Boyd School of Law. Registration and additional information is available here.
Tuesday, October 16, 2012
Now seeking nominations and applications for the position of Dean of Boyd Law.
See here for ad. If you want to read about why the current interim dean is not (and won't be) a candidate for the position, see here. We're looking forward to seeing lots of good candidates.
Saturday, October 13, 2012
Professor Tovino Places New Articles in the Oregon Law Review and the Penn State Law Review
"Gone Too Far: Federal Regulation of Health Care Attorneys" examines the propriety of Congress's decision to extend the application of the HIPAA Privacy Rule to outside counsel who represent health industry clients. As background, outside health care counsel frequently obtain medical records, billing records, health insurance claims records, and other records containing individually identifiable health information in the course of representing health industry clients in medical malpractice, licensure, certification, accreditation, fraud and abuse, peer review, and other civil, criminal, and administrative health law matters. "Gone Too Far" is the first to argue that state rules of professional conduct, not federal health information confidentiality regulations, should govern outside health care counsel’s use and disclosure of confidential client information.
"Conflicts of Interest in Health Care and Health Law" compares and contrasts illustrative conflicts of interest that arise in the contexts of clinical medicine, human subjects research, and the practice of health law. After identifying strengths and weaknesses in state and federal provisions designed to manage such conflicts, the article proposes revisions to federal regulations governing human subjects research and State Rules of Professional Conduct.
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Professor Main Places His Latest Article in the Cornell International Law Journal
As background, dual trends are colliding in U.S. courts. The first trend is a tidal wave of cases requiring courts to engage the domestic laws of foreign legal systems; globalization is the principal driver of this escalation. The second trend is a profound and ever-increasing skepticism of our ability to understand foreign law; the literature of pluralism and postmodernism has illuminated the uniquely local, language-dependent, and culturally embedded nature of law. Courts cope with this dissonance by finding some way to avoid the application of foreign law. But these outcomes are problematic because parties are denied access to court or have their rights and responsibilities determined pursuant to the wrong law.
Professor Main's new article offers an exposition of lexical meaning to explain the source of these oppositional trends and to illuminate possible solutions. Legal words and ideas transcend geographic, social, and cultural boundaries. For this reason, the words of another legal system look familiar and, thus, appear knowable to an outsider. Yet autonomous national legal systems tend to tailor the meanings of these shared words for idiosyncratic purposes. Thus ironically — even paradoxically — the more commonly a word is used, the less predictable is its meaning. This differentiation of meanings makes actual knowledge of the foreign law difficult to achieve.
As a framework for examining this phenomenon, Professor Main's article demonstrates that the common meaning of a word is a limited resource. The common meaning of a word erodes when legal systems assign a new meaning to a shared word. Idiosyncratic meanings are useful and generative, but they also introduce an important negative externality because the common meaning of a word is essentially the starting point for measuring the meaning of that word in a foreign system. The more robust the common meaning, the lower the measurement costs. The prototypical solutions to common-pool problems — privatization and regulation — are infeasible here. And ubiquitous efforts to unify, approximate, or harmonize laws tend to exacerbate the problem rather than help solve it. According to Professor Main, "We could drop the pretense that we are able to understand foreign law and eliminate the demand for it. Or, if the doctrines are going to presume familiarity with foreign law, we must address the supply-side and ensure that courts are, in fact, better able to ascertain foreign law."
Professor Main, who joined the faculty in 2012 and serves as William S. Boyd Professor of Law, is a leading figure in the field of civil procedure. His books have been published by Aspen, West, and Oxford University Press. One of these books, Civil Procedure: Doctrine, Practice, and Context, is now in its fourth edition, and is one of the most popular casebooks in the field.
Professor Main’s scholarship has also been published in the Washington University Law Review, the University of Washington Law Review, the Notre Dame Law Review, and other respected journals. Most of his scholarship explores dynamics at the intersection of topics in procedure, globalization, and language.
