Archives By Date (2009-2010)
The 2009 Constitution Day Celebration Lecture
Mark Sundahl
Associate Professor of Law
Cleveland-Marshall College of Law
What Would Socrates Say about Our Constitution?
Professor Sundahl is an expert in ancient Greek Law. According to Professor Sundahl, the Athenians struggled with many of the same issues that confronted the framers of our own Constitution and they undertook various reforms to resolve problems concerning direct democracy, the separation of powers, and judicial review. In his lecture, he will explain the nature of the Athenian democracy and then examine how the framers improved upon the Athenian model—and how certain problems that Athens faced remain to this day.
If you missed Prof. Mark Sundahl's Constitution Day Lecture, "What Would Socrates Say about Our Constitution," you can see him and hear his lecture HERE
The 2009 Littler Mendelson Employment and Labor Law Lecture
Julius G. Getman
Earl E. Sheffield Regents Chair
University of Texas School of Law, Austin
Are Unions Putting Their Eggs in the Wrong Basket?
Professor Getman has been a pioneer in empirical studies in the field of labor law and continues to do extensive field work. He is author of THE BETRAYAL OF LOCAL 14: PAPERWORKERS, POLITICS AND PERMANENT REPLACEMENTS (Cornell University Press 1998) and co-editor, with UT faculty colleague, former Secretary of Labor Ray Marshall, of a book of essays, THE FUTURE OF LABOR UNIONS: ORGANIZED LABOR IN THE 21ST CENTURY (L.B.J. School of Public Affairs 2004). Professor Getman is a former President of the American Association of University Professors.
In his lecture, Professor Getman will argue that unions’ success in organizing depends not on legal change but on the use of non-traditional organizing tactics. He believes that the Employee Free Choice Act or “card check bill” would not accomplish what unions think it would; rather, it would leave employers with essentially the same advantages they currently hold in organizing battles/campaigns.
The 2009 Legal Writing Lecturer
Terri LeClercq
Senior Lecturer, Legal Writing (ret.)
University of Texas School of Law
Writing Rules That Matter(ed)
Can the passive voice, a misplaced comma or an ambiguous phrase sabotage a legal document and send its author back into court—this time to defend his or her own written product?
Legal writing scholar and language expert Terri LeClercq knows that bad grammar and clumsy writing are costly errors that can jeopardize a lawyer’s career. She will provide evidence of the hazards of poor drafting when she presents "Writing Rules that Matter(ed)," a free lecture at Cleveland-Marshall College of Law in the Moot Court Room of the law school on East 18th Street and Euclid Avenue.
Terri LeClercq was Senior Lecturer at the University of Texas School of Law. She is the author of numerous publications on writing well and intelligibly for many disciplines and in many genres and has worked with universities, law firms and government agencies across the United States providing expert opinion and testimony on language issues. She is the 2006 recipient of the AALS Section on Legal Writing’s Lifetime Achievement Award.
In her Cleveland-Marshall Legal Writing Program Lecture, Professor LeClercq will review specific documents and explain how they wound up being the focus of litigation, backtracking to the drafting phase where errors and ambiguities in language occurred.
Navigating Political Campaign and Election Law in 2009
Check-in: 5:30 PM; program begins: 6:00 PM
Moot Court Room,
One free hour of CLE
Don McTigue
Managing Partner
McTigue & McGinnis, LLC
Join the Democratic Lawyers Group of Northeast Ohio and the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, along with the Greater Cleveland Young Republicans, the Cleveland-Marshall Republicans, the Cleveland-Marshall Federalist Society, the Cleveland-Marshall Libertarians, the Cleveland-Marshall American Constitution Society, and the Cleveland Marshall Democratic Law Organization as they present an event which explores the legal problems and questions political candidates and campaigns encounter in campaigns.
3pm – 4pm
Moot Court Room
Richard Cordray (NOTE: No CLE for This Program)
Ohio Attorney General
Smith v. Spisak
On October 13, Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray will represent the state before the United States Supreme Court in the case of death row inmate Frank Spisak. The question the state will pose is whether, in its review of Mr. Spisak’s death sentence, the Sixth Circuit disobeyed the directives of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act and ignored a relevant Supreme Court's decision in an earlier case. The Court will also consider whether the Appeals Court incorrectly presumed prejudice and whether it failed to consider the Ohio Supreme Court’s standards for determining prejudice.
