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MORGANTOWN, WEST VIRGINIA—Several WVU Law students recently presented bills they had researched and drafted to state legislators. The practical experience was the culmination of Lawyers & Legislation, a seminar taught by Professor of Law David Hardesty, WVU President Emeritus.

The mock legislative hearings were conducted before West Virginia state senators Robert Beach and Amanda Pasdon, and former delegate Alex J. Shook ‘97.

The students’ bills ranged from banning revenge porn and requiring lower teacher-student ratios in public schools to legalizing marijuana and prohibiting employment and housing discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and identity.

Rebekah Bofinger, a 3L, says she got a lot out of the class because it required practical drafting skills instead of writing a research paper on a certain area of law.

MORGANTOWN, WEST VIRGINIA — WVU Law professor is co-author “Mastering Labor Law” (Carolina Academic Press). 

“We take the complicated legal foundations of labor law and makes them accessible to the beginner – or even to a lay person – while still being of significant use to the expert,” said Lofaso, who also serves as associate dean for faculty research and development at WVU Law.”It is one of the few labor law books to include significant discussion of public-sector labor law, making it a leader among labor law treatises.” 

“Mastering Labor Law” begins with an introduction to private and public sector labor law. It then turns to United States labor history and procedure, organization, and jurisdiction issues under the National Labor Relations Act. The book then comprehensively addresses the organizational and collective bargaining processes, before covering forms of protected activity. It closes by considering other topics such as labor arbitration, union security clause, labor preemption, and antitrust doctrine.

The other co-authors of “Mastering Labor Law” are Paul M. Secunda, Professor of Law and Director of the Labor and Employment Law Program at Marquette University Law School, Joseph E. Slater, the Eugene N. Balk Professor of Law and Values at the University of Toledo College of Law, and Jeffrey M. Hirsch, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, and Geneva Yeargan Rand Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina School of Law.

-WVU-

kc 11/7/14

MORGANTOWN, WEST VIRGINIA—West Virginia University College of Law Professor Patrick McGinley recently participated in the fourth annual Carver Colloquium at the University of Denver Sturm School of Law.

The topic of the colloquium was fracking bans and setbacks and whether or not they constitute a takings—the seizure of private property by the government for public use. McGinley debated the issue Wayne Forman, a land, oil and gas attorney with the firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck.

Constitutional Takings Jurisprudence is a focus of McGinley’s legal scholarship. His article “Regulatory Takings in the Shale Gas Patch” was published in the Penn State Environmental Law Review (19 Penn St. Envtl. L. Rev. 193).

Each year, the Carver Colloquium features two notable land use, environmental, and natural resources law scholars. It is hosted by the Rocky Mountain Land Use Institute and Jan Laitos, the John A. Carver, Jr. Chair at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law, in partnership with the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Video footage of the 2014 Carver Colloquium featuring McGinley can be viewed here.