Professor Traum Places Latest Article in the Florida Law Review

The Boyd School of Law is very pleased to announce that Professor Anne Traum placed her latest article, "Using Outcomes to Reframe Guilty Plea Adjudication," in the Florida Law Review.

The abstract for Professor Traum's article provides:  "The Supreme Court’s 2012 decisions in Lafler v. Cooper and Frye v. Missouri lay the groundwork for a new approach to judicial regulation of guilty pleas that considers outcomes.  These cases confirm that courts enjoy robust authority to protect defendants’ Sixth Amendment right to effective counsel and that plea outcomes are particularly relevant to identifying and remedying prejudicial ineffective assistance in plea bargaining. The Court’s reliance on outcome-based prejudice analysis and suggestions for trial court level reforms to prevent Sixth Amendment violations set the stage for trial courts to take a more active, substantive role in regulating guilty pleas. This Article traces these significant doctrinal shifts and argues that they supply both impetus and authority for trial courts to regulate guilty pleas by monitoring plea outcomes. This proposal builds on market-based concepts while strengthening the judicial role in safeguarding constitutional values. By monitoring outcomes, courts can detect and correct factors in the plea market, like prosecutorial overreaching and deficient counsel, which can distort the parties’ ability to negotiate fair results. Outcomes monitoring is justified for practical reasons because it builds on courts’ expertise and unique place in the plea markets, it can be implemented at the trial court level, it reinforces courts’ traditional sentencing authority, and it can prevent litigation of prejudicial ineffective assistance in post-conviction proceedings."

Professor Traum's Florida Law Review article follows three other Traum articles recently placed in Hastings Law Journal, Cardozo Law Review, and Maryland Law Review.  See Anne R. Traum, Mass Incarceration at Sentencing, 64 Hastings L.J. 423 (2013); Anne R. Traum, Constitutionalizing Immigration Law on Its Own Path, 33 Cardozo L. Rev. 491 (2011); and Anne R. Traum, Last Best Chance for the Great Writ: Equitable Tolling and Federal Habeas Corpus, 68 Md. L. Rev. 545 (2009)).

Congratulations, Anne! 

Rankings study with very small sample size acknowledges problems.

In yesterday's TaxProf Blog post about various "top 10" rankings (here), we were dismayed to see Boyd listed in a category in which it most emphatically doesn't belong.  When I wrote to the author of these top ten lists, he responded by asking TaxProf Blog to add an asterisk to the part of the post dealing with "Career Baristas":

* Caution is in order for any ordinal ranking, but in a category like this, where the percentages are low, small numbers may appear large. For instance, the University of Akron has just 9 graduates in this category but ranks first; the University of North Dakota, just 5 graduates but ranks second; the University of Nevada—Las Vegas, just 6 graduates, but ranks third.

What are the facts?  Here's what I told Prof. Muller in an email yesterday:

Here's why Boyd’s inclusion on the Top 10 list of “Career Baristas” is materially misleading.  The percentage of graduates in non-professional, full-time, long-term positions listed for each of the schools in this “Top 10” is minuscule compared to the graduates employed in other types of jobs.  At Boyd, in a class of 128 graduates, six graduates (4.7%) were employed in non-professional, full-time, long-term positions as of February 15, 2012.  Based on these six graduates, Boyd is listed as the #3 top school in the nation for “Career Baristas.”  Meanwhile, 85 (66.4%) of Boyd’s class of 2011 was employed in full-time, long-term positions for which bar passage is required, and another 6 (4.7%) were employed in full-time, long-term positions where a JD provided an advantage.  A full 75% of the class, 96 students total, was employed in full-time or part-time long term positions that require bar passage or a JD.  Further, none of these positions are funded by the law school. 

The Top 10 list itself creates confusion because it is based on such a small percentage of the overall class.  It is particularly misleading in the case of Boyd because it is based on six graduates, providing an incomplete and distorted view of the employment prospects for Boyd students.

I'm glad that he added an asterisk.  (I'd have loved a broader retraction, but as long as folks understand the real story, that's the point of my having written to him.)

Nevada Law Journal is cited by the First Circuit.

In United States v. Sparks, 013 WL 1197741, *3 (1st Cir. 2013), the court cites one of the articles published in the Nevada Law Journal: Caleb Mason, New Police Surveillance Technologies and the Good-Faith Exception: Warrantless GPS Tracker Evidence After United States v. Jones, 13 Nev. L.J. 60 (2012). 

Congratulations, Professor Mason and the Nevada Law Journal!

