Faculty Activities

Professor Margaret Barry

Professor Marshall Breger

On May 18, he presented at a conference sponsored by the Urban Institute and Harvard University titled “Nonprofits in Financial Distress: Possible Regulatory Responses.”  His presentation focused on the federal tax enforcement of investments and spending by charities. Earlier in the month, Colinvaux attended the May meeting of the Tax Section of the American Bar Association.In late March, he convened and moderated a panel sponsored by the D.C. Bar titled "The Investment of Charitable Assets: UPMIFA and the Ramifications of a Downturn."

On March 10, he spoke on a panel that followed remarks by Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) at an event called “Nonprofits in a World of Change,” hosted by the Buchanan Ingersoll law firm. His remarks were reported in BNA’s Daily Tax Report.

On March 12, Professor Colinvaux was quoted in an article in the Chronicle of Philanthropy for an article titled "A Taxing Proposition."

In February, he convened and moderated a panel for the D.C. Bar Tax Section on Feb. 26 titled “Hospitals in the Spotlight. The IRS Hospital Report: Public and Private Views.” 

On Oct. 29, he participated in a roundtable discussion in Washington D.C. about political campaign intervention by section 501(c)(3) organizations. The roundtable was sponsored by the editor of the Exempt Organization Tax Journal. An account of the discussion, including quotes from Colinvaux, appeared in the Oct. 30 edition of Tax Notes Today.

He also participated in a conference at New York University School of Law on Oct. 23 and 24 that was titled “Structures at the Seam: The Architecture of Charities’ Commercial Activities.” The event was sponsored by the National Center on Philanthropy and the Law.

On Oct. 15, Colinvaux spoke at the D.C. Bar about changes to the new IRS Form that tax-exempt organizations must file.

Professor Mary G. Leary addressed the National Association of Attorney Generals in May, on the topic  "Digital Natives: Growing Up in an Electronic World." Professor Leary's recent article "The Right and Wrong Responses to "Sexting,"  The Public Discourse (May 2009), published by Princeton’s Witherspoon Institute, has generated much positive feedback.

She was interviewed by radio reporter Nima Reza on Family News in Focus on the subject of  “sexting,” a practice popular among some teenagers where someone takes a nude, partially nude or sexually provocative photo and sends it to someone else, typically by cell phone. The program Leary was a guest on airs on more than 600 radio stations.

A paper by Professor Leary was accepted for presentation at the 2009 Porn Cultures: Regulation, Political Economy, and Technology conference to be held in Leeds, England on the 15th and 16th of June. This international conference is sponsored by The Centre for International Communication Research (CICR) the Media Industries Research Centre (MIRC) and the Institute of Communications Studies at the University of Leeds. 

Professor Leary was a discussant for “The Social Costs of Pornography: A Consultation of the Social Costs of Pornography Project,” held at Princeton University Dec. 11 - 13, 2008. The meeting assembled leading experts in the fields of psychiatry, psychology, neurophysiology, philosophy, sociology, law, and political theory to present a rigorously argued overview of the problem of pornography in our society and to make recommendations. The primary purpose of the meeting was to examine the real nature of pornography in its moral and social consequences.

In Oct. 2008, Professor Leary was a presented  at the Mulieris Dignitatem conference at the John Paul II Cultural Center in Washington. Her paper, "Mulieris Dignitatem: Pornography and the Dignity of the Soul: An Exploration of Dignity in a Protected Speech Paradigm," wil be published in the next edition of the Ave Maria Law Review.

Professor Leary was interviewed on National Public Radio's "On the Media" in late Dec. 2008. She discussed the propriety of criminal prosecution under a federal statute that provides for prosecution of possession of cartoons which are “the obscene visual representations of the sexual abuse of children” when they are transported through interstate commerce.  

Her article, “Kennedy v. Louisiana: A Chapter of Subtle Changes in the Supreme Court’s Book on the Death Penalty," is scheduled to be published in Jan. 2009 in Vol 21, No. 2 of the Federal Sentencing Reporter.

Professor Lerman presented “Re-examining the Lake Pleasant Bodies Case: A Case Study in Ethical Decision-making” at the University of Akron’s law school on Nov. 10, 2008. She discussed a case from the 1970s in which two attorneys representing an accused murderer were informed by their client that he had killed several teenagers, and also told them where his victims’ bodies were located. The defendant, Robert Garrow, later confessed to the murders under oath, making it clear that his lawyers had known about his crimes all along. The attorneys then faced criminal charges, a disciplinary investigation, death threats, ostracism within their community, and extensive damage to their law practices. Lerman’s lecture covered the many difficult ethical decisions that confronted the legal team.

Professor Malveaux gave a presentation to approximately 20 undergraduate students from Villanova University on May 18, as part of the group's mini-semester in Washington. She spent an hour discussing the current Supreme Court term with the students. 

Professor Malveaux was a panelist at the 2009 Conference of the Metropolitan Washington Employment Lawyers Association (MWELA), a group of more than 250 lawyers who advocate for people in the greater Washington, D.C. area in employee rights and civil rights. The March 13 symposium, “Changing Our Practices for the Better,” was hosted by the George Washington University. Professor Malveaux’s panel addressed “Mandatory Arbitration: What’s Wrong and How Can We Fix It?”