Archive for 'FIU College of Law'

Senior Associate Dean Michelle D. Mason served as the keynote speaker at the 2012 National Achievers Society Induction Ceremony on Oct. 20, 2012 at the FIU Biscayne Bay Campus. The event, sponsored by the South Florida Center of Excellence at Florida International University, inducted 16 local students into The National Achievers Society (NAS).

Nationally, the Centers of Excellence have inducted more than 19,000 students into NAS since 1986 and induct approximately 300 new students each year.

NAS was established with the purpose of encouraging students in kindergarten through grade 12 to excel both academically and culturally.  By focusing on the importance of higher education and group accomplishments, NAS has enjoyed success in helping  students develop a sense of pride that has turned learners into leaders.

“A variety of role models and mentors made a significant difference for me growing up.  I feel privileged to be seen as having a perspective that could possibly assist another child as she charts her own educational journey,” said Mason.

Read More →

By Martin Haro

Eight law clinics are currently operating within the College of Law at FIU. There, law students are not only gaining hands-on experience in many areas of practice but also improving the lives of their fellow community members. In this first part of a two-part story, we tell you about some of the cases handled by the Consumer Bankruptcy Clinic, the Environmental Law Clinic, the Family and Children’s Advocacy Clinic and the Immigrant Children’s Justice Clinic.

When Peggy Maisel joined the faculty of the College of Law in 2003, she did so with a clear goal in mind: to establish a flagship clinical program that provides students with hands-on experience outside the classroom.

In August 2004, Maisel and former College of Law Professor Troy Elder launched the inaugural law clinic, the Carlos A. Costa Immigration and Human Rights Clinic. Currently, there are eight clinics and a ninth is being planned to work on behalf of veterans.

About 45 percent of FIU Law students work in a clinic before graduation. Through the end of the 2011-’12 year, the students had provided more than 27,000 hours of free legal services to approximately 400 individuals, groups and organizations. That is equivalent to a court-approved value of more than $2 million in free legal services, exclusive of faculty time.

“We are very much a law firm focusing on educating the next generation of lawyers through close supervision of law students as they practice for the first time and provide policy advocacy and community education throughout Miami-Dade,” said Maisel of the clinics, which primarily serve underprivileged individuals and nonprofits that must meet a certain threshold to receive services.

Read More →

The Spain-Florida Foundation 500 Years brought together leading Latin American legal experts, diplomats and the former heads of government of Uruguay, Spain and El Salvador to discuss the impact and legacy of the Constitution of Cadiz.  The two-day conference, hosted by the FIU College of Law, was titled “Homage to the Bicentenary of the 1812 Cadiz Constitution” and started on Oct. 18, 2012.

Matthew C. Mirow, Associate Dean of International & Graduate Studies and Professor of Law, served as a panelists on a discussion on the historical aspects of the Constitution of Cadiz. In his presentation, Mirow addressed the promulgation of the Constitution of Cadiz in Florida.

“This Constitution governed Spanish Florida from 1812 to 1815 and then again from 1820 until 1821 when Spain turned Florida over to the United States,” said Mirow.  “Daily political life in Florida’s Spanish colonial cities was governed by this document, and cities like St. Augustine ordered their activities around the requirements, rights, and duties expressed in this Constitution.”

The basis for this talk has just been published by Mirow in 24 Florida Journal of International Law 1-60 (2012).

For the 5th year running, Professor H. Scott Fingerhut has been selected to The Best Lawyers in America for protecting people’s liberties as one of the nation’s top criminal defense lawyers.

Best Lawyers is the oldest and most respected peer-review publication in the legal profession, with listings published in almost 70 countries around the world.  Lawyers are not permitted to pay any fee to participate or be included.

2013 will mark the 19th edition of Best Lawyers celebratory publication and include 50,178 attorneys in 128 practice areas, covering all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

Professor Fingerhut began his legal career as a prosecutor in Janet Reno’s Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office and opened his own law practice in 1992, where he concentrates still on state and federal trial and appellate criminal defense, as well as Florida Bar admission and regulation.

Professor Fingerhut has been with FIU since 2000.  He teaches trial advocacy, pretrial practice, and criminal procedure, coaches the trial team, and this year oversees the criminal law externship program.

Photo as seen on The Atlantic.com

In Defense of Baseball’s Infield Fly Rule

By Howard Wasserman

Baseball’s Infield Fly Rule has sparked more legal fascination than any other rule in sports. It returned to the national spotlight this past week when an unusual and controversial infield fly call in last Friday’s National League Wild Card game between the St. Louis Cardinals and Atlanta Braves short-circuited a potential Braves rally in a game the Braves ultimately lost. Opinion has been divided on the correctness of the call.

But beyond criticism of this specific call, some fans on Twitter and in web forums expressed a deeper distaste for the Infield Fly Rule itself, questioning whether it is necessary, wise, or warranted. They’re misguided: The rule is part of the sport’s fabric, uniquely warranted for a situation that’s unique to baseball.

There’s no other situation in baseball when the fielding team will be better off by not catching a fair ball than by catching it.

