LOS ANGELES TIMES: Domestic spying far outpaces terrorism prosecutions
May 12, 2008
BYLINE: Richard B. Schmitt
“The number of Americans being secretly wiretapped or having their financial and other records reviewed by the government has continued to increase as officials aggressively use powers approved after the Sept. 11 attacks. … ‘How does one measure the success? The short answer is we aren't in a great position to know,’ said Daniel Richman, a former federal prosecutor. With prosecutions declining, he said, the public is left with imperfect and possibly misleading ways to gauge progress in the Bush administration's war on terrorism -- such as the number of secret warrants the government issues or the number of agents it assigns to terrorism cases. ‘These are the only tracks in the snow left by terrorism investigations, if there are no more counter-terrorism prosecutions,’ Richman said. ‘This is why, more than ever, there is a pressing need for congressional oversight, for accountability at the top of the [Justice] department, and for public confidence in the department.’”

FINANCIAL WEEK: Critics: SEC no match for investment banks
May 12, 2008
BYLINE: Nicholas Rummell
“Recent criticism of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s oversight of investment banks, as well as the departure of libertarian commissioner Paul Atkins, could lead to greater investment bank regulation. … ‘In the 1990s, the SEC budget was truly starved,’ said John Coffee, a law professor at Columbia University. But while it received a major boost after the Enron and WorldCom scandals, he added, the enforcement program has since been put back on a diet, starting with the SEC’s policy in 2004 to focus more on individual penalties rather than ‘penalizing’ shareholders with large corporate penalties.”

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY: Panels Highlight the Copyright Divide
May 12, 2008
BYLINE: Craig Morgan Teicher
“Divergent opinions were the order of the day at the 2008 On Copyright conference, held May 1 in Manhattan. … The society panel, ‘New Experiences; New Expectations,’ mostly focused on lawyer Tim Wu’s interest in the recent trial in which Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling sued Steve Vander Ark when he announced plans to publish a book based on his popular Harry Potter Lexicon Web site. For Wu, the trial underscored the popular conception that a print book is more legitimate than an e-book: ‘Rowling didn’t care about the Lexicon as long as it was online,’ he said.”

NEW YORKER: Talk of the Town: Fan Feud
Issue of May 12, 2008
BYLINE: Tim Wu
“Once upon a time, a talented weaver named Arachne declared herself superior in skill to Athena, the goddess of wisdom, who also invented weaving. Whether Arachne was actually better we’ll never know, for Athena, in a jealous rage, destroyed her rival’s tapestry and turned her into a spider. Last summer, at a ‘Harry Potter’ convention in Toronto, a fan named Steve Vander Ark made a similar mistake when he dared to compare himself to Joanne (J. K.) Rowling. ‘It is amazing where we have taken ‘Harry Potter,’ ’ he said to a crowd of dedicated ‘Potter’ fans. Many readers dislike the epilogue in the final book; Vander Ark urged them to disregard it entirely, and even invented his own spell to do so (‘expelliepilogus’). ‘Jo’s quit, she’s done,’ he told the audience. ‘We’re taking over now.’ Comparing yourself to a living god can be risky, and Vander Ark has suffered cruel fates, in court and in the world of ‘Potter’ fandom. … Tim Wu (The Talk of the Town, p. 42) is a professor at Columbia Law School.”

TIMES-UNION: Ethics panel works in secret 
May 11, 2008
BYLINE: Irene Jay Liu
“A special commission that legislators claim is their ‘independent’ ethics watchdog is anything but, a monthlong Times Union investigation has found. … But while an opinion can be a strong defense, its strength depends on the integrity of the process that generated it, Columbia Law school professor and former assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel Richman said. ‘Certainly to the degree that there was collusion between the legislator and the commission in the creation of the opinion, I wouldn't give it much faith in a good-faith defense,’ Richman said.”

NEW YORK TIMES: In a Changing World, an Ever-Evolving Terrorism
May 9, 2008
BYLINE: Edward Rothstein“When the Barbary pirates were in their prime, they were paid homage and protection money by every major shipping nation. … But as Philip Bobbitt points out in his powerful, dense and brilliant new book, “Terror and Consent: The Wars for the Twenty-First Century,” in the late 18th century they were also quite different from the terrorists we now know. … Mr. Bobbitt, who teaches law at the University of Texas and Columbia University and directs the Center for National Security at Columbia — and who has held positions in six United States administrations — is too subtle to accept a formulation that has become little more than a relativist mantra.”

BLOOMBERG: State Street Subprime Damages May Surpass Reserve
May 8, 2008
BYLINE: Carlyn Kolker
“State Street Corp., the largest money manager for institutions, may have to pay more than the $625 million it set aside for damages from lawsuits over losses from subprime-mortgage investments made for pension funds. … To achieve class-action status, the funds need to show that their cases have common facts, said John Coffee, a securities law professor at Columbia University in New York. ‘The common issue will be, did they all get the same advice?’ Coffee said. Even without class-action status, the pension plans may still sue separately because the size of the claims justifies the cost of individual cases, Coffee said.”

