The program will explore the effectiveness of the federal “War on Poverty” programs in addressing/eradicating poverty, and participants will discuss how amendments to those laws have had an impact on their effectiveness. The “War on Poverty” programs include: Medicaid, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (“TANF,” formerly Assistance for Families and Dependent Children), Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (“SNAP,” formerly known as food stamps), federally funded legal services (originally under the Office of Economic Opportunity, and now the Legal Services Corporation), Head Start, and the No Child Left Behind Act (originally the Elementary and Secondary Education Act), among others. In addition, the joint program will explore newer ways that the federal government has attempted to address poverty, such asthe Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, the Family and Medical Leave Act and others.

Among the questions to be considered are: In what ways were individual “War on Poverty” programs effective and why? How and why were those programs ineffective? How did amendments to the War on Poverty enactments affect their efficacy in ameliorating poverty? What impact have exclusions from the poverty programs on such grounds as immigration status had on poverty? How do more recent federal laws affect poverty? Do they work with or in opposition to prior federal laws? Can the walls between federal poverty programs be broken down to more effectively address poverty? If so, how? How have communities responded to the “War on Poverty” programs and what impact has their efforts had on reshaping the poverty programs? What are concrete and innovative ways for the federal government to address poverty in the 21st Century for both individuals and communities? In collaboration with the Boston College Journal on Law and Social Justice, the joint program seeks papers for presentation and publication relating to the program’s topic. Submissions may include papers, on substantive law, interdisciplinary innovation or analysis, policy, empirical work, or clinical pedagogy, that either evaluate the effectiveness of the federal role in addressing poverty over the past 50 years, address how the federal government can address poverty in the 21st Century, or both.

The Boston College Journal of Law and Social Justice will publish selected papers, no more than two of which will be selected for presentation at the joint program in New Orleans. Selected authors must agree not to publish their work in another journal. Not all papers selected for publication will be presented at the annual meeting.

Submission information: Papers should be submitted by email attachment to aals.waronpoverty.papers@gmail.com. As the Planning Committee will use a blind review process, a cover letter with the author’s name and contact information should accompany the paper. The paper itself, including the title page and footnotes must not contain any references identifying the author or the author’s school. The submitting author is responsible for taking any steps necessary to redact self-identifying text or footnotes. Near complete papers should be submitted by August 9, 2013. Authors of papers chosen for presentation and/or publication will be notified by September 27, 2013. Final papers are due by December 2013.

Eligibility: Full-time faculty members of AALS member law schools are eligible to submit papers. Foreign, visiting (without a full-time position at an AALS member law school), and adjunct faculty members; graduate students; fellows and non-law school faculty are not eligible to submit. Faculty at fee-paid non-member schools are also ineligible.

For more information, please contact Emily Suski, Planning Committee Co-Chair for the Poverty Law Section at esuski@gsu.eduor Hina Shah, Planning Committee Member for the Clinical Legal Education Section at hshah@ggu.edu.

Prof. Susan Franck

Washington and Lee law professor Susan Franck will present research related to her book at the European Society of International Law’s 5^th Annual Research Forum.  The topic this year is International Law as a Profession.  Franck’s panel  is on the specific topic of the Dynamics of International Judicial Law Making, but her particular topic will focus on the role of counsel in investment treaty arbitration (ITA).

Using a dataset of 272 public ITA awards in 202 different cases rendered before January 2012, Franck’s research is the first of its kind internationally to explore the role of counsel through both descriptive and associative hypothesis testing.  It first offers basic descriptive information about the number of entities involved in representing clients in ITA, the relative roles of in-house and external counsel, and the patterns of representation exhibited by investors and states that retain counsel.  It next considers whether counsel involved in ITA solely represent investors, states or perhaps switch sides to represent different types of parties in different disputes.  The paper then identifies the most prevalent players and constructs the “Top 21” list of legal entities involved in ITA.

On the basis of this information, the paper constructs two different measures to both identify the impact of repeat players in the legal representation involved in ITA.  It constructs one variable—a binary measure—to simply identify whether counsel have ever been involved in multiple claims; and it constructs a second variable—a weighted variable—to provide a weighted assessment of the relative expertise of the individual legal entities involved in the arbitration process.  These variables are then coded to assemble data about the total experience of both the investors’ and respondent’s legal teams.  The research then explores the role of lawyers and the impact of the expertise of parties’ legal representation on critical variables.

