Professor Christopher Borgen was interviewed yesterday by the BBC on the situation in the
Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and international law. The audio of the interview is here and the relevant segment begins at about the 19.15 minute mark.
February 25, 2015
Borgen Interviewed by the BBC
February 23, 2015
Ward Elected to AALS Sections
Ettie Ward
Professor Ettie Ward was recently elected to the Executive Board and Secretary of the Sports Law Section of the AALS. Professor Ward was also elected to the Executive Boards of both the Civil Procedure and Litigation Sections.
February 20, 2015
Crimm and Winer on their Recently Published Book
Professor Nina Crimm and Professor Laurence H. Winer (Arizona State University, Sandra
Day O’Connor College of Law) have written a post on their recently published book, God, Schools, and Government Funding: First Amendment Conundrums (Ashgate, 2015). The post was noted on SCOTUSblog’s Wednesday round-up.
February 19, 2015
Facciolo Published in University of Pennsylvania Journal of Business Law
Jay Facciolo
Professor Jay Facciolo has just published “Do I Have a Bridge for You: Fiduciary Duties and Financial Advice,” his latest article on securities regulation, in 17 University of Pennsylvania Journal of Business Law 101 (2014). The issue of whether broker-dealers should be held to a fiduciary standard as are investment advisers has generated a great deal of debate since 2010, when Dodd-Frank mandated that the SEC study the issue. Currently, the Department of Labor is considering proposing a new rule that would apply a theoretically strict fiduciary standard to financial professionals in the ERISA context. Professor Facciolo’s article argues that a fiduciary standard is no substitute for substantively regulating conflicts of interest in the provision of financial advice. Fiduciary standards fail to provide strong legal protections because of the contractual nature of such standards. In addition, standards are only as strong as the enforcement mechanisms available and, in financial advice, regulatory oversight has been ineffective and there are no robust private rights of action. Finally, disclosure, the standard fall back in securities regulation, has not worked well in creating limitations on conflicts that protect investors. In fact, some recent research has even suggested that disclosure of conflicts of interest may make investors trust their conflicted investment advisers more. After all, only a trust worthy individual would be willing to disclose something potentially negative about herself.
February 19, 2015
Warner Published in Law360
G. Ray Warner
Professor Ray Warner’s article “Rejoice in New York’s Revised UCC, But Beware of Traps” was published in the February 18th issue of Law360.
February 10, 2015
Cunningham Article Cited by Supreme Court of Alaska
Larry Cunningham
Associate Academic Dean Larry Cunningham’s article, Appellate Review of Unpreserved Questions in Criminal Cases: An Attempt To Define the “Interest of Justice,” was recently cited by the Supreme Court of Alaska in Moreno v. State, 2015 WL 404251 (Alaska 2015), a decision clarifying the scope of plain error review in criminal cases in that jurisdiction. The article was previously cited favorably by the Supreme Court of Mississippi in Wilson v. State, 96 So.3d 721 (Miss. 2012), which quoted from Cunningham’s article in support of its decision. The article was published in the Journal of Appellate Practice and Process at volume 11, page 285. It articulates a framework by which appellate courts can analyze legal issues that are raised for the first time on appeal.
February 9, 2015
Movsesian Quoted in Deseret News on Religious Objections to Vaccination
Professor Mark Movsesian was quoted in the Deseret News on the subject of the paucity of
Mark Movsesian
religious objections to vaccination and the inapplicability of the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores to the current controversy concerning the measles outbreak.
February 3, 2015
Salomone Authors Editorial on Multilingualism
Professor Rosemary Salomone has written a short essay titled, “Why English is Not
Rosemary Salomone
Enough,” which appears in University World News. A bit:
Defining moments, like the attacks in Paris, should remind us that language is key to gaining an insider’s view and a sense of the ‘big picture’, which by the way also allows us to critically examine ourselves. Print and broadcast media, as well as the global blogosphere, still speak in many voices and worldviews and they are powerful shapers of ideas and opinions.
Though multilingualism is clearly important in the global economy, we should not underestimate the force of language and intercultural awareness in promoting global understanding and security.
Today it’s French. Tomorrow it could be Spanish, Chinese, Farsi or any other language depending on the vagaries of world events. With terrorism unwittingly binding the free world together, linguistic skills and the cultural doors they open are essential to both digging deep into differences, especially among our enemies, while finding common ground for mutual respect and joint action among present and potential allies.
The success of those efforts depends on many variables. Yet one thing is clear. If policy-makers and educators continue to give mere lip service to the foreign language deficit while English rapidly sweeps the globe, they disserve the interests of their own countries.
February 2, 2015
NY Times DealBook Runs Op-Ed on St. John’s Arbitration Study
Jeff Sovern
Professor Sovern authored an op-ed appearing on the New York Times DealBook web pages, When Consumers Give Up Their Right to Trial in Financial Disputes, about the St. John’s arbitration study, co-authored by Professors Elayne E. Greenberg and Paul F. Kirgis, as well as St. John’s Director of Institutional Assessment Yuxiang Liu. The essay concludes:
[O]ur survey suggests that consumers are surrendering fundamental rights without knowing it because they cannot comprehend the contracts that strip them of those rights and do not realize that courts will uphold the contracts. Congress has given the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau the power to block financial companies from taking those rights away, and the agency is studying the issue. The agency would do well to decide that companies can’t take advantage of these bewildering contracts.
February 2, 2015
Krishnakumar Guest Speaker at Duke Colloquium on Statutory Interpretation
On January 29, 2015, Professor Anita S. Krishnakumar was the guest speaker at Duke Law School’s Colloquium on Statutory Interpretation. Professor Krishnakumar spoke and fielded questions about her work-in-progress, Dueling Canons, an empirical and doctrinal paper that examines how often and in what ways majority and dissenting opinions in the Roberts Court employ the same statutory interpretation canons/tools to reach opposing outcomes in the same case.
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