SPRING 2008
A letter to our students
from Dean Geoffrey S. Mearns
Welcome to a new semester and a new era...
You are learning law during a transformative era in Cleveland-Marshall history. Whether you are beginning your second semester here or your final semester, your law school is undergoing a transformation. Our graduating students have spent two years with us in the company of architects, carpenters, electricians and construction workers. These students have seen 30-year-old walls fall and new ones rise. This project is now drawing to a close. We prepare to celebrate the renovation of a building that each day shows us more of the state-of-the art facility that is the renovated Cleveland-Marshall College of Law. We invite all of you—our first-year students and our graduating students—to the celebration.
Transformation...
Our law school was 80 years old in 1977 when we moved into our building on East 18th Street and Euclid Avenue. Today, the members of the class of 1977 are practicing law all across America. The old law school served them and the succeeding generation well. But by the turn of the century, our building, especially when compared with its splendid new law library, was showing its age. Architecturally, the building turned in on itself—away from its environment and its hometown. Technologically, it lagged behind the times. In short, it was a 1970s building out of step with the new century.
Now, crossing the renovated bridge from the law building to the communications building, you can see all the way to Lake Erie from a bank of new windows along the exterior wall. The bridge’s interior wall is lined with brightly refurbished classrooms, and throughout the passage are comfortable spaces—small oases—for reading or studying. Soon there will be a new front door facing Euclid Avenue, set within a dramatic three-tiered glass facade. Light flows from newly installed windows into the renovated Moot Court Room.
Downstairs in the old library space, there is an entire new world of classrooms, conference rooms, and faculty and student offices. Gone are the memorable yellow-and-green plaid carpet, the worn carrels, the sagging coat rack and the curtain that divided the cavernous room in two. Our clinical faculty are packing up for the move to a handsome row of offices that look out on a real garden—the walkway and sloping lawn outside the library. Beyond the faculty offices is a large open space where students can work on clinic cases—together in meeting rooms or separately in individual carrels. Smaller rooms open off the work area: conference rooms wired for power-point presentations and offices where students and faculty can consult privately with the clinics’ clients. Across the hall, workers are putting the finishing touches on the areas that will become home to our student organizations and our faculty presentation room.
These improvement were made possible as a result of the generosity of Mrs. Iris S. Wolstein, widow of the late Bert L. Wolstein ’53. In memory of her husband, Mrs. Wolstein donated $5 million to the law school to renovate our building. Her gift was a fitting memorial to Mr. Wolstein, a lawyer and a national commercial real estate developer, whose work involved the restoration of city landscapes across the nation. That gift, together with her challenge grant of $1.25 million to the Bert L. and Iris S. Wolstein Scholarship Fund, is the largest gift in University history. We, and generations of students to come, are indebted to this gracious lady. Thanks to her, we will soon be teaching and learning in a handsome 21st century building: the Bert L. Wolstein Hall.
About that bar exam...
As everyone now knows, you are learning law in the school whose students bested every public and private law school in the region and ranked second among all Ohio law schools on the July 2007 Ohio bar exam. Ninety percent of our students passed the bar on their first try. We congratulate all 107 of them! We expect their winning performance to be followed by another stunning success by those who take the bar in February and by those who will take the test next July. After all, you have been taught by the same exceptional faculty in the same curriculum that has prepared Cleveland-Marshall students for a life of accomplishment – not only as lawyers, but as leaders.
But first: our 109th commencement ceremony!
I am pleased that one of our most honorable graduates and one of our country’s most accomplished public servants will be the law school’s 2008 graduation speaker: the Honorable Louis Stokes ‘53, the first African-American elected to the U.S. Congress from Ohio and brother of the late Cleveland Mayor, Carl B. Stokes ’56, the first African-American elected mayor of a major American city.
As a young man and later as a WWII veteran, Congressman Stokes was involved in various civil rights causes. As a young lawyer, he distinguished himself as counsel to the United Freedom Movement and the lead attorney in two cases brought before the United States Supreme Court, Terry v. Ohio (1968), the landmark “stop and frisk” case, and Lucas v. Rhodes (1967), the NAACP’s successful anti-gerrymandering lawsuit. Congressman Stokes represented the citizens of Ohio’s 11th Congressional District for 30 years.
