Baltimore Briefs – Page 5 – University of Baltimore School of Law Magazine

27th Annual Awards Ceremony

Posted on September 13, 2021September 10, 2024 by Jason Keller in Baltimore Briefs

Law school held its virtual awards ceremony April 27

For the Class of 2021, Cassandra Brumback was valedictorian, and Scott Jenkins was salutatorian. Cooper Gerus won the 2021 Pro Bono Challenge Award.

The Law Faculty Award winners were Naseam Jabberi, day student, and Eaujee Francisco, evening student.

Jessica Carrick received the J. Ronald Shiff Award for Academic Excellence in Tax. The Clinical Legal Education Association (CLEA) Outstanding Student Awards went to Jameka Carter, for externship work; and to Xuan Mai and Sean Murphy, for their work in the Mediation Clinic for Families. Naseam Jabberi received the Center for International and Comparative Law Director’s Award.

Clinical Excellence Awards went to Stacey Loundsbury, Community Development Clinic; Rohina Azizian Zavala, Civil Advocacy Clinic; and Julia Zheng, Bronfein Family Law Clinic.

The award for Outstanding Teaching by a Full-Time Faculty Member went to Prof. Matthew Lindsay, and Itta Englander received the award for Outstanding Teaching by an Adjunct Faculty Member. The Saul Ewing Award for Outstanding Teaching in Transactional Law went to Prof. Robert Lande.

Prof. Gilda Daniels received the Faculty Scholarship Award for Traditional Research, and Prof. Colin Starger was given the Faculty Scholarship Award for Non-Traditional Research.

The Law Faculty Service Award went to Prof. Angela Vallario, and the Rose McMunn Distinguished Staff Award went to Katie Rolfes.

Prof. Dionne Koller Named Co-Chair of U.S. Olympics and Paralympics Commission

Posted on September 13, 2021September 10, 2024 by Jason Keller in Baltimore Briefs

Prof. Dionne L. Koller, director of the Center for Sport and the Law, has been named co-chair of the Commission on the State of the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee (also known as the USOPC Commission).

The USOPC Commission is a product of the Empowering Olympic, Paralympic, and Amateur Athletes Act that passed on Nov. 2, 2020. It directs the chairs and ranking members of the Senate Commerce Committee and House Energy and Commerce Committee to each appoint four members to the USOPC Commission. The USOPC Commission must conduct a study reviewing recent USOPC reforms and must submit its findings and recommendations to Congress.

“The USOPC exists to protect athletes and uphold the integrity of sport,” said Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-WA, commission chair, in announcing the commission on April 2, 2021. “There are many issues that plague sports, from unequal pay and treatment to sexual abuse. Having the right members on this Commission ensures that these issues can be properly addressed and remedied, so that Olympic and Paralympic athletes can feel safe in their sports environment.”

Koller’s scholarly focus is on Olympic and amateur sports law. She is a former chair and current member of the Executive Board of the Association of American Law Schools’ section on Sports and the Law. Koller also serves as a member of the United States Anti-Doping Agency’s Anti-Doping Review Board and provides pro bono support for Olympic Movement athletes.

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Privacy Was Focus of 12th Feminist Legal Theory Conference

Posted on September 13, 2021September 10, 2024 by Jason Keller in Baltimore Briefs

“Applied Feminism and Privacy” was the theme of this year’s 12th Feminist Legal Theory Conference on April 22 and 23, presented by the Center on Applied Feminism.

As always, current events provided an impetus for the conference theme. Our nation is at a critical time for a broad range of privacy issues. State-level abortion bans have put a spotlight on the importance of decisional privacy to women’s equality. Across America, advocates are fighting for reproductive justice and strategizing to preserve long-settled rights.

At the same time, our informational privacy is increasingly precarious. Data brokers, app designers and social media platforms are gathering and selling personal data in highly gendered ways. As a result, women have been targeted with predatory marketing, intentionally excluded from job opportunities, and subject to menstrual tracking by marketers and employers. In online spaces, women have been objectified, cyber-stalked, and subject to revenge porn.

With regard to physical privacy, the structural intersectionality of over-policing and mass incarceration impacts women of color and other women. And while a man’s home may be his castle, low-income women are expected to allow government agents into their homes — and to turn over reams of other personal information — as a condition of receiving state support. In addition, families of all forms are navigating the space of constitutionally protected family privacy in relation to legal parentage, marriage and cohabitation, and child welfare systems.

The first session examined menstrual justice and activism across employment, homelessness, education and data privacy, and in school and carceral settings. Panelists included Center co-directors Margaret E. Johnson, associate dean for experiential education and professor of law, and Michele E. Gilman, Venable Professor of Law.

