Category Archives: U.Miami

Mary Anne Franks Profiled in Ocean Drive

Mary Anne FranksMy colleague Mary Anne Franks is the subject of an unusual (for a law professor) profile in the current issue of Ocean Drive magazine. For those unfamiliar with Ocean Drive, it is a big thick glossy thing aimed squarely at the handmaidens of the plutocracy. The magazine celebrates Miami’s (and especially Miami Beach’s) moneyed party-goers, and is stuffed with ads for wildly expensive clothing and jewelery. In between the ads there are little articles about photogenic local celebutantes and charity party-goers. As far as I know, in 20 years in Miami I have never attended an event covered by Ocean Drive, but then again I’m hardly a regular reader. The thing does appear in the mail at my house — I’m guessing I got on their mailing list by subscribing to the Economist, which says something about either the Economist or Ocean Drive‘s demographic assumptions.

Anyway, Mary Anne is not Ocean Drive‘s covergirl — that’s a Bond girl — but she is the background for the table of contents, which must be the next best thing, and the subject of a writeup that begins, “Mary Anne Franks could shatter your kneecap if she wanted to” and goes on to discuss her expertise in Krav Maga, an Israeli martial art; it also touches on her expertise as a feminist legal thinker.

Before joining the Miami Law faculty, Mary Anne Franks was a Bigelow Fellow and Lecturer in Law at the University of Chicago Law School. She received her J.D. from Harvard Law School in 2007. She received her D.Phil in 2004 and her M.Phil in 2001 from Oxford University, where she studied on a Rhodes Scholarship. Mary Anne’s latest article is How to Feel Like a Woman, or, Why Punishment Is a Drag, which is forthcoming in the UCLA Law Review.

Posted in The Media, U.Miami | Comments Off on Mary Anne Franks Profiled in Ocean Drive

Good Stuff Happens

Two good things happened yesterday:

• The bill to provide a large public subsidy for the refurbishment of the the Miami Dolphin’s stadium died in Tallahassee. The combination of outrage over the fiasco of the Miami Marlins deal, and the fact that the team’s lead owner is a multi-billionaire seemed to scuttle it.

• Chartwell’s workers (UMiami dining hall workers) voted to unionize.

Posted in Florida, U.Miami | 6 Comments

Yet Another Law School Ranking

Given the source — AbovetheLaw.com — I would have been prepared to dismiss it out of hand. But Brian Leiter, who is a very discerning consumer of rankings, says that that the “ATL Top 50” is “not nuts and contains some useful information”. Coming from him, that is fairly high praise.

U.Miami Law comes in at 49th on the list — considerably higher than our usual US News rank, and right near the middle of the range (41-55) I would put us at if I were Ratings Czar. And Yale is #1, so they got that right too.

Posted in Law School, U.Miami | 1 Comment

No UM Food Workers’ Strike After All?

I was working up a long post on the looming food workers strike against Chartwells, which operates the food court and dining areas at UMiami, but it looks as if there may not be one. Responding, undoubtedly, to pressure from the U, Chartwells has agreed to the workers’ demand for a card check election regarding a union.

UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI STATEMENT ON UNIONIZING EFFORTS The University is aware of a possible work stoppage as part of a unionizing effort. Today, we have learned that Chartwells offered the union a card check, and the University is hopeful this will resolve the issues. The University assures the campus community that residential college dining halls and our food court operations will continue as scheduled through the remainder of the semester. The University values its faculty and staff, as well as employees of its contractors, including Chartwells.

This is very good news for the workers and for the rest of us. I would like to think that the faculty letter I and about 300 others signed, and the subsequent action by the UM Faculty Senate played at least a small role in this development.

Posted in U.Miami | 1 Comment

UMiami Law Students Doing Good

The Tampa Bay Times has a story about an “alternative spring break program” in which a group of UMiami Law students work in a mobile clinic to help undocumented long-time US residents get deferments from deportation. The story leads with my former Torts student and later research assistant:

Paulina Valanty arrived at the clinic for undocumented immigrants at St. Clement Catholic Church with more than a passing interest.

Valanty, 23, a law student at the University of Miami, used to live in the shadows, worrying about being deported.

“I was undocumented until I was 20. I was very afraid,” she said. “Any time I applied for anything and saw that little box that says ‘Social Security number,’ I was afraid. It was nerve-racking just looking at it.”

Valanty, who today is a citizen, regularly attends clinics like the one held at St. Clement on Tuesday to help young undocumented immigrants seek a change in their status.

Under a modification in federal laws last summer, undocumented immigrants who arrived here as children, brought by their parents, can apply for a deferment to avoid deportation.

Posted in Law: Everything Else, U.Miami | 15 Comments

Down Again (Resolved)

Law school faculty email is down … and so is the UM Law web site. They did a big server move Saturday night, and all was supposed to be well by Sunday.

But it isn’t.

Since most law school workstations are set up to rely heavily on the network, I hear they are not working either.

You can contact me at gmail.com using my firstname.lastname before the @. Or you can wait like the rest of us.

Update (3pm): Fixed at last.

Posted in U.Miami | Comments Off on Down Again (Resolved)