February 19, 2004

By Mike Emery
Staff writer

In March, the University of Houston Law Center will host four presentations from some of the country’s top legal minds.

“What distinguishes a university from other types of environments that encourage research and other creative activity is that, at a university, the ‘conversation’ about the process of discovery can go on almost 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” said Nancy Rapoport, dean of the Law Center. “Lectures and panels take ‘discovery’ on extremely important issues out of the classroom and into the lives of our faculty, staff, students and guests.”

The law center’s International Law Institute will present “Civil Litigation of International Law Violations in U.S. Courts” at 1 p.m. March 1 in Krost Hall.

Several experts will address the question of whether an American court can try parties for international law violations. Scheduled panelists include William J. Aceves, professor at California Western School of Law; Sandra Coliver, executive director for the Center of Justice and Accountability; Mark A. Drumbl, professor at Washington and Lee University School of Law; and Gunther F. Handl, professor at Tulane University’s School of Law.

The inaugural Baker Botts Lecture, “The Right to Claim Authorship After Dastar,” will be held at 6:15 p.m. on March 4 at the Coronado Club at 910 Travis St.

The Baker Botts’ speaker will be trademark and copyright law specialist Jane C. Ginsburg, professor at Columbia Law School. Response will be provided by Paul Kreiger, who has taught Trademark Law, Unfair Competition and Trade Secret Law at the UH Law Center.

The role of prosecutors is the focus of the third lecture in March. The inaugural Yale L. Rosenberg Memorial Lecture — named for the late UH professor of law — is titled “The Prosecutor’s Duty to Do Justice: A Jewish Law Perspective” and will be held at 9 a.m. March 9 in Krost Hall. Samuel J. Levine, professor of law at Pepperdine University’s Law School, will examine how prosecutors’ primary goal is to seek justice.

On March 24, the John Mixon Society presents “The Myth of Litigation Explosion.” The lecture begins at 1 p.m. in Krost Hall and features speaker Arthur Miller, professor of law at Harvard Law School.

A former legal editor for ABC TV’s “Good Morning America,” Miller feels that there is a myth surrounding the notion of litigation explosion.

“The filing of lawsuits is no more rampant than it was 25 years ago,” he said. “If there was such an explosion, it’s not because of greed or because of America’s frontier spirit.”