Here’s how the Infield Fly Rule works. When a team has runners on first and second or the bases loaded with less than two out and the batter hits a pop-fly ball (but not a line drive) in fair territory that can be easily caught by an infielder (under the rule, can be caught with “ordinary effort”), the batter is called out, regardless of whether the fielder catches the ball; if the ball drops and remains fair, it is in play and the runners can try to advance at their own risk. The rule is designed to remove the incentive for a fielder to deliberately drop an easily handled ball on the infield, which likely would allow him to turn a double play on the two base runners (and perhaps, although less likely, a triple play). It took its more-or-less current form in 1901, enacted in response to infielders actually doing this, a bit of trickery that was deemed not “sporting” at the time.

Read More →

Professor Matthew Mirow will complete a three-year term on the Southern Cone Regional Review Panel of the Council for International Exchange of Scholars, Washington, DC, this year. The Council administers the award of Fulbright U.S. Visiting Scholars, commonly referred to as Fulbright Professors, for the U.S. Department of State and the Fulbright Board.

The Fulbright is recognized as the United States’ premiere academic exchange program.  Over the past three years, Mirow has reviewed hundreds of applications by university professors seeking to teach or to do research in the countries comprising the Southern Cone, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, and Paraguay.

Mirow, who had a Fulbright to Chile in 2009, said, “It is a great deal of fun to read and discuss applications from professors around the U.S. in all sorts of fields.  The Fulbright not only changes the lives of these professors but also touches so many students and professors in the host universities.  I have no doubt that the Fulbright program is tax money well spent.   It has really been an honor to have played a small part in the Fulbright process.”

Members of the 2012-2013 Executive Board of the National Black Law Students Association were asked to give their best advice on what Black pre-law students should do to prepare for a successful law school experience. Here is what they wanted to share.

Advice:

As a third-year Black law student, I know that part of my duty is to assist the next generation of Black law students. In order to prepare for law school, Black college and graduate students should consider the following five steps (same advice I give my mentees).

(1) Find a mentor. Consider finding a mentor in a local bar association, a family friend who happens to be an attorney, or a person who is currently in law school. The key to success is finding answers for questions you may have. Mentors can answer your questions about law school and assist you with the law school application process.

(2) Create a support system. You will go through so many changes before, during, and after law school such that a good support system could make or break your success. If it wasn’t for my parents, brother, family, and friends I know that I would not have been able to survive law school.

Read More →

FIU Law’s Carlos A. Costa Immigration and Human Rights Clinic and Professor Juan Carlos Gómez were featured in a recent Miami Herald article for their work with low-income undocumented migrants applying to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA.

Professor Gómez is a Visiting Clinical Assistant Professor of Law at FIU. Gómez has been defending the rights of individuals in immigration matters for the last twenty years. During this time he has represented persons before the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, the United States Departments of Justice and Homeland Security in complex immigration matters. Within the field of immigration law, he has helped thousands of individuals in situations including removal and deportation proceedings, family immigration, and the transfer of professionals and executives to the United States.

“You hear all of these incredible stories of young people who have been brought to the United States and have such hope to contribute so much,” Gómez said. “They want to run businesses. They want to be accountants. They are paying for college out of their own pockets. These are incredible human beings, who will only make us a richer nation.”

Read More →

The legal community came together Sept. 29 to celebrate 10 years of FIU Law. In the process, nearly $1 million was raised for fellowships and scholarships, ensuring that the college’s promise to educate a unique type of lawyer will be kept for generations.

“Miami opens its doors to all individuals with the will and the heart to seek and achieve success. FIU Law will do the same,” said College of Law Dean Alexander Acosta, addressing more than 400 law students, lawyers, judges, alumni, faculty and university leaders who gathered at the Four Seasons Hotel Miami. “There is something special about the FIU Law student. They do not believe in limits. They charge forward with the attitude that with hard work and an excellent education nothing is beyond their grasp. This is the attitude that makes FIU Law and FIU Law graduates distinct.”

The Judge Aaron B. Cohen Foundation, law firms and individuals contributed to the $918,000 fundraising effort. Net proceeds will directly benefit law students by providing summer stipends and by funding scholarships for first generation students.

Read More →

The following op-ed by first-year FIU Law student Frandley Julien, Haitian leaders avoid root problems, originally appeared in The Sun Sentinel on September 30, 2012.

Those who follow Haitian politics closely have noticed that, for the last 25 years, no government has matched the current team’s ability to come up with innovative ideas, or their eagerness to achieve quick results. However, one’s enthusiasm is quickly dampened upon the realization that no other government has had so little institutional knowledge either.

Therefore, the current government’s entrepreneurial spirit, uplifting at first, may mean more trouble for the country if its innovative drive is unleashed with little respect for the institutions, and without a clear understanding of what it would take to achieve irreversible democratic, economic and social progress.

The current government approaches Haiti’s challenges as if it were a new country, with no history or antecedents. Everybody agrees Haiti has a great potential for tourism, that its hard-working people could constitute the ideal workforce for scores of local and foreign businesses.

But what the government fails to realize is that until Duvalier’s departure, thousands of tourists were visiting Haiti on a weekly basis, that all the jobs we are trying to attract, we had them until then. Why did these enterprises leave? Why did the tourists stop visiting us? The answer is a no-brainer: political instability and insecurity.

Read More →