Brooklyn Law School Dean Nicholas Allard recently sat down with Bloomberg Law’s Lee Pacchia for an interview. In the 13 minute interview, Dean Allard said that law schools need to find ways to cut the expense of merit scholarships, which they “use to buy students . . . with high LSATs” to improve the schools’ US News rankings. The money would be better spent on scholarships for students with financial need, he says. See the video of the interview below:
Category Archives: BLS Faculty
Episode 088: Conversation with Prof. Nelson Tebbe
Episode 088: Conversation with Prof. Nelson Tebbe.mp3
This podcast features a conversation with Brooklyn Law School Professor of Law Nelson Tebbe who teaches courses on constitutional law and religious freedom and other subjects. Professor Tebbe and University of Virginia Law Professor Micah Schwartzman posted on SCOTUSblog an entry entitled Symposium: The puzzle of Town of Greece v. Galloway. It concerned the U.S. Supreme Court’s acceptance of a petition to hear its first legislative prayer case in 30 years involving the town of Greece, New York which has been holding Christian prayers, typically conducted by local ministers, at town meetings since 1999. In a unanimous decision, the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals decided that the prayer practice was unconstitutional. The case is the first legislative prayer case the Supreme Court’s decision in Marsh v. Chambers in 1983, which upheld the constitutionality of government funding for chaplains.
In the conversation, Professor Tebbe also discusses the upcoming symposium, Religious Freedom and Equal Treatment: An International Look, scheduled for Friday, October 11, 2013 (9:00 am – 4:30 pm) and Saturday, October 12, 2013 (9:00 am – 2:00 pm) at Brooklyn Law School’s Subotnick Center, 250 Joralemon Street in Brooklyn, New York. The conference will focus on how legal systems address threats to religious freedom, as well as the use of religious liberty claims to limit equal treatment. Distinguished global experts from the academic and advocacy communities will discuss legal and advocacy challenges in different parts of the globe; offer new theoretical and doctrinal approaches to the potential conflict between these most fundamental individual rights; broaden the academic debate and develop new advocacy strategies; and build lasting cross-border networks among academics and advocates. The conference is open to everyone. Those interested in attending can RSVP here.
Symposium on Choice of Law in International Commercial Contracts
On October 18, 2013, from 9:15 a.m. to 3:15 p.m. at Brooklyn Law School’s Subotnick Center, 250 Joralemon Street Brooklyn, New York, the Dennis J. Block Center for the Study of International Business Law and the Brooklyn Journal of International Law will host a symposium, What Law Governs International Commercial Contracts? Divergent Doctrines and the New Hague Principles. The event should be of interest to private international lawyers and the international arbitration community. The agenda and participants of the symposium are available here.
Given the continued dramatic growth of international commerce, the Symposium will address the increasingly critical question: What law governs the contracts behind the commerce? Key issues include:
- In much of the world, courts accept the choice of the parties to a contract as to what law will govern it – but this principle is not accepted everywhere. Even in nations where it is accepted, differences abound.
- Should the ability of parties to select the law governing their contract be approached differently in the increasingly prevalent world of international commercial arbitration?
- In many arbitral systems, parties may select not only the law of a sovereign state, but also “rules of law” emanating from non-state sources, such as “principles” promulgated by international organizations. Should courts show the same deference to the parties’ choice of non-state law?
The Hague Principles on Choice of Law in International Contracts, prepared by the Hague Conference on Private International Law and now nearing completion, are expected to be quite influential, both in establishing the principle of party autonomy to select the law governing commercial contracts and in developing the principle and its limits. This symposium addresses the important issues described above – from the perspectives of both current law and the “best practices” represented by the draft Hague Principles.
Court Appoints Stop & Frisk Advisory Council
An article in the New York Law Journal reports that US District Judge Shira Scheindlin for the Southern District of New York has appointed a panel of law professors to assist a court-appointed facilitator in developing remedies in the case of Floyd v. City of New York, the stop-and-frisk litigation. Brooklyn Law School Professor of Law I. Bennett Capers will serve as chair of the Academic Advisory Council to assist facilitator Nicholas Turner of the VERA Institute of Justice. Turner will work with the NYPD and the Academic Advisory Council in a mediation process to develop reforms. Longer-term changes include a trial run of body-worn cameras in the precinct in each borough that saw the highest number of stops.
