Spring 2013 Cornell Law Forum by Cornell Law School

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Why Diversity Matters pag e 12

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Spring 2013 When East Met West: 125 Years of Japanese Law Students at Cornell Law School

125 Years Later: Harada and Naruse of 2013

Spring 2013

Building a Better Transactional Lawyer: New Courses Bolster Deal-Making Savvy Winter Cup Moot Court Named for Faust Rossi â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;60

CORNELL LAW

Rediscover the Law School Reunion Weekend 2013 will be a wonderful opportunity for you to return to Ithaca to visit with the professors and classmates you remember with great fondness and to see the changes that the Law School has made since you were last here. There is a great selection of programs for you to choose from during this special weekend. Please visit our website or call to make your reservations now. The Law School community looks forward to welcoming you back to Myron Taylor Hall.

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Cornell Law School

Reunion weekend 2013 JUNE 6~8

get connected at: www.lawschool.cornell.edu/alumni/reunion/index.cfm or call: 607.255.5251 for more information

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Volume 39, N o. 1

A N o te fro m the D e a n

W he n E a s t M e t We s t: 1 2 5 Ye a rs of Ja p a n e s e L a w S tu d e n ts a t C o r ne l l

Kevin M. Clermont

1 2 5 Ye a rs L a te r: H a ra d a a nd N a ru s e of 2 0 1 3 by

Kenneth Berkowitz

W hy D i v e rs i ty M a tte rs by

L i n da B r a n d t M y e r s

P rofi l e s

Leslie Richards-Yellen ‘84

Maria Fernandez-Williams ‘92

Park Byoung-Day, LL.M. ‘91

Bri e fs

Building a Better Transactional Lawyer: New Courses Bolster Deal-Making Savvy

Symposium on Law, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship Brings Classroom Lessons to Life

Law School Hosts First Annual Empirical Patent Law Conference

Cornell Law Professors Write A Guide to Teaching Lawyering Skills

W. Bradley Wendel Wins Levy Award for Ethics

A Significant Win for Convict Defended by Innocence Clinic

Juvenile Justice Clinic Launched to Represent Defendants Facing Life Sentences

Conference and Report Address Sexual Violence against Girls in Southern Africa

U.S. Treasury Department’s Robert Dohner Delivers 2012 Clarke Lecture

Law School Hosts Debate on the Future of Firearms Law

A Temporary and Fond Farewell to the Edwin Dawson Rare Book Room

F a c ul ty N o te s

A l u mni

Winter Cup Moot Court Named for Faust Rossi ‘60

Class of 1985 Launches New Scholarship

How to Make the Most of Your Cornell Law School Education: Alumni Share Their Stories

FROM THE DEAN

Today, our student body represents a range of cultural, ethnic, racial, and economic groups, varies in age and experience, and hails from nearly every state in the United States and countries around the globe.

Dear Alumni and Friends:

“…any person…any study” That is the motto of Cornell University. In a letter about the design of the first official university seal, Ezra Cornell wrote to university president Andrew Dickson White on February 23, 1868, “after much discussion…my name should follow the legend thus, ‘I would found an institution where any person can find instruction in any study.’” This motto was also spoken in Cornell’s first inaugural address on October 7, 1868. When Cornell’s department of law opened its doors to students in the fall of 1887, this motto, more aspirational than practical in those early years, lived at the core of the new school’s vision. The school made a commitment to diversity in all its forms from the beginning. Our law school was the second in the country to graduate an

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African American, George Washington Fields, class of 1890. We were also among the first to graduate a woman, Mary Kennedy Brown, in 1893. By comparison, that’s a full sixty years before Harvard graduated a woman. International students have been a part of the student body from the beginning. In this issue, you will read about the first two: Keigo Harada ‘89 and Masayasu Naruse ‘89, both from Japan. This feature, written by Professor Kevin Clermont, explores the Law School’s history with Japan, and offers a glimpse into what law school was like for the inaugural class. You’ll also meet two of our current LL.M. students who share the same surnames as our first Japanese students. Neither knows of a familial relation, but some people have found the coincidence in our 125th year to be

auspicious. In all the years between 1887 and 2013, we have had more students from Japan than any other country outside of the United States. Indeed, Tokyo has our fourth largest alumni base, after New York, Washington D.C., and Boston. But in these 125 years, we have never had another Japanese student who shared one of these surnames, until now. Today, our student body represents a range of cultural, ethnic, racial, and economic groups, varies in age and experience, and hails from nearly every state in the United States and countries around the globe. In this year’s entering J.D. class of 2015, 40 percent of students identify as racial or ethnic minorities and 44 percent are women (in recent years, we have occasionally had more women than men). Our 1Ls come from thirty-three states and six countries. We also welcomed eighty-three LL.M. students from twenty-eight countries. Students have opportunities to join any number of organizations that offer networks of support throughout the Law School and the broader university. This spring, we are expecting a decision by the Supreme Court on an affirmativeaction case that every higher education institution is watching, Fisher v. University

the energy and enthusiasm that the student organizers bring to this event, and to see the pipelines being filled as returning alumni counsel and connect with current students. A major goal of ours is to maintain and expand these pipelines in multiple directions, so that any person of any background can come to Cornell Law School, soak in and contribute to the intellectual life at Myron Taylor Hall, and with this training lead a life of service and distinction in the law.

of Texas. In this issue, we explore how this decision could change not only the fabric of our student body, but also that of the entire legal profession. I would argue that diversity is of particular importance to law schools as we train the future leaders of the world. Lawyers encounter people with varying points of view

from many different cultural backgrounds. Lawyers are role models to many. Sensitivities to these differences are hugely important in all areas of law. By being inclusive to racial, ethnic, and genger identities, political viewpoints, and global perspectives, our law school exposes students to the cauldron they will encounter in the years ahead.

Coincidentally, I am writing this letter on the eve of Diversity Weekend. For many years, Cornell Law School and its diverse student organizations have sponsored a spring-semester event that focuses on issues of community at the Law School that is customarily held during the last Admitted Student Day. It is gratifying to sense

Stewart J. Schwab Allan R. Tessler Dean and Professor of Law law.dean@cornell.edu

Spring 2013

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When East Met West:

125 Years of Japanese Law Students at Cornell by

Kevin M. Clermont

r o n r e z n i ck , J o h n S a i d

photography

an d

Jason Koski

Cornell University Library Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, art

U tag awa H i r o s h i g e

and

K u n i s a da U tag awa

Up in classroom 389 of Myron Taylor Hall, you can now see the framed formal photograph presentation of thirty-one of the thirty-two graduates of the Cornell Law Class of 1890. Impressive—and surprising because this recently found composite includes two Japanese students, Gitaro Narukawa1 and Matsugu Takemura2 . That surprise prompted me to try to learn how they showed up at our infant law school. Well, it turns out that they were not our first Japanese law students. A year before them, Keigo Harada ’89 and Masayasu Naruse ’89 had entered with the school’s very first students in the fall of 1887.

More on the first students soon. But the point at this moment is that when Cornell’s law school opened its doors for the first time —one hundred twenty-five years ago—two Japanese students walked through the doors as members of the school’s small inaugural class. The following year those next two Japanese students arrived, and a steady trickle persisted during the school’s early years. Why? That takes some explaining, and the way to start is by setting the stage for the law students’ arrival in Ithaca. T h e S c h o o l’ s B e g i n n i n g s

Cornell University was founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White. They envisaged a law school within the university from the beginning, but it had to await financing. In 1885, in White’s final report as University president, he made the fateful announcement: We are called upon to establish a University, and as a University in this, as in previous centuries, must have in view all the possibilities of applying the highest thought to the best action, we should look into the future with reference to those departments which will round out our existing organization to full University proportions,—especially the Departments of Law and Medicine. Our position as regards a Department of Law is most favorable. Our aim should be to keep its instruction strong, its standard high and so to send out, not swarms

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of hastily prepared pettifoggers, but a fair number of well-trained, large-minded, morally based lawyers in the best sense, who, as they gain experience, may be classed as jurists and become a blessing to the country, at the bar, on the bench, and in various public bodies. In 1886, Cornell bought a 4000-volume law library, and the trustees approved their special committee’s proposal to establish a law school. Planning commenced. The law school opened as a separately administered undergraduate department of Cornell University in the fall of 1887 with fiftyfive entering students, including Keigo Harada and Masayasu Naruse. The law department operated under Dean Douglas Boardman with three resident professors who did the teaching: Francis M. Burdick, Charles A. Collin, and Harry B. Hutchins. Professors Moses Coit Tyler and Herbert Tuttle from other Cornell departments and various nonresident lecturers supplemented the program. Tuition was $75 a year, payable in three equal parts, plus a $5 graduation fee. The law school’s catalogue for 1887–1888 estimated yearly living expenses at $200–300 and textbooks, etc., at $25–50, while noting: “The additional expenses of a student depend so largely upon his personal tastes that it is difficult to give an estimate.” (This department of law did not adopt the name of College of Law until 1898, or Cornell Law School until 1925.)

Cornell Lawâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s relationship with Japan began with its founding. One could almost say that our tradition of welcoming Japanese students was part of the mission from the very beginning. Students from Japan continue to contribute importantly to the Law School, as both students and alumni.

Naruse attended at least two alumni meals in Tokyo, in 1899 and 1925, both featuring as the guest of honor Jacob Gould Schurman, who was the president of Cornell University from 1892 to 1920.

Harada, Naruse, and the rest of the entering class gathered with Professors Burdick, Collin, and Hutchins on September 26, 1887, not for a formal opening function but for an “introductory lecture” in a small room on the fourth floor of Morrill Hall. The building, which had been Cornell University’s first new construction, dated from 1868. The law library was at the south end of the top floor, offices at the north end, and lecture rooms in the middle; but, for fire safety, the three sections of the building were not interconnected, so going from one to another required descending outside the building to use a different entrance. “The quarters alloted to the school were inconveniently located, poorly ventilated and generally ill-adapted for the purposes of the school.”3 (Nevertheless, the school started well and grew rapidly. In 1892, the school moved into its own newly built building, the impressive Boardman Hall located where Olin Library now stands. In 1932, it moved into its present home, Myron Taylor Hall.) The course of study to an LL.B. would be two years, called the junior and senior years. The prerequisite was a “reputable” high school diploma or an examination showing a thorough knowledge of “arithmetic, English grammar, geography, orthography, American and English history and English composition.” (Almost immediately, pressure began growing to lengthen the course of study and to elevate the prerequisites. But law schools were then competing for students with the route of reading law in some law office and so could not be too demanding in these regards. Cornell progressed to a three-year program in 1897. The prerequisites started rising, slightly, in 1892. By 1898, the College of Law required, like the rest of the university, a four-year high school education. In 1911, the school demanded a year of college preparatory work. In 1919, it stipulated two years of college preparatory work. In 1924, it became a graduate program requiring a college degree.)

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Naruse received his LL.B. in 1889, on the basis of his thesis, “The Principles of the Law of Negligence, and the Modern Decisions upon the Liability of a Municipal Corporation for Its Defective Streets.”

The program of study consisted of all prescribed courses. The method of instruction was primarily traditional lecture or textbook recitation, although modern pedagogy played a role as some study of cases was employed right from the beginning. The workload was heavy, whether compared to the rest of the university or to other law schools. Class attendance was compulsory. Each instructor gave frequent, indeed usually daily, quizzes. At the end of each of the year’s three terms, there were oral and written examinations. At the end of the senior year, comprehensive oral and written examinations were given. Moreover, the catalogue provided: “Each member of the Senior Class who is a candidate for a degree, is required to prepare and deposit with the Faculty, at least one month before graduation, a thesis, not less than forty folios in length, upon some legal topic selected by himself and approved by the Faculty. The production must be satisfactory in matter, form, and style; and the student presenting it is examined upon it.” (Elective courses arrived at the law school in 1921. The comprehensive examinations and theses were gone by 1897, but made intermittent returns in successive attempts at reform over the decades.) “Furthermore, the Faculty do not hesitate to drop a student from the rolls at any time during the year on becoming satisfied that

he is neglecting his work.4 Because admitted students could get advanced standing by passing an examination in the subjects treated in the junior year (Elementary Law; Contracts, including Agency; Criminal Law and Procedure; Torts; Domestic Relations; Real Property; Evidence; Common Law Pleading and Practice in Cases at Law; Civil Procedure under the Codes; and English Constitutional History), nine students of the entering class were able to graduate in 1888. Thirty-six students graduated in 1889, but that number included some new admittees with advanced standing. The bottom line is that a fair number of 1887’s entering students —about a third—never graduated.5 Harada and Naruse did graduate. By the way, they were not the only foreign students in the initial cohort. The other, William Robertson, came all the way from Ontario! There was some geographic diversity among the American students, as Cornell Law was already on its way to being a national law school. Still, about 85 percent were from upstate New York. Moreover, they had no female classmates. The school’s first woman graduate was Mary Kennedy Brown in the Class of 1893. So the Japanese students stood out. Who were they, and what were they doing here? T h e F i r st Ja pa n e s e

Masayasu Naruse6 was born on November 25, 1868, in the Kida District of the Kagawa Prefecture on Shikoku Island, the second son of a prosperous farmer, Iwataro Naruse, and related to the ruler of the Inuyama Domain. An 1885 graduate of Keio Gijuku, where he studied Masayasu Naruse7 English and economics, Masayasu completed a two-year program at Bryant & Stratton Business Institute in Chicago before coming to Cornell. He received his LL.B. in 1889, on the basis of his thesis, “The Principles of the Law of Negligence, and the Modern Decisions upon the Liability of a Municipal Corporation for Its Defective Streets.” He returned to Japan for a career in banking. He wrote a book on finance and translated another from English. He worked for several banks before joining the aristocratic and prosperous Jyugo Bank in 1898. There he worked his way up to president, until the bank went under in the 1927 Showa financial crisis. He died in 1930. But before returning to Japan, Naruse had gone on to earn the Master of Laws in 1890, when Cornell Law awarded its first grad uate law degrees. His master’s thesis was entitled “A Comparative

Study of the Bill of Rights in the Constitution of Japan and America.” It was a laudatory account of the 1890 Constitution of the Empire of Japan, employing comparative study to analyze at length each of the fifteen articles of Chapter II on the Rights and Duties of Subjects—an effort “in bringing before the learned readers, the fundamental spirits and value of this great political gift from His Majesty, and in comparing them to those gifts endowed by Providence, which this great Nation beholds.” He explained that “it may be well said that the Bill [of Rights] in the American Constitution is a command of restriction, while that of Japan is a moral gift from Mikado, thus differing in their fundamental basis.” For example, unlike the U.S. right, Japan’s constitution in Article 30 stated: “Japanese subjects may present petitions, by observing the proper forms of respect and by complying with the rules specially provided for the same.” This was “simply a matter of special privilege to the people by the grace of the Sovereign, and is not recognized as a right; thus it may be properly called a gift from the Emperor, as a matter of political morality.” Masayasu married Miuie in 1892 in his hometown of Sanuki. They had seven children. His eldest son was a renowned French literature professor who traveled in the highest literary circles, and the second son was an engineer who became a rear admiral in the navy.

The Naruse summer home was in Zushi, Kanagawa Prefecture, near Tokyo. It is now called the Kuromon Culture Club, open to the public. “Kuromon” means “Black Gate,” as the pictured old gate of the Naruse home had been brought down from the Rokumeikan, the government’s residence in Tokyo for foreign guests.

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Keigo Harada was born in Akita City on December 25, 1867, the eldest son of Tanenori Harada, who would later become a well-known justice of the supreme court of Japan. Keigo was another 1885 graduate of Keio Gijuku, where he studied English literature. He continued that study for a year in Poughkeepsie before he came to Cornell. He sent a letter to Cornell saying that he had studied for four years at a great university in Japan, and therefore an entrance exam was not necessary for him —and he did enter the Cornell law department without that exam. He received his LL.B. in 1889. He returned to Japan, passed the bar in 1890, and found great success as a civil attorney in Tokyo. There he married, but had no children. He died in 1936. His LL.B. thesis was entitled “The Treaty between Japan and the United States.” It recounted, in considerable detail and upon solid research, the treaty regime imposed on Japan by the United States and other foreign powers beginning in 1854. He was critical: “Japan is now helpless, nay, worse than helpless, fettered as she is by the chains which the foreigners forged around her. Can it be that the Americans have forgotten the tyranny of Great Britain?” He called for revision: “The treaty which was considered adequate thirty years ago has become wholly inadequate, like a cradle becomes too small for a baby as he grows. Without saying anything about legality and justice, the present condition of Japan requires a treaty which is more liberal and equal. And her claim is in no regard absurd. She does not merely beg for benevolence, but offers a sufficient consideration for the redemption of her rights—the mutual advantages which will accrue if her claims are recognized. He closed with a warning: But no doubt there may come a crisis when, disregarded again and again, Japan is obliged to take a decisive position to recover her rights.” On the side, Harada taught at an affiliate of Keio University. The French archaeologists’ discovery of the stele containing the Code of Hammurabi in 1901 caused him eventually to redirect his life. He felt that to understand law, one had to understand the history of law, and to understand legal history, one had to study the whole ancient culture. So, he learned the Babylonian language and established in 1917 the Society of Babylon, a research society of amateurs who actually pioneered Mideastern studies in Japan. He worked tirelessly on cuneiforms and developed an arguable theory, based on similarities in myth, custom, arts, and language, that the Japanese nation descended in part

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The French archeologists’ discovery of the stele containing the Code of Hammurabi in 1901 caused Harada eventually to redirect his life. He felt that to understand law, one had to understand the history of law, and to understand legal history, one had to study the whole ancient culture. So, he learned the Babylonian language and established in 1917 the Society of Babylon, a research society of amateurs who actually pioneered Mideastern studies in Japan.

from migrating Sumerians. “Mr. Harada studied all night until daybreak, then went to sleep. He used to appear at his office at four o’clock in the afternoon. So we see that Mr. Harada spent all night in study not for his profession but for his mere labor of love towards the ancient civilization. So, he was given a nickname, ‘Cho-bon-datsuzoku-koji,’ which meant a ‘Ultra unworldly old fellow.’”8 Both Naruse and Harada were part of the wave of thousands of Japanese students who went abroad for university study as a crucial part of the modernization process during the Meiji Restoration (1868–1912). At the very end of the Shogunate Era and in the early Meiji years, young students with familial or political connections were sent to the United States and Europe to pursue undergraduate study. The results were poor. By 1875, the government had tightened up the flow, putting the program under still more central control and financing. Although some privately financed students continued to go abroad, the government now backed with loans only mature students with a good academic record and a degree from one of the recently established Japanese universities. Most of these students traveled for research and

advanced degrees, and many returned home to become professors. As the Meiji years went by, the greater part of government sponsorship shifted from U.S. study to German universities, but privately financed students increased in number and still favored the United States, with their many varied destinations now extending off the East Coast. Also, with time, the subjects of study extended beyond sciences and engineering to the liberal arts, including law. But why select Cornell in particular? And why pursue law studies in a common-law country, rather than France or Germany? Here the explanations lie in the fact that both Naruse and Harada came from Tokyo’s wonderful Keio University. It is the oldest institution of higher education in Japan, and it has long maintained a vibrant connection with Cornell University.9 At the connection’s origin, we find Fukuzawa Yukichi (1835–1901), who was one of the founders of modern Japan and hence appears on the 10,000-yen banknote. He pursued many interests and endeavors, being known as the Japanese Voltaire (whose image appeared on the 10-franc note) or Ben Franklin (whose image appears on the Fukuzawa Yukichi 100-dollar bill). He was not only the most influential cultural and political personality to set the tone for the Meiji era, and thus often called the father of the Japanese Enlightenment, but was also a towering figure in Japanese higher education. He started a school to teach Dutch in 1858, and renamed it Keio Gijuku (or Keio Public School) in 1868 and Keio University in 1890. In 1884, the oldest son of Fukuzawa Yukichi, named Fukuzawa Ichitaro, entered Cornell University for three rather lonely terms of study in agriculture. As a result, Cornell became well-known at Keio, and vice versa. Influenced by the high regard Fukuzawa Yukichi held for Cornell, a number of Keio graduates came to study at Cornell University, for all sorts of study. Accordingly, in 1887, Naruse and Harada chose to attend Cornell’s newborn law department. In sum, Cornell Law’s relationship with Japan began with its founding. One could almost say that our tradition of welcoming Japanese students was part of the mission from the very beginning. Students from Japan continue to contribute importantly to the Law School, as both students and alumni. That history is hinted at today on the walls of classroom 389. n

1. Narukawa, a graduate of the Tokyo School of Foreign Languages, wrote a thesis entitled “High Treason” for his Cornell LL.B. 1890. All the cited theses are in the Cornell Law School Library. Otherwise, alumni records from that period are basically nonexistent. Thus,I have had to rely on information from the Internet and the library; help from Mitsuru Claire Chino ‘91, Assistant Registrar Lyndsey Y. Clark, and Professor Charles K. Whitehead; and inspiration and assistance from Masayoshi Harada, LL.M. ‘13, and Masashi Naruse, LL.M. ‘13. 2. Takemura (1865–1912), LL.B. 1890 (thesis: “The Duty of Lawyers”), also received the Master of Laws in 1891 (thesis: “The Law of Customs and Usages”). He was connected to the Takemura daimyo family. He attended the University of Michigan before coming to Cornell. He died in Korea, aged fortyseven. He seemed to have had some post-Cornell connection to Masayasu Naruse, because the latter was cc’d on a 1923 letter to Cornell University from Kyoto Bank confirming that Takemura had worked at the bank as an auditor.

4. Harry B. Hutchins, “The Cornell University School of Law,” 1 Green Bag 473, 485 (1889). 5. A listing of forty-eight of the initial students, including Keigo Harada from Yokohama and Masayasu Naruse from Sanuki in Kagawa Prefecture, appeared in the Cornell Daily Sun, Sept. 28, 1887. Of the listed, sixteen did not go on to earn a degree. 6. His name was 成瀬正恭. So, the given name can be read as either Masayasu or Seikyo. 7. 慶応義塾出身名流列伝 [Lives of Notable Graduates of Keio Gijuku] 453 (Keio University, 1909). 8. Takahito Mikasa, “Near Eastern Studies in Japan,” 5 Orient: Rep. Soc’y for Near E. Stud. Japan 1, 3-4 (1969); see Seiichi Mori, 弁護士原田敬吾とバビロン学会の設立 [“Attorney Keigo Harada and the Establishment of the Society of Babylon”], 4 Mod. Japanese Stud. 161 (1987). 9. Kurakichi Aida, 慶應義塾とコーネル大學 [Keio Gijuku and Cornell University], 29 Shigaku 101 (1956).

3. Edwin H. Woodruff, “History of the Cornell Law School,” 4 Cornell L.Q. 91, 95 (1919).

Professor Kevin M. Clermont taught in Japan for a period at Keio University in 2003 under the name ケヴインクラモント. In 2005, Keio Law School and Cornell Law School created a faculty and student exchange program.

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12 5 Years

Later :

h a r ada a nd naruse of 2013 by

Kenneth Berkowitz

In the one hundred twenty five years since Cornell Law welcomed its first incoming class, Japan has continued to send some of its brightest, most accomplished students to study in Ithaca, including two current members of the graduate program, Masayoshi Harada, LL.M. ’13, and Masashi Naruse, LL.M. ’13. After receiving his bachelor’s degree from Tokyo’s Hitotsubashi University, Harada practiced law for five years in Nagoya, Japan, where he specialized in torts, mergers and acquisitions, administered bankruptcies, immigration law, and land transactions. In 2010, when the opportunity arose to create new laws and ministerial ordinances in Cambodia, he moved to Phnom Penh as a legal advisor to the Ministry of Justice. Working for the Japan International Cooperation Agency, Harada spent the next two years helping to rebuild the legal community, which has been decimated by twenty years of civil war, and drafting laws on the civil code, civil procedure, commercial enterprise, and domestic violence and ministerial

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ordinances on land recording and matrimonial property. Naruse completed his undergraduate education with an LL.B from Hosei University. Immersed in the international atmosphere at Hosei, he completed many projects on contract disputes, trademark claims, and e-commerce disputes with students from Asian countries. Having found his career path in international relations, he cultivated his motivation in researching an ideal intergovernmental system for information exchange during conflicts. In 2011, eager to learn more, he enrolled at Waseda University to pursue his studies in international litigation and a global IP regime, and the following year, he decided to apply to Cornell. As undergraduates interested in international law, both Harada and Naruse were familiar with the Law School’s reputation overseas. “For Japanese who want to work internationally, Cornell is definitely the first choice,” says Harada. “Studying law in the United States has become an important part of preparing for a career in

international law and a necessary step in working for international organizations.” “Cornell Law’s focus on East Asia and the fact that it has some of the world’s preeminent scholars in international law, such as Professor Kevin Clermont and Professor Annelise Riles, were compelling reasons to come to Ithaca,” adds Naruse. “And all the

globe, collaborated closely with faculty members to design their own courses of study, mixed with students from the J.D. and J.S.D. programs, and participated in interdisciplinary colloquia, events, and presentations. It’s a world away from their experience as undergraduates in Japan, with a different set of expectations about openness, diversity, and collegiality.

For Japanese who want to work internationally, Cornell is definitely the first choice. Studying law in the United States has become an important part of preparing for a career in international law and a necessary step in working for international organizations. — Masayoshi Harada, LL.M. ’13

people I spoke with recommended Cornell as the ideal environment for learning.” In the semester that’s followed, Harada and Naruse have worked alongside people from all around the

“What surprises me about Cornell Law is the closeness between professors and students, and the wide variety of projects being discussed,” says Naruse. “Participating in Meridian 180 and in last

semester’s East Asian Law Colloquia has brought insights and inspiration about what can be accomplished in the region. Meeting so many highly motivated people and exchanging ideas inside and outside the legal field has been a stroke of great fortune.”

continue the kind of work on judicial reform that he undertook in Cambodia. As his second semester of Cornell study concludes, he expects to spend the summer preparing for the New York State bar examination and then planning to start working internationally.

