Category Archives: BLS Faculty

Student Writing Competition – First Prize $10,000

manwritesletterHave a particular legal issue you are keen on?  Interested in writing about it?  If so, then submit your paper to be considered for the annual Brown Award given by the Judge John R. Brown Scholarship Foundation.

The Award is in recognition of Excellence in Legal Writing in American Law Schools.  There is no  limitation as to topic; only that the writing must be on a legal subject.

Any student wishing to submit a paper must have a letter of recommendation from a faculty member.  Specific details regarding the competition may be found here.

Some topics from last year’s winners.

First Place: Information Traps

Second Place: Beneath the Surface of the Clean Water Act: Exploring the Depth of the Act’s Jurisdictional Scope of Groundwater Pollution

Third Place: Lien on Me: The Survival of Security Interests in Revenues from the Sale of an FCC License

Episode 089: Conversation with Prof. Andrew Napolitano

Episode 089: Conversation with Prof. Andrew Napolitano.mp3

This podcast features an interview with Brooklyn Law School Visiting Professor of Law  Andrew Napolitano who teaches courses on Constitutional Interpretation and Individual Rights and First Amendment Law. Professor Napolitano discusses his role in the upcoming Evening with United States Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia scheduled for Friday, March 21, 2014 from 5:30 pm to 7:00 pm at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Howard Gilman Opera House.

In the conversation, Judge Napolitano discusses the format of the upcoming event where he will question Justice Scalia on issues of human freedom and the U.S. Constitution. Following that will be questions from the audience on a range of topics that Justice Scalia has covered both in his judicial opinions and dissents as well as the books that he has authored. Books in the collection of the BLS Library include:

Constitutional ChaosJudge Napolitano talks about two of his books that are in the BLS Library collection. The earliest is Constitutional Chaos: What Happens When the Government Breaks Its Own Laws (Call # HV9950 .N34 2004) written after he left the New Jersey Superior Court where he served as a trial judge from 1987 to 1995. The book speaks from his experiences and investigation about how government agencies will often arrest without warrant, spy without legal authority, imprison without charge, and kill without cause.

The other title is The Constitution in Exile: How the Federal Government Has Seized Power by Rewriting the Supreme Law of the Land (Call # KF5050 .N37 2006). The book explains how the federal government has manipulated the Constitution to take power from the states and the people. He closes the interview by discussing The Second Constitutional Convention: How the American People Can Take Back Their Government by Richard E. Labunski (Call #KF4555.L33 2000) which looks at Article V of the U.S. Constitution that authorizes the American people to call for a new constitutional convention.

Kolber on Neurolaw

Brooklyn Law School Professor Adam Kolber has posted on SSRN his latest article Will There Be a Neurolaw Revolution? The article is scheduled for publication in 89 Indiana Law Journal later this year. Here is the abstract:

The central debate in the field of neurolaw has focused on two claims. Joshua Greene and Jonathan Cohen argue that we do not have free will and that advances in neuroscience will eventually lead us to stop blaming people for their actions. Stephen Morse, by contrast, argues that we have free will and that the kind of advances Greene and Cohen envision will not and should not affect the law. I argue that neither side has persuasively made the case for or against a revolution in the way the law treats responsibility.

There will, however, be a neurolaw revolution of a different sort. It will not necessarily arise from radical changes in our beliefs about criminal responsibility but from a wave of new brain technologies that will change society and the law in many ways, three of which I describe here: First, as new methods of brain imaging improve our ability to measure distress, the law will ease limitations on recoveries for emotional injuries. Second, as neuroimaging gives us better methods of inferring people’s thoughts, we will have more laws to protect thought privacy but less actual thought privacy. Finally, improvements in artificial intelligence will systematically change how law is written and interpreted.

Data Privacy Legal Hackathon

Data Privacy Legal HackathonThis coming weekend, on February 8 and 9, Brooklyn Law School’s Brooklyn Law Incubator & Policy (“BLIP”) Clinic along with other groups, is organizing a Data Privacy Legal Hackathon. The event will take place in three locations: Dumbo (Brooklyn), London, and San Francisco. Participants will compete in a weekend-long hackathon to create tools that solve common legal problems in the field of data privacy.

