UM Space Law Students Partner with
MIT Engineering Students on Project
A semester-long collaboration between University of Mississippi space law students and Massachusetts Institute of Technology engineering students is helping prepare both groups for the challenges they will face in space-related careers.
The project requires the students to create a series of proposals on two different space-related issues. The idea for the collaboration originated from a conversation between Joanne Gabrynowicz, director of the National Center for Remote Sensing, Air and Space Law at the UM School of Law, and Annalisa Weigel, MIT assistant professor of aeronautics and astronautics and of engineering systems.
The law students benefit by learning about the needs and mind-set of engineers, since some of them may end up representing space engineers in their careers, Gabrynowicz said.
"Our students will act as legal advisers to the engineering students, who have to make decisions regarding their projects involving the International Space Station and Earth observation satellites," she said. "The idea is that space projects are impacted by the legal agreements that govern them, and the engineers carrying out the projects need to know about them."
Weigel, who visited Ole Miss recently and spoke to the law students, said engineers often view law and policy as constraints on their work.
"They don't tend to develop a really deep understanding of why those constraints exist," she said, adding that this project is a unique opportunity for engineering students to get a different perspective.
"For my engineering students to have exposure to law students and to the mind-set of a lawyer will be phenomenal," she said. "MIT doesn't have a law school, so this is a perspective that they wouldn't otherwise be getting on campus, but it certainly is one that they will run into in their careers, and I think it is important for them to understand that."
Nicholas Welly of Oxford, a second-year law student in the space law program, said the projects will give him and the other law students an opportunity to see what it is like to work with a client.
"This will give us a really good opportunity to look at what requirements a client might have and help us tailor the products we make as law students to meet their needs," he said.
Second-year law student John Wood of Atlanta, whose emphasis is in aviation law, agrees that the project is a chance to gain real-world experience.
"This field is really international, and the students we are working with will have different perspectives," he said. "This is really a mock client-attorney relationship, and just getting to interact with them in that setting mimics real-world experience and how practicing international aviation or space law will be."
As part of the project, Gabrynowicz plans to visit Weigel's MIT class in March to share her knowledge of space law. The law students' goal is to provide guidance on legal issues, while the MIT students will offer technical expertise in assessing the engineering, technical and policy issues related to their proposed scenarios.
John Grisham to Participate in Program Benefiting Mississippi Innocence Project
Author John Grisham joins others reenacting a 1963 trial as part of a continuing legal education program benefiting the Mississippi Innocence Project.
The program, which begins at 8 a.m. Friday (Jan. 16), is set for the Oxford Conference Center, at the intersection of Highway 7 and Sisk Avenue. Registration fees are $220. Although the program is intended for attorneys needing CLE credits, others interested in the program can register if space is available. The daylong event is sponsored by the Litigation Section of The Mississippi Bar.
Cal Mayo, an Oxford attorney and chair of the state bar section, said the program condenses the three-week trial of the Commonwealth v. Roy Smith into a day of testimony, with four volunteers portraying witnesses associated with the trial.
The program is based on the book "A Death in Belmont," written by Sebastian Junger, who also authored the best-selling novel "A Perfect Storm."
Junger said he thinks it is fantastic that the Mississippi Innocence Project is staging the mock trial to benefit the Mississippi Innocence Project.
"The heart of the justice system – of democracy – is that people can ask questions about how decisions are arrived at by our government," he said. "It doesn't mean that those decisions are wrong, but if those questions are not asked, our society is increasingly at risk of making errors. I can't wait to see how the case unfolds."
Grisham said he expects the event to be "a delightful mix of law, literature and a little fundraising for the Mississippi Innocence Project."
For more information or to register, contact Rene Garner, section and division coordinator at The Mississippi Bar, at 601-355-9226 or rgarner@msbar.org. A reception follows the event at the Oxford-University Club. Tickets for the reception are $25 in advance and $35 at the door.
For times available to the media, contact communications specialist Jennifer Farish at 662-915-5079 or jpfarish@olemiss.edu. For more information on the UM School of Law, go to http://www.law.olemiss.edu/.
Student Paper Receives National Attention.
Third-year law student Amanda Proctor has a way with words. And, if you choose not to believe it, then you can take it up with the American Bar Association (ABA).
Proctor won first place in the ABA Commission on Domestic Violence 2008 Law Student Competition this past summer.
Her winning essay "Breaking Into the Marital Home to Break Up Domestic Violence: Fourth Amendment Analysis of 'Disputed Permission" started as a seminar paper for a fourth amendment writing seminar taught by UM law professor Tom Clancy last year.
"The paper is on a timely and important topic in many ways," said Clancy, who described Proctors' paper as superior to most journal articles on the subject. "There are two recent cases, Georgia v. Randolph and Brigham City v. Stuart from the United States Supreme Court, that should have a lot of influence on such disputed authority to enter. Amanda recognized the importance of those two cases' impact on previous doctrine and wrote a great paper on the topic."
Her essay will be published in journals such as National Association of Women Lawyers Women's Law Journal (as an excerpt) and the American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law.
