Category Archives: BLS Faculty

Episode 096 – Conversation with Prof. Anita Bernstein

Episode 096 – Conversation with Prof. Anita Bernstein.mp3

In this podcast, Brooklyn Law School Professor Anita Bernstein and Loren Pani, BLS Class of 2015, her research assistant, discuss her series of articles on legal malpractice written for the Outside Counsel column of the New York Law Journal. Professor Bernstein reports on a data set of legal malpractice decisions issued during the last five years by the appellate courts of New York. To date four columns have been published:  Nine Easy Ways to Breach Your Duty to a Real Estate Client, which appeared in the August 11, 2015 edition of the NYLJ; Avoidable and Actionable Errors by New York Personal Injury Lawyers, September 17, 2015; Matrimonial Malpractice Before, During and After a Client’s Divorce, October 30, 2015; and  Judiciary Law §487 Claims For Attorney Misconduct, November 24, 2015. The fifth entry in the series, “Legal Malpractice Liability for Criminal Defense: Rare, Yet Possible”, is slated for publication on December 30. Prof. Bernstein and Loren credit BLS Reference Librarian Kathleen Darvil for her assistance in compiling the data set.

Episode 095 – Conversation with Prof. Lawrence Fleischer

Episode 095 – Conversation with Prof. Lawrence Fleischer.mp3

In this podcast, Brooklyn Law School Adjunct Professor Lawrence Fleischer talks about his Criminal Law, Procedure, Evidence and Film Lore Workshop, which he has been teaching for the past five years, initially with the late Professor Robert Pitler and now by himself. In the first part of the interview, Prof. Fleischer relates how the workshop uses movies to teach criminal trial evidence by requiring students to view legal films and give presentations to address current criminal law related matters. Prof. Fleischer, who serves of counsel to the New York law firm of Gotlin & Jaffe, received his B.A. in History Summa Cum Laude from City College of the City University of New York, a Juris Doctorate from American University School of Law, and an LL. M degree from New York University Law School. In addition to teaching at BLS, he teaches at City College of New York and has taught in the CCNY Political Science department, NYU’s School of Continuing Education, Hunter College’s Graduate History department, Brooklyn College’s Graduate department of Political Science, and Seton Hall’s School of Law. In the second part of the conversation, Prof. Fleischer discusses his use in his course of the case of Maria Barbella a/k/a Maria Barberi, the first woman sentenced to die in the electric chair in the US and of the Italian-American countess who came to her aid. The story is told in The Trials of Maria Barbella: The True Story of a 19th Century Crime of Passion by Idanna Pucci (Call #HV6053 .P83 1996) discussed in this site’s most recent blog available at this link.

Magna Carta: 1215-2015

Brooklyn Law School will host a traveling exhibit commemorating the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta September 14th to 28th. The exhibit will be open to the public on the first floor of Brooklyn Law School, 250 Joralemon Street from September 14th to 19th. Public viewing hours are 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday-Friday, and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday. The exhibit will then move to Brooklyn Borough Hall, where it will be open to the public from September 21st to 28th. Sponsored by the ABA Standing Committee on the Law Library of Congress, the exhibit, Magna Carta: Enduring Legacy 1215-2015, features 16 banners, 13 of which reflect spectacular images of Magna Carta and precious manuscripts, books and other documents from the Library of Congress’s rare book collections. The exhibit features a video by the Library of Congress, showing the Law Librarian and the exhibit curator handling the materials and explaining their significance.

In conjunction with the exhibit, the Law School will hold a special day-long symposium From Runnymede to Philadelphia to Cyberspace: The Enduring Legacy of Magna Carta on September 17. The symposium is a global gathering of renowned legal scholars, authors, artists, historians, public officials, librarians, and archivists from around the world who will explore the continuing impact of this seminal document on U.S. law, civil rights and liberties, art, the role of libraries and archives in the Digital Age, and law and order in Cyberspace. BLS Library Director and Associate Professor Janet Sinder will serve as moderator of a morning panel called Secrets of the Archives: Why We Preserve Documents in the Digital Age. Professor Sinder is one of a several BLS faculty members taking part in the event. For the full program of events, click here.

In advance of the exhibit, BLS Library Associate Librarian Linda Holmes has put together a presentation in the book display case on the first floor of the library with items from the library collection. The titles in the display are:

foundation

        • Magna Carta: The Foundation of Freedom 1215-2015 by Nicholas Vincent and others (Call # KD3946 .V56 2015). Contents are: Magna Carta in Context: a general survey from 1215 to the present day; Law Before Magna Carta: the Anglo-Saxon law codes and their successors before 1215; Plantagenet Tyranny and Lawmaking; The Tyranny of King John; Magna Carta: Defeat into Victory; Magna Carta in the Later Middle Ages; Magna Carta against the King; Magna Carta and the American Age of Reason; Magna Carta in the 19th Century; From World War to World Heritage: Magna Carta in the 20th Century; and 21st-Century Magna Carta

liberty

  • Magna Carta: Law, Liberty, Legacy edited by Claire Breay and Julian Harrison (Call # KD3946 .M345 2015). Contents are: Kingship and crisis; Runnymede and the granting of Magna Carta; Revival and survival; English liberties; Colonies and revolutions; Radicalism and reform; Empire and after; Magna Carta in the modern age; the text of Magna Carta 1215.

