Susan Scafidi was quoted in a CGTN America article about how US tariffs under Trump administration are affecting handbag makers. The Trump administration’s trade war with China started with tariffs on steel and aluminum. At the time, the U.S. president said tariffs wouldn’t target consumer goods. But this September he added handbags to a growing list of items to be hit with a 10 percent tariff. It caught many handbag makers off guard. Now many are scrambling to adjust. OMG Accessories’ handbags used to be made entirely in China. Today roughly 90 percent of them are made in Myanmar.…
Author: Newsroom
John Pfaff was quoted in a Fortune article about race-baiting and the criminal justice system. A new, racially divisive ad focused loosely on immigration and created by the Trump campaign, recalls an earlier political ad designed to stoke the fear of white voters. … John F. Pfaff, an author and professor at Fordham Law School, says “the Willie Horton Effect” continues to plague criminal justice reform efforts to this day. “Horton was an outlier—more than 99% of those allowed to go home on leaves returned without incident,” he explains. But otherwise smart attempts to reduce prison populations are derailed…
Susan Scafidi, director of the Fashion Law Institute, appeared in a CBS News video where she discusses the difference between cultural appreciation and appropriation. In the case of blackface, it’s not just trying to look like someone else. It is a whole history of…stereotyping, with all of the worst possible stereotypes, of ignorance and criminality and laziness and things like that, that go into depicting a whole race of people as some how less than… Watch full video.
Deborah Denno was quoted in a Ledger-Enquirer article about the electric chair as a form of capital punishment. Denno, a law professor at Fordham who has studied execution methods for more than 25 years, said Leuchter filled a void. Often “the most qualified people don’t want to be involved” in executions, she said. Even after he was no longer welcome as a prison contractor, Denno said prison officials continued to contact Leuchter for help “because they literally had no one else to go to.” … Denno said electric chairs have “a history of botches that has only gotten worse.”…
Deborah Denno was quoted in an Associated Press article about the execution by electric chair of murderer Edmund Zagorski. Tennessee’s chair, which hasn’t been used since 2007, is just one of many execution devices Leuchter worked on between 1979 and 1990, according to an article by Fordham University professor Deborah Denno in the William and Mary Law Review. In addition to electric chairs, Leuchter built, refurbished and consulted on gas chambers, lethal injection machines and a gallows for at least 27 states. … Denno, a law professor at Fordham who has studied execution methods for more than 25 years, said…
Deborah Denno was quoted in a Fox News article about the execution by electric chair of murderer Edmund Zagorski. As his planned Thursday execution draws near, Tennessee death row inmate Edmund Zagorski has been moved to “death watch,” according to reports. Meanwhile, the maker of the state’s electric chair, which is expected to be used for the first time since 2007, says he’s worried that the device might not work as planned. … [F]ordham University professor Deborah Denno notes that electric chairs have “a history of botches that has only gotten worse.” Read full article.
A review of Invisible: The Forgotten Story of the Black Woman Lawyer Who Took Down America’s Most Powerful Mobster, a book on the life of alumna Eunice Carter ’32, was published in the New York Law Journal. Eunice’s aspiration was to become a judge. As sensitively recounted by the author, she was frustrated in this quest by two powerful historical forces. First, Harlem became increasingly Democratic starting in the 1930s. Second, Eunice’s brother gained notoriety as a communist. Thus, Eunice became an indirect victim of McCarthyism. To her dying day, Eunice was convinced that she missed out on a judgeship…
Howard Erichson was quoted in a Law360 article about the latest Johnson and Johnson lawsuit, which claims the company’s talc products might be contaminated with asbestos. Weil Gotshal & Manges LLP this month knocked out claims that a woman’s alleged exposure to asbestos in Johnson & Johnson’s baby powder contributed to her mesothelioma, with firm attorneys taking a more aggressive stance than other counsel in prior cases by blasting the matter as a “sham” created by her lawyers. … That plaintiffs have won some talc verdicts puts pressure on J&J “to think about settling at some point, but the fact…
Alumna Rhonda Cunningham Holmes ’97 has been appointed the new executive director of Legal Counsel for the Elderly, an affiliate of AARP, providing free legal and social work services to Washington D.C. seniors in need. Legal Counsel for the Elderly’s (LCE) Board of Directors today announced the appointment of Rhonda Cunningham Holmes as its new executive director, effective Nov. 5. Holmes succeeds Jan Allen May who retired in July after 41 years with LCE. Rhonda Cunningham Holmes is an attorney with executive management experience in diverse legal and business environments. She served as the deputy director of the Washington…
Adjunct Professor Alison Taylor wrote an op-ed for Harvard Business Review on how CEOs should handle communications on sensitive socio-political issues. CEO activism, the growing trend of top executives speaking out on sensitive social and political issues, has been labeled the “new normal.” But behind the scenes, executives do not feel in control. They are struggling to anticipate and respond to intensifying pressure from the public, investors, and — above all — their employees. There are conflicting views of how CEOs should proceed. One survey suggests the public wants chief executives to lead on social change without waiting for the…