Dicta – NYU Law Magazine

Country Miles and Decades

Gina Rodriguez — Tue, 08 Sep 2015 20:10:54 +0000

In Around the World in 50 Years, Albert Podell ’76 writes a charming, engaging, and sometimes harrowing chronicle of:

The journey began in 1965 when Podell and his friend Harold Stephens set out to circumnavigate the globe by car, which they achieved and wrote about in their book, Who Needs a Road?

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New Frontiers

Gina Rodriguez — Tue, 08 Sep 2015 20:10:54 +0000

The Center on Law and Security selected Joshua Fattal ’18 (pictured above, far left) and Kevin Kirby ’17 (center) as scholars for ASPIRE (A Scholarship for Service Partnership for Interdisciplinary Research and Education), a program funded by the National Science Foundation and run in conjunction with NYU’s Polytechnic School of Engineering with the goal of training cybersecurity specialists. ASPIRE provides a full-tuition scholarship, a stipend, and a wide range of interdisciplinary academic opportunities with students and faculty from other NYU schools. Fattal, a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Columbia University, will examine the implications of cybersecurity for balance between privacy and national security. Kirby has an interest in national security law, renewable energy, and computer programming. He previously served five years as an army engineer and graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point. The two join Brian Eschels ’16 (far right), who was named an inaugural ASPIRE scholar last year.

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The Ambassadors

Gina Rodriguez — Tue, 08 Sep 2015 20:10:54 +0000

For 29 diplomats from 17 nations, an NYU Law classroom offered a chance to learn about the internal law of the United Nations. José Alvarez, Herbert and Rose Rubin Professor of International Law, addressed a range of complex issues in Law and Practice of the UN, the inaugural course of the Institute for Executive Education (IEE).

The IEE, launched this past January, offers non-degree programs for professionals. The UN course was customized and developed with the United Arab Emirates for young diplomats of all nations.

Although the students were advanced professionals, not all had legal training. The course therefore provided a compressed, high-level version of the kinds of discussions that might occur in Alvarez’s three-credit course International Organizations. “My goal is not to solve the problem, just to frame it for you,” Alvarez told the class.

“Sometimes diplomats lack legal knowledge, and sometimes lawyers lack diplomacy skills,” says Damira Zhanatova, from the Kazakhstan Mission to the UN, “so the synergy in the course of law, diplomacy, business, and political issues together is really useful.”

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Grumpy Court

Gina Rodriguez — Tue, 08 Sep 2015 20:10:54 +0000

University of Virginia Law Professor Michael Livermore ’06 and two Dartmouth College computer scientists will publish an article in the 2016 Washington University Law Review asserting that over time Supreme Court opinions have become longer, more layperson-friendly, and increasingly grumpy.

Using computer analysis of negative and positive language in Supreme Court opinions from 1791 to 2008, the authors gave 107 justices a “friendliness score” and determined that five current justices are among the 10 most cross: Samuel Alito, Stephen Breyer, Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas.

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No Trial by Jury

Gina Rodriguez — Tue, 08 Sep 2015 20:10:54 +0000

A new undertaking at the Law School will focus on a venerable yet disappearing feature of the American legal system: the civil jury trial. Why are so few civil cases resolved by juries? What are the consequences? Are there reforms that might stop or slow the jury trial’s demise? The just-launched Civil Jury Project (CJP) will tackle these questions.

The founder of Susman Godfrey, Stephen Susman, has provided funding for the project. He serves as CJP’s executive director and, as an adjunct professor, is also teaching the fall course How to Try a Jury Case Intelligently. Samuel Issacharoff, Bonnie and Richard Reiss Professor of Constitutional Law, and Catherine Sharkey, Crystal Eastman Professor of Law, serve as the project’s faculty directors.

“This is a critical moment in American history for the jury,” says Susman. “The Seventh Amendment guarantees citizens the right of trial by jury in common-law civil cases. The aim of this project is to gather and assess empirical data on the downtrending, and to examine the theoretical and practical critiques of jury trials and ways to improve them.”

While only recently formed, CJP has already enlisted as advisers a roster of distinguished judges, academics, and jury consultants, including federal and state court judges who have agreed to use their courtrooms as “laboratories” for the implementation of certain reforms in appropriate cases. Says Sharkey: “NYU’s Civil Jury Project, having brought together all relevant players—judges, lawyers, academics, and jury consultants—is uniquely poised to pursue a methodologically sound, policy-driven research agenda that will produce powerful data about the function, and future, of the civil jury.”

