Faculty in the News by Date | By Name

Notable Faculty Quotes, Nov.-Dec. 2007

Margo Bagley was quoted in an article on the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) in the November issue of Managing Intellectual Property. The article discussed concerns about the restrictive nature of the PTO's recently adopted Final Rules on Claims and Continuations, which require more succinct patent applications. "The PTO does not seem to have considered the full implications of these rules," said Bagley. "Patent attorneys are creative people and patent prosecution begs for strategic behaviour." She also criticized PTO chief Jon Dudas's lack of experience in patent prosecution. "If you haven't prosecuted a patent application and understand it from a client standpoint, you probably can't relate," she said. "Mr Dudas wants to have a more efficient PTO, which is a laudable goal but, as currently proposed, isn't necessarily the best thing for innovation."

Richard Bonnie was quoted in several articles on mental health reform in Virginia, as the Commission on Mental Health Reform he chairs presented its first set of recommendations. In the Nov. 26 Virginia Lawyers Weekly, he acknowledged possible resentment by some legislators over the role of the judiciary in the project, but said he hoped that legislators will consider the commission's proposals "a useful contribution to their work—but it's their work." In the Dec. 5 Richmond Times Dispatch, Bonnie warned that meaningful, coordinated changes will take at least three biennial budget cycles to implement. "We need to start somewhere," he noted in the Dec. 14 Times Dispatch. "So the question is, what do we start with?" Bonnie was also featured in a Nov. 20 C-Ville Weekly article in which he discussed his service in the early 1970s as executive director of the National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse, which called for more effort in the area of prevention instead of penalization. "We looked at drug use as a public health problem as opposed to a moral problem," he said. He also discussed his career-long advocacy of a scientific approach to policy making. "We make so much policy without actually thinking, measuring and paying attention to whether we're getting the benefits we're trying to get," he said. "Instead we make highly politicized, moralized decisions. . . . I think we can do better than we've done."

George Cohen was quoted in a Nov. 16 Wall Street Journal article about the settlement agreement in litigation over the painkiller Vioxx. The agreement requires that participating attorneys cut ties with clients unwilling to settle, to ensure that lawyers well versed in Vioxx litigation are locked in to the settlement and won't keep litigating against the company. Cohen warned that clients may in effect be losing the right to counsel if no knowledgeable attorneys are available. "If it would be difficult for a client to get another lawyer and take a lot of work for that other lawyer to get up to speed on a case, then you can't just drop and leave the client high and dry unless you have a good justification," he said. Cohen was also quoted in a Dec. 19 Chicago Tribune article about the indictment of a lawyer involved in an accounting scandal, after prosecutors said he crossed the line from being an adviser to playing an active and crucial part in perpetrating fraud. Cohen said the indictment will serve as a wake-up call for corporate lawyers. "Behind the scenes, it will have a very big impact," he said. "It's a great development in the sense that it reminds lawyers that assisting in fraud is a crime. Lawyers need to wake up and realize you can't go along with these things just because it's an important client."

In a Nov. 28 Roanoke Times story about a 15-year-old boy's "no contest" plea to charges that he sexually molested two young girls being baby-sat at his house, Anne Coughlin noted that the teen's case falls into a region of law where opposing schools of thought overlap—when children are involved in crime, "we often think we really should if possible try to rehabilitate," but society also tends to believe that sex offenders are most likely to be repeat offenders. "It's an excruciating question for the judge," she noted. The charges carry a total maximum possible punishment of 80 years in prison—but studies have begun to question whether punishing teenagers as adults is an effective crime deterrent. The worry is that when teenagers are placed in jails, "you're educating them to be criminals," Coughlin said.

