Professor Jose E. Alvarez, the newly named Hamilton Fish Professor of International Law and Diplomacy, spoke on "Engaged Scholarship" as one of the speakers on a plenary panel devoted to this subject at the annual meeting of the AALS in San Francisco in January. He presented the final chapter of his forthcoming book, titled The Promise and Perils of International Organizations, at faculty fora at Georgetown Law Center in January and at the University of Minnesota in April. Prof. Alvarez was one of the featured lecturers at the annual meeting of the American Society of International Law (ASIL) in April, where he gave a talk titled "The Emerging New Foreign Investment Regime." Prof. Alvarez was also nominated to become president elect of ASIL and is expected to take office during the society's centennial celebrations in 2006.
George A. Bermann '75 LL.M., Walter Gellhorn Professor of Law, Jean Monnet Professor of European Union Law and director of the European Legal Studies Center, was named to the teaching faculty of the College d'Europe in Bruges, Belgium. He also served as an adjunct visiting professor in the graduate degree program in Law and Globalization (DESS du Droit de la Globalisation) of the University of Paris I Law Faculty and the Institut des Sciences Politiques in Paris. Prof. Bermann testified before a Senate judiciary committee on the antitrust liability of OPEC and related sovereign immunity and act of state issues. He served as chief reporter of the ABA Administrative Law Section's multi-year research conference and publication project titled "The Administrative Law of the European Union." He was named a member of the Board of Academic Overseers of the new faculty of law of Koc University in Istanbul (whose dean is Tugrul Ansay '56 LL.M. ) and was also named an advisory board member of the Garrigues Chair in Global Law of the University of Pamplona (Spain). Prof. Bermann spoke on the following topics: "The Influence of European Law on French Administrative Law" in January at a conference at the University of San Diego and the University of California at San Diego and "Transnational Law in the First-Year Curriculum" at the January 2005 annual meeting of the AALS in San Francisco.
John C. Coffee, Jr., the Adolf A. Berle Professor of Law and director of the Center on Corporate Governance, was a panelist for a day-long program on "Democracy" at the AALS Annual Convention in San Francisco in January. His panel focused on the merits of "Shareholder Democracy." Also in January, Prof. Coffee spoke on "Recent Developments in Securities Litigation" at the annual Securities Regulation Institute in San Diego and on "Criminal Law in the Boardroom" at a conference of institutional investors in Naples, Fla. The Directorship Roundtable convened a special forum at the Metropolitan Club in New York City where Prof. Coffee was the principal speaker on "The Truth About Director Liability," which appeared in the February 2005 issue of Directorship. In February, he was a panelist at the annual meeting of the Professional Liability Underwriters Society in New York, where he spoke on "Sarbanes-Oxley's Impact." In March, Prof. Coffee presented a paper at the Law and Economic Seminar at Harvard Law School and spoke before a Columbia Alumni group in Palm Beach, Fla., on the topic "Is It Safe to Go on the Board?" In April, he was the moderator of a panel on "Employment Discrimination and the Wal-Mart Case" at the annual meeting of the ABA Litigation Section in New York.
Michael W. Doyle, the Harold Brown Professor of United States Foreign and Security Policy, spoke in January on "Enforcing Democracy Internationally" at a panel organized by Professor Samuel Issacharoff at the AALS annual meeting in San Francisco. Later that month, following up on a request from UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, he organized the first Global Colloquium of University Presidents, which met at Columbia University on January 18-19. Hosted by Columbia's president, Lee Bollinger '71, the colloquium drew university presidents from 15 major research universities around the world to discuss the meaning and protection of academic freedom. Meeting in parallel sessions, academic experts from the same universities discussed a key global public policy problem of interest to the United Nations community: the potential for global cooperation in managing international migration. Secretary-General Annan chaired the plenary discussions of both topics, producing consensus statements on the importance of both issues. The university presidents have decided to make the colloquium an annual event, hosted in rotation among five New York-area universities, with the purpose of building a cooperative international network of leading universities that fosters teaching and research on global public policy problems.
