Prof. White will be participating in a free two-day workshop, Rethinking Mortgage-Based Homeownership, May 16 - 17, 2013, at the University of Arizona Student Union. Sessions include panels on American Mortgages in Historical and Comparative Perspective and When Homeownership Fails. The full schedule is available at http://sociology.arizona.edu/homeownership-symposium/agenda; a list of speakers and panelists can be found at http://sociology.arizona.edu/homeownership-symposium/speakers.

Beginning with students graduating in 2014, the College of Law will offer two new certificate programs:  one in Family and Juvenile Law and the other in Tax Law and Policy.

The Family and Juvenile Law Certificate Program will provide a curriculum to prepare students for practice in selected areas of concentration in the fields of family and juvenile law. In addition to required and elective coursework in the law school, it will also require interdisciplinary coursework and participation in either a clinic or an internship. There will also be a regular series of speakers, panels, or other presentations from experts on topics related to family or juvenile law; and a faculty-student advisory board to develop initiatives to enhance the educational experience for students and to develop internship and externship opportunities. Professor Emerita Barbara Atwood will serve as the initial Program Director.

The Tax Law and Policy Certificate Program will recognize students who have successfully completed coursework concentrating in the field of tax law and policy. In addition to required and elective coursework in the law school, the program also offers the opportunity to take courses in the Eller College of Management. The program also requires students to engage in ten hours of unpaid, pro bono practice experience with the primary focus on an aspect of tax law. Professors Mona Hymel and John Swain will serve as the Program Directors.

As with the Law College’s International Trade & Business Law Certificate Program and the Indigenous Peoples Law & Policy Certificate Program, these new certificate programs will help students demonstrate their commitment to a particular field and their satisfactory completion of a specialized educational program.

Arizona Law is partnering with the Center for English as a Second Language (ESL) to provide an ESL bridge course for international students in Summer 2013. An ESL bridge couse is one that supports an academic course by providing language support in a specific content area. Academic courses will be taught by Arizona Law faculty and supported by a series of ESL courses supporting students by explicitly reinforcing terms, definitions, and concepts specific to the academic course. The program is designed for international students seeking full-time admission to the JD with Advanced Standing Program or the LLM in International Trade and Business program, but who are lacking the minimum English requirement; international students already admitted to an Arizona Law degree program; and students admitted to law programs elsewhere or practicing lawyers who would like to improve their legal English. For more information see the program flyer and the CESL website.

Five law students received recognition and cash prizes for their lawyering skills in the 13th Annual Richard Grand Damages Argument Competition. Student winners of the April 2, 2013, competition were:

• John Palfreyman and John Lierman (tie) (1st place - $1,500 each)
• Omar Vasquez (3rd place - $500)
• Robson Hauser and Andrew Floyd (4th place - $250 each)

The event is an oral argument competition that emphasizes the presentation of damages evidence in personal injury cases. Student finalists presented mock closing arguments on the issue of how much in damages should be awarded in a civil lawsuit. Local lawyers Gloria Torres, Joe Ezzo, Brian Chas, and Professor Paul Bennet served as jurors for the arguments.

The competition is funded by Richard Grand, a 1958 graduate of the College of Law. Grand began his practice in Tucson as a deputy county attorney and, since 1962 his practice has been limited to representing plaintiffs. On more than 100+ occasions he has obtained either a verdict or settlement in excess of $1 million.

In 1972, he received a jury verdict of $3.5 million, at that time the largest in the United States for a single injury. Wry v. Dial, 18 Ariz. App. 503 (1972). In 1972 he founded the Inner Circle of Advocates, which is limited to 100 U.S. lawyers who have completed at least 50 personal injury trials and have at least one verdict in excess of $1 million for compensatory damages. In 2002, the University of Arizona Alumni Association Board Of Directors awarded him the University of Arizona’s Professional Achievement Award to Richard Grand. Mr. Grand was only the twelfth person to receive this prestigious award.

The Arizona Board of Regents approved cuts in tuition for the College of Law for the 2013 - 2014 academic year on April 4, 2013. The reductions equal approximately 11% for in-state students and 8% for non-resident students. For more details, see the UANews post here.

