March 2007 Faculty Notes
Assistant Professor Michael C. Duff
Assistant Professor Michael C. Duff is currently working on a new article, Days Without Immigrants: Analysis and Implications of the Treatment of Immigration Rallies under the National Labor Relations Act. The article addresses whether instances of concerted employee attendance at immigration rallies resulting in job absenteeism are either protected work stoppages or unlawful secondary activity under the National Labor Relations Act, and further explores whether state attempts to regulate or enjoin such rallies would be preempted by Federal labor law. Professor Duff has completed a substantial draft that is presently under review by his colleagues in the Academy.
Professor Duff is a new face here at UW College of Law, having come here from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he worked for the National Labor Relations Board as a field and trial attorney. He is currently teaching Labor Law and is the Academic Support Director for students.
Professor Michael R. Smith
Professor Michael Smith recently published Rhetoric Theory & Legal Writing: An Annotated Bibliography in the Journal of the Association of Legal Writing Directors. Professor Smith is also a co-author of the Second Edition of The Sourcebook on Legal Writing Programs, which was recently published by the ABA. Professor Smith was invited to participate in a Law and Metaphor symposium hosted by the Mercer University Law Review on November 10, 2006, in Macon, Georgia. He presented Levels of Metaphor in Persuasive Legal Writing at the symposium.
On October 25, 2007 in Cheyenne, Professor Smith gave a presentation titled Effective Judicial Writing to members of the Wyoming Supreme Court, other members of the Wyoming judiciary, and their staff attorneys and clerks. Professor Smith has been invited to give a second presentation to the Wyoming judiciary on March 26, 2007. He is also scheduled to present Fog on the Lens: Appellate Court Confusion Between Standards of Review and Substantive Rules at the Rocky Mountain Legal Writing Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada on March 9, 2007. Professor Smith has also been invited to present Stock Stories and the Power of the Parenthetical at the international conference on Applied Storytelling in Law in London, England in July 2007.
Professor Smith is another new face at UW College of Law. He comes to us from Mercer University School of Law in Georgia. It is his goal to make UW Law's Legal Writing Program the best in the nation and we hope to see him succeed in that goal!
Professor Emeritus Theodore E. Lauer
The Wyoming County and Prosecuting Attorneys Association invited Professor Ted Lauer to speak at its annual meeting held in November 2006. Professor Lauer provided a review and annual update of recent Wyoming Supreme Court decisions.
Professor Lauer is currently teaching a class on English & Scottish legal history.
Kepler Chair in Law & Leadership, Professor Harvey Gelb
Professor Harvey Gelb recently published Reflections Upon SEC Standards of Professional Conduct in the Washburn Law Journal. The article considers the ambiguities and challenges faced by attorneys in meeting the requirements of the reporting and "appropriate response" rules of professional responsibility under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, Pub. L. No. 107-204, 116 Stat. 745, sec. 307, and the Securities and Exchange Commission Rules implementing that section.