Archive for 'Spotlight'

Pictured from left to right: Benjamin Crego, Brittany Dancel, Senior Circuit Judge A. Raymond Randolph, Senior Circuit Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg, Chief Judge Linda Ann Wells, Altanese Phenelus, and Chanel Rowe.

In the final round of the 10th Annual Moot Court Competition, held Saturday, Feb. 9, two teams of second-year law students presented arguments before a distinguished panel of judges at Rafael Diaz-Balart Hall.

Senior Circuit Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, presided as chief justice. Joining him on the panel were Senior Circuit Judge A. Raymond Randolph of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and Chief Judge Linda Ann Wells of the Florida Third District Court of Appeal.

The four students, who worked in teams of two, included: Benjamin Crego and Brittany Dancel, arguing for the petitioner, and Altanese Phenelus and Chanel Rowe, arguing for the respondent (the Sunshine County School Board).

The issues presented were whether the School Board violated the First Amendment rights of its students by: 1) preventing the wearing of “Islam is the Devil!” t-shirts under its dress code policy; and 2) suspending the students for speech communicated online while outside of school grounds.

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Florida International University alumni Victoria Cueto ’09, JD ’12 and Alejandro (Alex) Sola ’07, JD ’12, have been appointed to the position of Committed Training Attorney (CTA) for the Miami-Dade County Court Division. The Miami-Dade Office of the State Attorney announced the appointment on February 1, 2013.

As CTAs, Cueto and Sola will be responsible for overseeing a County Court division including, ensuring the smooth and efficient operation of the courtroom, and making decisions on many of the tougher substantive and procedural legal issues that arise in court on a daily basis.

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Pictured from L-R: Patricia Ramsey Chronicle, Graciela Cardona, Matthew Rogoff, Brigett Potts, Latoya Brown, & their coach Professor Erin Degnan

This past weekend, the FIU College of Law Board of Advocates Intercultural Human Rights Moot Court team won First Runner-Up at the Susan J. Ferrell Intercultural Human Rights Moot Court Competition. The competition was held at St. Thomas University School of Law in Miami Gardens, Feb. 1-3.

The team, which included 3L’s Latoya Brown, Patricia Ramsey Chronicle, Brigett Potts, Matthew Rogoff, and Graciela Cardona, was narrowly defeated in the final round against the City University of Hong Kong, despite receiving the highest overall oral argument scores from the Honorable Fausto Pocar, the former President of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.

The Susan J. Ferrell Moot Court Competition is a “competition revolving around a simulated court proceeding, in which teams representing both sides of the argument prepare written pleadings with respect to a fictional problem of international human rights law and policy, and present their arguments in an oral argument before the International Court of Justice.” This year, the competition featured a dispute under a bilateral investment treaty, environmental law issues, and the relocation of indigenous peoples without their free, prior and informed consent.

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Florida International University College of Law Professor Cyra Choudhury has been awarded a Santander & IGLP (Institute for Global Law & Policy) Doha Collaborative Research Grant from Harvard Law School to support her research initiative,”Avenues of Legal Reform of Transnational and International Labor Laws in the Gulf and Saudi Arabia.”

The grant will enable Professor Choudhury to travel to South Asia to study male and female laborers who work in the Middle East, with a particular purpose of describing these experiences in order to inform a legal reform proposal.

“I’m delighted to receive this grant from Harvard which will allow me to travel to do field work on the legal framework regulating labor migration from India and Bangladesh to the Middle East.  Receiving a grant given on a competitive basis is an honor and I hope that it will spark an ongoing collaboration with other IGLP scholars working in the same vein,” said Choudhury.

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To the trained eye of Elizabeth Price Foley, life and death aren’t as clear cut as, well, life and death. The professor specializes in constitutional law, healthcare law and bioethics, and has studied life and death extensively. Her findings may surprise you: Life and death aren’t opposites according to the law. In fact, they aren’t even related, legally speaking.

Foley focused on death in her TEDxFIU talk, which asked the audience “When are you really dead?”

