Nine months after its enactment, the Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act of 2009 or the Credit CARD Act of 2009 (Public Law No. 111-24) becomes effective today. The CARD Act, introduced by Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), was signed into law by President Obama on May 22, 2009. Consumer advocates praised the new legislation for putting restraints on a loosely regulated industry. Among its most prominent features, the law bars retroactive rate increases, requires more notice of impending increases and limits how quickly banks can impose late fees. In addition, it includes changes aimed at protecting young consumers from excessive credit card debt.

The Federal Reserve Board approved its final rule last month. Among other things, the rule:

• Protects consumers from unexpected increases in credit card interest rates by generally prohibiting increases in a rate during the first year after an account is opened and increases in a rate that applies to an existing credit card balance
• Prohibits creditors from issuing a credit card to a consumer who is younger than the age of 21 unless the consumer has the ability to make the required payments or obtains the signature of a parent or other cosigner with the ability to do so
• Requires creditors to obtain a consumer’s consent before charging fees for transactions that exceed the credit limit
• Limits the high fees associated with subprime credit cards
• Bans creditors from using the “two-cycle” billing method to impose interest charges
• Prohibits creditors from allocating payments in ways that maximize interest charges.

The new rule amends Regulation Z to address CARD Act amendments to the Truth in Lending Act, For more information, visit the Federal Reserve’s page What You Need to Know: New Credit Card Rules.

Unfortunately, the CARD Act’s delayed effective date has resulted in the legislation falling short of its consumer protection goals in significant ways. If the bill had become effective on the day after it was signed, it would have achieved what it set out to accomplish. Many of the new law’s important provisions do not become effective until August 2010 allowing credit card companies ample time to escape most of the provisions with real teeth.

Another major flaw of the legislation is it does not set a cap on credit card interest rates. While the new legislation puts curbs on when and how the industry can increase interest rates, it does nothing to limit card issuers’ ability to charge interest rates in excess of 30%. An amendment to put a ceiling on credit card interest rates at 15% was rejected by the Senate by an overwhelming majority. In advance of the law’s effective date, some credit card companies have tested 39.9% 59.9% and even 79.9%APR cards in recent months in the sub-prime market or people at the very bottom credit rung. See Cost of Bad-credit Credit Cards Rising Due to Reform Law posted at Personal Finance News. Interestingly, CreditCards.com reports that one of the card companies offering the 79.9% APR has called the response to its offer “phenomenal” saying that 2% of people receiving the offers have applied for the cards compared to the normal response rates of 1% to 1.2%.

Starting in August of 2010, card issuers will no longer be able to increase the interest on existing credit card balances, unless the cardholder falls 60 days behind on payments on any bill, not just their credit card bill. Credit card companies will be able to raise interest rates on future purchases at their discretion, as long as they provide 45 days notice. Further, credit card companies will not be able to increase interest rates at any time in the first year after issuing a credit card.

The controversial Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Bill of 2009 has generated a great deal of attention. The proposed law would sentence HIV positive homosexuals to death for having sex and punish homosexuals by life imprisonment. International pressure on Uganda is mounting to withdrawal the bill. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in a speech on human rights, said that the “law should not become an instrument of oppression”. Even President Obama called the proposed law “odious” in a recent speech saying “We may disagree about gay marriage, but surely we can agree that it is unconscionable to target gays and lesbians for who they are — whether it’s here in the United States or … more extremely in odious laws that are being proposed most recently in Uganda.” See Reuters report.

