We are very fortunate to have outstanding full-time, adjunct, and emeritus faculty, leaders-in-residence, and staff. We are pleased to share regular updates on the work of this talented group. Below are highlights from Summer 2025.
Faculty
Prof. Matt Green has published an article in Attorney at Law Magazine titled “White Man’s Burden: Ames and the War on DEI.” In the article, Prof. Green discusses the Supreme Court’s recent opinion in Ames v. Ohio Dep’t of Youth Services, which addressed the issue of “members of a majority group, say, white, heterosexual men, bear a heavier evidentiary burden to prove a claim of employment discrimination than members of a minority group.” In the Ames decision, Prof. Green writes, “the U.S. Supreme Court held that burden is inconsistent with Title VII’s text and the Court’s precedent.”
Prof. Green explains the relevant principles of Title VII at issue in the Ames decision, as well as analyzing the Court’s reversal of the Sixth Circuit. He also discusses the broader legal context, noting that the Ames decision may be used by opponents of DEI initiatives.
Prof. Green then argues that “[d]espite the backlash, merely labeling a program as DEI does not mean it violates antidiscrimination laws,” in part because “DEI has no uniform meaning.”
Prof. Green observes that “because Ames makes alleged reverse discrimination cases easier for plaintiffs to litigate, employers facing claims may opt to curtail or cancel DEI initiatives rather than risk prolonged, costly litigation even for claims that might ultimately fail on the merits.”
Prof. Laura C. Hoffman presented as a Panelist for Caring for Aging Populations in June 2025 at the 48th annual American Society of Law, Medicine, and Ethics (ASLME) Health Law Professors Conference at Boston University School of Law on her current legal research project, “Preventing Starvation: Policymaking to Feed the Sandwich Generation Caregiver”.
Prof. Hoffman also spoke as a Discussant at the Health Law Professors Conference as a member of a newly formed option of a discussion group format with law professors with expertise and significant legal scholarship in the area of telehealth regulation for a discussion group titled, Navigating Telehealth’s Crossroads: Access, Quality, and the Push for Parity.
Legal Educator-in-Residence Howard E. Katz made several presentations at the Southeast American Law Schools Association (SEALS) annual conference at Amelia Island, Florida. On July 29, Prof. Katz was on a panel whose topic was “Designing Your Course Package”, as part of the Aspiring Law Teachers Workshop. He made two presentations as part of the Newer Law Teachers Workshop: on July 30 the topic was “Teaching Fundamentals: Designing an Effective Core Law School Course”; on July 31st, the topic was “Constructing and Grading Exams to Enhance Assessment and Learning.”
Prof. Mehtab Khan spoke at the 2025 BIO Conference, held at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. Prof. Khan was part of a panel titled, “The Next Phase of AI and Biography,” discussing how generative AI is changing “how biographies are researched, written, and safeguarded.”
Prof. Khan also has been appointed to the Advisory Board of The Public Interest Corpus project, which is “focused on developing large-scale, high-quality AI training data from the world’s memory organizations to serve the public interest.” The Public Interest Corpus is a project of the Authors Alliance and Northeastern University with support from the Mellon Foundation. The Advisory Board includes leading national experts on AI, information science, and the role of libraries as information repositories.
Prof. Karin Mika participated in three Legal Writing conferences. The first, the Rocky Mountain Legal Writing Conference, was held in Salt Lake City, Utah in March. Prof. Mika spoke on, "Trials and Tribulations of Developing and Teaching Fully Online LRW Courses."
The second conference was held at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. Prof. Mika presented on, "Helping Transition from Undergraduate Writing to Legal Writing" with Terri LeClercq, professor emerita at the University of Texas at Austin.
The third conference was the biennial Association of Legal Writing Directors Conference held at Arizona State Law School in July. Prof. Mika was a participant on the panel, The Realities, Challenges, and Opportunities of Serving Without Tenure in Non-Traditional Institutional Leadership Roles.
Prof. Mika also served as a Scholarship mentor for the ALWD/LWI Scholarship Committee.
Prof. Kevin O'Neill and Patrick Charles published an article in the William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal entitled But for a Free Press: A Response to Press Freedom Skeptics.