WORLD POLITICS REVIEW: D.R. Congo Reviews Mining Contracts Signed During Resource-Fueled War
May 8, 2008
BYLINE: Aaron Ernst
“In the late 1990s and early 2000s, a curious export phenomenon occurred in the countries of Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi. … ‘In terms of value to the country, about 60 to 80 percent of the contracts had language that allowed the companies to avoid an obligation to actually ensure that it does what it says it will do,’ said Peter Rosenblum, law professor at Columbia University and an expert on DRC mining contracts. The contracts, he said, often undervalued the worth of the minerals being taken from the country in order to avoid paying taxes on the wealth that was extracted.”

REASON MAGAZINE: Hogwarts Law School
May 8, 2008
BYLINE: Jesse Walker
“Harry Potter gets along with his fans. … It's unclear how the courts will rule, but I'm inclined to agree with Columbia Law School's Tim Wu as to how they should rule. Wu wrote in Slate that Rowling ‘has confused the adaptations of a work, which she does own, with discussion of her work, which she doesn't….Textually, the law gives her sway over any form in which her work may be 'recast, transformed, or adapted.' But she does not own discussion of her work—book reviews, literary criticism, or the fan guides that she's suing.’”

BLOOMBERG: SEC's Bear Stearns Oversight Points to Fund Shortage
May 7, 2008
BYLINE: Jesse Westbrook
“The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's inability to avert the collapse of Bear Stearns Cos. may be traced to funding levels at the agency that haven't kept pace with the complexity of Wall Street's biggest companies. … ‘I've been concerned for some time that flat budgets would create gaps in the SEC's oversight and enforcement efforts,’ said Harvey Goldschmid, a former SEC commissioner who left the agency in 2005 and is now a professor at Columbia Law School in New York. ‘That may have been responsible for the failure to identify some of the problems at Bear Stearns.’”

FINDLAW: Does the Foolhardy McCain/Clinton Proposal for a "Gas Tax Holiday" Expose a More Fundamental Flaw in Democracy?
May 7, 2008
BYLINE: Michael C. Dorf
“Presidential candidates John McCain and Hillary Clinton have both recently endorsed a ‘gas tax holiday’ a temporary suspension of the federal 18.4 cents per gallon excise tax on gasoline and 24.4 cents per gallon on diesel fuel—during the summer months, as a means of affording working Americans some relief from high fuel costs. The proposals differ in one important respect: Clinton would couple the temporary suspension of the tax at the pump with a windfall-profits tax on oil companies. Nevertheless, with or without an accompanying windfall-profits tax, the gas tax holiday is unjustifiable as a matter of policy, and to his credit, Senator Barack Obama has rejected it as a gimmick. Yet historically, candidates who have eschewed populist but misguided policies have not fared well, and it is thus quite possible that Obama's principled stand on this issue could cost him votes or even the Presidency. … Michael C. Dorf is the Isidor & Seville Sulzbacher Professor of Law at Columbia University.”

WALL STREET JOURNAL: Mutual Funds Give Some Investors Pause Now
May 6, 2008
BYLINE: Palash R. Ghosh
“Mutual funds have been resilient despite rivalry from other investment options like exchange-traded funds, hedge funds and separately managed accounts, but now some investors are having their doubts. … ‘High fees are not really the biggest issue,’ says Louis Lowenstein, professor emeritus of finance and law at Columbia University, who has written a book, ‘The Investor's Dilemma: How Mutual Funds Are Betraying Your Trust and What to Do About It,’ which is highly critical of the industry. ‘The real problem with mutual-fund companies is the way they manage money,’ he says. ‘Their primary emphasis is on gathering assets, not managing those assets well. There is a significant conflict of interest between money management and asset gathering -- and, of course, fees are based on assets, not performance.’”

ESPACINSULAR: Celebran El “Foro Abierto Haitiano-Dominicano”
May 6, 2008
“La Universidad de Columbia en la ciudad de Nueva York, Estados Unidos, fue por segunda vez, este año, el escenario del ‘Foro Abierto Haitiano-Dominicano’, iniciado en el 2006 en esta prestigiosa casa estudios por jóvenes estudiantes de los dos países que comparten la isla de Quisqueya, para promover un cambio en las relaciones dominico-haitianas. … Esta posición fue apoyada por Carolina Bettinger-López, de la Escuela de Derecho de la Universidad de Columbia, quien criticó severamente ‘las repatriaciones masivas realizadas frecuentemente por el gobierno dominicano y la sistemática violación del derecho a la nacionalidad de los niños de origen haitiano nacidos en la República Dominicana’.”
Translation: This position was supported by Caroline Bettinger-Lopez from Columbia Law School, who severely criticized ‘the mass repatriations that the Dominican government frequently carries out and the systematic violation of the nationality rights of children of Haitian origin who are born in the Dominican Republic.’