The next section identifies whether the expertise of each party’s legal team is reliably linked to fundamental aspects of ITA, particularly variables such as amounts claimed, ultimate outcomes and amounts awarded.  It also explores whether expertise is linked in some way to either: (a) the amounts charged by lawyers; or (b) the amount of lawyer fees shifted by tribunal’s during the cost phase.  Finally, it considers the link between each side’s relative expertise, thereby offering the possibility of exploring whether the “lawyering up” by investors that retain more sophisticated counsel is linked to the expertise of respondent’s counsel and vice versa.

Ultimately, by exploring the role of lawyers in ITA and assessing whether they do (or do not) make meaningful contributions to the arbitration process, Franck argues we will have a better sense of the value of international lawyers in an area of law with critical implications for the international political economy. This, in turn, permits considered evolution of how lawyers potentially impact the generation of international law through their capacity as advisors and advocates.

Prof. Mark Drumbl

Washington and Lee law professor Mark Drumbl will give two international presentations on his recent book examining child soldiers and international law.

Drumbl will present first as a faculty member at the 13th Specialization Course in International Criminal Law, titled the Future of International Criminal Law in the Era of Globalization. The week long series of workshops will be held at the International Institute of Higher Studies in Criminal Sciences (ISISC) in Siracusa, Italy. Next, Drumbl will give a keynote address as part of the Canadian Bar Association’s National Military Law Conference, held in Ottawa, Ontario.

Both presentations are based on Drumbl’s book, Reimagining Child Soldiers, published by Oxford University Press. According to Drumbl, the international community’s efforts to halt child soldiering have yielded some successes. But this pernicious practice persists. It may shift locally, but it endures globally. Preventative measures therefore remain inadequate. Former child soldiers experience challenges readjusting to civilian life. Reintegration is complex and eventful. The homecoming is only the beginning. Reconciliation within communities afflicted by violence committed by and against child soldiers is incomplete. Shortfalls linger on the restorative front. The international community strives to eradicate the scourge of child soldiering. Mostly, though, these efforts replay the same narratives and circulate the same assumptions. Current humanitarian discourse sees child soldiers as passive victims, tools of war, vulnerable, psychologically devastated, and not responsible for their violent acts. This perception has come to suffuse international law and policy. Although reflecting much of the lives of child soldiers, this portrayal also omits critical aspects.

Drumbl’s book pursues an alternate path by reimagining the child soldier. It approaches child soldiers with a more nuanced and less judgmental mind. This book takes a second look at these efforts. It aspires to refresh law and policy so as to improve preventative, restorative, and remedial initiatives while also vivifying the dignity of youth. Along the way, Drumbl questions central tenets of contemporary humanitarianism and rethinks elements of international criminal justice.

Prof. J.D. King

Washington and Lee law professor J.D. King has published a new article titled Beyond ‘Life and Liberty’: The Evolving Right to Counsel. The article appears in the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, Vol. 48, 2013. Here is the abstract:

The majority of Americans, if they have contact with the criminal justice system at all, will experience it through misdemeanor courtrooms. More than ever before, the criminal justice system is used to sort, justify, and reify a separate underclass. And as the system of misdemeanor adjudication continues to be flooded with new cases, the value that is exalted over all others is efficiency. The result is a system that can make it virtually painless to plead guilty (which has always been true for low-level offenses), but that is now overlaid with a new system of increasingly harsh collateral consequences. The hidden consequences of a conviction may never be explained to the person choosing to plead guilty, leading to unjust results that happen more regularly and with more severe consequences than ever before.

This Article argues that current Sixth Amendment jurisprudence on the right to counsel has not adequately adapted to the changed realities within which misdemeanor prosecutions take place today. Because of the dramatic changes in the cultural meaning and real-life consequences of low-level convictions, there is no longer a useful or constitutionally significant line between those cases resulting in actual imprisonment and those cases not resulting in imprisonment. Two years ago in Padilla v. Kentucky, the Supreme Court recognized that the line between the direct and collateral consequences of a conviction has no constitutional significance in defining the effective assistance of counsel. Recognizing that the Sixth Amendment right to counsel has evolved throughout its history to accommodate the changing cultural context of criminal prosecutions, this Article calls for a robust expansion of the right to counsel in all criminal cases.