 

rule of law

  • Magna Carta and the Rule of Law edited by Daniel Barstow Magraw and others (Call # KD3946 .M33 2014). The book is a comprehensive and insightful new book from the American Bar Association that takes a fresh look at Magna Carta and its impacts on various issues and the rule of law in light of contemporary legal concerns. It includes an examination of the following aspects of Magna Carta; historical background, importance to constitutionalism and the rule of law, impact on the United States Constitution, executive power, role as a foundation for women’s rights and individual rights (such as habeas corpus), relevance to international law, and much more.

 

uncover

  • Magna Carta Uncovered by Anthony Arlidge and Igor Judge (Call # KD3946 .A75 2014). The authors (Aldridge, a Queen’s Counsel for more than 30 years who in 1990 argued a case on the meaning of clause 40 of Magna Carta, and Judge, a retired Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales) of this 238 page history provide a detailed explanation of the Magna Carta and its place in English (and subsequently American) law.

 

Brooklyn Law at CALIcon 2015

imageOn Thursday, June 18 at CALIcon 2015 held at the University of Denver’s Sturm College of Law, one of the opening sessions was called Incorporating Technology, Business Development and Marketing in the Law School Curriculum. The session by Brooklyn Law School Reference Librarian Harold O’Grady and Brooklyn Law School Technology Educator Lloyd Carew-Reid examined how law schools are now incorporating technology, business development and marketing in the law school curriculum. Using Google Hangouts, Harold and Lloyd were joined by Brooklyn Law School Professor Jonathan Askin and MIT’s Danza Greenwood to discuss their ABA-MIT Online Legal Appathon which took place at the ABA Tech Show 2015 in April.

Three BLS students participated remotely in the session: Alex Goldman, Class of 2014, Patrick Mock, Class of 2017 and Paula Collins, Class of 2017. Alex discussed his project on Technical Standards for Warrant Canaries. Patrick and Paula talked about their awards at the second annual Center for Urban Business Entrepreneurship (CUBE) Innovators Competition held in April 2015. Patrick won 1st Prize for his proposal, Buoy, which addresses the problem of student loan debt by incorporating a crowdfunding model into a student loan service. Paula won 3rd prize for her FLIC (Film Legal Information Center) app, which would deliver a virtual law practice, direct client services, and business/entrepreneurial services to a community of Indie film artists in Brooklyn and surrounding areas.

A video of the hour-long session is available on YouTube at this link.

The Supreme Court Crafts a New Standard in Pregnancy Discrimination Cases – Young v. UPS

On March 25, 2015, the Supreme Court handed down Young v. United Parcel Service and set forth a new standard making it easier for a female employee to establish discrimination under the Pregnancy Discrimination Act [42 U.S.C. 200e(k)] (“PDA”).  The Pregnancy Discrimination Act, which amended Title VII in 1978, explicitly provides that discrimination “because of sex” or “on the basis of sex” includes discrimination on the basis of “pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions.”

The Young case arose when UPS offered light-duty accommodations to disabled and injured employees but not to pregnant employees.  Young alleged this policy violated the PDA.

In Young, the Court did not go as far as to say that employers must accommodate pregnant workers whenever they accommodate non-pregnant workers.  What the Court did say is, whenever different accommodations are provided to similarly situated pregnant and non-pregnant workers, the employer must determine whether there is any legitimate reason for the disparate treatment. If no legitimate reason exists, then the employer has discriminated on the basis of pregnancy in violation of the PDA.  Even when the employer is able to articulate a neutral business rational for the different accommodations, the Court ruled that the pregnant worker must still be given the opportunity to show that the different accommodations impose a “significant burden” on pregnant workers that cannot be justified by the employer’s neutral rationale.

Going forward, the Young decision means that a pregnant worker will not be required to establish explicit discriminatory intent to prove a PDA violation.  Instead, under Young, it is sufficient for the worker to show that different accommodations offered to similarly situated pregnant and non-pregnant workers impose a “significant burden” on pregnant employees.

 

In Honor of Women’s History Month – BLS Alumna and Suffragette, “General” Rosalie Jones

rosaliejonesRosalie Gardiner Jones was born in 1883 to Mary and Oliver Livingston Jones, wealthy Oyster Bay socialites.  She graduated from Adelphi College, then a women’s school, in Brooklyn and later from Brooklyn Law School.