For more news and commentary on this reduction, see the following articles:

• NEW: Above the Law, A Trend in the Making:  Falling Law School Tuition? Let's Make It Happen, People!, Apr. 9, 2013.
• National Law Journal, Arizona Cuts Law School Tuition, Marking a First, Apr. 4, 2013;
• Arizona Republic, UA Law School May Cut Tuition to Lure Students, Apr. 3, 2013;
• Wall Street Journal Law Blog, University of Arizona Fires First Salvo in Law School Tuition War, Apr. 5, 2013;
• ABA Journal, Attention Law School Shoppers:  It's Now Cheaper to Get a JD from the University of Arizona, Apr. 5, 2013;
• KVOA, University Students Face High Tuition, Apr. 4, 2013;
• Arizona Daily Star, University of Arizona Law School Cutting Tuition as Enrollment Drops, Apr. 5, 2013 (for those using this document as a news source: contains omissions of fact.)

Visiting Scholar in Residence Stavang, Regents' Professor Glennon, Professor Gantz, Dean Miller, and Associate Dean Engel will each present a class dealing with issues in environmental law and humanities in Environmental Law at the Crossroads series offered by the College of Humanities in May 2013. For more information and to register for the classes, see here.

Prof. Orbach, along with Prof. Erik Gerding (University of Colorado), are the organizers of a one-day symposium that will explore the causes and consequences of institutional failues, focusing on problems in the collective decision-making process. The symposium, Herd Behavior, Groupthink & Financial Bubbles, will convene some of today’s leading experts in the area. It will be held on June 1, 2013, during the annual meeting of the Law & Society Association in Boston, Massachusetts. Details about the symposium are available here.

Regents’ Prof. Massaro and her co-author, E. Thomas Sullivan, President of the University of Vermont and former dean of the College of Law, recently wrote The Arc of Due Process in American Constitutional Law. More information about the book, published by Oxford University Press, is available here.

Prof. Robertson is a principal investigator in a new study on physicians taking money from the pharmaceutical industry. The research team’s study, Distributions of Industry Payments to Massachussetts Physicians, was published online in the New England Journal of Medicine last week. His team discovered that about 25% of physicians in Massachusetts do take money, and in some fields like urology, over 60% do. Some of his prior research has shown that these payments likely have an influence on prescribing decisions. Read the paper here.

The Universidad Mayor, Santiago, Chile, recognizes Prof. Kozolchyk for his world-wide work in international commercial law by investing him with the title of Doctor Honoris Causa on May 30, 2013. This title honors Prof. Kozolcyk’s lifetime of work including the drafting of several laws, treaties and collections of best commercial practices that have been adopted by many countries throughout the trading world, for his writing of influential textbooks adopted in Spain and Latin America, and for his work as a respected advisor to the United States and various other governments in the Americas, to the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) and the International Institute for the Unification of Private Law (UNIDROIT). Prof. Kozolchyk received the same recognition from the Antonio Guillermo Urrelo Private University of Cajamarca, Peru, in April 2009 and is the only United States’ professor of law to have been so honored by Latin American law schools.

Prof. Swain spoke as part of a keynote panel presentation on The Future of Amazon at the Telsey Advisory Group’s Fifth Annual Spring Consumer Conference in New York City on April 9, 2013. His presentation concerned the sales taxation of e-commerce and the impact on investors. The Telsey Advisory Group provides expertise in consumer trends to securities analysis and investors.

Prof. Rose and her co-author, Richard R.W. Brooks, Yale Law School, recently wrote Saving the Neighborhood:  Racially Restrictive Covenants, Law, and Social Norms. More information about the book, published by Harvard University Press, is available here.

Prof. Sjostrom's new text, Business Organizations:  A Transactional Approach, was recently published by Wolters Kluwer. Read more about this book here.

Prof. Jean Braucher was inducted as a fellow of the American College of Bankruptcy at a black tie event on Friday, March 15, 2013, at the National Portrait Gallery and Smithsonian Museum of American Painting in Washington, D.C. The Roger C. Henderson Professor of Law, Prof. Braucher has taught Bankruptcy, Contracts, and Commercial Law at the law college since joining the faculty in 1998. She is also faculty supervisor of the Mortgage Clinic, a collaboration with Southern Arizona Legal Aid.