Four faculty members; four new titles...
The law school’s four named professorships recognize the accomplishments of faculty who are excellent teachers and who have made notable contributions to legal scholarship. Endowed by our graduates and our friends in the legal community, these professorships are expressive of the donors’ commitment to Cleveland-Marshall and their understanding of how vital this public law school is to the profession and to the economic stability of Northeast Ohio.
Professor Susan J. Becker is the Charles R. Emrick Jr. – Calfee Halter & Griswold Professor of Law. Professor Becker’s recent publications address civil litigation and cutting edge issues in the area of sexual orientation and the law. Notable articles include Many are Chilled but Few are Frozen: How Transformative Learning in Popular Culture, Christianity, and Science Will Lead to the Eventual Demise of Legally Sanctioned Discrimination Against Sexual Minorities in the United States (2006), and Tumbling Towers as Turning Points: Will 9/11 Usher in a New Civil Rights Era for Gay Men and Lesbians in the United States? (2003). She is the author of two books: Discovery of Employees (2005), and The Law of Professional Responsibility in Ohio (with J. Guttenberg and L. Snyder) (2008).
Our 1968 alumnus Charles R. Emrick Jr., and friends and partners of the Calfee Halter & Griswold law firm created this professorship. Mr. Emrick is a former senior partner of the law firm and former Senior Vice President and Director of the Transaction Group, an investment-banking firm.
Professor Kathleen C. Engel is the Leon M. and Gloria Plevin Professor of Law. Her expertise in predatory lending practices and her advocacy on behalf of the victims of unscrupulous mortgage-lenders have earned her a national and an international reputation. She has lectured at universities around the world, been interviewed by the national media and is published widely.Recent articles include State and Local Anti-Predatory Lending Laws: The Effect of Legal Enforcement Mechanism (2007) (with R. Bostic, et al.), Do Cities Have Standing? Redressing the Externalities of Predatory Lending (2006) and Turning a Blind Eye: Wall Street Finance of Predatory Lending (2007) (with P. McCoy).
Cleveland-Marshall College of Law 1957 alumnus Leon M. Plevin is the founding partner of Plevin & Gallucci Company L.P.A. Leon’s wife, Gloria, is a nationally acclaimed painter and print-maker.
Professor Sheldon Gelman is the Joseph C. Hostetler – Baker & Hostetler Chair in Law. In his writing and teaching, Professor Gelman focuses on issues affecting persons with serous mental illnesses and on other questions at the intersection of medicine and constitutional law. His articles on abortion, forced sterilization of men and women and psychotropic medications have appeared in the Georgetown Law Journal, the University of Minnesota Law Review, the William and Mary Law Review and elsewhere. He is the author of Medicating Schizophrenia (1999).
The Joseph C. Hostetler – Baker Hostetler Chair in Law was established by John Deaver Drinko, Senior Adviser to the Policy Committee of the Baker Hostetler law firm, and friends and alumni of the firm. The chair honors the memory of Joseph C. Hostetler who, together with Newton D. Baker, were the firm’s founders.
Professor Kunal Parker is the James A. Thomas Distinguished Professor of Law. Professor Parker has written extensively on colonial Indian legal history and American immigration and citizenship in the context of history, social theory and contemporary politics. Relevant articles include U.S. Citizenship and Immigration law (1800 - 1924): Resolutions of Membership and Territory (2008), Context in Law and History: The Late Nineteenth Century American Jurisprudence of Custom (2006), and The History of Experience: On the Historical Imagination of Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (2003).
Cleveland-Marshall class of 1968 alumnus James A. Thomas is Chairman, President and CEO of Thomas Properties Group LLC, a real estate company that owns, acquires, develops and manages properties throughout the United States.
A celebrity faculty...