The pace of the master’s program and the crosspollination of ideas among students and faculty have made their time fly by, and though neither Harada nor Naruse are related to their namesakes in Cornell Law’s first class, Harada clearly recognizes what they have in common with the original Harada and Naruse. He calls it “the frontier spirit,” a quality that makes them “different from other lawyers,” and which he sees as a necessary ingredient for anyone preparing to work in a new, untested, unexplored field.

“In Cambodia, I saw a country struggling toward modernization as it tried to establish a free market and enter the global economy,” says Harada. “It seemed very similar to the transition that Japan experienced in creating its legal system one hundred years ago, when we made sure to stay true to our own culture and traditions while exploring the legal systems of Europe and the United States. At Cornell, in studying a mixture of common law and civil law, I hope to understand how to transfer those Japanese lessons to developing Asian countries, thereby contributing to the future development of law in Asia.”

At the halfway mark toward his master’s degree, Harada has set his sights on finding a position at an international organization—the World Bank and the United Nations are two of the first that come to mind—where he could

His master program halfway through, Naruse has set his mind on seeking a position as an international lawyer,

What surprises me about Cornell Law is the closeness between professors and students, and the wide variety of projects being discussed. Participating in Meridian 180 and in last semester’s East Asian Law Colloquia has brought insights and inspiration about what can be accomplished in the region. — Masashi Naruse, LL.M. ’13

specializing in trade, IP, and international litigation. “The balance of the relationship of Japan and the United States is at a point of drastic transition” he says. “Cultural and social conflict between the two countries has been increasing enormously while free trade has sped up. The Trans-Pacific Partnership is one way to achieve harmonization, but social, historical, cultural, and legal structure are rooted in one’s country. A system that facilitates those considerations needs to be explored.”

another country’s law and society. “The dynamics of all stakeholders in one country’s legal system as well as their roles in the international regime need to be taken into account while seeking adequate compromise with foreign actors,” he says. “It is a complex task to explore how these factors should be incorporated and operated by a sophisticated wheel. I seek to grapple with this challenge in my remaining days at Cornell Law School.” n

While learning comparative law methodology, Naruse has seen problems in the way foreign lawyers understand

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Why Diversity Matters by

L i n da B r a n d t M y e r s

photography

G a r y H o d g e s , F r a n k D i M e o , c h a r l e s H a r r i n g t o n , i s t o ckp h o t o

and

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Top-tier law schools and law firms may be among the biggest losers, should the Supreme Court shoot down affirmative action in higher education when they decide Fisher v. University of Texas.

The Court will soon rule (or perhaps it already has by the time you read this) on whether race will remain one factor of many in admission decisions at U.S. universities. If that seems like déjà vu all over again, in the words of the immortal baseball great Yogi Berra, it is. In 2003 in the landmark case Grutter v. Bollinger, the Court upheld the University of Michigan Law School’s use of race among many factors in a holistic admissions decision to ensure diversity in its classes, which the Court agreed was a compelling state interest. It is worth noting that in a parallel case at that time, Gratz v. Bollinger, which concerned the University of Michigan’s undergraduate program, the Supreme Court ruled that colleges could not assign applicants points based on race. Since then the composition of the High Court has become more conservative.

Fisher, the current case revisiting the same issue of race-conscious admissions, has been wending its way through the courts since 2009, a year after plaintiff Abigail Fisher, a young woman from Sugar Land, Texas, who is white, was denied admission to the university. Fisher said she lost out to black and Latino minority candidates, whom she deemed less qualified. A district court upheld the university’s admissions policy, as did a Fifth Circuit panel, but the Supreme Court may not. The worry is that the Court’s ruling will obligate law schools and law firms to become a lot less diverse, to the detriment of all— not only underrepresented minorities. “There’s an increasing consensus that diversity is a value in education, especially as we are training our students to enter professions such as law, where they will encounter many types of people, many viewpoints, many different races, cultures, genders, points of view,” said Stewart J. Schwab, the Allan R. Tessler Dean at the Law School.

Faculty say the depth of discussion is enhanced in a diverse classroom. Being exposed to a wide range of perspectives also will make our students better practitioners. I think it’s especially important for those who enter the judiciary or political arena or are involved in community leadership. —Richard D. Geiger

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Even Chief Justice Roberts, who is generally thought of as conservative on these issues, has said that he accepts the principle that diversity is a very important interest worth pursuing. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m not sure that some of the justices really believe that but they accept it as an official matter. â&#x20AC;&#x201D;Michael C. Dorf

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“We care about diversity because of the dynamic way learning happens in law school, both in and out of the classroom,” said Richard D. Geiger, associate dean of communications and enrollment at the Law School. “Faculty say the depth of discussion is enhanced in a diverse classroom. Being exposed to a wide range of perspectives also will make our students better practitioners. I think it’s especially important for those who enter the judiciary or political arena or are involved in community leadership,” he said. “Everyone teaching in a university has an interest in the outcome of this case,” said Professor Sheri Lynn Johnson. “I can’t imagine teaching constitutional law effectively in a classroom that wasn’t diverse.” Professor Steven H. Shiffrin concurs. “If you are going to have informed discussion in a classroom, it makes sense to have a variety of opinions and life experiences,” said the constitutional law scholar. Perhaps even more important, “diversity is a critical component to increasing the intellectual capital of the bar,” said Richard Ross, J.D./M.B.A. ’99, a corporate partner with Perkins Coie and mergers and acquisitions expert in its New York office. “With diversity you gain diverse approaches, strategies, experiences, all things necessary to represent your clients better.” “The best talent now seeks out places that are diverse, vibrant, and have policies to train and maximize people,” said Leslie Richards-Yellen ’84, a capital partner and chief of diversity and inclusion at Hinshaw & Culbertson in Chicago [see Profiles, p. 22]. “Employers need to make their organizations diverse to attract and retain the best people.”

point, said Dorf, that law schools are different—and understanding that difference is consistent with the majority ruling in the Grutter case. Under its Top Ten Percent Plan, the University of Texas accepts students in the top 10 percent of each Texas high school’s graduating class, regardless of their race. About 81 percent of its entering students are admitted and enroll under that plan, depending on the year and the number of acceptances. Dorf’s AALS brief in Fisher makes the point that the segregated nature of Texas high schools ensures some degree of diversity on University of Texas campuses. But the Ten Percent Plan alone leaves some courses and programs—and thus some classrooms —highly segregated. To remedy that and further increase diversity, the university also considers for admission a small group of applicants whose high school standing missed the 10 percent mark. Some of the factors for consideration among that group have included talents, leadership qualities, and family circumstances, as well as race. The brief points out that typical law schools enroll much smaller classes than those at large public universities, so they cannot rely on percentages or other formulas to achieve a diverse class. Instead, “following the Court’s guidance in Grutter v. Bollinger, law schools evaluate each applicant’s record holistically, counting such academic factors as success in analytically demanding majors, intellectual curiosity and improvement over time, as well as such other factors as veteran status, work experience, and hardships overcome.” Race is one of those (and other) factors.

But do the justices see diversity as a positive for society? “Officially they do,” said Professor Michael C. Dorf. A constitutional law scholar, he coauthored an amicus brief for both the Grutter and Fisher cases on behalf of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS), which represent 176 public and private law schools, including those at Cornell, Harvard, and the University of Michigan. “Even Chief Justice Roberts, who is generally thought of as conservative on these issues, has said that he accepts the principle that diversity is a very important interest worth pursuing,” Dorf said. “I’m not sure that some of the justices really believe that but they accept it as an official matter.”

Everyone teaching in a university has an interest in the outcome of this case, I can’t imagine teaching constitutional law effectively in a classroom that wasn’t diverse. —Sheri Lynn Johnson

The amicus brief in Fisher is one of a hundred that the justices may or may not read in advance of their ruling. It makes the

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Affirmative action is about more than diversity, it’s an issue of fairness as well. Minorities who have traditionally been left out of the professions must enter them, both as role models and to help break the cycle of the underclass. It takes generations to catch up. It’s not going to happen all on its own. We have to affirmatively make it happen. — Barbara J. Holden-Smith

The brief goes on to state: “It is critical that law schools continue to be able to consider race as a factor within their holistic admissions process because no race-neutral method exists for achieving racial diversity in law schools, while fulfilling law schools’ other important goals.”

The term “affirmative action” refers to actions that achieve nondiscrimination. It was first used officially in the United States in 1965 by then president Lyndon B. Johnson in an executive order prohibiting discrimination in hiring, with the stated purpose “to correct the effects of past and present discrimination.”

“We engage in a holistic review process and if you remove race from that, you’re not really being holistic,” Geiger pointed out. He and others worry that if law schools were forced by the Court to adopt a race-neutral admissions system, they would be a lot less diverse than they are now.

Johnson had in mind minorities who had been historically discriminated against, such as African Americans. But in the Regents of the University of California v. Bakke case, which the Supreme Court ruled on in 1978, the plaintiff, Allan Bakke, was white. Bakke sued for admission to the University of California Davis Medical School using the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment (as did Abigail Fisher in the Fisher case), asserting that he would have been admitted if he were African American.

And that would have a chilling effect on the teaching and practice of law, assert many law scholars and practitioners. “There’s no good proxy for race,” said Professor Barbara J. HoldenSmith, vice dean at the Law School and a member of its admissions committee. Substituting social class as a measure won’t ensure racial diversity, she said. “African Americans are only 12 percent of the population. If colleges and law schools took only poor black students, there would be even fewer African Americans attending than there are today.” It would also hurt top-tier law schools like Cornell’s disproportionally by further restricting its applicant pool, she said. How will the Supreme Court ruling in Fisher affect the study and practice of law? “The real risk in this case,” said Dorf, “is that the Court might say: You can’t even use a holistic plan of the sort that Grutter approved if you can substantially increase diversity using nonracial means like a percentage program. That would mean other places would have to start using a percentage plan even if they haven’t been using one already. I think it’s not likely as a matter of the Court’s style,” Dorf said, “but it’s certainly thinkable in terms of the logic of prior opinions.”

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The Court in the Bakke case, which was nearly evenly divided, found that the school had a compelling interest in a diverse student body and as a result could consider race in its admissions program, but only as a “plus” factor. It could not employ a “quota system” by setting aside seats for applicants of a particular race and selecting minority students using standards not applied to all applicants, as it had been doing. Nevertheless Bakke himself was successful; the Court ordered his admission to the University of California Davis Medical School. The notion of a diverse student body as a compelling state interest was first introduced in the Bakke ruling by Justice Lewis Powell. “Powell said, ‘We’re a society of many minorities,’’’ noted Professor Aziz F. Rana, a constitutional law scholar. “He was skeptical of using affirmative action to remedy past discrimination and was wary of thinking of the Equal Protection Clause [of the 14th amendment] in terms of the historical experience of any one group. In his mind no group had been distinctively mistreated.”

Over time, other justices on the Court began to accept Powell’s argument, said Rana. “The consequence was less judicial emphasis on viewing affirmative action as a tool to counter the effects of longstanding societal discrimination against minorities,” he said. “A problem with the switch to the language of diversity is that it has deemphasized the issue of historic legacies of racism,” Rana asserted. The result? “The focus on diversity, rather than on remedial justifications for race-conscious policies, has promoted a Court logic that often fails to recognize or address systematic forms of discrimination,” he said. He sees some irony in that shift. “The framers of the 14th Amendment and its equal protection clause, writing against the backdrop of Reconstruction and the end of slavery, saw no problem with using race-conscious policies or focusing on remedial justifications to ensure that African Americans, especially newly freed slaves, would finally gain civil equality,” Rana remarked. “It is still not a race-blind world,” commented Professor Johnson. “Discrimination is still a fact for people of color. In my mind,

diversity is not the most compelling reason for affirmative action. Righting societal wrongs is more important.” “Affirmative action is about more than diversity,” said HoldenSmith. “It’s an issue of fairness as well. Minorities who have traditionally been left out of the professions must enter them, both as role models and to help break the cycle of the underclass. It takes generations to catch up. It’s not going to happen all on its own. We have to affirmatively make it happen.” To critics of affirmative action who assert that this gives minorities an unfair advantage over white applicants with more merit, she responded: “That argument assumes, first, that someone deserves a place in a particular school—but nobody is owed that. Second, what does merit mean? Your grade point average or exam scores mean only that you have an opportunity to apply to a particular school because you are qualified to do the work there, not guaranteed a place there.” Shiffrin observed: “In Bakke and Grutter there was an idea that you don’t just admit one member of a minority group because, in a polarized society, that person is going to be isolated. You

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need to have a ‘critical mass.’” At the oral argument in Fisher, the Court’s more conservative justices tried to pin down how the University of Texas defined critical mass, he noted. “It wasn’t easy to answer. The more you define it, the more it sounds like you have quotas,” Shiffrin said. “I think that the critical mass notion will play a significant part in whatever opinion the Court hands down.” Justice Anthony Kennedy, for whom Dorf clerked, will likely have the deciding vote, both Dorf and his Law School colleagues agree. Much of the outcome will depend on whether Kennedy’s opinion is written narrowly or broadly, and in which direction, Dorf added.

“One potential danger for law schools,” Dorf said, “is the Court might require them to change their admissions procedures in ways that are inconsistent with the policies of the AALS and its member schools. It may say schools and colleges can’t even use a holistic plan of the sort that Grutter approved if they can substantially improve diversity using nonracial means like Texas’s percentage program. That could mean they would have to start using a percentage plan as well.” Even if the Court didn’t directly alter college and law school admission procedures, it might require other changes that would be harmful, said Dorf. For example? “A substantial contraction in the diversity of students graduating from good colleges would reduce the diversity of the law school applicant pool,” he said. “If the Court doesn’t require a percentage plan but rules that race can no longer be a factor in admissions criteria, the question then is what race-neutral means are available to law schools for achieving diversity,” Dorf asked. “There are some. You can ramp up your outreach. There, you are not making race an express criterion for admissions—just for recruiting. You could weight factors that have some connection to the kinds of diversity you want, for example, disadvantage and obstacles overcome. But I think the bottom line is unless you just disobey the law, there’s no way to get the same level of diversity using purely race-neutral means.” Shiffrin, who is chair of the school’s admissions committee, is particularly concerned that fewer minorities in undergraduate programs will lead to even fewer at law schools. “Law is an important occupation for advancing political positions,” he asserted. “To screen minorities out of that profession is unthinkable.” Johnson added: “It’s not just about the classroom but about the cadre of lawyers that we send out and how the profession will be much impoverished.”

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Others worry about fewer minorities among law faculty. Professor John Blume, who heads a committee on diversity at the Law School that is part of a university-wide initiative, said: “We are in agreement that we would like to have a more diverse faculty in addition to a more diverse student body, that includes traditionally underrepresented minorities.” “To increase the pool of diverse faculty applicants,” said HoldenSmith, who also serves on the school’s diversity committee, “we might encourage our own minority law students to consider careers teaching law as well as make opportunities available for our graduates to come to the Law School for several years to work on research projects, perhaps teach a course, and get some mentoring. While such programs require money, the Law School would get something out of it as well. We’re exploring that possibility as part of the university’s diversity initiative.”

A problem with the switch to the language of diversity is that it has deemphasized the issue of historic legacies of racism.” The result? “The focus on diversity, rather than on remedial justifications for race-conscious policies, has promoted a Court logic that often fails to recognize or address systematic forms of discrimination. —Aziz F. Rana

She also would like to see more resources devoted to making the climate at the school and the university one in which minority students and faculty will flourish. If such initiatives succeed, that will be good news to the leaders at major law firms, who are counting on recruiting, especially from top-tier law schools like Cornell’s, the diverse associates they’ll need to flourish in a changed global environment. “We’re in a different world now,” noted Richards-Yellen. “You have to have diversity so you can be a competitor.”

on our communities.” Employee support for those values may be why the firm was named one of Fortune magazine’s “100 Best Companies to Work For” in 2013, for the eleventh straight year.

To prove her point, she asked: “What do clients think about when they hire a law firm? Number one is firm size,” she said, “but number two is commitment to diversity. Law firms have to figure out how they can be more profitable and imaginative. If they’re smart, serious, and want to get somewhere, they’ll invest in diversity.”

And being diverse may have enhanced the firm’s success. It has won scores of awards, including “Venture Capital Law Firm of the Year” in 2011–12 by U.S. News, and has such high-end clients as the current resident-in-chief at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and many of Seattle’s top firms.

Her law firm, Hinshaw & Culbertson, was the Defense Research Institute’s top firm for diversity in 2012 and is a top-ranked LGBT employer, she noted. The firm measures and rewards support for diversity as part of its compensation, and its mission statement includes a commitment to diversity and inclusion, she reported. Richards-Yellen, whose primary job at the firm is diversity, said that law firms will only be successful at recruiting the best and most diverse group of employees if they make doing so a priority, sanctioned and supported by those at the top. Ross concurred. “I was part of a group considering other firms,” he said, “but Perkins Coie’s ethos made it the most attractive one to me.” The firm’s leadership “believes it’s important for us to have a diverse organization, do pro bono work, and make an impact

Whatever current Supreme Court justices decide in Fisher about the value of diversity, they would do well to have considered the words of the former justice who wrote the majority opinion in Grutter. In 2010, Sandra Day O’Connor and Dean Schwab considered the role of diversity and race, cowriting an essay published in The Next Twenty-Five Years: Affirmative Action in Higher Education in the United States and South Africa. “When the time comes to reassess the constitutionality of considering race in higher-education admissions,” they wrote, “we will need social scientists to clearly demonstrate the educational benefits of diverse student bodies, and to better understand the links between role models in one generation and aspirations and achievements of succeeding generations.” n

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Cornell Law Students and Recent Graduates, on Diversity’s Value

Aleesha Fowler C l a s s o f 2 0 14

President, Black Law Students Association; and member, Latino American Law Students Association

The term ‘diversity’ does not apply only to race. It encompasses many aspects of a person’s culture—food, religion, values, traditions, et cetera. As a member of both the Black Law Students Association and the Latino American Law Students Association I have the opportunity to learn about the diverse Latin American community as well as the black community. Participation in both offers me a valuable cultural experience. The more cultures one is exposed to and learns to appreciate, the more adaptable one becomes professionally. Diversity can also serve as a great learning tool because it provides people with a broader, more accurate view of their own society and those within it. After law school, I plan to pursue a career in international arbitration. I want to learn more about the legal systems of different countries and see firsthand how they differ from those in the United States.

Antonio Haynes C l a s s o f 2 0 12

Law clerk for Hon. Gerard E. Lynch, Federal Court of Appeals, Second Circuit; former member, Black Law Students Association and Lambda Law Association

Erika López C l a s s o f 2 0 14

President, Latino American Law Students Association

I was an officer in both the Black Law Students Association and in Lambda. Those types of groups are important because they provide a space in which students are at liberty to be themselves. By simply being yourself, you often enrich others’ experiences. When you’re training to work in the real world, it’s important to be exposed to ideas you may not have heard anywhere else. Exposure to diverse points of view intellectually enriches us all and is critically important to our society. Too often, the most vocal critics of affirmative action frame the debate as if minority students are getting a preference not afforded to other students. But seeking out minority, diverse, and underprivileged students who will excel is surely no more problematic than seeking out those students whose parents and grandparents are alumni. A broader focus on diversity can only broaden the legacy of excellence.

I emigrated from Ecuador to the United States when I was thirteen. Despite obstacles, I was determined to succeed and follow my dream of becoming a lawyer. Diversity is important at law schools because not all great minds think alike. During my time at Cornell Law School, I have met people with backgrounds, views, and beliefs similar to my own and others with completely different ones. That taught me to analyze, understand, and appreciate my beliefs but also opened the door to new thoughts and perspectives. Most importantly, my experience at the Law School has developed my intellectual diversity and made me better equipped to become a successful member of the legal profession. Diversity helps law firms meet the needs of an increasingly diverse pool of clients. After graduation I hope to work at a firm where I can help other countries develop economically.

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Puja Parikh C l a s s o f 2 0 14

President, South Asian Law Students Association

I’m a first-generation American, born here in the United States to parents from India. About 32 to 39 percent of students at the Law School say they come from diverse backgrounds. That’s good, but it’s not enough. Constitutional Law courses offer an opportunity for people to speak out, but often so few students have diverse backgrounds that those who do keep quiet because they don’t want to be branded as different. That’s too bad because today, with global boundaries changing, it’s more important than ever to encounter opinions, ideas, and perceptions different from your own. In every way in which we study and learn, diversity plays a role. It shapes how one learns. It’s important that people from diverse backgrounds are given the same opportunities as others— at law school and later on the job.

Cheyenne Sanders c l a s s o f 2 0 14

President, Native American Law Students Association

I grew up in a low-income, single-parent Native family. My classmates are incredibly bright and most are conscious of the struggles that underrepresented communities face. Our conversations influence our understanding of controversial policy decisions and are the foundation of our legal education. Diversity is especially important to law students because of where we’re headed after graduation. While at school, we are building our skills in a host of areas—and how we each view, understand, and practice diversity is vital in preparing for our legal careers. That’s why our classrooms must be representative of the communities we hope to serve and the ideal of equality we hold. Society should be equally invested in a conversation about affirmative action. If we want to change the status quo of inequality and overall income disparity, the conversation must start with equal access to education—and that is what I believe affirmative action works toward.

Winter L. Torres ’07 Attorney and CSR (Collaborative Strategic Reading) program coordinator, Padres & Jóvenes Unidos (Parents and Youth United), Denver, Colorado

I grew up in southern New Mexico, confronting poverty and racism. I was the valedictorian of my high school, attended the University of New Mexico on scholarship, then worked in politics before coming to Cornell Law School. I got a great education there. I was head of the Latino American Law Students Association and am still good friends with the other heads of the minority student organizations. I remember bringing a different perspective to class. Since I graduated, I know that Professor Rachlinski has presented on ‘implicit bias.’ You don’t know you’re doing it, but you are treating minorities differently. Implicit bias probably plays a role in the vast achievement gap that greatly impacts the families I work with, and America’s future. n

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PROFILES

Leslie Richards-Yellen ’84: Capital Partner and Chief of Diversity She has a unique combination of skills—public finance expertise and an impressive record at helping firms hire and keep the best, most diverse workforces. As capital partner and chief of diversity and inclusion at Hinshaw & Culbertson in Chicago since 2007, Leslie Richards-Yellen ‘84 still works in bonds, but her chief task is to make the organization more diverse.

Law firms have to figure out how they can be more profitable and imaginative. We’re in a different world now. You need diversity to compete. If you don’t have people who can look at and access the world in different ways, you impoverish your institution. — Leslie Richards-Yellen ‘84

“Law firms have to figure out how they can be more profitable and imaginative,” says Richards-Yellen. “We’re in a different world now. You need diversity to compete. If you don’t have people who can look at and access the world in different ways, you impoverish your institution.” But hiring the best, most diverse talent isn’t enough. “If you’re serious about diversity and want to maximize your firm’s potential, you’ll look

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deeply into your organization’s procedures and processes and ask what might work to the detriment of some people, then reengineer to change that,” she says. “The most successful diverse firms have procedures in place that create opportunities,” says Richards-Yellen—“trips to meet with clients, seats on committees, access to meetings, sponsors, and other ways to help them get clients and become successful.” Richards-Yellen grew up in a small town in Iowa. “My family was the only black family within a forty-mile radius,” she says. Her father, a psychiatrist, emigrated from Bolivia as a young man. Her mother, a psychiatric social worker, helped put him through medical school. After attending Drake University, Richards-Yellen applied to law schools. Cornell wasn’t on her list but her father fished the application from the waste basket and insisted she apply. “Cornell gave me the confidence to go out into the world and

stand my ground, learn and become a more worthy person,” says Richards-Yellen. One constant friend has been Professor Sheri Lynn Johnson. “She was a huge influence and a great mentor,” says RichardsYellen. “You need someone in your corner who thinks you can succeed, and Sheri became that person for me. I would not have made it without her.” Johnson has high praise for her too. “Leslie is one of the smartest lawyers I know,” she said. “Her gift for analytic and strategic thinking made her a formidable bond lawyer, and I have been fascinated to watch her turn her talents to the recruitment and development of diverse lawyers.” Richards-Yellen met her husband, David, in her Contracts class. “It was one of my toughest classes, as it was taught Socratically, with questions posed but no answers provided. Every time David spoke the professor looked pleased, so I would put a star in my notes next to his comments. Naturally I wanted to get to know him.”