This year’s keynote speaker was Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of the National Women’s Law Center.

13th Feminist Legal Theory Conference

Save the date for the 13th Feminist Legal Theory Conference scheduled for April 8, 2022. Themed “Applied Feminism and ‘The Big Idea,'” this year’s conference aims to capture, develop, and disseminate cutting edge theorizing around issues of gender equity and intersectionality.

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Noted British Historian Quentin Skinner to Present Stead Lecture Oct. 8 as Part of CICL Republicanism Conference

Posted on September 13, 2021September 10, 2024 by Jason Keller in Baltimore Briefs

The Wilson H. Elkins Conference on Republicanism will take place Thursday, Oct. 7 through Saturday, Oct. 9, 2021, at the School of Law.

Regents Professor and Wilson H. Elkins Professor M.N.S. Sellers, co-director of the school’s Center for International and Comparative Law, and other noted lawyers, philosophers and political scientists, will discuss Republican law, Republican justice and the Republican form of government. The results of the conference will be published by Oxford University Press as The Oxford Handbook of Republicanism.

Philip Pettit, the Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor of Politics and Human Values at Princeton University, and Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy at the Australian National University, will deliver the Wilson H. Elkins Lecture on “Republican Democracy” at 5:30 p.m. on Oct. 7.

Quentin Skinner, the Barber Beaumont Professor of the Humanities and co-director of The Centre for the Study of the History of Political Thought at Queen Mary University of London, will deliver the John Sumner Stead Lecture on “Liberty and Rights: A Neo-Roman Approach” on Oct. 8 at 9:45 a.m.

Pettit works in moral and political theory and on background issues in the philosophy of mind and metaphysics. He was elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2009, honorary member of the Royal Irish Academy in 2010, and Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy in 2013; he has long been a fellow of the Australian academies in Humanities and Social Sciences.

Pettit’s recent single-authored books include On the People’s Terms: A Republican Theory and Model of Democracy (2012); Just Freedom: A Moral Compass for a Complex World (2014) and The Robust Demands of the Good: Ethics with Attachment, Virtue and Respect (2015).

Skinner is a fellow of the British Academy and a foreign member of several other national academies, including the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.

His scholarship, which is available in 20 languages, has won him many awards, including the Wolfson History Prize and a Balzan Prize. His two-volume study, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought (1978), was listed by the (London) Times Literary Supplement in 1996 as one of the 100 most influential books published since World War II.

Skinner’s other books include Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes (1996), Liberty Before Liberalism (1998), Machiavelli (2000), Hobbes and Republican Liberty (2008), Forensic Shakespeare (2014), a three-volume collection of essays called Visions of Politics (2002), and From Humanism to Hobbes: Studies in Rhetoric and Politics (2018).

The Republicanism Conference is supported by grants from the Wilson H. Elkins Fund of the University System of Maryland and the John Sumner Stead Fund of The University of Baltimore Center for International and Comparative Law. To learn more, email cicl@ubalt.edu.

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Ernesto Villaseñor to Serve as Diversity and Inclusion Delegate to ABA Law Student Council

Posted on September 13, 2021September 10, 2024 by Jason Keller in Baltimore Briefs

Rising 2L Ernesto Villaseñor Jr. will serve as the Delegate for Diversity and Inclusion on the American Bar Association Law Student Division 2021–2022 Council (LSD).

“The LSD is more than just a group within the American Bar Association,” he says. “It’s a door into law school advice, career guidance, perks, networking and opportunities for growth throughout your law school endeavor, and beyond. It is also a space to raise unmet needs that would help you succeed in your law school career … and work with the LSD to help fulfill those needs that would benefit you and fellow students across the country.”

A native of Compton, CA, Villaseñor describes himself as a “first-generation Lawtino.” He is also the incoming vice president of the law school’s Students for Public Interest (UBSPI). “After working in public interest, nonprofit leadership and governmental spaces for more than 10 years,” he says, “I want to connect those experiences as an aspiring public defender and be a zealous advocate for those who I will fight on behalf of.

“My goal is to strengthen the connection between public interest work and our law school, helping bring more opportunities for law students while serving our communities. As the next ABA Delegate of Diversity and Inclusion, I want to bring bold leadership and uplift the underrepresented voices among the law student body at [Baltimore Law] and across the nation, creating pipelines for leader- ship and representation in decision-making spaces.”

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Starger Begins Three-Year Term as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs

Posted on September 13, 2021September 10, 2024 by Jason Keller in Baltimore Briefs

Prof. Colin Starger has begun a three-year term as associate dean for academic affairs, replacing Prof. Dionne Koller, who also served in the role for three years.