Professor Ariela Dubler delivered a paper titled "The Morality of Borders" at a conference on Equality and the Family at the University of Toronto in February. In March, she presented a paper on "Licit Sex, Illicit Sex, and Same-Sex Marriage" at a conference on same-sex marriage at Yale Law School. In addition, she presented her current research on the history of federal laws that prohibited the movement of women across borders for "immoral purposes" at legal history workshops at UCLA, Yale and the University of Virginia, as well as at the law faculty workshops at Stanford, Cardozo, Washington University and Seton Hall.
Jeffrey Fagan, Professor of Law and Public Health, testified in January before a joint session of three committees of the New York State Assembly, critiquing recent scientific evidence on the deterrent effects of the death penalty. In February, he delivered a paper on "Crime and the Transformation of Public Space," at the Conference on the Urban Age, sponsored by the London School of Economics and Deutsche Bank's Alfred Herrhausen Society for International Dialogue. He presented a paper in March at the Emory University Law School on ""Legal Mobilization as Collective Action: Community Justice and the Legitimation of the Criminal Law." In April, he gave the Walter Reckless Lecture at Ohio State University, titled "The Empirical Illusion of Deterrent Effects of Capital Punishment." In May, he presented a paper at the Workshop on Crime and Punishment at the University of Chicago Law School on "Illicit Gun Markets and the Social Contagion of Gun Violence." Later in May, he provided expert testimony based on this research in civil litigation in federal District Court for the Eastern District of New York. In June, he presented a paper titled "The Social Ecology of Violence Against Women," at the annual meeting of the Study Group on Intimate Violence, jointly sponsored by the Minerva Center of the University of Haifa and the New York University School of Social Work. His research continues on social and legal strategies to suppress illegal gun markets, and on the effects of incarceration on voter participation.
Robert A. Ferguson, the George Edward Woodberry Professor in Law, Literature, and Criticism, spoke on "Point of View in Judicial Opinions" before an alumni group at Davis, Polk & Wardwell in March. In April, he gave a talk titled "Point of View and Judicial Rhetoric" at John Jay College.
Professor Katherine Franke, co-director of the Center for the Study of Law and Culture, had a number of speaking engagements this spring, including "Breaking with Tradition: New Frontiers for Same-Sex Marriage" at Yale Law School; "Ethics of Human Rights Documentation" at the eighth annual conference of the Association for the Study of Law, Culture and Humanities in Austin, Texas (where she also served as a commentator on a panel titled "Moral Panic, Legal Consequences"); "Gender and Transitional Justice" at a workshop on Gender and Transitional Justice convened by the International Center for Transitional Justice in Bellagio, Italy; at a workshop on culture and politics at Amherst College; on law school diversity at the University of Mississippi School of Law; and to a colloquium on Feminism, Law and the State at Rice University in Houston. Adjunct
Professor Alejandro Garro '90 J.S.D. served in January as Argentine delegate to the UN Commission on International Trade Law ("UNCITRAL"), where he joined two different working groups, one in charge of amending the UNCITRAL Model Law on International Commercial Arbitration, and the other focusing on the elaboration of a Legislative Guide on Secured Transactions. In February, Prof. Garro lectured at the Universidad Externado in Bogota, Colombia, on international business transactions. In March, he gave a presentation at the UN headquarters in Vienna to honor the 25th Anniversary of the Vienna Sales Convention. Also that month, Prof. Garro took part in two conferences on the teaching of Latin American law in the United States at the University of Saint Louis Washington College of Law and Harvard School of Law. At both occasions, he shared his more than 20 years of experience of introducing Latin American law to American law students. In April, Prof. Garro gave a course called Sûrétes réelles mobilères en droit compare at the Faculté de Droit Comparé in Strasbourg, France. He also lectured at the doctoral program on commercial law (DEA droit des affaires), focusing on the influence of the American law in the modern regulation of cross-border commercial transactions. In May, he joined the Advisory Council on the Vienna Sales Convention, of which he is a member, in charge of elaborating opinions on the interpretation of this treaty.