James Gibson's comments at a conference on universities and copyright were quoted in two sources. In the Dec. 11 Washington Internet Daily, he noted that most universities limit their copyright education to "finger-wagging," which at best only ensures that students halt downloading activities until graduation. In the Dec. 11 Insider Higher Ed, Gibson observed a lack of critical engagement with copyright issues at the university level and the result that students often don't understand the logic behind prohibitions on illegal file sharing. "I find that very much at odds with the university mission in general," he said, suggesting that better comprehension could lead to better compliance with the law.

A. E. Dick Howard was quoted in a Dec. 3 Lawyers USA article about the possible course of the Supreme Court after the 2008 presidential election. "Assuming that [a Republican] president puts another Roberts or Alito on the court, it seems you have the beginnings of a true conservative working majority," he said. If Justices John Paul Stevens and Ruth Ginsburg were both replaced, he added, that "would make a significant difference, and not just on abortion—on religious issues, affirmative action, the environment." Howard added that if Democrats retain their control of Congress, then even if a Republican president is elected the fight over a staunchly conservative Court pick could be a fiery one. "The future of the Supreme Court depends not only on who is in office but who controls the Senate," he said. "The issue is a little more complicated than who the next president will be."

In a Dec. 4 Washington Times story about the importance of living wills, Alex Johnson noted that living wills differ from state to state—as do the opportunities to contest such wills. He added that women considering a living will should take into consideration their reproductive beliefs. A doctor may not agree to end a gravely ill woman's life if she is pregnant, he explained, so women of child-bearing age must specifically state their intentions in their living wills.

Gregory Mitchell was quoted in a Dec. 12 Waynesboro NewsVirginian article about the $250,000 settlement of a $2.45 million lawsuit against Fishburne Military School by a former cadet raped by a fellow student. He noted that it is "not unusual" for plaintiff's to walk away with just 10 percent of the initial asking price, as the other 90 percent is often chipped away over such concerns as protecting the victim from the witness stand. He added that the school likely also opted to negotiate a settlement rather than risk a jury awarding anything close to the asking price. "I would think the last thing for a private military school to want is for this to go public," he said, adding that it would want to "avoid a public trial that would be unpleasant for everybody."

Robert O'Neil wrote a commentary on four recent challenges to free speech in academe for the Nov. 2 Chronicle of Higher Education, including the University of California Irvine's rescinded (and reinstated) deanship offer to Erwin Chemerinsky and the appearance at Columbia University by Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. "The lessons that may be gleaned from such varied events do not invite easy synthesis, but several broad principles emerge," he wrote. "Most clearly, while colleges are under no duty to invite particular outside speakers or recruit particular faculty members from elsewhere, once an invitation or an offer has been extended, such a commitment may not be rescinded on the basis of any unwelcome or abhorrent views that the speaker or the candidate may have expressed." In a Nov. 16 Chronicle article about the University of Delaware's abandonment of diversity sessions designed to teach tolerance in dormitories after criticism by a free-speech group, O'Neil said that he believed as long as students know they can opt out without penalty, discussions of race and other sensitive issues can serve an educational purpose without running afoul of the First Amendment. "If the exposure to views . . . different from those of other students makes you uncomfortable, that's unfortunate," he said. "But that doesn't mean the program is coercive."

In a Nov. 12 Duke Chronicle story about a conference on bioengineering patents at Duke Law School, Margaret Riley spoke about the ethics of animal use and exploitations for scientific discoveries. "There has been a very major failure for ethicists to engage both the public and scientists," she said. "It doesn't get in the newspaper and no one does anything with it."

In a Dec. 19 Associated Press story about the destroyed CIA interrogation tapes, Robert Turner said the destruction of the tapes may not have been an illegal act by itself. "But if a judge told them not to destroy evidence, then you've got a problem of who was involved in the decision," he said. "If people who knew— or should have known—of the judge's order were involved in the decision and did not bring that to the attention of others, you've got a problem."

In a Nov. 20 Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star article about a provision in a county administrator's contract that prohibits him from seeking or inquiring about a new job unless he tells supervisors first, J. H. Verkerke said the clause "is extremely unusual in the domain of employment contracts."

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