Faculty Notes Susan Bitensky Professor Susan Bitensky’s most recent law review article has been accepted for publication as the lead piece in the Oklahoma Law Review. The article—titled “Section 1983: Agent of Peace, or Vehicle of Violence Against Children?”—examines cases in which parents have invoked section 1983 to state a cause of action against state authorities who interfere with the parents’ “right” to corporally punish their children. The article focuses on the irony implicit in such litigation because section 1983’s predecessor statute, section 1 of the Civil Rights Act of 1871, was enacted to permit suit as a means of stopping violence—especially whipping—perpetrated against blacks and their white sympathizers during Reconstruction. Professor Bitensky delivered a paper on the child’s right, under the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, to be educated without undergoing corporal punishment, at the University of Victoria’s international symposium entitled “Creating a Culture of Human Rights, Democracy and Peace in the New Millennium” held August 18-22, 2001, in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. In September, 2001, she prepared an issue paper for the American Bar Association on how the ban on corporal punishment of children contained in the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child would impact American law if the U.S. were to become a party to the Convention. Professor Bitensky gave a speech at the MSU-DCL President’s Club Dinner on May 11, 2001. The speech addressed whether U.S. Supreme Court decisions have contributed to gun violence in the nation’s elementary and secondary schools. Amy Christian Professor Amy Christian’s scholarship is featured in Martha Chamallas’s recent book, Introduction to Feminist Legal Theory, published by Aspen Publishers, Inc. The book has been adopted in many law schools across the country, bringing additional distinction to Professor Christian’s writings as well as to MSU-DCL. The chapter on Applied Feminist Legal Scholarship focuses, in part, on implicit gender bias in the tax code and on Professor Christian’s work relating to the structure of joint return tax rates. Professor Chamallas points out that Professor Christian’s recent articles illustrate how “the joint return scheme resembles coverture in that the ‘joint’ asset (i.e., the tax savings from filing jointly [rather than separately]) is legally owned by the husband, and the law merely presumes that the wife will derive a benefit.” In this manner, the joint return resembles the legal concept reminiscent of a bygone era in which “husband and wife were one and that one was the husband.” In April 2001, Professor Christian was a panelist and presented a paper at a Tax Policy Workshop at the Washington University School of Law in St. Louis, Missouri. The paper, entitled The Ethics of Tax: Beyond Consequentialism, examines tax law from a philosophical perspective. Specifically, Professor Christian asks whether tax law should be judged only with respect to its practical consequences or whether it should also be assessed with respect to general philosophical principles of right and wrong. The presentation was well received and is expected to generate new areas of inquiry for Professor Christian’s scholarship. During the summer of 2001, Professor Christian continued her examination of the tax laws and their effects on men and women, with a special focus toward the extensive changes enacted in June 2001. For example, the new tax act contains prospective relief from the marriage penalty, a frequent subject of her scholarship. Professor Christian plans to incorporate tax changes such as this one into her future scholarship. Recent changes in the tax laws are also being incorporated into the classroom. The new marriage penalty relief provisions will be discussed, for example, in a new course called “Tax Policy Seminar,” that she will be offering in the spring of 2002. Professor Christian’s current work in progress is an article co-authored with Professor Robert A. McCormick. Professors Christian and McCormick are researching and writing about the legal status of student athletes and their relationship to universities, the NCAA and professional sports franchises. The tax treatment of athletic scholarships provides a tax-related foundation for considering the complex relationships among these parties. David Favre Professor David Favre published an article titled “Equitable Self-Ownership for Animals” in the Duke Law Journal (December 2000). He wrote a second article, “How the World of Legal Education Changed and I Got to Build my Root Cellar,” which was published by the Journal of Legal Education. Professor Favre presented a lecture about ivory trade under international law at a two-day conference held in Dallas by the Animal Law Sector of the Texas Bar. During the presentation, he made comments about animal rights from his self-ownership article. He also attended a conference in China to make a presentation on U.S. animal law. In addition, Professor Favre was the keynote speaker at the International Conference on Environmental and Resource Law at Fuzhou Law School in China. The conference was sponsored in November 2001 by the Research Institute of Environmental Law of Wuhan University. Professor Favre’s topic of discussion was the U.S. experience in the interaction of capitalism and efforts to protect the environment. Elizabeth Price Foley Professor Elizabeth Price Foley’s editorial, “Feds Overreach on Cloning,” was published in the Detroit Free Press (August 2001). She has been invited to participate in a symposium on law, genetics and cloning, sponsored by the Albany Law Review. Professor Foley was appointed to serve a three-year term on the Diversity Committee of the American Bar Association Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar. Brian Kalt Professor Brian Kalt had an op-ed about political polarization on the World Wide Web in the National Post, a Canadian national