Faculty in the News

Directors & Boards—October 1
THE PURPOSE DEBATE Back to the ‘80s: Business Roundtable’s “Purpose” Statement Redux
By Kristin Bresnahan
Moving away from that framework back to a meaningful stakeholder model in which business leaders are held accountable will require thoughtful changes in the regulation of our equity and debt markets. If there is anything to learn from the past, it is that statements of good intentions will not necessarily take us where we are hoping to go. The next step is important.
[Note: Bresnahan is executive director of the Ira M. Millstein Center for Global Markets and Corporate Ownership.]

Law.com | Legaltech news—October 1
Teaching Tech: How Legal Education Coursework Is Changing in Today’s Digital Era
Still others, like Columbia Law School and Yale Law, have official legal tech student associations and organizations, and Stanford Law School offers a combination program in law, science, and technology. These examples just begin to scratch the surface—today’s law school curriculum spans the legal tech gamut, from legal analytics to legal app development. 

MSNBC | Live with Stephanie Ruhle—October 1
Trump’s inner circle the focus of the impeachment push (Video)
More of President Trump’s closest aides and allies are being sucked into the impeachment inquiry, which is expanding quickly on Capitol Hill. Stephanie Ruhle is joined by Washington Post White House Bureau Chief Philip Rucker, Washington Post Columnist Brian Klaas, former U.S. Justice Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller, former Ambassador William Courtney, and former U.S. Attorney Berit Berger, to discuss what we have learned in the last 24 hours and what that means for the impeachment process.
[Note: Berger is the executive director of the Center for the Advancement of Public Integrity.]

RealClearMarkets—October 1
If the U.S. Retreats from Capitalist Policies, the Poor Will Pay
From 1990 until 2013, approximately 170 million people escaped poverty, according to the McKinsey Global Institute. Opening the country’s economy to global competition had a significant impact, according to economists Jagdish Bhagwati and Arvind Panagariya.

Washingtonian—October 1
The Most Powerful Women in Washington
150 of the Area’s Most Influential Women In Government, Business, Law, Education, Media, Nonprofits, and the Arts.
Law
Lina Khan
Counsel, House Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust
[Note: Khan is an academic fellow at Columbia Law.]

City & State NY—October 2
Will New York take net neutrality into its own hands?
“Net neutrality,” a term first coined by Tim Wu, a law professor at Columbia University, in 2003, refers to policies that prohibit internet service providers from blocking or “throttling” internet traffic to certain websites or offering paid fast lanes for better service on such sites.

Institutional Investor—October 2
A Secretive Committee of Wall Street Insiders Is the Least of the New York Fed’s Concerns.
“One of the things is that to be legitimate in the eyes of the public, there’s got to be more accountability and more transparency,” says Columbia Law School professor Kathryn Judge.  . . . “The New York Fed is controlled by the New York banks, and it’s performing a public function,” says John Coffee, a securities law professor at Columbia Law School. “That’s the tension.”

Law360—October 2
DC Circ. Delays $1B Pipeline Fight After 3rd Circ. Ruling
Jennifer Danis, a staff attorney at Columbia Law School's Environmental Law Clinic who represents two New Jersey conservation groups, told Law360 Wednesday, “We will continue to protect our clients' interests while PennEast contemplates its next steps. The project itself is in significant jeopardy, with no legally tenable route.” . . . The conservation groups are represented by Jennifer Danis and Edward Lloyd of Columbia Law School.

The New York Times—October 2
Will Trump Ever Leave the White House?
Philip Bobbitt, a law professor at Columbia and the University of Texas, and the author of a new edition of Charles Black’s “Impeachment: A Handbook,” replied to my inquiry: I doubt he would go quietly and would not be surprised if he claims he was robbed, but any attempt to hold onto office — to refuse to leave the mansion, or keep issuing executive orders drafted by Stephen Miller, or sending nominations to the Senate — would be laughably brief. There is no Praetorian Guard in the United States, certainly not the highly professional Secret Service. 

