PHOTO: MICHAEL MANNING

Profile:
Mary O'Connell

Playing Doctor

Professor Mary O’Connell ’75 gave up law for a few months this year to become a visiting professor of psychiatry at UMass Medical School in Worcester.

Q: So, I was wondering, how did a lawyer become a visiting professor of psychiatry?

A: My kids say I’ve finally found my calling.

Actually, I met Dr. Geri Fuhrmann, director of the UMass Medical School Child and Family Forensic Center (CFFC) about 15 years ago. The Massachusetts Legislature had just passed a statute requiring all divorcing parents to attend five hours of mandatory divorce education. Geri and her UMass colleague, Joseph McGill, had created a program called “Parents Apart,” which turned out to be the most popular parent ed program in the state. Some of us were worried that parent educators might be oblivious to the fact that in every class they gave, they were probably talking to someone who was a victim of domestic violence or to a perpetrator. When I talked to Geri about the program’s lack of violence sensitivity, I found her surprisingly receptive. The result was that she, Joe and I rewrote “Parents Apart,” and in the process, published an article on violence-sensitive parent education. Geri and I stayed in touch, and when my sabbatical came up, I asked about the possibility of doing more work with her. She loved the idea, as did the medical school, but there was one problem: they couldn’t make me a visiting professor of law because UMass has no law school. So, since the CFFC is based in their Department of Psychiatry, they made me a visiting professor of psychiatry.

Q: What’s the focus of your research?

A: I’m concerned that in a noble effort to spare children some of the worst conflict and bitterness of the divorce process, the family courts have gone overboard. They are mandating that many parents accept — and pay for — a slew of interventions, like an evaluation of their parenting ability by a professional psychologist, a mandatory mediation session, often with a court-based mediator, who may or may not have much training. There is even something called “parenting coordination,” which attaches a psychologist to the family post divorce and requires parents to work with her or him in making important decisions about their children — sometimes for years.

I think most people who have never been through this process might be shocked by the level of legal intrusion. So that’s what my work is about — how to bring legal norms and limitations back to a system that has lost sight of them in its warm embrace of mental health/ADR norms.

Q: What’s been your research process and when will your paper be available?

A: I’ve observed families being evaluated and attended the case conferences where ongoing evaluations are discussed. I’ve listened in — all of this with the permission of the clients, of course — on parenting coordination telephone sessions. The folks at CFFC have been magnificent. No line of inquiry was off limits. And we’ve had wonderful, challenging conversations about the enormous clash between the “behind closed doors” norms of mental health/ADR and the transparency and reviewability that are essential to the legal process. We’ve talked about consistency — which isn’t really a value in psychology, a science that views each individual and family as unique. And, of course, we’ve talked about state intrusion. So far, I’ve presented preliminary versions of my paper to the UMass Law and Psychiatry Seminars in April and at the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts conference in Washington, DC, in June. The finished version is probably a few months away.

PHOTO: DAVID LEIFER

Hackney Explores Law and Economics in New Book

For more than two decades, the law and economics movement has been one of the most influential and controversial schools of thought in American jurisprudence. In his new book, Under Cover of Science: American Legal-Economic Theory and the Quest for Objectivity (Duke University Press, 2007), Professor James Hackney situates the modern law and economics movement within the trajectory of American jurisprudence from the early days of the Republic to the present. Hackney is particularly interested in the claims of objectivity or empiricism asserted by proponents of law and economics. He argues that the incorporation of economic analysis into legal decision making is not an inherently objective enterprise. Rather, law and economics often cloak ideological determinations — particularly regarding the distribution of wealth — under the cover of science.

PHOTO: DAVID LEIFER

David Hall Appointed to Boston Civilian Review Board

Professor David Hall said he already feels the grave responsibility attending his January appointment to the Boston Police Department’s new civilian review board. Boston Mayor Thomas Menino tapped Hall, New England School of Law Dean John O’Brien and former Parole Board member Ruth Suber for the panel, which is independently reviewing allegations of serious police misconduct that are dismissed by the police Internal Affairs Division. In turn, the civilian review board may look at lesser allegations if a citizen appeals an internal affairs decision, and also make recommendations to the Police Department about the disposition of cases and punishment of officers.

Hall, who specializes in civil rights, legal education and social justice, was appointed to the board of the Legal Services Corporation by President Bush in 2003 and has been honored by the Boston Bar Association, the Massachusetts Black Lawyers Association and the National Association of Public Interest Lawyers, among other groups.

