Joseph “Joe” Landau—the new Dean of Fordham Law School—says he didn’t grow up dreaming of becoming a lawyer. “I loved math, but I also loved debate and everyone said I would go into law,” he recalled. “I wasn’t so sure.” After graduating with highest honors at Duke University, he pursued journalism and worked as the assistant managing editor at The New Republic, where he wrote an article about same-sex sexual harassment, something that wasn’t considered against the law at the time. Shortly after, the issue was taken up by the U.S. Supreme Court. “The legal issues I was writing about…
Author: cdunlap
Fordham Law Professor Susan Scafidi, director of Fordham Law’s Fashion Law Institute, gives her thoughts on Taylor Swift’s homemade Chiefs jacket and the National Football League’s approach to merchandising and trademark infringement. “A DIY recycled jersey, or a gift to a friend, is outside of the reach of the law,” explains Susan Scafidi, the founder and director of the Fashion Law Institute at Fordham Law School. “But once the item is offered for sale, the brands’ trademark attorneys may start gearing up for their own game days.” This is presumably why Designs by Kristin bills its business as “Custom Reworked…
Fordham Law Professor Nestor Davidson, faculty director of the Urban Law Center, is quoted in an article discussing how Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is targeting politically blue communities by barring liberal policies. “If there’s a strong need for state regulation in some areas, go ahead,” said Nestor Davidson, associate dean at Fordham Law School, who has written extensively on urban policy, planning and pre-emptions. “But I think the idea of home rule is that when there are policies at the local level, you can disagree, but it’s not democratic to say the answer is ‘we’ll take the power away from…
Fordham Law Professor Richard Squire, director of the Fordham Corporate Law Center, is quoted in a Wall Street Journal article discussing Elon Musk’s willingness to pay the legal bills for people who want to sue Disney. Richard Squire, a law professor and director of the Fordham Corporate Law Center, said he couldn’t recall another instance in which a CEO backed litigation against a company when their own business wasn’t involved. “Musk’s actions here are consistent with his general desire to use his personal wealth to protect certain values that he sees as necessary to civilization,” Squire said. Read “Elon Musk…
Professor Deborah Denno, death penalty expert and founding director of Fordham Law’s Neuroscience and Law Center, appeared on CBS Mornings to discuss the potential dangers of Alabama’s controversial nitrogen hypoxia execution, scheduled to take place tonight. Watch the segment, “Alabama prepares to carry out first execution by nitrogen asphyxiation” on CBS Mornings.
Fordham Law Professor Bruce Green, director of the Louis Stein Center for Law and Ethics, published an op-ed on CNN arguing that former President Donald Trump and the 18 co-defendants in the Georgia election case cannot legally claim that they are being prosecuted unfairly on account of the prosecutors’ alleged relationship with each other. In the Georgia prosecution of Trump and his co-defendants, an alleged romantic relationship between two top prosecutors seems to be even less of a problem, as far as disinterested prosecutorial decision-making is concerned, than the alleged conflicts of interest that courts ordinarily overlook. The prosecutors’ relationship,…
Fordham Law Professor Deborah Denno, founding director of Fordham Law’s Neuroscience and Law Center, is quoted in an Atlantic article outlining Alabama’s upcoming nitrogen hypoxia execution experiment. Although three states have laws permitting the use of nitrogen hypoxia, Alabama is the first to produce a (well-redacted) protocol for carrying it out. The document emerged in court filings last year, shedding some light on what Alabama intends to do. “Yet, at no time does Alabama ever state, step-by-step, how such a nitrogen hypoxia execution shall proceed,” Fordham University law professor Deborah Denno told me. “The reader only deduces the procedure that executioners will…
Fordham Law Professor Bruce Green is quoted in a Lawfare article outlining potential conflict of interest in Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony before the United States House Select Committee on the January 6th Attack. I asked Bruce Green, a legal ethics professor at Fordham Law School, about this exchange. “The client is entitled to know who is paying her legal fees, so that she knows precisely to whom the lawyer may be beholden, and so that she can ultimately make a fully informed decision whether the lawyer is likely to represent her with undivided loyalty,” Green wrote back in an email. “Passantino’s…
Fordham Law Professor Deborah Denno, a criminal law and death penalty expert, is quoted in a Miami Times article describing federal prosecutors decision to seek capital punishment for a white supremacist who killed 10 Black people in Buffalo, NY. “It’s a mass shooting, and mass shootings have only increased over the years and gotten worse. It was also racially motivated, and that seems to be a huge factor here,” said Deborah Denno, a Fordham University law professor who studies the death penalty. “Garland is sort of indicating what he thinks is important, what would drive him to ask for the…
Fordham Law Professor Abner Greene, a constitutional law expert, is quoted in a New York Times piece discussing claims from former President Trump’s attorneys saying he is immune from all prosecution unless first impeached and convicted in Congress. Mr. Sauer’s reading on Tuesday of what lawyers call the impeachment judgment clause did not impress legal scholars. Abner S. Greene, a law professor at Fordham University, said that “the impeachment arguments are sure losers — both that the president may be criminally prosecuted only if impeached and convicted, and that the president may not be criminally prosecuted if impeached and not convicted.” Read…