paper. He participated in three events to promote his book, Sixties Sandstorm, about the fight over making a national lakeshore area in the Sleeping Bear Dunes area: a speech to the Grand Ledge (Michigan) Rotary, a speech and book signing in Empire, Michigan (sponsored by the Cottage Book Shop and Empire Historical Museum), and a speech and book signing at the annual meeting of the Leelanau Historical Society in Leland, Michigan. Christine Klein Professor Christine Klein’s article, “Preserving Monumental Landscapes Under the Antiquities Act,” has been accepted for publication by the Cornell Law Review. The Georgetown University Law Center invited her to present the paper as part of its annual environmental workshop speaker series. Professor Klein has recently made four additional presentations. In November, she served as moderator of the MSU-DCL Law Review’s Forum on Directional Drilling, a panel discussion published in the first volume of the 2002 Law Review. In October, she discussed the current controversy over large-scale water withdrawals from the Great Lakes for commercial sale and other uses as part of the Central States Law School Association meeting and also as part of the Michigan Environmental Health Association’s annual meeting. Finally, she made a presentation on current issues in environmental law at the American Bar Association’s Seminar of Appellate Staff Attorneys in July. Mae Kuykendall Professor Mae Kuykendall returned from her semester visit at Florida State University, where she enjoyed opportunities to participate in other professors’ classes as a visitor, as well as teaching her own classes, and received a football autographed by Heismann trophy winner Chris Weinke. Her article, “Comment on Gay Marriages and Civil Unions: Democracy, the Judiciary and Discursive Space in the Liberal Society,” appeared in the Mercer Law Review during the summer of 2001. Professor Kuykendall is serving this year as president of the Central States Law School Association, and in that capacity, she will lead MSU-DCL’s hosting of the annual meeting of the group. The meeting consists of scholarly presentations by law professors from the central states and occasional other schools. The group also uses the meetings to address emerging issues in legal education. MSU Provost Lou Anna K. Simon will greet the attendees with reflections on her experience as the academic officer of a major university that has assimilated a law school into its institutional life. Professor Kuykendall has recently agreed to serve as reporter for the amendments to the Michigan Nonprofit Corporation Act. In that capacity, she will assist the Nonprofit Corporations Committee of the Business Law Section of the State Bar of Michigan to incorporate amendments to the Michigan Business Corporation Act since 1994 (as appropriate). Professor Kuykendall has recently served as co-reporter of the Corporation Law Committee of the Business Law Section of the State Bar of Michigan. A set of revisions, which included provisions incorporating authorization to do electronic filings and conduct electronic meetings, was enacted by the Michigan legislature and signed by the governor over the summer. Professor Kuykendall is teaching Mergers and Acquisitions this fall for the first time at MSU-DCL. The class is benefiting substantially from a set of guest lectures by Trustee and Board President Clif Haley, who is sharing with the class a vivid account of transactions that he shaped as a top executive at Budget Rent-A-Car and relating the legal issues implicated to the text used in the class. Mr. Haley was able to have the deal documents scanned for placement on the TWEN website for the class, which enables the students to access them on their computers in class. Michael Lawrence Associate Dean and Professor Michael Lawrence had two articles published in law journals this fall: “A New Case for Direct Congressional Regulation of Guns in School Zones” in the University of Denver Law Review and “Do ‘Creatures of the State’ Have Constitutional Rights? Standing for Municipalities to Assert Procedural Due Process Claims Against the State” in the Villanova Law Review. C. Nicholas Revelos Professor C. Nicholas Revelos will be jointly offering a course in Cybersecurities Law in the Spring 2002 term with Professor Howard Friedman, director of the Cybersecurities Law Institute at the University of Toledo College of Law. The course will utilize video-streaming technology and will be taught entirely in cyberspace to students at both law schools. The course will concentrate on the federal regulation of securities transactions conducted on the Internet. Charles Ten Brink Charles Ten Brink, professor of law and director of library and technology services, made a presentation, “Re-Thinking Information Services for Academics,” at the annual conference of the American Association of Law Libraries in Minneapolis on July 18, 2001. He made an additional presentation on issues in the preservation of digital information for the Arts, Communications, Entertainment and Sports Section of the State Bar of Michigan on September 12. MSU-DCL HOSTS VISITING SCHOLAR FROM RUSSIA Dmitri Bartenev Throughout the 2001-02 academic year, MSU-DCL is hosting Dmitri Bartenev, a visiting scholar from Petrozavodsk State University in Petrozavodsk, Russia. Bartenev is visiting as part of the Junior Faculty Development Program (JFDP), sponsored by the American Councils for International Education. JFDP strives to support the development of higher education, scholarship and democracy in the former Soviet states. Program participants seek to develop new courses, implement curriculum reforms in their home institutions, cultivate new teaching skills, expand their information base, practice new teaching skills by presenting to American audiences, develop professional contacts and act as resources for colleagues in their host schools. Bartenev currently is developing a course in health law and updating a course in constitutional law.