BOSTON HERALD: Hillary Clinton climbs Barack into race
May 6, 2008
BYLINE: Dave Wedge
“Barack Obama, weakened from a racially charged controversy involving his pastor, battles today to stop a surging Hillary Clinton from derailing his historic presidential bid as the Democrats face crucial contests in Indiana and North Carolina. … Columbia Law School political science professor Nathaniel Persily said Obama needs a big North Carolina win and a strong showing in Indiana to prevent superdelegates from jumping to the former first lady and current senator from New York. ‘His strategy is to prove to people that the current controversies will not hurt his prospects in the general election,’ Persily said. ‘Part of it is showing he can take the most recent round of punches and move on.’”

INSIDE HIGHER ED: A Mental Health and Public Safety Primer
May 6, 2008
BYLINE: Elia Powers
“In the grand scheme of the American Psychiatric Association’s six-day annual meeting at Washington’s massive downtown convention center, one three-hour session inside a subdivided meeting room is small in relative significance and scope. … The session featured much talk about the often differing interests of students and administrators when it comes to mental health cases. Paul S. Appelbaum, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, said it’s his impression that student suicides that occur on campus tend to be forever linked to the university in the public consciousness, whereas deaths that take place while the student is home on break don’t carry that connection. Colleges are inherently fearful of liability, he said, which helps explain why their policies often favor keeping troubled students away from campus. Appelbaum said mandatory leave policies for students suffering from mental illness are typically ineffective, because they take the students away from their support system and often their treatment, and can permanently damage self esteem. ‘It’s a sense that ‘I’ve failed, and home can be even more stressful,’ ’ he said.”
Paul S. Appelbaum is the Elizabeth K. Dollard Professor of Psychiatry, Medicine, and Law.

LATIN BUSINESS CHRONICLE: Brazil Keeps Booming
May 5, 2008
“It was only fitting that President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva spent Friday receiving a delegation of the country’s stock race car drivers. … Separately, Columbia University announced that Vale is providing a $1.5 million grant over five years to establish the Vale-Columbia Center on Sustainable International Investment. … The new center is a joint undertaking between the institute and Columbia Law School. Karl P. Sauvant, who is executive director of the Columbia Program on International Investment and will be executive director of the new center.”

NATIONAL POST: How Canada's dawdling cost U.S. an opportunity to deter crime
May 3, 2008
BYLINE: Theresa Tedesco
“Some American justice officials privately admit they didn't expect it would take the RCMP more than three years to file criminal charges against Mr. Drabinsky and Mr. Gottlieb -- and another six years to get the case before a Canadian judge. ‘The wheels of justice grind slowly, and apparently particularly slowly in Canada,’ mused Professor John Coffee from Columbia University Law School in New York. ‘I don't think this would have been an exceptionally difficult case to prosecute had it been brought to court by the U.S. attorney in New York.’”

REUTERS: U.S. ponders Guantanamo closure as Bush term ends
May 2, 2008
BYLINE: Sue Pleming
“The Bush administration could announce plans by the end of its term in January to close Guantanamo prison and an upcoming Supreme Court ruling might be the impetus for this, senior U.S. officials and experts say. … Matthew Waxman, a former senior Defense and State Department official who dealt with detainee policy, has argued strongly for the closure of Guantanamo but he said the Supreme Court's decision could ‘cut both ways.’ If inmates were seen to have the same rights in Guantanamo Bay as on the U.S. mainland, then there could be little strategic reason to move them. ‘The major criticism of Guantanamo is that it represents a so-called legal black hole,’ said Waxman, now a professor at Columbia Law School in New York.”

NEW YORK TIMES: From Making the Cases to Challenging Them
May 2, 2008
BYLINE: Karen Donovan
“For the last 10 years, Ronnie Abrams lived a real-life version of ‘Law & Order.’ … ‘They do a lot of the less glamorous stuff that meets the needs of people who are not going to get representation unless it is pro bono,’ said Ellen Chapnick, dean for social justice initiatives at Columbia School of Law, who will be overseeing a prosecutors seminar taught by Ms. Abrams this fall. Lawyers like Ms. Abrams, Ms. Chapnick says, can fill a talent void at big law firms, which have relied in the past on the public organizations to oversee young lawyers. ‘It’s a huge problem,’ she said.”

ASSOCIATED PRESS: UN expert: food crisis is a human rights emergency
May 2, 2008
“The U.N. Human Rights Council should meet urgently to spotlight the global food crisis as a human rights emergency affecting at least 100 million people whose right to adequate food is being massively violated, a U.N. expert said Friday. Olivier De Schutter, the council's new independent expert on the right to food, said a special session of the human rights body would bring into the debate over rising food prices and global shortages ‘the human right to adequate food which for the moment has been totally absent.’ … De Schutter, a law professor at the University of Louvain in Belgium and currently a visiting professor at Columbia University's Law School in New York, said the consequences of the food crisis ‘are immense.’”
This story was picked up by the Dallas Morning News.

BLOOMBERG: Berkshire's Bond Insurer, Moody's Stake Face Probe
May 1, 2008
BYLINE: Erik Holm
“Billionaire Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. faces a probe by Connecticut's attorney general for possible conflicts created by owning almost 20 percent of credit ratings company Moody's Corp. while also running a new municipal bond insurer. … The conflict exists and Moody's should voluntarily recuse itself from ratings tied to Berkshire's unit, said John Coffee, professor of securities law at Columbia University in New York.