Author: Melanie McDonald

Notre Dame Law School alumnus David Scheper ’85 was selected as a Fellow of the prestigious American College of Trial Lawyers. Fellowship is extended only by invitation, and membership in the organization can never be more than one percent of the total lawyer population of any state or province in the United States and Canada. Members are chosen for their skill as advocates and for careers marked by the highest standards of ethical conduct, professionalism, civility and collegiality.

Mr. Scheper has successfully represented companies and individuals in high-stakes cases and investigations throughout the country, both in federal and state proceedings. He served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles from 1987 to 1999 and as Chief of the Criminal Division from 1997 to 1999. As an Assistant U.S. Attorney, Mr. Scheper was responsible for the investigation, trial, and appeal of federal criminal cases involving, tax, securities, and bank fraud; money laundering; murder; bank robbery; and narcotics. As Chief of the Criminal Division, he oversaw the work of approximately 180 prosecutors in the largest U.S. Attorney’s office in the United States. Mr. Scheper also served as a member of the Criminal Chiefs’ Working Group, an assembly of selected criminal chiefs from across the country devoted to policy analysis. Mr. Scheper tried 20 cases and briefed and argued numerous appeals during his tenure as a federal prosecutor.

Before helping to form Scheper Kim & Overland LLP, from 1999 to March 2004, Mr. Scheper was a partner at Winston & Strawn and chaired the litigation department in the Los Angeles office. He practices in the areas of general commercial and business litigation, internal investigations, and white collar criminal defense.

In the civil arena, Mr. Scheper has represented numerous businesses and financial institutions in federal and state courts throughout California and elsewhere. His engagements have included the successful defense at trial of a national investment real estate firm accused of intentional interference with contractual relations; the successful defense at trial of a prominent law firm in a legal malpractice action; representation of a Fortune 20 telecommunications firm in a multi-billion dollar breach of contract case; representation of a defense contractor in a False Claims Act case involving the National Missile Defense Program; representation of an international architectural firm in a multi-million dollar uninsured False Claims Act case resulting in a nuisance value settlement on the eve of trial; representation of a Fortune 250 managed services firm in environmental, antitrust and breach of contract disputes; representation of a Midwest bank in a RICO case; negotiation of multi-million dollar severance packages for high-level executives at a closely-held corporation; and representation of an individual in a multi-million dollar dispute over commission payments owed on a financing deal.

In Mr. Scheper’s white collar practice, he has represented senior executives and companies in investigations involving, among other things, the backdating of stock options, the Clean Water Act and other environmental laws, Medicare and Medi-Cal fraud, bankruptcy fraud, tax fraud, securities fraud, investment fraud, and federal and state antitrust defense. He also served as independent counsel to the City of Thousand Oaks in connection with the enforcement of the City’s campaign finance laws. In addition, Mr. Scheper has conducted internal investigations into allegations of conflict of interest by the prosecuting attorney of a large California municipality and alleged wrongdoing by employees of Fortune 500 companies in the paint, oil, communications, housing, insurance and managed services fields.

Mr. Scheper received an A.B. in history from Harvard College in 1980, where he was the center on the football team. He received a J.D., cum laude, from the University of Notre Dame Law School in 1985 and was a member of the National Moot Court Appellate Team.

Notre Dame Professor of Law Michael Kirsch’s most recent scholarly article— The Role of Physical Presence in the Taxation of Cross-Border Personal Services, 51 Boston College Law Review (2010)—addresses the international tax implications of virtual personal services, a jurisdictional matter that has arisen out of the increasing importance of global trade, telecommunications, and personal mobility.

After earning a J.D. from Harvard and an LL.M. in taxation from New York University, Kirsch worked for four years in the tax department of a Los Angeles law firm. He then served as a law clerk for Chief Judge Lapsley W. Hamblen, Jr., of the United States Tax Court in Washington, D.C. Following the two-year clerkship, he served as a staff attorney in the IRS’ Office of Associate Chief Counsel (International). From 1997 through 2001 he worked in the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Tax Policy, where he was the Associate International Tax Counsel.