After law school the couple, by then married, moved first to Washington, D.C., where both worked for law firms, then to New York City, where David Yellen joined the law faculty at Hofstra University and Richards-Yellen became outside bond counsel to the New Jersey Healthcare Facilities Financing Authority. She worked long hours serving “every hospital in New Jersey that wanted to issue bonds and refinance.” She then became a lawyer for Vanguard’s Fixed Income Group for twelve years. “They were one of the world’s biggest bond buyers. I analyzed the bonds’ legal structure, looking at the legal risks,” she says. She also served on a team to recommend how Vanguard could become more diverse. “Diversity was part of my brand and part of why they valued me,” she says. Along the way the couple had three daughters. Then, in 2005 Richard-Yellen’s husband became dean of Loyola University’s law school and the family moved to Chicago. “For the first time in my life I moved without a job,” she says. “I’m glad I had enough confidence to take the risk.” Of three job offers, the one at Hinshaw & Culbertson appealed to her most because it allowed her to do diversity work and bonds. This March, Richards-Yellen spoke to the Women’s Law Coalition at the Law School, where the couple’s oldest daughter, Jordan, is now a stu-

dent and a 1L representative to the Black Law Students Association. “Jordan and I text daily,” relates Richards-Yellen. “Her first professor was Sheri Johnson, and every professor she’s had was a former professor of mine or my husband’s. I can almost put myself in her shoes.” ~Linda Brandt Myers

Maria FernandezWilliams ‘92: From the Bronx to IBM Maria Fernandez-Williams ’92 believes that affirmative action still has a role to play in American society. “When we can affirmatively say that race is not an issue in promotion, pay, or success rate in school, then we can retire our affirmative action programs,” she said. Fernandez-Williams, who has worked for IBM in a number of areas since her graduation from Cornell, is becoming more involved with the Cornell Law School’s LALSA (Latino American Law Students Association) and BLSA (Black Law Students Association) students. She notes that they “are still struggling with some of the issues I struggled with back then.” “It’s exposure,” she explains. “When I was in law school, I did not know a lawyer. I didn’t know what to expect or even what they made. I just knew I wanted to be a lawyer!” Today’s students ask her about everything from their perceived Spanish accents to what job

would be best for them to take. She is concerned that they may feel, as she did, “I’m different and I don’t quite fit in and don’t know if I’ll succeed.” Fernandez-Williams grew up in the Bronx, “in the same neighborhood as Justice Sotomayor,” she said. “I went to the same schools she did. My parents pushed and pushed, and there was no question but that I would go to college.” After graduating from Cornell Law School, she went to work for IBM, where she still works. “That’s unusual, but a good experience,” she said. “They

gave me a lot of responsibility early on, and I’ve had a lot of diverse jobs here.” Her positions include serving as senior counsel for their North America Sales Division, for Latin America, and for the Global Compliance Program. Currently she’s responsible for joint development alliances and technology licensing for IBM’s semiconductor process technology. “I had to get up to speed—lots of very smart people had to explain the technical concepts to me,” she said. “As a negotiator, I have to be able to bridge the discussion between legal and technical issues.”

When we can affirmatively say that race is not an issue in promotion, pay, or success rate in school, then we can retire our affirmative action programs. — Maria Fernandez-Williams ’92

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PROFILES As a longtime New York City resident—she went to Lehman College (City University of New York)—FernandezWilliams didn’t immediately consider Cornell Law School. But a cousin, who was a Cornell undergraduate, convinced her. “She brought me an application and said fill it out, I’ll take it back,” Fernandez-Williams recalls. As a single mother with a two-year-old daughter, however, staying near her parents seemed like a better idea— even when the cousin committed to help with child care. Then Fernandez-Williams went to an event for admitted minority students at the Law School. “Either Dean Lukingbeal or Dean Geiger came up to me and asked if I brought Lauren with me. The fact that they read my essay that talked about my daughter and knew it was important to me, I thought—this is a school that cares about who you are. Then all the LALSA students said— we’ll be there for you.” “I had my support. I had my village,” Fernandez-Williams recalled. Later, she served as president of LALSA. Professor Sheri Lynn Johnson, who had sponsored the event for minority students, was part of that village. “There’s something about her that’s so approachable,” said Fernandez-Williams. “I knew if I needed something I could go to her.” “Cornell Law School prepared me well for IBM, and my nonprofit participation as well,”

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Fernandez-Williams said. “While I knew that I wanted to become an in-house counsel, I also was influenced by the public interest spirit and clinics the school offered. I figured out early in my career that I wanted to combine both.” She has served on the board of the Committee for Hispanic Children and Families, and currently is on the board of LatinoJustice PRLDEF. She is a member of the John Jay Pre Law Institute Advisory Board and has been involved with the Hispanic National Bar Association on the local and national level. Returning to the need for affirmative action, FernandezWilliams talked about her experience at IBM. “Our customers are global and diverse and the world is more connected. If we don’t figure out how to exist in that diverse world, we can’t succeed.” “My father came here illegally from Spain,” she says. “My mother is American, from Puerto Rico. Marriage to my mother made him a resident. They produced a lawyer, an executive producer, and a son who did two tours in Iraq. It’s the American Dream.” ~ j u d i t h p r at t

Park Byoung-Dae, LL.M. ‘91, Reaches the Supreme Court After a legal career that began as an undergraduate at Seoul National University, Park Byoung-dae, LL.M. ’91, has

been appointed to a six-year term as a justice on the Supreme Court of South Korea. Only thirteen seats on the Supreme Court are recognized as the most honorable and respected positions for every lawyer in the country. A report issued by the National Assembly of South Korea offered this description: “Considering Mr. Justice Park has the courage and competence to perform such an important responsibility…and very strong confidence to defend the independence of the judiciary branch and protect social minorities, he is very eligible to be appointed as a Justice of the Supreme Court.” Born in 1957, he grew up on a farm outside Yeongju, about one hundred miles southeast of Seoul. He graduated from Seoul National University

with an LL.B. in 1980, and completed his coursework at the Judicial Research and Training Institute, where he later taught as a member of its faculty. Park was appointed to a judgeship on the Seoul Civil District Court in 1985, and following his fifth year on the bench, he decided to enter the master’s program at Cornell Law considering the Supreme Court’s recommendation. He arrived during a period of widespread change, including a pro-democracy movement, in South Korea. When he returned to Seoul in 1991, he took a leading role in reforming the legal system. “After coming back, I had many opportunities to participate in the ensuing judicial reforms that were taking place,” says Justice Park, who credits the Law School for his understanding of case law.

Considering Mr. Justice Park has the courage and competence to perform such an important responsibility…and very strong confidence to defend the independence of the judiciary branch and protect social minorities, he is very eligible to be appointed as a Justice of the Supreme Court. — National Assembly of South Korea report

“The current legal system in South Korea is based on a so-called ‘Compound System,’ which many experts have assessed as an unusually successful establishment,” he says. “However, the Korean bar has been always open-minded to absorb legal achievements from other countries. The inspirations instilled from Cornell had invoked many new ideas from within me. At Cornell, I was able to experience firsthand how human rights can be realized in the lives of individuals, as a universal right of mankind.” “My initial understanding was that the civil law system was superior in clarity and predictability while the common law system had greater flexibility and adaptability on the unique situations of each individual case. It was only after studying at Cornell that I was actually

able to grasp how the common law system functioned practically,” he adds. And, “for example, the flexibility in dealing with the remedies to the infringement of rights or defining the amounts of damages on a case-by-case basis were inspiring experiences which spurred greater openness in my way of thinking. Perusal of the years of accumulated judicial precedents on Freedom of Speech gave me a chance to ponder how the plaza of thought under the system of liberalism and democracy should be established,” he explains. Higher posts followed. He served as a judge on the Seoul High Court before becoming president on the Daejeon District Court, earning a reputation as a progressive for his work in mapping out a new model for civil procedure,

providing assistance to defendants representing themselves in court, introducing citizen participation in criminal trials, strengthening copyright laws, and facilitating alternative dispute resolutions. In one groundbreaking decision, he declared invalid exclusive management agreements between popular performers in the Asian region and the most influential entertainment company in South Korea. He ruled that the agreement excessively infringed on individuals’ rights, and was thus unfair. As a result, a model entertainment management agreement reflecting his decision was created and widely adopted by the entertainment industry. In another case, he ruled to reinstate a journalist and a president of a public institution who had lost their jobs for criticizing the government. And, he established the scope and limit of online open marketplace companies’ legal liabilities to brand manufacturers and consumers arising from frequent sales of fake products. He also has a solid reputation as a scholar in the field of jurisprudence. In 2005, he received ‘The Year’s Legal Thesis Award’ given by the Korea Legal Center for his legal research on ‘The Structure Analysis of Decision Standards on Performance Based on Illegal Cause.’ This award has been recognized as the most honorable award for Korean lawyers since it is given to only

two researchers from the entire Korean bar on an annual basis. At the Law School, John J. Barceló, William Nelson Cromwell Professor of International and Comparative Law and Elizabeth and Arthur Reich Director of the Leo and Arvilla Berger International Legal Studies Program, led him through a series of case studies on international transactions, and “for a student like me, coming from Korea, a nation jumping up to the economic springboard, these lectures were very helpful in organizing my thoughts regarding a lawyer’s role in this global society.” From his time in Ithaca, he retains fond memories of the wooded path around Beebe Lake, the ivy climbing up the façade of Myron Taylor Hall, the pleasures of Stewart Park, and the view from Cayuga Medical Center, where his second daughter was born. “These scenes remain so vividly in my mind as if I had seen them only yesterday,” he says. “These are all places of joy and happiness to me, which overlap when I think of Cornell and Ithaca. “At Cornell, I watched how people with truly diverse origins and thoughts can achieve harmony and establish commonality,” he continues. “The warmth and kindness that I received from people in Ithaca are still with me every day. Deep in this jurist’s heart, the values summed up by ‘Lawyers in the Best Sense’ truly makes sense.” n ~Kenneth Berkowitz

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Building a Better Transactional Lawyer: New Courses Bolster Deal-Making Savvy “Court decisions, by and large, involve failed or contentious transactions,” says Charles K. Whitehead, professor of law. Most transactions, he notes, never reach the courtroom. Yet legal education tends to be heavily biased toward court cases, scanting students on deal-making skills. With about half of its graduates heading into transactional fields, the Law School is addressing this oversight—common in legal education—with a new slate of courses that equip participants to tackle real-world deals. “What we’ve done at Cornell, and I don’t think it’s unfair to say we’re one of the country’s leaders in this, is create capstone classes that give students exposure to transactional law, providing perspective and a broader understanding of what a deal lawyer does,” says Whitehead. He adds, “It’s something I would have loved to have had when I was in law school.” In Deals, students dissect actual transactions and then get to speak with the lawyers behind them. In Introduction to Transactional Lawyering, course study culminates in the Transactional Lawyering Competition, judged by seasoned alumni. Whitehead points out how rare it is for law students, or even novice lawyers, to receive significant time and feedback from such senior

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What we’ve done at Cornell, and I don’t think it’s unfair to say we’re one of the country’s leaders in this, is create capstone classes that give students exposure to transactional law, providing perspective and a broader understanding of what a deal lawyer does. — Charles K. Whitehead

practitioners. By the final round, he says, many of the contenders have picked up a level of understanding that puts them on a par with junior lawyers a few years ahead of them. Supplementing these two lecture classes is a host of seminars and practica. Taught mostly by alumni, they cover a broad range of practice areas, including private equity, commercial banking, capital markets, corporate governance, real estate, financial derivatives, and the structuring of complex agreements. “Our full-time faculty provides the nucleus of our curriculum, and the adjunct faculty members, enormously talented and experienced practitioners, provide breadth and immediacy,” says Stewart J. Schwab, the Allan R. Tessler Dean and Professor of Law. Over the past four years, the dedication from alumni practitioners has helped to create a strong and growing transactional curriculum.

Charles K. Whitehead

The underlying theme of all the seminars, says Whitehead, is that adroit structuring and negotiations actually make transactions more valuable for both parties. “This is no surprise to experienced practitioners,” he says, “but it’s a revelation to students.” “Our overall goal is to make Cornell Law students better prepared than any law students in the country at transactional law,” says Schwab, “and we are succeeding.”

DEALS AND TRANSACTION L AW COURSES:

LAW 6292 Deals Charles K. Whitehead, professor of law Raymond Minella ‘74, executive director, Clarke Business Law Institute LAW 6293 Deals Seminar: Drafting and Analyzing Corporate Agreements

Arnold S. Jacobs, M.B.A. ‘63/LL.B. ‘64, partner, Proskauer & Rose LAW 6294 Deals Practicum: Private Equity Transactions

Steven Flyer ‘91, managing principal, Gotham Private Equity Partners

Lou R. Kling, partner, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom

Eileen T. Nugent, New York office leader and head of Private Equity Group, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LAW 6572 Introduction to Transactional Lawyering

LAW 7159 Deals Seminar: Bank Loan Transactions

Charles Fox, founder, Fox Professional Development LAW 7160 Deals Seminar: Law and Investment Banking —The General Counsel’s Perspective

Neil Radey, J.D./M.B.A. ‘83, managing director, Credit Suisse LAW 7163 Deals Seminar: Financial Derivatives

Gary Barnett, director of the Division of Swap Dealer and Intermediary Oversight, U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission

Gregory Scopino ‘05, special counsel with the Division of Swap Dealer and Intermediary Oversight, U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission LAW 7166 Deals Seminar: Capital Markets Transactions

James Junewicz, partner, Winston & Strawn

Charles K. Whitehead, professor of law LAW 6738 Negotiation Skills

Raymond Minella ‘74, executive director, Clarke Business Law Institute LAW 7154 Corporate Governance in Practice: Advising the Board of Directors

Mark Underberg ‘81, independent corporate governance advisor

LAW 7169 Deals Seminar: Real Estate Transactions

Cornell Law School Offers New Course on Whistleblower Laws This semester, Cornell Law School is offering a new course, Whistleblower Law: Involving Private Citizens in Public Law Enforcement, which will analyze how the law protects and encourages whistleblowers who report wrongdoing. “The number of federal and state whistleblower laws has increased dramatically over the past several years, and we believe that a strong understanding of these matters will prove valuable to our students as they embark on their careers,” said Stewart J. Schwab, the Allan R. Tessler Dean and Professor of Law. Schwab co-teaches the course with Neil Getnick ’78, managing partner of the Manhattan law firm Getnick & Getnick and chairman of the Taxpayers Against Fraud Education Fund. Getnick has handled some of the nation’s largest whistleblower cases. Schwab and Getnick will be joined by more than forty leading practitioners representing plaintiffs, defen-

Nathalia Bernardo, real estate associate, Paul Hastings Robert J. Wertheimer, real estate partner, Paul Hastings

Dean Schwab

Neil Getnick ’78

dants, and the government who will assist as guest lecturers. Getnick reported that whistleblower laws are increasingly being used by the government to combat fraud throughout the country and internationally. “These laws have become essential tools for fighting fraud, and knowledge of their complexities is important for both government lawyers and lawyers in private practice,” Getnick said. The course focuses on citizeninitiative enforcement pursuant to the qui tam provisions

These laws have become essential tools for fighting fraud, and knowledge of their complexities is important for both government lawyers and lawyers in private practice. — Neil Getnick ’78

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Judge Margaret J. Finerty ‘78, partner, Getnick & Getnick, New York City

Randall Fox, bureau chief, Taxpayer Protection Bureau, Office of the New York Attorney General Neil Getnick ‘78, partner, Getnick & Getnick, New York City

Ronald Goldstock, ex officio board member, International Association of Independent Private Sector Inspectors General

Michael Granston, acting director, Civil Fraud Section, U.S. Department of Justice James Helmer Jr., senior

Kristin Amerling, executive director, Taxpayers Against Fraud Education Fund

Daniel R. Anderson, deputy director, Commercial Litigation Branch, Civil Division, U.S. Department of Justice

Sara Bloom, assistant U.S. attorney, Economic Crimes Unit, U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts

James Breen, founder, Breen Law Firm, Alpharetta, Georgia

Patrick Burns, director of communications, Taxpayers Against Fraud Education Fund David Chizewer, principal, Litigation Group, Goldberg Kohn, Chicago

Cheryl Eckard, relator, U.S. ex rel. Eckard v. GlaxoSmithKline and SB Pharmco Puerto Rico

Kyle Eisenmann, associate, Kenney & McCafferty, Philadelphia

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partner & president, Helmer, Martins, Rice & Popham, Cincinnati

Peter Hutt II, partner, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, Washington, D.C.

Erika Kelton, partner, Phillips & Cohen, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. Brian Kenney, partner, Kenney & McCafferty, Philadelphia Gregory Krakower, senior advisor and counselor to the attorney general, Office of the New York Attorney General

Katherine Lauer, partner, Latham & Watkins, San Diego

Ann Lugbill, of counsel, Murphy Anderson, Cincinnati

Colette Matzzie, partner, Phillips & Cohen, Washington, D.C.

Daniel Meron, global co-chair, Health Care & Life Sciences Practice Group and co-chair, Healthcare Services & Providers Industry Group, Latham & Watkins, Washington, D.C.

Frederick “Rick” Morgan, partner, Morgan Verkamp, Cincinnati

Patrick O’Connell, founding partner, O’Connell & Soifer, Austin, Texas David Ogden, partner, Wilmer Hale, Washington, D.C. John Phillips, founding partner, Phillips & Cohen, Washington, D.C.

Lesley Ann Skillen, partner, Getnick & Getnick, New York City

Professor Stout

Shelley Slade, partner,

Richard Stengel, managing editor of Time magazine, moderated the panel. Other panelists were Arif Naqvi, founder and group chief executive of Abraaj Holdings, and Jochen Zeitz, chairman of the board’s sustainability committee and then CEO of the Sport and Lifestyle Division and chairman of the administrative board at PUMA.

Vogel, Slade & Goldstein, Washington, D.C.

Claire Sylvia, partner, Phillips & Cohen, San Francisco

Jennifer Verkamp, principal, Morgan Verkamp, Cincinnati

Joseph E. B. “Jeb” White, partner, Nolan & Auerbach, Philadelphia

Stephen Whitlock, director, Whistleblower Office, Internal Revenue Service

Lynn Stout Speaks at Clinton Global Initiative Lynn Stout, Distinguished Professor of Corporate and Business Law at Cornell Law School, was among the world’s leading lights in politics, academia, diplomacy, economics, and journalism when the Clinton Global Initiative convened this week to discuss solutions to the growing global economic crisis. Stout participated in a panel called “Working Capital: Creating Value for Business and Society,” which followed a speech by President Barack Obama.

Stout’s panel discussed how multinationals can have a positive impact on the global economy. “We should not lose sight of the fact that big businesses are a vital part of the larger solution,” said Stout. At the same time, she pointed out, there are obstacles, including the practice of running companies with the sole purpose of maximizing stock price. This is a relatively new idea, Stout said, and one that is not working for employees and in fact “not working well” for anyone. Stout noted that there is no evidence that these companies perform any better than those companies that do not engage in this practice.

Stout pointed out that the obsession with stock price has hurt the economy. She said that while in 1960 the average investor held onto a stock for an average of eight years, today’s investor is much more impatient, on average holding a stock for four months. Stout proposed a stock transfer tax that would encourage investors to hold onto stocks longer and therefore contribute to a sounder economy overall. The panel focused on sustainability as the means to bolstering the economy. Naqvi told the audience that long-term sustainability and long-term profitability need not be mutually exclusive. Zeitz called for greater transparency from

businesses, exposing those businesses that are not committed to sustainability. Stout proposed that sustainabilityrelated incentives be built into CEOs’ compensation packages to encourage corporate sustainability. Stout said of the conference, “CGI reflects the energy and the imagination of its founder, President Bill Clinton. It presses a relentlessly optimistic view, reminding us we can go a long way toward solving the world’s problems if we are willing to abandon the easy comfort of cynicism and roll up our sleeves to apply our creativity and strength to make things better.”

Professor Hockett Testifies before Congressional Panel

Symposium on Law, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship Brings Classroom Lessons to Life Cornell Law professor Charles K. Whitehead aimed to create a conference that would help students understand “the realworld effects of the law” on new business and, at the same

to intellectual property, and from venture capital to law and innovation. Each presentation was followed by an analysis from a practitioner or a panel of practitioners and scholars. All symposium papers will be published in an upcoming issue of the Cornell Law Review. “We were thrilled to have such a great lineup, including several

In events like the Entrepreneurship Symposium, the Law School can be a catalyst in bringing together a diverse group of entrepreneurs, educators, policymakers, and lawyers to examine cutting-edge issues that promote or hinder entrepreneurial success. — Stewart J. Schwab

On September 11, Cornell Law professor Robert C. Hockett testified before the Congressional Financial Services Panel Series on the topic, “The Housing Crisis and Policy Solutions: Should Eminent Domain Be Used to Save Underwater Homeowners?” Hockett discussed his “Municipal Plan” for underwater mortgage loans, testifying that “it is incumbent on local government to purchase underwater mortgage loans from private label securitization trusts; reduce principal; thereby mitigate loss for borrowers, communities, and investors; and in so doing stabilize homeownership rates, families, neighborhoods, and communities across the country.” In his testimony Hockett discussed the constitutionality of using eminent domain for principal reduction, the precedent for using eminent domain to purchase mortgages, whether eminent domain should be limited to certain types of loans or conditions, and how cities and judges determine fair market value for a mortgage loan.

time, allow academics and practitioners in the fields of law, business, and technology to work together on pressing legal issues that affect innovation and entrepreneurship. The resulting Symposium on Law, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship, sponsored by the Cornell Law Review and Clarke Business Law Institute, was held on February 8 at the Cornell Club in New York City. Academicians and practitioners presented papers on topics ranging from capital markets

alumni who have been prominent in entrepreneurship and innovation,” said Whitehead. Stewart J. Schwab, Cornell Law School’s Allan R. Tessler Dean and Professor of Law, introduced the keynote speaker: Daniel Huttenlocher, dean of computing and information science at Cornell University and dean of the new Cornell Tech in New York City. Huttenlocher spoke about Cornell Tech, which has been specifically designed to foster entrepreneurship and innova-

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“The Right Not to Use in Property and Patent Law,” presented by Oskar Liivak, Cornell Law School, and coauthored by Eduardo M. Peñalver, University of Chicago Law School “Monte Carlo Simulation of Contractual Provisions: An Application to Default Provisions in Venture Capital Limited Partnership Agreements,” presented by Katherine Litvak, Northwestern University School of Law

tion. He described Cornell Tech as “what the city needs and what the nation needs.” Professor Oskar Liivak will soon be addressing the first class of Cornell Tech engineers on patent issues. “They’ve expressed an interest in learning more about intellectual property,” Liivak said. “Hopefully, we can help their students and they can help our students.” He added, “For me to talk to people on the front lines will be valuable.” Schwab pointed out that there will be significant intersection between Cornell Law School and Cornell Tech. “The Law School will have an important role in both the near and far term in ensuring the success of the Tech Campus,” said Schwab. In the near term, the Law School is already assisting by educating the Tech Campus students in intellectual property and related issues. In the longer term, Schwab envisions Law students assisting Tech Campus students and others

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in applying for patents, creating employment agreements, filing partnership or incorporation documents, and other legal transactions. “In events like the Entrepreneurship Symposium, the Law School can be a catalyst in bringing together a diverse group of entrepreneurs, educators, policymakers, and lawyers to examine cutting-edge issues that promote or hinder entrepreneurial success,” said Schwab. Symposium Presenters:

”Redrawing the Public-Private Boundaries in Entrepreneurial Capital Raising,” presented by Donald C. Langevoort and Robert B. Thompson, Georgetown University Law Center “Reviving the Paper Patent Doctrine,” presented by John F. Duffy, University of Virginia School of Law

“Liquidation Rights and Incentive Misalignment in Start-Up Financing,” presented by Michael Klausner, Stanford Law School, and Stephen J. Venuto ‘96, Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe “Carrots and Sticks: How VCs Induce Entrepreneurial Teams to Sell Start-Ups,” presented by Jesse M. Fried, Harvard Law School, and coauthored by Brian Broughman, Indiana University, Maurer School of Law “Law and Entrepreneurial Opportunities,” presented by D. Gordon Smith of J. Reuben Clark Law School, Brigham Young University, and coauthored by Darian M. Ibrahim, University of Wisconsin Law School. Commentators:

Anna T. Pinedo, partner, Morrison & Foerster

Lawrence W. Granatelli ‘84, partner, Fenwick & West

Marshall Phelps ‘69, former vice president, IBM, and former vice president and deputy general counsel, Microsoft

Eric Young, cofounder and partner, Canaan Partners Josh Wolfe, cofounder and managing partner, Lux Capital Management

Michael G. Rhodes, partner and chair, Litigation Department, Cooley Greg Pass, entrepreneurial officer, Cornell NYC Tech, Cornell University Colin Hill, founder and CEO, GNS Healthcare

Steven C. Browne ‘88, coleader, Corporate Practice Group, and managing partner of the Boston office, Bingham McCutcheon

Law: Free, Understandable, Accessible About 250 people from thirtynine countries recently gathered at Cornell Law School to discuss free access to law. Cornell’s Legal Information Institute (LII) hosted the international Law via the Internet (LVI) conference, October 7, 8, and 9. The conference celebrated the first time LVI has been held in the United States and also recognized the LII’s twentieth anniversary year. When Peter W. Martin, the Jane M.G. Foster Professor of Law Emeritus and former dean of the Law School, and Thomas R. Bruce, director of the LII, founded the institute in 1992, free access to law meant putting a few court cases on the newly available Internet. Welcoming the conference-goers, Cornell Law’s Stewart J.

Thomas R. Bruce Richard Susskind BELOW: Conference participants traveled from thirty-nine countries for the LVI conference and to celebrate twenty years of the LII. FAR LEFT: LEFT:

Schwab, the Allan R. Tessler Dean and Professor of Law, said that in 1992 Martin and Bruce probably had no idea how their concept would grow. Now, he noted, the LII accounts for 65 percent of Cornell’s web traffic, with fourteen million visitors a year. Regulations, laws, and court cases are available online on forty LII namesake websites and dozens of commercial sites. Forty countries have subscribed to the Declaration of Free Access to Law.

Access.” Shirky holds a joint appointment at New York University, in the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) and the Journalism Department. His 2008 book, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations, explores how networked collaboration is changing business and industry.

But making law accessible has also grown in complexity. In developed countries, online technology changes daily. In developing countries, just getting at the laws can be challenging. For example, presenters from Kenya, Uganda, Malawi, Swaziland, the Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, and South Africa shared their experiences in creating legal information institutes. As Ufuoma Lamikanra of the Nigerian Institute of Advanced Legal Studies said, their task is “expensive, difficult, and time consuming.” However, Thelma Julie, of the Seychelles Legal Information Institute, noted that their difficulties “draw attention to failings of the system.” Even wealthy countries need more affordable legal service.