Starger is the founding director of the law school’s Legal Data & Design Clinic, and he also co-led the now-defunct Pretrial Justice Clinic, with Zina Makar. Makar recently rejoined the faculty and will teach criminal law. In recent years, Starger has taught Criminal Law, Civil Procedure, Introduction to Lawyering Skills, Jurisprudence, and Coding for Lawyers, in addition to leading the clinics.

Before joining the law faculty in 2010, Starger served as an acting assistant professor of lawyering at New York University School of Law. He graduated in 2002 from Columbia University Law School, where he was a recipient of the Jane Marks Murphy Prize (for Clinical Excellence), and a graduation speaker for his J.D. class.

Following graduation, Starger clerked for Magistrate Judge Michael Dolinger in the Southern District of New York. From 2003 to 2007, he worked as a staff attorney at the Innocence Project at Cardozo Law School. At the Innocence Project, Starger was lead counsel on four DNA exonerations, including one from Oklahoma’s death row.

Starger is the principal on the SCOTUS Mapping Project, a software-driven effort to map Supreme Court doctrine. He has been honored for his innovative work in law and technology, named in 2014’s “Fastcase 50” and as a 2020 American Bar Association “Legal Rebel.” He is a member of the New York and Maryland bars.

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New Staff Join Law School Over Past Year

Posted on September 13, 2021September 10, 2024 by Jason Keller in Baltimore Briefs

Rayna Simon joined the Office of Academic Affairs as student affairs coordinator after working in various roles at her alma mater, Stony Brook University, since 2010. Most recently, she was director of the office of undergraduate student government, where she managed a $3.7 million operational budget and supervised staff and volunteers. Prior to that, Simon was executive assistant to the vice provost for graduate education at Stony Brook.

She also served as an advisor to the Office of Multicultural Affairs, working with minority students in leadership and academic success programs. She earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in social work at Stony Brook.

Assistant Director of Admissions Justin Aromas-Janosik came to Baltimore Law from George Mason University Antonin Scalia Law School, where he had been director of recruiting and marketing since 2015. Prior to that, he was an admissions officer at Northern Kentucky University Chase College of Law from 2008 to 2015.

Aromas-Janosik earned a bachelor’s from the University of Cincinnati and a Master of Arts in Communications from Northern Kentucky University.

Denise Williams joined the Law Career Development Office as associate director. She has five years’ experience as an assistant state’s attorney in the felony trial unit, first in Baltimore City and then in Cecil County. She also clerked for four District Court judges
in Harford County.

Williams earned her B.S. from Drexel University and her J.D. from the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law.

The law library welcomed a new digital reference librarian, Savannah Long, who is responsible for maintaining the law school’s ScholarWorks and SSRN presence, in addition to her regular reference librarian duties.

Before coming to Baltimore Law, Long was a Law Library Fellow at the James E. Rogers College of Law at the University of Arizona, while she was pursuing a Master of Arts in Library
and Information Science. She earned her J.D. at Vanderbilt University and her B.S. at the University of Alabama.

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Baltimore Law Welcomes New Faculty Members

Posted on September 13, 2021September 10, 2024 by Jason Keller in Baltimore Briefs

Five professors join the law faculty

Professor Erica J. Suter is professor of the practice and the new director of the Innocence Project Clinic (IPC), a unique and collaborative position with the Maryland Office of the Public Defender and the School of Law. She replaces Michele Nethercott, who retired after leading the clinic for almost 20 years.

Suter joins Baltimore Law from private practice, where she has been widely recognized as an accomplished appellate and post-conviction criminal defense attorney. In addition to her private practice, Suter gained experience working with students at Georgetown University and UDC’s David A. Clarke School of Law.

She earned a B.A. from Bates College, a master’s from the University of Chicago, and a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center.

Profess or Shanta Trivedi returns to Baltimore Law, where from 2016 to 2020 she was a clinical teaching fellow in the Bronfein Family Law Clinic. She is teaching family law and directs the Sayra and Neil Meyerhoff Center for Families, Children and the Courts.

After concluding her fellowship at Baltimore Law, Trivedi spent one year at Georgetown Law Center, as a clinical teaching fellow and women’s law and public policy fellow in the Domestic Violence Clinic.

Prior to entering teaching, Trivedi was an attorney in the family defense practice at Brooklyn Defender Services in New York. She has a B.A. in journalism from New York University and a J.D. from Boston University. Trivedi takes the CFCC reins from Professor Barbara Babb, who has retired after 32 years at Baltimore Law.