Ronald J. Gilson, the Marc and Eva Stern Professor of Law and Business, was elected chair of the board of the American Century (Mountain View) family of mutual funds. In January, he presented a paper on separation and the structure of corporate law at a conference on Criteria for Good Corporate Law. Also that month, he gave a paper on understanding MACS and MAES at the University of California at Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall). In March, Prof. Gilson presented a paper on corporate governance and controlling shareholders at the Kirkland & Ellis Law and Economics Workshop. He gave a paper on the same topic at a conference on corporate governance in Seoul, Korea, in May.
Jane C. Ginsburg, the Morton L. Janklow Professor of Literary and Artistic Property Law and co-director of the Kernochan Center for Law, Media and the Arts, was in residence at Cambridge University as holder of the Goodhart Chair (for more on the chair, please see the Leadership section). This spring, she gave several courses and lectures throughout Europe: international intellectual property for LL.M.s at Cambridge, copyright and new technology at Toulouse University, U.S. copyright law at the University of Nantes, and copyright and new technology at the University of Paris XI. Prof. Ginsburg also gave lectures on private international law aspects of copyright at the University of Edinburgh in February and for the Intellectual Property Lawyer's Organization in London in March. Lectures on recent developments in U.S. copyright were delivered at the University of Wales in Swansea in March and for Columbia alumnae/i in Paris in April. Prof. Ginsburg served as a commentator for a presentation on plagiarism at Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge, in April, and she gave lectures on authors' rights of attribution at the University of Nantes and at Oxford University, both in May. Also that month, she lectured on copyright and new technology at the University of Oslo.
Professor Jack Greenberg '48 was a visiting professor at Hebrew University in January. He gave the John Frank lecture at Arizona State University in February and received an honorary degree from Notre Dame in May.
Michael Heller, the Lawrence A. Wien Professor of Real Estate Law, was a fellow this spring at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in Stanford, Calif., where he drafted a book on the nature of ownership. In January, he gave a talk on common interest communities to the Joint Session on Property and Local Government Law at the annual conference of the AALS, and in March he gave the faculty colloquium at Stanford Law School.
Samuel Issacharoff, the Harold R. Medina Professor in Procedural Jurisprudence, organized the AALS plenary session on Democratic Governance, at which he spoke on "Stabilizing Democratic Government in Countries of Conflict" and on "Political Rights in Corporate Governance" in January. He also gave a talk to the plenary session titled "Law, Philosophy and Foreign Affairs." In February, he presented "The Inevitability of Aggregate Settlement: An Institutional Account of American Tort Law" at the NYU Legal History Colloquium and later that month gave a talk titled "The Future of the Voting Rights Act" at the Law School. In March, he spoke to the Corporation Law Committee of the Association of the Bar of New York on the Class Action Fairness Act. "Antitrust Class Actions," a presentation at a symposium on Litigating Conspiracy at University of Western Ontario, was given in April. Also in April, he delivered the Lane Lecture at the University of Nebraska on "Politics and the Future of Voting Rights," spoke on "The Future of the Voting Rights Act" at Yale University and addressed the Bankruptcy Judges Conference organized by the Law School. In May, Prof. Issacharoff presented the first draft of the Report on Aggregate Litigation to the gathering of the American Law Institute in Philadelphia.
Professor Benjamin L. Liebman, director of the Center for Chinese Legal Studies, visited mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan with director of development Linda Nelson in December to meet with alumni. Also in December, Prof. Liebman delivered a lecture on the relationship between the media and the law in China and the United States at the Shenzhen campus of Peking University Law School. In January, Prof. Liebman delivered a lecture titled "Legitimacy through Law in China" at the Columbia University Peace Seminar. Also that month, he was a commentator at a conference titled "The Professions and Professionalism in China" hosted by Harvard Law School. In April, Prof. Liebman served as a panelist at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute's conference titled "China's Economic Emergence: Progress, Pitfalls, and Implications at Home and Abroad." Also in April, he presented a paper called "An Empirical Examination of Defamation Law in China" at the Center for Chinese Legal Studies' conference in honor of Stanley Lubman '58.
Professor Gillian Metzger '95 participated on a panel on "The Future of Adjudication" hosted by the Association of American Law School's Administrative Law Section at the AALS annual conference in January. In addition, she will be presenting at two conferences: Outsourcing Governmental Functions, held at the National Academy of Public Administration in February; and Governance by Design, held at the Harvard Law School in March. Professor Metzger will also be presenting at workshops at Washington University Law School and the University of Michigan this spring.
