Our professors are renowned scholars and practitioners—experts who shape the study and practice of law. I'm proud to share a sampling of their recent scholarship with you. The energy and engagement exhibited by our faculty continue to make Cardozo a leader in legal education.
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/Google Patent Diversity Project, which seeks to increase the number of women and minority innovators receiving patents; 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.
FACULTY SCHOLARSHIP
Is Tax Law? | Fordham Law Review (Forthcoming)
Coin Taxes (with Mitchell Kane) | U.C. Irvine Law Review (Forthcoming)
"New kinds of private money are thriving, with increasing circulation, growing acceptance, and rapid technological innovation. But this new suffers from an old problem: bank runs. . . . As a result, these new types of money remain critically vulnerable to bank runs, and the potential for financial contagion from their failure poses catastrophic risks to society."
The Safe Harbor for Leveraged Buyouts in Bankruptcy | American Bankruptcy Law Journal (Forthcoming)
Is it Time to Scrap Stare Decisis? | Illinois Law Review Online
"Stare decisis may not be an inexorable command. But it is a command—a long-standing one—and for good reason. This should be considered when the Supreme Court issues its next decision overruling legal precedent, whether it is Humphrey’s Executor or another ruling, whether explicitly or by stealth, and irrespective of the merits of the underlying dispute. It may just be a valuable piece of evidence in the case for or against stare decisis. Certainly, the jury is out as to whether we should continue to stand by the ideal or sit down to think more deeply about perpetuating the doctrine given its practical demerits. Rather than allowing the justices to continue a facade, perhaps we should just accept that this is a new reality. It just may be that by removing this metaphorical ace from the deck (or Joker, if you’re Thomas), the house of cards at One First Street will come crumbling down. If that comes to pass, at least it may present the opportunity to draw up a new blueprint that instructs how to lay a more stable, “more perfect” foundation. And on those grounds, “we the People” can erect a true temple of Justice, one actually worthy of “ourselves and our posterity.”
Conscripted Surveillance | Florida Law Review (Forthcoming)
"This Article provides a rich descriptive account of ISAP's surveillance powers and posits a new theory of ISAP as a form of "conscripted surveillance." ISAP's incredible and invasive reach has largely been justified on grounds that individuals consent to its terms, but this consent is a fallacy. It is based on a coercive choice-agree to ISAP or go to jail-and an empty threat-ICE could not actually send everyone it threatened with ISAP to jail if they refused. As such, ICE functionally conscripts immigrants into service as beacons of community surveillance, using the data it collects through ISAP to make mass arrests and facilitate mass deportations. Understanding ISAP in this way reveals how our administrative and legal systems fail to meaningfully oversee the harms that ISAP perpetuates, and it provides a new lens through which to evaluate and critique the terms and scope of immigration detention in the U.S."
Agency Factmaking | Yale Law Journal (Forthcoming)
Occursus: An Introduction to my Ghosts | Law, Culture, and the Humanities
An Alternate History of Chevron, With a Lesson for Today | Fordham Environmental Law Review (Forthcoming)
The Abuse of Neutrality | Virginia Journal of International Law
Algorithmic Tax Ownership | BYU Law Review (Forthcoming)
Swiping Rights | U.C. Davis Law Review (Forthcoming)
"Much has been written about the intersection of regulation and entrepreneurship. But sparse attention has been paid to the unintended consequences on early-stage companies of more subtle regulatory interventions like contract rules—especially those with inconsistent or conflicting requirements among the states. This Article begins to fill that gap and uses as a case study a set of contract laws passed long ago to govern traditional matchmaking services, but now equally apply to Tinder and its brethren.”
Did Copyright Fail Music Artists? | B.U. Law Review (Forthcoming)
Diagonal Representation | B.U. Law Review (Forthcoming)
Public Defender Discretion | U.C. Davis Law Review (Forthcoming)
Who Decides Who Gets Deported? | Florida Law Review (Forthcoming)
Resurrecting Immigration Releases | Yale Law Journal (Forthcoming)
Immigration’s Prejudice Problem | Nevada Law Journal (Forthcoming)
Anticompetitive Acquiescence | Florida Law Review (Forthcoming)
Sidewalk Living | William & Mary Law Review (Forthcoming)
Notice Pleading’s Quiet Return | Washington University Law Review
Empiricism and Constitutional Torts (with Joanna Schwartz & Jim Pfander) Annual Review of Law & Social Science (Forthcoming)
Subordinate Prosecutors | Stetson Law Review (Forthcoming)
Anti-Zionism, Antisemitism, and the Promise and Problems of Antidiscrimination Law | Indiana Law Journal (Forthcoming)
Property & Information | Washington University Jurisprudence Review (Forthcoming)
Joint Bank Accounts: Who Needs Them? | Iowa Law Review (Forthcoming)
Gregory Keating’s Understanding of Tort Law | Law & Philosophy (Forthcoming)
No Exit | NYU Law Review (Forthcoming)
Regulating Robotaxis | Southern California Law Review (Forthcoming)
Consumer Tradeoffs | Arizona State Law Journal (Forthcoming)
The Two Faces of Stays Pending Appeal | Notre Dame Law Review Online (Forthcoming)
Defending U.S. Citizenship-Based Taxation in Theory and in Practice: An Essay on Fiscal Citizenship in a FATCA World
Cardozo Law Review (Forthcoming)
Book Announcements
The International Tax Revolution | Forthcoming July 2025
International Conflict Resolution Processes
The Jewish Legal Tradition (with others)