Faculty Activities

Professor Katharine Baker gave a talk, "Marriage as an Agreement to Agree," at the Canadian Law and Economics Conference in September 2003.

In October 2003, Professor Baker presented a faculty workshop at Northwestern University School of Law entitled, "Paternity and Contract."

Visiting Associate Professor Susan Bisom-Rapp will moderate a panel  discussion, "The Ripple Effects of Free Trade: NAFTA's Impact on the Domestic Labor Environment" at the "NAFTA World of Work" conference to be held at Chicago-Kent on November 19, 2003.  Professor Bisom-Rapp is collaborating with Assistant Dean Lydia Lazar to organize the conference. 

Professor Bisom-Rapp will introduce Martha Fineman, an authority on feminist jurisprudence, whom she secured as the keynote speaker, at Thomas Jefferson School of Law's Fourth Annual Conference on Women and the Law in February 2004.  Additional activities of Professor Bisom-Rapp include an appointment to the Law and Society Association's Committee on Working Conditions, and speaking at the Association's Annual Meeting last June as Co-Chair of a panel discussion on social science research and sexual harassment law.

Professor Ralph Brill assisted the reporter doing research for an October 2003 Chicago Magazine article, Collision Course, involving the litigation arising from the two-plane crash which killed radio personality Bob Collins. Professor Brill is quoted in the article at page 133.

Professor Sanford Greenberg is currently serving as Co-Chair of Oak Park Families with Children from China, a non-profit organization that he helped organize.

His article, Who Says It's a Crime?: Chevron Deference to Agency Interpretations of Regulatory Statutes that Create Criminal Liability, 58 U. Pitt. L. Rev. 1 (1996) was cited by the 10th Circuit in NLRB v. Oklahoma Fixture Co., 332 F.3d 1284, 1287 n.4 (10th Cir. 2003) (en banc).

Professor Philip Hablutzel has been reappointed to the Illinois Secretary of State's Corporate Law Advisory Committee for 2003-2004.  The Committee's June 2003 meeting was hosted at Chicago-Kent. At the September and October meetings, the Committee considered proposals drafted by Professor Hablutzel on amending the Illinois General Not For Profit Corporation Act.  Professor Hablutzel has served on the Committee since 1986.

In September 2003, Professor Hablutzel was organizer and Chair of the Fifteenth Annual two-day seminar at the Chicago Bar Association on "How to Form an Illinois Business Entity: Corporation and Its Alternatives." Professor Hablutzel started this seminar for the CBA and has been its Chair since the beginning.  New topics this year included "Post-Enron Governance Issues" and drafting partnership agreements under the new Illinois General Partnership Act.

In October, Professor Hablutzel made a presentation to the Corporation, Securities and Business Law Section Council of the Illinois State Bar Association on the proposals for amending the Illinois General Not for Profit Corporation Act.  The proposals include tightening the provision on governance by the Board of Directors as a way of reducing the opportunities for fraud.

Professor Hablutzel continues in his second term on the Executive Committee of the Financial Institutions Section of Association of American Law Schools.

Professor Claire Hill spoke to the Canadian Law and Economics Association on "Regulating the Rating Agencies" and "How German Contracts Do As Much or More with Fewer Words" (the latter based on a paper co-authored with Chris King) in September 2003.

Her October talks included "Trust But Verify: Monitoring Through an Evolutionary Lens" (based on a paper co-authored with Erin O'Hara) at a meeting of the Society for Evolutionary Analysis in Law. Midwestern Law and Economics Association heard Professor Hill speak on "How German Contracts Do as Much or More with Fewer Words" and "Regulating the Rating Agencies" was the topic at George Mason Law School.

Professor Hill organized the Symposium, "Law &": Philosophical, Psychological, Linguistic, and Biological Perspectives on Legal Scholarship, which was held at Chicago-Kent in October 2003.

Professor Hill is currently serving as a member of the Executive Committees of the Canadian Law and Economics Association and the Law and Society Association. 

Professor Nancy Marder has been appointed as Reporter for the Illinois Supreme Court Committee on Jury Instructions in Civil Cases. She has been elected to the Executive Committee of the Association of American Law Schools Section on Civil Procedure. She is also serving as a peer reviewer to Law and Society Review.

In October 2003, Professor Marder gave a faculty workshop on cyberjuries at the University of Georgia School of Law.

Professor Sheldon Nahmod spoke to several hundred attorneys at the University of Georgia on "Recent Developments in Section 1983 Litigation" in September 2003.

In October he gave two talks in Chicago.  He spoke to the Lawyers' Division of the American Friends of the Hebrew University about "The Establishment Clause and the Proper Role of Religion in the Public Square." The topic for a lay group, organized by the Dawn Schuman Institute for Adult Jewish Education was "The Establishment Clause and Religion and the Equal Protection Clause and Affirmative Action."