“Having external accountability in matters of police use of excessive force and other matters is critical to the integrity of the law enforcement system and to the city of Boston in general. Those of us who have been asked to assume this awesome and difficult responsibility are attempting to bring the best insights, fairness and integrity we can muster to this process,” said Hall.

Summer 2007 | Faculty News

Faculty Notes

Professor Roger I. Abrams’ article, “Blackmun’s List,” based on research using Justice Blackmun’s papers in the Library of Congress, was published by the University of Virginia Entertainment and Sports Law Journal. The Bureau of National Affairs published two of Abrams’ arbitration awards. He was also appointed as permanent arbitrator under the Harvard University Construction Project and Craft Unions Agreement and by Lockheed Martin and the OPIEU. He delivered an invited paper on baseball’s grievance arbitration process at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York; spoke to the Sports and Entertainment Law Societies at Boston College Law School and Northeastern; taught an undergraduate class on sports economics; presented a continuing legal education program to the Boston Bar Association; spoke at the National Academy of Arbitrators’ annual meeting in San Francisco; and traveled across the river to Harvard Law School, where he presented his “Ode to Weiler” in tribute to retiring Harvard Professor Paul Weiler. Continuing his work with the media, Abrams wrote an op-ed for the Boston Herald on Barry Bonds, was interviewed by National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition” on baseball and alcoholism, The American Lawyer for an article on legal developments in baseball and the Boston Business Journal for an article on practice-oriented legal education. He appeared on WGBH’s “Greater Boston” in April in honor of the Red Sox’s opening day.

Professor Brook K. Baker ’76 has been active on issues related to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and what he ruefully calls “The Pharma Wars.” Concerning the Global Fund, he attended a consultation on “Increasing Civil Society Impact on the Global Fund — Strategic Options and Deliberations” and presented an “Options Paper” he authored on “Community System Strengthening.” Based on the recommendations of that consultation, the board of the Global Fund adopted a resolution supporting the routine inclusion in Global Fund proposals of requests for “funding of relevant measures to strengthen the community systems necessary for the effective implementation of Global Fund grants.” In addition, as a member of the Northern NGO Delegate Contact Group, Baker worked on proposals to triple or quadruple the size of the Global Fund to $6 to $8 billion a year by 2010, to explore cost-saving methods for pooled procurement of medicines and medical supplies, and to increase support and funding for human resources for health and health system strengthening.

In response to “The Pharma Wars,” Baker has been active in popular education, policy debates and demonstrations concerning access to medicines in India and Thailand. He had four short articles published in Malaysia and Thailand concerning Thailand’s issuance of compulsory licenses and retaliation by Abbott Laboratories, which has withdrawn seven products from the Thai market. Baker notes that Thailand’s compulsory licenses are completely legal and thus would permit generic producers to manufacture two key AIDS medicines for use in Thailand’s robust, universal treatment plan. Baker organized the Northeastern chapter of the Student Global AIDS Campaign (SGAC) to hold a fundraiser that raised more than $900 to help bring three Thai activists to the US to defend Thailand’s actions and protest Abbott’s retaliation. Former Thai Senator Jon Ungphakorn and Wirat Purahong, chair of the 100,000-member Thai Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS, along with his interpreter, visited Baker’s Negotiation class on April 26. That same day, Baker took the Thai activist to a demonstration against Abbott in Worcester during a “Global Day of Protest” that involved more than 40 demonstrations in 20 different countries.

Earlier in the year, Baker and Northeastern SGAC students held a Valentine’s Day “Broken-Heart Award” demonstration against Novartis in Cambridge, Massachusetts, during a blustery Nor’easter. Thirty students from Northeastern and at least a dozen other demonstrators challenged Norvatis’ lawsuit against the government of India whereby Novartis sought to overturn a key provision in India’s Patent Act that restricts pharmaceutical patents for minor changes to existing pharmaceutical entities.

To build support for drug company campaigns, Baker conducted workshops at the Stop HIV/AIDS in India Initiative (Washington, DC, on Jan. 17), at the Global Justice Conference on AIDS, Trade and Child Survival (Washington, DC, on Feb. 3), at Harvard’s AIDS Alliance, Law School Human Rights Program, and AIDS Tank (Feb. 13, April 4 and 5), and at a human rights forum sponsored by the Violence Prevention and Diversity Program at the NU Center for the Study of Sport in Society (May 2).