His scholarship, which focuses on international taxation, is published by top law journals, including the New York University Law Review, the Harvard Journal on Legislation, and the Texas Law Review.

For more information about Professor Kirsch, visit his faculty profile.

Notre Dame Law School alumnus Brian T. Moynihan ’84 has risen through the ranks at Bank of America, and was just elected CEO by the company’s board of directors. Previously, Moynihan served as BofA’s President of Global Banking & Wealth Management.

Link to Bank of America’s news release here: http://multivu.prnewswire.com/mnr/bankofamerica/41726/

This weekend (December 11-13), Notre Dame Assistant Professor of Law Sean O’Brien will take part in the ISBA’s 2009 midyear meeting in Chicago, during which the Diversity Leadership Council will present a special program in honor President Obama’s “Call to Service” and International Human Rights Day – Lincoln’s Legacy: Lawyers Who Protect Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. The program will include a keynote address by Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan and a panel discussion of Illinois lawyers who “make a difference” moderated by WTTW’s Chicago Tonight Host Phil Ponce.

O’Brien—who has also served as assistant director of Notre Dame Law School’s Center for Civil and Human Rights since 2005—has a wealth of experience in international and domestic human rights work. He holds three degrees from the University of Notre Dame, most recently graduating summa cum laude from the Center’s LL.M. program in 2002. His experience includes work with the Belfast law firm of Madden & Finucane before the Bloody Sunday Inquiry in Derry, Northern Ireland and litigation with the Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL) in the Inter-American System for the Protection of Human Rights. Immediately prior to his return to Notre Dame, he served as Chief Counsel for Immigration and Human Rights at the Center for Multicultural Human Services (CMHS) in Falls Church, VA, directing a legal services program for survivors of torture and war trauma.

O’Brien’s passion becomes service to the profession through his work as chair of the bar’s Human Rights Section Council. The body educates Illinois lawyers and the public on human rights issues and assists the bar in advocating for greater human rights protections in Illinois and beyond. “Few members of the Section Council practice human or civil rights law full-time,” explains O’Brien. “But they all see human rights as part of their vocation in the law and it informs their representation of clients.” Through their work on the Section Council, O’Brien believes that lawyers from all parts of the state and all different practice areas “rekindle the flame” that drew them to the profession of law in the first place.

Under O’Brien’s leadership, the Section Council is currently looking at ways to support the June 2008 decision of the ISBA General Assembly to oppose the death penalty in Illinois. Through legislative monitoring and other activities, the Section Council hopes to ensure and end to state-sponsored killing. The Section Council is also taking steps towards recommending that the ISBA officially support the U.S. ratification of the U.N. Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). The treaty is the only human rights-related treaty on the U.S. State Department’s priority list of 17 treaties “on which the Administration supports Senate action at this time.” While the U.S. signed CEDAW in 1980, the Senate has failed to take the final step of actually ratifying the treaty. The U.S. stands with Iran, Somalia, Sudan, Nauru, Palau and Tonga as the only nations in the world who have yet to ratify this treaty protecting and promoting basic human rights for women and girls. O’Brien hopes that the ISBA, along with other bar associations across the country, can help remove the U.S. from this list once and for all.

In addition to human rights, O’Brien is a member of the International and International Law Section Council, as well as the bar’s Diversity Leadership Council. “It’s important that our profession reflects the wisdom and experiences of the entire community – not just of those who have traditionally been able to afford law school. If the bar is not inclusive – and is not seen as taking active steps to promote diversity – we risk our reputation as agents of justice and as a profession that champions the law on behalf of those who cannot defend themselves.”

Tonight, from 5:30-7 p.m. at the Notre Dame Hammes Bookstore, Notre Dame Professor of Law Nicole Garnett will speak about her new book, Ordering the City: Land Use, Policing and the Restoration of Urban America (Yale University Press, 2009).

