Law Schools Use Merit Scholarships To Boost Rankings

Brooklyn Law School Dean Nicholas Allard recently sat down with Bloomberg Law’s Lee Pacchia for an interview. In the 13 minute interview, Dean Allard said that law schools need to find ways to cut the expense of merit scholarships, which they “use to buy students . . . with high LSATs” to improve the schools’ US News rankings. The money would be better spent on scholarships for students with financial need, he says. See the  video of the interview below:

Episode 088: Conversation with Prof. Nelson Tebbe

Episode 088: Conversation with Prof. Nelson Tebbe.mp3

This podcast features a conversation with Brooklyn Law School Professor of Law Nelson Tebbe who teaches courses on constitutional law and religious freedom and other subjects. Professor Tebbe and University of Virginia Law Professor Micah Schwartzman posted on SCOTUSblog an entry entitled Symposium: The puzzle of Town of Greece v. Galloway.  It concerned the U.S. Supreme Court’s acceptance of a petition to hear its first legislative prayer case in 30 years involving the town of Greece, New York which has been holding Christian prayers, typically conducted by local ministers, at town meetings since 1999. In a unanimous decision, the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals decided that the prayer practice was unconstitutional. The case is the first legislative prayer case the Supreme Court’s decision in Marsh v. Chambers in 1983, which upheld the constitutionality of government funding for chaplains.

In the conversation, Professor Tebbe also discusses the upcoming symposium, Religious Freedom and Equal Treatment: An International Look, scheduled for Friday, October 11, 2013 (9:00 am – 4:30 pm) and Saturday, October 12, 2013 (9:00 am – 2:00 pm) at Brooklyn Law School’s Subotnick Center, 250 Joralemon Street in Brooklyn, New York. The conference will focus on how legal systems address threats to religious freedom, as well as the use of religious liberty claims to limit equal treatment. Distinguished global experts from the academic and advocacy communities will discuss legal and advocacy challenges in different parts of the globe; offer new theoretical and doctrinal approaches to the potential conflict between these most fundamental individual rights; broaden the academic debate and develop new advocacy strategies; and build lasting cross-border networks among academics and advocates. The conference is open to everyone. Those interested in attending can RSVP here.

Symposium on Choice of Law in International Commercial Contracts

On October 18, 2013, from 9:15 a.m. to 3:15 p.m. at Brooklyn Law School’s Subotnick Center, 250 Joralemon Street Brooklyn, New York, the Dennis J. Block Center for the Study of International Business Law and the Brooklyn Journal of International Law will host a symposium, What Law Governs International Commercial Contracts? Divergent Doctrines and the New Hague Principles. The event should be of interest to private international lawyers and the international arbitration community. The agenda and participants of the symposium are available here.

Given the continued dramatic growth of international commerce, the Symposium will address the increasingly critical question: What law governs the contracts behind the commerce? Key issues include:

  • In much of the world, courts accept the choice of the parties to a contract as to what law will govern it – but this principle is not accepted everywhere. Even in nations where it is accepted, differences abound.
  • Should the ability of parties to select the law governing their contract be approached differently in the increasingly prevalent world of international commercial arbitration?
  • In many arbitral systems, parties may select not only the law of a sovereign state, but also “rules of law” emanating from non-state sources, such as “principles” promulgated by international organizations. Should courts show the same deference to the parties’ choice of non-state law?

The Hague Principles on Choice of Law in International Contracts, prepared by the Hague Conference on Private International Law and now nearing completion, are expected to be quite influential, both in establishing the principle of party autonomy to select the law governing commercial contracts and in developing the principle and its limits. This symposium addresses the important issues described above – from the perspectives of both current law and the “best practices” represented by the draft Hague Principles.

Bluebooking With Success Workshops: 10/31 & 11/4

BLS Library Director and Blue Book expert Janet Sinder will again hold a series of workshops on using the Blue Book this fall.  These workshops are geared to first year students, but open to all.  No reservations are needed.

The workshops will be held on Thursday, October 31, 2013, from 4:00pm to 5:00pm in Room 401 and on Monday, November 4, 2013 from 5:00pm to 6:00pm in Room 601.