In the opening keynote speech, “Liberating Law Yet Further,” Sir Richard Susskind, IT adviser to the Lord Chief Justice of England, said that in England, many people who need legal help don’t look for it because they see the law as intimidating and expensive. Susskind’s talk drew from his most recent book, The End of Lawyers? Rethinking the Nature of Legal Service. The second keynote speaker, Clay Shirky, gave the address, “Authority in an Age of Open

Law must not only be accessible, Shirky said, it must be comprehensible. And collaborative annotation, while controversial, makes things understandable. For example, he described an attempt by physicians to coun-

teract Wikipedia articles on medicine. However, Shirky recounted, Wikipedia’s collaborative, nonexpert approach created stronger, more detailed, and clearer information. At the LVI-2012 gala dinner, Schwab presented Martin and Bruce with commemorative sculptures that read: “Your vision, generosity, and dedication continue to further the rights of all people to know and understand the laws that govern them, without cost.” Videos of the conference are available at www.lvi2012.org.

But making law accessible has also grown in complexity. In developed countries, online technology changes daily. In developing countries, just getting at the laws can be challenging.

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conference can help to further promote the development of empirical analysis in patent policy.”

Law School Hosts First Annual Empirical Patent Law Conference On September 28, top scholars in patent law, economics, and policy gathered at the Law School for the first annual Empirical Patent Law Conference. Jointly sponsored by Cornell’s Law and Economics Program and the University of Illinois College of Law’s program in Law, Behavior, and Social Science, the conference featured presentations of working

New Voices in Finance: Conference Encourages Cutting-Edge Scholarship on Market Regulation

Professor Frakes at an open session of the Empirical Patent Law Conference with Nicolas Ziebarth from Cornell’s Department for Policy Analysis and Management.

Now, more than ever, patent law and policy face a need for sound empirical insights. Empirical analysis in this arena, however, is a highly challenging endeavor. Intending to make this an annual event, Melissa and I organized this conference in an effort to help confront these challenges and to advance the state of knowledge in empirical patent law scholarship. — Michael Frakes

papers on the most current research projects in the field. Speakers covered a diverse range of topics, starting with a session focused on the interplay of patent law and innovation in the pharmaceutical industry. Columbia University’s Bhaven N. Sampat presented his research on the practice of “evergreening,” in which companies establish portfolios of low quality patents in order to extend the patent term on new

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drugs and protect their positions in the marketplace. He was followed by MIT’s Heidi Williams, who is examining the relationship between fixed patent terms and the development of cancer treatments. “Now, more than ever, patent law and policy face a need for sound empirical insights,” says Cornell Law professor Michael Frakes, the Jia Jonathan Zhu and Ruyin Ruby Ye Sesquicentennial Faculty Fellow, who

organized the conference with Melissa Wasserman, professor at the University of Illinois College of Law. “Empirical analysis in this arena, however, is a highly challenging endeavor. Intending to make this an annual event, Melissa and I organized this conference in an effort to help confront these challenges and to advance the state of knowledge in empirical patent law scholarship.” Adds Wasserman, “the conference fostered a rich interdisciplinary discussion of a number of topics of significance to modern patent policy, such as the possible distortionary effect of patent term duration on biopharmaceutical innovation. The need for empirical insights in patent law has become even more pressing in light of the growing import of intellectual property to social welfare and the recent passage of major patent reform. Michael and I are delighted that this annual

On September 29, Cornell Law School and the Clarke Business Law Institute (BLI) hosted “New Voices on Financial Market Regulation,” an academic roundtable conference. The event brought together some of the finest junior legal minds in the country to discuss their research. Leading scholars in the field from Cornell, Georgetown, Columbia, and Vanderbilt participated. “In the wake of the 2008 crisis, it has become clear that legal experts, as much as economic experts, had failed to keep up with the risks that were developing in our nation’s financial system,” says conference organizer Lynn Stout, Distinguished Professor of Corporate and Business Law at Cornell. “This conference was designed to encourage and promote the best in emerging legal scholarship on the problem of regulating financial markets and financial institutions.” The conversation spanned a range of pressing topics, including the complexities of regulating derivatives markets, the role of insurance regulation in consumer protection, and ways to reform the banking system.

to your office and says, ‘How would you like to organize . . .’” recalled Cornell’s Mitchel Lasser, the Jack G. Clarke Professor of Law, who orchestrated the conference with Tel Aviv University’s Roy Kreitner and Hila Shamir, “. . . and then the sentence actually ended pretty well,” he added.

Professor Hockett above: Adam Levitin of Georgetown Law Center, Daniel Schwarcz of University of Minnesota School of Law, Jeffrey Manns of George Washington University, and Saule Omarova of University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill LEFT: Professor Stout above LEFT:

the Bruce W. Nichols Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center. “Public and Private, Beyond Distinctions?” Conference is Latest Collaboration between Cornell and Tel Aviv University

In the wake of the 2008 crisis, it has become clear that legal experts, as much as economic experts, had failed to keep up with the risks that were developing in our nation’s financial system. — Lynn Stout

Among the Cornell participants joining Stout were BLI professors Robert C. Hockett and Charles K. Whitehead. Other participating scholars included Margaret Mendenhall Blair, the Milton R. Underwood Chair in Free Enterprise at

Vanderbilt University School of Law; Jeffrey N. Gordon, the Richard Paul Richman Professor of Law and Codirector of the Richman Center for Business, Law, and Public Policy at Columbia Law School; and Adam J. Levitin,

On October 11 and 12, the Law School hosted “Public and Private, Beyond Distinctions?” a conference sponsored jointly with the Tel Aviv University Buchmann Faculty of Law. The two schools are engaged in ongoing collaboration, including student and faculty exchanges, joint research and publication, and several conferences. In June 2010, scholars from both schools attended a conference in Tel Aviv whose papers were published in the Cornell Law Review. The papers presented at the Cornell conference will be published in the January 2014 issue of Tel Aviv’s Theoretical Inquiries in Law. “It all started with the dreaded moment when the dean comes

Shamir, who is serving as a visiting professor at Cornell Law for the fall term, kicked off the program with a presentation of her paper, “The Third Globalization of the Private/ Public Distinction.” After a historical overview of the public/private distinction in classical legal thought and subsequent realist critiques, she examined its status in the current legal moment, focusing on implications for the welfare state. As a case study, Shamir presented the Israeli Supreme Court’s controversial 2009 decision declaring prison privatization unconstitutional, which she viewed as a missed opportunity to acknowledge the dynamism between the public and private spheres. In commentary following the presentation, Cornell’s Michael C. Dorf, the Robert S. Stevens Professor of Law, raised further questions about public/private dynamism and hybridization. The session continued with Lasser’s paper “Collapsing Distinctions: The ECJ’s Viking Jurisprudence,” a scathing critique of a decision by the European Court of Justice (ECJ). Observing that the court had turned a labor dispute between a Finnish company and its

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citizens), and indeed debate whether there is a meaningful difference between public and private law. This symposium provides fresh perspectives and examples on the question.” Laura Spitz, J.S.D. ’06, Appointed Associate Dean for International Affairs Professor Dorf and Dean Schwab above right: Hila Shamir of Tel-Aviv University Faculty of Law right: Jacco Bomhoff of The London School of Economics and Professor Lasser

With the commencement of the school year, Cornell Law has introduced a new leadership position and welcomed back an old friend to fill it. Laura Spitz, J.S.D.’06, is now associate dean for international affairs.

above:

workers into a simplistic comparison of fundamental rights and freedoms, Lasser asserted that the “unabashedly powerful” court has shown disastrous insensitivity in its absorption of subsidiary legal domains. Commentator Ori Aronson, of Bar-Ilan University in Israel, probed issues of the ECJ’s mission and capacities, as well as the consequences of more specialized adjudication. Most papers found a blurring of the traditional public roles of government and the private roles of business, families, and individuals. For example, Tel Aviv University’s Guy Mundlak called for a revitalization of workplace democracy, in which the quintessential public concept of democracy applies to private workplaces. While recognizing that some forms of workplace democracy could not survive the gaze of economic sobriety, Mundlak found important guidance from the

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all-affected principle—that those affected by decisions should have a voice in their creation. Stewart J. Schwab, the Allan R. Tessler Dean and Professor of Law, commenting, emphasized that all employment regulation, even of the private workplace, involved public policy. Still, he said, Americans were reluctant to have the privacy rights of public-sector workers necessarily spill over into the private workplace. Other conference participants included Tel Aviv University professors Eyal Benvenisti, Leora Bilsky, Talia Fisher, Doreen Lustig, and Issi Rosen-Zvi; the London School

of Economics’ Jacco Bomhoff; and Cornell Law professors Josh Chafetz, Robert C. Hockett, Bernadette A. Meyler, Jens David Ohlin, Aziz F. Rana, Laura Underkuffler, and Xingzhong Yu, as well as postdoctoral fellow Sergio Latorre. “The public-private distinction is an important topic that showcases how well the Tel Aviv and Cornell faculties mesh,” said Schwab. “Scholars and practicing lawyers perennially debate the distinctions between public law (traditionally seen as the rules between citizens and their government) and private law (rules governing relations among private

The deanship was created following the retirement this spring of Larry Bush, executive director of the Clarke Center for International and Comparative Legal Studies. Spitz will oversee the Clarke Program as its executive director and also support the management of the Berger International Legal Studies Program. “I am meant to ensure that the already fantastic international and comparative legal studies programming continues,” says Spitz, “and at the same time consider whether the programs (or certain aspects of the programs) should be changed or grown.” “We are delighted to have Laura Spitz join us in this important position,” says Stewart J. Schwab, the Allan R. Tessler Dean and Professor of Law. “As a J.S.D. graduate of Cornell, she already knows the Law School well, and we look for-

bilities. In doing so, we shared with each other our own teaching experiences and pedagogical views and, in the process, we all learned from each other.”

University, the University of New Mexico, and Emory University.

Laura Spitz, J.S.D.’06

ward to having her coordinate and highlight our many international activities and programs.” Spitz returns to Ithaca from Vancouver, B.C., where she was a partner in the Corporate and Commercial Group of Miller Thomson. From 2005 through 2010, she was a law professor at the University of Colorado and also consulted on a wide range of legal matters for U.S. clients. Spitz has testified before a Senate committee on bankruptcy reform at the Georgia State Legislature and taught CLEs and made presentations in her areas of expertise both domestically and internationally, including at the University of British Columbia, the University of Toronto, Yale

“It will be no easy task to fill Larry Bush’s shoes,” says Spitz. “But I am very excited to join and learn from a group of incredibly talented administrators. I have been for many years a lawyer, and I was also for several years a law professor. I believe this position permits me to have the best of both worlds, at one of the best universities in the country, and I feel very fortunate.” Cornell Law Professors Write A Guide to Teaching Lawyering Skills There are myriad texts available in law school bookstores about legal writing. But a quartet of Cornell Law professors in the Lawyering Program noticed that the books were leaving one demographic in the cold—legal writing professors. Program director Joel Atlas— along with Lara Gelbwasser Freed, Andrea J. Mooney, Michelle A. Fongyee Whelan, and two former Cornell Law colleagues, John Mollenkamp and Ursula Weigold—sought to rectify this issue by writing their own book, A Guide to Teaching Lawyering Skills, published by Carolina Academic Press in August. “A glance at our office bookshelves showed them to be filled with excellent books for students of legal writing but wholly missing any books for

Before writing this book, the professors involved set out with a number of goals that

We thought that a book that addresses the specific challenges of teaching lawyering skills would be worthwhile, as skills-based teaching does not lend itself to the traditional casebook and Socratic dialogue method used to teach doctrinal subjects in law school. — Lara Gelbwasser Freed

professors of legal writing,” says Atlas. Professors who teach legal writing and research courses are the primary audience for the book. The authors tackle a number of different topics, from simpler issues such as creating a syllabus and setting course goals to looking at the process of grading and providing feedback. According to Atlas, each professor brought his or her own unique voice to the writing process. “Taking this untraveled path required us to start from scratch and assess the full scope and depth of a legalwriting professor’s responsi-

they wanted to achieve. “Our primary goal was to create a how-to guide for teaching the real-life skills employed by practicing attorneys,” says Freed. “We thought that a book that addresses the specific challenges of teaching lawyering skills would be worthwhile, as skills-based teaching does not lend itself to the traditional casebook and Socratic dialogue method used to teach doctrinal subjects in law school.” Whelan echoes Freed’s sentiments, adding that the group hoped to create a versatile book for professors that they could use at any time of the day. “Another goal was to create a

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BRIEFS resource that simultaneously could be (1) a book that serves as an overview of the important aspects of teaching legal writing and (2) a kind of a desk reference that a professor could pick up at any time, go to a particular section in the book, and use as a starting point to answer any particular questions that the professor may have,” says Whelan. Ultimately, this quartet hopes that their book will be able to

impact any professor who owns it. “We are hoping that we created something very practical,” says Mooney. “This will hopefully be the kind of book that professors don’t need to read from start to finish in order to find it useful. Instead they can just turn to the chapter they really need for a particular issue to help them with their teaching.”

In a test of gastric will, Professors Michael Dorf, Brad Wendel, Charles Whitehead, and Dean Stewart Schwab faced off for a good cause and an entertaining study break for students at the third annual Faculty Pie Eating Contest, held the week following Thanksgiving. With 968 grams of pie eaten, Dorf held onto his title as the reigning champion. All proceeds from the event went to Love Knows No Bounds, an Ithaca-based charity working to help victims of Hurricane Sandy.

Lawyers and Fools: Whitehead and Coauthors Examine Lawyer-Directors in Public Corporations “The accepted wisdom, that a lawyer who is also a corporate director has a fool for a client, is outdated,” says Cornell Law Professor Charles K. Whitehead. In a new working paper, Whitehead and coauthors Lubomir P. Litov and Simone M. Sepe argue that the benefits of lawyer-directors in today’s world significantly outweigh the costs. “On average, a lawyer-director increases firm value by 9.5 percent, and when the lawyer is also a company executive, the increase rises to 10.2 percent,” says Whitehead. “During our sample period, 2000–2009, the result was an almost doubling in the percentage of public companies with lawyerdirectors.” Released this month, “Lawyers and Fools: Lawyer-Directors in Public Corporations” is the first paper to analyze the rise of lawyer-directors on corporate boards. Departing from the dominant model for evaluating board composition, which focuses on the internal costs of separating ownership and control, Whitehead et al. examine the influence of the external business environment on optimal board composition, as well as the value of legal expertise in company management. “Our findings fly in the face of requirements that emphasize

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Professor Whitehead

the independence of directors,” says Whitehead. “Our intuition is that a lawyer-director brings a special perspective based on her training and experience with the law and legal issues, and an appreciation of doing things ‘by the book’ that likely comes with it. Factors other than independence, such as training, skills, and experience, can be as or more valuable to the firm and its shareholders.” Having a lawyer on the board, according to the authors’ research, curbs corporate risk taking. That outcome appears to be as much the product of efforts by lawyer-directors to enhance internal governance as it is a response to litigation and regulation. By filling substantive gaps in how the company is managed, the authors argue, board composition can increase firm value based on the particular management skills and experience that directors bring to the job. The full paper is publicly available online at http:// papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers. cfm?abstract_id=2218855.

W. Bradley Wendel Wins Levy Award for Ethics

inform their thinking about legal obligations.”

The New York State Bar Association Committee on Professional Ethics has presented the Sanford D. Levy Memorial Award for 2012 to W. Bradley Wendel, professor of law at Cornell Law School, for his contributions to the field of professional legal ethics.

Wendel was first notified of the Levy Award while on sabbatical last spring. The ethics committee presented him the award at a meeting on October 17.

“I do the theoretical side of things,” said Wendel, who specializes in the application of moral and political philosophy to problems of legal ethics. “You’d think that lawyers in practice would consider it too ‘ivory tower.’” However, he said, “It was gratifying to hear that people out in the practice found my work not too remote, to be useful.” He added that he hoped, “the work I do might at least

The Sanford D. Levy Memorial Award was established in 1981 by a bequest of a former chair of the Committee on Professional Ethics at the New York State Bar Association. Among the previous winners of the annual award are former New York State chief judge Judith Kaye; Roger C. Cramton, the Robert S. Stevens Emeritus Professor of Law and former dean of Cornell Law School; and Charles W. Wolfram, the Charles Frank Reavis Sr. Emeritus Professor of Law at Cornell.

“I know many of the previous recipients of the award, and they are prominent names in the field,” Wendel said. “It is gratifying to be listed among them.” Ben Tettlebaum ’12 Awarded Rhodes Public Interest Fellowship: Project Will Cultivate Urban Agriculture in Maine “Cornell Law gave me more than information and knowledge,” says Ben Tettlebaum ’12, “It

taught me how to analyze both the law and extra-legal problems critically.” As the second recipient of the Law School’s Frank H.T. Rhodes Public Interest Law Fellowship, Tettlebaum will soon be putting that skill to work for urban communities and the environment. Through the Farm and Food Initiative of the Conservation Law Foundation (CLF), based in Maine, Tettlebaum will work with urban farming organizations to provide legal and planning tools to underserved

Ben Tettlebaum ‘12

Urban gardens and composting can provide healthy, local food sourcing, educate underprivileged youth, develop smallbusiness opportunities for ‘environmental justice’ communities, create jobs throughout Maine, divert tons of solid food waste, and sequester CO2. — Ben Tettlebaum ’12 Professor Wendel

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BRIEFS populations, laying the foundation for urban agriculture throughout New England. Urban gardens and composting, he says, “can provide healthy, local food sourcing, educate underprivileged youth, develop small-business opportunities for ‘environmental justice’ communities, create jobs throughout Maine, divert tons of solid food waste, and sequester CO2.” “At a time when environmental concerns are dominating national public policy discussions, we are thrilled to award the second Frank H.T. Rhodes Public Interest Law Fellowship to Ben Tettlebaum,” says Karen V. Comstock, assistant dean for public service and a member of the Rhodes Fellowship selection committee. “The committee selected Ben because he has an impressive record of creative leadership on matters relating to the complex issues at the intersection of law, policy, and the environment.” She adds, “Given Cornell’s history as a land-grant institution and its support of research, scholarship, and the practical application of knowledge addressing the challenges of sustainability, we are confident that Ben’s fellowship project will make an important contribution to these efforts.”

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Tettlebaum worked in environmental education for almost a decade before enrolling at Cornell. As a student at the Law School, he served as president of the Environmental Law Society, and in the spring of 2011, he organized the Energy Conference on Gas Drilling, Sustainability, and Energy Policy, which drew more than 400 participants from across the state and the nation to discuss the divisive issue of high volume hydraulic fracturing (“hydro-fracking”). Since graduating cum laude in the spring of 2012, Tettlebaum has worked as a legal clerk for Hon. Duane Benton of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, in his home state of Missouri. It was there, years ago, that the seeds of his upcoming endeavor were planted. “Growing up on a farm, seeing the hardship wrought by large-scale monoculture, and experiencing the power of local communities producing and consuming their own food gives this project a personal connection for me,” he says. Funded by the Atlantic Philanthropies and shared by the Law School and Cornell’s Population Program, the Frank H.T. Rhodes fellowships are named for Cornell University’s president from 1977 through 1995, also a former Atlantic board member and chair. The fellowships further scholarship and research in poverty alleviation, public health, human rights, and support for the elderly and disadvantaged children.

clinic news

A Significant Win for Convict Defended by Innocence Clinic Rudolph Young has been fighting to exonerate himself of a Brighton, New York, home invasion and burglary ever since eyewitness testimony led to his conviction in 1993. A state appeals court initially reversed that ruling, but after a second identification, Young was convicted again in 1999 and the state courts affirmed. On October 16, however, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit unanimously ruled that the testimony violated Young’s rights and ordered a retrial. In 1991, the home of William and Lisa Sykes was invaded by a man wrapped in a blanket and wearing a scarf over his face, leaving only his eyes visible. After failing to identify him in a photo lineup, Lisa Sykes picked Young out of an in-person lineup. He was found guilty of the break-in and theft. The next year, a state appeals court overturned the conviction on the grounds that Young had been arrested without probable cause, rendering the lineup testimony inadmissible. However, when Lisa Sykes identified Young as the home invader again five years later, the judge allowed her testimony under the “independent source doctrine,” receiving it

Professor Blume

as untainted by any events subsequent to the night of the crime. Young was convicted a second time. A few years later, Cornell Law School Professor John H. Blume was speaking at a continuing legal education program in nearby Rochester, when he was approached by a public defender named Brian Shiffrin about a former client’s case that had been bothering him. Shiffrin believed the convicted man, Young, was innocent, and that the state courts had misapplied federal law in affirming his convictions. He asked Blume, director of Clinical, Advocacy, and Skills Programs, and director of the Cornell Death Penalty Project, to look into it. Blume reviewed the trial record and concluded that there was no solid evidence against Young other than Sykes’s identification, which he thought dubious. He offered his assistance, and the assistance of students in Cornell Law School’s Innocence Clinic. Young, who at the time was

Allowing this type of identification evidence is a recipe for convicting an innocent person. We know that eyewitness identification evidence in general is often wrong and this type of tainted eyewitness testimony is even more problematic, but courts continue to allow it as a sort of compromise. — John Blume

challenging his conviction as a pro se inmate in federal habeas corpus proceedings, was thrilled at the prospect. Over the next several years, Blume and multiple generations of Cornell Law students conducted legal research and drafted briefs and pleadings for Young. After a federal district court judge ordered a new trial and the Monroe County District Attorney’s Office appealed, Blume became counsel of record for Young and argued the case in the Second Circuit. Blume also persuaded the Innocence Project in New York, headed by Barry Scheck, to file an amicus brief on Young’s behalf. Throughout the litigation, the focus was on discrediting the independent source identification determination, and

emphasizing the dearth of reliable evidence pointing toward Young’s guilt. For Young and his defenders, the Second Circuit’s decision was momentous. “Claims of this nature generally lose,” says Blume, “so the fact that this one won is significant. I think Mr. Young won because the court was persuaded that there is a very strong possibility that Mr. Young is factually innocent.” According to Blume, the decision is also significant because it shines a light on the unreliability of the evidence that is often admitted under the independent source doctrine. “Allowing this type of identification evidence is a recipe for convicting an innocent person,” he says. “We know that eyewitness identification evidence

in general is often wrong and this type of tainted eyewitness testimony is even more problematic, but courts continue to allow it as a sort of compromise. I think what [the Young decision] reflects is that, in cases where a court looking at all the evidence concludes that it is unrealistic that a witness’s identification was based on the actual encounter as opposed to subsequent events, the court will order a new trial. Especially when the other evidence is as weak as it was in this case.” Young’s case was the third victory for Cornell Law School Innocence Clinic clients in the last six months. In March, one of Blume’s clients, Edward Lee Elmore, was released from prison after being incarcerated for more than thirty years when the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit concluded that Elmore’s trial lawyers failed to adequately challenge forensic evidence the federal court concluded was suspect and unreliable. Earlier this month, a state trial judge in South Carolina granted a new trial to another of Blume’s Innocence Clinic clients, Wesley Max Myers, based on DNA evidence that the judge believed created a material possibility that Myers was wrongfully convicted. According to Blume, Cornell Law School students played an invaluable role in these cases as well.

clinic news

Juvenile Justice Clinic Launched to Represent Defendants Facing Life Sentences When Miller v. Alabama was decided this past June, it was a watershed moment for juvenile rights. In a 5–4 decision, the Court held that the Eighth Amendment prohibited mandatory sentences of life without parole for juvenile offenders convicted of homicide. In the wake of this decision, a need for advocacy arose, according to Professor John H. Blume, Cornell Law School’s director of Clinical, Advocacy, and Skills Programs and director of the Cornell Death Penalty Project. Responding to the need, Blume, along with professors Sheri Lynn Johnson and Keir M. Weyble, created the Law School’s new Juvenile Justice Clinic, which assists juvenile defendants facing life sentences in a postMiller world. Ultimately, Blume decided to focus the clinic’s efforts on cases in South Carolina, a state where he saw a void in representation. “In South Carolina, there’s a significant need to provide high quality representation to the juveniles who have been sentenced to life without parole,” says Blume, who also added that his experience practicing in the state and connections with criminal defense attorneys

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BRIEFS there were also contributing factors. The clinic—which consists of eight students, three faculty members, and one fellow— began its work in August. According to Blume, one of the first major tasks the students embarked on was working on a class action suit in the state’s Supreme Court on behalf of the thirty-seven juveniles in South Carolina who have been sentenced to life without parole. From conducting legal research to assisting in the drafting of the lawsuit, Blume says that the students have been both assisting the clinic’s clients and gaining invaluable practical experience. In addition to the class action suit, Blume says that five of the thirty-seven cases were chosen for individual representation. Students are working on these cases in teams of two, conducting numerous interviews with their client’s family, friends, teachers, and coaches in an effort to place the crime that the juvenile defendant was convicted of committing in the appropriate context. When it comes to the type of work his students are involved in, Blume notes a number of challenges involved. “With the clients in this clinic, the students have to work to establish a relationship of trust,” Blume says. “In most cases, their clients come from different cultural backgrounds than our students. Our clients are almost all poor children of color who were raised in dysfunctional

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Angela Cornell Helps Develop Bolivia’s First Legal Clinic

Professor Johnson

Professor Weyble

I very much believe in the work that the clinic is taking on,” says Jessica Hittelman ‘13, whose client was arrested at fifteen, sentenced at eighteen, and involved in what she describes as a “wrong place, wrong time” scenario.

families and, in many cases, subjected to various and sometimes multiple forms of trauma.” Despite these challenges, the clinic has been rewarding on both a personal and professional level for the students involved. I very much believe in the work that the clinic is taking on,” says Jessica Hittelman ‘13, whose client was arrested at fifteen, sentenced at eighteen, and involved in what she describes as a “wrong place, wrong time” scenario. “This, to me, is not the picture of someone who deserves to live out the rest of his natural

Jessica Hittelman ‘13

life behind bars. Yet the judge in his case paid little attention to these details, and made the sentencing determination with little to no information about our client. This, to me, is a wrong worth righting.”