A close reading of the proposed law shows it to be more wide-reaching than its proponents suggest. Ugandans don’t have to be gay or have gay sex to face the death sentence under the law which makes being a “serial offender” punishable by execution. A serial offender is a person who has “previous convictions” for “homosexuality OR RELATED OFFENCES.” In other words, if a Ugandan has one prior conviction for a violation under the Bill and then has a subsequent conviction he or she will be classified as a serial offender and face execution. “Related offences” in the Bill include non-sexual acts such as:

• aiding and abetting homosexuality
• advocating same-sex relationships or LGBT rights
• having a same-sex marriage
• publicising or funding pro-LGBT organisations
• using the internet or a mobile phone for the purpose of homosexuality or its promotion
• being a person in authority who fails to report an offender to the police within 24 hours

Under the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, all convicted serial offenders are liable to execution, regardless of their sexuality so that not just LGBT Ugandans are subject to this legislation. This YouTube video explains the Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Bill in an instructive analysis .

At the start of every semester, Professor Fajans and I conduct a two hour workshop to help upper level students prepare to research and write a seminar paper.  This semester the workshop was held on February 4, 2010.  Topics discussed included research strategies, finding and selecting a topic, developing a thesis, framing arguments, footnoting and plagiarism.

If you were either unaware of the workshop or were unable to attend, you can still access all of the workshop materials online or if you prefer, you can obtain a hard copy of the materials at the library’s circulation desk.  To access the hard copy, simply ask the circulation staff for the Seminar Paper Workshop materials on course reserve.  You can also access a video recording of last semester’s workshop online or check out the dvd which is also available on course reserve in the Library.

To access the online version of the materials and the video, click on the link below.

http://guides.brooklaw.edu/seminarpaper

Today marks the 201st anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the US. Born in 1809 and known historically as president and politician, Lincoln spent most of his life (nearly twenty-five years) as a practicing lawyer. Students and scholars can access several items in the Brooklyn Law School Library collection to learn more about Lincoln the Lawyer. The newest item about Lincoln in the BLS Library collection is Lincoln the Lawyer by Brian Dirck (Call #E457.2 .D575 2007) which uses items from a database of Lincolns documents to give an overview of Lincoln’s practice. One of the most interesting chapters is the one on Lincoln’s debt practice which concludes that “insofar as Lincoln specialized in any area of law, he was a debt-collection attorney”.

Last night, I had the great pleasure of introducing Peking University law student Helen Lee to saucisse de canard at Le Monde bistro.  Helen is my honored first visitor from Beijing! How a law student’s life can change in a few short weeks…

When I was in China, Helen was investigating legal internship opportunities.  She had completed her law school course work and was finalizing a paper about taxation of intercompany income.  Just as I do for BLS law students, I  had highlighted to Helen some articles and blogs about international transfer pricing.

Fast forward to January 2010: Through Peking University, Helen obtained an interview with a Tennessee engineering firm.  This firm is developing business ties in Beijing, and hopes, in future, to hire a Chinese legal “agent.”  Helen noted that her U.S. interviewer asked her a question about international transfer pricing–fortunately, the author of one of the blogs that I recommended had addressed this issue!  So, I had a small part in helping Helen to showcase her skills.  Helen impressed the representatives of this TN firm, and by February, she had begun a two-month internship in the firm’s Knoxville office.  The firm offered her a week’s leave to celebrate the Chinese New Year with some of her friends in other U.S. states.  (The Chinese New Year, or Spring Festival, is a major holiday.  It is similar to our December holiday season in the U.S.)

Like BLS alum. Brian Barbour in Hong Kong, Helen is basically “flying solo” in Knoxville.  Since she is interning for an engineering company, Helen had to identify for her employer the databases that she needs to perform international tax research.  She noted that legal treatises are much more expensive to purchase in the U.S. Helen recently acquired a copy of the OECD Transfer Pricing Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises and was shocked by the $80+ price tag.  Too true…in my BLSL “collection development” role, I often feel the pain of the high prices charged for international tax sources.