A current list of the projects as they develop is available on the Hacker League Project Page.

Speakers and judges include:

New York: BLS Professor of Law Susan Herman and BLIP Founder Professor Jonathan Askin as well as several BLS alumni, Hon. Ann Aiken (District of OR), David Wainberg (AppNexus), Wilfried De Wever (HiiL), Doc Searls (VRM Harvard Berkman Center), K. Krasnow Waterman (MIT), Amyt Eckstein (Moses & Singer), Jason Tenenbaum (Rashbaum Associates), Dona Fraser (ESRB), Solon Barocas (Doctoral Candidate, NYU), Sol Irvine (Yuson & Irvine), Heather Federman (Online Trust Alliance)

London:  Dr. Ian Brown (Oxford Internet Institute), Dr. Ian Walden (Queen Mary University), John Cummings (Innovation Partners), Stefan Magdalinski (Mydex)

San Francisco: K. Krasnow Waterman (MIT), Brian Behlendorf (Mozilla Board), Michelle Dennedy, author of The Privacy Engineer’s Manifesto” (McAfee), John Buckman (EFF) There is still space left at all the locations for participants who want to volunteer. Sign up at the hacker league website to add your skills and join a project.

For more details on the event, see the post Data + Law =  Data Privacy Legal Hackathon at the site Brooklyn Tech Triangle.

Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals

IFLRBrooklyn Law School students, faculty and staff can access the Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals via Hein Online. The IFLR is a subject index to selected international and comparative law periodicals and collections of essays. It is produced at the Berkeley Law Library, University of California Berkeley for the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) and is multilingual. It provides information on articles and book reviews published in over 500 legal journals published worldwide. Coverage encompasses public and private international law, comparative and foreign law, and the law of all jurisdictions other than the United States, the UK, Canada, and Australia. The IFLP also analyses the content of about eighty individually published collections of legal essays, Festschriften, Mélanges, and congress reports each year. There are nearly 300,000 index records with links to over 34,000 full-text articles and book reviews via journals available in Hein Online.

Teaching Transactional Law

Brooklyn Law School Professor Bradley Borden has posted on SSRN an article entitled Using the Client-File Method to Teach Transactional Law. The full text of the 18 page article, published at 17 Chapman L. Rev. 101 (2013), is available here.  The abstract reads:

This Article presents a teaching method (the client-file method) for transactional law courses that combines the business school case-study method with the law school case method. The client-file method of teaching requires students to become familiar with real-word legal issues and the types of documents and information that accompany matters that transactional clients bring to attorneys (i.e., the contents of a client file). The method also requires students to learn and apply substantive law to solve problems that arise in a transactional law practice. Because the client-file method places students in a practice setting, it helps them become more practice-ready law graduates. Although the client-file exists in various forms in many parts of the legal curriculum, this Article describes its specific application to transactional business law courses with accompanying diagrams and a description of the learning cycle it facilitates. The method provides the promises making experiential learning accessible to a greater number of law students.

Congress.Gov Replacing Thomas

 

congress_gov_logo2

The free legislative information website, Congress.gov, is transitioning into its permanent role as the official site for federal legislative information from the U.S. Congress and related agencies. The site, which launched in beta form last fall and features platform mobility, comprehensive information retrieval and user-friendly presentation, is replacing the nearly 20-year-old THOMAS.gov.

Beginning Nov. 19, typing Thomas.gov into a web browser will automatically redirect to Congress.gov. Thomas Twitter followers will be transferred to the Congress.gov Twitter account. THOMAS.gov will remain accessible from the Congress.gov homepage through late 2014 before it is retired.

To help ease the transition for users from THOMAS.gov to the new site, the Library of Congress is offering online training webinars over the next few months. Complete this form if you wish to register for a training webinar.

Center for Urban Business Entrepreneurship (CUBE)

This month, Brooklyn Law School will be launching the Center for Urban Business Entrepreneurship (CUBE). This new initiative will serve as a hub for exploring legal issues surrounding entrepreneurship, and for providing effective legal representation and support for new businesses. It will offer training for the next generation of business lawyers in technology, real estate, media, creative arts, energy, or any other area of enterprise with tools to support and help build the start-up successes of tomorrow.