Recent Publications by Professor Trimble

The Boyd School of Law is pleased to announce that Professor Marketa Trimble has several recent publications in the areas of intellectual property, international law, and gaming law.

First, Professor Trimble completed a book chapter titled "Proposal for an International Convention on Online Gambling."  This chapter, which will be published in Regulating Internet Gaming: Challenges and Opportunities (Ngai Pindell & Anthony Cabot eds., UNLV Gaming Press 2013), presents the outline of an international convention that will facilitate cooperation among countries in enforcement of their online gambling regulations while allowing the countries to maintain their individual legal approaches to online gambling.  A copy of Professor Trimble's chapter may be downloaded from SSRN here. 

Second, Professor Trimble completed an article titled "Injunctive Relief, Equity, and Misuse of Rights in U.S. Patent Law."  This article, published in 2012 by GRUR International, a law journal of the German Association for the Protection of Intellectual Property, discusses recent adjustments that U.S. courts have made to the doctrine of patent misuse and the availability of injunctive relief in patent infringement cases.  An abstract for the article is available from Scholarly Commons here.

Third, Professor Trimble updated and edited a book chapter titled "Extraterritorial Enforcement."  This chapter analyzes three forms of extraterritorial enforcement of intellectual property rights, including the extraterritorial application of intellectual property laws to acts committed outside protecting countries, the extraterritorial litigation of rights under the laws of foreign countries, and cross-border enforcement of judgments rendered in intellectual property cases.  This chapter will appear in Intellectual Property in Common Law and Civil Law (Toshiko Takenaka ed., 2013) later this spring.

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).

Eighth Annual Colloquium on Scholarship in Labor and Employment Law

The Boyd School of Law is pleased to announce that it will host the Eighth Annual Colloquium on Current Scholarship in Labor and Employment Law on September 27 and 28, 2013, in Las Vegas, Nevada.

 

The Colloquium will begin with a breakfast at the UNLV Tam Alumni Center on Friday morning. Participants will workshop papers all day Friday through Saturday afternoon. Breakfast, lunch, and break services will be provided on site at Boyd School of Law on Friday; breakfast, break services, and a wrap-up dessert reception will be offered on Saturday (lunch on your own). On Friday evening, a special dinner and panel discussion will be held at the Culinary Union (Local 226) banquet hall.

 

The Colloquium will offer an informal setting in which participants can discuss works-in-progress and exchange ideas. The friendly, low-key atmosphere and the opportunity for participants to socialize with colleagues who specialize in labor and employment law make this gathering especially fun and valuable.

 

For complete details and to register for the Colloquium, please click here. Questions regarding the Colloquium may be directed to Ann McGinley, William S. Boyd Professor of Law, Boyd School of Law, UNLV, and Ruben Garcia, Professor of Law, William S. Boyd School of Law, UNLV.

Professor Anderson Publishes Special Series in the National Bar Association Magazine

The Boyd School of Law is very pleased to announce that Professor Rachel Anderson recently published four new articles in issue 3, volume 18, of the National Bar Association Magazine (Fall 2012/Winter 2013).

Part of "Nevada 2012: A Special Series on African Americans in Nevada Politics - Past and Present," Professor Anderson's pieces are titled "A Short Road to Statehood, A Long Road to Washington" (page 16), "Blacks and Voting Rights in Nevada" (page 17), "Blacks in the Nevada Legal Profession" (page 19), and "Blacks in Nevada Elections" (page 21).

Congratulations, Rachel! 

Boyd School of Law in top 20 for article placement

The William S. Boyd School of Law at UNLV ranks 17th in the nation for per capita productivity of articles in top journals according to a study conducted by the Roger Williams University (RWU) School of Law.

In the study, administrators at RWU Law compared the scholarly output in selected journals of all law schools that are ABA-accredited, members of the Association of American Law Schools, and were ranked below the 50th spot in the U.S. News & World Report 2013 rankings.

Qualifying articles were those published since 1993. Faculty lists included all full-time tenured and tenure-track academic faculty in 2011-2012 who were expected to produce scholarship as a major part of their duties.

For more information on the study, click here. For complete rankings, click here.

DANIEL W. HAMILTON SELECTED AS NEXT DEAN OF BOYD LAW SCHOOL

UNLV President Neal Smatresk announced today that Daniel W. Hamilton has been selected as the third dean of the William S. Boyd School of Law. Hamilton, associate dean for faculty development and professor of law and history at the University of Illinois College of Law, will start July 1, 2013.