The book tackles the often-overlooked connections between urban land use and policing policies. Importantly, Professor Garnett’s book explores how the concept of urban disorder shapes urban policy. She does so by examining how cities construct and maintain order and suppress disorder through both land use and policing policies, by evaluating the effectiveness of property regulation policies and policing techniques in making urban neighborhoods safer and more vital, and by highlighting the risk that too much focus on the problem of “disorder” in cities may drain them of needed energy and vitality.

“The intersections and conflicts between the ideas of “order” and “disorder” in urban policy are as many, varied, and complex as the cities where they are played out,” says Garnett. “A humble and honest effort to understand them, however, forms the foundation of the kinds of urban policies that I believe can transform our cities into healthy, vibrant, and orderly places to make our lives.”

In her book, Garnett provides several case studies, including “the ambitious plan of the Chicago Housing Authority to demolish all of the city’s notorious high-rise public housing projects and replace them with low-rise, mixed-income private developments.” The example highlights the failure of the order construction model in post-war Chicago—which ultimately led to concentrated disorder and crime—and the move toward “a neighborhood-redevelopment strategy that aims to reorder and renew poor urban neighborhoods by saving them from the ravages of disorder-plagued public housing.”

Garnett is the author of numerous articles on property, land use, urban development, local government law, and education. She is currently working on a major empirical research project with Notre Dame Professor of Law Peg Brinig examining the effects of Catholic school closures on urban neighborhoods. Garnett also is a Fellow of the Institute for Educational Initiatives and, from 2008-2010, a Provost Fellow at Notre Dame.

For more on Professor Garnett’s book, link to Yale University Press at: http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=9780300124941
For more on Professor Garnett, visit her faculty bio page at: http://law.nd.edu/people/faculty-and-administration/teaching-and-research-faculty/nicole-stelle-garnett.

Watch a recording of the event.

A panel discussion titled “What Would a Good Conscience Clause Look Like? A Catholic University’s Perspective” was held Dec. 3 (Thursday) at 12:30 p.m. in the Patrick F. McCartan Courtroom of the University of Notre Dame’s Eck Hall of Law.

The discussion concerned how Catholic teaching and tradition, scholarship and legal developments might inform efforts to protect the rights of conscience of health workers, pregnant women, taxpayers and other citizens.

The panelists were Rev. Michael D. Place, chair of the International Federation of Catholic Health Institutions; O. Carter Snead, associate professor of law in the Notre Dame Law School; and Margaret F. Brinig, Fritz Duda Professor of Law in the Notre Dame Law School.

Father Place, who holds a doctorate in sacred theology from The Catholic University of America, is the former president and chief executive officer of the Catholic Health Association of the United States. Snead, former general counsel to the President’s Council on Bioethics, was recently appointed by UNESCO to its International Bioethics Committee. Brinig, who co-chairs Notre Dame’s Task Force for Supporting the Choice of Life, teaches courses in family law and has written and lectured widely on issues arising from fertility, pregnancy, adoption and financial stresses on families.

The panelists hope that the discussion will launch a university-wide critical discussion and lead to a “white paper” addressing these and other issues of conscience, law, healthcare and public funding.

The event was sponsored by the Notre Dame Law School in association with Notre Dame’s new Task Force on Supporting the Choice for Life.

Douglass Cassel, Notre Dame Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Civil and Human Rights at the Law School, will lead the human rights panel discussions for the Transatlantic Strategy Forum in Brussels, Belgium. The conference, titled “The European Union, the United States and Global Governance: Major Trends and Challenges,” runs Dec. 3-4.

Cassel’s remarks compare the approach of the European Union to the approach of the United States on a variety of human rights-related subjects, including the use of military force in counter-terrorism operations and the role of international law in adjudicating human rights violations.

