Official Blog of St. John's University School of Law Faculty
The American Bankruptcy Institute (ABI) presented G. Ray Warner, Associate Dean for Bankruptcy Studies and Professor of Law, with its prestigious Annual Service Award during the ABI’s Spring Meeting in Washington, D.C. The ABI’s highest membership award, the Annual Service Award is presented to the ABI member whose contributions over the past year have been extraordinary, as determined by the ABI’s Advisory Board of past presidents.
Yesterday Leiter’s Law School Reports posted the results of a survey of over 200 of its readers asking “which areas of law deserve more attention in the legal academy?” The top 10 subjects were:
What was immediately apparent to me as I read through this list was how many of these areas are already strengths at St. John’s Law School.
My co-blogger, Jeff Sovern, is one of the leading consumer law scholars in the country. He has co-authored a casebook in the field, written numerous articles on a wide variety of consumer law topics, and founded the Consumer Law & Policy Blog.
St. John’s is also home to the Center for Labor and Employment Law. Founded and directed by David Gregory, the center is a forum where students, practitioners and scholars come together to explore the practice and theory of labor and employment law.
Paul Kirgis founded the Hugh L. Carey Center for Dispute Resolution, which he runs with Elayne Greenberg. The Carey Center is a leader in the growing field of alternative dispute resolution, offering courses, clinics, and experiential learning to students, hosting scholarly programs, and providing professional training and other forms of outreach to the community. Paul is one of the leading scholars in the field (you can find some of his publications here) and is a regular contributor to Indisputably, the ADR Prof Blog.
On the clinical front, we have the Consumer Justice for the Elderly: Litigation Clinic. Under the direction of Ann Goldweber and Gina Calabrese, the clinic students represent low-income, elderly Queens residents in cases involving predatory lending, contractor fraud, debt collection, and other consumer matters.
Befitting our location in one of the most diverse communities in the country, St. John’s actually has three immigration clinics: the Bread & Life Immigration Clinic, the Immigrant Social Justice Clinic, and the Refugee and Immigrant Rights Litigation Clinic.
These areas may get short shrift elsewhere, but they have been a focal point at St. John’s for years.
Professor Christopher J. Borgen has authored a chapter, “Public International Law and the Conflict Over Transnistria,” in Managing Intractable Conflicts: Lessons From Moldova and Cyprus. The project was supported by the Open Society Institute and involved Moldovan and Turkish think tanks.
On April 13, Dean Cunningham spoke at the Institute for Law Teaching and Learning’s conference, Law Teaching for Adjunct Faculty, held at Western State College of Law in Fullerton, CA. His topic was hiring, supervising, and collaborating with adjunct faculty.
Professor Christopher Borgen will speak at Fordham Law School in a program titled “Human Rights and the Use of Drones in International Law” on Friday, April 19, at 1:00 p.m.
Professor Janai Nelson will present her paper, The First Amendment, Equal Protection, and Felon Disenfranchisement: A New Viewpoint, at CUNY Law School on Wednesday, April 17. The talk is based on her article of the same name, which was recently published in the Florida Law Review. You can find the published version of the article here.
Professor Edward Cavanagh’s latest paper, Antitrust Law and Economic Theory: Finding a Balance, has been accepted for publication by the Loyola Law (Chicago) Journal. The paper is not yet available on SSRN.
Professor Cavanagh will also present the paper at the Mid-West Antitrust Symposium at Loyola on Friday, April 19.
On April 9, Professor Jeff Sovern spoke at the Practicing Law Institute’s 18th Annual Consumer Financial Services Institute in Manhattan on a panel titled “The New Consumer Perspective.” Two days later, he presented a paper on cooling-off periods at the Annual Conference of the American Council on Consumer Interests in Portland, Oregon.
On Friday, April 12, Professor Michael Perino will present a paper entitled Setting Attorneys’ Fees in Securities Class Actions: An Empirical Assessment at the 19th Annual Symposium of the Institute for Law and Economic Policy in Naples, Florida. Co-written with University of Texas Law Professors Lynn Baker and Charles Silver, the paper analyzes, among other things, the effect that ex ante fee agreements have on fee awards in securities class actions. Papers from the conference will be published in an upcoming issue of the Vanderbilt Law Review. The paper is not yet available on SSRN.
More information on the symposium is available here.
Research Professor Matthew Bruckner’s latest paper, The Virtue in Bankruptcy, was accepted for publication in the Loyola University Chicago Law Journal. Here is the abstract:
In response to a gap in the corporate bankruptcy literature, this article offers a new positive theory of corporate bankruptcy law based on virtue ethics. The dominant theory of corporate bankruptcy law — the creditors’ bargain model — is necessarily incomplete because it does not account for bankruptcy courts’ equitable and discretionary powers, or for Congress’ decision to privilege decision-making criteria other than economic efficiency. By contrast, virtue ethics can offer insights about corporate bankruptcy law’s most salient features for at least three reasons. First, bankruptcy courts appear to give content to bankruptcy laws by using virtue ethical principles. Virtue ethics’ decision-making process — practical wisdom — can provide insights into how bankruptcy judges balance concerns about, among other things, efficiency, justice and fairness when reaching decisions. This is particularly true when the bankruptcy court’s equitable jurisdiction or discretionary powers are implicated. Third, virtue ethics’ symbiotic consideration of means and ends parallels the process bankruptcy judges are called on to use when exercising their discretionary or equitable powers under numerous provisions of the Bankruptcy Code.
A current version of the paper is available on SSRN (here).
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