The Washington Post—October 2
The Technology 202: A President Elizabeth Warren is starting to worry top tech titans
Author Tim Wu pointed out, however, that making California the face of net neutrality just adds to the laundry list of tech issues the state seems to be tackling before Congress. 

Lawfare—October 3
Three Lessons From the First Time a Head of State Was Impeached
By Michel Paradis
The first impeachment of a head of state therefore offers a precedent for impeaching a president alleged to have abused his diplomatic powers in a way that failed, to borrow a phrase, to put America first.
[Note: Paradis is a lecturer at Columbia Law.] 

Jacobin Magazine—October 3
“Living Together Shouldn’t Put Us at War With One Another or With the Earth”
Nature is often treated as separate from politics — as something we can take for granted while we struggle over human affairs. Climate change has suddenly made nature political — or so it seems. But in fact, Jedediah Purdy reminds us, it has been that way all along. For two decades, Purdy, a law professor at Columbia, has investigated the political beliefs that shape our understandings of nature, the struggles that play out on the literal terrain of the earth, and the human politics that remake the nonhuman world around us. 

Bloomberg Businessweek—October 3
Private Equity Wields More Power Than Ever as Warren Picks Fight
The industry has shown a knack for hiring Beltway insiders who can navigate both Republican and Democratic circles. This month, the AIC plans to bring CEOs of private-equity-owned companies to Washington to chat with lawmakers across the spectrum. “They have managed to have influence with both parties,” said John Coffee, a law professor at Columbia University.
[Note: This article also appeared in the Australian Financial Review and Yahoo Finance.] 

Climate Liability News—October 3
Supreme Court to Decide Whether to Halt Baltimore Climate Case
“The Clean Power Plan stay is the only precedent I am aware of for this. And that, it is widely said, was unprecedented,” said Michael Burger, executive director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University. 

The Economist—October 3
Silicon Valley and the state gird for war
The House has hired Lina Khan, author of an influential paper on Amazon’s power, as counsel. . . . Tim Wu of Columbia Law School and others have devised a legal strategy to make Facebook spin off Instagram and WhatsApp.
[Note: Khan is an academic fellow at Columbia Law School.] 

Law360—October 3
Alaska Tells FERC $45B Pipeline Project Won't Do Harm
But the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School expressed concerns FERC ignored big climate-change questions and asked it to properly consider the project’s greenhouse-gas impacts. The center told FERC that could be accomplished in part by including an analysis of the emissions from the fossil fuels that the project would extract and burn. 

Mic—October 3
Trump's climate change denial is causing a science "crisis," says new bipartisan report
According to the Columbia Law School, there are more than 379 documented incidents of the Trump administration actively attempting to silence scientists by preventing their research from being made public, restricting the types of research that can be done and choosing not to publish findings. 

The New York Times—October 3
Do We Need to Break Up Facebook?
In warning about the dangers of Facebook’s monopolistic ambitions, Mr. Hughes cites Tim Wu, a Columbia Law School professor and the author of “The Curse of Bigness,” who told Wired’s editor, Nicholas Thompson: Mark Zuckerberg wrote an email when he was acquiring Instagram that was disclosed in the New York Post, and it suggests he was buying Instagram because he saw it as a competitive threat. 

Vice—October 3
WeWork Is Imploding. More Co-Working Spaces Could Be Next
Revelations of Neumann using the company as a kind of personal piggy bank suggest a “pathological lack of internal control,” according to John Coffee, director, Center on Corporate Governance at Columbia University Law School. 

WNYC | The Brian Lehrer Show—October 3
Impeachment: White House Subpoenas (Audio)
Scott R. Anderson, senior fellow with the National Security Law Program at Columbia Law School, fellow at the Brookings Institution, and senior editor at Lawfare, discusses the latest in impeachment news as Congress moves to issue subpoenas to the White House and Kurt Volker, former envoy to Ukraine, prepares to testify. 