“Dan Hamilton will bring with him his sterling record as a scholar, his exceptional experience as a teacher, and his experience in working with faculty, students and alumni,” said UNLV Executive Vice President and Provost John Valery White, who preceded Hamilton as law school dean.

Hamilton received a Ph.D. in American legal history from Harvard University, a J.D. from George Washington University and a bachelor's degree from Oberlin College. An elected member of the Board of Directors for the American Society for Legal History, Hamilton was a Golieb Fellow in Legal History at New York University School of Law, has been a visiting scholar at the American Bar Foundation, and served as past chair of the Legal History Section of the Association of American Law Schools.

Hamilton says the Boyd School of Law’s talented faculty, dedicated staff, and engaging student body drew him to apply.  “I am extremely proud to become the third dean of the William S. Boyd School of Law, and I’m looking forward to continuing Boyd Law’s tradition of excellent teaching, outstanding scholarship and active engagement with the academy and the community,” Hamilton said.

Hamilton researches and writes primarily on American property ideology and the legal and constitutional issues during the Civil War.  He has written numerous articles and reviews on American legal history, with works in Civil War History, the Chicago-Kent Law Review, the Journal of Supreme Court History, the Journal of American History, the Journal of Southern History, the Journal of Interdisciplinary History, the Journal of National Security Law, and the Law and History Review.  His book, The Limits of Sovereignty: Property Confiscation in the Union and the Confederacy During the Civil War, was published in 2007 by the University of Chicago Press.

Hamilton succeeds John Valery White, who moved from the deanship of the William S. Boyd School of Law to the position of Executive Vice President and Provost at UNLV in 2012. Nancy Rapoport, Gordon Silver Professor of Law at UNLV, served as interim dean during the search.

The Boyd School of Law has been among U.S. News & World Report’s top 100 law schools in the nation for seven consecutive years and this year achieved its highest-ever ranking. The school ranked 68th nationally overall, third in legal writing program, and 11th in the dispute resolution.

Professor McGinley to Give University Forum Lecture Today

The Boyd School of Law is pleased to announce that Professor Ann McGinley is giving a University Forum Lecture today (Tuesday, March 19, 2013) from 7:30 to 8:30 p.m. at UNLV's Marjorie Barrick Museum/Harry Reid Center. 

Professor McGinley's lecture, which is presented by the College of Liberal Arts and sponsored by the UNLV Women's Council, is titled "The End of Men: Myth or Reality?" Drawing on law, popular culture, and concepts of masculinity, Professor McGinley will challenge Hanna Rosin's assertion in "The End of Men" that women will soon overtake men in blue-collar and white-collar workplaces. Professor McGinley will explore changing relationships between the sexes and how the law has affected gender dynamics at work. She will also examine how the increasing sexualization of Las Vegas casino jobs affects men’s and women’s job prospects and relationships.

The event is free and open to the public. Additional information is available here.

Congratulations to Boyd Law students Morgan Petrelli and Marisa Rodriguez-Shapoval!

Their presentation, Building Luxury Amongst Squalor: A Case Study of Migrant Construction Workers in India, won first place in UNLV's Graduate & Professional Student Research Forum on Saturday.  Thanks to Professor Fatma Marouf's International Human Rights & Comparative Law Practicum in India, Morgan and Marisa were able to convey the lessons that they learned from the course--and convey them well enough to beat students from several other programs at UNLV.

Professors Cammett and MacDowell Place New Article in Violence Against Women

The Boyd School of Law is very pleased to announce that Professor Ann Cammett and Professor Elizabeth MacDowell placed one of their new articles, "Models of Invisibility: Rendering Domestic and Other Gendered Violence Visible through Clinical Teaching," in volume 19 (forthcoming 2013) of the peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary journal Violence Against Women.

"Models of Invisibility" describes Professor Cammett and Professor MacDowell's experience creating the Family Justice Clinic at Boyd School of Law and illustrates how they made gendered violence more visible to students through clinical teaching even in cases in which gendered violence was not part of the presenting legal problem. The article will appear in a special issue of Violence Against Women that is devoted to teaching domestic violence. The issue is co-edited by University of Miami School of Law Professor Donna Coker and Arizona State University School of Social Transformation Professor Madelaine Adelman.

Congratulations, Anni and Elizabeth!

Professor Bartrum Publishes Two New Articles; Has Two Additional Articles Forthcoming

The Boyd School of Law is pleased to announce that Professor Ian Bartrum has two articles that recently went to press and two additional articles that are forthcoming shortly.