This issue comes to the forefront as the demand for organ donation continues to rise. It more important than ever to standardize how and when death is legally declared.

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Before joining the Florida International University College of Law, Professor José Gabilondo served in the Department of the Treasury’s Office of the Assistant General Counsel for Banking and Finance, where he advised the Bureau of Public Debt, the Social Security Trust funds, and other executive departments on a variety of legal matters.

We caught up with him to get his views on the fiscal matters that have been in the headlines.

FIU Law: What is the “fiscal cliff?”

Gabilondo: This an alarmist metaphor that refers to a package of statutorily-required federal tax increases and spending cuts that kicks in January 2^nd of next year, unless Congress can come up with another fiscal plan.  Ironically, this was the solution to a more serious problem: gridlock in Congress over raising the federal debt limit while curbing run-away spending.  A divided Congress punted until after the election by agreeing tax increases and spending cuts that were never expected to see the light of day.  So the package is remarkably fair because it spreads the fiscal burden broadly, balancing conservative and liberal values and putting in place some sound reforms.  Congress didn’t mean to act responsibly, effectively, and in the public interest, but they did.

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The Best Lawyers has selected Florida International University College of Law alumnus Daniel Sibirsky ’06 for inclusion in the nineteenth edition of The Best Lawyers in America (2013), the oldest and most respected peer-review publication in the legal profession.

Best Lawyers compiles its lists of outstanding attorneys by conducting exhaustive peer-review surveys in which thousands of lawyers confidentially evaluate the legal abilities of other lawyers in their practice areas. To be listed in this publication is widely regarded as a significant honor.

Sibirsky, who was born in Ecuador, and immigrated to the United States as a child, accredits his experience as a key motivator to study law.

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Third-year law student Andrea Canona will begin her law career as a law clerk through the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Honors Program, the largest and most prestigious federal entry-level attorney hiring program.

“When the Department of Justice informed me that I had been selected I was ecstatic, and frankly, a bit surprised,” Canona said. “The selection process is very competitive and I feel very fortunate to be in this position.”

Selections to this prestigious program are made based on several elements of a candidate’s background including a demonstrated commitment to government service, academic achievement, legal aid and clinical experience, leadership, and extracurricular activities that relate to the work of the DOJ.

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Pictured from left to right: Coach Matthew L. Baldwin, Coach Anthony C. Hevia ‘07,  Joseph P. Glace (3L), Nisha Mohammed (3L), Marc Schmulian (4L),  Julian V. Stroleny (4L), Professor H. Scott Fingerhut, and Professor H.T. Smith.

This past weekend in Washington, D.C., the FIU Law Trial Team – composed of students Joe Glace (3L), Nisha Mohammed (3L), Marc Schmulian (4L), and Julian Stroleny (4L) – won first place at the 16th Annual National White Collar Crime Mock Trial Invitational, sponsored by Georgetown Law and the Georgetown University Law Center Barristers’ Council.

From 20 of the top trial advocacy programs across the country, the FIU Trial Team won all five rounds in the competition, defeating the University of Houston, Fordham University, and Barry University in the preliminary rounds. They entered the semi-final round undefeated and as the second-ranked squad, where they defeated the University of Houston once again, and then William & Mary in the final round.

This year’s tournament featured allegations of straw contributions, illegal money orders, a mayoral campaign, and the candidate’s alleged honest services fraud in accepting a bribe to change her position to favor a casino referendum on the same ballot.

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FIU Law alumna Katie Edwards (’12) will succeed state Rep. Franklin Sands (D-Weston) as the State Representative for District 98. She defeated her Republican opponent, Cara Christine Pavalock, a bankruptcy and foreclosure attorney from Plantation, and will now represent a district that includes most of Davie and parts of Plantation and Sunrise.

“I congratulate Katie Edwards on her election to the House. Her commitment to public service and the community is palpable and we thank her for her service,” said Dean R. Alexander Acosta.

Ms. Edwards was born and raised in Broward County and has been a resident of Plantation for 23 years. She received her J.D. from FIU Law and her bachelor’s degree in Agricultural Economics from Clemson University.

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