The 2013 inductees included prominent judges and bankruptcy attorneys from around the country, including an Arizona Law alum, Steven Berger ('84), as well as some international insolvency professionals. The induction event also included two days of panels on hot topics in bankruptcy.

The American College of Bankruptcy (ACB) is an honorary association of bankruptcy and insolvency professionals. Its fellows include commercial and consumer bankruptcy attorneys, corporate turnaround specialists, judges, academics, bankruptcy trustees, and government officials. The fellows are selected on the basis of a “proven record of the highest standards of professionalism and service to the profession,” according to the ACB. The organization supports education programs for bankruptcy professionals and service work to assure access to debt relief.

Prof. Braucher has written numerous scholarly articles concerning bankruptcy and also has served in a variety of positions with national bankruptcy groups. In 2011, she was the scholar in residence of the American Bankruptcy Institute in the Washington, D.C., area. She is currently a member of the board of directors of the National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys and vice president of the National Consumer Bankruptcy Rights Center, which files appellate briefs supporting the rights of consumer debtors, who cannot typically afford appellate representation.

Prof. Dobbs and Prof. Bublick, with Prof. Paul T. Hayden, have written the 7th edition of Torts and Compensation, Personal Accountability and Social Responsibility for Injury. This edition, as well as the Concise 7th edition, will be published in early April. More information about this book is available here.

Victor Nilsson (3L) received the first prize in the ABA Business Law Section’s Mendes Hershman Student Writing Contest for his article, You’re Not from Around Here, Are You? Fighting Deceptive Marketing in the Twenty-First Century, 54 Ariz. L. Rev. 801 (2012). This prize included an all-expenses-paid trip to Washington, D.C., to attend the ABA Business Law Section’s spring meeting, as well as $2,500. Read more about the award here. Victor also received the Snell & Wilmer Best Published Note Award at the recent Arizona Law All-Publications Award Banquet and the Snell & Wilmer Best 2L Note Award last spring for this article.

The three Arizona Law publications, Arizona Law Review (ALR), Arizona Journal of International and Comparative Law (AJICL), and the Arizona Journal of Environmental Law & Policy (AJELP), held their 2012 - 2013 Award Banquet, Thursday, April 18, 2013.

For the ALR, the award recipients were:

• Best Case Note Award:  Julie Wilson-McNerney
• Best Copywork Award:  Kimberly O'Hagan
• Snell & Wilmer Best 2L Note Award:  Jana Sutton
• Snell & Wilmer Best Published Note:  Victor Nilsson
• Steptoe & Johnson 2L Writer of the Year:  Alexander McCourt
• Java Jim Award:  Sarah E. Epperson
• Rose 'n Berg Distinguished Editor Awards:  Nicholas Verderame & Michael Shumway
• Steptoe & Johnson Editor of the Year Award:  Brian Mosley

For AJICL, the award recipients were:

• Best Copywork Award:  Robert Rosvall
• Professionalism Award:  Ronald Cooper
• Greatest Contribution by an Editorial Board Member:  John Lierman
• Collegiality Award:  Jessica Gale
• Best 2L Note:  Edward Laber
• Prof. Kozolchyk Award for Best Student Note:  Elinor Rushforth
• Greatest Contribution by a 2L Writer:  Alanna Duong
• Distinguished Editor Award:  Rachel Fleming

For AJELP, the award recipients were:

• Editor of the Year Award:  Caylin Goldey Barter
• Distinguished Editor Awards:  Jacob Kavkewitz & Brian Tedder
• 3L Associate Editor Award:  Oksana Holder
• Best Copywork Award:  Matthew Bracken
• Best Comment Award:  Benjamin Nucci
• Professionalism Award: A li Felchlin

Thanks to the Law College Association, Patricia Martin & Timothy Berg, Robert & Elise Rose, Snell & Wilmer, Toni Massaro, and all the other sponsors for supporting this event.

The Udall Foundation recently announced that Cara Wallace, a 1L at the College of Law, is one of 12 students from 12 tribes and 11 universities selected as 2013 Native American Congressional Interns. Interns were selected by an independent review committee of nationally recognized Native educators and tribal policy leaders on the basis of academic achievement and a demonstrated commitment to careers in tribal public policy.