The first new article, titled "Originalist Ideology and the Rule of Law," 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. A copy of this article, recently published in volume 15 of Heightened Scrutiny, the official online companion of the University of Pennsylvania's Journal of Constitutional Law, is available here.

The second new article, titled "The Ministerial Exception and the Problem of Religious Sovereignty," explores potential theoretical limits on the jurisdictional independence of religious sovereignty in the context of the ministerial exception. A copy of this article, recently published in Where Law & Religion Meet – Online Journal of the Emory Center for Law & Religion, is available for download here.

Professor Bartrum also has two forthcoming articles. The first of these, "Religion and the Restatements," forthcoming in volume 79 of the Brooklyn Law Review (2013), is an interstitial examination of religion and the Restatement project; that is, it outlines the places that issues of religious freedom come up in the existing Restatements, and then makes some recommendations for future editions.

The second article, "Constitutional Value Judgments and Interpretive Theory Choice," forthcoming in volume 40 of the Florida State University Law Review and downloadable here, applies lessons from Thomas Kuhn’s work on scientific paradigm changes to constitutional practice and derives a list of four overlapping and sometimes competing "constitutional values," including constraint, flexibility, representation, and identity, from texts in the constitutional canon.

Congratulations, Ian!

Professor Sternlight Publishes New Article in the Southwestern Law Review

The Boyd School of Law is very pleased to announce that Jean Sternlight, Director of the Saltman Center for Conflict Resolution and the Michael and Sonja Saltman Professor of Law, recently published a new law review article in the Southwestern Law Review. The article's full citation is Jean R. Sternlight, Mandatory Binding Arbitration Clauses Prevent Customers from Presenting Procedurally Difficult Claims, 42(1) Sw. L. Rev. 87 (2013).

Professor Sternlight's article explores the viability of replacing consumer class actions with individualized consumer arbitration in four parts. A pdf. copy of Professor Sternlight's article is available from the Southwestern Law Review here.

Congratulations, Jean!

Dean Rapoport Publishes New Book Review

The Boyd School of Law is very pleased to announce that Interim Dean and Gordon Silver Professor of Law Nancy Rapoport published a new book review in volume 47, issue 1 (March 2013), of the Law & Society Review.

Dean Rapoport's review is of Brian Tamanaha's Failing Law Schools (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), which highlights the multiple ways in which law schools are failing. According to Dean Rapoport: "The first step in solving a problem, though, is admitting you have one. Even the people who think that legal education is just fine as it is need to read this book. Otherwise, their confirmation bias will cause them to keep the status quo just long enough to find themselves irrelevant -- or worse. The bravest thing a law faculty can do these days is to read about the problems -- many of our making -- in modern legal education. The best way to start is by reading this book."

Dean Rapoport's full review is available from the Law & Society Review here.

Professor McGinley Publishes Article in the Connecticut Law Review

The Boyd School of Law is very pleased to announce that Professor Ann McGinley published a new law review article in the Connecticut Law Review. The full citation is Ann C. McGinley, Reasonable Men, 45 U. Conn. L. Rev. 1 (2012), and a pdf. copy of the article is available from the Connecticut Law Review here.

As background, after the Supreme Court recognized sexual harassment as a form of sex discrimination under Title VII, lower courts used the reasonable person standard to measure whether the behavior was sufficiently severe or pervasive to constitute a hostile working environment. Cultural and radical feminists objected to the reasonable person measure, and many supported a reasonable woman standard, which the Ninth Circuit adopted. Because of its tendency to essentialize how women would react, many feminists soon abandoned their support for the standard. A number of circuits, however, continue to use the reasonable woman or reasonable victim standards.

Most of the scholarship concerning the proper standard of reasonableness assumes male perpetrators and female victims. There is no legal scholarship that deals with the question of a male victim of a female perpetrator. A recent Ninth Circuit female-on-male harassment case raises important issues concerning the reasonable woman standard.

In her article, Professor McGinley develops multidimensional masculinities, a new legal theory, to reconsider sexual harassment law as it relates to male victims. Through an examination of the recent Ninth Circuit case, Professor McGinley's article demonstrates that applying a reasonable man standard to male victims would establish a preferred standard of masculinity that may harm men, women, and society in general. Most likely, the article proposes, the standard would mimic the concept of “hegemonic masculinity,” the most powerful ideal form of masculinity in society. This ideal form of masculinity would judge too harshly those men who may be most vulnerable to other-sex and same-sex harassment: men who do not live up to gender stereotypes.

