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.
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
“Tort victims in general want their own committee apart from unsecured creditors because they’re often looking to get different information from the debtor. The problem is that every committee that is appointed is a financial drain on the business, so there’s less money for everyone to go around.”
“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.”
“One of the biggest legal challenges for the luxury sector is dealing with the sustainability factor or, as Vanessa Friedman from The New York Times puts it, ‘responsible fashion’. We must deal with waste and climate change and undertake responsible manufacturing, working with factories that play by these rules.”
“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.”
Progress in implementing a deal that many in the tax industry thought was destined to fail comes at a critical time for the OECD. The organization’s tax department had also come under attack from some developing countries for creating a framework that was “not inclusive” and was too complicated to administer, according to Christine Kim, a professor of tax at Cardozo School of Law in New York.
“The confrontational process of cross-examination can be seen by the jury as retraumatizing or blaming the victim, particularly when defense counsel is male and the victim is female,” Miller said. “Defense teams will often elect to have a female member cross-examine alleged sexual abuse victims to diminish these concerns. Seeing a female team member express doubt about the witness’s story gives the jury permission to do the same.”
“If the sitting president has said he’s not going to assert privilege, then there’s a certain amount of time (before) the documents then have to be released unless the former President succeeds in getting a court order, an injunction, for example, prohibiting their release. That would require a pretty significant ruling by a federal court.”
“Every justice has their own approach to hypotheticals. Some justices go in the opposite direction of Justice Breyer and go for things that are in the public eye at the moment. I think that can be very effective.”
“I think it is very telling that Trump's lawyers are not taking a position in court when they clearly could do so. It is hard to imagine that there's anything in this affidavit that is beneficial for Trump to be released. So I think that they may be trying to benefit strategically from sort of publicly calling for its release.”
“This is one of the most important decisions the Supreme Court has handed down in this century, certainly in the past half-century. I think this will have seismic impact on women’s lives and on the choices they can make, and really, on the course of the country."
“The government could take the view that these are the two most important of the ultra-low-cost carriers and we don’t want to see them merged, but I doubt that would happen.”
“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.”
“It remains to be seen whether Britney’s case makes long-term change to conservatorship. But this case raised the consciousness of the fundamental problems with this approach.”
“There is nothing new about elected officials sincerely disagreeing with the Supreme Court about whether the Constitution provides a right to abortion in the first trimester. What is new and troubling about S.B. 8 is not that it expresses an opinion about Roe, but that it makes conduct in reliance on the Supreme Court’s authority a statutory tort.”
“If you’re a company that everyone wants to invest in, one of many ways that you can get leverage over investors is by saying, ‘Let’s make the due diligence requests a little more modest here.’ If you are working at a private company and you know that fewer people are investigating you, it’s a lot easier to conceal misconduct, and conceal it for a longer period of time.”
“Wright points out that the U.S. legal system is more DAO-hospitable than those in Europe, since in the U.S. you can create member-managed companies that don’t designate a single manager or CEO. He helped write a new Wyoming law that allows for LLC DAOs but says the Delaware law is just as flexible.”
“However well-meaning the advocates of the BBBA’s section 137702 may be, they have picked the wrong vehicle for regulating college and university scholarship practices. Section 4968 should remain intact as the initial extension beyond private foundations of the revenue taxation imposed by section 4940.”