Official Blog of St. John's University School of Law Faculty
Anita Krishnakumar
Professor Anita Krishnakumar presented two papers,”Reconsidering Substantive Canons” and “Textualism and Statutory Stare Decisis” at a Yale Law School “Statutory Interpretation Theory” seminar run by William N. Eskridge on February 9, 2016
Associate Academic Dean Larry Cunningham was interviewed by the Agence France-
![larry-cunningham2[1]](https://stjlawfaculty.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/larry-cunningham21.jpg?w=780)
Larry Cunningham
Presse, an international news agency, for an article about interest in American crime docudramas, such as “Serial” and “Making of a Murderer.” In the interview, Dean Cunningham is quoted about exonerations, innocence investigations by journalists, and the O.J. Simpson trial. The piece has been picked up by publications in Australia, Singapore, Bahrain, and others.
G. Ray Warner
Professor Ray Warner will be at the United Nations this week as a member of the International Insolvency Institute’s delegation to Working Group VI of UNCITRAL. The working group is developing an international model law of personal property secured transactions.
Jeff Sovern
Bloomberg BNA’s Banking Daily quoted Professor Jeff Sovern in an article, Financial Firms Watch, Wait on CFPB Move to Limit Arbitration. According to the article:
“I think they are very troublesome,” Jeffrey Sovern, a law professor at St. John’s University, in New York, said of the arbitration clauses. “Class action lawsuits are a mechanism to deter businesses from taking advantage of consumers in small amounts,” he told Bloomberg BNA, echoing a point made by Cordray in his speech.
A customer who is mistakenly charged $30 on his mobile phone bill is unlikely to file a claim in court or arbitration to get the money back, and such a case is too small to justify hiring an attorney, Sovern said. If that customer files a class action on behalf of a million customers hit with similar charges, that’s a $30 million lawsuit, and the dynamics have changed.
Professor Lawrence Joseph presented a paper,”The Aesthetics of Narrative and Metaphor: 
Creating a Lawyer Self in Poetry and Prose” at the Stanford Law School’s Symposium “Narrative and Metaphor in the Law” on January 30, 2016. The Symposium, in the words of its sponsors, “brings together scholars in law and related disciplines who have made the most outstanding contributions to the study of narrative or metaphor and the law.” Professor Joseph’s paper will be included as a chapter in a book of the Symposium’s presentations to be published by Cambridge University Press.
Christine Lazaro
Professor Christine Lazaro was quoted in Investment News on the Department of Labor’s pending rule proposal regarding the definition of fiduciary under ERISA:
“The Department of Labor has done a pretty significant job in listening to all the stakeholders over the last five-year period,” said Christine Lazaro, associate professor of clinical legal education at St. John’s University. “To imply they haven’t fully considered the cost benefit analysis of the rule’s impact is misleading.”
The rule proposal was submitted to the Office of Management and Budget on January 28, 2016, prior to its being released to the public in the Federal Register.
St. John's University Law Faculty Blog 