Professor Elizabeth Glazer has been selected as one of the Best LGBT Attorneys Under 40 by the National LGBT Bar Association. She will be included in the inaugural listing of the best and brightest in the LGBT legal community. Prof. Glazer will be recognized for her selection at the 2010 Lavender Law Career Fair & Conference.

Lea Bishop Shaver, up-and-coming legal scholar in the areas of intellectual property and human rights, will join Hofstra Law’s full-time faculty as an associate professor of law effective September 1, 2010. In her first year, Shaver will teach Intellectual Property Survey, Patent Law and Transnational Law.

Shaver received her Bachelor of Arts in sociology and Master of Arts in social sciences from the University of Chicago. She graduated in 2006 from Yale Law School, where she was a Coker Fellow in Constitutional Law and served as the submissions and articles editor for the Yale Human Rights & Development Law Journal.

After law school, Shaver received a Fulbright scholarship to work at the Centre for Applied Legal Studies, an academic research and litigation center at the University of the Witwatersrand Law School in South Africa. While there, she contributed to human rights litigation defending access to education, housing and water.
Since her return to the United States, Shaver has worked as a resident fellow at Yale Law School’s Information Society Project, an academic center for law and technology. During her tenure at Yale, Shaver taught the advanced seminar Access to Knowledge Practicum and oversaw research projects on intellectual property and innovation in seven countries.

For more information about Lea Shaver, read the press release or visit her website.

Dean J. Herbie DiFonzo’s article, “Stopping for Death: Re-Framing Our Perspective on the End of Life,” was featured in the University of Florida Journal of Law and Public Policy. Published this week, the article was co-written by Ruth C. Stern.

ABSTRACT:

How we die is increasingly becoming a matter of law and public policy. We grapple with issues of patient autonomy, the proper parameters of doctor-patient discussions on the end of life, the right to hasten death, and the right to control our own medical treatment. But it is physicians and patients, not judges and legislators, who are the principal actors in events at the end of life. Palliative medicine is just beginning to probe the multi-dimensional totality of suffering in dying and seriously ill patients. What we learn will influence our options at the end of life and tell us why different approaches benefit different individuals. Before we invite the lawyers and the policy makers to our bedsides, it is important that we understand the dying process, and how doctors and patients can more effectively collaborate in the pursuit of a better death. As litigation in appellate courts and battles over state voter initiatives reveal, our legal system has not yet decided who should control the final decision over our lives. Stopping for Death: Re-Framing our Perspective on the End of Life, continues the examination of the judicial, ethical and policy responses to the demand for legalized assisted suicide and euthanasia which we began in Terminal Ambiguity: Law, Ethics and Policy in the Assisted Dying Debate, 17 B.U. Pub. Int. L.J. 99 (2007). This new article reflects upon our society’s growing sensitivity to suffering, and examines how recent developments have altered expectations of the doctor-patient relationship. Learning more about the nature and impact of serious illness highlights the limitations of our current end-of-life laws and policies. The legal parameters for voluntarily ending our lives are currently confused and in conflict. Moreover, they have been debated and enacted amidst a cacophony of rights’ talk and discourse about the permissible extent of governmental authority and the range of constitutionally-commanded privacy. Indeed, the current clamor threatens to drown out more subtle yet insistent voices asking that, before we bestow a right, we thoroughly investigate the nature of the wrong. But an insufficient amount of scholarly literature has addressed the conditions at ground zero in the assisted suicide debate: the quality of life of those near death, as well as their expectations for care and how a reasonable society might fulfill them. This article questions the utility of the concept of “terminal illness” in devising methods to care for the dying, and it argues that hospice and palliative care, long believed to be nearly infallible in end of life care, do not benefit all patients. We conclude by suggesting that assisted dying is but one of several ways to manage our own dying. What is more important is that, in an era of shrinking health care resources, we revise the ways in which we think about death, both medically and legally.

The formal citation is 20 U. Fla. J. L & Pub. Pol’y 388 (2009).

With Supreme Court deadlocked, commission drops Gableman ethics case
by Patrick Marley
Journal Sentinel
July 8, 2010

EXCERPT:

The case so divided the justices that they issued their decisions under separate case numbers - an unprecedented move for any set of judges, according to James Sample, a professor at Hofstra Law School in Hempstead, N.Y., who has followed the case.

"This is the first time where I think it became clear that in addition to principle, this court is deeply divided on a personal level," he said. "That group of seven is an incredibly awkward forced marriage."

Read the full article at jsonline.com.

Effective July 1, Hofstra Law School has named three current faculty members and an administrator to positions that reflect the school’s emphasis on scholarly pursuits and international context.

J. Herbie DiFonzo, Professor of Law, has assumed the role of Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs. In this position, Dean DiFonzo will support the academic mission of the law school by attracting and retaining top-notch faculty and working with them to ensure that the law school provides an outstanding education to its students.

Eric Lane, the Eric J. Schmertz Distinguished Professor of Public Law and Public Service, has been named Associate Dean for Intellectual Life. In this new role, Dean Lane will bring distinguished practitioners, both private and public, to Hofstra Law School for presentation to students, faculty and others. He will also be responsible for helping interested faculty find opportunities to participate in policy making or other similar endeavors.

I. Bennett Capers, Associate Professor of Law, has been named Associate Dean for Intellectual Life. In this capacity, Dean Capers will enrich the Hofstra Law community by planning and promoting events, workshops and programs that encourage intellectual pursuits among faculty and students.

Jeffrey Dodge has transitioned to the role of Assistant Dean of Global Initiatives and Multicultural Affairs. In this new position, Jeff will provide visionary leadership, strategic planning and innovative programmatic development to position Hofstra Law as a leader in international law programming.