Professor Berger Places Her Latest Article in Legal Communication & Rhetoric
As background, cognitive psychology has given judicial intuition a bad reputation. Most recent studies conclude that judges allow their intuitions to mislead them when they make judgments about character, credibility, or the future. Judicial hunches are thought to rely on biases, flashes of insight to be blind to unconscious influences.
Applying a neglected branch of decision-making research, Professor Berger argues that judicial intuition has been misunderstood and its real value under-appreciated. Although intuition may lead our judgments astray, intuition is key to the very different process of problem solving: it unlocks doors and opens up pathways. In her article, Professor Berger reconciles claims from the heuristics and biases branch of cognitive psychology (intuition leads to mistakes and overconfidence) with findings from more naturalistic decision-making studies (intuition is the way that real-world experts identify options for testing).
According to Professor Berger, "When judges are solving problems - and they are doing so when they are finding, interpreting, applying, and making law - both the lawyers seeking to persuade them and the judges themselves should apply the lessons learned by psychologists who have studied expert decision making in the field. Like problem solving itself, persuasion is rooted in intuition: visual and verbal cues prompt decision makers to recognize parallel or alternative patterns and paths. Once begun, persuasion continues through visualization: information guides decision makers to imagine the outcome of fitting pieces into patterns and moving events along paths. Analogy, metaphor, and storytelling are the sources of power that generate both parts of this problem solving process: intuition and visualization."
Professor Berger joined the faculty in 2011, bringing expertise in Legal Writing, Law and Rhetoric, and First Amendment. Prior to joining UNLV, Professor Berger taught at Mercer University School of Law in Macon, GA; the University of San Diego; and Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego.
Monday, October 8, 2012
Professor Trimble Places Her Latest Article in the Emory International Law Review
As background, concentrating patent litigation that involves parallel patents in a single national court would improve the enforcement of patent rights by lowering litigation costs and enhancing the consistency of judgments concerning patents covering the same invention in multiple countries. However, any concentration of patent litigation is difficult because of the rule mandating that only courts in the country where a patent was granted may adjudicate the validity of the patent. In the European Union, the 2006 judgment in GAT v. LuK appeared to solidify this notion by holding that the exclusive jurisdiction rule, now in Article 22.4 of the Brussels I Regulation, applies to any decision on patent validity. However, the recent decision in Solvay opens the interesting possibility that preliminary assessments of patent validity could be made even by courts outside the country of the patent grant. Professor Trimble's article thus discusses whether Solvay could be extended to cover the assessments of validity that German courts conduct in infringement proceedings. If Solvay were to apply to these assessments, German courts could become the natural centers of litigation of infringements of multiple countries’ patents in Europe.
The full text of Professor Trimble's article may be downloaded from SSRN.
Professor Trimble joined Boyd's full-time faculty in 2010, bringing expertise in Conflict of Laws, Patent Law, Cyberlaw, International Intellectual Property Law, Private International Law, Intellectual Property, Copyright Law, European Union Law, and Comparative Law. She is a graduate of Stanford Law School (J.S.D., 2010; J.S.M., 2006) and the Law School of Charles University in Prague (Ph.D., 2002; JUDr., 2001; and Mgr., 1997).
Uncensored Voices: Celebrating Literary Freedom
By Jeanne Price
On Saturday, October 6, the ACLU of Nevada, together with the Las Vegas Clark County Library District, UNLV’s Black Mountain Institute, Nevada Humanities, the Las Vegas Review-Journal, and the American Institute for Graphic Arts, hosted "Uncensored Voices: Celebrating Literary Freedom." The event marked the celebration of Banned Books Week in Las Vegas and focused on censorship's past, present, and future. The event, held at the Clark County Library, opened with remarks by Jeanne Goodrich, Director of the Las Vegas Clark County Library District, and Dane Clausen, Executive Director of ACLU of Nevada.