The article is available for download from SSRN.

Prof. James Pannabecker

Sheshunoff-Pratt has published a new book by James H. Pannabecker entitled Compliance Guide to the 2013 Mortgage Lending Rules. The book explains the seven mortgage rules issued in January 2013 by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and other agencies to meet deadlines set by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.

The manual includes implementation checklists to help develop project plans and audit compliance, before-and-after tables to show how each regulation changes the landscape, call-out boxes to explain important ideas and offer practical pointers, and applicability charts to illustrate which loans are affected by which part of each regulation and whether a “small institution” exemption applies. The book provides summaries, detailed explanations, and background material for each rule. Ordering information is available at www.sheshunoff.com or by calling 800-456-2340.

University of Nevada Las Vegas
William S. Boyd School of Law
Saltman Center for Conflict Resolution

Psychology and Lawyering: Coalescing the Field

Friday, Feb. 21 and Saturday, Feb. 22, 2014
UNLV William S. Boyd School of Law
Las Vegas, Nevada

Notification of Conference and Call for Proposals

In recent years both academics and practitioners have increasingly begun to recognize that the field of psychology has a tremendous amount to offer practicing attorneys. Traditionally, those who connected law and psychology focused primarily on juries, trials, and criminals’ states of mind. But today, researchers are broadening their focus to examine the ways in which psychology can be of use to a wide variety of common lawyering practices, including interviewing, counseling, writing, negotiation, and ethical conduct as well as attorney satisfaction and business success. For one example of this work see Jennifer K. Robbennolt & Jean R. Sternlight, Psychology for Lawyers: Understanding the Human Factors in Negotiation, Litigation, and Decision Making (ABA 2012). 

This growing field draws broadly from cognitive and social psychology pertaining to memory, judgment and decisionmaking, and persuasion; developmental psychology examining attachment theory or social and emotional development; clinical psychology relating to counseling, meditation, and communication; neuroscience as it relates to economic and moral decision making, emotion, and communication; and organizational psychology as it relates to the structures of legal practice. Legal researchers have come to this interdisciplinary field with varied backgrounds, including from clinical work, legal writing, alternative dispute resolution, pretrial litigation, family law, immigration, transactional practice, criminal law, health law, and many more.     

Yet, while many are interested in the field of psychology and lawyering, this area has not yet fully coalesced. To date no conferences, listserves, or sections of organizations focus primarily on the potential contributions of psychological research to lawyering. Thus, while some in the growing field do exchange ideas and papers, others miss out on opportunities to benefit from each others’ ideas and experience.

Our goal in hosting this conference is to begin to fill this void – to bring together a broad range of academics in both law and psychology to focus on the many insights empirical psychological research can provide to law students and practicing attorneys. The focus will be on lawyering rather than law, in that we will examine how knowledge of psychology can enhance the practice of law rather than how it can inform substantive law (though the latter is also an interesting and important question). We will also consider how best to teach this material to law students. And, the conference will include a discussion of next steps we might take to further advance this field. 

We welcome proposals (250 words or less) from prospective presenters from law, psychology, or other disciplines who wish to present on how insights drawn from psychological research can be applied to help lawyers better represent their clients. (Presenters will be expected to pay their own expenses, except that UNLV will provide some nice meals.) Please submit your abstract electronically as a Word document or PDF to Jean.Sternlight@unlv.edu by July 15, 2013. Include a title and your contact information as well. The Nevada Law Journal has offered to publish approximately ten papers arising out of this conference. Please let us know if you think you might be interested in this publication opportunity. Final papers would be due in the summer of 2014.

Finally, if you are interested in attending the conference but prefer not to make a presentation, please let us know that as well. We will need panel chairs, attendees, and quite likely commentators. While there is no conference registration fee, attendance will be limited. You can reserve a spot by registering here: http://law.unlv.edu/registration-LawPsych2014. We will be providing more details on the conference, accommodations and other matters closer to the date.