The Globe and Mail—October 4
After Trump calls on China to investigate Bidens, released text messages show attempted negotiations with Ukraine
Jennifer Rodgers, a former federal prosecutor who teaches law at Columbia University in New York, said Mr. Trump’s call for China and Ukraine to pursue one of his 2020 challengers may be a calculated move. By stating his requests publicly, he appears to be trying to make them seem less serious and nefarious – just part of the hyperbole for which the President is famous, she said.
[Note: Rodgers is a lecturer at the Law School and serves on the advisory board of the Center for the Advancement of Public Integrity.] 

The Hill—October 4
Adam Schiff did not commit treason
There are relatively few cases in which the federal courts have had the opportunity to explain the text of the Constitution in greater detail, though it has been a subject of commentary. The legal scholar George Fletcher, for example, has argued that the “distinguishing feature of treason in the Anglo American tradition” is the “element of breached loyalty.” 

NBC News—October 4
CIA's top lawyer made 'criminal referral' on complaint about Trump Ukraine call
"They didn't do any of the sort of bread-and-butter type investigatory steps that would flush out what potential crimes may have been committed," said Berit Berger, a former federal prosecutor who heads the Center for the Advancement of Public Integrity at Columbia Law School. "I don't understand the rationale for that and it's just so contrary to how normal prosecutors work. We have started investigations on far less." 

Talking Points Memo—October 4
Inside The Christian Legal Army Weakening the Church-State Divide
The Law, Rights, and Religion Project at Columbia Law School also submitted comments against the rule change, arguing it would also put religious minorities “at risk of losing their job if they do not comport with the theological beliefs of their employers,” which is not “a reasonable way to protect religious freedom.”

NPR | Weekend Edition Saturday—October 5
Legal Avenues In Ukraine Affair (Audio and transcript)
SCOTT SIMON, HOST: Impeachment is a political act, a constitutional response to wrongdoing by a president. If people below the office of president have committed wrongdoing, what legal ways are there to hold them accountable? Berit Berger is a former assistant U.S. attorney who now heads the Center for the Advancement of Public Integrity at Columbia University. Thanks so much for joining us. 

NRC Handelsblad—October 5
Zie me, haat me (Dutch)
A few years ago, the American media professor Tim Wu wrote The Attention Merchants. In it he describes how the government, companies and politicians are increasingly successful in penetrating our heads and demanding our attention - to sell us something, to influence our behavior or to make us believe something. 

El País—October 6
¿Hay que trocear los gigantes tecnológicos? (Spanish)
In early 2017, an unknown law student, Lina Khan, published an article titled 'Amazon's Antitrust Paradox' in The Yale Law Journal that quickly became a hit in the academic world. . . . To Khan and other American experts — Barry Lynn, Tim Wu — who follow this line, their fans call them the "new brandeisians," for Louis Brandeis, known as the people's lawyer for facing oligarchs in the first half of the 20th century. 

CNN—October 7
Trump's breathtaking immunity claim is thrashed by judge
By Jennifer Rodgers
So what is really going on here to prompt such legal gymnastics on the part of the President? I think there are two things at play. First, Trump's actions underscore (again) how desperate he is to avoid disclosing his tax returns and financial records. Second, notwithstanding their willingness to take a shot at it, Trump's lawyers are smart enough to know that succeeding on the merits was well out of their reach. So what was the true goal of this litigation? I think it is delay, delay, delay. 

The New York Times—October 7
America’s Risky Approach to Artificial Intelligence
By Tim Wu
If the race for powerful A.I. is indeed a race among civilizations for control of the future, the United States and European nations should be spending at least 50 times the amount they do on public funding of basic A.I. research. 

SCOTUSblog—October 7
Argument analysis: Justices seem hesitant to award attorney’s fees to government in litigation challenging denial of patent applications
By Ronald Mann
The first morning of the term showed a welcome moment of camaraderie on the bench, as justices from both sides of the ideological spectrum seemed to join in their skepticism of the government’s position in Peter v. NantKwest. 