A ninth-grade teacher in Knoxville recently invited Helen to address her students.  Some of the students’ questions made me laugh: “Are there streets on which you can drive cars in Beijing?  Do people in Beijing drive BMWs?”  [Let me tell you–there are six lane highways in Beijing, and the residents drive a wide range of cars.]  The questions that Helen fielded from these ninth-graders required more poise and resilience than any assignment she will receive during her internship! I think, however, that the Knoxville teacher needs to license Cisco’s educational videoconferencing software. (We’ve all seen the commercial featuring Ellen Page and the U.S./Chinese tots “Ni haoing” each other…I don’t know how kids that young are communicating in real time with a 13.5 hr. time difference in their school days, but that’s another story.) When a speaker mentions the name of China’s president [Hu Jintao] and a U.S. high school student replies, “Is that some type of animal?” IT IS TIME FOR AN EDUCATIONAL INTERVENTION.

Unfortunately, Helen is currently based in a section of Knoxville that does not have bus or subway service.  (The firm provided Helen with a studio apartment near her office.) Her 20-minute walk to Knoxville’s WalMart is fun, but the 20-minute return trip with grocery bags is less fun…  She did emphasize, though, that people at her firm have offered many invitations, including visits to stores on the weekends.  NYC reminds Helen of Beijing, and she has quickly adapted to our subway system. She spent a great day at the Met, and presented me with a beautiful impressionist calendar from the museum.  I am sorry that my friend’s stay here will not be longer, but I have a strong sense that this is only the first of many visits that Helen will make to the U.S.

Stories like this one (registration required) in the Washington Post report on Democrats from Vice President Joe Biden to freshman Sen. Tom Udall (NM) calling for changes to the filibuster, a century-old parliamentary device used by the minority party to draw out debate and block the wishes of the majority party. In his column in today’s NY Times, Paul Krugman states:

The truth is that given the state of American politics, the way the Senate works is no longer consistent with a functioning government. Senators themselves should recognize this fact and push through changes in those rules, including eliminating or at least limiting the filibuster. This is something they could and should do, by majority vote, on the first day of the next Senate session.

What to do about the filibuster is a topic that has been around for a long time. The US Senate website has a brief history of Rule XXII on filibusters and cloture. Views about amending the rules governing its use change depending on whether the speaker is part of the majority party or part of the minority party. The Washington Post article contrasts Minority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell, (KY) on his effort, five years ago when he was Majority Leader, to change nearly century-old filibuster rules with his oppostion to the move now. As a US Senator, Biden supported filibusters to block President Bush’s judicial nomination, most notably the nominations of Miguel Estrada, Caroline Kuhl and Priscilla Owen. Likewise, Mr. Krugman, in his March 29, 2005 column, warned of efforts by extremists to eliminate the filibuster to pack the courts with like-minded judges. Clearly, one’s opinion on the topic changes depending on whether one is in the majority or the minority.



The Brooklyn Law School Library has in its collection two worthwhile items for students interested in the history of the filibuster. Politics or Principle?: Filibustering in the United States Senate by Sarah A. Binder and Steven S. Smith (Call #JK1161 .B56 1997) has a Table on page 7 showing the Major Rule Changes Affecting the Senate Filubuster dating back to 1806. The book dispels much of the conventional wisdom about the filibuster and focuses on five major myths: that unlimited debate is a fundamental right differentiating the Senate from the House of Representatives; that the Senate’s tradition as a deliberative body requires unlimited debate; that the filibuster was once reserved for a few issues of the utmost national importance; that few measures are actually killed by filibuster, and that senators resist changing the rules because of a principled commitment.

The more recent item is Filibuster: Obstruction and Lawmaking in the U.S. Senate by Gregory John Wawro and Eric Schickler (Call # JK1161 .W39 2006). The introduction to the book has a section titled “The Centrality of Obstruction to Senate Lawmaking” that says “Whatever the reason, the Filibuster is deeply ingrained in the political culture of the United States.” It goes on to say “Even though the filibuster is the most popularly known procedural maneuver in the Congress, it has received scant scholarly attention.” Its recitation of the history of the filibuster tells the reader that before 1917, there was no way to end a Senate filibuster. In that year, the Senate adopted its first “cloture rule,” which enabled a two-thirds majority to end debate.