Laura Ray, Outreach & Instructional Services Librarian, was appointed Chair of the Morris L. Cohen Student Essay Competition Committee of the Legal History and Rare Books Special Interest Section of the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL). The Competition is named in honor of Morris L. Cohen, late Professor Emeritus of Law at Yale Law School. The purpose of the Competition is to encourage scholarship in areas of legal history, rare law books, and legal archives, and to acquaint students with the AALL and law librarianship. The Committee annually markets the Competition on numerous blogs and lists, reviews essay submissions, selects winning and runner-up essays, and conducts a webinar featuring the winning essay presentation.
Ray was also reappointed Chair of the Community Engagement Committee of the Ohio Regional Association of Law Libraries (ORALL). The Committee identifies issues relating to the promotion of community engagement, diversity, equity, and inclusion within ORALL membership and the law librarian profession within the ORALL states. The Committee promotes community engagement activities and resources and raises membership’s awareness of diversity, equity, and inclusion issues. Laura has chaired the Committee since its creation in 2023.
Prof. Heidi Gorovitz Robertson served as a reviewer for the Fulbright Commission’s Fulbright Specialist program in the 2025 Cycle 4 evaluations. Robertson has served as a reviewer for applicants to the specialist roster for many years. She is the Steven W. Percy Professor of Law at CSU|Law and Professor of Environmental Studies at the Levin College of Public Affairs and Education.
Prof. Milena Sterio participated as a judge in the quarter-final and semi-final rounds of the International Criminal Court Moot Court Competition in The Hague, Netherlands, from June 16-18, in The Hague, Netherlands. Prof. Sterio is a member of the ICC Moot Court Competition’s Board of Directors, and in this capacity, she participates every year in the development of the Moot Court problem.
Prof. Sterio also participated as a speaker at a panel on the topic of “Prosecuting Environmental Crimes in Ukraine” at Leiden University, Netherlands. In addition to Prof. Sterio, the panel discussion featured Andriy Kostin, Ukrainian Ambassador to the Netherlands. Prof. Sterio has been involved in training Ukrainian judges and prosecutors on prosecuting environmental war crimes organized by the International Bar Association.
Prof. Sterio participated in the annual meeting of the “Association Internationale de Droit Penal” (International Penal Law Association) in Paris, France. Prof. Sterio currently serves as the U.S. Chapter President of the AIDP and has played a prominent role in the organization, including developing U.S. national reports on several international penal law topics, and serving as general rapporteur for AIDP’s previous scientific cycle.
Prof. Sterio participated in the “Talking Foreign Policy” radio show, broadcast on the Sound of Ideas on June 23, on the topic of President Trump’s foreign policy. The episode also included Profs. Harold Koh and Oona Hathaway (Yale Law School), Paul Williams (American University Washington College of Law), Kevin Nealer (former State Department official), and Prof. Michael Scharf as host (CWRU School of Law). She then participated in the Sound of Ideas radio program on WCPN (Cleveland NPR-affiliate) discussing events of the Middle East, focusing in particular on the ongoing Israel-Iran conflict.
Prof. Sterio has been selected as a member of the International Law Association‘s newly established Rights of Nature Committee, as a representative of the American Branch of the International Law Association. In this capacity, she will collaborate with ILA colleagues on the development of the Committee’s inaugural report which will be issued in March 2025.
Prof. Sterio also has been nominated and elected a member of the Cleveland Council on World Affairs for a three-year term starting in 2025. The CCWA was founded in 1923 to foster greater understanding of world affairs amongst citizens of Cleveland, with the notion that better international understanding would help promote world peace. Its mission is to promote engagement in international affairs and world cultures through education, citizen diplomacy and public dialogue.
Prof. Sterio presented at various discussion groups at the Southeast American Law Schools Association (SEALS) conference in Amelia Island, Florida. On July 29, Prof. Sterio participated in the discussion group on “Current Trends in Emerging Technologies and the Law from the International, Comparative, and Domestic Perspective.” On July 30, she participated in the discussion group on “Environmental Crimes in the Ukraine Conflict.” And on August 2, she participated in the discussion group on “The Geneva Conventions: 75 Years Later.”