Says Cassel:
“The nations of the European Union and the United States of America have more in common in support of human rights than do any other two regions in the world…Within their broadly similar traditions, however, lie important differences. Some are of relatively recent vintage, such as different mixes of law enforcement and military force in counter-terrorism operations. Others are more longstanding, including sharply different approaches to international law and international criminal accountability, fundamentally different roles for religion and religious values, markedly varying ideologies of political economy, differing emphases on freedom of expression, contrasting attitudes toward state-sanctioned violence, and dramatically different approaches to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

For Cassel’s complete remarks, click here

By: Michael O. Garvey, news and information

A panel discussion titled “What Would a Good Conscience Clause Look Like? A Catholic University’s Perspective” will be held Dec. 3 (Thursday) at 12:30 p.m. in the Patrick F. McCartan Courtroom of the University of Notre Dame’s Eck Hall of Law.

The discussion will concern how Catholic teaching and tradition, scholarship and legal developments might inform efforts to protect the rights of conscience of health workers, pregnant women, taxpayers and other citizens.

The panelists are Rev. Michael D. Place, chair of the International Federation of Catholic Health Institutions; O. Carter Snead, associate professor of law in the Notre Dame Law School; and Margaret F. Brinig, Fritz Duda Professor of Law in the Notre Dame Law School.

Father Place, who holds a doctorate in sacred theology from The Catholic University of America, is the former president and chief executive officer of the Catholic Health Association of the United States. Snead, former general counsel to the President’s Council on Bioethics, was recently appointed by UNESCO to its International Bioethics Committee. Brinig, who co-chairs Notre Dame’s Task Force for Supporting the Choice of Life, teaches courses in family law and has written and lectured widely on issues arising from fertility, pregnancy, adoption and financial stresses on families.

The panelists hope that the discussion will launch a university-wide critical discussion and lead to a “white paper” addressing these and other issues of conscience, law, healthcare and public funding.

The event is sponsored by the Notre Dame Law School in association with Notre Dame’s new Task Force on Supporting the Choice for Life. It is free and open to the public.

More information is available at http://law.nd.edu/about/conferences/conscience-clause.

Notre Dame Professor of Law John Nagle spends Thursday afternoons in the classroom. That’s not unusual for a University professor—except that his classroom is at Covenant Christian School, and his students are in grades 5-8.

A specialist in environmental law, Nagle wrote a chapter on the law governing the management of national parks for his latest book, due to be published by Yale University Press in spring 2010. That expertise, combined with the timeliness of a recent PBS broadcast on the subject of national parks, convinced him to share his knowledge with this young group of budding environmentalists.

“These kids plainly, really care about the environment,” says Nagle, whose two daughters attend the school. “They have a keen appreciation for its importance.”

Nagle adds that, so far, the students have completed an assignment to identify the national park that they would most like to visit, and have suggested places that should be named national historic sites. “One student suggested that Fort Hood should be recognized as a national historic site in the aftermath of the tragic shootings there, which shows that the students understand how history unfolds before their very eyes,” Nagle observed. They also discuss topics such as national park land use and the conflicts that arise, such as wanting to snowmobile through Yellowstone versus wanting to maintain a more pristine landscape.

Nagle understands the impact that exposure to a subject early in life can have on one’s adult choices. “My family took a trip to Door County, Wisconsin, when I was about ten years old,” he explains. “My mom woke me up at 6:30 a.m. for a hike through the woods to see cedar waxwing birds. I wasn’t so happy about getting up early for a hike at the time, but it’s one of my favorite memories now.” He went on to study environmental policy at Indiana University before attending the University of Michigan Law School.

At Notre Dame, in addition to environmental law, Nagle teaches pollution law, biodiversity and the law, legislation, election law, constitutional law, and property. For more on Prof. Nagle, visit
http://law.nd.edu/people/faculty-and-administration/teaching-and-research-faculty/john-copeland-nagle.