If you have questions please contact:

Jean R. Sternlight
Saltman Professor of Law & Director Saltman Center for Conflict Resolution
University of  Nevada, Las Vegas Boyd School of Law
Jean.Sternlight@unlv.edu
(702) 895-2358
]]> http://wlulawfaculty.wordpress.com/2013/05/17/psychology-and-lawyering-coalescing-the-field/feed/ 0 profspencer http://wlulawfaculty.wordpress.com/2013/05/15/lec-perc-workshop-on-environmental-economics-for-law-professors-2/ http://wlulawfaculty.wordpress.com/2013/05/15/lec-perc-workshop-on-environmental-economics-for-law-professors-2/#comments Wed, 15 May 2013 16:13:19 +0000 profspencer http://wlulawfaculty.wordpress.com/?p=1990 ]]> Wednesday, October 2 to Sunday, October 6, 2013, Lone Mountain Ranch, Big Sky, MT

The George Mason Law & Economics Center (LEC) and the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC) presents the LEC-PERC Workshop on Environmental Economics for Law Professors to be held at the Lone Mountain Ranch in Big Sky, Montana. The program will run from Wednesday, October 2 to Sunday, October 6, 2013 and is part of the newly created LEC-PERC Joint Program on Economics, Law, and the Environment (http://www.masonlec.org/programs/lec-perc-joint-program-economics-law-environment).

OVERVIEW: The objective of this three-day workshop is to expose professors who teach natural resource and environmental law to the importance of property rights, transaction costs, and markets for solving environmental problems. The workshop will begin with some initial theoretical insights regarding the potential for environmental markets and build to specific applications to land, forests, wildlife, minerals, water, air, and ecosystem services, to mention a few.

The primary audience is tenured law school faculty who teach and do research on property, natural resources, and environmental law.

The LEC-PERC workshop will accommodate up to 24 law professors. All professors must attend all group meals together. Class sessions will be held Thursday through Saturday, with morning and afternoon sessions each day.

Reading materials will be provided in advance, and all participants should arrive having read, and prepared to discuss, the materials.

The LEC-PERC Workshop on Environmental Economics for Law Professors is organized by Henry N. Butler, George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law at George Mason University School of Law and Executive Director of the LEC, and Terry L. Anderson, President of the PERC and John and Jean De Nault Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.

No Tuition; Hotel and Group Meals are Provided.

There is no tuition charged for the workshop, nor are there any room and board fees. Participants are responsible for their own travel costs to and from the workshop, as well as incidental expenses and individual meals.

APPLICATION PROCESS AND ACCEPTANCE: Acceptance for this conference is by competitive application only. Application should be made here: http://www.cvent.com/d/gcqs5g. Each applicant must state why they believe this program will be valuable to them and their work, and provide the names and contact information for three (3) professional references. The applicant may also include any additional information that would be pertinent to the decision-making process. Nominations by deans or letters of recommendation are welcome, but not required.
FURTHER INFORMATION: For questions regarding the application process, or about the program in general, please contact Jeff Smith at jsmithQ@gmu.edu. The LEC will begin evaluating applications on May 20, 2013 and will continue to consider applications until the program is fully subscribed.

PRELIMINARY AGENDA: The preliminary agenda can be seen on our website here: http://www.masonlec.org/events/event/134-lec-perc-workshop-law-professors-environmental-economics

In an ever changing legal landscape, this program again promises to provide a timely and practical update on antitrust developments around the world. Our speakers are leading private and in-house lawyers, economists and antitrust enforcers from the US, EU, Brazil and India. Among them are Bruno Lasserre, President, Autorite de la Concurrence, Paris; Maureen K. Ohlhausen, FTC Commissioner; and Professor William Kovacic, now at George Washington University Law School and formerly an FTC Chairman. We hope you’ll join us for this exciting program.

This conference is sponsored by the Searle Center on Law, Regulation, and Economic Growth at Northwestern Law, Baker & McKenzie, Mayer Brown, Microsoft Corporation, NERA Economic Consulting, and MLex.

TOPICS: Topics will include:
- Update on International Cooperation and Convergence
- Year in Review – US, EU and Brazil
- Venturing Outside the US – Antitrust Issues in Competitor Collaborations, Joint Ventures, Strategic Alliances, Teaming Agreements
- Antitrust Litigation, Arbitration and Use of Economists Outside the US
- Lessons Learned From Compliance to Global Cartel Investigations
- Update on Antitrust Enforcement in India
- Antitrust Perspective on Innovation, New Product Development, Standard Setting and Licensing
- Antitrust Issues in Doing Business in China
- Evaluating the Effects of Merger Policy
- Basic Economic Concepts Arising in Antitrust Matters
- Tying, Bundling, Exclusivity, MFNs and Other Distribution Issues
- Identifying and Resolving Conflicts Outside the US

FURTHER INFORMATION: For full program details, please visit: http://www.law.northwestern.edu/searlecenter/conference/international
REGISTRATION: http://www.law.northwestern.edu/searlecenter/conference/international

TUITION:
- $400 Standard Registration
- $200 Government/Academic/Judicial

CLE CREDITS: Earn up to 10.75 CLE credits in the State of Illinois, including 2.0 professional responsibility (ethics) CLE credits.