In October, Angela B. Cornell, clinical professor of law, traveled to La Paz to work with two Bolivian law schools, Universidad Católica Boliviana and the Universidad Salesiana de Bolivia, and a nonprofit human rights organization, Capacitación y Derechos Ciudadanos, which together are creating the first legal clinic in the country. Eduardo Rodríguez Veltzé, the former president of Bolivia who has also served as chief justice of the Bolivian Supreme Court, initiated the project as dean of the Catholic University. Cornell and Villanova University School of Law professor Beth Lyon are providing pro bono assistance in the development and implementation of the legal clinic. “Bolivia is one of the poorest countries in Latin America, with more than half of the population living in poverty and at least a quarter in extreme poverty,” says Cornell. “The country also has the largest indigenous population in the region, with thirty different languages spoken. The legal clinic will serve the needs of vulnerable populations, of which many are indigenous, with representation in both criminal and civil matters.” During her visit, Cornell provided feedback on the initial

clinic news

Cornell Students Take on Securities Dispute Resolution Triathlon

Professor Cornell

proposal and supplied training on clinical pedagogy for the clinic’s professors. All of the training was done in Spanish. She also worked with the law students who will be the first to work in the clinic. While in La Paz, Cornell also presented a talk on international labor law at a seminar on obstacles and challenges to human rights in the twentyfirst century. The Bolivian clinical project was supported by the International Senior Lawyers Project, which provides experienced pro bono lawyers to promote human rights, equitable and sustainable development, and the rule of law worldwide. Ongoing expertise and support for the new clinic will be provided through August 2013.

“I would compare it to army boot camp,” says William A. Jacobson, Cornell’s Securities Law Clinic director, of the training three clinic students undertook in preparation for the recent Securities Dispute Resolution Triathlon. Coached by adjunct professor Birgitta Siegel, second-year law students Alex Poe ‘14, Malavika Rao ‘14, and Yingchen Xiong ‘14 spent six weeks researching and practicing for the event, where they took first place in the mediation competition, one of three competitions within the triathlon. Cosponsored by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) and St. John’s University School of Law, the triathlon drew twenty teams from schools around the country to New York City on October 13 and 14. Playing the roles of attorneys and clients, participants navigated the negotiation, mediation, and arbitration of a dispute scenario, with members of FINRA’s roster of experienced neutrals serving as mediators, arbitrators, and judges. “I’m so proud of these three students, who sacrificed nights, weekends, and even part of fall break to prepare for this competition,” says Jacobson, who praises the experience as a valuable introduction to real-

Coached by adjunct professor Birgitta Siegel, second-year law students Alex Poe ‘14, Malavika Rao ‘14, and Yingchen Xiong ‘14 spent six weeks researching and practicing for the event, where they took first place in the mediation competition, one of three competitions within the Securities Dispute Resolution Triathlon.

Alex Poe ‘14

Malavika Rao ‘14

world challenges. In addition to researching the substantive matters of the case, the students had to work under strict time constraints and hone three very different sets of skills for the three competitions. They also had to work effectively as a team, a skill Jacobson stresses in the Securities Law Clinic. On the whole, he says, “The project presented students with many aspects of what it means to be a lawyer, as opposed to a law student.” The Securities Law Clinic provides students with an opportunity to develop fundamental investigatory and

Yingchen Xiong ‘14

advocacy skills in the context of the substantive laws governing investments. The clinic also provides representation and community outreach in the largely rural and underserved “Southern Tier” region of upstate New York.

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BRIEFS Conference and Report Address Sexual Violence against Girls in Southern Africa Law School’s Third Annual Women and Justice Conference Brings Together Judges and Magistrates from Southern Africa and U.S. “For the first time, I read a report that captured the voices of the children,” said Hon. Gertrude Chawatama as she addressed the students, scholars, and officials filling Cornell Law School’s MacDonald Moot Court Room. Chawatama, judge of the High Court of Zambia and Commissioner on the Truth, Justice, and Reconciliation Commission of Kenya, was referring to a report released by the Law School’s Avon Global Center for Women and Justice, Cornell’s International Human Rights Clinic, and Women and Law in Southern Africa-Zambia that addresses sexual violence against girls in Zambia. Launched October 18 during the Avon Center’s Third Annual Women and Justice Conference, the report, “’They are Destroying Our Futures’: Sexual Violence against Girls in Zambia’s Schools,” is the result of Law School faculty and human rights clinic students’ interviews with government officials, school teachers and administrators, and more than 100 children during two trips to Zambia. Of the students interviewed, 54 percent reported that they had personally experienced

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Professor Brundige with Judge Gertrude Chawatama

Rashida Manjoo, UN special rapporteur on violence against women

Rashida Manjoo stressed that sensitivity to both tradition and the nitty-gritty details of implementation were essential for effective reforms. As she emphasized the importance of critical analysis in evaluating progress, Manjoo also mentioned more than once that the need represented a great research opportunity for the students sitting before her.

sexual violence or harassment at the hands of teachers, students, or men while traveling to and from school. When asked about peers, 84 percent of students reported that they had either experienced or knew of classmates who had experienced such abuse. Joining Chawatama on the report release panel were Avon Global Center executive director Elizabeth Brundige, Cornell Law professor Cynthia Grant Bowman, and Hon. Virginia M. Kendall, U.S. District Judge for the Northern District of Illinois. A panel of

simultaneously at the U.S. Embassy in Lusaka, Zambia.

Matrine Chuulu of Women and the Law in Southern Africa

government officials and other concerned parties convened

Rashida Manjoo, United Nations special rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences, served as keynote speaker for the conference. Manjoo spoke of the legal, cultural, and socioeconomic causes of sexual violence and the obstacles to redress. Drawing on visits to a wide range of countries, including Jordan, Italy, Somalia, Algeria, Zambia, and the United States, she stressed that sensitivity to both tradition and the nitty-gritty details of

implementation were essential for effective reforms. As she emphasized the importance of critical analysis in evaluating progress, Manjoo also mentioned more than once that the need represented a great research opportunity for the students sitting before her. The conference also convened fifteen judges and magistrates from southern Africa and the United States to share stories of the challenges they face, as well as accounts of progress and innovation. A judge from Malawi explained her country’s “come courts,” which empower the members of rural communities by bringing the judicial apparatus to them. A Zambian judge observed that recent constitutional reforms throughout the region are compelling officials to confront the question, “What is justice?” adding, “The period from now is going to be crucial.” Reflecting on the event, Brundige, who was lead author of the Zambian report, said, “By bringing together judges and other stakeholders from southern Africa and the United States, the conference facilitated an important transnational dialogue about strategies for addressing the sexual abuse of girls. As participants shared ideas and best practices, their conversations illustrated the importance of working together across borders and sectors to combat this devastating form of gender-based violence that affects girls throughout the world.”

U.S. Treasury Department’s Robert Dohner Delivers 2012 Clarke Lecture On October 2, Robert Dohner, deputy assistant secretary for Asia at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, delivered the 2012 Clarke Lecture at the Law School. This was the tenth anniversary of the lecture series, which is presented by the Clarke Program in East Asian Law and Culture. “The Clarke Lecture’s aim is to bring a scholar or public figure of truly global prominence to Cornell each year to deliver a major public lecture,” said Annelise Riles, director of the Clarke Program, Jack G. Clarke Professor of Far East Legal Studies, and professor of anthropology. “All of the [lecturers] have been individuals who have somehow challenged us to think in new and truly innovative ways about some aspect of law and governance in East Asia.” In his position at the Treasury, Dohner is responsible for the region extending from Pakistan and India through China, Korea, and Japan. He has previously served as the department’s director of the East Asia Office, Tokyo Financial Attaché, and director of the Office of Central and Eastern Europe. Before joining Treasury, Dohner was a senior economist at the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, a principal economist at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, and senior

There’s really no one better, I think, to serve as our tenth Clarke lecturer. He is probably the major figure defining what the U.S. position is on our evolving relationships in East, Southeast, and South Asia in the financial field. — Annelise Riles

Robert Dohner

economic adviser to the Under Secretary of State for Economic and Agricultural Affairs. He also taught economics at the Fletcher School of Law and diplomacy at Tufts University, and he has worked at the GATT and the Monetary Authority of Singapore. “There’s really no one better, I think, to serve as our tenth Clarke lecturer,” said Riles. “He is probably the major figure defining what the U.S. position is on our evolving relationships in East, Southeast, and South Asia in the financial field.” In his lecture, “U.S. Policy and the Changing Economic and Financial Landscape of East

Asia,” Dohner explained some of the trends and forces that have shaped the region’s economies in recent years and also addressed the importance of U.S. involvement in the region, including in the Trans-Pacific Partnership now under negotiation. Dohner concluded with four take-away points: Future growth in the region is not a given; in order to succeed, East Asian nations need to grow in ways different from the past; domestic, or even regional, efforts alone may not be sufficient to drive effective economic reform; and the United States has a huge economic interest in East Asia and remains vital to growth in the region. Funded by a gift to Cornell Law School by Jack G. and Dorothea S. Clarke, the Clarke Program in East Asian Law and Culture brings a broad interdisciplinary and humanistic focus to the study of law in East Asia. Through research, teaching, and scholarly dialogue, it expands the purview of legal scholarship and develops new ways of thinking about transnational law, politics, and culture.

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BRIEFS The Judiciary and Political Change in Egypt “This is an extraordinarily interesting moment in Egyptian history,” noted Bruce Rutherford, referring to the Supreme Constitutional Court of Egypt’s anticipated response to a draft constitution released by the country’s constituent assembly. “It is a fascinating moment for legal theory,” he continued, “a moment of what some claim is revolutionary change and what others call a period of gradual and incremental transition.” The Law School welcomed Rutherford, associate professor of political science and Middle Eastern & Islamic civilization studies at Colgate University, to participate in the fall 2012 colloquium series presented by the Clarke Initiative for Law and Development in the Middle East and North Africa. Rutherford has researched extensively on law and politics in Egypt and is the author of the

Professor Thomas

presciently titled Egypt after Mubarak: Liberalism, Islam, and Democracy in the Arab World (Princeton, 2008). Rutherford’s presentation provided a survey of three main approaches to jurisprudence in Egypt—the liberal, the conservative, and the revolutionary— as they have manifested in the decisions of the country’s ordinary, administrative, and constitutional courts since the uprising that ousted President Hosni Mubarak in 2011. He concluded with three key observations: first, that the judiciary, as a corporate body, has been “remarkably incoherent” in its preference for one or another approach; second, that the Muslim Brotherhood, which currently dominates Egypt’s elected bodies of governance, is trying to expand its

influence over the judiciary; and third, that proponents of liberalism appear to be rallying around the judiciary as their last bastion of influence over the future of the country. In her introduction to Rutherford, Chantal Thomas, professor of law and director of the Clarke Initiative, stated, “I think his work presents us with one of the most nuanced and careful studies of constitutionalism and its role in legal interpretation and legal reform—in particular among judges and courts in the Egyptian context—that has been published in the last generation.” The Clarke Initiative for Law and Development in the Middle East and North Africa is a cumulative project that focuses on current legal, political, economic, and social changes in the Middle East and seeks to be a part of the ongoing progress in the region’s rule of law and in the evolution of its legal processes.

Fall 2012 Clarke Initiative Colloquium for Law and Development In The Middle East and North Africa presenters

Bernard Freamon, Seton Hall University School of Law

Asma Barlas, Department of Politics, Ithaca College

James Grabowski, Field Operations, AMIDEAST

Guenter Heidenhof, Public Sector and Governance in the Middle East and North Africa Region, World Bank Sheila Lalwani, Merrill School of Journalism, University of Maryland Fadhel Kaboub, Department of Economics, Denison University Bruce Rutherford, Political Science and Middle Eastern and Islamic Civilization Studies, Colgate University Graciana del Castillo, Columbia School of International and Public Affairs

Andrew Metcalf, King & Spalding

This is an extraordinarily interesting moment in Egyptian history. It is a fascinating moment for legal theory, a moment of what some claim is revolutionary change and what others call a period of gradual and incremental transition. — Bruce Rutherford

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Ziad Fahmy, Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University

Catherine Warrick, Political Science Department, Villanova University

Law School Holds Third Transactional Lawyering Competition

The third annual Transactional Lawyering Competition brought together fifty-two Cornell Law students and thirty-two alumni instructor-judges to test dealmaking skills.

“The conventional law school curriculum implicitly emphasizes appellate litigation. But a transactional practice demands additional skills,” says Professor Charles K. Whitehead. In response, Cornell Law School has developed a comprehensive transactional lawyering curriculum, with courses and seminars that span a range of practice areas, from real estate deals to private equity finance to capital markets regulation, among others. Included within the new curriculum is an introductory course on transactional lawyering that provides students with a basic understanding of deal structuring. On November 10 and 11, fifty-two Cornell Law students put their grasp of such skills to the test in the Law School’s third annual Transactional Lawyering Competition. Presented by the Clarke Business Law Institute (BLI) and the Business Law Society, the competition challenged student teams representing the buyer and seller in a transfer of assets to navigate a hypothetical transaction. Doing so required them to understand their client’s objectives, mark up a precedent agreement, and negotiate that agreement with opposing counsel. The mock negotiations were judged by a distinguished panel of faculty and alumni deal lawyers. Two days of competition whittled the field down to a pair

to address them. The competition is made possible through the continued strong support of our alumni who act as instructor-judges.”

of winning teams—buyer’s counsel, Jennifer Nettleton, LL.M. ’13 and Tom Schultz ’13, and seller’s counsel, Ryan Delaney ’13 and Kirk Sigmon ’13. “Cornell’s program is the only intramural transactional

lawyering competition in the country,” says Whitehead. “Through it, and coursework completed before the competition, students become familiar with issues that commonly arise in a business transaction and the tools that lawyers use

The BLI was established in 2007 by a founding gift from Jack G. Clarke, LL.B. ’52 and his wife, Dorothea S. Clarke. It provides a locus for law faculty with particular expertise in such areas as securities regulation, financial institutions, international economic law, intellectual property, transactional lawyering, business organizations, and ethics and corporate culture.

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BRIEFS Transactional Lawyering Competition 2012 Alumni Instructor -Judges

John Alexander ‘71, Sayles & Evans

Sarah Hewitt ‘82, Schnader Harrison Segal & Lewis

John Altorelli ‘93,

James Hill ‘91,

DLA Piper

Morgan Stanley

Andy Berger ‘69, Tannenbaum Helpern Syracuse & Hirschtritt

Robert Lee ‘81, Wells Fargo & Company

John Calandra ‘91, McDermott Will & Emery

William Casazza ‘85, Aetna

Ira Marcus ‘74, Marcus, Brody, Ford & Kessler Billi McCullough ‘94, Holland & Hart

Ziff Legal Group

Robert Feiner ‘85, Feiner Wolfson

Todd Feinsmith ‘91, Pepper Hamilton

Steven Flyer ‘91, AUA Private Equity Partners

Dean Fournaris ‘91, Wiggin and Dana

David Furman ‘86, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher

Ashley Gillespie, M.B.A. ‘00/J.D. ‘01, Morgan Stanley Frank Golay ‘77,

Ray Minella ‘74, Cornell Law School Joshua Nathan ‘91, Private Practice

Dale Okonow, J.D./M.B.A. ‘83, The Watermill Group Jeff Ross ‘99, Debevoise & Plimpton

John Schwolsky ‘85, Willkie Farr & Gallagher

William Shiland ‘83, Rexford Management Company

Andy Stamelman ‘83,

Sullivan & Cromwell

Joyce Haag ‘75,

Chris Todoroff ‘87,

formerly Eastman Kodak Company

Humana

Joel Hartstone ‘70,

Cornell Law School

Stonegate Capital Group

William Haubert ‘91, Richards, Layton & Finger

Denise Hauselt ‘83, Corning Incorporated

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In an October 24 presentation hosted by Cornell Law School’s Dorothea S. Clarke Program in Feminist Jurisprudence, Fuentes recounted her push for women’s rights within the EEOC amid great resistance. In 1966, she became one of the forty-nine founders of the National Organization for Women (NOW), which embarked on an ambitious program to promote the enforcement of the prohibition

Nixon Peabody

Riker Danzig Scherer Hyland & Perretti

“Men and women lived in two different worlds,” Sonia Pressman Fuentes says of U.S. society circa 1965. That was the year Fuentes joined the newly created General Counsel’s Office of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) as its first woman attorney. At the time, “not only was most of the country uninterested in gender discrimination, so were

most of the EEOC commissioners and staff.”

Deborah McLean ‘78,

Jacqueline Duval ‘92,

Women’s Rights Pioneer Sonia Fuentes Speaks at Law School

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Mark Underberg ‘81,

Sonia Pressman Fuentes flanked by Karen Weiss of Cornell Alumni Affairs and Development and Professor Bowman.

Sonia Pressman Fuentes enumerated more than two dozen impediments to women’s rights in the United States and abroad, including the pay gap, efforts to whittle down reproductive rights, rampant sexual violence against women, discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, and inadequate infant and maternal healthcare.

on sex discrimination included in 1964’s Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. In the years since, “the effects of Title VII have spilled over into every area of our society,” said Fuentes. Her presentation, “The Legal Revolution in American Women’s Rights— and the Problems That Remain,” surveyed the advances for women in such spheres as legislative protection, career and educational opportunities, and representation in the government. Fuentes observed, “The changes in women’s status that we have seen in the last almost fifty years have been mind blowing, way beyond anything those of us who founded NOW had in mind.” Nonetheless, Fuentes cautioned, a slew of problems remain. She enumerated more than two dozen impediments to women’s rights in the United States and abroad, including the pay gap, efforts to whittle down reproductive rights, rampant sexual violence against women, discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, and inadequate infant and maternal healthcare. Cynthia Grant Bowman, the Dorothea S. Clarke Professor of Law, remarked, “It is an inspiration for current students to hear about how much a small group of persons determined to bring about social change can achieve—and to hear Fuentes’ continuing commitment to addressing the problems that remain.”

When she began advocating women’s rights in the sixties, Fuentes noted, a key weapon of her opposition was ridicule. Asked by an audience member if this was still the case, Fuentes referenced Congressman Todd Akin’s recent comments on “legitimate rape.” “I don’t think there’s as much ridicule, but there are ridiculous arguments,” she said. She also observed that today many women who support equal rights nonetheless eschew the term “feminist,” because they associate it with being unfeminine or undesirable. She remarked that she sees this proclivity as an internalization of the slanders deployed by women’s rights opponents, constituting another weapon that threatens the cause. “While women have come a long way . . . we still have a very, very long way to go,” she said, before concluding with the closing words of Ted Kennedy’s speech at the 1980 Democratic National Convention: “The work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream will never die.” Constitutional Law and Theory Colloquium Welcomes Columbia’s Jamal Greene On Monday, September 17, the Constitutional Law and Theory Colloquium welcomed its first guest presenter of the year. Earlier in the day, Jamal Greene, professor of law at Columbia Law School, had

Jamal Greene of Columbia Law School

served on a panel during the Law School’s celebration of the 225th anniversary of the signing of the U.S. Constitution. At the colloquium, he discussed his paper, “Pathetic Argument in Constitutional Law,” an examination of appeals to emotion in judicial decision writing. The Constitutional Law and Theory Colloquium series brings leading scholars in law, history, political science, and related fields to Cornell Law School to present their latest work. Co-conveners Josh Chafetz, associate professor of law, and Michael C. Dorf, the Robert S. Stevens Professor of Law, engaged students and guests in a lively discussion of cutting-edge issues in constitutional law and constitutional interpretation. “This year the colloquium has a terrific mix of senior scholars and rising stars,” said Dorf. “It’s a great treat for me to share responsibility for the colloquium with Josh Chafetz, who is himself a rising star, having already established

himself as a leading voice on the constitutional law applicable to Congress.” Chafetz, for his part, said, “It’s a great privilege—and a lot of fun!—to get to co-convene it with Mike, who is undoubtedly one of the top constitutional scholars in the nation,” adding, “The colloquium is a great opportunity for our students to be exposed to perspectives from across the legal academy and for those of us on the faculty to trade ideas with our colleagues.” Fall 2012 Constitutional Law and Theory Colloquium presenters

Jamal Greene, Columbia Law School

Stephen Sachs, Duke University School of Law

Cary Franklin, University of Texas School of Law Amanda Tyler, University of California, Berkeley School of Law

Rogers Smith, University of Pennsylvania

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BRIEFS International Law/ International Relations Colloquium This interdisciplinary colloquium, held at Myron Taylor Hall and jointly offered with the Department of Government at Cornell, invites scholars to present research at the intersection of international law and international relations. The presented work spans a broad substantive and methodological spectrum, and includes both empirical and theoretical material. Fall 2012–Spring 2013 presenters

James Gathii, Wing-Tat Lee Chair in International Law and professor of law, Loyola University School of Law, Chicago

Neta Crawford, professor of political science and African American studies, Boston University Jana von Stein, assistant professor of political science, University of Michigan, and faculty associate, Center for Political Studies, University of Michigan

Jutta Brunée, associate dean of law (graduate), professor of law, and Metcalf Chair in Environmental Law, University of Toronto Faculty of Law

Ruti Teitel, Straus Fellow, New York University Straus Institute for the Advanced Study of Law and Justice (2012–2013)

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Thania Sanchez, assistant professor of political science, Yale University, and faculty associate, Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, Yale University

Jason Yackee, assistant professor of law, University of Wisconsin Law School

Karen Alter, professor of political science and law, Northwestern University Mark Blyth, professor of political science, Brown University Laura Dickinson, Oswald Symister Colclough Research Professor of Law, George Washington University Law School Rob Howse, Lloyd C. Nelson Professor of International Law, New York University School of Law Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, Dorsey & Whitney Chair in Law, University of Minnesota Law School “Versions of Academic Freedom”: Stanley Fish Delivers 2012 Stevens Lecture On August 31, members of the Cornell community packed the Law School’s MacDonald Moot Court Room for this year’s Robert S. Stevens Lecture, delivered by Stanley Fish, the Davidson-Kahn Distinguished University Professor of Humanities and Law at Florida International College of Law. One of the country’s leading public intellectuals, Fish has authored more than 200 scholarly publications and books on a wide range of topics, from Milton to Intelligent

Design. He is a regular contributor to the New York Times Opinionator blog. The Stevens lecture series, established in 1955 in honor of Robert S. Stevens, Cornell’s longest-serving dean, furnishes law students with an opportunity to expand their legal education beyond the substantive and procedural law taught in the Law School. Stanley Fish

Those who would extend their academic prerogatives beyond the “special and distinctive” purview of their professional duties believe they are ennobling their profession, but I think they’re ruining it. — Stanley Fish

“I can imagine no one more suited to the assignment presented by the lecture—to expand legal education—than Stanley Fish, whose groundbreaking work has provoked the legal academy as well as judges and law students for many years,” said Bernadette A. Meyler, professor of law and faculty director of research, in her introduction. Meyler cited Fish’s 1980 book Is There a Text in This Class? which shook critical orthodoxies in both literature and law, as well as his more recent work in constitutional interpretation.

Addressing a current project, Fish’s Stevens lecture was entitled “Versions of Academic Freedom: From Professionalism to Revolution.” In it, he identified five approaches to the concept, ranging from the “It’s Just a Job School” (which “may have only one member, and you’re listening to him,” noted Fish) to the “Academic Freedom as Training for Revolution School.” Noting that, as one moves along this spectrum, the adjective “academic” loses its delimiting force, Fish characterized the more liberal

schools as blurring or even erasing the line between academic freedom and freedom in general. This, he believes, is a mistake. Those who would extend their academic prerogatives beyond the “special and distinctive” purview of their professional duties believe they are ennobling their profession, he said, “but I think they’re ruining it.” “I resist the move to view the justification of the academic endeavor as an instrument of something bigger,” continued Fish, who favors a justification flowing from the task itself. As an academic, he asserted, just about all he can do is tell students, “I’m singing a song. I want you to join in,” adding, “I can’t promise that your life or your world or your marriage will be better.” According to Fish, this is both the academy’s greatest weakness and its greatest strength: its inability, and indeed unwillingness, to answer the question, “But what does it do for me?” Why, then, we should value education at all? Concluded Fish, with a smile, “I haven’t the slightest idea.” Cornell Law Faculty Members Travel to Southern Africa to Work with Zambian Lawyers With a gross domestic product that continues to show strong growth and a population of more than thirteen million, one might be shocked to hear that there are fewer than 1,000 attorneys in Zambia.

Professor Martin presents to Zambian Lawyers with Professor Ndulo in foreground.

In an effort to strengthen the legal profession throughout the country, the Law Association of Zambia has launched a new initiative that offers continuing legal education for those practicing law in the country. To help with this effort, a trio of Cornell Law professors and one alumna made the trip to the Southern African nation in early January to lend their expertise. Over the winter break, Professors Peter W. Martin, Charles K. Whitehead, and Muna B. Ndulo were in Lusaka, Zambia, to lecture as part of a workshop jointly sponsored by the Southern African Institute for Policy and Research—founded by Ndulo—and the Law Association of Zambia. Sara Lulo, J.D./LL.M. ‘02, who is currently the director of international programs at Yale Law School, participated in the workshop, as well. They were joined by Professor Funmi Arewa from University of California at Irvine School of Law. “To be able to help lawyers in Zambia build expertise in the topics on which we lectured

increases their potential to be major participants in the global trade and investment taking place in the country,” says Martin, the Jane M.G. Foster Professor of Law Emeritus, of the importance of the workshop. Martin added that the feedback he received about the workshop was overwhelmingly positive as the attendees relished the opportunity to expand their expertise. “Across the week’s sessions the participants were very, very engaged.” According to Martin, of the fifty-four participants in the workshop, half worked in private practice, while one-third worked in a government capacity. More than half of the attendees had been practicing for less than a decade. In fact, three of the participants were law students who had yet to be admitted to the bar. A wide range of topics was covered at the workshop. Martin taught about ways the Internet and technology can be used to improve the practice of law, while Whitehead discussed

the legal side of corporate acquisitions. Additionally, the topics of commercial arbitration between governments, outside investors, private equity, and venture capital funds were discussed. The topics of investors and of commercial arbitration between governments were covered by Ndulo and Lulo; private equity and venture capital, by Arewa. Ultimately, given the nature of Zambia’s developing economy, the workshop had a special value for the attorneys involved. “It’s apparent that much has been going on in Southern Africa and especially in Zambia since it gained independence in 1964,” said Whitehead, who specializes in corporations, mergers and acquisitions, and financial markets. “The country has been growing economically and it continues to do so. It was useful for those who attended the workshop to get a sense of some of the developments outside of Zambia and then consider how they might apply them within the country.”