When she was 28, Rosalie entered the suffrage movement and led two “suffrage hikes”, one from NYC to Albany, and the second from NYC to Washington DC, to bring attention to the women’s right to vote movement.

The NYC to Albany hike took thirteen days. Rosalie along with other women, walked (in skirts), through bad weather and difficult roads, a distance of 150 miles to reach their destination. They made speeches, sang songs to keep morale up, and gave interviews to the press along the way. The press dubbed her and her followers, “General Jones” and the “suffragette pilgrims”.

The NYC to Washington, DC hike covered more than 200 miles and took 20 days to finish.  When the arrived in DC they joined over 5,000 of their fellow suffragists in the National Woman Suffrage Parade procession, marching down Pennsylvania Avenue toward Constitution Hall.

Bestlaw: Chrome Extension for WestlawNext

Earlier this week, BLAWg IN Bloom, the Indiana Law Library Blog, had an interesting post that could be of great help to Brooklyn Law School faculty and students who use WestlawNext. Titled Legal Research Tech Tool: Bestlaw, the post discusses how cost-effective research is one of the toughest skills to master. Law students have the luxury of using legal databases without any fiscal consequences. In the practice of law, when paying for subscriptions to legal research platforms (with clients are being billed for research time on these platforms), users need to think more carefully. Now a new tool called Bestlaw, developed to encourage cost-effective in subscription platforms, will change things.

BestlawJoe Mornin, a third year law student at UC Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall) and editor-in-chief of the Berkeley Technology Law Journal, built Bestlaw, that adds useful features to WestlawNext:

  • Perfect Bluebook citations with one click
  • Clean, readable view
  • Automatically-generated tables of contents
  • Quick links to jump to footnotes
  • One-click copying for citations, titles, and full text
  • Collapsing and expanding statutory sections
  • Finding documents on free sources like CourtListener, Cornell LII, Casetext, and Google Scholar
  • Preventing automatic sign offs
  • Sharing documents by email or on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+

WestlawNext users can download the Bestlaw browser add-on for Chrome (support for Firefox is coming soon too) and get help conducting research in WestlawNext more cost-effectively Morin is working on support for Lexis Advance that is coming soon). After installing Bestlaw, its tools appear for searches on WestlawNext. The add-on allows a view of documents in free sites like Casetext, Cornell LII, Court Listener, Findlaw, Google, Google Scholar, Ravel Law, or Wikipedia before viewing (and paying to view) them in WestlawNext. For secondary sources, like law review articles, users have the option under Display to show an automatically-generated Table of Contents for documents. While many law review articles come with these already, some do not, and many other secondary sources do not either, so this can be a handy tool for quick skimming to find the parts of the document that are most germane to the research task.

February New Books List

The Brooklyn Law School Library February 2015 New Books List is out with 98 new titles in both print and e-book versions. The items cover a wide range of subjects including copyright law (Cultures of Copyright, Call #KF2996 .C85 2015), legal composition (How to Write Law Essays & Exams, Call #KD404 .S77 2014 and Putting Skills into Practice: Legal Problem Solving and Writing for New Lawyers, Call #KF250 .B375 2014), freedom of speech (Speech Matters: On Lying, Morality, and the Law, Call #BJ1421 .S554 2014 and Whistleblowers, Leaks, and the Media: The First Amendment and National Security, Call #KF3471 .W49 2014), and others.

Article VOn the subject of what seems to be the nation’s broken politics and government, two books on the list are Too Weak to Govern: Majority Party Power and Appropriations in the U.S. Senate (Call #KF4987.A67 H36 2014) and The Article V Amendatory Constitutional Convention: Keeping the Republic in the Twenty-First Century (Call #KF4555 .B69 2014) by former Chief Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court Thomas E. Brennan, founder of the Thomas M. Cooley Law School and of Convention USA, a citizens’ initiative to promote an Article V convention. The latter book describes how a number of citizens groups are trying to get an Article V convention, coming to several conclusions:

  • Congress will never voluntarily call a convention no matter how many petitions are received, because a convention might propose amendments which would decrease the powers or prerogatives of Congress.
  • States have the right to call an Article V convention without the concurrence of the Congress whenever two-thirds of the states wish to participate.
  • Citizens of the several states have the constitutional right to organize a convention for proposing amendments, without the call of Congress or the approval of the state legislatures.
  • No amendment proposed by a convention, of any kind, will become a part of the federal constitution unless it is ratified by three quarters of the states, as required by Article V.