Our faculty is a faculty of scholars on whose expertise the media, state and federal government, national organizations, the courts and other legal scholars increasingly rely. In the last months of the old year and the first of the new year, our faculty was out and about, and the national spotlight was upon them.
For example, there are perhaps only a few law professors in the country who can speak with authority on UNIDROIT and the Space Assets Protocol to the Cape Town Convention on International Interests in Mobile Equipment, and Professor Mark Sundahl is one of them. On November 27, 2007, he appeared on the Space Law Probe, the premier space law blog, which will link you to an earlier interview he presented on the Space Show.
On December 13, 2007, Professor Deborah A. Geier testified before the United States Senate Finance Committee at a hearing on "The Housing Decline: The Extent of the Problem and Potential Remedies." Professor Geier’s area of expertise is tax law, and her testimony examined the tax consequences that arise when mortgage lenders foreclose on principal residence debt.
Associate Dean Phyllis Crocker chaired the Ohio section of the American Bar Association’s Death Penalty Moratorium Implementation Project, a three-year study aimed at determining whether Ohio conducted executions impartially and met legal standards for fairness and due process. Dean Geoffrey S. Mearns was also a member of the Ohio study group.
On January 2, 2008, Professor Kermit Lind, Assistant Director of the Urban Law Development Clinic, spoke to Business Week reporter Michael Orey on the problem of establishing title ownership of abandoned real estate property in the magazine’s lead article, “Dirty Deeds.”
A few days later, Professor Candice Hoke, Director of CSU’s Center for Election Integrity, was a source of electronic voting expertise in Clive Thompson’s lead article in the January 6 New York Times magazine, “Can you count on voting machines?”
Professor Kathleen C. Engel has been an indispensable authority on the implications of the sub-prime lending crisis. On January 9, 2008, the Federal Reserve Board of Governors appointed her to a three-year term on its Consumer Advisory Council. The ten-member Council serves as advisor to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve Board of Governors “on the exercise of its responsibilities under the Consumer Credit Protection Act and on other matters in the area of consumer financial services.” You may read more about Professor Engel's appointment in the Federal Reserve Board's press release.
In the first week of the new year, the Association of American Law Schools, the principal advocacy organization for law faculty, chose two of our faculty to serve on panels during the organization’s annual meeting in New York City. Professor Engel participated in a panel “State and Local Anti-Predatory Lending Laws: The Effects of Assignee Liability and Legal Remedies" for the Section on Financial Institutions and Financial Services, and Professor Milena Sterio spoke on “Globalization, Human Rights, and the Erosion of State Sovereignty" in a panel "New Voices in Human Rights - Part Two.”
Stay tuned: This is only the beginning of the new year—much more to follow as we make our way through 2008.
An English visitor...
This semester, Professor Susan Nash is visiting our law school as a participant in our faculty exchange program with Westminster University in London, England. At Westminster, she is Professor of Law and Head of the Department of Postgraduate Legal Studies and teaches the law of evidence and international criminal law. Her research interests include criminal procedure and evidence, human rights, mutual legal assistance and EU criminal Law. At Cleveland-Marshall, Professor Nash is teaching a Criminal Law Seminar on European Criminal Law and Procedure. Our Professor Veronica Dougherty is the other member of the exchange. She is spending this semester in London, where she will teach a seminar on prevalent Issues in American Law at Westminster.
Our students: their rich lives outside the classroom...
Each year, Cleveland-Marshall students volunteering in the Pro Bono Program contribute approximately 10,000 hours to projects that bring essential services to community organizations that serve Ohio’s neediest citizens—organizations such as the Cleveland Bar Association, the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland, the Cleveland Municipal School District, the Cuyahoga County Board of Commissioners, the Cuyahoga County Earned Income Tax Coalition, the Cleveland Foodbank and Habitat for Humanity.
Through our partnerships with these organizations, this semester our students are helping 10th graders in every high school in Cleveland prepare for the social studies portion of the state-mandated proficiency exams, coaching area students for the city-wide mock trial competition, joining with area attorneys in offering free legal advice to inner-city residents in walk-in clinics on both sides of town, assisting poor and elderly Clevelanders in completing and filing their income tax returns, helping those who have lost their driving privileges to regain their licenses and building new houses for homeless families. In short, this is a law school of men and women who, even as students, have taken to heart the profession’s commitment to serve others.
