Official Blog of St. John's University School of Law Faculty
Peggy McGuinness
Peggy McGuinness presented her forthcoming book chapter, “Treaties, Federalism and the Contestation of Missouri v. Holland,” at the Pace University Law School faculty colloquium on October 22. The Chapter will appear in Treaty Practice of the United States (Dubinsky, Fox, Roth eds., Cambridge Univ. Press) to be published in 2015. Professor McGuinness participated in a panel discussion of the book at International Law Weekend at Fordham Law School on October 25.
John Barrett
On October 21st, Professor John Q. Barrett participated in a Monroe County Bar Association program, at the Rubin Center for Education, Rochester, New York, on the life and legacies of U.S. Supreme Court Justice and Nuremberg chief prosecutor Robert H. Jackson. Professor Barrett lectured about Justice Jackson’s life, including some of his notable and deep connections to Rochester and prominent speeches he delivered there in the 1930s and 1940s. Other speakers were Michael R. Wolford of The Wolford Law Firm, LLP; the Honorable Henry J. Scudder, Presiding Justice, Supreme Court of the State of New York, Appellate Division, Fourth Department; the Honorable Leslie G. Foschio, U.S. Magistrate Judge, U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York; and Gregory L. Peterson of Phillips Lytle LLP. For press coverage, click here.
Professor Lawrence Joseph’s poem, On Nature, has been published in Commonweal Magazine’s 90th Anniversary issue. 
John Barrett
Professor John Q. Barrett recently gave two continuing legal education lectures that reviewed U.S. Supreme Court decisions and developments from last Term and previewed some cases and possible developments in the newly-started Term. On October 6th (“First Monday”), he lectured at the Federal Bar Association’s EDNY chapter, at the U.S. Courthouse in Central Islip, New York. On October 9th, he lectured at The New York State Judicial Institute in White Plains, New York, for video broadcast to Judges and court personnel across New York State.
Marc DeGirolami will participate (regretfully, only virtually and not in person) this Wednesday in a conference
at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, on The Roberts Court and the Protection of Religious Freedom in the United States, organized by Olivier Roy and Pasquale Annicchino. Here’s the description of the conference (in Italian); the link contains the program:
Contesto
John Glover Roberts Jr. è stato nominato Chief Justice della Corte Suprema degli Stati Uniti il 22 settembre 2005, nomina confermata una settimana dopo dal Senato con 78 voti favorevoli e 22 contrari. In questi 9 anni si sono succedute numerose decisioni di assoluto rilievo del massimo organo giurisdizionale statunitense. Tra queste alcune hanno portato a definitivo compimento una nuova interpretazione ed una differente applicazione delle due clausole del primo emendamento costituzionale che si occupano di libertà religiosa: la Free Exercise Clause e la Establishment Clause. Dopo aver inquadrato nel contesto storico e politico la presidenza Roberts, questo workshop intende esaminare le principali pronunce della Corte Suprema sulla libertà religiosa.
Ogni relatore sarà chiamato a commentare una pronuncia e, mediante un approccio di “law in context” a darne una interpretazione nell’ambito del più ampio sviluppo della giurisprudenza della Corte.
L’obiettivo è quello di realizzare un volume collettivo (in italiano) che possa offrire agli studiosi nuovo materiale di riflessione e studio su un argomento che tocca gli interessi scientifici sia dei costituzionalisti che dei cultori delle materie ecclesiasticistiche.
Jeff Sovern
The Philadelphia Inquirer story, Consumers Rarely Use the Right to Cancel a Contract reports on Professor Jeff Sovern’s article, Written Notice of Cooling-Off Periods: A Forty-Year Natural Experiment in Illusory Consumer Protection and the Relative Effectiveness of Oral and Written Disclosures, forthcoming in the University of Pittsburgh Law Review. The article also quotes from an interview with Professor Sovern. The article states:
Sovern, who teaches consumer law and civil procedure at New York’s St. John’s University Law School, analyzed survey responses from 155 businesses that informed consumers of their right to cancel a deal. It rarely seemed to matter. . . .
“I’ve been teaching these laws for more than a quarter-century, and I’ve been wondering if they actually helped anybody,” [Sovern] told me last week.
For the full story, with additional quotes and discussion of Sovern’s research go to the full article.
Eva Subotnik
This Friday, October 10th, Professor Eva Subotnik will join Professor Molly van Houweling of UC Berkeley Law School and Professor Daniel Gervais of Vanderbilt Law School for a panel discussion at Columbia Law School’s symposium addressing the concerns of professional authors, artists and performers and suggesting changes to law and practice that would benefit authors and encourage creativity. Professor Subotnik will present a talk entitled “Actors and Artists as Authors,” forthcoming in the Columbia Journal of Law & the Arts, which will explore the degree to which different kinds of creative professionals can and do benefit from the status of “author” under the Copyright Act.
Larry Cunningham
On October 4, 2014, Larry Cunningham, the Law School’s Associate Academic Dean, spoke at the Fall Leadership Summit of the American Bar Association’s Law Student Division. He presented on the panel, “Getting the Most Out of Law School: Student and Administration Integration.” He addressed ways that law school administrators and students can work together to further career development. Dean Cunningham talked about St. John’s Law’s strategic priority of helping students achieve their career goals and initiatives that have been developed to improve job placement. He provided advice to the audience, student leaders from schools in the northeast and mid-Atlantic, about ways they can work with administrators at their law schools to improve job outcomes.
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