Curtis J. Milhaupt '89, Fuyo Professor and director of the Center for Japanese Legal Studies, participated in February in a closed-door session entitled "Undercurrents in Japanese Society" sponsored by the U.S. intelligence community. In March, Prof. Milhaupt presented a paper entitled "Choice as Regulatory Reform: The Case of Japanese Corporate Governance" (co-authored with Ronald Gilson) at the Law and Economics Workshop at Boalt Hall, Berkeley. In April, he moderated a conference on hostile takeovers in Japan sponsored by the Association of the Bar of the City of New York In May, he presented a paper titled "Economic Growth, Benevolent Dictators, and the Irrelevance of Legal Origin" (co-authored with Ronald Gilson) at an international corporate governance conference in Seoul, Korea.
Professor Ed Morrison organized a conference for U.S. Bankruptcy Judges, co-sponsored by the Federal Judiciary Center, in April at Columbia Law School. The conference gathered speakers from across the University to discuss recent developments in law, business, art and medicine. Prof. Morrison presented his most recent work, "Serial Entrepreneurs and Small Business Bankruptcies" (with Douglas Baird, University of Chicago). He presented the same paper in February at the University of Virginia. These projects—and the superb health of CLS—were discussed at a meeting of the Columbia Law School Association of Utah in Salt Lake City in March.
Professor Katharina Pistor taught an intensive course on comparative corporate law at the Institute of Law and Finance, Frankfurt University (Germany) in December 2004/January 2005. In February she gave an invited lunch talk at USC Law School on Law Enforcement under the title "Incomplete Law: Theory and Evidence from Financial Market Development" (co-authored with C. Xu). Also in February, she was the keynote speaker at a two-day workshop at the University of Kobe, Japan, entitled Towards an Interdisciplinary View of Comparative Law. At this workshop she presented "The Transplant Effect" (published in the American Journal of Comparative Law, 2003) and "Incomplete Law and Fiduciary Obligations" (based on a contribution in Curtis Milhaupt '89 (ed.), Global Markets, Domestic Institutions, 2003). She also served as a judge on the first moot court in European Union law, hosted by NYU Law School.
Professor Catherine Sharkey presented a paper, "Dissecting Damages: An Empirical Exploration of Sexual Harassment Awards," at the January 2005 annual meeting of the AALS as part of a panel convened by the Section on Law & the Social Sciences. She delivered the same paper at a University of Maryland School of Law Faculty Workshop in February. The following month, she gave a panel presentation titled "Punitive Damages: Developments and New Directions" at the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, sponsored by the Products Liability Committee. In April, she presented another paper, "Crossing the Punitive- Compensatory Divide," at a Blue Sky Lunch (an interdisciplinary workshop in law, economics, and business), at Columbia Law School and at a conference for bankruptcy judges, jointly sponsored by the Federal Judicial Center and Columbia Law School. In May, she participated in a panel called Seeking Redress in U.S. Courts at the Global Justice Forum 2005 conference, convened in London by Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein.
Jane M. Spinak, the Edward Ross Aranow Clinical Professor of Law and director of Clinical Programs, was asked by John Mattingly, the commissioner for the New York City Administration for Children's Services (ACS), to serve on the newly created commissioner's Advisory Board. The board assists the commissioner in shaping ACS' new plan to restructure children's service in New York City. In February, she served as commentator to a presentation by Emilio Garcia Mendez, chair of Criminology University of Buenos Aires, for a panel discussion titled From Minors to Citizens in Latin America. The event was part of the Law School's 2005 Social Justice Initiative's Latin America Speaker Series. In March, Prof. Spinak was the facilitating chair of the plenary session of a conference addressing the impact of the recent New York Court of Appeals decision in Nicholson v. Scoppetta on child welfare practice in New York. Also that month, she was in Budapest at a meeting to finalize plans to develop child advocacy clinics in Poland and Romania.