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A Worthy Dozen

Gina Rodriguez — Tue, 08 Sep 2015 20:10:54 +0000

Selected by 24 judges from nearly 300 nominations of lawyers ages 40 years and younger, 12 NYU Law alumni were named among New York Law Journal’s 50 Rising Stars of 2015:

Daniel Bitton LLM ’04
Partner
Axinn, Veltrop & Harkrider

Lauren Burke ’09
Executive Director
Atlas: DIY

Ross Hirsch ’00
Partner
Herrick, Feinstein

Nilda Isidro ’07
Partner
Goodwin Procter

Chi-Yu Liang LLM ’09
Partner
Withers Bergman

David Livshiz ’05, LLM ’06
Senior Associate
Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer

Joseph Loy ’04
Partner
Kirkland & Ellis

Renato Matos LLM ’14
Partner
Capell Barnett Matalon & Schoenfeld

Sateesh Nori ’01
Attorney-in-Charge of the Queens Neighborhood Office
Legal Aid Society

Kevin Orsini ’03
Partner
Cravath, Swaine & Moore

Farrah Pepper ’01
Executive Counsel for Discovery
General Electric

Benjamin Rajotte LLM ’07
Assistant Professor of Law
Touro College Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law Center

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Area of Agreement

Gina Rodriguez — Tue, 08 Sep 2015 20:10:54 +0000

With a foreword by Bill Clinton and acknowledgments of the Koch Brothers and the Heritage Foundation, Solutions: American Leaders Speak Out on Criminal Justice explores bipartisan opposition to mass incarceration. Brennan Center for Justice President Michael Waldman ’87 and Justice Program Director Inimai Chettiar asked elected officials, advocates, and presidential candidates such as Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Ted Cruz, Kamala Harris, Martin O’Malley, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Bryan Stevenson, and Scott Walker to contribute essays proposing solutions to over-incarceration. “In this time of increased political polarization,” former president Clinton wrote in the foreword, “there is one area where we have a genuine chance at bipartisan cooperation: the over-imprisonment of people who did not commit serious crimes.”

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A-Paper Confessions

Gina Rodriguez — Tue, 08 Sep 2015 20:10:27 +0000

Professor David Richards’s spring seminar Free Speech, Ethical Transformation, and Social Change: Race, Gender, and Sexual Orientation explored the role free speech played in resistance, such as Gandhi’s in India and the US feminist and antiwar movements in the 1960s and ’70s. For his final law school project, David Billingsley ’15 recorded an album, Confessions, with his band Mary’s Roommate that explored themes in the course. Giving him an A, Richards praised Billingsley for his candor: “[Confessions] reflected beautifully his own personal struggles with the issues of the seminar, in particular, overcoming the patriarchal voices in his psyche.”

Billingsley found turning his ideas into songs made the topic more accessible: “Music allows people to react to the message more directly and sincerely through feeling.”

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Moral Support

Gina Rodriguez — Tue, 08 Sep 2015 20:10:26 +0000

Since May, professors Anthony Appiah (pictured above, left) and Kenji Yoshino (right) have comprised two of the three New York Times Magazine Ethicists, who respond every Sunday to readers’ quandaries over right and wrong. The philosopher and the constitutional scholar, respectively, have wrestled with recent queries such as:

What should I do about a nanny who drinks?

Can I change my name to avoid job discrimination?

Do another woman’s marriage vows bind me?

Should I respond to my mechanic’s racist poster?

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Center Stage

Gina Rodriguez — Tue, 08 Sep 2015 20:10:26 +0000

This June, the US Senate unanimously confirmed Eileen Decker ’90 as US attorney for the Central District of California (CDCA). The CDCA encompasses seven counties including Los Angeles, serving the largest population of any district in the United States. Decker served as Los Angeles deputy mayor for homeland security and public safety since 2009, and previously worked for 15 years as a federal prosecutor specializing in national security issues.

“Simply put, Eileen Decker’s qualifications are impeccable,” said California Senator Dianne Feinstein in a statement on her confirmation. “The breadth of experience Ms. Decker will bring to the position is impressive, and she has earned the respect of the legal community and law enforcement alike.”

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