Discussions were moderated by Steve Sebelius, political columnist at the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Panelists included Tony Diaz, author and founder of the Librotraficante Movement, Professor Jeanne Price, Director of the Wiener-Rogers Law Library at the William S. Boyd School of Law, Dr. Auggie Romero, Director of Student Equity at the Tucson Unified School District, and Trevor Timm, an activist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Much of the discussions centered on recent state and federal legislative initiatives focused on, in the case of state legislation, public school curriculum, and, at the federal level, national security and restrictions on access to information.
On Friday, the panelists spoke on KNPR’s State of Nevada about censorship issues in the news today.
The Banned Books program anticipates the opening of the Vegas Valley Book Festival on November 1, 2012.
On Saturday, October 6, the ACLU of Nevada, together with the Las Vegas Clark County Library District, UNLV’s Black Mountain Institute, Nevada Humanities, the Las Vegas Review-Journal, and the American Institute for Graphic Arts, hosted "Uncensored Voices: Celebrating Literary Freedom." The event marked the celebration of Banned Books Week in Las Vegas and focused on censorship's past, present, and future. The event, held at the Clark County Library, opened with remarks by Jeanne Goodrich, Director of the Las Vegas Clark County Library District, and Dane Clausen, Executive Director of ACLU of Nevada.
Discussions were moderated by Steve Sebelius, political columnist at the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Panelists included Tony Diaz, author and founder of the Librotraficante Movement, Professor Jeanne Price, Director of the Wiener-Rogers Law Library at the William S. Boyd School of Law, Dr. Auggie Romero, Director of Student Equity at the Tucson Unified School District, and Trevor Timm, an activist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Much of the discussions centered on recent state and federal legislative initiatives focused on, in the case of state legislation, public school curriculum, and, at the federal level, national security and restrictions on access to information.
On Friday, the panelists spoke on KNPR’s State of Nevada about censorship issues in the news today.
The Banned Books program anticipates the opening of the Vegas Valley Book Festival on November 1, 2012.
Professor Berkheiser Named to List of Top Lawyers
Berkheiser serves as Professor of Law, Director of Clinical Programs, and Director of the Juvenile Justice Clinic at Boyd School of Law. A founding faculty member, Professor Berkheiser's areas of expertise include clinical legal education and teaching, criminal procedure, juvenile law, criminal law, and appellate law.
Congratulations, Mary!
Professor Bartrum's Latest Essay Published in the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law
Professor Bartrum's essay contends that "one of the basic tenets of the 'New Originalism' -- the so-called 'contribution thesis' -- compromises our underlying commitment to the rule of law. By locating some binding substantive content of constitutional language in a historical record beyond the text itself, originalism undermines the fundamental concepts of formal legality and public accessibility. With these issues in mind, th[is] essay concludes that originalism is not a philosophical account of how the Constitution has meaning in our legal system, but is instead a judicial ideology intended to promote the constitutional policy judgments of an earlier generation."
The full text of Professor Bartrum's essay may be downloaded from SSRN.
Professor Bartrum joined the faculty in 2011, bringing expertise in constitutional law, constitutional theory, constitutional history, and law and religion. He taught previously at Drake Law School, Vermont Law School, and at Yale Law School as the Irving Ribicoff Fellow.
Sunday, October 7, 2012
Professor Price Places Her New Article in the Cleveland State Law Review
The article focuses on the role played by definitions in a reader’s understanding and application of a statute. Despite the frequency with which terms are defined in the United States Code (the Code includes more than 25,000 defined terms), statutory definitions remain relatively unexamined. Professor Price frames her analysis by distinguishing two functions served by legislation – statutes are both communication vehicles and instruments of governance. She suggests that a better understanding of the effect of definition on a reader’s interaction with a text, coupled with an appreciation of the different roles served by definition, will enable legislators to draft more useful definitions and enable interpreters to better apply those definitions
Professor Price, who also serves as Director of the Wiener-Rogers Law Library, joined the faculty in 2008. She teaches Research Methods and enjoys focusing on information sources and strategies in business and commercial contexts. As illustrated by her new law review article, Professor Price's research interests focus on law and language, law-related taxonomies, and cross-language information retrieval.