The second part of Judge Scheindlin’s opinion in last month’s ruling lays out her remedies. Those include “immediate changes” to the NYPD’s implementation of stop-and-frisk, such as revisions to NYPD training materials, more thorough documentation of stops through a new form and better and more thorough activity log records, as well as a better standard for the NYPD’s supervising officers to assess the constitutionality of the stops their subordinates are making.
Other members of the panel are retired Brooklyn Law Professor William Hellerstein, Ian Ayres of Yale Law School, Alafair Burke of the School of Law at Hofstra University, Miriam Gohara, visiting assistant professor at Columbia Law School, Taja-Nia Henderson of Rutgers School of Law-Newark, Tanya Hernandez of Fordham University School of Law, Conrad Johnson of Columbia Law School, K. Babe Howell of CUNY Law School, Olatunde Johnson of Columbia Law School, Tracey Meares of Yale Law School, Janice Tudy-Jackson of Columbia Law School and Steve Zeidman of CUNY School of Law.
The appointment of the Council comes one day after the Judge’s Order denying New York City’s request for a stay pending appeal of her appointment of a police department monitor to help develop and implement reforms of stop-and-frisk practices. The city has moved for an expedited appeal in the case the case and is expected to ask the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit for a stay.
For background information on the issue of stop and frisk, see SARA, the BLS Library Catalog, for the 27 page internet report Stop-and-Frisk 2011 NYCLU Briefing.
A New Tool to Identify Legislative Histories: Proquest: Legislative Insight
Wally Gobetz, Washington DC: Capitol Hill: United States Capital, Flickr Photostream (June 6, 2009), www.flickr.com/photos/wallyg/3777337913/lightbox/
Whether you are tracing a statute’s history for your summer internship or for a paper you are writing, you will want to use a new tool the library recently acquired, Proquest’s Legislative Insight. Often researching legislative histories can be cumbersome and time consuming. Legislative Insight promises to streamline the process by digitizing and by publishing online the majority of full text publications associated with a legislative history. These documents include all versions of enacted and related bills, Congressional Record excerpts, and committee hearings, reports, and documents. Legislative Insight also includes other related material such as committee prints, CRS reports and Presidential signing statements. Furthermore, Legislative Insight offers a research citation page that not only links to the full text of the associated primary source publications, but allows the user to do a Search Within from that very page that searches the full text of all the associated publications with one-click.
To access Legislative Insight from off-campus, you first need to implement the proxy instructions.
YouTubeTutorials for United Nations Sources
Students taking the International Information Sources course at Pratt Institute, School of Information and Library Science created the following three tutorials for learning how to use the these United Nations materials:
Music Copyright Infringement Resources
Anyone with an interest in copyright infringement issues in the music industry should check out a great free source of information sponsored by UCLA and Columbia Law Schools called the Music Copyright Infringement Resource. The site serves as an online archive of historical and current materials that pertain to this area of law, including important cases from the 1800’s to the present, pending litigation, news, and even a glossary of musical terms. It also contains a blog called the FORUM, which features short articles by various authors on the topic of music and copyright.
Keep in mind that the Brooklyn Law School library also has recent publications on these issues, such as:
Entertainment law for the general practitioner (2011)
Music Industry Handbook (2011)
Getting permission: how to license & clear copyrighted materials, online & off (2010).
For help finding additional sources of information, please feel free to speak to any of the Reference Librarians.
Annual New York State Judicial Candidate Voter Guide
The 2011 New York State Judicial Candidate Voter Guide is available through the Unified Court System’s website at (www.nycourts.gov/vote) through Election Day, Nov. 8, 2011.
The 2011 non-partisan Judicial Candidate Voter Guide is designed to help you make a more informed decision on Election Day (November 8, 2011).
The Guide covers elected, trial-level judge positions, other than Town and Village Justices as provided by the state and county boards of election. There is also biographical information about each candidate as provided by the candidate. Where candidates have participated, the Guide has links to their biographical, educational and professional histories. Candidates also were allowed to provide a short “personal statement” about themselves for the Guide. Finally, there is are descriptions of elective judicial offices throughout New York State.
The Guide lists covers for New York State judicial races; fifty-four of the state’s sixty-two counties have at least one contested judicial races on November 8th.