Faculty in the News

Bloomberg—April 3, 2018
America Rolls Out Its Libor Replacement (Audio)
Eric Talley, Co-Director of the Millstein Center for Global Markets and Corporate Ownership at Columbia Law School, discusses the debut of the Secured Overnight Financing Rate, which will eventually replace Libor.

Center for American Progress—April 3, 2018
Religious Liberty for a Select Few
By Sharita Gruberg, Frank J. Bewkes, Elizabeth Platt, Katherine Franke, and Claire Markham
“Conservatives have worked to use religious liberty claims to advance anti-equality political and legislative aims—particularly regarding issues of sex, marriage, and reproductive rights.”

The New York Times—April 3, 2018
Don’t Fix Facebook. Replace It.
By Tim Wu
“Facebook, at its core, is a surveillance machine, and to expect that to change is misplaced optimism.”

SCOTUSblog—April 3, 2018
Opinion analysis: Justices reject Fair Labor Standards Act protections for service personnel at car dealerships
By Ronald Mann
“There was no surprise yesterday in the justices’ resolution of Encino Motorcars v. Navarro, holding service advisors at car dealerships exempt from the Fair Labor Standards Act.”

The Cut—April 3, 2018
Gender-Studies and Law Professors Support NYC Investigation Into The Wing
The signatories are academics from Columbia, NYU, CUNY, and other New York institutions of higher education; they include Patricia J. Williams, a professor at Columbia Law School, and the author of the column “Diary of a Mad Law Professor” for the Nation magazine.
[Note: Katherine Franke also signed the petition.]

CNN—April 4, 2018
Trump is hitting Amazon where it hurts
But Trump is marshaling the same protectionist tactics to derail Amazon and boost its competitors that he used by slapping tariffs on imported steel and aluminum to prop up US manufacturers, said John Coffee, a professor of corporate governance at Columbia Law School. Both come at the expense of consumers, Coffee argued.

The Buffalo News—April 4, 2018
Columbia students help monitor Erie County zombie home foreclosures
“Zombie properties are a blighting influence throughout New York,” said Columbia law professor Conrad Johnson. “By participating in this program, students at Columbia Law School can make a positive difference while fulfilling their responsibilities to serve the public.”
[Note: Professor Johnson was quoted by several other outlets in Buffalo about this new initiative involving the Law School’s Lawyering in the Digital Age clinic.]

The Guardian—April 4, 2018
Shell threatened with legal action over climate change contributions
Courts in other countries are increasingly a climate change battleground. According to the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia law school in New York, there are now more than 1,000 cases in the world. Most are claims for damages in the US.

The Washington Post—April 4, 2018
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos asked whether leakers could be prosecuted, internal report shows
David Pozen, a law professor at Columbia University who researches government leaks, said he is not aware of criminal prosecution of any Education Department employees or contractors for leaking government information.

Christian Science Monitor—April 5, 2018
Climate change goes to court
Trial participants are “bound by procedural rules, by evidentiary rules, and there’s a neutral arbiter sitting in the front of the room, or on the side if it’s a trial by jury,” says Michael Burger, executive director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University in New York.

The Hill—April 5, 2018
There’s nothing ‘fair’ about judges tipping the scales in favor of federal agencies
Columbia University law professor Phillip Hamburger, who wrote an excellent book on this topic (Is Administrative Law Unlawful?), hit the nail on the head when he said administrative law “has become the government’s primary mode of controlling Americans.”

Vermont Public Radio—April 5, 2018
Lawyers Say Esty's Workplace Leadership Doesn't Work In A #MeToo Moment
“A severance agreement is a contract between the employer and the employee,” said Suzanne Goldberg, a professor at Columbia Law School and director of its center for Gender and Sexuality Law. Goldberg said thanks to recent trends like the #MeToo movement, those contracts are changing.

The New York Times—April 5, 2018
Locals Knew He Was Mentally Ill. Officers Who Shot Him Didn’t.
“It really is this hole in the neighborhood policing model,” said Jeffrey Fagan, a professor and criminologist at Columbia Law School. “I can’t imagine a patrol cop doing this who walked those streets or drove those streets. The point is for them to actually have that kind of intimate knowledge.”

CNBC—April 5, 2018
Here’s how we’ll know when it’s an actual trade war
“In itself it's a nebulous word,” said Jagdish Bhagwati, a professor of economics at Columbia University. So far, Bhagwati said, the Trump administration's actions against President Xi Jinping's government on trade “are the opening shots to get at the Chinese for what they've been doing for a long time.”