Before coming to UNLV, Professor Price served as Associate Director of the Tarlton Law Library and Lecturer at The University of Texas School of Law as well as Adjunct Professor at The University of Texas School of Information. A member of the Texas Bar, Professor Price practiced corporate and securities law in Houston and overseas for nearly ten years. Professor Price is a graduate of Yale University (B.A.), The University of Texas (J.D.), and the University of Maryland (M.L.S.).
UNLV Faculty Members to Participate in Health Care Reform Event
The program, which will offer 3.5 CLE and CME units, will feature presentations by Connie Akridge (Past President, State Bar of Nevada, and Partner, Holland and Hart), Chris Cochran (Chair and Associate Professor, Department of Health Care Administration and Policy, UNLV), Catherine Cortez Masto (Nevada Attorney General), Dr. Mitchell Forman (Dean, Touro University), Jon Hager (Executive Director, Silver State Health Insurance Exchange), Dr. Florence Jameson (President, Nevada State Medical Association), Scott Kipper (Nevada Insurance Commissioner), Kate Leone (Senior Health Counsel, Senator Harry Reid's Office), Larry Matheis (Executive Director, Nevada State Medical Association), Dr. Thomas Schwenk (Dean, University of Nevada School of Medicine), and Stacey Tovino (Associate Dean for Faculty Development and Research and Lincy Professor of Law, Boyd School of Law, UNLV).
"Health Care Reform: Next Steps for Nevada" will be held on November 16, 2012, between 1:00 and 5:30 p.m. at The Smith Center, 361 Symphony Park Avenue, Las Vegas, Nevada, 89106. A reception from 5:30 to 6:30 will follow. Registration information is available here.
Saltman Center Presents Film Screening of Streetball Hafla
Streetball Hafla, which explores how basketball can foster harmonious relationships between Jews and Arabs in Israel, will be discussed by panelists Sasha Nizgoda, Gilad Berman, Mohammad Nasereddin, Ricky Sobers, Tom Jackovic, and Michael Saltman.
The film screening and panel discussion, which are free and open to the public, will be held on October 23, 2012, at 7:00 p.m. at the UNLV Student Union Theatre. No RSVP is required. A movie trailer for Streetball Hafla is available here. For more information, call (702) 895-2428 or visit the Saltman Center for Conflict Resolution online here.
Boyd to Present 'Hot Topics' CLE
The Boyd School of Law is very pleased to announce that it will present a 'Hot Topics' continuing legal education (CLE) program on October 12, 2012.
The program, which is approved for 2 CLE credits and .5 ethics credit, will include presentations by Nancy Rapoport, Interim Dean and Gordon Silver Profesor of Law ("The Ten Commandments: Avoiding Judicial Wrath for Practitioners"), Ngai Pindell, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Professor of Law ("The Power of Eminent Domain to Address the Local Mortgage Crisis"), and Stacey Tovino, Associate Dean for Faculty Development and Research and Lincy Professor of Law ("The HIPAA Privacy Rule and Business Associates: Review and Update").
The 'Hot Topics' CLE will be held on Friday, October 12, 2012, between 3:30 and 5:30 p.m. at the Thomas & Mack Moot Court Facility at Boyd School of Law. Registration information is available here.
The program, which is approved for 2 CLE credits and .5 ethics credit, will include presentations by Nancy Rapoport, Interim Dean and Gordon Silver Profesor of Law ("The Ten Commandments: Avoiding Judicial Wrath for Practitioners"), Ngai Pindell, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Professor of Law ("The Power of Eminent Domain to Address the Local Mortgage Crisis"), and Stacey Tovino, Associate Dean for Faculty Development and Research and Lincy Professor of Law ("The HIPAA Privacy Rule and Business Associates: Review and Update").