Hope to see you there!

Court Appoints Stop & Frisk Advisory Council

An article in the New York Law Journal reports that US District Judge Shira Scheindlin for the Southern District of New York has appointed a panel of law professors to assist a court-appointed facilitator in developing remedies in the case of Floyd v. City of New York, the stop-and-frisk litigation. Brooklyn Law School Professor of Law I. Bennett Capers will serve as chair of the Academic Advisory Council to assist facilitator Nicholas Turner of the VERA Institute of Justice. Turner will work with the NYPD and the Academic Advisory Council in a mediation process to develop  reforms. Longer-term changes include a trial run of body-worn cameras in the precinct in each borough that saw the highest number of stops.

The second part of Judge Scheindlin’s opinion in last month’s ruling lays out her remedies. Those include “immediate changes” to the NYPD’s implementation of stop-and-frisk, such as revisions to NYPD training materials, more thorough documentation of stops through a new form and better and more thorough activity log records, as well as a better standard for the NYPD’s supervising officers to assess the constitutionality of the stops their subordinates are making.

Other members of the panel are retired Brooklyn Law Professor William Hellerstein, Ian Ayres of Yale Law School, Alafair Burke of the School of Law at Hofstra University, Miriam Gohara, visiting assistant professor at Columbia Law School, Taja-Nia Henderson of Rutgers School of Law-Newark, Tanya Hernandez of Fordham University School of Law, Conrad Johnson of Columbia Law School, K. Babe Howell of CUNY Law School, Olatunde Johnson of Columbia Law School, Tracey Meares of Yale Law School, Janice Tudy-Jackson of Columbia Law School and Steve Zeidman of CUNY School of Law.

The appointment of the Council comes one day after the Judge’s Order denying New York City’s request for a stay pending appeal of her appointment of a police department monitor to help develop and implement reforms of stop-and-frisk practices. The city has moved for an expedited appeal in the case the case and is expected to ask the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit for a stay.

For background information on the issue of stop and frisk, see SARA, the BLS Library Catalog, for the 27 page internet report Stop-and-Frisk 2011 NYCLU Briefing.

Seminar Paper Workshop

This past Monday Professor Elizabeth Fajans and Librarian Kathy Darvil hosted a workshop on how to effectively research and write your seminar paper.  Topics covered included sources for selecting your topic, sources for researching your topic, and how to effectively organize and write your paper.  If you were unable to attend the workshop, there is no need to fear.  Kathy Darvil created an online research guide to support the seminar.  The guide is available at guides.brooklaw.edu/seminarpaper.  From the guide’s landing page, you can access a recording of last year’s presentation, Professor Fajan’s slideshow on how to write your seminar paper, and Kathy Darvil’s online presentation on how to research your seminar paper.  Also listed and described on the guide are all the resources (as well as several others) that were discussed in the workshop.  If you should need further help selecting or researching your topic, please stop by the reference desk for assistance.

New Books List for September 2013

The Brooklyn Law School Library has released its New Books List – September 12, 2013. The list is accessible on the SARA Library Catalog at this link. Among the 67 titles are these seven with particular interest to law students as they prepare for the practice of law:

Acccelerated 2-Year J.D. Programs

Earlier this week, Brooklyn Law School’s Dean and Professor of Law Nicholas W. Allard hosted a Panel discussion called New Realities in Law: A Response to President Obama’s “Two-Year J.D.” Suggestion. The session took place after comments at a town hall-style meeting last week by President Obama who said, “I believe that law schools would probably be wise to think about being two years instead of three years.”  BLS has begun an important conversation about the new world of law, emphasizing new changes underway; the response from law schools, including “Brooklyn 2-3-4” and other innovations to enhance educational value; the most pressing needs among employers; and new opportunities for students entering the legal marketplace. Among the panelists were American Bar Association President James Silkenat, New York Law School Dean and President and Professor of Law Anthony C. Crowell, New York City Corporation Counsel Michael Cardozo, and Presiding Justice Randall Eng of New York’s  Appellate Division, Second Judicial Department. Brooklyn Law School created the first two year J.D. program in the NY metropolitan area in May 2013 when its Board of Trustees approved the start of the program in 2014.

