February 2010
Professor Lucy S. McGough, the Law Center’s Vinson & Elkins Professor of Law, was named a Distinguished Professor and a Calogero Justice Award recipient by the Louisiana Bar Foundation. She will be honored at a gala to be held in April in New Orleans. The Distinguished Professor honor is in recognition of individuals who have distinguished themselves in their chosen profession and have brought credit and honor to the legal profession. The Calogero Justice Award honors an individual or organization for a significant contribution to the Louisiana Justice system. For the past 13 years, a member of the Law Center’s faculty has received this honor.
Distinguished Global Visitor & Civil Law Workshop—In early February 2010, Professor Santiago Legarre (Universidad Católica Argentina, Buenos Aires) visited the LSU Law Center. Professor Legarre taught Comparative Constitutional Law, a course he had taught on previous visits in 2003 and 2005. His research interests lie in constitutional law and jurisprudence, and his recent publications include The Historical Background of the Police Power, 9 Univ. of Penn. J. of Const. Law 745 (2007) and Nature and Dimensions of Stare Decisis, with Julio C. Rivera, in Essays in Honor of Saúl Litvinoff (Olivier Moréteau et al. eds. 2008).
Professor Legarre also participated in the Civil Law Workshop, Saúl Litvinoff Series. On the occasion of the closing session of the series, on February 4, he presented Common Law, Civil Law, and the Challenge from Federalism, after giving a vibrant homage to the great Litvinoff, with much humor and charisma. See the video presentation.
Agustin Parise, research assistant in CCLS, received a post-doctoral scholarship to conduct research at the prestigious Max Planck Institute in Germany. From October 2010 to January 2011, he will be visiting the Max Planck Institute of Comparative Law in Hamburg. From February to October 2011, he will visit the Max Planck Institute of Legal History in Frankfurt. His plan is to conduct research on the sources of the Louisiana Civil Code and to study the impact our Civil Code had in the rest of the world. Typically, a Max Plank scholarship does not exceed six months. The fact that Agustin is awarded a full year grant is an indication of his high stature as a scholar in comparative law and legal history and also recognition of the work and reputation of our Law Center and its Center of Civil Law Studies.
January 2010
Chancellor Jack M. Weiss was recently appointed to the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) Committee on Libraries and Technology. Professor Andrea Carroll was appointed to the AALS Committee on Curriculum. Both will serve a three-year term.
AALS is the principal representative of legal education to the federal government, other national higher education organizations, learned societies and international law schools. It is a non-profit educational association of 171 law schools representing over 10,000 law faculty in the United States. The purpose of the Association is “the improvement of the legal profession through legal education.”
Professor Ray Diamond gave the keynote address at the Southern Region and Rocky Mountain Region Black Law Student Association Law Journal Symposium held January 16, 2010. The title of his remarks was, Black Voices: Race, Perspective, and Law.
In December 2009, Professor Olivier Moréteau sat as a judge on a doctorate panel at Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, where doctoral candidate Laurent Chassot presented a thesis on the combination of custom, western legal systems and global law in Vanuatu. Also in December, in Vienna, Professor Moréteau participated in a working session of the European Group on Tort Law.
Civil Law Workshop, Saúl Litvinoff Series—Homage was given to Boyd Professor of Law Saúl Litvinoff on the occasion of the sixth session of the Civil Law Workshop, on January 13. Professor Jörg Fedtke, Tulane University Law School, presented Time to Move On—Challenging a Tired Division—Common Law Methods in a Civil Law System. The event was well attended by faculty, students, and international participants.