PrawfsBlawg recently had an interesting post The legal debate over the Senate’s rules: a dialogue that begins to discuss scholarly aspects of the US Senate as a continuing body, arguably the most powerful constitutional consideration in favor of the permissibility of entrenched Senate rules. There is a link to an SSRN paper Burying the ‘Continuing Body’ Theory of the Senate by Aaron-Andrew P. Bruhl of the University of Houston Law Center.

If you’ve ever wondered what’s in room C38 in the cellar of the library, here is a brief overview of the Brooklyn Law School Archives which are housed there.

BLS Law Notes: The Magazine of Brooklyn Law School: This publication contains news of both faculty and alumni. The archives has copies back to 1996 and it is still published today both online and in print.

Bulletins: While the school no longer publishes a hard copy bulletin or school catalog, the archives does contain the bulletins published from 1903 to 2006, the year of the last print edition. These bulletins, for those who don’t remember them, contained an introduction to the school, a description of the faculty and a listing of the courses offered.

Class Pictures: Pictures of the graduating classes from 1901 to 1969.

Commencement Programs: Programs for the graduation exercises from 1903 to date.

Justinian: The Justinian was the school newspaper, written by students for the BLS community. The Justinian was published for sixty years, from 1938 to 1998. After an interval of four years, the student newspaper was re-named BLS News and was published from 2002 to 2006. Both papers contained articles reporting on the activities of student organizations, student opinion pieces on various topics, interviews with well-known alumni, profiles of new faculty members, editorials and letters from students recommending various changes to the school’s administration. The administration does really listen to students and as I reviewed some of these editorials and letters, I noted that most of their recommendations were realized, maybe not as quickly as students wanted, but their wishes did come true!

Photo Profiles: Print copies of pictures of the BLS entering classes from 1984 to 2001. Now available online and called the “BLS Facebook.”

Yearbooks: The BLS yearbooks from 1982 to date, containing pictures of the graduating classes. Also, copies of The Chancellor which was published for the following years: 1930, 1932-1935, 1948 and 1954.

There are also miscellaneous items such as a collection of interior and exterior pictures of the school when it was located at 375 Pearl Street, pictures of the 2001 centennial celebration and the book drafts and notes from Jeffrey B. Morris, the author of Brooklyn Law School: the First 100 Years.

If you are interested in looking at any material in the archives, contact the library reference desk. Phone: 718-780-7567 or e-mail: refdesk@brooklaw.edu.

This week, the Innocence Project released 250 Exonerated: Too Many Wrongfully Convicted detailing 250 exoneration cases along with statistics on common causes of the wrongful convictions. The release of the report coincided with the exoneration of Freddie Peacock, a 60 year old man from Rochester, New York wrongfully convicted of rape 33 years ago. The exoneration was the result of DNA testing in what the Innocence Project said is the 250th DNA exoneration in the United States. Convicted in 1976 of rape, Peacock was sentenced to 20 years in prison and released on parole in 1982. Even though no longer incarcerated, he fought to prove his innocence since he left prison 28 years ago.

Some interesting findings in the report include:

• DNA exonerations in 33 states and the District of Columbia
• States with most DNA exoneration: New York (25), Texas (40) and Illinois (29)
• 76% of wrongful convictions involved eyewitness misidentification
• 50% involved either improper forensic science or forensic science without validation
• 27% relied on a false confession, admission or guilty plea
• 70% of the 250 people exonerated are people of color; Black (60%), Latino (9%), White (29%)

The Brooklyn Law School Library has additional reading on the subject of wrongful convictions in New York. See Lessons Not Learned: New York State Leads in the Number of Wrongful Convictions but Lags in Policy Reforms that Can Prevent Them, An Innocence Project Report (Call # KFN6102 .L37 2007 (INTERNET).