CM Law Faculty

Chris Sagers, the James A. Thomas Distinguished Professor of Law, appeared this week on the Wisconsin Public Radio current affairs program “Central Time,” to discuss potential antitrust action against the online retailer Amazon. You can hear a clip of the segment here.

On Tuesday, August 15, Professor Alan Weinstein was one of the three land-use law experts who discussed the Supreme Court’s latest “takings” ruling on a national webinar sponsored by the American Planning Association.  The case, Murr v. Wisconsin, saw the Court ruling 5-3 that a Wisconsin “lot merger” regulation was not an unconstitutional taking as applied to two contiguous parcels, one of which the owners wanted to sell while retaining the other. Rejecting the competing “bright-line rule” positions offered by the owners and the State of Wisconsin, Justice Kennedy announced a new multi-factor test to determine the extent of the appropriate “denominator” in takings claims involving merger provisions applied to contiguous parcels.  In his presentation, Professor Weinstein reviewed the facts and ruling in Murr, discussed the dissenting Justices’ criticisms of Kennedy’s test, and the implications of the Murr ruling both on how state and local governments regulate contiguous parcels and ways that owners of contiguous parcels may react to the ruling.

The other speakers were Nancy Stroud of the firm Lewis, Stroud & Deutsch, PL, and John Echeverria of Vermont Law School.

In addition, Professor Weinstein is currently in the top 10 % of authors on SSRN by all-time downloads.

Chris Sagers, the James A. Thomas Professor of Law

As antitrust issues come to be more and more in popular discussion, Chris Sagers, the James A. Thomas Professor of Law, has been busy discussing them with media around the country. He discussed the growing antitrust concerns surrounding Amazon with various outlets, including Forbes Magazine, Yahoo Finance, and the current-affairs website ATTN.  He also spoke about the pending merger of AT&T and Time Warner, Inc., with Bloomberg, and the state of competition in the airlines with a major daily paper in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Professor Karin Mika presented at the Biennial ALWD (Association of Legal Writing Directors) Conference held at the University of Minnesota, July 19-21.  The theme of the conference was, “What Unites and Divides Us.” The title of Professor Mika’s presentation was, “The Legal Writing Classroom in a Post-Trump (win) Presidency.”  In her presentation, Professor Mika discussed views on whether the divisions in our country should be discussed in the classroom and, if so,  how it should be done to avoid bias or being overly political.  She also discussed how the classroom atmosphere has or has not changed since the election, especially in relation to minorities (both teachers and students) who may feel intimidated by the current climate in the nation.  Finally, Professor Mika discussed whether there is liberal bias in colleges, and whether professors implicitly or explicitly encourage it in the classroom.

Professor Sterio at the Radio Bleu Touraine radio station, participating in “The Inquiry,” BBC Word Service

Professor and Associate Dean Milena Sterio participated as a panelist in a BBC World Service radio and online show “The Inquiry,” in an episode entitled “Who Gets to Have Their Own Country?”  According to the BBC description of this episode, available here:

You might think simple rules decide the creation of nation states. You’d be wrong.

There are plenty of people out there who want their own state – like in Iraqi Kurdistan and Catalonia, which both have independence referendums coming up. Yet the national governments in Baghdad and Madrid say the votes – whatever their outcome – won’t result in new countries. So how do you start a new country? Making sense of an atlas dotted with exceptions, special cases and lands in limbo, we ask: who gets to have their own country?

In addition, Professor Sterio was quoted in a BBC article on the same topic, entitled “How do you start a country,” available here.

SEALS Panel on the Trump Administration and Foreign Affairs and National Security Law Issues

Professor and Associate Dean Milena Sterio presented on a panel entitled “The Trump Administration and  Foreign Affairs and National Security Law Issues” at the Southeastern Law Schools’ Association (SEALS) Annual Meeting in Boca Raton, Florida, on August 5.  In addition, Professor Sterio presented, at the same conference, as part of a discussion group on overcoming bias threat and stereotypes in law school teaching on August 6.