Law School Briefs – 10/23/13

Law School Briefs highlights news from law schools in Indiana. While Indiana Lawyer has always covered law school news and continues to keep up with law school websites and press releases for updates, we gladly accept submissions for this section from law students, professors, alumni, and others who want to share law school-related news. If you’d like to submit news or a photo from an event, please email it to Marilyn Odendahl at [email protected], along with contact information for any follow-up questions at least two weeks prior to the issue date.

IU Maurer to participate in national study of mediation

The Indiana University Maurer School of Law and IU’s Department of Psychological Brain Sciences have been awarded a four-year, $763,686 grant from the National Institute of Justice to study safety concerns in family mediation.

The project will examine whether mediation is a safe alternative to court-based litigation in cases with a history of domestic violence. Experts are divided on whether family mediation is a useful alternative or whether the parties with a record of violence can be adequately protected from physical and emotional harm during mediation.

Amy Applegate, director of the Viola J. Taliaferro Family and Children Mediation Clinic, is a member of the research team.

“Despite the use of protective measures such as shuttle or videoconferencing mediation, the appropriateness of mediation has been a source of controversy in cases involving intimate-partner violence,” Applegate said. “The NIJ’s generous grant also makes it possible to measure the effectiveness of mediation in these cases.”

The study, to take place at District of Columbia Superior Court’s Multi-Door Dispute Resolution Division, will consist of a randomized control trial of family mediation with couples that have a history of violence which Multi-Door would generally consider inappropriate for alternative dispute resolution. The cases will be randomly assigned to one of three study conditions: traditional court-based litigation, shuttle mediation or videoconferencing mediation.

Results of the study will be published in interdisciplinary peer-reviewed journals, reports and presentations to stakeholders.

IU McKinney hosts delegation as part of human rights study

A delegation from the Philippines visiting the United States made a stop at the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law on Sept. 27. Law professor George Edwards hosted the group, which was visiting the country as part of the State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Program.

The program’s objective is to help participants study U.S. methods for effective investigation and prosecution of human rights cases. It also aims to examine the best practices to investigate and build cases, specifically regarding extrajudicial killings, and to compare the challenges of extrajudicial killings in the Philippines to human rights concerns in the U.S.

Edwards is the founding director of the Program in International Human Rights Law. Created in 1997, the PIHRL has placed 170 law students in internships in 55 countries worldwide.

Lawyer returns to Valparaiso to deliver Seegers Lecture

Valparaiso University Law School welcomed a return visitor for the 2013 Seegers Lecture on Jurisprudence held Oct. 3.

Randy Barnett, professor at the Georgetown University Law Center and director of the Georgetown Center for the Constitution, gave the address “Popular Sovereignty and the Judicial Duty to Assess the Rationality of Laws.”

This was Barnett’s second time speaking at the law school. Twenty-two years ago, he came to the school to present a paper.

The Seegers Lecture Series is sponsored by the late Edward A. Seegers, who made various contributions to Valparaiso University.•