News

Professor Julian Arato, Associate Professor of  Law and Co-Director of the Dennis J. Block Center for International Business Law, has been elected to the Executive Council of American Society of International Law (ASIL) for a three-year term.

Professor Aaron Twerksi, the Irwin and Jill Cohen Professor of Law and preeminent authority in the areas of products liability and tort law, was honored by Marquette Law School with a Lifetime Achievement Award. Twerski is a graduate of the law school. The awards program was held April 3.

Professor Anita Bernstein, a nationally recognized authority on tort law, feminist jurisprudence, professional responsibility and products liability, has authored a new book, The Common Law Inside the Female Body (Cambridge University Press 2019). Bernstein breaks new ground with her in-depth exploration of U.S. common law through history—focusing on crimes, contracts, torts and property—as a fertile source for strengthening women’s rights and freedoms.

In her recent article Sorting Out White-Collar Crime, 97 Texas Law Review 225 (2018), Professor Miriam Baer, an expert in criminal law and former Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York, examines the federal criminal code’s lack of gradation in its fraud offenses.

Professor Miriam Baer, an expert in criminal law and former Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York, offered her thoughts to CNN, Vox, and Politico on whether Attorney General William Barr’s summary of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s final report was sufficient to exonerate President Donald Trump of wrong-doing. Baer concluded that the report does not exonerate Trump and that, without further details, Barr’s summary is not conclusive.

Professor David Reiss, an expert in Real Estate Finance and Consumer Finance Law and founding director of the Law School’s Community Development Clinic, has been appointed Chair of the New York City Rent Guidelines Board by Mayor Bill de Blasio.

Professor Kate Mogulescu, a national expert on human trafficking issues, has co-authored a new report, State Report Cards: Grading Criminal Record Relief Laws for Survivors of Human Trafficking, that rates all 50 states and Washington, D.C. on the effectiveness of their criminal record relief laws for survivors of human trafficking.

Professor Cynthia Godsoe, an expert on family and criminal law, explored Sex Crimes in the #MeToo Era during the February Dean’s Law & Policy Series program. Interim Dean Maryellen Fullerton moderated the discussion.

Professor Jodi Balsam, a sports law expert and former in-house counsel at the National Football League, spoke with multiple media outlets about the settlement between Colin Kaepernick and the NFL. Kaepernick and his former 49ers teammate Eric Reid claimed that teams around the league colluded to penalize them for leading national-anthem protests. The resulting controversy made Kaepernick the face of a broader social justice movement.

When Professor William Araiza, a widely published constitutional law scholar, was recently quoted in The New Yorker in a preview of playwright Heidi Schreck’s autobiographical play, “What the Constitution Means to Me,” he demonstrated unique insight into the show. Araiza, as it happens, had served as an adviser to Schreck and her team on the law behind the play, which opens on Broadway in March after a critically acclaimed off-Broadway run.

Professor Minna Kotkin, an expert on issues of employment discrimination and sexual harassment and director of the Law School’s Employment Law Clinic, testified before the New York State Legislature on Feb. 13 in a joint Senate and Assembly Public Hearing on Sexual Harassment in the Workplace. It was the first public hearing on harassment held by New York lawmakers in nearly 30 years, prompted by an increase in reported incidences of sexual harassment in the workplace and social media and high-profile news reports of sexual harassment allegations that have brought national attention to the issue.

In a recently published article in Columbia Law Review, 119 Columbia Law Review 249 (2019), “The Place of ‘The People’ in Criminal Procedure,” Professor Jocelyn Simonson examined the use of the term “The People” as synonymous with the prosecution in a criminal case, i.e., “The People of the State of X v. John Doe.” The term, which is used in many jurisdictions, Simonson wrote, is problematic because it implies that the prosecution is the neutral party, while defendants are marginalized and excluded.

In a recent column in a series about legal malpractice in the New York Law Journal, Anita Bernstein, Anita and Stuart Subotnick Professor of Law, and John Crain ’19, propose a solution for countering judge-imposed burdens not found in New York Judiciary Law §487, which provides for treble damages in legal malpractice cases when a lawyer’s behavior was particularly egregious.

Professor Jodi Balsam, a sports law expert and former in-house counsel at the National Football League, recently published her first article in LawInSport, an educational platform and global community focused on sport and the law, since being named to the organization’s editorial board in November 2018.

With more than 460,000 people across the United States confined in pre-trial detention on any given day, and Democratic control of the New York State Senate making criminal justice system reform more likely at the state level, Professor Jocelyn Simonson, co-director of the Center for Criminal Justice, addressed the question “What Comes After Money Bail?” during the January Dean’s Law & Policy Series program. Interim Dean Maryellen Fullerton moderated the discussion, kicking off the spring 2019 series.

In a commentary appearing in the Jan. 25 edition of the New York Law Journal, Areeb Been Khan ’20, Robert Levy ’19, and Juliana Malandro ’19, along with Professor David Reiss, argue that the Small Business Jobs Survival Act (SBJSA), currently being debated by the New York City Council, actually contains no protections tailored to small businesses. Instead, the Act would implement a new lease renewal arbitration system that treats all commercial tenancies the same, allowing businesses as large as Amazon to benefit. Consequently, the Act would create a bureaucratic process that works contrary to its stated goals.

Professor Miriam Baer, an expert in criminal law and former Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York, spoke with CBS News about the potential impact of the departure of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein on the Mueller investigation, following reports that he is planning to resign in the coming weeks.

Professor Flora Midwood has joined the Law School as Assistant Director of the Academic Success Program. She will work closely with Professor Shane Dizon, Director of Academic Success, to assess, build, and oversee programs and courses aimed at enhancing students’ academic experience, intellectual engagement, and bar preparedness. She will also direct post-graduate bar preparation programming, and this spring semester, will teach the Pre-Bar Review course for 3Ls.

Professor Neil Cohen, an expert in international commercial law, is the subject of the Member Spotlight in the winter issue of The ALI Reporter, the quarterly newsletter of the American Law Institute. In a Q&A, Cohen discusses how he first became interested in commercial law, his experience studying and applying the rules and principles of the Uniform Commercial Code, and his work as a reporter on significant ALI projects.

Brooklyn Law School was well represented at the 113th Association of American Law Schools (AALS) Annual Meeting, Jan. 2-6, in New Orleans, which drew thousands of law school faculty, deans, administrators, and scholars from around the country. Led by Interim Dean Maryellen Fullerton, who attended the annual Dean’s Meeting at the conference, and Vice Dean Christina Mulligan, a contingent of more than a dozen faculty made the trip to the Crescent City to share their expertise and discuss the latest developments in their respective areas of focus in legal education.