Professor Zina Makar returns to Baltimore Law, where from 2016 to 2019 she was a clinical teaching fellow and co-director of the Pretrial Justice Clinic, which she co-founded. Prior to that, she was a public defender and Open Society Fellow at the Maryland Office of the Public Defender. In 2017, she was named Public Interest Attorney of the Year by the Baltimore City Bar Association.

After completing her Baltimore Law fellowship, she became a teaching fellow in the Civil Rights Clinic and Voting Rights Institute at Georgetown University Law Center. While at Georgetown, she earned her Master of Laws in Advocacy. Makar has a B.S. from University of Maryland and a J.D. from University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law.

Professor Melinda Dunmire is professor of the practice and director of the law school’s Low-Income Taxpayer Clinic, replacing John Snyder. Prior to joining the faculty, she was assistant to the Maryland Comptroller, where she provided general counsel on legal and policy matters, monitored federal tax law changes, and led legislative workgroups, among other duties.

Dunmire also has extensive experience as a hearing officer for the Comptroller’s Office and as a guest lecturer on tax matters at law schools and professional organizations. She earned her bachelor’s, Master of Laws in Taxation, and J.D. degrees at The University of Baltimore, as well as a certificate in nonprofit management from the Community College of Baltimore County.

Professor Marta Baffy joined the faculty as director of academic success and professor of the practice. She came from Georgetown University Law Center, where for five years she was faculty director of its two-year LL.M. program and taught a number of courses on legal research and writing, working with legal texts, linguistics and English for non-native speakers.

She has provided legal services to a variety of diverse communities, and she has published and presented widely on pedagogical practice in law schools. She earned her B.A., summa cum laude, from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and both a master’s and a doctorate in linguistics from Columbia and Georgetown, respectively. Her J.D. is from Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University.

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Law School Partners with State to Investigate Updates to Maryland Laws to Allow Autonomous Vehicles

Posted on September 13, 2021September 10, 2024 by Jason Keller in Baltimore Briefs

This year, the law school embarked on a joint project with the Maryland Department of Transportation State Highway Administration (MDOT SHA) to investigate updates to Maryland law to support the safe deployment of connected and automated vehicle (CAV) technology. Existing laws related to vehicles typically assume that key decisions regarding the operation and maintenance of a vehicle are made by a human, and these laws therefore may be poorly suited to governing vehicles that operate autonomously. Such laws threaten to undermine the future adoption of CAV technologies in Maryland.

To complicate matters, many diverse areas of law potentially relate to vehicles, including transportation, insurance, criminal, environmental and business law. With the emergence of CAV technologies, some states have revised certain key portions of their laws, but this “patchwork” approach to legal reform can lead to legal inconsistencies, enforcement difficulties, and unintended effects. As such, MDOT SHA and Baltimore Law have launched a comprehensive audit of all Maryland statutes and regulations relevant to automated driving.

The team at Baltimore Law is led by Prof. Will Hubbard, director of the law school’s Center for the Law of Intellectual Property and Technology. Three additional professors will spearhead the effort – Prof. Michele Gilman, Prof. Nancy Modesitt, and Prof. Colin Starger — while six law students will support the project as research assistants: Taylor Bayat, Michael Blanchard, Christian Coward, Nyari James, Sina Jahanshahi and Molly Shaffer.

The project will conclude in February 2022 with recommendations for changes to Maryland laws necessary to pave the way for safely deploying CAV technology in Maryland.

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New Staff Joined UB Law This Summer

Posted on October 29, 2020September 10, 2024 by Jason Keller in Baltimore Briefs

Neal Kempler joined UB Law as director of bar success and professor of the practice in July 2020. Prior to joining UB, he spent 18 years as the vice president of program development for Shemer Bar Review, LLC, where he designed innovative bar-passage programs, taught classes in the techniques of bar success, and advised, supported and motivated thousands of individual students.

Prior to his work in the bar-exam preparation industry, Kempler served as an executive in the healthcare field. He received his B.A. in Philosophy and Psychology, cum laude, from Boston University, and his J.D., summa cum laude, from UB Law.

James Simermeyer has joined the UB Law staff as assistant director of admissions for non-J.D. recruitment (LL.M. and certificate programs) and special projects. In his previous role, Simermeyer was the assistant director of diversity and public interest at the University of New Mexico (UNM) School of Law. Simermeyer grew up in Baltimore County and graduated from UNM School of Law.

Prior to working in law school administration, he was a juvenile public defender for the San Carlos Apache Tribe. Simermeyer is a member of the Coharie tribe. He is very excited to be back home in Baltimore and feels blessed to be joining the wonderful UB community.