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This fall semester, the Brooklyn Law School community welcomes two visiting scholars: Hon. Zohar Dolev Lehmann, Judge of the Southern District Courts of Peace in Israel, a first-instance trial court; and Professor Frederik Swennen, who joins us from the Faculty of Law of the University of Antwerp in Belgium.   Swennen, who brings national and international expertise in family law, will be visiting from Sept. 23 through Dec. 22. Lehmann, whose scholarship focuses on evidence and contract drafting, will join us from Sept. 30 through Oct. 28.  Director of International Programs and Adjunct Professor of Law Diane Penneys Edelman, who develops and administers a variety of international programs, including the LL.M. and Visiting Scholar programs, said that these scholars will play an important role at Brooklyn Law.   “I am thrilled to have visiting scholars come to Brooklyn Law School for so many reasons,” Edelman said. “They bring not only their unique knowledge of their areas of research and work, but also share with us the perspectives of their legal systems, from which we can learn so much. Along with our international LL.M. and J.D. students, as well as the study abroad opportunities that we offer, these scholars help the entire BLS community to expand its horizons.”  Swennen served as dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Antwerp from 2018 to 2024 and is also a full professor of family law at the university, where he has taught since 2002. His research focuses on new models for the legal recognition of non-traditional family constellations, including queer family and nomadic, plural, and platonic family relationships.  A magna cum laude recipient of LL.B. and LL.M. degrees, the professor earned a Ph.D. in law from the University of Antwerp, where he has taught a broad array of family law subjects, with a focus on international and comparative legal research, and interdisciplinary study relating to sociology and animal law.  He has also served as a visiting professor at KU Leuven in Belgium and Panthéon-Assas University in Paris (Paris II), and as a research fellow at the University of Cape Town and North-West University (Potchefstroom) in South Africa, the Birkbeck Institute for Social Research in London, and the Netherlands Institute for Advance Studies in Amsterdam. Swennen also currently serves as president of the International Society of Family Law.   Lehmann earned her LL.B. degree at Hebrew University of Jerusalem and her LL.M. (Hons.) at Tel Aviv University. She also completed significant training in representing victims of sexual assault as well as in small claims mediation. Prior to becoming a judge, she worked at the Southern District Attorney’s Office (Be’er Sheva) in Israel, and served for 15 years as a prosecutor with the Tel Aviv District Attorney’s Office. In addition to presiding over the Southern District Courts of Peace,  Lehmann serves as Judge and Chairperson of Parole Boards. While at Brooklyn Law, she will be exploring the areas of evidence and contract drafting. 

Americans of all political leanings have been voicing skepticism about the legitimacy of the U.S. Constitution, laws, and institutions, directing their doubts at entities ranging from the Supreme Court to local criminal courts to state election bureaus. But what’s driving that skepticism and is there hope for change? The Law School took on those questions in a well-attended Brooklyn Book Festival panel discussion, “The Legitimacy of Law at a Crossroads,” moderated by Professor Alexis Hoag-Fordjour and held as part of the Oct. 2 festival, which the Law School has hosted and sponsored for 11 years. One reason for distrust of government institutions is the public’s detachment from the regulatory process, said Professor William Araiza, who wrote Rebuilding Expertise: Creating Effective and Trustworthy Regulation in an Age of Doubt (NYU Press, June 2022). His book argues that citizens’ faith in government has weakened over decades, driven most recently by the COVID-19 response. Rebuilding faith requires cultivating “administrative expertise” and acknowledging the public’s competency in guiding some decision-making. “We need expertise for the very simple reason that the problems we confront as a nation, society, and world are too complex to be addressed in any other way,” Araiza said. “There must be a strong, robust, competent, and also trusted core of bureaucrats.” Democracy and expertise can reinforce one another if government experts solicit public input early on. One example he cited is the Federal Aviation Administration. Before deciding whether to first address the issue of tarmac delays or compensation for baggage loss, the FAA could ask the public which issue is more urgent. “Engaging the public at that stage can, in fact, increase the agency’s expertise and improve its democratic credibility credentials,” Araiza said. Currently, the public is engaged to react to a complicated set of technical regulations only at the end of the process. In criminal procedure cases, unreliable criminal evidence has heightened public distrust, said panelist M. Chris Fabricant, director of strategic litigation for the Innocence Project, and author of Junk Science and the American Criminal Justice System (Akashic Books, April 2022). He said half of the wrongful conviction cases that the Innocence Project has helped overturn relied at least partially on “junk science,” including forensic techniques that are known to be unreliable. Scientific evidence is, however, held to a higher standard in civil cases, he said, asserting that an explosion of personal injury, mass torts, and product liability lawsuits in the 1970s and 1980s prompted corporations to successfully fight back in court against scientific evidence. Those efforts culminated with rulings such as the 1993 Supreme Court decision in Daubert [v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals], which established standards for scientific evidence to be introduced in court. “No longer were judges going to defer to the so-called relevant scientific community, but they were going to have to look at things like peer reviews and testability, and basic fundamentals of science,” Fabricant said. About 10 years after the Daubert case, a study found nearly 40 percent more exclusions of “scientific evidence” took place in civil cases, but “nothing had changed on the criminal side—nothing.” Prosecutors are still not held to a high level of scrutiny, he said. Where he sees hope is that the desire to reform the criminal legal system has support on both sides of the aisle. The right is concerned about the financial cost of mass incarceration, while the left considers having 2.3 million people incarcerated as a bad thing in general. He also hopes a “blue wave” of Democrats elected in 2024 could pave the way toward doing away with the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA), which has hampered the ability to get state-level criminal cases, where most wrongful convictions happen, reviewed by federal courts. When it comes to skepticism related to the Constitution, some of it focuses on the document’s original framers, nearly half of whom were slaveholders, said Professor Wilfred U. Codrington III, co-author with John F. Kowal of The People’s Constitution: 200 Years, 27 Amendments, and The Promise of a More Perfect Union (The New Press, 2021). Additional uncertainty relates to the difficulties inherent in amending the Constitution through formal means. While some people think it’s “unachievable” or “fruitless” to make progressive change through Constitutional amendments, Coddington argues that it remains the best way, because without those amendments we would have to rely on 51 different state constitutions or what he calls “informal” changes affecting Constitutional rights at the federal level, as happened with the recent Supreme Court abortion ruling in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization. “Instead, we’re getting a Supreme Court or a ‘super legislature,’ as some would call it, doing these changes without really engaging the whole country, as a democracy requires,” he said. Social movements, such as the civil rights and suffrage movements, he noted, ultimately drove Constitutional changes historically and can do so again. “We have, mostly in four waves, amended the Constitution to make it more progressive, more inclusive, more protective of democracy,” Coddington said. The political divides now may be problematic, but “there were also problems that people faced in past waves before they amended the Constitution.”