Financial Times—October 7
Credit Suisse’s potential damages mount in RMBS cases
John Coffee, a Columbia Law School professor and securities litigation expert, said: “It is easier to settle cases when there are a fair number of precedents that are on point and enough settlements to establish the settlement range. Here there are.” 

MSNBC | The Beat with Ari Melber—October 7
Former Giuliani Aide: He's now 'a right-wing conspiracy nut' (Video)
Berit Berger, former federal prosecutor, compares Trump’s backtracking defense to one of ‘criminal defendants,’ as he argues he was ‘joking’ when he asked a ‘foreign government to interfere’ in the election. 

Australian Financial Review—October 8
Business wrestles with an identity crisis
There has been a backlash in the US. Columbia Law School Professor Katharina Pistor asks: "Who are CEOs to autonomously change the rules of capitalism? Apparently, America's corporate leaders believe they can decide freely whom they serve. But as agents, rather than principals, that decision really isn't theirs to make." 

Fox Business—October 8
Fmr. Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne wants to explain controversial exit, stock sale and predicts more deep state revelations
“It’s entirely possible Byrne thinks the company would go down without him,” said Columbia Law School professor John Coffee. “But if he did have material, non-public information he was not free to trade. I can’t disbelieve Patrick Byrne but it’s possible he had a double incentive to sell when he was fired and because he knew the stock was going to hell.” 

The Guardian—October 8
Will the US supreme court uphold basic protections against discrimination?
By Suzanne Goldberg
In short, three decades after the supreme court recognized that workplace decisions based on stereotyped views about men and women run contrary to our sex-discrimination law we may be on the cusp of taking a giant step backwards. 

Bloomberg News—October 8
SCOTUS Appears Divided Over LGBT Employee Bias Suits (Podcast)
Columbia Law School Professor and Director for the Center for Gender and Sexuality, Suzanne Goldberg discussed arguments heard Tuesday by the U.S. Supreme Court over whether federal anti-discrimination law protects gay and transgender employees. She speaks to Bloomberg’s David Westin and June Grasso.
[Note: Amid news concerning three cases before the Supreme Court about the scope of Title VII protections for LGBTQ workers, Goldberg was also quoted in Agencia EFE, FOX 5 NY, and Vox.] 

The New York Times—October 8
Compassion in Action: Humanizing Politics and Inspiring Global Change
We also read this Times article on intersectionality, a term coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw, that refers to “the complex and cumulative way different forms of discrimination like racism, sexism and classism overlap and affect people.” 

Reuters—October 8
Special Report: Index funds invest trillions but rarely challenge management
Index funds’ business model and cost pressures don’t allow for much company research, said Ron Gilson, a professor at the law schools of Columbia University and Stanford University who follows the industry. “There’s not much room for them to be investing in stewardship, particularly when real stewardship is expensive and you’re charging some customers close to a zero management fee,” Gilson said in an interview.
[Note: This article appeared in media outlets worldwide.] 

Washington Examiner—October 8
Freshman House Democrat backing impeachment inquiry faces boos and heckling at town hall
And former State Department official Matthew Waxman, now a Columbia Law School professor, said Slotkin showed courage in handling dissenting views form constituents. "I watch this differently: @RepSlotkin is a patriot for taking a principled stand in a tough district despite obvious electoral risks," Waxman tweeted. 

E&E News | Climate Wire—October 9
How Trump agencies' NEPA reviews lowball climate impacts
At least 40 lawsuits against the feds hinge on environmental reviews, and courts have delayed major actions on issues like the Keystone XL pipeline and federal coal leasing due to inadequate climate analysis, according to a report by the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School. . . . "There is not yet any law that explicitly says, 'The federal government cannot contribute to climate change,'" said Michael Gerrard, a Columbia Law School professor who specializes in climate law.
[Note: This article also appeared in Scientific American.] 

