News

UPDATE – 3/24/14: U.S. Supreme Court rejects Mingo Logan Coal Company v. Environmental Protection Agency

The permit was initially granted in 2007 by the Army Corps of Engineers for the mountain top removal mine that would discharge fill into two nearby streams. Three years later, the EPA withdrew the use of the two streams as disposal sites.

Mingo Logan Coal says the D.C. Circuit ruling gives too much authority to the EPA and jeopardizes any project across the county that requires a Clean Water Act permit. Those projects represent an annual investment of $220 billion, according to the petitioners.

However, McGinley told Law360 that a single enforcement action over the four decades since the Clean Water Act was passed won’t do much to unsettle the markets and will not draw the attention of the U.S. Supreme Court.

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – The West Virginia University College of Law ranks 16th in the nation for the most alumni leading publicly traded companies, according to new research. The findings come from Robert Anderson, associate professor of law at Pepperdine University.

Using data from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Anderson recently determined the top 25 law schools with the highest percentage of alumni serving as corporate directors or executive officers. He writes about his research in his blog, Witnesseth: Law, Deals, & Data.

While Anderson’s rankings closely match the standard law school hierarchy, he told The National Law Journal that “a handful of law schools performed better on the corporate boardroom analysis than their U.S. News & World Report rankings would indicate.” WVU Law’s No. 16 on the corporate leadership list is higher than its No. 91 U.S. News Best Law Schools ranking.

In his blog, Anderson writes “West Virginia manages to break into the top 25, largely because of its small size and critical mass of graduates in public company positions.”

In planning for its future, West Virginia should take a closer look at smaller countries like Denmark or South Korea, according to Gregory Bowman, WVU Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs.

Bowman has spent a lot of time in South Korea as head of a legal study abroad program there, and he lived in Denmark as an exchange student.

“Both places offer interesting perspectives on West Virginia,” he suggested at Creative WV.

Both countries emphasize a quality education, which results in highly educated workforces that support high tech industries, solid growth, and an overall high quality of life, Bowman pointed out.

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — West Virginia University College of Law Professor Valena Beety recently spent two weeks in residence at the University of Texas School of Law as part of the Big XII Faculty Fellowship Program. 

She was one of just six WVU faculty who were selected to participate in the program this year.

The Big XII Faculty Fellowship Program was created to stimulate scholarly initiatives through creation of an academic community within the institutions in the Big XII Athletic Conference.

As a Big XII Fellow, Beety researched the growing roles of clemency and forensic science in the Texas and West Virginia state criminal justice systems. Her research included a focus on executive and judicial clemency and forensic findings in capital punishment cases. Texas has executed more inmates than any other state. There is no death penalty in West Virginia.