The purpose of the conferences is not only to identify challenges, but also to engage practitioners, organizers, and scholars who can offer innovative and under-explored ways of framing and executing civil rights legal initiatives.

• Identifying the key barriers to equality and opportunity for people of color in contemporary American life.
• Exploring the realities presented by current economic challenges and securing pathways to educational and economic opportunity for poor African Americans.
• Identifying strategies to mainstream an understanding of implicit racial bias in civil rights law and policy.
• Promoting a criminal justice paradigm that recognizes the need for violence reduction and increased public safety in communities of color, and challenges mass incarceration, injustice and racism in the criminal justice system.

Registration Notes:

As space is extremely limited at the conference, we advise participants to register online in advance to reserve a seat.  The conference registration fee is $50 and can be made using credit card or check online.  To the extent that space is available on the conference day, on-site registration will be permitted starting at 8:00 a.m. on June 6, 2013.  On-site registrants may submit the $50 registration fee by cash or check, made payable to the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, Inc.

Agenda can be downloaded at https://reg.naacpldf.org/agenda.pdf

The George Mason Law & Economics Center (LEC) and the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC) presents the LEC-PERC Workshop on Environmental Economics for Law Professors to be held at the Lone Mountain Ranch in Big Sky, Montana. The program will run from Wednesday, October 2 to Sunday, October 6, 2013 and is part of the newly created LEC-PERC Joint Program on Economics, Law, and the Environment (http://www.masonlec.org/programs/lec-perc-joint-program-economics-law-environment).

OVERVIEW: The objective of this three-day workshop is to expose professors who teach natural resource and environmental law to the importance of property rights, transaction costs, and markets for solving environmental problems. The workshop will begin with some initial theoretical insights regarding the potential for environmental markets and build to specific applications to land, forests, wildlife, minerals, water, air, and ecosystem services, to mention a few.

The primary audience is tenured law school faculty who teach and do research on property, natural resources, and environmental law.

The LEC-PERC workshop will accommodate up to 24 law professors. All professors must attend all group meals together. Class sessions will be held Thursday through Saturday, with morning and afternoon sessions each day.

Reading materials will be provided in advance, and all participants should arrive having read, and prepared to discuss, the materials.

The LEC-PERC Workshop on Environmental Economics for Law Professors is organized by Henry N. Butler, George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law at George Mason University School of Law and Executive Director of the LEC, and Terry L. Anderson, President of the PERC and John and Jean De Nault Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.

No Tuition; Hotel and Group Meals are Provided.

There is no tuition charged for the workshop, nor are there any room and board fees. Participants are responsible for their own travel costs to and from the workshop, as well as incidental expenses and individual meals.

HONORARIUM: An honorarium of $750 will be paid to each participant within 30 days of successful completion of the workshop. Successful completion requires attendance at all class sessions and group functions, including group meals.

REFUNDABLE DEPOSIT: All participants accepted to the Institute must make a refundable* deposit of $750 to bond their attendance at the workshop. Deposits are due within thirty (30) days of acceptance. Failure to provide the deposit by that date will result in cancelation of acceptance.

*Deposit will be refunded only upon completion of the entire workshop, including participation in all group functions.

APPLICATION PROCESS AND ACCEPTANCE: Acceptance for this conference is by competitive application only. Application should be made here: http://www.cvent.com/d/gcqs5g. Each applicant must state why they believe this program will be valuable to them and their work, and provide the names and contact information for three (3) professional references. The applicant may also include any additional information that would be pertinent to the decision-making process. Nominations by deans or letters of recommendation are welcome, but not required.

FURTHER INFORMATION: For questions regarding the application process, or about the program in general, please contact Jeff Smith at jsmithQ@gmu.edu. The LEC will begin evaluating applications on May 20, 2013 and will continue to consider applications until the program is fully subscribed.