Island Life—October 9
Vanuatu hosts high-profile event on legal action for climate justice
Chaired by Minister of Foreign Affairs Ralph Regenvanu and co-hosted by Columbia Law School’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, the event focused on the possibility of promoting climate justice through an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice (ICJ). . . . At the event, Professor Michael Gerrard, professor of law at Columbia and director of the Sabin Center, explained how an advisory opinion from the ICJ could assist Pacific Islanders in the quest for climate justice. 

Nature—October 9
Kids’ climate lawsuit to go before Alaska court
If the young plaintiffs in the Sinnok case succeed in forcing the state of Alaska to take stronger action against climate change, their victory would be unprecedented, says Michael Burger, executive director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University in New York. But regardless of their ultimate outcomes, he says, kids’ climate lawsuits around the world have succeeded in attracting media coverage and increasing public discourse on climate change. 

New York Law Journal—October 9
Judges Head Back to School to Prepare for Presumptive Mediation Initiative
That training was held over two weeks at the Columbia Law School Mediation Clinic, which was the first institution to deliver training to judges this year in preparation for the state’s initiative on presumptive ADR, or alternative dispute resolution. Professor Alexandra Carter, the former director of clinical education at Columbia Law School, leads the training every semester. When officials from the state Office of Court Administration asked if she would be open to having the judges sit in this year, she jumped at the idea. 

CNN—October 10
Trump impeachment inquiry creates a constitutional crisis
The White House issued a bombastic letter rejecting the impeachment inquiry Tuesday. It included legal citations, but it would be thrown out by any court in the country, according to Jennifer Rodgers, a CNN legal analyst and lecturer at Columbia Law School. "The name of this game is delay, delay, delay, with the election coming," she said on CNN, predicting an impeachment vote by the end of the year -- ambitious Democrats say Thanksgiving -- regardless of whether the White House complies with any of the growing body of subpoenas being thrown at it. 

Project Syndicate—October 10
Does Public Banking Work?
By Katharina Pistor
Public ownership in itself does not lead to bad outcomes; nor has privatization proven to be the panacea that its boosters promised. Much depends on governance and the clarity of the stipulated goals. Checks and balances are needed to keep management on track, and the managers themselves must have the right skill set. But whether public banks will work is not really the right question to ask. More important is whether they will stay on mission.
[Note: This article appeared in multiple media outlets worldwide.] 

The American Prospect—October 10
FTC Policy: Commissioner Phillips Downplays Potential Use of Sherman Act Section 2 to Block Mergers
Facebook has purchased at least 92 companies since 2007, according to Columbia Law professor Tim Wu, including Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014. 

MSNBC | Velshi & Ruhle—October 10
Who are Giuliani’s associates who were arrested? (Video)
Two associates of Rudy Giuliani accused of donating hundreds of thousands from foreign sources to a PAC supporting President Trump are under arrest. NBC’s Tom Winter and former federal prosecutor Berit Berger join Stephanie Ruhle and Ali Velshi to break down what we know. 

The New Yorker—October 10
Is Amazon Unstoppable?
Tim Wu, a law professor at Columbia, said, “Amazon is a microeconomist’s wet dream. If you’re a consumer, it’s perfect for maximizing the efficiency of finding what you want and getting it as cheap and fast as possible. But, the thing is, most of us aren’t just consumers. We’re also producers, or manufacturers, or employees, or we live in cities where retailers have gone out of business because they can’t compete with Amazon, and so Amazon kind of pits us against ourselves.”
[Note: Wu’s comments also appeared in Esquire Italia.] 

