The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit will hold oral arguments at the College of Law on Monday, March 26, 2012, 10:00 a.m. - noon in the Ares Auditorium. 

The Arizona Journal of International & Comparative Law Editorial Board for 2012 - 2013 has been announced. The new Editor-in-Chief is Ronald A. Cooper. The Masthead with the new Board can be found here.

The Arizona Journal of Environmental Law & Policy Editorial Board for 2012 - 2013 has been announced. The new Editor-in-Chief is John M. Gregory. The Masthead with the new Board can be found here.

The Arizona Law Review Editorial Board for 2012 - 2013 has been announced. The new Editor-in-Chief is Stuart D. Kottle. The Masthead with the new Board can be found here.

The Environmental Breakfast Club, a diverse group of faculty from various departments, programs and colleges on the campus, who meet monthly at Arizona Law to discuss works in progress on the environment and natural resources, have just released their schedule for the coming year. All presentations will be on the first Friday of each month (January and May excepted), from 8:30 to 9:45 a.m., in the Law College Faculty Lounge (Room 237).

UPDATE: Presentations for the Spring semester are as follows:

• February 3, 2012:  Derek Lemoine, Assistant Professor of Economics.
  Topic:  Tipping Points and Ambiguity in the Integrated Assessment of Climate Change
• March 2, 2012:  Sabrina Helm, Associate Professor, Family & Consumer Sciences, Co-Director of Consumers, Environment & Sustainability Initiative.< br /> Topic:  Understanding the Human Dimension in Water Conservation: The Example of Residential Adoption of Rainwater Harvesting
• April 6, 2012:  Ron Trosper, Professor and Head of American Indian Studies.
  Topic:  How American Indians Recognized the Value of their Commons.

The Legal Writing program is delighted to announce the five finalists for this year’s Richard Grand Legal Writing Competition:

• Joseph Austin (1L)
• Matthew Chandler (2L)
• Benjamin Harville (3L)
• Jared Jorde (2L)
• Annie Ross (1L)

These finalists were selected from 40 entries. We were impressed by the variety and the high quality of the submissions. Selecting the five finalists was difficult, and we warmly commend all who wrote. Our five outside judges will determine the final order of the awards. This year’s judges are:

• The Honorable Robert M. Brutinel, Justice, Arizona Supreme Court;
• The Honorable Wendy Morton, Commissioner, Maricopa County Superior Court;
• Timothy Eigo, Editor-in-chief of Arizona Attorney magazine;
• Troy Larkin, Attorney, U.S. Customs and Border Protection; and
• Jeremy A. Lite, Attorney, Quarles and Brady, LLP

The awards reception will be held on Monday, January 30, at noon in the Sullivan room. The final order of the awards will be announced at that time. All faculty, staff, administration, Grand judges, and Grand participants (and their friends and guests) are invited to attend.

As always, the Legal Writing Program is grateful to attorney Richard Grand for his generosity in creating, inspiring, and funding this competition.

College of Law Alumni Kris Carlson ('11), Gemma Zanowski ('10), and Susan Friedman ('10) have recently started Tough Love Pit Bull Rescue, an organization working to save pit bulls in Arizona, California, Nevada, and Washington. Read more here.

C. Bradley Vynalek ('99), a partner in the Phoenix office of Quarles & Brady, recently received a Service Award from the State Bar of Arizona for work he did as a State Delegate to the American Bar Association's House of Delegates. Read more here.

Prof Schneyer, co-chair of the Alternative Business Structures Working Group of the ABA Commission on Ethics 20/20, commented that he couldn't predict whether the Commission would approve nonlawyer ownership interests or not at this stage, following a meeting of the Commission. Read more here.

Prof. Rabin discussed the issue that the detention and child protection systems often does not recognize that detained undocumented parents are trying to remain in contact with their children in a February 1, 2012, story on ABC's Nightline website. Read the story here.

In a recent study, Professor Braucher, along with Professors Robert M. Lawless and Dov Cohen, University of Illinois, discovered that blacks were more likely to be steered into filing under Chapter 13 of the Bankruptcy Code than whites, who were more often steered into Chapter 7. The study, entitled Race, Attorney Influence, and Bankruptcy Chapter Choice, will be published later this year in the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, and is available in draft form here. The New York Times published an article on the study on January 20, 2011, here.

Prof. Rabin was one of several speakers at a January 17, 2012, news conference on the issue of what happens to children whose parents are in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Prof. Rabin spoke on the results of her study, Disappearing Parents:  A Report on Immigration Enforcement and the Child Welfare System, which found that children in this situation are often put into the Child Protective Services system, which is not set up to deal with coordination issues with the federal immigration detention system. Read more here.

Prof. White was quoted in a January 9, 2012, piece on The Bottom Line on msnbc.com concerning strategic default, i.e., walking away from underwater homes. Read the piece here.

Regents' Professor Massaro participated in the New York Times "Room for Debate" series on January 5, 2012, on the question "Should noncitizens who live in America be allowed to donate to U.S. elections?". Her comments, entitled Citizens United Set the Tone, can be read here.

Indian Country Today listed Prof. Williams as one of seven Heroes on the Hill, 2011, for his work to protect the rights of First Nations in British Columbia. Read more here.

Prof. Anaya, in his role as Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, will conduct his first official visit to the United States in the spring of 2012. He will review the U.S. government’s implementation of the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and follow up on his work on the impact of extractive industries on the rights of Indigenous Peoples. Read more here.