Eight members of the Fordham Law faculty recently spoke about the big ideas that drive their work—from frontline workers’ rights to changing power dynamic between cities and states to privacy and crime control—as part of a limited video series.
“Our nation is at a crossroads as we grapple with fundamental questions covering a range of issues that define our society and shape our culture,” said Dean Matthew Diller. “Legal scholarship plays a critical role in helping us understand these issues, the backdrop against which they arise, and in identifying promising ways forward that are true to our core values.”
Their ideas are spotlighted below.
THE BIG IDEA: Essential Workers’ Rights
Professor James Brudney serves as the Joseph Crowley Chair in Labor and Employment Law at Fordham Law School. Professor Brudney has dedicated most of his career and scholarship to workers’ rights. Before becoming a law professor, he served as chief counsel and staff director of the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Labor. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit and the world adjusted to a new way of life, labor and employment issues pertaining to frontline workers became the focus of Professor Brudney’s scholarship. In his latest article, “Forsaken Heroes: COVID-19 and Frontline Essential Workers,” published in Fordham Urban Law Journal, Professor Brudney explores the inadequate protections accorded to frontline workers and proposes a legal framework to change the system.
THE BIG IDEA: Unmasking Latino Anti-Black Bias
Professor Tanya Hernández is the Archibald R. Murray Professor of Law and an internationally recognized comparative race law expert. She focuses her scholarship on the study of comparative race relations and anti-discrimination law. Professor Hernández excavates the otherwise silenced voices of the Afro-Latino and African American victims of Latino anti-Blackness. Her work aims to aid those who care about the pursuit of racial equality, by providing a more expansive view of the greater swath of the population that is harmed by anti-Black bias. In her upcoming book, Racial Innocence: Unmasking Latino Anti-Black Bias and the Struggle for Equality, Professor Hernández explores these further.
THE BIG IDEA: Privacy, Equality, and Crime Control
A former federal prosecutor,
Professor Bennett Capers’ academic interests include the relationship between race, gender, technology, and criminal justice. At Fordham Law, Professor Capers serves as the director of the Center on Race, Law and Justice. He has recently focused on how technology can help or hurt the drive for equality in the criminal justice system. In his article, “
Afrofuturism, Critical Race Theory, and Policing in the Year 2044,” published in
New York University Law Review, Professor Capers looks to the future of policing and criminal justice in a “majority-minority” country.
THE BIG IDEA: Modernizing the Constitution
Professor Julie Suk is an interdisciplinary legal scholar, focusing on women as constitution-makers at the intersection of law, history, sociology, and politics. Professor Suk’s interest in constitutional and social change has led her to explore the twenty-first century revival of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) in her latest book, We the Women: The Unstoppable Mothers of the Equal Rights Amendment. We the Women maps out the past and future of the ERA and tells the stories of the forgotten women lawmakers and lawyers who shaped it over a century. Professor Suk’s scholarship calls for the modernization of the U.S. Constitution to make it more inclusive and responsive to twenty-first century concerns.
THE BIG IDEA: Rethinking Mutual Fund Voting
Professor Sean J. Griffith is an expert in corporate and securities law and serves as the T.J. Maloney Chair in Business Law at Fordham Law. In his latest research, Professor Griffith posits answers to questions surrounding mutual fund voting, specifically when mutual funds should vote on behalf of their investors and when they should not. In “Opt-In Stewardship: Toward an Optimal Delegation of Mutual Fund Voting Authority,” an article published in Texas Law Review, Professor Griffith argues that voting authority depends on two things: information and purpose.
THE BIG IDEA: Combating Inequality in the Nonprofit Sector
Associate Professor Atinuke Adediran joined the Fordham Law faculty at the start of the 2021 academic year. She is an interdisciplinary legal scholar with expertise on corporate social responsibility, nonprofit organizations, and the legal profession. Her scholarly articles, “Nonprofit Board Composition,” forthcoming in the Ohio State Law Journal, and “Disclosures for Equity,” forthcoming in the Columbia Law Review, address the critical lack of awareness of inequality in the nonprofit sector, and how to use the law to address inequality in philanthropic funding.
THE BIG IDEA: Re-assessing How Cities and States Govern
THE BIG IDEA: Globalization’s Uneven Impact
Professor Jennifer Gordon focuses her scholarship on immigration and labor law, and the struggle for social justice. More specifically, Professor Gordon examines how globalization has opened up the world to a freer flow of goods, money, and services across borders, while the laws surrounding the movement of people and the rights of workers have become more restricted. In her scholarly work, Professor Gordon critiques this contrast and asks how a fairer regime might look. In her forthcoming article in Law and Social Inquiry, “In the Zone: Work at the Intersection of Trade and Migration,” Professor Gordon examines the global regulation of trade and its relationship with migration.