Associated Press—October 11
Arrest of Giuliani associates ensnares ‘Congressman 1’
Columbia University Law professor Richard Briffault told the AP that loopholes in U.S. law make it harder to detect foreign actors trying to influence the U.S. political system by funneling money through shell companies to super PACS. In this case, the money trail was revealed through a lawsuit against Parnas that forced the release of transfers and banking records earlier this year. “What makes this so dramatic is who these people are, their connection to Giuliani,” said Briffault, who studies campaign finance. “I think it’s a bombshell because of its connection to Ukraine and Trump.”
[Note: This article appeared in numerous media outlets nationwide.] 

Decrypt Media—October 11
Libra Association Member dismisses central bank concerns as “conspiracy theories”
Katharina Pistor, a professor at Columbia Law School, told Decrypt that “Mr Monica is effectively saying that the Treasury of the Libra Association will be determining monetary policy for the world according to the criteria it prefers with no accountability to anyone.”
[Note: This article also appeared in Yahoo Finance.] 

Wired Magazine—October 11
Facebook Is Losing Its Cover for Libra As More Members Flee
The structure appeared designed so that “members of the Libra Association will be insulated from liability and accountable only to themselves,” Katharina Pistor, a professor of law at Columbia, told Congress in July. 

CBC News—October 12
Is the U.S. in a constitutional crisis? Current standoff is unlike anything in American history
For David Pozen, there's no denying that Trump is thumbing his nose at constitutional conventions with weak legal arguments. But the Columbia law professor argues that everything taking place is happening within the framework established by the U.S. Constitution. . . . "I would say the White House is playing constitutional hardball within that process, but as long as we're within the terms of a constitutionally prescribed process, I think it's hard to say that we're in crisis mode." 

The Post and Courier—October 12
A new sheriff is in town, but Chester's scars offer lessons for other rural SC counties
A report in 2016 by Columbia Law School’s Center for the Advancement of Public Integrity noted that small municipalities are susceptible to corruption because many don’t have the “kind of oversight and enforcement mechanisms” that larger government agencies employ. The report called for the creation of “regional ethics bodies” to share costs of auditing and oversight investigations. 

Mother Jones—October 13
Fort Worth Police Officer Fatally Shoots Black Woman in Her Own Home
News of Jefferson’s death has sparked outrage on social media. Kimberle Crenshaw, a legal scholar who has led groundbreaking efforts to study and recognize police violence against black women wrote, “Not safe even in our own homes.” 

Handelsblatt—October 13
Libra: Facebooks Projekt einer weltumspannenden Kryptowährung gerät unter Druck (German)
For Katharina Pistor, a law professor at New York's Columbia University, this is only a first step. "Attempts to regulate digital currencies through pressure from established institutions may be effective in the short term, but it's not a long-term solution," she says. 

City Limits—October 14
Debate Over Fine Points of Campaign-Finance System as Deadline Nears
Richard Briffault, Joseph P. Chamberlain professor of legislation at Columbia Law School, pointed in his prepared testimony to the commission to the fact that Supreme Court decisions have guaranteed privately funded candidates and interest groups the right to unlimited spending on campaigns. He concluded that “the Commission ought not to require candidates to accept a spending limit as a condition for receiving public funds” despite the fact that most public funding programs do. 

DiversityInc—October 14
Dr. Kimberlé Crenshaw Delivers Keynote Speech on Intersectionality
Dr. Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the phrase “intersectionality” nearly three decades ago, despite it only recently entering mainstream conversation. Crenshaw delivered the keynote speech Oct. 2 at DiversityInc’s Women of Color and Their Allies event, explaining the term intersectionality and its application to women of color in the workplace. 

New Yorker—October 14
Briefly Noted
This Land Is Our Land, by Jedediah Purdy (Princeton). The starting point for this slim, compelling book is the claim that “nature and landscape are palimpsests of history and social violence more than they are respites from these things.” Purdy discusses climate-change denialism, gives a thorough history of the environmental movement and its precursors, and writes feelingly about Thoreau’s relevance to today’s political frustrations. “Thinking in response to terrain,” as Thoreau did, Purdy writes, “can support a kind of political clarity, an alternative to the hopeless way in which the world runs away from us but still will not let us go.”

