Professor Griffin to Give "Important 2012-2013 Supreme Court Cases" CLE

The Boyd School of Law is very pleased to announce that Professor Leslie Griffin will give an "Important 2012-2013 Supreme Court Cases" continuing legal education presentation on February 15.

During the CLE, Professor Griffin will review important cases on the Supreme Court’s 2012-2013 docket, including Fisher v. University of Texas (affirmative action), Windsor v. United States and Hollingsworth v. Perry (same-sex marriage), Shelby County v. Holder (Voting Rights Act), and other notable First, Fourth and Fifth Amendment cases.

The program, which will be held in the Thomas and Mack Moot Court Facility and has been approved for one CLE credit, will begin at 3:00 p.m. on February 15. Additional registration information is available here.

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.

Eliminating Class Actions – A Tsunami in the Wake of AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion Threatens Access to Justice

By Professor Jean Sternlight

When the Supreme Court handed down its decision in AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion, commentators expressed concern that the decision might effectively bring an end to many consumer and employment class actions. The five-four decision held that courts' use of California's Discover Bank test for whether an arbitral class action waiver is unconscionable was preempted by the Federal Arbitration Act. The Court explained that the Discover Bank rule, which would classify as unconscionable those class action waivers contained in consumer contracts of adhesion that would insulate companies from claims that they cheated large numbers of consumers out of individually small sums of money, effectively requires "the availability of classwide arbitration" and thereby "interferes with fundamental attributes of arbitration and thus creates a scheme inconsistent with the FAA."