Cardozo's reputation for academic excellence is rooted in the scholarship of our faculty, whose work shapes law and policy. I'm proud to share with you some of the recent works of my colleagues that have appeared in major media outlets. I hope you find them thought-provoking.
Melanie Leslie became dean of Cardozo Law School on July 1, 2015. She is the first Cardozo Law graduate and the first woman to hold the position.
Dean Leslie was the driving force behind a number of important initiatives at the intersection of law, technology, intellectual property, and business, including The FAME Center for fashion, art, media and entertainment law, which prepares students to work in the creative industries through its extensive curricular offerings; The Cardozo Patent Diversity Project, which seeks to increase the number of women and minority innovators receiving patents; The Blockchain Project, which offers classes and symposia on blockchain and regulation; The Center for Rights and Justice; and The Center for Real Estate Law and Policy. Dean Leslie spearheaded the Deans Leadership Academy, an annual virtual conference to provide guidance and skillsets to future law school deans.
A Cardozo professor since 1995, Dean Leslie is a leading scholar in trusts & estates, fiduciary obligations and nonprofit governance. Courses taught include Property, Trusts and Estates, Nonprofit Governance, and Evidence. She has been presented the “Best First-Year Professor” award by three graduating Cardozo classes. She served as Cardozo’s Vice Dean from 2014-15.
Dean Leslie is a prolific scholar whose work has been published by the NYU Law Review, Boston College Law Review, Florida Law Review, William & Mary Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal, and Indiana Law Journal, among others. She is the co-author of a leading casebook, Estates and Trusts, Cases and Materials, as well as Concepts and Insights: Trusts and Estates. Dean Leslie has been a Visiting Associate Professor of Law at New York University School of Law, and a Visiting Professor of Law at Columbia Law School. She has served on the NY State Bar and NYC Bar Joint Committee on the Uniform Trust Code, as a Legal Fellow of the American College of Trusts and Estates Counsel (ACTEC), and on the executive committees of the AALS Sections on Trusts & Estates and Nonprofits and Philanthropy.
Prior to joining the Cardozo Law faculty she clerked for Justice Gary S. Stein of the New Jersey Supreme Court and practiced commercial litigation at Debevoise & Plimpton, Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, and McCarter & English.
A native of Las Vegas, Dean Leslie received her B.A. in Theater from the University of Oregon, with honors, before moving to New York City, where she spent several years working as a professional actor and vocalist. She then received her J.D. from Cardozo Law magna cum laude in 1991, where she was the Executive Editor of the Cardozo Law Review.
U.S. News & World Report
U.S. News & World Report
Heald & Sichelman
Professor Kate Shaw's Podcast, Strict Scrutiny, won the Best Politics or Opinion Podcast Award from The Podcast Academy. She said in her acceptance speech that “we started Strict Scrutiny, a podcast about the Supreme Court, because we thought we all needed to be paying more attention to an institution that is shrouded in secrecy, but whose decisions have enormous impact on all of our lives.”
You can listen to Strict Scrutiny wherever you choose to listen to podcasts.
“There’s a new tax avoidance/evasion scheme in town. In the past few years, high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth individuals have flocked to life insurance as the scheme du jour.”
“The guidance hopefully will provide consistency in how the D.O.J. and D.O.E. will assess each case is a significant step forward”
“Many startups continue to force arbitration in situations of alleged sexual misconduct. We’re going to see a ton of emails go out in the next week indicating that this is now the law. I’m concerned that the bill leaves out the people who are most deserving of judicial adjudication in the tech industry and beyond.”
“It’s a huge case and it covers an entire system. And it’s a system that has resisted reform of its medical practices for so many years. I don’t think Arizona is so unusual. I have never encountered a system that I thought did a good job.”
“What I teach [the students at Cardozo] more than anything else is that their job as lawyers is to change the criminal justice system. We have an obligation to not just become lawyers but to improve the system… We should be involved in change.”
Kim said the deal had come under attack from developing countries for being "not inclusive" and complicated to administer.
“Photography makes bad law. It’s a thin copyright. So much of what makes a photo great is about the photographer’s artistic vision, but so much of it is about the factual world they are photographing, and that’s not protectable.”
“With so little progress made at the federal level, state leaders should step up, demonstrate that their words have meaning, and support local legislation that will bring some justice and accountability to their own backyards.”
“The risk: An erroneous ruling by the Court would do severe damage to the Georgia and Ukraine investigations and international humanitarian law more generally. The opportunity: a proper ruling by the Court could help guide the United States and others away from the flawed alternative interpretation of the law.”
“I think the prosecutor appropriately leaned into the timeline today. Both to show that the defendant had the opportunity to commit the murder, clean up quickly using the hose, and then go to his mother's house to try to set up an alibi. Also to show how implausible it would be for anyone else to get in in that very narrow window.”
“The Biden administration has made democracy a central focus of its agenda, and there is good evidence from the midterms that the public actually cares a great deal about democracy as a value. The court right now is a genuine threat to democracy — to both the choices made by our elected representatives and the processes by which we translate preferences into tangible policy.”
“Here we have Juul settling for a lot of money and promising to stop doing a lot of stuff that was aimed at kids. That’s great, but I’d expect to see the next company coming down the line try to do the same thing.”
“These are all proxy fights for other stuff that’s going on in the separation of powers debate that the court is very familiar with” from tax, securities and environmental cases, Vishnubhakat said. The justices “didn’t stop being interested in IP. They were just focused for a while on what IP-related disputes could contribute to the broader conversation about the structure of government.”
“People can play games with [cryptocurrency] and not have to pay any taxes. It’s incredibly unfair to the vast majority of law-abiding taxpayers when the IRS is crippled. I think that’s the problem with bitcoin — the tax evasion has become normatively accepted.”