BLS Associate Professor of Clinical Law Jonathan Askin is the  CUBE Innovation Catalyst and also Founder & Director of the BLIP Clinic. The inspiration for the project is allow BLS  law students to use their law degrees to explore new ways to represent innovative entrepreneurs, embark on ventures of their own, and trail blaze paths for the entrepreneurial lawyer and the legally-trained entrepreneur. BLS Dean and Professor Law Nicholas Allard is making a series of presentations seeking input from faculty and others about plans for the Center for Urban Business Entrepreneurship (CUBE).

EnterpreneurialThe BLS Library has in its collection Entrepreneurial Practice: Enterprise Skills for Lawyers Serving Emerging Client Populations by Nelson P. Miller, Michael J. Dunn, and John D. Crane (Call # KF300 .M554 2012). The book discusses the increasingly specialized role of law in our complex, technical, regulatory state affecting more people more frequently and more deeply than ever before. It argues that if communities are to prosper, lawyers must standardize law products and services to meet new needs, efficiently fit those services for individual clients, price those services transparently, and deliver them timely by accessible means. Lawyers who learn these new law practice conventions will have more meaningful and rewarding careers that promote the order, openness, health, welfare, and economy of their communities. These lawyers will use more mobile and powerful technology in more clear, precise, and technical means to convey better-suited law products and services to better-served clients.

Lord Mansfield: Justice in the Age of Reason

Brooklyn Law School Professor of Law Emeritus Norman Poser is a widely-respected expert in both international and domestic securities regulation and the author of Broker-Dealer Law and Regulation, International Securities Regulation: London’s “Big Bang,” and the European Securities Markets. Before joining Brooklyn Law School’s faculty in 1980, he worked for the American Stock Exchange as Executive Vice President for Legal and Regulatory Affairs and Senior Vice President of Policy Planning and Government Relations. Professor Poser also served as Assistant Director of the Division of Trading and Markets of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. He has worked as a consultant and expert witness on a wide variety of matters, including engagements in connection with securities litigations and arbitrations for the New York State Attorney General, the World Bank, the Organization of American States, the United States Agency for International Development, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and several prominent securities exchanges.

Lord MansfieldProf. Poser recently published Lord Mansfield: Justice in the Age of Reason available in the BLS Library’s International Collection (Call # KD621.M3 P68 2013). The book is the first modern biography of Lord Mansfield (1705–1793). In it Prof. Poser details the life and times of the great 18th-century judge and statesman, whose legacy continues to have a unique influence on Anglo-American law and society. The son of a minor Scottish nobleman who skirted charges of treason, Mansfield rose through English society to become a member of its ruling aristocracy, confidential advisor to two kings, and friend to statesmen, poets, artists, actors, bishops, soldiers, and members of the nobility. His extraordinary political career – both before and during his unprecedented 32-year tenure as Chief Justice of England – offers a portrait of a fascinating era.

On Wednesday, November 7, 2013 at 6pm in the Subotnick Center at 250 Joralemon Street, there will be a Book Launch followed by a Reception. Those wanting to attend this event are urged to RSVP online at www.brooklaw.edu/mansfield before Tuesday, November 5. There is no charge for this event. Copies of the book will be available for purchase. Earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal published a review of Prof. Poser’s book. The review can be found at this link.

Umbrellas Available for Checkout

Umbrella

For when New York City has more rain than shine…umbrellas are back and available to borrow in the library! We have been fortunate enough to receive replacements for the original Bloomberg umbrellas, courtesy of LexisNexis. There are currently 6 umbrellas that can be checked out from the library’s Circulation Desk for 24 hours. So the next time you see rain pouring down as you leave class for the day, stop by and borrow one – you can bring it back the next day.

In addition to umbrellas, remember that we have lots of useful things available to borrow besides books – USB drives, laptop locks, headphones, and dry erase markers. If you have suggestions for other items you might be interested in having available for loan in the library, please let us know.