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Responding to each other as well as questions from the audience, the two dug into the implications of conflicting approaches to constitutional interpretation, touching not only on death rays but also on medieval English law, the American Revolution, the ratification process of the U.S. Constitution, and the centralization of U.S. military power.

Law School Hosts Debate on the Future of Firearms Law “I think you need patent counsel on the death ray,” Alan Gura advised Cornell Law’s Michael C. Dorf. The death ray, an invention proposed by Dorf, was merely hypothetical, but it was meant to shed light on a real and serious issue: the standards by which courts determine what

Both experts predicted that the Court would uphold the right, with certain restrictions. Said Dorf, “I think we’re agreed about the likely outcome of the Supreme Court; I’m just not sure that’s the right outcome.”

weapons may reasonably be prohibited. This and other aspects of gun control laws were examined by Dorf and Gura over the course of a debate hosted by the Cornell Federalist Society and the Second Amendment Club, which took place at the Law School on January 29. Gura is a partner and cofounder of Gura & Possessky. He graduated from Cornell University with a B.A. in Government in 1992 before earning his law degree from Georgetown University. Prior to founding his firm, he served as a deputy

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Law School Hosts Debate on Obamacare Ruling

Alan Gura debates Professor Dorf.

attorney general for the state of California, as counsel to the United States Senate Judiciary Committee, and as a litigation associate for the Washington offices of Sidley Austin. Gura successfully litigated District of Columbia. v. Heller and McDonald v. Chicago, two landmark Supreme Court cases on the Second Amendment. Dorf, the Robert S. Stevens Professor of Law, has written several books and dozens of law review articles on constitutional law and related subjects. He served as a law clerk

for Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy and as amicus curiae in Supreme Court cases Fisher v. University of Texas (currently pending) and Grutter v. Bollinger. He was the main author of the AALS amicus brief in support of the winning side in the 2010 Supreme Court case of Christian Legal Society v. Martinez. Dorf writes a biweekly column for Justia’s free web magazine Verdict and posts several times per week on his blog, Dorf on Law. The debaters began by discussing what may be the next major firearms law issue adjudicated by the Supreme Court: whether the Second Amendment guarantees the right to carry firearms for self-defense outside the home. Both experts predicted that the Court would uphold the right, with certain restrictions. Said Dorf, “I think we’re agreed about the likely outcome of the Supreme Court; I’m just not sure that’s the right outcome.”

On the evening of September 4, Myron Taylor’s G85 lecture hall filled to capacity and then some as two legal scholars took their seats to debate the Supreme Court’s June decision upholding the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare. Representing the opposition to the act was Ilya Shapiro, senior fellow of the conservative think tank, the Cato Institute, and editor in chief of the Cato Supreme Court Review. Shapiro has contributed to a variety of media outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, L.A. Times, CNN, Fox News, The Colbert Report, and NPR. Shapiro has been heavily involved in the Obamacare debate for over two years and has filed ten amicus briefs pertaining to the case on behalf of Cato. Facing off against Shapiro was the Law School’s Michael C. Dorf, the Robert S. Stevens Professor of Law. Dorf is an expert in constitutional law

Public Interest Symposium Brings Students and Alumni Together to Explore Careers in Public Service

Ilya Shapiro

and has written hundreds of popular essays, dozens of scholarly articles, and four books on constitutional law and related subjects, including, most recently, The Oxford Introductions to U.S. Law: Constitutional Law. After leisurely opening comments, during which Shapiro referred to the issue as “the case of a generation, if not a lifetime,” while Dorf questioned whether the decision actually mattered, the debate picked up speed as the two bandied history, hypotheticals, and implications. The back-andforth ended on the topic of Chief Justice John Roberts’ motives in upholding the act, which Shapiro energetically denounced as strategic rather than legal, much to Dorf’s skepticism. Closing remarks were delivered by Stewart J. Schwab, the Allan R. Tessler Dean and Professor of Law, who applauded the Cornell Law School Federalist Society for organizing the event, remarking, “It’s a great way to start the semester— with vigorous debate.”

Thirteen Cornell Law School alumni returned to Myron Taylor Hall on Friday, January 25 to take part in the Eighth Annual Public Interest Legal Career Symposium sponsored by the Office of Public Service. The symposium, which featured four panels, moderated by Karen V. Comstock, assistant dean for public service, and Elizabeth K. Peck, director of public service, attracted a large and engaged student audience. “First-year students especially appreciated the opportunity to hear from a critical mass of Cornell Law alumni,” said

First-year students especially appreciated the opportunity to hear from a critical mass of Cornell Law alumni. The speakers represented a range of practice settings in which they contribute in very meaningful ways for the public good. — Karen V. Comstock

Comstock. “The speakers represented a range of practice settings in which they contribute in very meaningful ways for the public good.” Each speaker offered concrete advice on crafting meaningful careers and finding job satisfaction. They provided insights

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BRIEFS into the best and most difficult aspects of their jobs; offered tips to students interested in pursuing their type of work; suggested helpful courses, clinics, internships, and other Law School experiences; and reflected upon the wisdom they have gained and how that impacts their goals for the future. Later that evening close to 100 students attended the symposium’s capstone event at Cornell’s Statler Hotel: the thirteenth annual Cyrus Mehri ’88 Public Interest Lecture, “Myths and Misconceptions: Public Defenders as Real Lawyers for Real Criminals,” given by Joseph Krakora ‘83, public defender for the state of New Jersey. “This year’s well-received lecture provided a pragmatic, yet upbeat, perspective on the U.S. criminal justice system,” noted Comstock. Sworn in as the New Jersey public defender on June 28, 2011, Krakora has devoted more than twenty-five years representing indigent citizens charged with criminal offenses. For eight years he served as an assistant public defender and director of capital and special litigation, handling numerous death penalty cases until the abolition of the death penalty in New Jersey in December 2007. He spent a number of years as both a staff attorney and a manager in the Essex adult division, where he developed his reputation as one of the top criminal defense attorneys in the state.

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above: Patricia McCarthy ‘89, Joseph Krakora ‘83, and Lisa Newstrom ‘08 above right: Lynne Kolodinsky ‘14 and Minsuk Han ‘14 right: Major McCargo ‘14, Saad Ullah Rizwan ‘13, and Puja Parikh ‘14

Cyrus Mehri ‘88, a devoted supporter of Cornell Law School’s public interest program, created the annual lecture with the belief that a vital component of legal education is the opportunity to benefit from strong public interest mentors. The Public Interest Symposium: PARTICIPANTS

Working Towards Social and Economic Justice Jennifer DaSilva ’03, founder and executive director, Start Small Think Big—New York City

Lisa Newstrom ’08, attorney, Bay Area Legal Aid—San Jose

Brad Weinstein ’05, vice president, Office of Corporate Engagement, Goldman Sachs— New York City Promoting the Public Interest as a Private Attorney

Alexis Saba ’11, fellow, Columbia Law School’s Center for Climate Change Law—New York City

Daniel Sosland ’85, president and CEO, Environment Northeast —Rockport, Maine

Diana Adams ’04, principal, Diana Adams Law and Mediation —New York City

Representing the Public as a Government Attorney

Wendy Atrokhov ’99,

Christopher Bletsch ’05, senior counsel, New York City Law Department, Commercial and Real Estate Litigation Division —New York City

public service counsel, Latham & Watkins—New York City

Michael Siegel ’09, associate attorney, Siegel & Yee—Oakland, California Protecting the Environment Bradley Oliphant ‘01, trial attorney, U.S. Department of Justice, Environment and Natural Resources Division— Washington, D.C.

Patricia McCarthy ’89, assistant director, U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Division, Commercial Litigation Branch— Washington, D.C. Justin Pfeiffer ’07, senior attorney, New York State Department of Health, Bureau of House Counsel—Albany, New York

Through Department of Labor Internships, Law School Students Tackle Unemployment in the United States It was an experiment: Assemble a team of first-year law students and deploy them to New York City’s One-Stop Career Centers, where every day New York State Department of Labor staff serves long lines of the city’s unemployed. For the program’s director, this was a new twist on a longstanding project. Over the past decade, Harold Oaklander, an alumnus of Cornell’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations (ILR), has sent some fifty Cornell students on four-week winter internships to assist the departments of labor in their home states. Not long after he and Roger Gerby of the New York State Department of Labor established the Department of Labor/Alliance for the Prevention of Unemployment (DOL/APU) program, about 20 percent of applicants were coming from the Law School. As the 2012 internship season approached, recruitment from the ILR faced some difficulty, but, says Oaklander, “interest among the legal community in the legal problems of workers forced out of homes and/or jobs was peaking.” Working with the Law School’s Karen V. Comstock, assistant dean for public service, and Angela B. Cornell, director of the Labor Law Clinic, Oaklander reconfigured the program as a nine-week summer internship

exclusively for Law School students. The National Employment Law Project also started providing staff for after-hours discussion sessions with the interns. One member of the inaugural team was Maxine Adams ’14, who spent a part of her internship working with the Industrial Board of Appeals helping to organize and summarize older cases, and also had the chance to attend unemployment insurance eligibility hearings before the Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board. It was her time working at a One-Stop Career Center, however, that left the deepest impression. “I think that the most important aspect of my internship was the ability to work one-on-one with individuals currently getting benefits from the unemployment insurance system,” she says. “There were people from very different walks of life that all needed some type of assistance.” Michaela Dudley ’14 interned at a One-Stop in Harlem, where she too had an eye-opening experience assisting people filing for unemployment insurance and seeking jobs. “Working in Harlem was a truly unique experience,” she says.

Harold Oaklander

Maxine Adams ’14

“It has inspired me to pay more attention to the unemployment problem in my legal career.” That’s just the sort of response the program’s organizers hoped to elicit. “College courses addressing the unemployment issue are just not found in the U.S.” says Oaklander. The DOL/APU program stands out as an opportunity for students to learn about and address these issues. The experience also fulfills new pro bono requirements by the state of New York for anyone taking the bar exam. “This program gives students the opportunity to provide meaningful, substantial help to people dealing with unemployment and also to learn about systemic issues involved in unemployment,” says Comstock, who is now overseeing the integration of the DOL/ APU internships into the Law School’s Public Interest Fellowship program. “Working in environments like this, seeing the day to day struggles of chronically unemployed people, can be a life-changing experi-

Michaela Dudley ’14

ence for students, and it can inform what they want to devote their legal skills to.” “Our internship program has brought Cornell’s brightest students, our future leaders in business, government, and academia, whether practicing law or management, face to face with the unemployed, and with the understaffed government bureaucracy mandated to assist with reemployment,” Oaklander adds. “Law students, informed and motivated by their internships, are uniquely placed to take a leading role upon graduation in the battle against unemployment.”

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BRIEFS Students Impress in This Year’s Cuccia Cup Moot Court Competition Can a foreign plaintiff sue a foreign corporation for crimes committed in a foreign land in United States courts? More than fifty second- and thirdyear students attempted to answer this question when they tackled this year’s Cuccia Cup problem, which was based on Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co., a case pending before the Supreme Court this term. The tournament culminated on October 27 in the MacDonald Moot Court Room, with Lynne Kolodinsky ’14 and Jon Underwood ’14 representing the petitioner, Omni Oil Company, and Jonathan Goddard ‘14 and Daniel Horowitz ’14 representing the respondent, Jamie Lannister. The two finalists faced an active panel of federal judges: Hon. William A. Fletcher of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit; Hon. Gerard E. Lynch of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit; Hon. Frederic L. Block ‘59 of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York; and Hon. William P. Johnson of the U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico. After an engaging final round and lengthy deliberations, Goddard and Horowitz were proclaimed the winners. The judges also provided comments after the round, highlighting the complexity of the problem and praising the participants’

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right: Cuccia Cup winners Jonathan Goddard ‘14 and Daniel Horowitz ‘14 BELOW: Judges Johnson, Lynch, and Fletcher

poise and substantive knowledge. Scott Burnett ’13 and Thomas Schultz ’13 won the prize for best brief. Finalists’ prizes for the Cuccia Cup are funded annually through endowed gifts from the late Francis P. Cuccia (LL.B. 1912), in memory of Mary Heagan Cuccia, as well as from Helen Belding Smith and the estate of Henry P. Smith III (1936). The prizes for Best Brief are funded through an endowed gift from Louis Kaiser (LL.B. ‘21).

After an engaging final round and lengthy deliberations, Goddard and Horowitz were proclaimed the winners. The judges also provided comments after the round, highlighting the complexity of the problem and praising the participants’ poise and substantive knowledge.

A Temporary and Fond Farewell to the Edwin Dawson Rare Book Room Over the years, the Cornell Law Library’s Edwin S. Dawson Rare Book Room has witnessed numerous open houses, exhibits, class lectures, and even the exchange of marriage vows between two Law faculty (Professors Emily L. Sherwin and Kevin M. Clermont). With Phase I of Law School construction necessitating the complete removal of the library’s rare book room, the librarian and Law Library staff hosted a final open house and reception on October 24. The open house was undoubtedly the best attended in the Rare Book Room’s history, with a strong showing of support from old friends, students, Law faculty and staff, the university, and local community. Old favorites from the collection were on display, including the Scottsboro train replica used as an exhibit in the historic 1930s trial of the Scottsboro boys and trial pamphlets from the Nineteenth Century Trials Collection. Also on display for the first time were the impressive and ornate medals of Myron C. Taylor.

The 2013 Winter Cup Moot Court Competition, henceforth to be known as the Faust F. Rossi Moot Court Competition (see p. 68), attracted wide participation by students this year. Josh Wesneski ‘14 was declared the winner, Tom Curry ‘13 the finalist, and Chad Mizelle ‘13 received the Louis Kaiser Award for Best Brief.

A significant portion of the current rare book collection, are materials acquired at the inception of the Law School which have become rare through the passage of time. A majority of acquisitions have been obtained through gifts and diligent purchase. With the increasing addition of materials to the collection, it

Thankfully this is not a permanent farewell and the Dawson Rare Book Room will be back. A new room is slated for construction during Phase III of Law School renovations.

became obvious that the library lacked the facilities to house its growing rare treasures and by the mid-seventies, the need for a rare book room was manifestly evident. At that time most of the library’s rare collection pre-1700 was being held at the Olin Library. Construction of a new rare book room commenced in May 1981, and was completed in August of the same year. In 1985, the room was dedicated as the Edwin S. Dawson Rare Book Room, a gift of Donato A. Evangelista ‘57 in memory of his father-in-law. Thankfully this is not a permanent farewell and the Dawson Rare Book Room will be back. A new room is slated for construction during Phase III of Law School renovations (dates to be announced in the future). In the meantime, most of the collection has been transferred on a temporary basis to the Cornell University Library Annex, a secure state-of-the-

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BRIEFS Faculty, staff, students, and friends of the law library gathered for the final open house and reception in the Edwin Dawson Rare Book Room.

art high-density facility with a climate-controlled environment. Library users will enjoy uninterrupted access to the collections and can request items through the library catalog, with a twenty-four hour turnaround. A small and select collection of materials are being retained in a climate-controlled and secure room in the Law School. This will enable the library to continue to showcase some materials and host exhibits. Furthermore, some of the rare book collection has been digitized and is accessible via the Law Library’s website all year round. The most recent and ambitious digitization project, which started in 2011, is the Trials Pamphlets Collection, a collection of nineteenth century popular and official trial accounts whose restoration was made possible with funding from the Save America’s Treasures Grant Program.

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A TIMELINE OF SIGNIFIC ANT PRINT ACQUISITIONS:

In 1886, before the inception of the Law School, 4,000 volumes were acquired from the collection of a prominent Ithaca lawyer, Merritt King. Many of the volumes in this collection are now considered rare. Books were also gifted to the Law Library from the personal libraries of former students and Law School faculty. Some of these books have been added to the rare book collection.

In 1893, the library received a major gift when the widow and daughter of the Law School’s first dean, Judge Douglas Boardman, purchased the library of Nathaniel Moak, an Albany attorney, and donated it to the library in memory of the dean. A significant portion of this collection, which became rare

simply due to the passage of time, is now housed in the Law Library’s rare book collection.

In 1908, Earl J. Bennett (LL.B. 1901) established a fund devoted to the collection of all U.S. and territorial session laws in existence. In 1945, Edwin J. Marshall (LL.B. 1937) donated a major gift of rare books to the library. The earliest item in this collection of books on equity was The Speech of the Lord Chancellor of England in the Exchequer Chamber, Touching the Post-Nati (London 1609).

In 1979, the library purchased the Thorne collection of English legal history materials, mostly published in the seventeenth century, to add to the collection. Professor Samuel Thorne was librarian at Yale Law School and professor of legal history at Harvard, and had built this collection during his career. In 1998, Cornell University alumni Henry H. Korn and Ellen Schaum Korn donated the Donovan Nuremberg Trials Collection, consisting of General William Donovan’s personal archive of the Nuremberg Trial transcripts.

In better times, before words became devalued by their electronic overuse, Jane would have been meaningfully described as a genuinely nice person. Retirement did not cause her to change her ways. She and husband Murray, despite their having raised and launched three children out into the world, made their home always open to any waif

In Memoriam: Jane Garrett Deathe By E.F. Roberts, Edwin H. Woodruff Professor of Law Emeritus The Law School lost a great friend when Jane Deathe fell victim to cancer last November. Jane made her first appearance in the Law School’s picture directory for the academic year 1979–80. This was on the pages devoted to “secretaries,” then captioned with a drawing of a young lady sitting erect typing on an IBM electric typewriter. I recall this as a vintage year in my own life because I became a lucky beneficiary of her services for several years. She appeared in a new guise in the 1982–83 edition in the pages devoted to admissions and financial aid, wherein she was described as the assistant director of admissions. I have a particular recall of that metamorphosis because Jane came to me to tell me about her impending ascent before it was announced. I told her I thought it great news for her, which I did, and wished her well in her new role, although in my heart, I attached a demerit to the new dean of admissions whose poaching did at least evidence good judgment.

in need of a hot meal and warm bed. And Jane busied herself working for organizations dedicated to meeting the educational needs of young women worldwide. Most remarkably, those who visited her in the last days came away awed by her will and capacity to still make others feel at ease and to show a real interest in their doings. n

Jane Deathe

Subsequent years saw Jane cast as assistant director of admissions and financial aid, and lastly as director of financial aid. We kept in touch, and, if I remembered to do it, I tried to send her a picture of Victoria Regina as a reminder that her compatriots back in Canada were celebrating Queen Victoria Day. It was a sad day for me when she did not appear in the 2004–05 directory and I judged the school all the poorer for the absence. Missing was a quiet but always pleasant personality, someone always concerned to understand and meet the needs of others. In a temple dedicated to instilling in people an ethos of roughshod competition and material success, this was all the more noteworthy.

Three dogs and one llama walk into the Law School... Prior to fall semester finals, the Law Library hosted Cornell Companions, a pet visitation program sponsored by the Cornell University veterinary community to offer students a therapeutic study break.

Most remarkably, those who visited her in the last days came away awed by her will and capacity to still make others feel at ease and to show a real interest in their doings.

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FACULTY Joel Atlas, Lara Gelbwasser Freed, Andrea J. Mooney, and Michelle A. Fongyee Whelan (along with former Cornell colleagues John Mollenkamp and Ursula H. Weigold) coauthored A Guide to Teaching Lawyering Skills. This book, designed for teachers of legal writing and research courses, explores all of the essential components of the teaching process, including setting course goals; creating a curriculum, syllabus, and assignments; developing teaching methods; providing feedback to students both orally and in writing; evaluating and grading student work; working with teaching assistants; and enhancing professional development.

John J. Barceló, the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of International and Comparative Law and Elizabeth and Arthur Reich Director of the Leo and Arvilla Berger International Legal Studies Program, completed work on the fifth edition

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of the Teachers Manual for the new fifth edition of his leading casebook International Commercial Arbitration—A Transnational Perspective (5th ed., 2012) (with Tibor Varady). The 337-page Teachers Manual was published by West at the end of the fall semester and carries a 2013 copyright date. As director of the Berger International Legal Studies Program, Barceló organized several guest lecture events at the Law School during the fall semester and served on the board of the Scheinman Institute on Conflict Resolution in the Cornell School of Industrial and Labor Relations.

In September, John H. Blume, professor of law and director of Clinical, Advocacy, and Skills Programs and the Cornell Death Penalty Project, gave several presentations at and participated in the Capital Mitigation Workshop, which was hosted by Cornell Law School and cosponsored by the Cornell Death Penalty Project and the Defender Services Division of the Administrative Office of the United States Courts. The program was designed to increase the practical skills of mitigation

specialists involved in capital post-conviction litigation. In October, Blume, along with Professor Weyble, director of Death Penalty Litigation, appeared at a Rule 440 (postconviction relief) hearing in Steuben County, New York, on behalf of Innocence Clinic client Rachael Casey. Another of the Innocence Clinic’s clients, Wesley Max Myers, was granted a new trial following a post-conviction relief hearing at which Blume was lead counsel. Blume, along with Professor Johnson and Weyble, also launched a new Juvenile Justice Clinic focusing on juveniles sentenced to life without parole. Blume also published “Racial Epithets in the Criminal Process” (along with Johnson and Patrick Wilson ‘11) in the Michigan State Law Review, “Unholy Parallels between McCleskey v. Kemp and Plessy v. Ferguson: Why McCleskey (Still) Matters” (with Johnson) in the Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law, and “The Death Penalty in Delaware: An Empirical Study” (with Johnson, Professor Eisenberg, and Professor Hans) in the Iowa Law Review. Additionally, Blume published “Plea Bargaining and the Right to the Effective Assistance of Counsel: Where the Rubber Hits the Road in Capital Cases” in the Federal Sentencing Reporter, and a review of John Bessler’s book Cruel and Unusual: The American Death Penalty and the Founder’s Eighth Amendment in the Political Science Quarterly.

During the fall semester, Cynthia Grant Bowman, the Dorothea S. Clarke Professor of Law, gave the keynote address at the annual dinner of the Finger Lakes Women’s Bar Association, speaking about the obstacles faced by women who became lawyers in the period between 1920 and 1970, with an emphasis upon those with connections to Cornell or Ithaca. She also served as moderator on October 18 and 19 at a conference held by the Avon Global Center for Women and Justice at Cornell Law School to launch the Center’s report on sexual violence against schoolgirls in Zambia. The conference brought together a number of judges from both Africa and the United States to discuss remedies for

this serious problem. In addition, Bowman prepared and sent out a report from the conference, “Women, Sustainable Development, and Food Sovereignty/Security in a Changing World,” sponsored by the Dorothea S. Clarke Program in Feminist Jurisprudence earlier that year. She also edited several articles and wrote the introductory essay for a symposium on the conference to be published in the Cornell Journal of Law & Public Policy. Bowman taught, for the second time, her new Family Law Clinic, in which students coregistered in the Family Law course represent indigent clients in the community seeking divorces and also assist pro se applicants for support in the local Family Court. This new approach to teaching family law, a hybrid course, is featured in an article Bowman prepared for presentation at a conference that will take place at the University of Wisconsin Law School this spring to explore new methods of teaching family law.

Bowman taught, for the second time, her new Family Law Clinic, in which students co-registered in the Family Law course represent indigent clients in the community seeking divorces and also assist pro se applicants for support in the local Family Court.

on the steering committee for its upcoming Legislative Data Workshop.

During the fall semester, Legal Information Institute (LII) Director, Thomas R. Bruce, and the LII crew finished two years’ work building legislative data models for the Library of Congress. The purpose of the project, commissioned by the Library’s Office of Strategic Initiatives, was to create Semantic Web-oriented metadata models that would provide the architecture for new generations of information retrieval systems for use by Congress and the public. But the biggest news of the fall semester was the LII’s twentieth birthday, celebrated by hosting the Law via the Internet (LVI) Conference at the Law School. With nearly 250 attendees from 39 countries, the conference was a gathering of the most influential scientists, scholars, and publishers working in the field of open access to legal information. Keynote speakers included the noted legal futurist Sir Richard Susskind, and well-known social media and Internet thinker Clay Shirky. Widely regarded as the best event in the fourteen-year history of LVI, the conference was a great tribute to the LII and its work. Bruce continues to serve, with LII Associate Director Sara Frug, as an advisor to the Bulk Data Task Force of the U.S. House of Representatives, and

Femi Cadmus, the Edward Cornell Law Librarian, associate dean for library services, and senior lecturer in law, was elected in November to a three-year term on the executive board of the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL). Cadmus continues to serve on the board of directors of New England Law Library Consortium (NELLCO), an international consortium of law libraries, and hosted its fall meeting of law library directors at the Law School in October. She published two articles, “Not Your Parents Law Library: A Tale of Two Academic Law Libraries,” which appeared in the Green Bag, and “Happiness at Work: Rules for Employee Satisfaction and Engagement” in Trends in Law Library Management and Technology. Cadmus oversaw library activities connected to Phase I of the renovation which has necessitated the temporary relocation of the Edwin Dawson Rare Book Room. She hosted a well attended open house in October, after which books

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FACULTY and materials from the rare book room were moved to climate controlled, offsite university library storage. The law library also formally launched its digitized trial pamphlets website at http://ebooks.library. cornell.edu/t/trial/index. php. The pamphlets capture a formative period in American history ranging in date from the late 1600s to the late 1800s and contain contemporary accounts of trials that involved prominent citizens or that dealt with especially controversial or lurid topics. The project was funded by a $155,700 grant from the Save America’s Treasures Grant Program.