Notre Dame Associate Professor of Law O. Carter Snead, along with Professor Philip Sloan in Notre Dame’s Program of Liberal Studies and Graduate Program in History and Philosophy of Science, was awarded a $50,000 seed grant from the University’s Initiative in Adult Stem Cell Research and Ethics. The money will fund a project entitled “Theological, Scientific, Ethical, and Legal Aspects of Alternative Stem-Cell Research.” The project will culminate in an interdisciplinary workshop to be held next summer at Notre Dame, and is meant to be a precursor to a permanent interdisciplinary center focused on this topic.

Snead was recently named to serve as an expert for the Initiative. Says Snead, “the Initiative takes a comprehensive approach to stem cell research, exploring not only the relevant scientific and engineering questions, but attending to the ethical and humanistic matters as well. The research aims at the common good, and is conducted in a manner that respects the equal dignity of all human lives from conception to natural death.”

Adult stem cell research is actively pursued at Notre Dame. Adult stem cells are found in different tissues and organs throughout the bodies of animals, including the nervous system. The two most well known sources of adult/non-embryonic stem cells are bone marrow and umbilical cord blood. Notre Dame commits itself to never using embryonic stem cells in research to cure human disease. The University opposes the use and destruction of embryos on the grounds that it constitutes the unjust taking of innocent human life for the benefit of others.

“The Notre Dame Adult Stem Cell Initiative is a tribute to the uniqueness of Notre Dame as the nation’s premier Catholic research university,” says Snead. “Notre Dame, like other elite schools, is committed to scholarly excellence, interdisciplinarity, and the pursuit of cutting edge research. At the same time, these aspirations are shaped by and grounded in the University’s mission. The Initiative reflects this synthesis.”

A significant portion of Snead’s research and teaching centers around the ethical, legal, and social questions associated with stem cell research and related questions (such as human cloning). He has published numerous articles, both for scholarly and general audiences on these matters including: The Pedagogical Significance of the Bush Stem Cell Policy: A Window into the Nature of Bioethical Regulation in the U.S., 5 YALE J. HEALTH POL’Y, L. & ETHICS 491 (2005); Preparing the Groundwork for a Responsible Debate on Stem Cell Research and Cloning, 39 NEW ENG. L. REV. 701 (2005) (Keynote address for 2004 Symposium, “Bioethics: The Current Stem Cell Research Debate”); A Comparative Analysis of E.U. and U.S. Funding Policies for Embryonic Stem Cell Research: Details, Aims, and Effects, 4 QUADERNI COSTITUZIONALI 834 (2007); Bioethics and Self-Governance: The Lessons of the Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights, JOURNAL OF MEDICINE AND PHILOSOPHY, 34: 204-222, 2009 doi 10.1093/jmp/jhp024; Public Bioethics and the Bush Presidency, 32 HARV. J. OF L. & PUB. POL. 867 (2009); and Public Bioethics, Science, and the Problem of Integration, _ U.C. DAVIS LAW REVIEW _ (forthcoming 2010).

Aside from teaching and research, Snead’s professional service has also focused heavily on the question of stem cell research. Prior to joining the faculty of Notre Dame, he served as General Counsel to the President’s Council on Bioethics (a White House advisory body), where he advised the Chairman and Members on the legal and public policy dimensions of stem cell research and human cloning. From 2004 to 2005, he led the U.S. government delegation to the United Nations Educational, Science, and Culture Organization (UNESCO) in the negotiation of the Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights (adopted in October 2005).

Snead recently concluded his service as Permanent Observer for the U.S. government at the Council of Europe’s Steering Committee on Bioethics (CDBI), where he assisted in the development of international instruments and standards relating to stem cell research, among other things.

Currently, Snead serves as a member of UNESCO’s International Bioethics Committee, a 36-member body of independent experts who advise member states on bioethical questions. It is the only bioethics committee in the world with a global mandate.

Snead serves as Chairman for the Stem Cell Research/Bioethics Working Group of the New Federal Initiatives Project for the Federalist Society. Finally, he is a Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, DC.

To learn more about Professor Snead, visit his webpage.