Peter L. Strauss, Betts Professor of Law, presented an account of his preliminary work on rule-making in the European Union (a part of the project Prof. George Bermann is directing) in January at a panel on Administrative Law in Europe, given under the auspices of the University of San Diego Law School and the University of California at San Diego. Prof. Strauss continued work on this paper as a fellow at the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Study and Conference Center in Bellagio, Italy during April and presented his results at the European University Institute in early May. In February, Professor Strauss presented a paper on publication rule-making - regulatory guidance and policy instruments - at the midwinter meeting of the ABA's section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice in Salt Lake City. In March he participated and presented a similar paper in a symposium on the current state of federal rule-making at American University in Washington, D.C. In May, he participated as a commentator in a symposium at the University of Pennsylvania Law School to celebrate the publication of Professor Edward Rubin's new book, Beyond Camelot: Rethinking Politics and Law for the Modern State. In early June, Prof. Strauss participated in the Law School's exchange program with Tokyo University, teaching a series of classes on American public law.
Professor John Fabian Witt presented a paper on internationalism and civil liberties at the Yale Legal Theory Workshop in January. In March, he gave a lecture titled "The Institutions of American Tort Law" at the Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy at the University of Buffalo.
"Debate the Issue Now" in the National Law Journal (January 31, 2005) about a lawsuit filed by some servicemen challenging the "stop-loss" orders forcing reserve personnel to stay on in Iraq beyond their enlistment contract dates
Prof. George Bermann '71
WTO Law: Cases, Text & Materials (with Mavroidis and Howse) due out from West Publishing in July 2005
Trade and Health in the World Trade Organization (Bermann and Mavroidis, eds.) due out from Cambridge University Press in August 2005
Cases & Materials on European Union Law (2004 supplement) (West)
"The Territorial Scope of Application of Private International Law Instruments: The Jurisdiction and Judgments Example" (with Bernard Audit) in Transnational Civil Litigation in the European Judicial Area and in Relations with Third States (N. Watte & A. Nuyts, eds.) (Bruylant, Brussels, 2005)
"Competences of the Union" in European Union Law for the 21st Century: Re-thinking the New Legal Order (T. Tridimas & P. Nebbia, eds.) (Hart Pub., 2004)
Op-ed editorial in several European newspapers (including France's Le Figaro and Belgium's La Libre Belgique) titled "La Constitution interminable de l'Europe"
Prof. Jeffrey A. Fagan
"The Decline of the Juvenile Death Penalty: Scientific Evidence of Evolving Norms" in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology
"Legal Socialization of Children and Adolescents" (with Tom R. Tyler) in Social Justice Research
"Neighborhood, Crime, and Incarceration" (with V. West and J. Holland) in the Columbia Human Rights Law Review
"Two Patterns of Age Progression in Adolescent Crime," in American Juvenile Justice (Franklin Zimring, ed.) (Oxford University Press, 2005)
Prof. Robert Ferguson
"The Voice of Richard Posner" in the NYU Annual Survey of American Law (Spring)
Barnes and Noble edition of The Federalist by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay forthcoming
Prof. Alejandro Garro '90 J.S.D.