New York Law Journal—April 5, 2018
Enforcing New York Convention Awards in the United States: Getting It Right
In making and explaining these various distinctions, it is interesting to note that the Second Circuit drew heavily from the draft Restatement of the Law (Third) The U.S. Law of International Commercial Arbitration (the Draft Restatement), a current project of the American Law Institute, the Chief Reporter of which is Prof. George A. Bermann of the Columbia Law School.

ProactiveInvestors.com—April 6, 2018
Longfin CEO battles for company's future amid SEC probe and wild swings in its share price
Kate Judge, a law professor at Columbia University, who specializes in finance and regulation, thinks the SEC’s investigation into LongFin will be lengthy and hard-hitting, given the group’s ties to cryptocurrency via Ziddu.com.

Elle—April 6, 2018
Mothers Need Childcare to Run for Office. One Candidate Wants to Use Campaign Dollars to Pay for It.
Richard Briffault, an expert on government ethics and a professor at Columbia Law School, explains that the FEC has made exceptions to its "personal expenses" rule in cases when a candidate incurs a cost that he or she wouldn’t have had it not been for the race.

This is Zero Hour—April 7, 2018
Human Rights and Safe Spaces (Audio)
Note: Katherine Franke was a guest of this radio talk show to discuss the investigation by The New York City Commission on Human Rights into The Wing, the private, women’s-only membership club in NYC. She addressed the legal questions in the case and a variety of issues at play, including discrimination, religious exemptions, and the application and enforcement of laws.

CNN—April 9, 2018
Syria attack response looms over Bolton's first week as national security adviser
‘I don't expect him to be a very tempering influence,’ said Matthew Waxman, who worked as a staffer on George W. Bush's National Security Council.

Newsday—April 9, 2018
Liuba Gretchen Shirley seeks to use campaign funds for childcare
Columbia Law School Professor Richard Briffault, an expert on campaign finance, said Grechen Shirley would “have a good argument that she can use campaign funds for childcare costs if she's incurring them solely because she's running for office.”

Mississippi News Now—April 9, 2018
Credit card signatures are about to go the way of pay phones
“That’s obviously not a useful way to run regular commercial transactions,” a Columbia professor, Ronald Mann, said. A Mastercard representative admitted that, nowadays, they hardly ever had to bother to access their vast collection of electronically stored signatures.

Vogue—April 10, 2018
Inside the World of Amal Clooney
As of late March, Clooney is back in the U.S.—she has work to do at the U.N., and she is coteaching a human rights–law course as a visiting Columbia professor—but her attention has been turned Stateside for other reasons, too.

Michigan Daily—April 10, 2018
Higher education leaders conversation talks free speech, inclusion
Suzanne Goldberg, an administrator and law school professor from Columbia University, asked the panel what classroom initiatives have been effective in addressing diversity and inclusion on college campuses.

NBC—April 10, 2018
Trump administration's religious liberty guidance a ‘license to discriminate,’ report says
This decision by Secretary Wilson, an appointee of President Donald Trump, reflects the administration’s selective expansion of religious exemptions to anti-discrimination protections, according to the Center for American Progress (CAP). The liberal think tank, along with Columbia Law School’s Public Rights/Private Conscience Project, warned of this “Religious Liberty for a Select Few” in a new report.

The Wall Street Journal—April 11, 2018
As Mark Zuckerberg Prepares to Testify, Here’s How Washington Could Regulate Silicon Valley
The FTC's current enforcement approach “doesn't seem very toothy,” said Tim Wu, a Columbia University law professor and former FTC senior adviser.

Esquire—April 11, 2018
All the Ways Trump Can Shut Down the Mueller Probe
“All of this is unclear, because none of this has happened before,” says Jennifer Rodgers, executive director of the Center for the Advancement of Public Integrity at Columbia Law School and a former prosecutor in the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. “None of it's been tested.”
[Note: Jennifer Rodgers was interviewed about the Muller probe and Michael Cohen by a number of other major news outlets]

Martinsville Bulletin—April 12, 2018
Experts provide analysis of video released by police in deadly Danville shooting
“He wasn’t going to cooperate under the scenario that unfolded, but that didn’t have to be the outcome,” said Jeffrey Fagan, Isidor and Seville Sulzbacher professor of law at Columbia Law School in New York. “For example, they could have explained to him what would happen if and when he got out of the car.”

Washington Examiner—April 12, 2018
Trump would break the law bombing Bashar Assad, some scholars say
“The president's use of force against Syria wouldn't be very different than what other modern presidents have done,” said Columbia University law professor Matthew Waxman. “President Obama asserted that he had constitutional power to take this kind of action, too.”