This highly regarded internship program is intended to provide American Indians and Alaska Natives with an insider’s view of the federal government. The internship is located in Washington, D.C., and is known for placing students in extremely competitive internship positions in Senate and House offices, committees, Cabinet departments, and the White House, where they are able to observe government decision-making processes firsthand.

The 12 Udall Interns will complete an intensive, 10-week internship in the summer of 2013. Special enrichment activities will provide opportunities to meet with key decision makers. From 1996 through 2013, 209 American Indian and Alaska Native students from 110 tribes will have participated in the program.

For more information about Ms. Wallace and the other 2013 Udall Interns, please see this page:  www.udall.gov/OurPrograms/NACInternship/MeetInterns.aspx?Year=2013.

Arizona Law 2012 - 2013 Law & Entrepreneurship students, under the guidance and mentorship of Prof. Hecker, have provided legal advice to competing startups in the McGuire Center for Entrepreneurship during the past year. Their efforts culminate in the annual McGuire New Venture Competition and Showcase, held at McClelland Hall on Friday, April 26, 10:00 a.m. - 6:30 p.m. The law students will present their work at 3:00 p.m. More details about the New Venture Competition and Showcase are available at the McGuire website, http://mcguireexperience.com/nvc/.

The Environmental Moot Court team made an extremely good showing at the 25th Annual National Environmental Moot Court Competition at Pace University Law School in White Plains, New York, last week. The Competition featured 72 teams from law schools across the country and judges drawn from the ranks of leading environmental practitioners and national nonprofit organizations.

Our team advanced to the quarter-finals. Jena Decker-Xu (3L) was named Best Oralist in the first Preliminary Round of the competition. The team members are:

• Heather Coe-Smith (3L)
• Jena Decker-Xu (2L)
• John Lierman (3L)

The Team was coached by Don Large and by many faculty members and attorneys who contributed their time to judging practice rounds.

Congratulations to Arizona Law 2Ls Daniel Arellano and Omar Vasquez, who just won the American Bar Association’s First Amendment and Media Law Diversity Moot Court Competition! Daniel and Omar were one of only eight teams chosen, on the basis of their resumes and a sample essay, to submit an appellate brief. Their brief won them a spot as one of only four teams selected to participate in oral arguments at the ABA Forum on Communication Law’s 18th Annual Conference in Orange County, California. Not only did Daniel and Omar win the oral-argument competition for Arizona Law, they also won the Best Brief Award, and Omar was recognized as Best Oral Advocate. The team’s coaches were Arizona Law Professors Toni Massaro, Derek Bambauer, and Jane Bambauer. You can read more about the competition here.

Daniel and Omar participated in this competition through Arizona Law’s Legal Skills Competition program, one of the many experiential-education opportunities at the College. Each year, Arizona Law sends student teams to participate in five competitions – the ABA National Appellate Advocacy Competition, the Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition, the National Trial Competition, the Native American Law Student Association Moot Court Competition, and the Pace National Environmental Law Moot Court Competition. Students like Daniel and Omar who are interested in participating in other Legal Skills Competitions may seek approval to do so from Arizona Law’s Legal Skills Competition Board. You can find more information about these opportunities on the College of Law’s website at www.law.arizona.edu/current_students/Legal_Competitions/competition.cfm.

Arizona Law’s team has won the Inaugural Ninth Circuit Bankruptcy Negotiation Competition, sponsored by the American College of Bankruptcy, in Los Angeles. The three team members are Jeffrey Coe, David Obrand, and Bradley Terry, all third-year students.

The competition was held at the University of Southern California’s Gould School of Law late last month. Twelve teams competed in this first competition, and the Arizona law students edged out contenders from UCLA, USC, UC-Berkeley, UC-Davis, UNLV, and BYU, among others.

The team’s coach is Robert M. Charles, Jr., who teaches Bankruptcy Reorganization at the law college and is a partner at Lewis and Roca, based in its Tucson office. A 1982 graduate with distinction from the law college, Mr. Charles heads the firm’s Finance and Bankruptcy Group and practices throughout Arizona and Nevada.

