Sarah Seo ’23 has been selected as the inaugural recipient of the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund Policy Fellowship. Seo will be joining the Legal Defense Fund (LDF)’s New York office this fall for a two-year period to work on issues related to education and economic justice. After completing a policy internship with LDF this past year, Seo said she was ecstatic to be returning to one of the most prestigious civil rights organizations in the country as a fellow. “So many amazing advocates have worked at LDF, and I knew I wanted to be a part of its…
Author: Sejla Rizvic
The Center on Asian Americans and the Law hosted a “Professionalism and Career Advice Panel Discussion” for Fordham Law students featuring three accomplished Asian American speakers, who spoke about their legal careers and how they got to where they are today. The panelists included U.S. Magistrate Judge Sanket J. Bulsara of the Eastern District of New York; Una A. Dean, vice president, assistant general counsel, and head of global investigations at IBM, and Richard K. Kim, a partner at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. The event was moderated by Professor Thomas H. Lee, Leitner Family Professor of International Law and…
On June 12, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced that Fordham Law Professor Atinuke Adediran will serve the agency as a senior advisor on racial justice on a yearlong Intergovernmental Personnel Act (IPA) assignment. Adediran will be working in the newly-formed Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights, where she will advise on policy and legal issues related to race equity and the environment. She is tasked with analyzing the administration of the EPA’s civil rights, affirmative employment, and diversity programs, making policy recommendations on national civil rights issues, and implementing strategic plans for civil rights programs. The advisory…
Shanice Scantlebury ’25, Yannick Twumasi ’25, and Cristian Vega ’25 have been named the 2023 recipients of the Hon. Deborah A. Batts Scholarship. The scholarship was established in 2021 soon after the death of Judge Batts, a U.S. District Judge for the Southern District of New York and the Law School’s first Black faculty member to receive tenure at Fordham Law. Working with Fordham Law’s Center on Race, Law and Justice, Batts Scholars are dedicated to using their legal education to promote social justice, civil rights, and equality. We spoke with this year’s recipients about their work on social justice…
Fordham Law students Daniel Akilov ’24 and Makayla Ashe ’24 won first place at the Cardozo BMI Entertainment and Media Law Moot Court Competition in March, triumphing against 14 other teams. The competition centered around trademark, copyright, and NFTs—areas of law neither Akilov nor Ashe were familiar with before they began preparing for it. “In some ways, the most difficult part of [the competition] is that you are exploring an entirely new area of the law and have to have a working knowledge of it before you even start practicing oral arguments,” said Ashe. The team turned to their coach,…
During this year’s diploma ceremony, members of the Class of 2023 as well as faculty members and administrators were presented with awards in recognition of their outstanding achievements and contributions to the Law School. Select Awards for Faculty and Administrators THE DEAN’S MEDAL OF RECOGNITION Helen Hadjiyannakis Bender, Associate Professor of Law Dean’s Medal of Recognition 2023 | Prof. Helen Hadjiyannakis Bender from Fordham Law School on Vimeo. This award, the highest honor the Dean can confer, is presented to a person selected by the Dean who has shown outstanding commitment to the ideals of the Law School through their…
This year’s Fordham Law Review Symposium was particularly special, in part because it celebrated the legacy of the Hon. Robert A. Katzmann, former chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Judge Katzmann, a longtime friend of Fordham Law School who passed away in 2021, took an outsized role in reforming immigrant representation in New York. The symposium examined the impact of one of his many successful initiatives, the influential Katzmann Immigration Study Group, which marks its 15th anniversary this year. Among other achievements, Judge Katzmann and the study group developed the idea that would become…
Alejandro Mayorkas, seventh secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, engaged in a compelling keynote conversation about the most significant immigration questions of the day. The keynote conversation was a part of the Fordham Law Review’s spring symposium on March 9, which focused on the impact of the Study Group on Immigrant Representation, which was initiated by the late Judge Robert A. Katzmann of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Two years since his appointment, Mayorkas emphasized the DHS’s successes, despite strong headwinds. “When we stepped in, hundreds and hundreds of families had been separated, and…
Fordham Law student Ben Lew ’23 has been selected as the winner of this year’s Robert T. Matsui Annual Writing Competition. Held by the Asian Pacific American Bar Association Educational Fund, the competition seeks to encourage legal scholarship on issues of importance to the Asian American community. This is the second year in a row that a Fordham Law student has won the top prize. Lew’s award-winning paper examines the 1955 case Naim v. Naim, which dealt with the issue of interracial marriage. Han Say Naim, a Chinese immigrant, and his wife, Ruby, a white woman, had been married in…
The Fordham Urban Law Journal celebrated its 50th anniversary by bringing together speakers from both the criminal defense and prosecution side for a discussion about the future of criminal prosecution. The event was co-sponsored by the Stein Center for Law and Ethics, and the Center on Race, Law and Justice. “Issues of criminal justice are at the forefront of so much of the public discourse,” said Dean Matthew Diller. “On one side, there are calls for limitations on the power of the prosecutor’s office, police departments, mass incarceration, and complaints about overcriminalization. At the same time, there are calls for…