University of Pittsburgh School of Law Faculty Blog

Professor David Harris says that withholding the name of the victim of a police shooting victim who is now hospitalized needlessly raises suspicions of a cover up.

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Professor Stella Smetanka published a book chapter titled “Susie’s Voice,” with Rosa Lynn Pinkus and Nathan A. Kottkamp, in Complex Ethics Consultations: Cases that Haunt Us (Cambridge Univ. Press 2008), edited by Paul J. Ford and Denise M. Dudzinski.

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Professor Pat Chew’s article “Myth of the Color-Blind Judge: An Empirical Analysis of Racial Harassment Cases,” co-authored with Robert Kelley, has been posted on SSRN. The article will be published in Washington University Law Review in the Spring of 2009.

The article is based on an empirical study of over 400 federal cases, representing workplace racial harassment jurisprudence over a twenty-year period, found that judges’ race significantly affects outcomes in these cases. African American judges rule differently than White judges, even when we take into account their political affiliation and case characteristics. At the same time, our findings indicate that judges of all races are attentive to relevant facts of the cases but interpret them differently. Thus, while we cannot predict how an individual judge might act, our study results strongly suggest that African American judges as a group and White judges as a group perceive racial harassment differently. These findings counter the traditional myth of judicial decision-making that the race of a judge would not make a difference, since the decision-making process is presumed to be rationale and objective.

Given the underrepresentation of minority judges on the federal bench, the growing minority population in the U.S., and minority skepticism of judicial fairness, this article offers empirical support for a more racially-diverse judiciary. Having more judges of color promises to increase the impartiality of the judicial system and yield more equitable legal outcomes.

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Professor Lawrence A Frolik was the Keynote Speaker at the Fourth Annual Guardianship Conference, “Best Practices in Guardianship Cases,” held in Boston, Massachusetts on Friday, November 4, 2008.  The Conference is sponsored by The Massachusetts Guardianship Association and the Flaschner Judicial Institute and brings together judges, attorneys and profession guardians to discuss current issues faced by the Massachusetts guardianship system. Professor Frolik addressed the topic, “Guardianship in Practice – Are We Progressing or Regressing?”.

On November 8, 2008, Professor Ronald A. Brand spoke on “Treaties and Separation of Powers in the United States: A Reassessment after Medellín v. Texas” at the Seminar on “Separation of Powers in the Americas . . . and Beyond” at the Duquesne University School of Law.  The Seminar was co-sponsored by the Inter-American Bar Association and included presentations the Chief Justices, professors, and scholars from throughout the Western Hemisphere and from Europe.

On October 27, 2008 Professor George Taylor presented a paper on “Equality and Diversity:  Some Jurisprudential Considerations” to the Law Department of the London School of Economics.  From October 28-31, he participated in an international conference on the work of philosopher Paul Ricoeur at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, and on October 31, he presented a keynote paper there on “Legal Hermeneutics.”

Commenting for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on a request for a change of venue in the pending retrial of former Alleghen County Coroner Dr. Cyril Wecht:

David A. Harris, a criminal procedure professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, agreed that the prosecution making a motion for change of venue is rare. “It’s an indication of just how much trouble the government has had with this case,” he said.

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On October 11-15, 2008, Professor Ronald A. Brand traveled to Muscat, Oman, with Kate Drabecki (JD ‘08) and Katerina Ossenova (JD ‘08) to help the Sultan Qaboos University School of Law develop a Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot team as part of an effort to develop that school’s commercial law and arbitration curriculum.  The work is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Commerce as part of its Commercial Law Development Program (CLDP) under the Middle East Partnership Initiative.  This project represents the second CLDP contract awarded to the Center for International Legal Education to assist law faculties in the Persian Gulf Region.

On October 18, 2008, Professor Ronald A. Brand provided a review of ten significant developments as part of a panel on Recent Developments in Private International Law at the International Law Weekend sponsored by the American Branch of the International Law Association and the Association of the Bar of the City of New York.

Professor Brand has been elected an associate member of the International Academy of Comparative Law.  The Academy is the premier international organization for the study of comparative law.

Federal District Judge Edward Nottingham of Colorado, who has been under investigation for a variety of alleged ethical transgressions, has resigned from his life-tenured position on the federal bench. Professor Arthur Hellman commented on the resignation in stories in the National Law Journal and the Denver Post. The chief judge of the circuit said that Judge Nottingham may have made false statements to the misconduct inquiry. Professor Hellman said that, based on those statements, Judge Nottingham may face the loss of his license to practice law or even federal criminal charges.

Links:

http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_10860631

http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202425690409

Andrew E. Taslitz, the Welsh S. White Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law, has just been appointed to the new Federal Law Subcommittee of the Committee on Policy and Legislation of the American Bar Association’s Criminal Justice Section. This new Subcommittee’s charge is to review all proposed criminal justice legislation in the new Congress and to examine changes in criminal justice policy or practice of the new Administration, then to make recommendations to the Section leadership, and ultimately the ABA leadership, on the need to express an ABA position on these matters.

Professor Taslitz has also become a participant in the University of Pittsburgh’s interdisciplinary Center for Race and Social Problems and has agreed to present to the Center on the topic of race and innocence. Professor Taslitz, along with Pittsburgh Professor David Harris and Indiana-Bloomington law professor and sociologist Jeanine Bell, has also begun the research design phase of an empirical study of search warrant bases in the City of Pittsburgh over the last several years. On October 31 and November 1, 2008, Professor Taslitz completed his first full meeting of the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws’ Committee on Electronic Recordation of Custodial Interrogations and, as a result, is expected to present draft legislation for that Committee’s consideration in March 2009. He also helped to review draft standards of the ABA Committee on Transactional Surveillance Standards (addressing government surveillance of third parties holding private record information, for example, internet service providers or banks) at its last meeting in Denver, Colorado.

Professor Taslitz has just published Ferguson v. City of Charleston: the Feminization of Consent, in THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES (Gale Publishing, 2008); The Guilty Plea State, 2 CRIM. JUSTICE __ (2008) (editor’s introduction to symposium on guilty pleas); Prosecutorial Preconditions to Plea Negotiations: “Voluntary” Waivers of Constitutional Rights, 23 CRIM. JUSTICE __ (2008); a 2008 Supplement to his co-authored text, EVIDENCE LAW AND PRACTICE (3d ed. 2007); and a 2008 Supplement to his co-authored text, CONSTITUTIONAL CRIMINAL PROCEDURE (3d ed. 2007).