Sherry F. Colb, professor of law and Charles Evans Hughes Scholar, is in the final stages of completing her book, Mind if I Order the Cheeseburger? scheduled for publication by May. The book poses common questions people ask about animal rights, including whether human beings can be healthy and thrive without consuming animal-based foods, whether lacto-ovo vegetarianism effectively protects animals from slaughter and cruelty, how one might understand indigenous practices of thanking animals before consuming them, and

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whether veganism unjustly threatens farmed animals with extinction. Colb provides some surprising and original answers to these and other questions. In August, Colb plans to participate in the Practicing Law Institute’s Supreme Court Review, a Continuing Legal Education event in New York City at which she will review the U.S. Supreme Court’s criminal procedure cases from the Court’s current term. Colb also continues to publish biweekly columns on Justia. com’s legal commentary site, Verdict (verdict.justia.com). Her recent titles include “The European Court of Human Rights Upholds German Ban on PETA’s ‘Holocaust on Your Plate’ Campaign: Lessons for Animal Activists and for Animal Product Consumers”; “Is Cellphone Tracking Okay If There’s No Trespass? A Sixth Circuit Panel Says Yes”; and “The Downside of Juries in a World That Can’t Stop Talking.” Colb writes a related blog post at Dorf on Law (DorfOnLaw. org), Professor Dorf’s legal blog, where her biweekly posts generally appear on the same day as her Verdict columns.

Charles D. Cramton, assistant dean for graduate legal studies, welcomed an incoming LL.M. class of eighty-three students representing thirty countries and nationalities (citizenship and/or education) this past fall. For the third time, there were more women than men in the LL.M. class with fifty-one women and thirty-two men. Sixty-three percent of the students are from Asia (with the largest representation from China), 22 percent from Europe

During the fall, Cramton worked with the Cornell J.S.D. Association and the Cornell LL.M. Association in planning and coordinating events and seminars for the international students, including all facets of career services for the LL.M. students. In his role as the coordinator for continuing legal education, Cramton ensured the Law School’s compliance with the rules and regulations of the New York CLE Board. In calendar year 2012, the Law School sponsored a total of fifty-six continuing legal education programs, on a wide variety of topics.

This past year the New York Court of Appeals amended the rules for the admission of foreigntrained attorneys, and Cramton was in frequent contact with both the New York Board of Law Examiners and the Court of Appeals to ensure that our LL.M. students will continue to qualify to sit for the New York State Bar Examination following completion of their LL.M. degrees.

(principally western Europe), and the balance from the rest of the world (with the Americas— North, Central, and South— and Africa having the largest representation). We also welcomed three new J.S.D. students (two from the LL.M. class of 2012, one from the class of 2007). They joined our seventeen continuing J.S.D. students and four visiting doctoral students from around the world.

Cramton continued to serve as an active member of the New York State Bar Association’s Committee on Legal Education and Admission to the Bar, the National Association for Law Placement’s Advanced Degree and International Advising Section and the Association of American Law Schools’ (AALS) Graduate Programs for NonU.S. Lawyers Section. This past year the New York Court

of Appeals amended the rules for the admission of foreigntrained attorneys, and Cramton was in frequent contact with both the New York Board of Law Examiners and the Court of Appeals to ensure that our LL.M. students will continue to qualify to sit for the New York State Bar Examination following completion of their LL.M. degrees. In January, Cramton participated in the annual International Student Interview Program (one of two job fairs in the United States for international LL.M. students), cosponsored with New York University School of Law and thirty other U.S. law schools, where approximately forty of our LL.M. students had interviews with U.S. and international legal employers.

Michael C. Dorf, the Robert S. Stevens Professor of Law, was one of several attorneys who wrote an amicus curiae brief on behalf of the Association of American Law Schools in the pending Supreme Court case of Fisher v. University of Texas. He coauthored, with George Washington University Law professor Neil H. Buchanan, the article “How to Choose the Least Unconstitutional Option:

Lessons for the President (and Others) from the Debt Ceiling Standoff,” which was published in the October issue of the Columbia Law Review. As the “fiscal cliff” loomed in December, the article and Dorf were widely quoted, including in the New York Times and on NPR. His Cutler Lecture was published in the William and Mary Law Review under the title “Spandrel or Frankenstein’s Monster? The Vices and Virtues of Retrofitting in American Law.” Despite a busy fall of lawyering, teaching, scholarship, and popular writing for Verdict, Justia.com and his blog DorfonLaw.org, Dorf’s proudest accomplishment of the semester was his successful defense of his title as the faculty pie-eating champion.

Cynthia R. Farina, the William G. McRoberts Research Professor in Administration of the Law, published two articles based on the CeRI Regulation Room project. “Rulemaking v. Democracy: Judging and Nudging Public Participation That Counts” responds to recent suggestions that agencies should look to mass e-mail comments in environmental and other high-profile rule-

makings as democratic guidance on prioritizing competing values. Arguing that the kinds of preferences expressed through mass comments may be good enough for electoral democracy but not good enough for rulemaking, the article disputes the common opengovernment belief that more public participation, per se, is a good thing. It proposes a fundamental e-Government principle: A democratic government should not actively facilitate participation it does not value. Further developing this idea, “Knowledge in the People: Rethinking ‘Value’ in Public Rulemaking Participation,” explores the contribution that the experiential “situated knowledge” of “ordinary” people can bring to some rulemakings, and examines the challenges posed for agencies by the narrative form in which such knowledge is often conveyed. Farina led the Regulation Room project in establishing a new research collaboration with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). With the additional guidance of Professor Whitehead, students in Farina’s e-Government Clinic moderated online discussion among consumers, small lenders, and credit counseling organizations about a set of new consumer mortgage protections being proposed by CFPB. The summary of this discussion was filed as a public comment in the rulemaking, and is referenced several times by the agency in its explanation of the recently issued final rules.

In January, Michael Frakes, assistant professor and Jia Jonathan Zhu and Ruyin Ruby Ye Sesquicentennial Faculty Fellow, published (with Melissa Wasserman from the University of Illinois College of Law) an article in the Vanderbilt Law Review titled “Does Agency Funding Affect Decisionmaking? An Empirical Assessment of the PTO’s Granting Patterns,” in which Frakes and his coauthor found evidence that the fee structure of the United States Patent and Trademark Office biased the agency toward granting patents. In the fall, Frakes presented this patent research in front of leaders of much of the world’s major patent offices at the Patent Statistics for Decision Makers conference at the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development in Paris. In the fall, Frakes also presented some of his working research on the relationship between medical malpractice pressure and health care quality at a number of conferences and seminars, including the Harvard Law School Law, Economics, and Organization Workshop, the Northwestern Law School Law and Economics Colloquium, the Seventh Annual Conference on Empirical Legal Studies at Stanford Law School, and the Midwestern Law and Economics Association Annual Meeting at Washington University School of Law in St. Louis.

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FACULTY In February, Frakes published an article in the American Economic Review titled “The Impact of Medical Liability Standards on Regional Variations in Physician Behavior: Evidence from the Adoption of National-Standard Rules.”

Glenn G. Galbreath, clinical professor of law, made a presentation sponsored by the League of Women Voters in January on “Simplification of the New York State Court System.” Its basic premise was that while New York State’s court system is widely recognized as one of the most archaic and convoluted in the country, the state has been unable or unwilling to make any significant advances in simplifying its courts’ bureaucracy and hierarchy, notwithstanding repeated attempts over the last half century and the likelihood of saving a half billion dollars a year with some modest changes. Galbreath also wrote a controversial (at least to many judges) article in the winter 2013 edition of The Magistrate which is read by over 2,000 New York town and village justices. He strongly suggested that the New York State Magistrates Association should

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take the lead for all the New York State judiciary and affirmatively lobby for a ban on the use of judicially identifiable vehicle license plates in New York. Official license plates that identify the vehicle owner as a judge are too easily perceived by the public and police officers as pleas for favored treatment from officers when they see traffic offenses committed by the drivers of those vehicles. Also in the fall, Galbreath presented a lecture and demonstration to New York State Child Protective Service workers as part of their mandatory training on how to testify in court regarding their investigations into neglected and abused children.

Valerie Hans continued researching, writing, and lecturing about the jury system. Hans spoke in September about a new model of jury damage award decision making in the Faculty Development Series at Wake Forest University School of Law. The visit to Wake Forest gave her the opportunity to work with faculty there (including Gregory Parks ‘08) on a project exploring whether implicit race bias affects tort case

decision making. During the fall, she planned new research testing the jury damage award model, collaborating with colleagues and students in Cornell’s School of Social Ecology; that project is now in the data collection stage. Hans also participated at two important conferences on the future of juries and jury research. The American Bar Association’s Commission on the American Jury Project organized a national conference, “The Optimal Jury Trial,” and Hans helped to develop and moderated a panel of judges and lawyers debating new techniques for the presentation of evidence. Video clips of the panel will be available in the coming months to help inform legal professionals about the plusses and minuses of these techniques. She also made an invited presentation on global juries for the National Science Foundation conference, “The Future of Jury Research.” Finally, she coedited a special issue of the Yonsei Law Review devoted to the future of juries and other forms of lay adjudication in East Asia. Hans and her Cornell Law School collaborators (Professors Blume, Johnson, Eisenberg, and Wells) published an article in the Iowa Law Review. The article reports their discovery of significant judge-jury differences as well as race effects in Delaware’s capital punishment system. Hans spoke about that research in a continuing education program in Wilmington, Delaware, in early January.

During the fall semester Michael Heise’s recent empirical studies of judicial decision making in the religious context (coauthored with Gregory Sisk), “Muslims and Religious Liberty in the Era of 9/11: Empirical Evidence from the Federal Courts” and “Free Exercise of Religion Before the Bench: Empirical Evidence from the Federal Courts,” were published in the Iowa Law Review (vol. 98) and Notre Dame Law Review (vol. 88), respectively. Heise also presented a paper, “Charter School Legislation Migration,” at a faculty workshop at Washington University School of Law. Finally, Heise (along with numerous Cornell Law School colleagues) participated in the Seventh Annual Conference on Empirical Legal Studies (CELS), hosted by Stanford Law School.

Robert A. Hillman, the Edwin H. Woodruff Professor of Law, began work on his portion of volume three of the treatise, J. White, R. Summers, and R. Hillman, Uniform Commercial Code (6th ed.), which will

be published in late 2013 or early 2014. The volume covers Uniform Commercial Code Articles 4A, 5, 6, and 7 (Funds Transfer, Letters of Credit, Bulk Transfers, Warehouse Receipts, and Bills of Lading). Hillman completed his portion of the manuscript for volume two of the treatise, covering Uniform Commercial Code Articles 2A, 3, and 4 (Leases, Negotiable Instruments, and Bank Deposits and Collections), which is scheduled for publication early this year. Volume one of the treatise, covering Uniform Commercial Code Articles 1 and 2 (General Provisions, Sales, and Software Contracts), was published during the fall of 2012. The three volumes are part of an over 2000-page, four-volume treatise on commercial law.

and a member of the board of directors of PIABA, gave a presentation on recent developments in arbitration law.

Hillman also completed a manuscript entitled The Importance of Fault in Contract Law.

Anne Lukingbeal, associate dean and dean of students, began her fifth year of service on the American Bar Association Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar Accreditation Committee. She traveled to Chicago in September and to Phoenix in October to attend regular meetings of the group. Also in October, she attended a meeting in Chicago of the ABA Foreign Programs Subcommittee.

Associate clinical professor of law and director of the Securities Law Clinic, William A. Jacobson, chaired the Annual Securities Seminar of the Public Investors Arbitration Bar Association (PIABA), held in Austin, Texas, in October. Jacobson, who is the treasurer

In October, she hosted the annual Women’s Law Coalition reception for students and faculty at her home. On behalf of the Cornell Prelaw Advisors, she again moderated “More Than You Ever Wanted to Know about Law School Applications” in the fall, an event always well attended by Cornell undergraduates. She is serving as a member of the newly formed Cornell Outdoor Education Faculty Advisory Council, whose goal is to assist Cornell Outdoor Education with issues of academic integration and support. The group had its introductory meeting in September.

In January, Martin conducted a session, “Employing the Internet and Technology, More Generally, in the Practice of Law,” at a business law workshop in Lusaka, Zambia, sponsored by the Law Association of Zambia and the Southern African Institute for Policy and Research. While in Lusaka, Martin also met with those now responsible for the Zambia Legal Information Institute, an activity which he helped found in 1996.

During the fall term, Peter W. Martin, Jane M.G. Foster Professor of Law Emeritus, revised and updated his Introduction to Basic Legal Citation, accessible online at http:// www.law.cornell.edu/citation/ and available in multiple e-book formats at http://www. access-to-law.com/citation/. (A Google search on “legal citation” will take you straight to both versions.) With the spread of tablet computers, the e-book versions have taken off; over 60,000 copies were downloaded during 2012. Martin also completed his second essay of the year on Social Security reform, “The Case for Reforming the Program’s Spouse Benefits While ‘Saving

Social Security’” (Dec. 2, 2012), http://ssrn.com/abstract= 2183949, and adapted his orientation presentation, “Messages from Some Cornell Law School Ghosts” for an alumni webinar. (That version is online at: http://www.access-to-law. com/video/ghosts.html.) In January, Martin conducted a session, “Employing the Internet and Technology, More Generally, in the Practice of Law,” at a business law workshop in Lusaka, Zambia, sponsored by the Law Association of Zambia and the Southern African Institute for Policy and Research. While in Lusaka, Martin also met with those now responsible for the Zambia Legal Information Institute, an activity which he helped found in 1996.

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workshop organized by Cornell’s Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies.

On August 20, 21, and 22, Muna B. Ndulo, professor of law and director of Cornell University’s Institute for African Development, attended a workshop, “Constitutional Challenges in South Sudan,” held in Juba, South Sudan. The workshop attracted participants from the Marx Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, the University of Pretoria’s Institute for International and Comparative Law in Africa, as well as the United States and members of the South Sudan National Constitutional Review Commission. Ndulo made a presentation to the workshop on the relevance of international human rights norms to national constitutions. On September 20, Ndulo was the first speaker in the Fifth Annual Ralph R. Watkins Africana Studies Lecture Series at SUNY Oneonta. He presented “Challenges of Peace Keeping: African Solutions to African Problems.” The annual lecture series honors the late Professor Emeritus Ralph Watkins of the SUNY Oneonta History and Africana and Latino Studies Departments. At Cornell, on October 20, Ndulo presented “Human Rights, Islam, and the Somali Constitution” at a

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On November 13, Ndulo was a discussant at a public forum called to examine the film, Sifuna Okwethu. The forum was organized by the Fordham University School of Law Leitner Center for International Law and Justice. The movie depicted one South African family’s struggle to regain the family land stolen during the apartheid era. From December 10 through 14, Ndulo attended the Law, Justice, and Development week organized by the legal departments of the World Bank, International Finance Corporation (IFC), Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), and the Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID). The 2012 forum explored how law and justice contribute to better development outcomes through opportunity, inclusion, and equity. Ndulo made a presentation to the panel on the topic, “Emergence of New States and Issues around Failed States.” From January 7 through January 11, Ndulo, along with Professors Martin and Whitehead, Olufunmilayo B. Arewa of the University of California at Irvine School of Law, and Sara Lulo ‘02 (former Avon Center executive director), were resource persons at a workshop on business law and legal research in Lusaka, Zambia. The workshop was organized by the Law Association of Zambia (LAZ) in collaboration with the Southern African

Institute for Policy and Research (SAIPAR). The weeklong workshop attracted fifty-six registered participants. Ndulo, Whitehead, Martin, Arewa, and Lulo gave lectures on the following topics: “Commercial Arbitration and Investor State Dispute Settlement”; “Legal Aspects of Corporate Acquisitions”; “Private Equity and Venture Capital Funds and Financing”; and “Using Internet in the Practice of Law.”

Annelise Riles, the Jack G. Clarke Professor of Far East Legal Studies, director of the Clarke Program in East Asian Law and Culture, and professor of anthropology published “Is This Capitalism? If Not Then What Is It?” in a special

online issue of Cultural Anthropology: Theorizing the Contemporary—Finance, May 2012. The article is available at http://blogs.cornell.edu/collateralknowledge/2012/05/16/ is-this-capitalism-if-not-thenwhat-is-it/. She also published “Is New Governance the Ideal Architecture for Global Financial Regulation?” in the Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies Discussion Paper Series, January 2013. This article is available at http://www.imes.boj.or.jp/ research/abstracts/english/13E-01.html. In the fall, Riles presented “Against Market Totalitarianism” as a keynote at the Law and Society conference entitled “Exploring the Legal in Socio-Legal Studies” at the London School of Economics and at a conference on market regulation at the Max Planck Institute in Freiburg, Germany. She presented a plenary lecture, “Against Market Totalitarianism,” at a McGill University conference, “Stateless Law: The Future of the Discipline.”

In the fall, Riles presented “Against Market Totalitarianism” as a keynote at the Law and Society conference entitled “Exploring the Legal in Socio-Legal Studies” at the London School of Economics and at a conference on market regulation at the Max Planck Institute in Freiburg, Germany.

She also presented a paper entitled “Overcoming Regulatory Arbitrage: A Conflict of Laws Approach” at a conference on private international law at the Duke University School of Law. In November, she made two presentations on the anthropology of finance at the American Anthropological Association annual meetings, and in December she presented a paper coauthored with law student Charlotte Davis ‘13, entitled “Collaboration: Rethinking How We Think about the Politics of Regulation,” to the online World Economic Association conference, “Rethinking Financial Markets: Social Capitalism, Economies of Money, and Custodial Regulation.” In January, Riles served as the Shimizu Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics (LSE) Law School where she presented a faculty seminar, “Overcoming Regulatory Arbitrage: A Conflict of Laws Approach.” She presented “Smart Power: Feminism and Instrumentalism in U.S. Foreign Policy” in the LSE public international law workshop series, taught two classes in the anthropology of law, and commented on doctoral student research in the Department of Architecture and Urban Planning at Goldsmiths College, University of London. She also presented a paper, “From Comparison to Collaboration: New Directions in Comparative Law,” at the University of Kent Law School. At Cornell, Riles hosted a speaker series on East

Asian Law under the auspices of the Clarke Program in East Asian Law and Culture and the Cornell Society for the Humanities. Riles also continues her work with Meridian 180, an online community of leading intellectuals in Asia, Europe, and North America, featuring discussions of current policy issues now in four languages— Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and English. In 2012 the program completed the Korean interface for the Meridian 180 website. More information about Meridian 180 is available at meridian-180.org. Riles also writes about financial markets regulation on her blog, blogs. cornell.edu/ collateralknowledge/.

E.F. Roberts, the Edwin H. Woodruff Professor of Law Emeritus, can recall that in 1957 Max Lerner could describe the Constitution as America’s covenant and, because of this, the nine justices touched with divinity. Today we read in the op-ed pages of The New York Times a piece by a veteran professor of constitutional law asserting that the same document deserves shredding because it is packed with

Common opinion seems to be that the justices have lost their wings and are little more than politicians representing the values of their particular party.

“archaic, idiosyncratic, and downright evil provisions.” Common opinion seems to be that the justices have lost their wings and are little more than politicians representing the values of their particular party. This rather disheartening view of the judicial branch comes when the explicitly political branches seem unable to deal with the costs of the welfare state, much less address the country’s decaying infrastructure, while seriously thinking about the new infrastructure needed along its coasts to deal with the effects of climate change. Meanwhile, trying to extract itself from wars in the Mideast, our country finds itself outflanked in Africa by the object of those crusades. Saved by not having been exposed to a classical education, our ruling elites are not deeply worried about the possibility that the fault lies in the very structure of our governing system, as was the case in Rome. A good novel might be written portraying how one party that gained control of all three

branches of the federal government might be able radically to restructure things along authoritarian lines while maintaining the appearance of the current system. Octavius Caesar, after all, claimed to have restored the republic in all its glory, though, as Ronald Symes described that Roman Constitution, it was a “screen and a sham.” A good symposium might be had considering whether the sheer chance of divided government has saved us or whether the voters are smarter animals than we give them credit for. Or was this recent run on the gun shops evidence that deep down the citizenry have an unexpressed fear of just such a possibility? Meanwhile we have it on good authority that any attempt to repeat the Roman solution would end up as a complete farce. The lesson here? The real value of emeritus status is the time to think these things at one’s leisure and then enjoy an occasional Guinness.

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He was also given a collection of appreciative messages in album form from many of the 220 individual students that he taught in his fall courses on evidence and civil procedure.

Faust F. Rossi, the Samuel S. Leibowitz Professor of Trial Techniques, will retire from the Law School on July 1. He will have completed forty-six years of teaching. Since he is not teaching in the spring, he was honored at the end of his

Rossi was mentioned in the Cornell University summer 2012 Ezra alumni magazine in an article about the university, entitled “What Makes a Legendary Professor?” The article stated that according to a university-wide poll of professors, students, and alumni, Rossi was among those faculty

Rossi has a contract with the American Bar Association to publish a hardcover book that incorporates the many lectures that he has given on great American trials. He continues to work on this project in collaboration with Glenn Altschuler, Cornell University’s Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Professor of American Studies.

last class on November 30. At a ceremony with students and faculty in attendance, he received a plaque created and presented by his students which read as follows: “On behalf of all students who have had the privilege of your instruction, thank you for your dedication, patience, wisdom, and friendship. You are a most beloved professor and shall be missed.”

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School’s Institute of International and Comparative Law in Paris. Rossi has a contract with the American Bar Association to publish a hardcover book that incorporates the many lectures that he has given on great American trials. He continues to work on this project in collaboration with Glenn Altschuler, Cornell University’s Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Professor of American Studies. Rossi says that his teaching career is not finished. He hopes to continue to teach part time at other law schools in the Washington, D.C., area after he and his wife move to Bethesda, Maryland, in late 2013 or early 2014. He will also give continuing legal education lectures on evidence and advocacy to judges and lawyers for national and state bar association groups.

Steven H. Shiffrin, the Charles Frank Reavis Sr. Professor of Law, continues to work on his book manuscript, What’s Wrong with the First Amendment? In the fall he completed chapters on race, commerce, and democracy. He also submitted an amicus brief to the New Mexico Supreme Court on behalf of Professor Dorf and himself. There he argued that a statute prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation does not violate freedom of speech when it is applied against a commercial photographer who refused to photograph a samesex commitment ceremony because the ceremony involved two women instead of a man and a woman.

members “who could best hold them spellbound with the power of their words.” Rossi remains a presence at the university and Law School. Even after retirement, he will continue to teach the Great American Trials course at Cornell’s Adult University session in August 2013. He will again also be teaching the course, “Introduction to the American Legal System,” at the Law

Emily Sherwin wrote a symposium article on Scott Shapiro’s recent book Legality, raising questions about the rationality of following legal rules. She also completed her graduate coursework in philosophy and taught for the first time from her new casebook, Ames, Chafee, and Re on Remedies.

In September, W. Bradley Wendel cohosted a colloquium entitled, “Jurisprudential Perspectives on Taxation Law,” with Cornell Law School alumnus John Prebble, J.S.D. ’72. The colloquium was co-spon-

Legal philosophy too often falls back on stylized examples of law like the “no vehicles in the park” statute that lack the richness and complexity of real law. As peculiar as it may sound, considering tax law and jurisprudence together may enable progress to be made in philosophical debates that seem to have stalled out.

sored by Cornell and Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand, where Prebble is currently on the faculty of law. Scholars and practicing lawyers from the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, and China considered issues at the intersection of the highly theoretical field of legal philosophy and the intensely practical domain of tax law. Wendel presented a paper on inclusive and exclusive positivism in tax law, which is the basis for an ongoing research project. The aim of the project is to refine a current and seemingly intractable debate in jurisprudence by using examples drawn from law as practicing lawyers actually experience it. Legal philosophy too often falls back on stylized examples of law like the “no vehicles in the park” statute that lack the richness and complexity of real law. As peculiar as it may sound, considering tax law and jurisprudence together may enable progress to be made in philosophical debates that seem to have stalled out.

In the fall, Wendel published responses to reviews of his 2010 book, Lawyers and Fidelity to Law, which ran in symposia in the Texas Law Review and the international journal Legal Ethics. The critical perspectives on the book were challenging and illuminating, and hopefully they, along with Wendel’s responses, will sharpen some of the issues that continue to divide the discipline of philosophical legal ethics. In a very different field, Wendel’s contribution was published in a symposium on the views of the prominent theologian Stanley Hauerwas regarding law. The paper, entitled “Lawyering in the Christian Colony: Some Hauerwasian Themes, Reflections, and Questions,” argues for a conception of religious lawyering that respects both moral pluralism and the duty to be faithful to one’s calling. Finally, and a bit more downto-earth, Wendel published a short guide for new teachers of professional responsibility,

to be distributed by Aspen Publishers. The guide considers different approaches to the content of the course, teaching, casebooks, the use of technology in the classroom, and other issues that may be encountered by teachers beginning in this area.