On the international scene, Baker was invited to attend an international workshop, “Access to Medicines: The Bigger Access to Medicines Picture — Life Beyond TRIPS,” organized by the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development and the Lancet, in London in April. He also attended a meeting of the Advocacy Working Group of the Global Health Workforce Alliance in Washington, DC, in June.

Professor Martha F. Davis continues her work on human rights and US law. In February, she spoke at the Yale Law School “Rebellious Lawyers Conference” on human rights law in the US. She addressed similar topics at a Columbia Law School program for litigators in April, at the “Human Rights for All” program for state legislators cosponsored by Northeastern and Suffolk Law School in April, and at the Maryland “Partners for Justice Conference” in Baltimore in May. In March, she presented a paper at the Fordham Law School conference, “What is the Place of Poverty Law in the Law School Curriculum?: Looking Back and Planning for the Future.” Her paper, “The Pendulum Swings Back: Poverty Law in the New and Old Curriculum,” draws parallels between curricular responses to the 1960s poverty law movement and the contemporary human rights movement. It appears in the summer 2007 issue of the Fordham Urban Law Journal. Davis also coauthored an amicus brief in King v. King, pending in the Washington State Supreme Court. The brief, available on the Web site for the law school’s PHRGE, presents foreign law and international law supporting a low-income litigant’s claim for appointed counsel in a child custody case. Davis’ op-ed, “Human Rights at Home,” was published in the Boston Globe on May 20.

Professor Richard A. Daynard chaired the 22nd conference of the Tobacco Products Liability Project held in February in Miami. From there, he went to Jackson, Mississippi, to speak before the National Cancer Institute’s President’s Cancer Panel. Later that month, he went to Austin, Texas, to speak at the annual conference of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco. He finished the month in San Francisco for a meeting of the California Tobacco Program’s Evaluation Task Force. In March, he participated in a peer review process for international tobacco control grants at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, and gave a talk back at Northeastern on legal approaches to obesity control as part of the inaugural festivities for Northeastern University President Joseph Aoun. He had a busy week in mid-April, cosponsoring a symposium with the Vietnam Women’s Union in Hanoi on the impact and control of secondhand smoke on women and children, and then on to the University of Maryland Law School to talk about the legal implications of “less hazardous” cigarettes. (At this point, he reports United Airlines notified him that he had achieved super-elite frequent flyer status, based just on his 2007 travels!) The following week he participated in a conference on health and “personal responsibility” at Harvard Medical School, arguing in favor of both personal responsibility and strong government regulation to make personal responsibility feasible. May was a quiet month, with just a single trip to Miami to participate in the annual scientific symposium of the Flight Attendant Medical Research Institute. In June, he vacationed with his family in Machu Picchu and the Galapagos — one imagines he used those frequent flyer miles for first-class seats. Things heated up again at the end of the month, with a trip to Bangkok for the second conference of the parties of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.

Together with Professor Eric Goldman, Professor Stacey L. Dogan filed a brief of amici curiae on behalf of a group of law professors in the Rescuecom Corp. v. Google, Inc. case before the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. At the annual meeting of the Association of American Law Schools in Washington, DC, in January, she was a panelist for a discussion, “The Morality of Copyright Disobedience.” She spoke about her forthcoming article, “Grounding Trademark Law Through Trademark Use” (coauthored with Mark Lemley), in March as part of the Northeastern University Institute for Global Innovation Management Thought Leadership Seminar Series, and also at a faculty workshop held at Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego in April. Dogan traveled to Alicante, Spain, in May to present “Keyword Advertising and Trademarks on the Internet” for the VIII European Intellectual Property Institutes Network Congress. Also in May, she participated in a Practising Law Institute advanced seminar on trademark law in New York; her topic was “Trademarks as Keywords for Paid Search Results and Advertising: Is it Trademark Use?” At the American Intellectual Property Law Association meeting in May, her topic was “Keyword-Triggered Advertising/Sponsored Links — Is it Trademark Infringement?”

In January, Associate Professor Rashmi Dyal-Chand ’94 presented her award-winning paper, “Human Worth as Collateral,” at the Scholarly Papers Presentation at the Association of American Law Schools annual meeting; the paper was published this spring in Rutgers Law Journal. In March, she participated in a panel, “Making Myths and Telling Tales in Global Economic Ordering,” at the spring “Symposium of Unbound: A Journal of the Legal Left” at Harvard Law School. In April, she presented her paper, “Predatory Credit Card Lending in the Age of the ‘Enlightened’ Borrower,” at the 11th International Conference on Consumer Law, sponsored by the International Association of Consumer Law in Cape Town, South Africa. And in June, she presented her paper, “Exporting the Ownership Society: A Case Study on the Economic Impact of Property Rights,” at the “Interschool Junior Faculty Symposium on Poverty Law” at American University Washington College of Law. She participated in an invitation-only workshop series on “Development and the Politics of the Global Economy,” sponsored by the European Law Research Center at Harvard Law School.