Be humble, be kind, be generous—and be prepared. So went the message to students from Damian Williams, U.S. Attorney of the Southern District of New York, who visited Brooklyn Law School for a “fireside chat” featuring an intimate conversation with students on his life and career. Leading the conversation with Williams was Christopher Foderingham-Garraway ’19, appellate attorney at the Second Judicial Department. The event was held on Oct. 19 through the joint efforts of the Brooklyn Law School Black Law Students Association (BLSA), the Caribbean Attorneys Network, and the Northeast Black Law Students Association. Williams, whose nomination by President Joe Biden was confirmed by the U.S. Senate in 2021, is the first Black person to lead the Southern District’s office in its 233-year history. He has since served as the lead prosecutor of such high-profile cases as that of FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (who has, since the talk took place, been convicted of fraud) and U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), who faces a federal indictment that accuses him of violating corruption and bribery laws. Williams spoke about how when he started at the U.S. Attorney’s office, leading it wasn’t his plan, but that he had always moved forward in his work to be in the best position to assume the role if it presented itself. “He talked about how, whatever his goal or whatever the case, he plans meticulously for it,” said BLSA President Rahmel Robinson ’24. Williams stressed the importance of mentoring others and of the impact of being mentored himself, especially during his clerkships with then-federal appellate judge Merrick B. Garland (now the U.S. attorney general) and the late Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens. “He said he knows that whatever position he’s in, he’s not in the seat permanently, so he works to make it better for those that follow him,” said BLSA Executive Board member Nneka Wharton ’24. Williams’ advice to students: don’t let power compromise your capability for kindness, generosity, and humility; those are the keys to your success, said Robinson. “He emphasized that in every situation you may have self-doubt but that you always have something to learn, and something to give. And to always keep looking toward the next challenge,” Robinson said.

The U.S. Senate confirmed today Hon. Ramon E. Reyes Jr. ’92 to the position of U.S. District Court judge for the Eastern District of New York (EDNY). Reyes, who was nominated by President Joe Biden in September 2022, served as U.S. magistrate judge for the EDNY since 2006, and is also a member of the Brooklyn Law School Board of Trustees and has served as an adjunct professor at the Law School. “Ramon Reyes is universally respected for the judgment, wisdom, and integrity he brings to his work as a judge,” President and Joseph Crea Dean David D. Meyer said.  “There could be no finer addition to the U.S. District Court, and we are proud that he extends a long legacy of distinguished service by other Brooklyn Law School alumni on the EDNY bench.” Reyes previously served as an assistant U.S. attorney for the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York from 1998 to 2006. From 1995 to 1998, he was a litigation associate at O’Melveny & Myers in New York. He served as a law clerk for Judge David G. Trager on the U.S. District Court for the EDNY from 1994 to 1995. In 1993, Reyes was a legislative attorney for the New York City Council. He received his LL.M. from New York University School of Law in 1993, his J.D. from Brooklyn Law School in 1992, and his B.S. from Cornell University in 1988. Incoming students at the 2023 Convocation were led in an oath of professionalism by Reyes, who helped lead the ceremony, held at the EDNY. Other BLS alumni who now serve or have served on the EDNY, located a short walk from the school, in Brooklyn include former dean and current judge Hon. I. Leo Glasser ’48, current judge Hon. Ed Korman ’66, as well as several alumni who have passed away: Hon. Sterling Johnson Jr. ’66, Hon. Arthur Spatt ’49, and Hon. Henry Bramwell ’48.  EDNY judges with close ties to the school include Chief Judge Margo K. Brodie, who is a current and longtime member of our adjunt faculty, Trager, a former Brooklyn Law School dean, for whom Reyes once clerked, Hon. Gene Nickerson, who was a trustee of the Law School, and Hon. Jack B. Weinstein, who was chief judge for the EDNY from 1980-1988, and was an adjunct professor at Brooklyn Law School.

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