In November, Professor Nahmod will speak to the Iowa Municipal Attorneys Association on "Important Decisions of the Supreme Court's 2002 Term."

Professor Michael Spak has recently completed an article "The U.S. Military Should Give Up Its Excuses and Change Its Policy of 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Pursue' to a Policy on Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Sexual Orientation." He expects to make a decision soon on which journal will publish the article. 

In October, Professor Spak is giving talks on the Multistate Professional Responsibility Exam at the following law schools: Chicago, Cleveland State, Ohio State, and Valparaiso.

Professor Richard Warner spoke to the American Association of Political Consultants on "Formulating an Ethics Statement Before You Campaign" in October 2003.

Also in October, Professor Warner was elected President of SAFEonline (Standards Association for Elections Online) at the Academic Conference of the American Association of Political Consultants. 

Professor Richard Wright presented a paper on "Reasonableness, Rationality, Justice, and Efficiency" at the Special Workshop on Law and Economics and Legal Scholarship at the 21st World Congress of the International Association for Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy at Lund University in Sweden, August 13-16, 2003.

Research in Progress

Visiting Associate Professor Susan Bisom-Rapp's current research project is an ethnographic study of the efforts of a large labor and employment law firm, Littler Mendelson, to build an international employment law practice and how the foreign lawyers the firm encounters react to the firm's American style. Key questions associated with the study are whether the lawyers engage in transnational legal strategies on behalf of their clients and whether they foresee the eventual convergence of lawyering styles across national jurisdictions.

Professor Nancy Marder is currently working on a paper that examines the unintended consequences of courtroom technology on jurors, to be presented at the International Conference on the Legal and Policy Implications of Courtroom Technology at the College of William and Mary Law School in February 2004.

Professor Michael Spak is writing an article on "The Effect of Military Culture on Responding to Sexual Harassment: The Warrior Mystique."

Forthcoming Publications

Professor Mark Bauer has finished writing Small Liberal Arts College, Fraternities and Antitrust: Rethinking Hamilton College.   It will be published in the Catholic University Law Review, Winter 2004.

Professor Claire Hill has a forthcoming book review of Taxing Choices by Rebecca Johnson to be published in Canadian Journal of Law and Society.  Beyond Mistakes: the Next Wave of Behavioral Law and Economics will be published in the Queen's Law Journal (Kingston, Ontario, Canada) as the Galway Lecture.

Regulating the Rating Agencies is forthcoming in Washington University Law Quarterly.  Law and Economics in the Personal Sphere, a Review Essay, will be in Law and Social Inquiry. 

Professor Timothy Holbrook will have an invited essay, The Supreme Court's Complicity in Federal Circuit Formalism, 20 Santa Clara Computer & High Tech. L.J. 1 (2003) (forthcoming 2004).

His Symposium article, The Treaty Power and the Patent Clause: Are There Limits on the United States' Ability to Harmonize? will be published in ___ Cardozo Arts & Ent. L. J. ___ (forthcoming 2004).

Professor Marcia McCormick will have her article, Federalism Re-Constructed: The Eleventh Amendment's Illogical Impact on Congress' Power published in ___ Ind. L. Rev. ___ (forthcoming February 2004).

Professor Nancy Marder has contributed a book chapter, "Cyberjuries: A Model of Deliberative Democracy?" for a book entitled The Prospects for Electronic Democracy, edited by Peter Shane and to be published by Routledge, Inc.

She contributed two short essays on the jury for the Encyclopedia of American Civil Liberties

Professor Joe Morrissey will have his article, Catching the Culprits: Are the Securities Fraud Laws Any More Effective After Sarbanes-Oxley? published in ___Columbus Bus. L. Rev. (forthcoming December 2003

Professor Jeffrey Sherman will have a previously published law review article excerpted in the new edition of Roger Anderson, et al., Fundamentals of Trusts and Estates (Matthew Bender). The article is Posthumous Meddling: An Instumentalist Theory of Testamentary Restraints on Conjugal and Religious Choices, 2000 U. Ill. L. Rev. 1273.

Professor Joan Steinman has completed the manuscript for the April 2004 pocket parts for volumes 14B and 14C of the Wright and Miller treatise, Federal Practice and Procedure (West Publishing Co.). 

Her article, Shining a Light in a Dim Corner: Standing to Appeal and the Right to Defend a Judgment in the Federal Courts, will be published in 38 Ga. L. Rev.  ___ (2004). 

Professor Alexander Tsesis has three articles forthcoming in 2004. Regulating Intimidating Speech will be in 41 Harvard Journal on Legislation.  Furthering Freedom: Civil Rights & the Thirteenth Amendment will be in 44 Boston College Law Review.  Justice at War and Brown v. Board of Education will be in 47 Howard Law Journal.

His book, Thirteenth Amendment and Freedom: Historical Context and Legal Theory, will be published by New York University Press in Fall 2004.