Professor McGinley's article proposes a shift to a new universal standard for determining whether workplace behavior is sufficiently severe or pervasive to create a hostile working environment. This standard inquires whether the victim’s response is a reasonable one considering not only the various identity factors of the victim, but also the workplace, and the social and individual context in which the harassing behavior occurs.

Professor McGinley to Give University Forum Lecture on March 19

The Boyd School of Law is pleased to announce that Professor Ann McGinley is giving a University Forum Lecture on Tuesday, March 19, 2013, from 7:30 to 8:30 p.m. at UNLV's Marjorie Barrick Museum/Harry Reid Center.

Professor McGinley's lecture, which is presented by the College of Liberal Arts and sponsored by the UNLV Women's Council, is titled "The End of Men: Myth or Reality?" Drawing on law, popular culture, and concepts of masculinity, Professor McGinley will challenge Hanna Rosin's assertion in "The End of Men" that women will soon overtake men in blue-collar and white-collar workplaces. Professor McGinley will explore changing relationships between the sexes and how the law has affected gender dynamics at work. She will also examine how the increasing sexualization of Las Vegas casino jobs affects men’s and women’s job prospects and relationships.

The event is free and open to the public. Additional information is available here.

Professor McGinley Publishes Article in the Hofstra Labor and Employment Law Journal

The Boyd School of Law is very pleased to announce that Professor Ann McGinley recently published her law review article, "Beyond the Water Cooler: Speech and the Workplace in an Era of Social Media" (with Ryan P. McGinley-Stempel), in the Hofstra Labor and Employment Law Journal. The article's full citation is Ann C. McGinley & Ryan McGinley-Stempel, Beyond the Water Cooler: Speech and the Workplace in an Era of Social Media, 30 Hofstra Lab. & Emp. L.J. 75 (2012).

"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.

UNLV Boyd School of Law Achieves its Highest Ranking in U.S. News & World Report

In the U.S. News & World Report 2014 edition of the best graduate schools and specialty programs released today, the UNLV Boyd School of Law ranked 68 out of 194 accredited law schools, the highest it has ever placed on the list. It climbed eight spots from last year.

“For a school that is two years away from being old enough to drive, this upward trend in the rankings is nice to see,” said Nancy B. Rapoport, Interim Dean at the Boyd School of Law. “Although we're naturally quite happy to see our ranking improve, it's important to remember that the reputation ranking is based on very small sample sizes—and that the reputation ranking accounts for 40 percent of a school’s total score. What a potential student should watch is the bar passage rate and the placement rate – two items that are of utmost importance to someone considering law school.”

The Boyd School of Law has been among the top 100 law schools in the nation for seven consecutive years.

The law school also tied for third in the nation for its legal writing program, maintaining its position from last year. The Lawyering Process Program emphasizes professionalism and prepares students to enter the workforce proficient in the key language skills of legal practice.

The law school also ranked 11th in the dispute resolution rankings. Established in 2003, the Saltman Center for Conflict Resolution is dedicated to advancing education in the field of alternative dispute resolution and provides a venue for advanced study of the nature of conflict and the methods through which conflicts may be resolved. The Center received the prestigious Ninth Circuit ADR Education Award in 2008.

“What's particularly gratifying is that, unlike the ‘regular’ U.S. News rankings, the specialty rankings are based on the evaluations of our peers in those categories,” said Rapoport.

Among part-time law programs, UNLV's law school ranked 24th out of 82 accredited law schools. Fewer than half of the country's law schools offer part-time programs, which generally take four years to complete.

The William S. Boyd School of Law has more than 450 students and offers three juris doctor degree programs: a full-time day program, a part-time day program, and a part-time evening program. The school also offers three dual-degree programs: a J.D./MBA, a J.D./M.S.W. and a J.D./Ph.D. It is fully accredited by the American Bar Association and a member of the American Association of Law Schools – accomplishments it achieved in record time. For more information about the William S. Boyd School of Law and its programs, visit UNLV Boyd School of Law.

A complete list of rankings is available at U.S. News & World Report.

Boyd Identified as "Fully Transparent" in Reporting Employment Information

The Boyd School of Law is pleased to announce that it was identified in Law School Transparency's (LST's) annual index of law school disclosure of placement information as one of only 47 law schools across the United States that are fully transparent in reporting employment information.

LST reports that only 23.6% (47/199) of ABA-approved law schools have been fully transparent in 19 categories of placement data as of March 4, 2013, and Boyd was included in that list. For a link to Boyd's data regarding employment outcomes, click here.