Professor David Hall recently spoke about his book, The Spiritual Revitalization of the Legal Profession: A Search for Sacred Rivers, at Roger Williams School of Law, Southern New England School of Law and the law firm of Winston and Strawn in Chicago, Illinois.

Clinical Professor Wallace E. Holohan was honored by Massachusetts Correctional Legal Services in June at its 35th anniversary celebration. Holohan was lauded for his “intense dedication to his clients and to teaching that has inspired many of the graduates of the [Prisoners’ Rights] clinic to devote their legal skills to criminal defense and civil rights careers” and for training “hundreds of law students to provide effective representation for their prisoner clients at disciplinary and parole hearings.”

Matthews Distinguished University Professor Karl E. Klare is working pro bono on a strategic initiative sponsored by the Massachusetts AFL-CIO to improve the legal climate for union organizing through changes in state law. A bill he drafted to protect union recognition campaigns from employer retaliation, vetoed last year by former Governor Mitt Romney, is again working its way through the Legislature, having passed the House in May. In February, Klare lectured at the Harvard Trade Union program on international trade and collective bargaining and addressed the annual Gompers-Murray-Meany Labor Conference on workplace privacy in May. He participated in a colloquium at Cornell in January on “Land, Labor and Constitutionalism in the New World Economy: Lessons from the South.” In March, he moderated a roundtable discussion at the law school, attended by leading practitioners, on employers’ misclassification of employees to avoid social insurance, tax and collective bargaining obligations.

Professor Hope Lewis will be a fellow this fall at Harvard University’s W.E.B. DuBois Institute for African and African-American Research; she plans to pursue a book project on race, gender, migration and human rights. Earlier in the year, she was a visiting scholar at the Boston College Program on African and Diaspora Studies and at the Harvard Law School Human Rights Program. The Boston Herald published Lewis’ op-ed on Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, “Focus Not on the Skin-Deep,” in February. Her articles on international law appeared in two recent American Bar Association publications: “Human Rights and Natural Disaster: The Indian Ocean Tsunami,” in Human Rights (Fall 2006), and “Are Foreign Sovereigns Immune from US Jurisdiction When a Municipality Seeks a Judgment Validating Tax Liens on Their Real Property?” in Preview of United States Supreme Court Cases (April 16, 2007).

Lewis was a plenary speaker on “Race, Class and Hurricane Katrina in Human Rights Perspective” at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University in March. She moderated a panel on “International Regimes and Institutions” for the “Third World and International Law Conference” in Albany in April. She also coedits, with Professors Wendy Parmet and Rashmi Dyal-Chand, the online scholarly abstracts journal sponsored by PHRGE, Human Rights and the Global Economy. Lewis helped plan the World Court of Women, sponsored by the Women’s Working Group, for the United States Social Forum, in Atlanta in July. She chairs the sub-theme discussion on “Globalization, Trade and Human Rights” for the 50th annual meeting of the African Studies Association, scheduled for October in New York.

Associate Professor Daniel R. Williams delivered his article, “Mitigation and Capital Defendants Who Want to Die,” at an April conference of the Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities, held at Georgetown Law School.

Professor Lucy A. Williams talked about “Labor Markets, Migration, Gendered Work and the Economic Family” at a Harvard Law School conference, “Up Against Family Law Exceptionalism,” held in February. In April, she addressed the South African Reading Group at New York Law School; her topic was “Issues and Challenges in Addressing Poverty and Legal Rights: A Comparative United States/South African Analysis.” Later in April, she was invited as a visiting scholar to present her paper, “Poor Women’s Work Experiences: Gaps in the ‘Work/Family’ Discussion” at the Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy at the University at Buffalo Law School. Her lecture podcast is available at ublaw.classcaster.org. She also filmed a video on “Sovereign Immunity” for the Center for Legal Aid Education’s nationwide affirmative litigation training.

Professor Margaret Y.K Woo’s most recent publication is “Migrant’s Access to Justice” in 11 Loyola University Chicago International Law Review 101 (2007). In March, she spoke at the faculty seminar at Washington and Lee University School of Law. She has also been appointed to the Standing Advisory Committee on the Rules of Civil Procedure of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.