On this subject, BLS Professor of Law Nelson Tebbe and former BLS Professor Frederic Bloom have written and posted on SSRN a paper called Countersupermajoritarianism. The abstract for the 24 page paper, due for publication in an upcoming edition of the Michigan Law Review, reads:

How should the Constitution change? In Originalism and the Good Constitution, John McGinnis and Michael Rappaport argue that it ought to change in only one way: through the formal mechanisms set out in the Constitution’s own Article V. This is so, they claim, because provisions adopted by supermajority vote are more likely to be substantively good. The original Constitution was ratified in just that way, they say, and subsequent changes should be implemented similarly. McGinnis and Rappaport also contend that this substantive goodness is preserved best by a mode of originalist interpretation.

In this Review, we press two main arguments. First, we contend that McGinnis and Rappaport’s core thesis sidesteps critical problems with elevated voting rules. We also explain how at a crucial point in the book — concerning Reconstruction — the authors trade their commitments to supermajoritarianism and formalism away. Second, we broaden the analysis and suggest that constitutional change can and should occur not just through formal amendment, but also by means of social movements, political mobilizations, media campaigns, legislative agendas, regulatory movement, and much more. Changing the Constitution has always been a variegated process that engages the citizenry through many institutions, by way of many voting thresholds, and using many modes of argument. And that variety helps to make the Constitution good.

Episode 093: Interview with Prof. Christopher Beauchamp

Episode 093: Interview with Prof. Christopher Beauchamp.mp3

In this interview. Brooklyn Law School’s Associate Professor of Law Invented by LawChristopher Beauchamp speaks about his first book, Invented by Law: Alexander Graham Bell and the Patent That Changed America (Call# KF 3116.B43 2015). Published by Harvard University Press, the book explores questions of ownership and legal power raised by the invention of the telephone, and tells of a forgotten history with wide relevance for today’s patent crisis. Using the  invention of the telephone in 1876 as one of the great touchstones of American technological achievement, Beauchamp sheds new light on that history, and examines the legal battles that raged over Bell’s telephone patent, perhaps the most consequential patent right ever granted. Prof. Beauchamp shows that the telephone was as much a creation of American law as of scientific innovation.

On March 7, 1876, the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office approved Alexander Graham Bell’s patent for Improvement of Telegraphy (No. 174,465) in an unusually fast approval process, with three applications hand-delivered by Bell’s lawyer on February 14, mere hours before a competing application was submitted by engineer Elisha Gray. Bell’s legal maneuvering strongly suggested that an unknown informant within the PTO was assisting efforts to beat Gray to the telephone patent. Subsequent litigation reached the U.S. Supreme Court twice in 1888, first with The Telephone Cases (126 U.S. 1), and then with United States v. American Bell Telephone Corp. (128 U.S. 315). Prof. Beauchamp untangles these lawsuits and analyzes their aftermath in a way that should appeal to both intellectual property experts and novices.

Reconstructing the world of nineteenth-century patent law, replete with inventors, capitalists, and charlatans, where rival claimants and political maneuvering loomed large in the contests that erupted over new technologies, the book challenges the popular myth of Bell as the telephone’s sole inventor, exposing that story’s origins in the arguments advanced by Bell’s lawyers. More than anyone else, it was the courts that anointed Bell father of the telephone, granting him a patent monopoly that decisively shaped the American telecommunications industry for a century to come. Prof. Beauchamp investigates the sources of Bell’s legal primacy in the United States, and looks across the Atlantic to Britain to consider how another legal system handled the same technology in very different ways.

BLS Library New Books List

PostconvictionThe Brooklyn Law School Library New Books List for January 14, 2015 includes 88 items recently added to the collection. Among them is State and Federal Postconviction Remedies: Last Hopes by BLS Professor Ursula Bentele and Professor of Law Emerita Mary R. Falk (Call #KF9690 .B46 2014). It is available on Reserve at the Circulation Desk. The book is a useful text for courses on postconviction remedies (whether comprehensive or focused on either state remedies or federal habeas, as each area benefits from some knowledge of the other), for appellate practice courses that include such remedies, as well as for law school clinics devoted to seeking relief for indigent prisoners. This text will also be of assistance to those involved in postconviction litigation, whether as advocates for prisoners seeking postconviction relief, as prosecutors responding to postconviction applications, or as law clerks in the chambers of judges adjudicating these claims.

Chapter 1 provides a brief history of postconviction remedies and an overview of the various procedures available in state and federal courts.

Chapters Two and Three survey the state postconviction scene, providing cases that illustrate the most common grounds for relief and describing the procedural hurdles an applicant must overcome.

Chapters Four, Five and Six address federal habeas corpus, first noting the restrictions on grounds for relief, then detailing the procedural requirements, and finally, illustrating how habeas works in practice through five opinions capturing some of the most significant principles at work in this area.

Chapter Seven highlights ethical issues that are particularly likely to arise for counsel in postconviction practice, whether defense attorneys or prosecutors.

Appendix A contains the principal postconviction statutes and rules of four states, illustrating a variety of approaches. Finally, Appendix B contains the major federal statutes and rules, as well as the form application to be used by state prisoners seeking federal habeas relief.