On June 8, nearly two dozen legal scholars gathered at Fordham Law School for the annual Criminal Justice Ethics Schmooze in which they presented and discussed papers on the professional conduct and regulation of prosecutors, defense lawyers, and their offices. Organized and hosted this year by the Law School’s Stein Center for Law and Ethics, the informal, seminar-style forum encourages scholarship on criminal prosecution and criminal defense by supporting and incubating writing at the early stage.
The invitation-only event, inaugurated at Fordham Law in 2014, is organized by several New York-area law school faculty with an academic interest in the work of criminal prosecution and criminal defense.
“In 2014, when the Criminal Justice Ethics Schmooze began, only a handful of legal scholars were writing about ethics in criminal practice,” said Fordham Law Professor Bruce Green, Louis Stein Chair and director of the Stein Center. “Their ranks have expanded significantly owing in part to this gathering and the encouragement and support it offers. Over the past decade, dozens of scholars from across the country have participated in this Schmooze one or more times, and dozens of drafts shared at this gathering have resulted in important published works.”
The forum has since rotated among several of its co-sponsors’ institutions across New York, and continues to expand and support the community of junior and senior scholars interested in writing about prosecutors and defense lawyers from a range of perspectives. This year’s participants included Fordham Law’s Green and Bennett Capers as well as legal scholars from other institutions who write in the field. A particular objective is to support the work of junior scholars, including those who have not yet begun their teaching careers. This year’s Schmooze highlighted junior scholars’ drafts, while more senior scholars joined in offering comments and suggestions.
“This event brings us together to build connections across the scholarly community,” said Professor Russell Gold of the University of Alabama School of Law. “There’s no one better in the business than Bruce Green in terms of generous support for colleagues and building community.”
“When I look around the room, I’m seeing and hearing from 15 people I’ve never met, but have read their work before,” added Adam Gershowitz, Vice Dean and R. Hugh and Nolie Haynes Professor of Law at William & Mary Law School, who attended the forum for the first time this year. “These connections are valuable and show the great quality of what’s being produced.”
About the Stein Center
The Stein Center was established through the generosity of Louis Stein of the Class of 1926 and his family, including his granddaughter Marilyn Bellet of the Class of 1976. Among its other initiatives and projects are an annual colloquium on the legal profession hosted at Fordham in conjunction with the Fordham Law Review, and two other rotating scholarly gatherings: the Legal Ethics Schmooze, which is a biannual gathering of legal academics whose scholarship focuses generally on legal ethics and the legal profession, and the A2J Roundtable, which is an annual discussion of early-stage writings on access to justice by academics from varied scholarly perspectives.