The Washington Post—October 14
A more appropriate target for the LGBTQ discrimination case: Mitch McConnell
That can’t be, Judge Gerard E. Lynch argued in an opinion dissenting from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit’s ruling, which adopted the more expansive reading of “because . . . of sex” last year. Lynch, a Columbia law professor named to the appeals court by President Barack Obama, reviewed the social, political and legislative history of Title VII before concluding, “regretfully,” that sexual orientation discrimination is logically separate from sex discrimination and that Congress has not yet banned it.

Inside Story—October 15
The hipster trustbusters
One of the hipsters is Tim Wu, a professor at Columbia Law School. Wu has form as a policy innovator. Dubbed the “father of net neutrality” — he coined the term and has been an effective proponent of the policy — Wu’s latest (appropriately small) book, The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age, is a treatise on the failures of America’s antitrust laws. . . . Another of the hipsters, Lina Khan, became a famous critic of the antitrust enforcement regime even before graduating from her law degree, when an article she penned in the Yale Law Review went viral.

MSNBC | The Beat with Ari Melber—October 15
Giuliani’s former colleagues ‘flabbergasted’ at conduct that put him under criminal investigation (Video)
Berit Berger, alumna of the SDNY, joins The Beat with Ari Melber to discuss her former colleagues being ‘flabbergasted’ by the investigation into Rudy Giuliani and find it ‘shocking’ to see him being ‘investigated by the same district that he once used to lead.’

The New York Times—October 15
The Trump Impeachment Inquiry: What Happened Today
The range of voices puts this impeachment investigation in new historical territory, according to Philip Bobbitt, a professor at Columbia Law School and a co-author with Charles Black of “Impeachment: A Handbook.” The Clinton impeachment had little to do with governance, Mr. Bobbit told me. “It had nothing to do with foreign policy or defense policy,” he said. “And in Nixon’s case, there were maybe a couple of dozen people involved.”

Philadelphia Inquirer—October 15
More than racist Facebook posts, police vehicle stops are driving distrust | Editorial
Interactions with police that civilians perceive as unfair breed distrust, as well as cynicism about the rule of law. A recent study by Amanda Geller, of New York University, and Jeffery Fagan, Columbia University, demonstrate that teens’ interactions with police shape their relationship with the law. The teens who see these interactions as intrusive or unfair are less likely to respect law enforcement officers or to develop a sense that they should adhere to the law. Negative perceptions were diminished when teens had interactions hey perceived as fair.

Voice of America—October 15
Is There a #MeToo Backlash?
Columbia University law Professor Olatunde Johnson, who writes about modern civil rights legislation and innovative ways to address discrimination and inequality, sees #MeToo as a strong force for change. “I think one of the most powerful things is that it's really brought attention to the issue of sexual harassment to sexual assault and it has provided a way for women to collectivize their stories,” Johnson says. “A lot of times people don't believe people in isolation, but when you hear repeated stories that's when you begin to think these are systemic problems that we need to deal with. And that's powerful.”

The Washington Post—October 15
Democratic presidential candidates come under pressure to release Supreme Court picks
Demand Justice, a group founded to counteract the conservative wing’s decades-long advantage over liberals in judicial fights, will release a list of 32 suggested Supreme Court nominees for any future Democratic president as they ramp up their push for the 2020 contenders to do the same. . . . The full list from Demand Justice includes:
● Timothy Wu, the Julius Silver professor of law at Columbia Law School and former special adviser for the National Economic Council for the Obama White House.

Yahoo Finance Australia—October 15
A negotiation expert on why asking questions in a job interview is a must
Clinical professor at Columbia Law School and director of mediation at CLS Mediation, Alexandra Carter, knows a thing or two about negotiation. She believes looking for a job is just like negotiating. “Job hunting is actually negotiation,” she tweeted. “And asking questions is your best strategy.”