CM Law Faculty

Clinical Professor of Law Doron Kalir was interviewed recently by the Cleveland Jewish News on current political developments in Israel. The article discussed recent efforts – and failures – by several parties to establish a coalition in Israel.

Separately, Professor Kalir completed a series of three lectures on Jewish Philosophy as a Practical Guide to Life. The lectures, given as part of Congregation B’nai Jeshurun’s Fall Weingold Forum, discussed the choices a person who accepted the Jewish God into their lives has to consider.

Associate Dean and Professor Jonathan Witmer-Rich appeared in a News Channel 5 story about the progress of the Cleveland Division of Police under the federal consent decree.  He explained, for example, that the CDP used to have a huge backlog of civilian complaints that were never resolved.  Today, in contrast, that backlog is gone and civilian complaints are addressed and resolved.

Professor Witmer-Rich also emphasized they key role of rebuilding trust:

“The very beginning of the Consent Decree talked about trust between the community and the police,” said Witmer-Rich. “That’s really the fundamental issue here, is trust. When you have trust between a community and its police department, you can have mistakes made on either side and you can still have a functioning relationship and you can move forward. But when there’s a really severe breakdown in trust, and that was definitely the case, then it’s very hard to have a well-functioning police department.”

Chris Sagers, the James A. Thomas Professor of Law, was quoted in a story in Fortune Magazine on the ongoing congressional investigation into anticompetitive conduct by the Apple corporation. Investigators for the House Judiciary Committee recently sent detailed questions to Apple and several other Big Tech firms asking them about their business practices, and this week Apple returned its much-anticipated answers.  Sagers opined on how seriously to take Apple’s explanations, and whether there might be anticompetitive behavior afoot in spite of them.

On November 19, Professor Reginald Oh spoke at a CMBA “Hot Talk” focused on the ongoing impeachment inquiry.  Professor Oh appeared on a panel with Professor Jonathan Adler (Case Western Reserve University School of Law), moderated by Marisa Darden, co-chair of the CMBA Criminal Law section.

Professor Oh laid out the case for impeachment, explaining the interrelated concepts of bribery and extortion, and why the existing evidence demonstrates that President Trump committed both bribery and extortion in his conduct.  Professor Oh also responded to some of the defenses that have been advanced to date.