faculty news
Faculty Notes Raj Bhala finished “Understanding Islamic Law (Shari’a),” a 50-chapter, 1,445-page book in the LexisNexis Understanding Series. Available as of May 2011, the book is a comprehensive text for Islamic law courses, which are now offered at nearly half of all American law schools and many law schools in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United Kingdom, East Asia and Europe. It is also intended as a reference for practitioners, who may need it for issues from Islamic finance to wills. Covering the religion, history and law of Islam, the book is the first such text written by a non-Muslim scholar for English-speaking legal audiences. The text also systematically compares Islamic law with U.S. legal rules and Catholic Christianity. Bhala gave the following presentations: n “Islamic Law (Shari’a): Basic Terms, the Sunni-Shi’ite Split, and the Law of War,” national conference of the Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) Corps, Washburn University School of Law, Topeka, October 2010. n “Building Human Capital and Developing Legal Talent,” 9th annual Arab Thought Foundation Conference, followed by dinner at the Grand Serai (Prime Minister’s Palace) with the Prime Minister of Lebanon and other invited dignitaries, Beirut, Lebanon, December 2010. n “Sub-Continental Lawyers, AngloMuhammadan Law, and International Trade Law,” annual conference of the American Association of Law Schools, Law and South Asia Group, San Francisco, January 2011. n “Islamic Law (Shari’a): Origins, Sunni-Shi’ite Split, Jihad and Terrorism,” Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, January 2011. n “Understanding Islamic Law: Women’s Rights and Religious Freedom,” Human Rights Symposium, KU Law, February 2011. n “Theory and Practice of Islamic Banking Law and Finance,” KU International
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Programs seminar for faculty on “Islam in a Global World,” March 2011. n “Seven Points About the Arab Revolutions of 2011,” panel discussion on “Revolutions in the Middle East,” KU Center for Global and International Studies and Kansas African Studies Center, Lawrence, March 2011. Bhala has been elected to a two-year term as vice chair of the International Trade Committee of the Inter-Pacific Bar Association, headquartered in Tokyo. As a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Bhala participated in a national conference call with Ambassador Ron Kirk, the U.S. trade representative, to discuss the Doha Round of world trade negotiations; efforts in Congress to pass free trade agreements with Korea, Colombia and Panama; and opposition in the U.S. to trade liberalization. He also participated in a national conference call on “Islam and Democracy in the Middle East,” hosted by Reza Aslan. Bhala gave a television interview on the revolution in Egypt and uprisings across the Arab world, featured on KSNT Channel 27 NBC News, Topeka. Bhala completed the 9/11 Patriot’s Run Marathon in Olathe (in 83 degrees heat) in 4:05:50, placing 10th out of 94 runners overall and 5th among men ages 40-49. Robert Casad published the 2010-11 supplement to the Kansas Code of Civil Procedure, the 2010-11 supplement for Jurisdiction and Forum Selection (2d ed.), and the 2011 edition of the Kansas Civil Jury Instruction Handbook. Mike Davis was appointed to the Governance Committee and re-appointed to the Finance Committee of the ABA Section on Legal Education and Admission to the Bar and chaired the six-person ABA accredita-
tion site review team for the Charleston School of Law. He spoke to the Hugh Means Inn of Court on the new Kansas statute governing common interest communities and was re-elected for an 11th year as chair of the Douglas County Community Foundation. Martin Dickinson served as a panelist at the KU Law Federalist Society program on the constitutionality of the individual health care mandate in September 2010. Chris Drahozal published “Creditor Claims in Arbitration and in Court,” 7 Hastings Business Law Journal 77 (2011), with Samantha Zyontz (Searle Civil Justice Institute, Interim Report, November 2009); and “An Empirical Study of AAA Consumer Arbitration,” 25 Ohio State Journal on Dispute Resolution (2010), with Samantha Zyontz (Searle Civil Justice Institute, Preliminary Report, March 2009). He gave the Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP Distinguished Lecture in Business Law on “Why Arbitrate? Substantive Versus Procedural Theories of Private Judging,” at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada on Feb. 11. Drahozal presented a paper titled “Arbitration and Profit” (co-authored with Bo Rutledge, University of Georgia School of Law) at the Midwestern Law & Economics Conference, University of Colorado School of Law, Boulder, Colo., on Oct. 8; at a workshop hosted by the Center for Contract and Economic Organization at Columbia Law School, New York, Feb. 7; and at a workshop at Loyola New Orleans College of Law, New Orleans, March 3. Together with his co-reporters, Drahozal presented Council Draft No. 2 of the Restatement (Third) of the U.S. Law of International Commercial Arbitration to the Council of the American Law Institute on