See the video of the presentation
Professor Christine Corcos has published Law and Magic: A Collection of Essays (Carolina Academic Press, 2010), a book of 24 essays by legal and other academics, practicing attorneys and magicians from the U.S. and Europe. The collection explores the very rich ways in which the rule of law and the practice of magic enrich and inform each other. The authors bring both a U.S. and a comparative law perspective while examining areas such as law and religion, criminal law, intellectual property law, the law of evidence, and animal rights. Topics include alchemy in fifteenth-century England, a discussion of how a courtroom is like a magic show, stage hypnotism and the law, Scottish witchcraft trials in the eighteenth century, the question of whether stage magicians can look to intellectual property to protect their rights, tarot card readings and the First Amendment, and an analysis of whether a magician can be qualified as an expert witness under the Federal Rules of Evidence. The book debuted at the 2010 Association of American Law Schools meeting in New Orleans. Professor Corcos’s own essay in the book is called “Ghostwriters”: Spiritualists, Copyright Infringement, and the Right of Publicity. Other authors include the Honorable Loren A. Smith, Senior Judge of the U.S. Court of Claims, who is both a jurist and a practicing magician, and Marianne (Mimi) Wesson, of the University of Colorado Law School, who is also a best selling mystery novelist. The book is available from the publisher, and from online booksellers such as Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
Professor Paul R. Baier—The Diamond Anniversary sixth edition (2010) of Professor Baier’s The Pocket Constitutionalist has been published by Claitor’s. It features digests of U.S. Supreme Court individual rights opinions cut to perfect diamonds over the course of 35 years by Baier’s students, who are listed in the Table of Authors. The book distills 15,510 pages of United States Reports to 357 painstaking one-page digests. “With the publication of this microscopic labor of love, my former teacher and friend reaps the great joy of a dedicated teacher—parental pride in the accomplishments of his students,” says Justice John L. Weimer of the Louisiana Supreme Court in his foreword.
Professor William Corbett wrote an article during summer 2009 titled Babbling About Employment Discrimination Law: Does the Master Builder Understand the Blueprint for the Great Tower? The article discusses issues in employment discrimination law, focusing on the Supreme Court’s recent decision in an age discrimination case, Gross v. FBL Financial Services, Inc., 129 S. Ct. 2343 (2009). The article will be published in a forthcoming issue of the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Business Law.
Professor Robert Lancaster was recently elected to the Executive Board of the Poverty Law Section of the American Association of Law Schools.
VISITING
Asya Ostroukh, a Fulbright Scholar from Russia, is now in residence at the Law Center. Dr. Ostroukh’s research project is French Legal Tradition Influence on the Louisiana Legal System. Dr. Ostroukh is an associate professor in the Department of Legal Theory and History at the Law SWchool of Kuban State University inKrasnodar, Russia.
STAFF HIGHLIGHTS
Mary Johns, formerly the Systems Librarian, was promoted to Assistant Director for Technical Services/Systems Librarian in August 2009.
Phillip Gragg, Reference & Faculty Services Librarian, was accepted for and attended AALL Leadership Academy in October 2009, will be a columnist for Law Library Journal, and was granted library tenure in spring 2009.
Melanie Sims, Government Information Librarian, is serving as the 2009-2010 President of the Louisiana Library Association (LLA). She is the second African American to serve as President of this organization which has been in existence since 1925 and has over 1,100 members statewide. The primary objective of the Louisiana Library Association is to promote the library interests of the State of Louisiana. In addition to serving as LLA President, Melanie will serve as guest editor of Louisiana Libraries for a special theme issue on diversity. Melanie is the Special Libraries Representative on the Louisiana Federal Depository Library Council which serves as the final authority on questions of policy and procedure regarding the implementation of the State Plan for Federal Depository Libraries in Louisiana. She also serves as a member of the Board of the Friends of the Baton Rouge Community College Magnolia Library.
Ajaye Bloomstone, Acquisitions Librarian, presented a program at the annual American Association of Law Libraries conference titled: Redefining Work Roles in Response to Changing Environments. She is a member of the American Association of Law Libraries Technical Services Special Interest Section Executive Board and Education Board, Acquisitions Standing Committee Chair. She is also the Association for Library Collections & Technical Services (a division of the American Library Association) liaison to the American Association of Law Libraries. She is a co-compiler of Prices of US and Foreign Published Materials, Bowker Annual Library and Book Trade Almanac 2008, 53rd ed.
Will Monroe, Head of Instructional Technology, passed the general examinations for a Doctoral Degree in Educational Research with a concentration in educational technology.
Kevin Baggett, Circulation Librarian, was elected as president of the Baton Rouge Association of Law Librarians (BRAALL), appointed to Louisiana Library Association’s Literary Award Committee, and appointed to American Association of Law Libraries, Academic Law Library Special Interest Section’s Statistics Committee. He also published book review in Louisiana Libraries, and had a CALI Lesson proposal on Louisiana Secondary Resources accepted (2010 publication date).