On October 15, Attorney General Cordray will discuss Smith v. Spisak during a free public event on October 15 from 3:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. at Cleveland-Marshall College of Law on East 18th Street and Euclid Avenue.
The case, Smith v. Spisak, has special resonance in Cleveland and at Cleveland State University. In 1983, a Cuyahoga County jury convicted and sentenced to death self-proclaimed neo-Nazi Frank Spisak for the murders in 1982 of three men at Cleveland State University: the Reverend Horace Rickerson, CSU student Brian Warford, and CSU administrator Timothy Sheehan. Mr. Sheehan was the father of Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Brendan Sheehan, Cleveland-Marshall College of Law Class of 1993.
The Cleveland-Marshall chapter of the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy is sponsoring the event.
Attorney General Cordray will take questions at the conclusion of his remarks.
Criminal Justice Forum I
Beth A. Wilkinson
Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP
Washington, DC
and
Phyllis L. Crocker
Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs
Cleveland-Marshall College of Law
The Future of the Death Penalty in the U.S.A.—Reform? Abolition? Status Quo?A Conversation
Ms. Wilkinson, a former federal prosecutor, was appointed a special attorney to the U.S. Attorney General in U.S. v. McVeigh and Nichols. She has testified before the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate on death penalty issues and is co-chair of the Constitution Project’s Death Penalty Initiative. Dean Crocker chaired the ABA's Ohio Death Penalty Assessment Team. The team examined the administration of the death penalty in Ohio and published its findings and recommendations in Evaluating Fairness and Accuracy in State Death Penalty Systems: The Ohio Death Penalty Assessment Report (2007).
1:00 p.m. – 6:30 p.m.
4 hours of free CLE
A Conference on The State of LGBT Rights: Ohio, America, and the World - (Watch Full Event Video)
A conference organized by CM Allies to consider the legal status of members of the LGBT community in Ohio, nationally and internationally. Invited speakers include lawyers, academics and activists who have been on the front line of the movement at the national, state and local levels. Topics include marriage, domestic partnership, benefits, employment, housing, and adoption.
Geoffrey S. Mearns
Dean and Professor of Law
Cleveland-Marshall College of Law
Camilla Taylor
Senior Staff Attorney
Lambda Legal HRC
Chicago, Illinois
Carrie Davis
Staff Attorney
ACLU of Ohio
Lynn Bowman
Executive Director
Equality Ohio
Columbus, Ohio
Joe Cimperman
Member
Cleveland City Council
Paula Ettelbrick
Immediate Past Executive Director
International Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Commission
Susan Doerfer
Executive Director
The LGBT Center of Greater Cleveland
Sarah Warbelow
Senior Counsel for Special Projects & Justice for All Fellow
Human Rights Campaign
Washington, DC
The 2009 Baker & Hostetler Visiting Professor of Law
Daphne Spain
The James M. Page Professor and Chair
Department of Urban & Environmental Planning
The University of Virginia
Women's Rights and the Shaping of the Postwar Metropolis
Daphne Spain, the University of Virginia’s James M. Page Professor and Chair of the Department of Urban and Environmental Planning, has catalogued the lives of women and their contributions to the American political and social landscape in numerous articles and in books such as Balancing Act: Motherhood, Marriage, and Employment among American Women (with S. Bianchi (1996)), Gendered Spaces (1992) and American Women in Transition (1986).
Professor Spain’s 2001 book, How Women Saved the City, describes women’s efforts, during the years between the end of the Civil War and the end of WWI, in creating safer and more charitable cities for poor families, single women, minorities and immigrants through their participation in visionary organizations such the Young Women’s Christian Association, the National Association for Colored Women and the College Settlement Association.
Professor Spain believes that post-war years have often been times of progress for women in their struggles for equal rights and that their successes transformed the home, the workplace, and the social environment of our country’s great industrial cities. On November 3, she will speak on Women’s Rights and the Shaping of the Postwar Metropolis in a free public lecture at 5:00 PM in the Moot Court Room of Cleveland-Marshall College of Law on East 18th and Euclid Avenue.
Professor Spain is the law school’s 2009 Baker & Hostetler Visiting Professor of Law. Her lecture is approved for one free hour of CLE credit.
Details: 216-687-6886.