"Forum Non Conveniens: Availability and Adequacy of Latin American Fora from a Comparative Perspective" in 35 Inter-American Law Review 65-99 (2003-2004)
International Encyclopedia of Comparative Law, Volume VI (Derechos reales, property and trust ) and (derecho registral inmobiliario, recordation of interests in land) (September 2004)
"La contribution de la jurisprudence interamericaine a la protection des droits de l'homme en Amérique Latine" in L 'Europe des libertés (No. 13, May 2004)
Prof. Kent Greenawalt '63
"History as Ideology: Philip Hamburger's Separation of Church and State" in the California Law Review (January)
Prof. Benjamin Liebman
"Watchdog or Demagogue? The Media in the Chinese Legal System" in the Columbia Law Review (January)
Prof. Gillian Metzger '95
"Facial Challenges and Federalism" in the Columbia Law Review (April)
Prof. Edward Morrison
"Article Derivatives and the Bankruptcy Code: Why the Special Treatment?" in Yale Journal on Regulation (Winter 2005)
Prof. Catherine Sharkey
"Revisiting the Noninsurable Costs of Accidents" in 64 Maryland Law Review (2005)
"Unintended Consequences of Medical Malpractice Damages Caps" in 80 N.Y.U. Law Review (2005)
Prof. William H. Simon
"Wrongs of Ignorance and Ambiguity: Lawyer Responsibility for Collective Misconduct" in Yale Journal on Regulation (Winter 2005)
Prof. Peter Strauss
Legal Methods: Understanding and Using Cases and Statutes (Teaching Materials) (Foundation Press, summer 2005)
Editor for Administrative Law Stories (Foundation Press, 2005)
Prof. John Witt
"The Internationalist Beginnings of American Civil Liberties" in the Duke Law Journal
"The Inevitability of Aggregate Settlement: An Institutional Account of American Tort Law" (with Samuel Issacharoff) in the Vanderbilt Law Review
Party Autonomy: Constitutional and International Limits in Comparative Perspective
George Bermann '75 LL.M., ed. (Juris Publishing)
This volume addresses questions on the restrictions on private autonomy that increasingly flow from international treaties and national constitutions. While limitations on private autonomy traditionally found their basis in various doctrines in the relevant private law field (such as contracts, property or trusts and estates), it is "higher" law - notably constitutional and international law - that more and more often prescribe those limitations. This particular interface between private and public law has seldom been explored, least of all comparatively. Unsurprisingly, sharp differences emerge among states in which constitutional and international norms play a role in the resolution of disputes over the free assertion and disposition of private law rights. Some states have experienced remarkable developments in the recognition of either constitutional or international norms - and occasionally both - in this regard. Some make a concerted effort to integrate these limitations into the doctrinal fabric of private law, while others permit constitutional and international treaty norms to perform this function in a more autonomous and clearly identifiable way. Finally, states diverge even more when it comes to determining the modalities by which international and constitutional restrictions on party autonomy are to be enforced. Some states have established special enforcement mechanisms designed to reflect the special character and status of those autonomy-limiting claims that find their origins in national constitutions or in international treaties to which the state in question may be a party.
International Organizations as Law-Makers Jose Alvarez (Oxford University Press, 2005)
This book addresses how international organizations with a global reach, such as the UN and the WTO, have changed the mechanisms and reasoning behind the making, implementation and enforcement of international law. Alvarez argues that existing descriptions of international law and international organizations do not do justice to the complex changes resulting from the increased importance of these institutions after World War II, and especially from changes after the end of the Cold War. In particular, this book examines the impact of the institutions on international law through the day to day application and interpretation of institutional law, the making of multilateral treaties, and the decisions of a proliferating number of institutionalized dispute settlers.
Public Health Law Manual Frank Grad '49 (The American Public Health Association (APHA), 2005)
This 400-page book, which has been called a "classic" by health professionals, has been enlarged and updated to include materials on bio-terrorism, developments in toxicogenomics, references to recently emerging communicable diseases, such as SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome), as well as new chapters on international public health law. Also included is a critical analysis of CAM (Complementary and Alternative Medicine) and a full discussion of the recent federal privacy regulations of protected health information.
Does God Belong in Public Schools? Kent Greenawalt '63 (Princeton University Press, 2005)
Controversial U.S. Supreme Court decisions have barred organized school prayer, but neither the Court nor public policy exclude religion from schools altogether. In this book, Prof. Greenawalt, one of America's leading constitutional scholars, explores many of the most divisive issues in educational debate, including teaching about the origins of life, sex education, and when--or whether--students can opt out of school activities for religious reasons. With the help of case studies, Prof. Greenawalt considers how to balance the constitutional commitment to personal freedoms and to the separation of church and state with the vital role that religion has always played in American society. Do we risk distorting students' understanding of America's past and present by ignoring religion in public-school curricula? When does teaching about religion cross the line into the promotion of religion? While the author concludes that bans on school prayer and the teaching of creationism are justified, he also argues that students ought to be taught more about religion - both its contributions and shortcomings - especially in history courses. To do otherwise, he writes, is to present a seriously distorted picture of American society and indirectly to be other than neutral in presenting secularism and religion.