The 'Hot Topics' CLE will be held on Friday, October 12, 2012, between 3:30 and 5:30 p.m. at the Thomas & Mack Moot Court Facility at Boyd School of Law. Registration information is available here.
Friday, October 5, 2012
Boyd to Host 'Academe Meets Bar' Event
The event, which will offer 1.0 hours of continuing legal education (CLE), will feature talks by four Boyd faculty members, including Professors Linda Edwards, Jeff Stempel, Jean Sternlight, and Marketa Trimble.
Linda Edwards, E.L. Cord Foundation Professor of Law, will discuss her recent book, Readings in Persuasion: Briefs That Changed the World. Jeff Stempel, Doris S. and Theodore B. Lee Professor of Law, will discuss his recent book, Fundamentals of Litigation Practice. Jean Sternlight, Director of the Saltman Center for Conflict Resolution and Michael and Sonja Saltman Professor of Law, will discuss her recent book, Psychology for Lawyers: Understanding the Human Factors in Negotiation, Litigation, and Decision Making. Finally, Marketa Trimble, Associate Professor of Law, will discuss her recent book, Global Patents: Limits of Transnational Enforcement.
The event will take place on November 1, 2012, from 4:00 to 5:20 p.m. in the Thomas & Mack Moot Court Facility. The event is free and open to the public.
Thursday, October 4, 2012
Las Vegas City Life Interviews Professor Griffin
Entitled, "A Local Law School Prof Is at the Forefront of the Debate over Contraception Insurance and Religion," the interview begins with Professor Griffin's decision to write a letter that was signed by 170 law professors across the country and entered into the Congressional Record on August 1, 2012, at pages E1370 and E1371. In the letter, which defends free contraception coverage under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), Professor Griffin contends that ACA protects women's rights and does not infringe on religious freedom:
"The way I think of religious freedom is to say we have the free exercise clause, and although there are few cases that say the government has to keep complete hands off religious organizations, the dominant theme has been that religions need to follow the law, like everybody else. Otherwise every citizen would be a law unto himself. If the drastic end of my religion said 'sacrifice human beings,' that shouldn’t entitle me to do it. And so if you move down from the very extreme to 'well, if my religion says I can harm people, or if my religion says I can treat my employees any way I want,' we shouldn’t assume the Constitution protects that kind of freedom. What the Constitution protects is laws that aren’t based on religion and that let us all live together."
Professor Griffin concludes her interview by stating, "One of the reasons we have the establishment clause is to keep churches from having too much power in our government. The First Amendment is supposed to protect individuals. The individuals here are women of different faiths, or no faith, and of different conscience. They should be the ones who get to make decisions about their reproductive freedom, not their employers."
Professor Griffin currently serves as William S. Boyd Professor of Law. She is author of Law and Religion: Cases and Materials, editor of Law and Religion: Cases in Context, and author of numerous articles and book chapters about law, religion, politics and ethics. Her most recent law review article, "The Sins of Hosanna-Tabor," forthcoming in the Indiana Law Journal, addresses the Supreme Court’s recent First Amendment decision. Professor Griffin is a graduate of Yale University (M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D., Religious Studies) and Stanford Law School.
Monday, October 1, 2012
September 2012 Issue of Boyd Briefs Released
The Boyd School of Law is very pleased to announce the release of Volume 1, Issue 2, of Boyd Briefs.
Issued on a monthly basis, Boyd Briefs provides information about the scholarly and other activities of Boyd faculty members during the previous month. Illustrative entries announce new faculty publications, the drafting of briefs and uniform legislation, submission to administrative agencies of comments on proposed regulations, Clinic victories, the organization and hosting of academic conferences, appointments and elections of Boyd faculty members to local, national, and international boards, offices, and societies, and other honors and awards.
The September 2012 issue of Boyd Briefs announces several new book contracts and law review placements, the hosting of several conferences and festivals, and many other faculty honors and awards. Congratulations, Boyd faculty members!
The Boyd Briefs archives may be accessed here.
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