To learn more about the Pro Bono Program, contact Pro Bono Program Director Pamela Daiker-Middaugh.
They also serve...
Across this continent and across the oceans, other men and women, before they ever opened a law book, were offering their lives and service to our country. I speak of our law students who are enrolled at Cleveland-Marshall as veterans of the armed forces. When they chose our law school, they chose well. Historically, in every class and after every major war or international conflict, veterans have come to our law school as the next and logical step toward a career of serving their country. Today, 17 veterans are enrolled in our law school. They are listed below with gratitude and good wishes for their future.
Anthony Ashurst ‘09: United States Army (1978-1987), Fort Knox, Kentucky; Fort. Benning, Georgia; Camp Casey, Korea; Fort Hood, Texas; Fort Drum, New York; Fort Bragg, North Carolina;
Jessica Brakey ’11: United States Air Force (1998-2005), United States Air Force Academy;
Patrick Charles ’09: United States Marine Corps (1997-2002); Marine Security Guard Detachments, Paris, France, and Shanghai, China;
Nick Davalla ’09, United States Army (2001-2006), Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and Iraq;
Scott Davidson ’11: United States Navy Seaman E3 (1996-1997), Great Lakes, Illinois, Orlando, Florida;
Troy L. Ezell ’09: United States Air Force (2001-present), Offutt Air Force Base, Omaha, Nebraska, and Air National Guard in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania;
Cedric M. Hammond ’11: United States Air Force (1991-2006), Yokota, Japan; Incirlik, Turkey, and others deployments;
Edward F. Herman ’10: United States Army (2001-2002), Afghanistan;
Nichol Higdon ’10: United States Navy (1995-1998), Coronado Island, California;
Rosel C. Hurley III December ’07: United States Army (1988-1991), South Korea, Fort Hood, and Iraq Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm;
Christine Lederer ’11: United States Navy, Bremerton, Washington;
Charles Northcutt ’08: United States Marine Corps (1993-1997), Camp Lejeune, North Carolina;
Christopher Pyanowski ’09: United States Marine Corps (1997-2003), Iwakuni, Japan, Camp Pendleton, California, and deployments to Australia, Egypt, Kuwait and Iraq;
George Sakellakis ’11: (1995-2003, active and reserve duty), United States Army, Fort Sam Houston, Texas; Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri; Operation Noble Eagle, USA; Operation Iraqi Freedom;
Anthony W. Scott ’08: United States Marine Corps (1990-1998), Parris Island Recruit Training Depot and the Marine Corps Air Station, Beaufort, South Carolina; Turkey, Spain, Italy and Israel, aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt;
Christine Tibaldi ’08: United States Army (1993-1996), Fort Story, Virginia;
Urszula Szenfeld ‘10: United States Army (2002-2007; Army Reserve, 2007-present), Fort Hood, Texas, and Operation Iraqi Freedom;
Raymond Videc ’11: United States Army 82 Airborne Division (1995-1998), Fort Brag, North Carolina;
And congratulations to Nathan W. Torres ’08, who has been accepted into the United States Navy’s Judge Advocate’s General Corps and sworn-in as an ensign.
Students and scholars: a parting word...
Our law school’s engagement with the city that surrounds us and the world far beyond our doors is one of the most gratifying features of being a member of the Cleveland-Marshall community. Our students’ direct involvement with some of the area’s most vulnerable citizens teaches both students and their clients the power of the law to effect good, while our faculty’s scholarship and public appearances ask the difficult questions that must be resolved to sustain our democracy and define our country’s proper role as a global citizen. In sum, our scholars and our students are doing the work that justice demands of all of us.
For further information about this newsletter and about the law school, please contact Louise Dempsey at louise.dempsey@law.csuohio.edu Our mailing address is 2121 Euclid Avenue, LB 138, Cleveland, OH 44115.
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