Faculty News

Assistant Professor Charles C. Jalloh has just published a comment on the International Criminal Court Decision on the Authorization of an Investigation in Kenya in the American Journal of International Law, July 2011, Volume 105, Number 3 at pp. 540-547.

Professor John Burkoff discussed the decision of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to allow telecasts of arguments.  Arguments will be taped and not broadcast live.  Professor Burkoff supports the idea.  "There are cameras everywhere. You're being watched on the street. I think that there is a generational tilt toward more openness, and cameras in the courtroom is essentially inevitable."

Link to the article here.  

Professors Ronald Brand and Harry Flechtner taught in the 2011 Institute in Commercial Law and Dispute Resolution in Zagreb and Zadar, Croatia, in July.  This is the second year for the unique summer program operated as a joint venture of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, the University of Zagreb Faculty of Law, and the Touro Law Center.  Students received an overview of international business transactions, a week of instruction in substantive international commercial law, and a week of coverage of international commercial arbitration.  They then prepared and presented written and oral submissions in an arbitration setting.  This year, Brand provided part of the IBT coverage, and Flechtner provided the coverage of the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods.  One-third of the students were from law schools outside the United States, providing a strong element of diversity in the classroom, which included instruction by eight professors from four different law schools.

Professor Rhonda Wasserman co-drafted an amici curiae brief, urging  the United States Supreme Court to grant a petition for a writ of certiorari in the case of Adar v. Smith, No. 11-46.   The case involves the refusal of the State of Louisiana to issue a revised birth certificate to a Louisiana-born child who was adopted by an unmarried gay couple in New York.  The brief contends that Louisiana’s refusal violates the Equal Protection and Full Faith and Credit Clauses of the United States Constitution.  Professor Wasserman worked on the brief with Professor Joan Hollinger of UC Berkeley (Boalt Hall) School of Law, Professor Courtney Joslin of  UC Davis School of Law,  Jonathan Damon, Esq., an attorney with Dewey & LeBoeuf, and Cathy Sakimura, Esq., an attorney with the National Center for Lesbian Rights.  Twenty-four other prominent professors of family law, conflict of laws, and constitutional law and drafters of several Uniform Acts addressing family law matters signed onto the brief.

The brief can be downloaded by clicking on the pdf download link on the right side of the screen, near the bottom.

To read more about the Adar case, click here.