A search of Hein Online shows that the idea of a two-year law school program dates back more than 40 year ago when the late Preble Stolz, a Law Professor at the University of California at Berkeley, wrote an article The Two-Year Law School: The Day the Music Died, 25 J. Legal Educ. 37 (1972-1973). The article notes that the proposal of a two-year law school goes back to 1972 in New Orleans when a proposal to authorize some law schools to grant the first degree in law after two years of study was killed. The idea was contained in a revision of the standards for accreditation of law schools by the ABA. Years later, an article called The Happy Charade: An Empirical Examination of the Third Year of Law School, 51 J. Legal Educ. 235 (2001), began with the ancient law school proverb “In the first year of law school, they scare you to death. In the second year, they work you to death. In the third year, they bore you to death.” There is more at a recent post on Balkanization titled The Proposal for a 2 Year Law Degree: Deja Vu All Over Again?

Welcome to the 1L Class

The 2013 convocation held earlier this month was the first opportunity for the incoming class at Brooklyn Law School to listen to Dean Nicholas Allard in the ceremonial courtroom of the Brooklyn Federal Courthouse on Cadman Plaza East. Dean Allard commented: “The walk you just completed with your new classmates from the front of the Law School plaza, through the heart of the Downtown Brooklyn community and into this majestic hall of justice, drives home several important facts: that you are not alone, that you are part of many communities, that our law school is inextricably intertwined – by virtue of location and intentional design – with the center of the legal profession and institutions of justice as the only law school in the largest borough in the City of New York, that a microcosm of the world is within an arm’s-length radius of Joralemon Street.”

Allard commended the students for choosing a law school education during a down economy. Noting that the legal profession has changed, he cautioned students that traditional legal jobs “will likely never return.” He said. “A good legal education, which is expensive and includes demanding reading, writing, scholarly dialogue and practical training, is more necessary, more valuable than at any time before.” Allard’s mention of the high cost of legal education and his remark that traditional legal jobs are quickly diminishing should remind students not to base the cost of their education on the expectation that they will receive a traditional law firm job upon graduation. The Dean said it can also give students the chance to “take a company public” or represent “an entrepreneur working at one of hundreds of start-ups in the Brooklyn Tech Triangle.” Attending a law school in Brooklyn will allow students to be “Brooklyn ready” which means “that we will make sure that you will be ready to be productive members of the 21st century profession from day one.  [It means] being able to handle any curve-ball that a world of changes throws your way, being able to answer tough questions, and forging solutions to new problems that no one has seen or even thought of yet.”

The librarians at the BLS Library have created a Research Guide called 1L Resources, Tips and Tools which describes print and digital resources in the BLS Library to help 1Ls succeed at Brooklyn Law School. The guide has four pages with sub-pages of useful content. See below:

Library Information

  • Borrowing Materials
  • Equipment, Printing and Copying
  • Finding Course Materials

First Year Basics

1L Court Study Aids

  • Civil Procedure
  • Constitutional Law
  • Contracts
  • Criminal Law
  • Property
  • Torts

Research, Writing and Citation

  • Legal Citations
  • Legal Research
  • Legal Writing and Analysis

Access Library Databases from home

Virtually every library database available to you on campus can also be accessed from home, most without a password (with the exception of BloombergLaw, Westlaw, and Lexis – they always require passwords). However, in order to access databases such as HeinOnline, Academic Search Premier, and other useful resources without coming all the way to school, you must first implement the Proxy Server Instructions so that you are communicating with these websites via the BLS server. Instructions for the browsers that work best with these databases can be found on the law school’s website. Please note that once you set up the Proxy Server, you will be required to enter your BLS Username and Password each time you attempt to access the web on the selected browser.  Therefore, you may want to use a browser different from the one you normally use for web browsing.

If you have any difficulty setting up your browser using these instructions, feel free to stop by the Reference Desk and a librarian will be happy to assist you.