Prof. Sterio participated in an event at the United Nations in New York City on August 26 on the topic of “The ICJ Advisory Opinion on Climate Change and the BBNJ Agreement.” The BBNJ Agreement, also known as the Agreement on Marine Biological Diversity of Areas beyond National Jurisdiction, is an agreement under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
Prof. Sterio also participated in the International Humanitarian Law Roundtable on the topic of “The United Nations at 80 – Relevancy and Challenges for International Criminal Justice in the Coming Decades” in Chautauqua, New York, on August 24-25.
Prof. Sterio moderated a discussion group on “Facilitating the delivery of international criminal justice at the regional and national level.” This discussion group focused on prosecutions based on universal jurisdiction, the role of the investigative mechanisms, the creation of internationalized domestic tribunals (Syria), and the new Ukraine-Council of Europe aggression tribunal.
Prof. Jonathan Witmer-Rich appeared on WKYC Channel 3 to discuss bail issues in the prosecution of Gregory Moore for the murder of Eliza Sherman. Moore is charged with stabbing Sherman to death in 2013. Moore was arrested in Texas and extradited to Ohio, and in May 2025, the trial court set his bond at $2 million. On July 3, Moore posted the bond and was released without other restrictions, such as surrendering his passport.
Prof. Witmer-Rich explained that the trial court likely believed Moore would not be able to post such a large bond. He said, “The reason there aren’t other restrictions on the defendant, I think, is that the judge assumed that by setting a $2 million bond, the defendant wouldn’t be able to be released.”
Prof. Witmer-Rich noted that Ohio trial judges often use large bail amounts instead of ordering defendants to be detained, but that this practice has risks. He explained, “If they have concerns about danger, they just jack up the bail amount to something really high. They pick a really big number — like $2 million — and that’s, I think, what the judge did here. $2 million, that means the defendant is not going to get out, and that was set back at the end of May, but in this case, within about a month, the defendant put together whatever he put together, and as soon as you post your $2 million, you’re out.”
Emeriti Faculty
Prof. Emeritus Brian Glassman lectured at the Case Western Reserve University Siegal Lifelong Learning Center on April 9, 2025. His topic was “The (True) Tale of the Parthenon Sculptures.”
Prof. Glassman also presented at an event hosted by the Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association on May 14, 2025: “The Movement of Art in Peacetime: Provenance and the Illicit Trade in Antiquities.”
Prof. Emeritus Alan Weinstein was retained by the New York City office of the Linklaters law firm as an Expert Witness for the Plaintiff mosque in a recently-settled federal RLUIPA statute lawsuit which claimed that the Town of Oyster Bay, NY — located in Nassau County, Long Island — discriminated against the mosque in denying the mosque's application for zoning approval to construct a new, larger building. The settlement allows the mosque to construct its new building and the Town agreed to pay the mosque $3.95 million dollars in damages and attorneys’ fees.
Adjunct Faculty
Adjunct Prof. Doug Meal published “Rethinking Negligence Claims in Cyberattack Class Actions: Teachings of the Third Torts Restatement Regarding Actionable Injury,” 26 Sedona Conf. J. 357 (2025). In the article, Prof. Meal argues that US courts have to date failed to provide a coherent answer as to whether cyberattack class action members have suffered an “actionable injury.” Drawing on the principles in the Third Restatement of Torts, he argues that “the injuries typically alleged in a cyberattack class action . . . [are] non-actionable in common-law negligence.” Accordingly, Prof. Meal concludes that insofar as courts follow the Third Restatement of Torts, “in particular the series’ principles regarding actionable injury in common-law negligence, claims based on common-law negligence should, and will, cease to be viable in cyberattack class actions.”
As part of the CSU|LAW Center for Cybersecurity and Privacy Protection, three CSU law students — Kyndal N. Hutchison, Taneisha M. Fair, and Amanda Borngen — provided research assistance to Prof. Meal for the article. Prof. Meal teaches a course in Cybersecurity Litigation at CSU|LAW