Charles K. Whitehead’s paper, “Sandbagging: Default Rules and Acquisition Agreements,” was published in the Delaware Journal of Corporate Law. In the M&A world, a buyer “sandbags” a seller when, knowing the seller has materially breached a warranty, it closes the deal and then asserts a post-closing claim for damages. The paper analyzes the effect of differing default rules on contractual provisions that address sandbagging. Whitehead is also the coauthor of a recently released paper on the role of lawyers on the boards of public companies. Titled “Lawyers and Fools: Lawyer-Directors in Public Corporations,” the paper offers new evidence on the valuable role of lawyer-directors that contradicts the accepted wisdom that lawyers on boards have fools for clients. The paper was profiled in the Financial Times, Reuters, and Corporate

Counsel, among numerous publications. In addition, Whitehead moderated the third annual Transactional Lawyering Competition, the country’s only intramural “moot court” for students interested in exploring a transactional law career. The competition included over fifty student competitors and over thirty alumni-instructors. Whitehead also organized the Cornell Law School Conference on Law, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship. Sponsored by the Clarke Business Law Institute and the Cornell Law Review, the conference drew over 100 lawyers, regulators, academics, and entrepreneurs from around the country. In addition, Whitehead participated in a conference on business law hosted by the Law Association of Zambia in Lusaka, Zambia, where his presentation focused on U.S. mergers and acquisitions. From February, Whitehead has been a visiting professor at Peking University Law School, where he is teaching a course on corporate governance, acquisitions, and capital structure. He was also appointed Co-Chairman of the ABA Committee on International Financial Products and Services and to the advisory board for the Columbia Law School Blue Sky Blog, which focuses on the law relating to corporations and the capital markets. n

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Winter Cup Moot Court Named for Faust Rossi ’60

Cornell Law School’s Winter Cup moot court competition, long a staple of the academic year and a signature event of the spring semester, will continue henceforth as the Faust F. Rossi Moot Court Competition. Intended to honor Rossi, the name-change

We all are privileged to have been the first in a long line of Cornell lawyers to have taken Professor Rossi’s course on evidence. The trial lawyers who emerged from our class and those that followed were significantly influenced by Faust’s unique and distinctive methodology, which emerged in that now-legendary course. — John Clarke ’67

is the result of a gift from Law School alumni who have combined their resources to establish an endowed fund devoted to the moot court program. Classmates John Clarke ’67, Paul Crotty ’67, Bruce Goldstein ’67, Susan Robfogel ’67, and Jonathan Weld ’67 served on the committee for this initiative; as moot court teammates at a time when Rossi was beginning his tenure as a member of the Cornell Law School faculty, Clarke and Weld benefitted from Rossi’s guidance and advice throughout their participation in various internal and exter-

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The inaugural Faust F. Rossi Moot Court Competition will be held early in the spring term of 2014, accompanied by a celebration appropriate to the moment and the man. Class of 1985 Launches New Scholarship

Faust Rossi

nal moot court competitions. “We all are privileged to have been the first in a long line of Cornell lawyers to have taken Professor Rossi’s course on evidence,” said Clarke. “The trial lawyers who emerged from our class and those that followed were significantly influenced by Faust’s unique and distinctive methodology, which emerged in that nowlegendary course.” Beloved and respected by more than four decades of Cornell Law students, Faust F. Rossi ’60 is the Samuel S. Leibowitz Professor of Trial Techniques at Cornell Law School, a faculty to which he has belonged since 1966; recurrently a visiting professor at Central European University in Budapest; and regularly a faculty participant of the Cornell Summer Institute of International and Comparative Law in Paris. His legal scholarship currently investigates the use of experts in American litigation.

The Cornell Law School Class of ’85 Scholarship made its first award in the fall of 2012, marking the realization of a goal that Class of ’85 alumni had defined at their twentyfifth reunion two years previously. The Cornell Law student who received financial assistance from the fund is just the first of many who will benefit from it henceforth. Several donors have given and continue to give to this scholarship with the intention that it will always make a meaningful difference in the lives of future students, many of whom will enjoy the opportunity to attend Cornell Law School because of it. Next year’s award promises to be even more valuable, for current gifts and commitments to the Class of ’85 Scholarship’s endowment have increased since the inaugural grant was made. Going forward, scholarship grants will increase

proportionately as the fund receives additional support. With nearly 50 percent of Cornell’s J.D. candidates receiving some level of scholarship support and the competition among top-tier law schools for the best and brightest students as keen as ever, finding additional sources of financial assistance is an abiding priority. It is also a foremost goal of the current “Cornell NOW” fundraising campaign. The Cornell Law School Class of ’85 Scholarship will be formally recognized at the class’s thirtieth reunion in 2015 as part of the campus-wide sesquicentennial celebration of the founding of Cornell University. By then, three additional students will have received grants that will speed their respective educations in the law toward success.

More than 125 Cornell Law alumni and guests enjoyed lunch, camaraderie, and a breathtaking view of Central Park before hearing from speaker Thomas A. Russo, J.D./M.B.A. ‘69. below: Dean Schwab and Mr. Russo.

above:

Russo began alerting Wall Street in late 2007, while he was vice chairman and chief legal officer at Lehman Brothers. His message, backed by reams of data, warned all who would listen about the forces converging to create an economic collapse.

Annual Luncheon Hosts an Insider’s View of Wall Street

Continuing a tradition founded in the 1950s, Cornell Law alumni met in January for the New York Annual Luncheon, where they reminisced, networked, and listened to Thomas A. Russo, J.D./M.B.A. ’69, talk about the lessons of the 2008 financial crisis. Called “a thoughtful sage” by Stewart J. Schwab, the Allan R. Tessler Dean and Professor of Law, Russo began alerting Wall Street in late 2007, while he was vice chairman and chief legal officer at Lehman Brothers. His message, backed

by reams of data, warned all who would listen about the forces converging to create an economic collapse. “A lot is at stake for the economy, and all actions that add liquidity or help prevent distressed sales that exacerbate the problem are worthy of consideration, even if they are somewhat out of the box,” he wrote in “Credit Crunch: Where Do We Stand?” “Something needs to be done.”

Five years after being proven correct, Russo is executive vice president of legal, compliance, regulatory affairs, and government affairs and general counsel at AIG, where he oversees what he calls “the biggest restructuring of any company ever in the history of mankind.” “When I started writing about the crisis, it was solely as an outline for a speech I had to give,” said Russo. “But it got bigger and bigger and bigger, from twenty pages to thirty

pages to more than a hundred pages, and the more I got into it, the more curious I became. It became an obsession to understand not only the U.S. economy but also its place in the world economy.” Completed with help from Aaron J. Katzel, his chief of staff at that time, the 143-page, exhaustively footnoted The 2008 Financial Crisis and its Aftermath: Addressing the Next Debt Challenge (2011) was posted on Group of Thirty’s

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ALUMNI website and uploaded to Kindle. It took off, reaching board rooms around the world and leading to a New York Observer profile that called Russo “the secret scribe of Wall Street.” That’s a long way from where he started, newly enrolled in the dual degree program at Cornell, and unsure whether his career would lead to law or business. “The education I received at Cornell was invaluable, and the best decision I made was to get the dual degree,” said Russo. “Too often, lawyers simply look at life through the prism of the law, but there’s a lot more to it. Even though people are coming to you for legal advice, you have to see the world through different lenses, in the context of different disciplines. The better your education, the higher the quality of your advice.” The 2013 event took place in Le Parker Meridien’s Estrela Penthouse overlooking Central Park and was sponsored by Cadwalader (Charles M. Adelman ’73); DLA Piper (John J. Altorelli ’93); Morrison & Foerster (Joel C. Haims ’93); Paul Hastings (Brian P. Moran ’93); Proskauer Rose (Paul A. Salvatore ’84); Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom (David E. Schwartz ’94); Tortoise Investment Management (Ian J. Yankwitt ’93); and the Cornell Law School Admissions Office.

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Cornell Latino American Law Students Association and Black Law Students Association Alumni Mixer

Warmth and laughter spilled from the thirty-seventh floor conference room of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom on January 11 as current students and alumni of the Cornell Latino American Law Students Association and the Black Law Students Association reunited at a mixer organized by the groups’ leaders. Alumni from the New York City area caught up with old friends and made new ones among current

LALSA and BLSA students. Guests were also delighted to see Professor Sheri Lynn Johnson, assistant director of the Cornell Death Penalty Project, Professor Emeritus Winnie Taylor, and Professor Angela Cornell in attendance. “The Alumni Mixer was a unique and highly valuable experience. I had the opportunity to talk to partners at law firms, judges, and associates practicing in a variety of different areas of law, both to learn about their careers and to ask for individual advice about my job search. As I continue to e-mail with alumni

above: Maria Fernandez-Williams ‘92 below: Judge Stephen Robinson ’84, Nora Ali ‘15, Sasha Belinkie ’15, Oscar Lopez ’15, Adrian Ramos ’14, Judge Ariel Belen ‘81 bottom: Vanessa Clarke ’12; Brent Wesley Drummond and Cesar Sanchez (admitted students); Michael Clarke ’89; Ashley Akins ’13

Some of the people I met continue to mentor and guide me today as a 1L. This year I met new people who took a sincere interest in how things are at Cornell, and gave me great advice as I start to look at potential career paths. — Nora Ali ’15

from that event, I am excited for the future events planned by the Alumni Association and eventually getting to participate and support the Law School as an alumna,” said Sasha Belinkie ’15. Nora Ali ’15, attended the mixer last year as an admitted student. “Some of the people I met continue to mentor and guide me today as a 1L. This year I met new people who took a sincere interest in how things are at Cornell, and gave me great advice as I start to look at potential career paths. More importantly, hearing personal accounts of where life has taken them with a Cornell Law degree is the best inspiration and motivation to work hard and take advantage of all that Cornell has to offer.”

“I really enjoyed seeing friends from my year,” Lucienne Pierre ’15 acknowledged, “but I was also pleased to be able to network with BLSA and LALSA alumni who graduated before me. I ended up at a firm that does not have a significant

minority associate/partner population, and it’s nice to be able to speak to people who have experienced the same situation and find out how they chose to navigate their careers. It’s fantastic to see former professors and to feel as if I am part of a very intimate, supportive community full of successful, driven, and down-to-earth people.” Marihug Cedeño ’13, former president of LALSA, agreed that “building a stronger alumni network for black and Latino students is a crucial undertaking. Seeing the Student and Alumni Mixer continue to grow and flourish is a powerful reminder of what a special place Cornell Law School truly is. I am already looking forward to next year’s mixer!”

How to Make the Most of Your Cornell Law School Education: Alumni Share Their Stories

Fifteen members of the Cornell Law School Alumni Association’s executive board of directors shared their views on their Cornell Law School education during a casual presentation to Law School students on Friday, September 21, in the Berger Atrium. The Cornell Law alumni board members made the pilgrimage to Ithaca for the board’s fall retreat and meeting in conjunction with Homecoming Weekend and took advantage of the opportunity to engage the students while on campus. Though it was 2:30 p.m. on a beautiful, warm Friday afternoon and the undergraduates of Cornell University were already partaking in Homecoming celebration activities, more than seventy-five Law

School students gathered in the Berger Atrium to network with alumni from a variety of sectors, including big law, government, nonprofit, and sole practitioner, from all over the country. The casual presentation began with John Vukelj ‘03 (DLA Piper), Allison Harlow Fumai ’02 (Dechert), Eric Elmore ’89 (Federal Trade Commission), Lisl Dunlop, LL.M. ’97 (Shearman & Sterling), Arthur Eisenberg ’68 (American Civil Liberties Union), and Patrick Rao ’94 (Carrier Corporation), each talking about his and her respective educational experiences and how they transitioned into gratifying careers. They offered valuable tips on identifying the pathway to specific fields of work and also shared the allimportant “do and never do’s” for interviewing. After the presentation, students mingled with all the members of the

Hon. Stephen Robinson ’84 was the gracious host, and we thank him, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, and the Cornell Law School Office of Alumni Affairs for making this get-together possible. Patrick Rao ‘94 presents to students.

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ALUMNI My classmates were eager to ask questions and learn about each of the alumni’s career paths. The alumni did a great job of covering every question asked. I know the students are already hoping for another! — Melissa Cabrera ’13

board and had an opportunity to talk individually with them. Melissa Cabrera ’13, remarked, “The Alumni panel was a great success. My classmates were eager to ask questions and learn about each of the alumni’s career paths. The alumni did a great job of covering every question asked. I know the students are already hoping for another!”

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“The program was not only for the J.D. students,” said Yun “Emma” Zhang ’13. “The LL.M.s also found the program incredibly valuable as it provided a platform for current students to connect to and exchange ideas with alumni.” “It was a positive experience for students and alumni,” stated John Vukelj ’03, current presi-

dent of the Alumni Association executive board of directors. “The board has always been focused on engaging alumni, but we have been expanding our outreach to the student population as well. The current students are our future base. We enjoy speaking with them, and we know students are always looking to network with alumni.”

above left: John Vukelj ‘03; Allison Harlow Fumai ’02; Patrick Rao ’94; Eric Elmore ’89; Lisl Dunlop, LL.M. ’97 above: Students filled Berger Atrium to hear from alumni about their experiences.

Fifteen Sworn into the United States Supreme Court Bar

This past November’s Supreme Court Bar Group admission, hosted by the Office of Alumni Affairs, featured the largest contingent ever from Cornell Law School. A diverse group of fifteen alumni took part in the swearing-in. Newly admitted to argue before the nation’s court of last resort are Charles Adelman ’73, William Barrett ’92, Richard Batchelder ’90, Theresa Concepcion ’07, James Dugan ’93, Daniel Duval ’ 02, Jacqueline Duval ’92, E. Eric Elmore ’89, Brandon Jonas ’07, Dorothy Bullard Moya ’07, Patrick Rao ’94, Charles Schilke ’88, Arthur Siskind ’62, Joshua Swift ’93, and Mor Wetzler ’07. Also present was Sheppard Guryan ’67, admitted to the Supreme Court Bar in December 2009,

who moved the group forward in court. With the ceremony taking place on November 26 (the Monday after Thanksgiving), alumni variously brought parents, spouses, and children to share the experience. The large number of guests and the range of their respective ages created a “family feeling” that was most welcome during the holiday season. The two-day event included a special dinner for alumni inductees and their guests on the eve of the ceremony, a breakfast on the morning-of at the Court, an opportunity to attend the day’s oral argument, and a private docent lecture in the courtroom afterwards. These activities were enjoyed by everyone and roundly praised. Rao wrote, “This was, by far, the best alumni event that I have par-

Dorothy Bullard Moya `07, Mor Wetzler `07, Brandon Jonas `07, Theresa Concepcion `07, Patrick Rao `94, Daniel Duval `02, Charles Schilke `88, Jacqueline Duval `92, Joshua Swift `93, Richard Batchelder `90, Charles Adelman `73, William Barrett `92, Sheppard Guryan `67, Arthur Siskind `62, James Dugan `93. (Absent from photo: E. Eric Elmore `89)

ticipated in. This was wonderful.” Schilke called “the entire Supreme Court Cornell Law event . . . absolutely splendid, one of the finest professional experiences that I have ever had.” Moya said that “it was truly a standout day and I am happy to have been part of the Cornell group.” Siskind, writing with “great appreciation,” called the event “an incredible

experience,” and noted, in person, that Supreme Court admission marked an achievement he had set for himself long ago. Siskind always admired his father’s beautifully framed U.S. Supreme Court Bar admission certificate and for many years thought it a distinction very worth pursuing. As Siskind said, “I have crossed off one more item on my bucket list.” The 2013 swearing-in is scheduled for December 3. If you are interested in being part of this prestigious group, please contact Kristine Hoffmeister, director of Alumni Affairs, at ksh54@cornell.edu. Space is limited.

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ALUMNI Chino ’91 Becomes First Female Executive of a Major Japanese Trading Company

Fortune Global-ranked Itochu Corporation out of Japan made history in February by announcing the appointment of Mitsuru Claire (Ike) Chino ’91 as an executive officer. When she assumes her new position in April, Chino will

residence. She is active with the Inter-Pacific Bar Association and lectures at Keio Law School and Hitotsubashi Business School. She is also a semiprofessional classical singer. She adds, “I am forever grateful to the well-balanced theoretical and practical legal training I received at Cornell Law School, which has served as a solid foundation in my career.”

I view this appointment not so much as my personal achievement, but rather as a manifestation of the increased importance the in-house legal function plays in this global day and age. — Mitsuru Claire (Ike) Chino ’91

become the first female executive officer of any major trading company in Japan, and also the youngest. Currently serving as the deputy general manager of Itochu’s legal division, Chino joined the company in 2000. She has been a champion for women’s causes there, and, among her achievements, helped to start a corporate diversity program in 2004. “It is my tremendous honor and privilege to be named the first female executive officer of any major Japanese trading company,” says Chino. “I view this appointment not so much as

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James Dabney ’79

Mitsuru Claire (Ike) Chino ’91

my personal achievement, but rather as a manifestation of the increased importance the in-house legal function plays in this global day and age.” Over the past decade, she has been recognized as a “Young Global Leader” by the World Economic Forum, as one of 100 “Japanese Women Recognized by the World” by Newsweek Japan, and as one of the top twenty-five in-house counsels in Asia by Asian Legal Business. She serves on the Cornell Law School Advisory Council and has taught at the Law School as a visiting professor and distinguished practitioner in

James W. Dabney ‘79 Argues Already v. Nike before the Supreme Court

Only a small number of lawyers get the chance to argue a case in front of the Supreme Court of the United States, but Cornell Law alumnus and adjunct professor James Dabney ’79 has argued three. On November 7, Dabney argued his latest case, Already, LLC v. Nike, Inc., as counsel for the petitioner. The Already case concerns the scope of federal court jurisdiction to hear challenges to the validity of federally registered trademarks. The specific question presented in Already is “[w]hether a federal district court is divested of Article III jurisdiction over a party’s challenge to the validity of a federally registered trademark if the registrant promises not to assert its mark against the party’s then-existing commercial activities.” Dabney’s client in the Already case is a Texas-based apparel company that sells YUMS athletic shoes. In 2009, Nike

sued Already, alleging trademark infringement on one of their shoe models. Dabney was Already’s defense counsel in the district court and has continued to represent Already on appeal and now in the Supreme Court, which is unusual these days, he says. “It’s increasingly rare for trial counsel to appear as arguing counsel in the Supreme Court,” says Dabney, who is a litigation partner at Fried Frank in New York City, and head of the firm’s intellectual property and technology practice group. He is also 2-0 in his prior Supreme Court appearances. When asked about going in front of the country’s highest court, Dabney says that he feels very fortunate to have had opportunities to participate directly in the shaping of patent and trademark law. “Writing academic articles is important,” Dabney says. “But litigation provides opportunities to bring about immediate change.” Dabney also argued Holmes Group, Inc. v. Vornado Air Circulation Systems, Inc., 535 U.S.

826 (2002), which overturned case law of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit concerning its appellate jurisdiction; and KSR International Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007), which overturned Federal Circuit precedent concerning the non-obvious subject matter condition for patentability. The Already case also involves review of a case law doctrine that originated in the Federal Circuit. During his Already argument, Dabney repeatedly drew on intellectual property practice experiences when answering questions from the Justices. In addition to knowing the record backward and forward, he says it is essential to be familiar with every Supreme Court case cited in the other side’s briefs. “You don’t want to be asked about a case and say you don’t recall it in that setting.” Dabney also notes that there is additional pressure arguing before the Supreme Court because so many people are watching, listening, and reporting on what is said. Dabney teaches a course at the Law School called Selected Topics in Patent Law and Practice. According to Dabney, the course considers important assumptions that underlie much current-day patent law and practice (for example, the meaning of the word “invention”) but are seldom articulated or critically analyzed. The federal registration at issue in the Already case was included in the assigned readings of his course last year.

Matthew L. Lifflander ’57 Discovers Forgotten History

Sworn in as New York’s governor on January 1, 1913, William Sulzer, a Democrat, was impeached by the Democratic majority in the State Assembly in August and removed from office in October by vote of the impeachment court. How his political career came to this unprecedented pass is the heart of The Impeachment of Governor Sulzer (Excelsior Editions, SUNY Press, 2012), by Matthew Lifflander ’57. Hired upon graduation to serve as assistant counsel to then governor Averell Harriman, Lifflander heard of Sulzer’s downfall while working in the executive chamber. Research he initiated fifteen years ago at Cornell, whose library holds fourteen boxes of Sulzer’s personal papers, confirmed Lifflander’s belief that the story of New York’s impeached governor should be told. Sulzer’s life was worthy of a novel: ran away to join the circus at thirteen; survived mortal illness; at eighteen, went to sea; became an attorney at twenty-one and quickly built a successful practice through extroversion, self-confidence, and lawyerly diligence. Attracted to politics, Sulzer applied his oratorical skills to winning election to the State Assembly (he became speaker at age thirty) and later to the U.S. House of Representatives (six times). As governor, Sulzer exposed corruption and defied

Matthew Lifflander ’57

Tammany Hall, precipitating his own undoing. In reconstructing Sulzer’s story, Lifflander recounts watershed historical events (e.g., the SpanishAmerican War; the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire) and provides colorful portraits of prominent figures, such as Roosevelt (Franklin and Teddy), Bryan, Smith, Lehman, and Morgenthau. The result is a compelling story of a popularly-elected

governor deposed by a Democratic party led by powerful Tammany chieftain Charles Murphy. “I’ve been fascinated by the history of Albany and the people who become famous there,” says Lifflander. “My first exposure to real politics came through Cornell. I tend to give Cornell credit for everything good that’s happened to me. This book is the latest.” n

Class Notes are Online Search for news on your classmates and other Cornell Law School alumni. You can also submit your own notes through the Law School website: lawschool.cornell.edu/alumni/classnotes/index.cfm

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FORUM Spring 2013 Volume 39, Number 1

Richard D. Geiger associate Dean, Communications and Enrollment

Tricia M. Barry Editor

Michael Heise Faculty Editor

Martha P. Fitzgerald

In Memoriam

director of Communications

Darcy Bedore

William G. Becker Jr., LL.B. `57

Lauretta D. Robinson, LL.B. `44

Joseph C. Buck, LL.B. `50

Stanley L. Rosen `52

Robin Awes Everett

Hon. John W. Burke, LL.B. `52

Marcella Rosinski `43

John L. Crites `71

Walter B. Schatz `49

Chester G. Dann, LL.B. `58

Hon. Harold A. Seidenberg `57

Kenneth Berkowitz, Femi Cadmus, Andrew Clark, Kevin M. Clermont, Kathleen Corcoran, Kristine S. Hoffmeister, John A. Lauricella, Hahn Liu, George Lowery, Owen Lubozynski, Ian McGullam, Linda Brandt Myers, Judith Pratt, E.F. Roberts

Milton Eisenberg `50

Donald M. Sheraw, M.B.A. `62/J.D. `69

Hon. William L. Evers `51 Ralph M. Shulansky `52 Benjamin Franklin `52 C. V. Stelzenmuller, LL.B. `52 Peter Gettinger `50 Paul F. Weisend, LL.M. `67 Emanuel R. Gold, LL.B. `59 Stanford N. Goldman Jr. `67 Charles R. Hann `51 Richard A. Insogna, LL.B. `53 William R. Kutner `77 Peter L. Landau, M.B.A. `58/LL.B. `59 Robert F. Martin `60

Copy Editor

design director

Contributing Writers

Heather Ainsworth (pp. 28, 35); Robert Barker (pp. 3, 20-21, 26, 38, 40-41, 53, 59, 61, 74); Cato Institute (p. 51); Carol Clune (p. 56); Cornell University Library Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections (pp. 5, 6); DiMeo Photography (pp. 2, 14, 16, 21, 61, 64, 66); Easy123Art (front cover); Donald Erickson (p. 11); Lindsay France (pp. 3, 27, 34, 37, 40, 42, 44, 47, 50, 55, 58, 68); Fried Frank (p. 74); José Luis Gutiérrez (p. 9); Masayoshi Harada (p. 11); Utagawa Hiroshige (pp. 1, 5, 8-9); Gary Hodges (pp. 12, 36, 40-41, 67); Kristine Hoffmeister (p. 69); Dusty Holoubek (p. 22); Bruce Hutchison Illustration (inside front cover, pp. 41, 44, 46, 56, 68); IBM (p. 23); Evgeny Karandaev (front cover); Jason Koski (back cover, pp. 3, 9, 20, 31-33, 36-37, 45-46, 54-55, 57); Odette Lienau (p. 19); Malerapaso (p. 14); Mita Media Center, Keio University (p. 7); Masashi Naruse (p. 11); Olaser (p. 17); Elizabeth Peck (pp. 51-52); Chris Pecoraro (pp. 1, 10); George Peters (p. 10); Rachel Philipson (p. 53); Eve Prime (p. 75); Jon Reis Photo + Design (pp. 63, 66); Ron Reznick (pp. 7); Jay Rosenblatt (p. 48); Rubberball (p. 13); John Said (p. 8); Sheryl Sinkow Photography (inside back cover, pp. 58, 60, 62-63, 65-66); Tess Steinkolk (p. 27); Deborah Stillman (pp. 69, 70, 73); Stuartbur (p. 18); Supreme Court of Korea (p. 24); University Photography (inside back cover, p. 63); Utagawa Toyokuni (p. 7); Kunisada Utagawa (p. 6); Wendell & Carolyn (pp. 1, 17) Photos and Illustrations

Robert J. Mayer `54 Frank R. Monfredo, LL.B. `54

Cayuga Press of Ithaca Printer

The editors thank the faculty, staff, alumni, and students of Cornell Law School for their cooperation in the production of this publication. Select articles in the “Briefs” section reprinted courtesy of Cornell Chronicle. Cornell Law School publishes Cornell Law Forum two times per year. It is an eco-friendly publication. Business and editorial offices are located in 119 Myron Taylor Hall, Ithaca, NY 14853-4901 (phone: 607-255-6499; email: tmr82@cornell.edu). Cornell Law School on the Web: www.lawschool.cornell.edu 76

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Spring 2013 When East Met West: 125 Years of Japanese Law Students at Cornell Law School

125 Years Later: Harada and Naruse of 2013

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Building a Better Transactional Lawyer: New Courses Bolster Deal-Making Savvy Winter Cup Moot Court Named for Faust Rossi â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;60

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