“I was really proud of our team. They did an excellent job understanding a complicated financial problem, applying their understanding of bankruptcy law, preparing a term sheet, and competing in both rounds of negotiation,” said Professor Charles. “They worked well together, and the judges gave them great feedback after their rounds. It was a terrific experience.”

All three competitors took Professor Charles’s Bankruptcy Reorganization course in the fall. The three students also had taken many other relevant courses in debtor-creditor law, such as Bankruptcy and Related Issues, Secured Transactions, and the Mortgage Clinic.

The competition involved the preparation and exchange of written term sheets over the semester break, followed by two rounds of in-person negotiations on January 26. The negotiations concerned an out-of-court restructuring between a financially distressed California winery and an unofficial committee of its unsecured creditors. Materials describing the fact pattern and the rules for the competition were distributed to the competing teams in early November, with preparation taking from then through the negotiation rounds in late January.

UPDATE:  The Arizona Daily Star published an article about the program on February 12, 2013. Read this article with additional details here.

Arizona Law students, along with UA English students are working with the Pima County Superior Court judge and alumni Dean Christoffel to simplify complex language in instructional packets related to divorce, child custody and other family law proceedings. The for-credit internship program, called Simpla Phi Lex, takes the expertise of both sets of students to make clear, succinct and accurate revisions to the instructions that accompany family law forms for Pima County Superior Court. Read more here.

Third-year student Jonay Foster spent the spring and summer of 2012 as a White House intern. Read about her experiences here.

Arizona Law students support an active chapter of the Environmental Law Society (ELS). On September 16, 2012, they hiked to Tanque Verde Falls. Additional hikes are being planned. The chapter will be hosting speakers, films, and other events to encourage awareness and further study of how the law intersects with the environment. In addition, the members are planning the ELS Annual Camping Trip and joint events with the Arizona Journal of Law and Policy.

Third-year Arizona Law students, Jordan Emerson and Athan Papailiou, assisted in a jury trial of a Tucson construction worker who treated women suffering gynecological problems by injecting them with ozone in his home without a license. Emerson and Papailious helped Assistant Arizona Attorney General Michael Jette in the case. The jury deadlocked on some of the charges but convicted the worker on others. Read more about the case here.

Please join in congratulating the following students, who have been selected as new members of the Arizona Journal of International & Comparative Law::

Please join in congratulating the following students, who have been selected as new members of the Arizona Journal of Environmental Law & Policy:

Please join in congratulating the following students, who have been selected as new members of the Arizona Law Review:

Richard Grand (’58) died Sunday, April 7, 2013, in San Francisco, California. He was an extremely successful litigator, winning verdicts or settlements of over $1 million in more than 100 cases. Read more here and here.

In a May 10, 2013, article about the Jodi Arias case in the Arizona Republic, Prof. Silverman spoke about the rarity of women on death row. The article was picked up by USA Today. Read the articles here and here.

Prof. Bambauer offered his expertise in an article about how to avoid trouble when posting online in a May 8, 2013, Lifehacker article, How You’re Unknowingly Embarrassing Yourself Online (and How to Stop). Read the article here.

On May 7, 2013, KOLD ran a TV report concerning the arrest of a Tucson man for child pornography after Google reported his activities to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Prof. Bambauer was interviewed for the story and explained how Google has the right to review your email if you use Gmail and how they possibly discovered this information. Watch the report and read the story here.

On April 16, 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in the “Baby Veronica” case concerning the Indian Child Welfare Act (CWA). Prof. Atwood, who has written about the ICWA in the past, co-authored the ACLU amicus brief in support of the Cherokee father and recently participated in a blog discussion concerning the case. Read the brief here and the discussion here.

Professor Atwood and Regents Professor Massaro wrote the piece for the Arizona Republic in the form of a Q & A between a professor and student. Read the March 23, 2013, opinion here.

Prof. Bambauer provides a short explanation of the new “6-Strikes” copyright alert system in a March 20, 2013, UA News story, found here.

Prof. Tatum is quoted extensively in a March 16, 2013, article in the Farmington Daily Times concerning the impact of the new provisions of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) on Navajo Tribal attorneys. Read the article here.

Prof. Bambauer discussed the new anti-piracy program on the March 12, 2013, episode of Arizona Illustrated. Read more and watch his discussion here.