Faculty Professional Development Schedule
2008-2009 Academic Year
Unless otherwise indicated, all sessions will meet in Room 327 from 12-1 p.m. For more information about the faculty professional development programs contact Professor Michael Schwartz.
July 2008
- 7/24 (Room 120, 12-1 p.m.): Professor Sarah Sargent (Adjunct, Washburn University School of Law)
Research area is inter-country adoption. Professor Sargent is doing a comparative analysis of seven countries (Guatemala, South Africa, China, India, the United States, South Korea and Sweden) to analyze the processes by which countries elect to become involved with inter-country adoption and the ramifications of those decisions on the "best interests of the child" standard. Some of the research work is being done through interviews with key inter-country adoption professionals in several countries.
September 2008
- 9/18: Professor Bill Rich
The History of the Privileges and Immunities Clause - 9/30: Professor Michael Hunter Schwartz
Clickers Redux: Now It's Easy to Use the Responder Units to Engage Your Students (But Please Don't so I Can Hog this Great Tool)
Professor Schwartz will use the new clickers both to demonstrate their instructional value and to show how easy they are to use. He will create a question or two on the spot
October 2008
- 10/13: Visiting Professor Bruce Carolan
The Birth of the European Union: The Role of the UK and the USA in the Creation of the European Coal and Steel Community
Synopsis: The road to the modern European Union (EU) began with the dramatic declaration of French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman of May 9, 1950. The declaration was largely the handiwork of French Foreign Minister Jean Monnet. In his remarks to a press conference called for the occasion, Schuman proposed the creation of a European Coal and Steel Community possessing supranational characteristics.
According to historian Alan Milward, "A certain saintliness has been conferred on all those who touched the Schuman proposals, from Monnet and Schuman down to the professor of law who drafted a version of them....' Some legal textbooks on EU law (including Professor Carolan's) implicitly portray the Schuman declaration as occurring in a vacuum, springing forth fully formed and armoured, like Minerva from the head of Zeus.
Professor Carolan hopes to contextualize the birth of the modern EU, particularly by exploring the respective roles of the United Kingdom and the United States in events leading up to Schuman's declaration. His thesis is that many of the modern features of the European Union owe much to the unrecognized influence of U.S. pressures on France in the post World War II period. He will also touch on the marginalization of the United Kingdom in the early stages of modern European integration.
November 2008
- 11/13-11/14: The Rule of Law and the Global War on Terrorism: Detainees, Interrogations, and Military Commissions (Symposium)
- 11/17: Associate Professor Lori McMillan
Topic TBA
December 2008
- 12/1: Associate Professor Mary Ramirez
Prioritizing Justice: Combatting Corporate Crime from Task Force to Top Priority
January 2009
- 1/26: Associate Professor Tonya Kowalski
Toward a Pedagogy for Clinical Legal Writing
Synopsis: In the course of clinical supervision, clinicians inherently instruct students in advanced legal writing. So far, there is no clear philosophy to guide clinicians in how to communicate with students about their writing. Previous attempts have tried to fit the "square peg" of classroom-based legal writing pedagogy into the "round hole" of the clinical environment, where time is short and consequences are great. I will present early findings from a nationwide survey on clinicians' current practices, and will also discuss how collaboration with legal writing faculty can yield an improved lexicon for discussing written analysis with students. Other topics may include how to achieve a good balance of directive vs. non-directive supervision when overseeing writing assignments, how to address plagiarism for law practice vs. law school, and so on.
February 2009
- 2/3: Professor Ali Khan
Infinity of Law
Synopsis: This presentation will demonstrate that infinity is a defining dimension of law. The concept of infinity has been studied with respect to time, space, theology, and mathematics but not with respect to law. This omission is understandable. To most legal professionals, infinity seems extraneous to the study of law. Ordinarily, law deals with the finite. Parties, lawyers, courts, complaints, claims, crimes, remedies, and punishments, these and other fundamental logistics of law all belong to realm of the finite. In fact, the legal machine of dispute resolution rests on the principle of finitude. The finitude machine relies on rules of evidence and rules of procedure to extract finite facts from an otherwise chaotic and infinite story; it then turns the extracted facts into finite issues, which are resolved under finite laws. A pre-established hierarchy of courts oversees final disposition of the case and the concept of res judicata seals the finite disposition of the case. Legal systems engaged in operating the finitude machine rarely ponder over infinity of law. A comparative analysis of secular law and Islamic law reveals, however, that infinity permeates secular law more than it does Islamic law. - 2/9: Associate Professor Brad Borden
Taxation of Shared Economies of Scale - 2/16: Associate Professor Aida Alaka
The Phenomenology of Error in Legal Writing - 2/20 (2:00-5:00 p.m.; location TBD): Curriculum Reform Committee
Things Worth Considering in Connection with Washburn's Curriculum Reform Efforts
(Carnegie, Best Practices, Washburn's LSSSI results, Krieger's Study of Washburn's students, past survey of skills taught by Washburn faculty, results of alumni survey, what other law schools are doing— including what other law schools are doing to address graduate writing issues, alternative models from outside legal education)
March 2009
- 3/9: Professor David Pierce
Topic TBA - 3/12: Howard Davidson (American Bar Association Center on Children and the Law)
Thirty Years of Advancing the Cause for Children
April 2009
- 4/3: Professor Carrie Basas (University of Tulsa College of Law)
Women with Disabilities and the Legal Profession (available on SSRN) - 4/6: Associate Professor Rory Bahadur
Is Negligence an Unworkable Liability Regime? - 4/13: Associate Professor Jeffrey Jackson
Putting the Rationality Back in the Rational Basis Test: How to Salvage the Court's Substantive Due Process Jurisprudence
