St. John's University Law Faculty Blog

Professor Christine Lazaro participated on the panel, “Staying Ahead of the Curve: Hot Topics in Securities Arbitration and Future Trends in 2019,” at the PLI program, Securities Arbitration 2019.

Professor Lazaro discussed recent cases, as well as issues impacting investors and the securities arbitration forum.  Additionally, Professor Lazaro co-authored an article for program with Teresa Verges entitled, Technology in Legal Practice: Keeping Ethical Obligations in Mind.  In addition to appearing in the program materials, the article will be published in PLI Current: The Journal of PLI Press.

On September 25, Professor Ray Warner presented his paper, Implementation of the Restructuring Directive: Enforcing Reorganization Plans in the United States, at the INSOL Europe Academic Forum on Harmonisation of Insolvency and Restructuring Law in the EU in Copenhagen, Denmark.

G. Ray Warner

Professor Rosemary Salomone was extensively quoted in an article that appeared in the September 5th issue of University World News.

Rosemary Salomone

The article, “Language in Universities – No One-Size-Fits-All Solution,” makes note of a recent policy adopted in Algeria ordering universities to teach in English rather than in French, which an overwhelming majority of Algerians supported in a national poll. It more extensively discusses a recent law adopted in Morocco setting aside teaching through Arabic in favor of foreign languages, and particularly French, in science, mathematics, and technical subjects in secondary schools. The idea is to put public schools on an equal academic footing with the country’s elite French private schools, and to prepare students for university programs that are primarily offered in French. Critics argue that the law violates the Moroccan constitution, which states that Arabic and Amazigh are the official languages of the state. Some would even prefer English to French for political and practical reasons. Professor Salomone suggests that there is no “one-size-fits-all” or “all-or-nothing” resolution to any language policy and that changes demand time and thoughtful planning, as Rwanda learned when it moved from French to English. She maintains that the question needs to be considered in light of the history, politics, and legal status of the official language or languages in each country, how the people define themselves as a nation, their feelings toward France as the “colonizer,” what problems they are trying to remedy, and what benefits they foresee. In view of those factors, she agrees that the changes in Algeria and Morocco are both reasonable.

On August 8, 2019, Professor John Q. Barrett spoke on a plenary session panel, “And Then They Came for Us: The Perils of Silence,” at the American Bar Association annual meeting in San Francisco.

The program began with a showing of the award-winning documentary, “And Then They Came for Us,” on U.S. incarceration of Japanese-Americans during World War II.

L-R:  Professors Barrett & Bannai, ABA President Bob Carlson, & Mr. Minami

Following the film, Professor Barrett spoke about lawyers’ conduct and inaction in Nazi Germany, about the Japanese-American cases in the U.S. Supreme Court during World War II, and about the work of lawyers at the Nuremberg trials of Nazi leaders following the war.  (For a press report on the panel, click here).

Professor Barrett’s fellow panelists were San Francisco lawyer Dale Minami and Seattle University law professor Lorraine Bannai.  They spoke about their 1980s representation of Fred Korematsu in the litigation that won the writ of coram nobis that negated his 1942 conviction for violating the military order that excluded him, because he was Japanese-American, from the U.S. west coast.