St. John's University Law Faculty Blog

On June 28 and 29, Professor G. Ray Warner was at the United Nations representing the International Insolvency Institute in the UNCITRAL discussions regarding the effect of digital architectures (distributed ledgers, block chain, smart contracts, etc.) on secured transactions.

On June 13, 2018, Professor Ann Goldweber moderated a panel at the 13th Annual NYC Elder Abuse Conference sponsored by NYC Department of Aging.  The panel discussed the impact of elder abuse on immigrants who do not have lawful status, including immigration protections and benefits for survivors of elder abuse and immigration consequences for alleged abuses. Panelists included Timothy Fallon, Senior Immigration Attorney, Her Justice and Richard Bailey, Attorney, Immigration Practice, Brooklyn Defender Services.

In her capacity as Director of the Consumer Justice for the Elderly: Litigation Clinic, Professor Goldweber also worked with clinic students and the Queens District Attorney’s Office, Senior ADA Christine Burke, Alumna ’93, to assist an elderly victim of deed theft.  The perpetrator pled guilty to a felony, the victim got his home back and on the recommendation of the DA’s office, the clinic client received restitution of $123,000.  The Clinic also received a $10,000 donation as part of the plea deal.

Professor Robin Boyle was interviewed by local Brooklyn television station BRIC TV on Thursday, June 21, 2018.   As a member of the advisory board for the Journal of the International Cultic Studies Association (ICSA), Professor Boyle was invited to the studio to discuss cults and the recent federal case against Nxivm, whose founder, Keith Raniere, was arrested on April 20, 2018 along with actor Allison Mack.  Raniere and Mack were indicted by the United States Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of New York, on charges of sex trafficking, sex trafficking conspiracy and forced labor conspiracy.  Professor Boyle’s interview can be viewed here.  She will be presenting on this topic at the annual conference of ICSA in Philadelphia on July 7, 2018.

On June 18th Professor Rosemary Salomone opened a pre-conference session for representatives from tuition -free/state-sponsored all-girls’ schools at the National Coalition of Girls’ Schools Global Forum on Girls’ Education II in Washington D.C.

Participants included advocates and school directors and staff from the United States, the United Kingdom, Israel, Qatar, and Poland. Her presentation, “Making the Case for Single-Sex Schooling” responded to the legal and policy claims made by civil liberties groups and others against publicly supported single-sex schools, critiqued the research on which those claims are based, and detailed randomly controlled empirical studies from Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and South Korea suggesting that these schools can produce positive outcomes.

Dean Larry Cunningham has been appointed co-chair of the New York State Bar Association’s Committee on Legal Education and Admission to the Bar.  Appointed by President Michael Miller, Dean Cunningham will serve as co-chair for the next year. The committee, which is composed of practicing attorneys as well as law school representatives, works on matters related to legal education, the bar exam, and admission.  He serves with Patricia Salkin, Provost (Graduate and Professional Divisions) of Touro College.

Professor Anita S. Krishnakumar, Dean Michael A. Simons, and Professor John Q. Barrett attended the Second Circuit Judicial Conference in Saratoga Springs, New York, on June 13-15.  On June 15, Professor Krishnakumar moderated a panel titled, “Courts and the Administrative State,” featuring former Obama Administration Solicitor General Donald Verrilli and Professors Gilian Metzger (Columbia), David Vladeck (Georgetown), and Ilya Somin (George Mason).  The panel explored recent and anticipated changes in the balance of power between the judicial and executive branches, including the future of the Chevron and Auer deference doctrines, presidential efforts to adopt policies in the wake of congressional gridlock and judicial responses to such initiatives, and the role of state courts in the modern administrative state.

Professor Eva Subotnik presented her paper, Copyright in Sharp Focus: An Empirical Study of Professional Photographers, co-authored with Professor Jessica Silbey (Northeastern) and Professor Peter DiCola (Northwestern), at the Third Copyright Scholarship Roundtable, held on June 8-9, 2018 at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, Philadelphia, PA.

The Roundtable is designed to be a forum for the discussion of current copyright scholarship, covering a range of methodologies, topics, and perspectives. Nine papers were chosen for discussion at the Roundtable this year.

Here’s an abstract of their paper:

Photography is among the activities most profoundly changed by digitization, mobile computing, and internet connectivity. Polaroids and photo albums have given way. Many people now enjoy the ability to take thousands of high-resolution images with their smartphone, store even more in the cloud, and share them on social media. Specialized equipment and national marketing reach are more widely accessible. Like many other creative professionals today, photographers who seek to make a living from their art are feeling pressure in the new landscape. As professional photographers have experienced these technological shifts, have they adapted their business models, their creative practices, or both? What role does the law, especially copyright law, play in how professional photographers make money and how they make photographs?

To study the working situations of professional photographers, we have conducted twenty-six interviews with individuals working in various genres and at different career stages. In this Article we explain how professional photographers approach the digital, miniaturized, and networked environment by detailing one of their most basic business decisions: pricing their services. We find that our interviewees rely heavily on an initial negotiation with clients. They rely much less on sales to other businesses, organizations, or consumers in the secondary market for photographs. As a result, we see copyright law’s primary economic function for professional photographers as supporting the creator’s bargaining power in an up-front negotiation before the images are created. This stands in contrast to a model of copyright as an anti-piracy tool. Additionally, we have observed that copyright law serves critical non-economic functions—such as maintaining image quality, subject integrity, and the photographer’s reputation—each of which relates to a core notion of professionalism. These findings suggest a path forward for copyright law focused less on preventing copying and more on facilitating bargaining leverage and professional integrity, both of which are relevant to photography’s role as the dominant communicative medium in the twenty-first century. This Article, then, is a study of law as social-economic regulation in the context of rapidly changing technology and the networked marketplace.