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 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.
"Many criminal legal system fees and fines practices can be characterized as “stategraft”--a concept developed by Professor Bernadette Atuahene to describe situations in which state agents transfer property from individuals to the state in violation of the law or basic human rights. The stategraft frame, with its focus on illegality, fits with much of the litigation and advocacy against unconstitutional fees-and-fines practices that have occurred over the last decade. Exposing illegal practices such as the operation of debtors’ prisons laid the groundwork for a more fundamental critique of the use of the criminal legal system as a revenue generator for the state. The Essay cautions, however, against relying too heavily on illegality to describe what is wrong with fees-and-fines regimes in light of the limited legal protections against state practices that saddle those who encounter law enforcement with debt. Relying on an illegality critique may make it harder to attack entrenched practices that courts are inclined to bless as legal and obscure more fundamental dynamics of predation and regressive revenue redistribution."
"By funneling onslaught litigation into bankruptcy, corporate defendants use chapter 11 to deny people the ability to participate in the justice process and to hurriedly shut down the truth telling and concomitant public airing that can come from that process. This Article shows how the reorganization process has been twisted to resolve onslaught litigation such that now its use is largely inappropriate."
"International human rights law prohibits slavery and the slave trade, but states are rarely held accountable. International human rights law advocacy neglects slavery and the slave trade in part because abolition marginalized the human rights of enslaved persons while consolidating empire. Today, the United States has doubled down on these imperial interventionist strategies, rebranding human trafficking as “modern slavery” and focusing enforcement on policing international borders and prosecuting perpetrators. Thus, human rights advocates should press international legal institutions to go beyond combatting human trafficking crimes and to focus additionally on state accountability for wrongs done to the human beings still exploited, enslaved, and slave traded today."
"Agency legal material is of paramount importance to the public. From the standpoint of good government principles, as attested by numerous past ACUS recommendations, agencies have an affirmative duty to disclose their legal materials. Congress now should step in to make those good-government principles ones that are both legally binding on agencies and practically meaningful."
"Startup lawyers have a new name: exit engineers. Startup lawyers create value for clients by anticipating issues that could arise in a future exit transaction (an acquisition or an IPO) and helping their clients address those issues proactively, thereby “engineering” the transaction costs of that exit. In doing so, startup lawyers make deals happen that might otherwise fail, enabling more efficient use of the parties’ resources. In turn, this facilitates reinvestment into the broader technology ecosystem; profitable liquidity events enable VCs to fund more enterprises and innovation. Successful exit transactions lead to more, new successful ventures."
"Building on the work of abolitionist scholars and organizers, this Article centers the role of Violence Interrupters as an important alternative to policing and punitive prosecution. It is the first to explore legal change that might minimize the legal barriers to violence interruption, including statutory reform, mens rea reform, expansion of the Second Amendment, and recognition of an innocent possession defense."
"Sidewalks are critical public resources. Unique among public spaces, sidewalks are home to an incredibly wide array of users and uses, all of which contact and conflict with one another in numerous ways. Sometimes these encounters enhance the users’ experiences and produce happy collaborations; often, they detract from those experiences and risk producing a chaos that degrades the space for everyone. Management and coordination are sorely needed."
Dobbs and Democracy (with Melissa Murray), Harvard Law Review (Spring 2024)
"Condominium safety is an issue of importance to millions of Americans. The Champlain Towers tragedy is a painful reminder that dangers not apparent to the untrained eye may impair the structural integrity of high-rise buildings, and that condominium board, if let to their own devices, may blind themselves to the attendant risks."
"NHTSA should use its investigative powers to monitor new technology as it comes to market. If a new automation system has a positive net impact on safety, NHTSA should let the experiment continue. If it creates unreasonable risks, NHTSA should tell the developer to go back to the lab and design safer software. Developers should learn that the easiest way to avoid regulation is to prioritize safety in development. In that way, NHTSA can finally realize its mission to channel the creative energies and vast technology of the automobile industry into a vigorous and competitive effort to improve the safety of vehicles."
Risk-Seeking Governance (with Brian Broughman), Vanderbilt Law Review (link)
"Innovation is a form of civic religion in the United States. Popular and political culture alike treat innovation as an unalloyed good. And the law is deeply committed to fostering innovation, spending billions of dollars a year to make sure society has enough of it. But this sunny vision of innovation as purely beneficial is mistaken. Some innovations, like the polio and Covid-19 vaccines, are unquestionably good for society. But many innovations are, on balance, neutral, and many more are simply bad for society (e.g., cigarette additives, worker surveillance, firearm bump stocks). This Article argues that a fuller conception of innovation’s costs and benefits counsels a radical reorientation of innovation law and policy."