Saying ‘I Do’ after DOMA

The seeds for LAW540: Marriage Equality: Practical Implications for a Post-DOMA Landscape were planted by third-year law student Sean Maye, who grew curious about the rapidly evolving implications of the 2013 U.S. Supreme Court decision to overturn the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, which had enabled states to refuse to recognize same-sex marriages.

“We learn in law school that there are myriad corners of the law that often overlap,” says Maye, co-president of OUTLaw, the school’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trangender student organization. “But when certain more contentious issues like gay marriage intersect with those different corners of the law, it is difficult to understand just what rights gay couples do and do not possess.”

His curiosity led to a panel discussion during Miami Law’s Diversity Week, which soon mushroomed into an eight-conversation series to examine the history, state of legal affairs, and other issues tied to marriage equality, such as immigration, adoption, probate, and taxes.

Organized by professor Charlton Copeland, associate deans Raquel Matas and Ileana Porras, and alumna Elizabeth Schwartz, J.D. ’97, the course was open to students for credit or audit and to practitioners. It launched January 22, just a day after six same-sex couples filed suit in Miami-Dade County for the freedom to marry. Schwartz is one of their attorneys in the historic case.

“I’m so proud that my alma mater has taken the step to focus a whole series of discussions on the complicated legal issues around marriage equality,” Schwartz says. “It’s certainly perfectly timed as the national and statewide spotlight shines on this most basic aspect of human dignity.”

Miami Law, OUTLaw, and the Miami-Dade Gay and Lesbian Lawyers Association sponsored the series.

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Photo by Donna Victor

Fighting for Privacy in a Public Arena

Mary Anne Franks is the kind of person you want watching your back. As an associate professor of criminal and family law, she’s focused on how to help people protect their privacy and personal space in an increasingly invasive society. She does this not only with her law books, however, but her fists.

Franks is a highly skilled instructor in Krav Maga, a deadly and brutally efficient martial art developed by the Israeli military. She became interested in it while teaching at the University of Chicago and living in the city’s Hyde Park neighborhood. That wasn’t her first experience living in a rough area. Before going to Oxford as a Rhodes scholar and later to Harvard Law School, Franks grew up in Pine Bluff, Arkansas—dubbed “The Most Dangerous Little Town in America” for its soaring violent crime rate.

While her pugilistic pastime may surprise some, it’s entirely in keeping with her ethos. “It’s a very physical acknowledgement of your own space, that you have autonomy over who you talk to, how you interact with them,” Franks says. “If you don’t want someone engaging with you in a certain way, you have a right to enforce that.”

Her current legal efforts target the hot-button issue of revenge porn, the disturbing trend of posting nude and otherwise compromising photos of an ex to the Web. Besides being humiliated, victims (almost always women) have lost their jobs, found themselves stalked, and in some cases been forced to change their names.

Few laws exist to protect such victims, so Franks has been drafting model legislation for interested state and federal lawmakers. “What really disturbs me is the victim-blamers, the people who say, ‘Why did she allow these pictures to be taken? She deserves whatever happens,’” says Franks. “If you don’t understand why revenge porn is wrong, then you don’t really understand why rape or sexual harassment is wrong. The underlying principle is the same: consent to sexual activity with one person in one context is not the same thing as consent to sexual activity with anyone else or in any other context.”

This proactive stance has brought increased media exposure, which makes Franks just a little wary. “I’m a pretty private person,” she says. “And anything you do these days, be it positive or negative, can put you in the spotlight in ways you can’t anticipate.” That has even meant some ugly threats of late, but Franks won’t back down. “I want to be one of the people shaping this conversation because it’s important. I’m not going to give up on that.” 

—Jason Fitzroy Jeffers 

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Tackling unprecedented dilemmas in the robotic age

Amir R. Rahmani, a UM College of Engineering assistant professor, displays 
a micro aerial vehicle. Photo by Catharine Skipp, A.B. ’79

Robotic aircraft and drones, unmanned machines with names like Predator and Reaper—in our brave new world, high-tech robots are becoming increasingly prominent in war, law enforcement, and many aspects of civilian society. The legal, ethical, and policy questions raised by such advances were addressed during We Robot, an international conference inaugurated at the University of Miami School of Law in April 2012.

The conference’s director, A. Michael Froomkin, the school’s Laurie Silvers and Mitchell Rubenstein Distinguished Professor of Law, came up with the idea for the event, taking inspiration for its name from the title of Isaac Asimov’s 1950 book I, Robot. The objective, Froomkin told Miami Law magazine, was to “start a conversation now between people who make the robots and those who make the rules.”

The weekend forum gathered experts in robot theory, design, and development, as well as those who influence the legal and social structures in which robots operate.

One of those presenters, Brigadier General Richard M. O’Meara, professor of international law in the Division of Global and Homeland Security Affairs at Rutgers University, said the field of military robotics has grown so fast that there has been little time in which to “consider the legal, ethical, and moral appropriateness” of their use. He recommended “creating new international treaties and practices, amending old ones, and forging new ethics for the use of new weapons.”

Video Archive of We Robot 2012

The post Where Humans Fear to Tread appeared first on University of Miami: Miami Magazine.

Anthony M. Kennedy
Photo by Nick Madigan

Sonia Sotomayor
Photo by Jenny Abreu

On the book circuit to promote her new memoir, My Beloved World, United States Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor visited the University of Miami on February 1, giving an audience of mostly students a rare, in-depth look into her life—from what it was like growing up poor in a Bronx housing project and attending Princeton University to sitting in judgment on the nation’s highest court.

Sotomayor, the first Hispanic and only the third woman appointed to the Supreme Court, also talked about her love of books during the conversation-style event with UM President Donna E. Shalala.

“There is a beauty to words that visual scenes can’t create,” Sotomayor explained. “I think most people, and especially the younger generation, forget to let the creativity of their minds be provoked by words. That’s what books did for me when I found them.”

The event, presented in association with Books & Books, preceded by ten days a visit from one of Sotomayor’s colleagues, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who delivered the Robert B. Cole Distinguished Jurist Lecture at the BankUnited Center Fieldhouse on February 11.

Kennedy, who was appointed by President Ronald Reagan in 1988 and is widely regarded as the court’s “swing vote,” also taught a Constitutional Law class at the School of Law, speaking at length about the Framers of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the separation of powers, and the concept of checks and balances. He frequently tested the students’ knowledge. “Are the words ‘checks and balances’ in the Constitution?” he asked. “I’ll buy you a bottle of beer if you can find [them].”

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