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The following are a sampling of some of the faculty's most recent appearances in the press. Please note that some links to external news sources may no longer be available.  

May 2013

7 May: Professor Kathleen Clark comments on  the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act in the Baltimore Sun: "The part of the partial repeal that I find the most cynical is the repeal of the searchable, sortable database" of personal financial information for federal employees. Read More

April 2013

29 April: In the Chronicle of Higher Education, Professor Neil Richards writes about surveillance after the Boston bombing. He writes that while surveillance technology helped to identify the bombers, we should not overlook the "other costs" of surveillance--loss of personal privacy, the right to dissent, and to think freely. "We must recognize that surveillance is complex, and consider both the types of surveillance at issue, and the degrees to which government and private monitoring are in question," he writes. "We must remember that secret surveillance is illegitimate [and] total surveillance is illegitimate. . . . Finally, we need to recognize that while surveillance has limited benefits when used properly, it has substantial costs in money, civil liberties, and power. We must take those harms into account as we decide what kinds of surveillance and how much are consistent with our basic commitment to a free society." Read More 

23 April: Professor Neil Richards pens an op-ed for CNN on post-Boston surveillance. "How many people do you know who have been the victims of terrorism?" he writes, inviting readers to "remember the big picture." "On the other hand, how many people do you know who have suffered from cancer, or obesity, or gun violence? If we're interested in safety, public health and gun control are much more important issues than terrorism. They, not surveillance, should be our safety priority." Read More 

20 April: A St. Louis Post-Dispatch article quotes Professor Neil Richards' comments on the use of video surveillance: “We have to carefully watch the watchers or we could end up with a level of public surveillance that nobody wants. The issue isn’t that we don’t want cameras but what kind of security state do we want and what privacy are we going to give up for it?” Read More 

15 April: An article on Network World summarizes Professor Neil Richards' article "The Dangers of Surveillance." It quotes Richards' conclusion, "The alternative to grappling with the civil-liberties threats that surveillance poses is to ignore those threats altogether, to face the prospect of rendering widespread government surveillance unreviewable and uncheckable. Democratic societies can do better than that." Network World includes links to Richards' full article. Read More 

12 April: On Kitsap Sun, Professor Kathleen Clark comments on relevations that companies with "deep oil company ties" had put together a 2,000-page report that claims the controversial Keystone pipeline project "is unlikely to have a substantial impact" on oil sands development."Everywhere you look, almost everything the government does is by contractors and grantees," Clark said. ""In general, the government has rather strict standards for conflict of interest for its own employees, and in general when it outsources work to contractors, it doesn't outsource those standards." Read More 

11 April: In a Huffington Post op-ed, Emeritus Professor Milton Bernstein commented on the U.S. Senate's "filibuster riot." He concluded, "Polls repeatedly show popular disgust that Congress is subject to deadlock, held hostage by a minority in the Senate and a nominal majority in the House achieved through gerrymandering. To continue these unfortunate patterns unchecked is to run the risk that the United States will lose the indispensable element of democratic government--the consent of the governed." Read More 

9 April: Professor Elizabeth Sepper co-authored an op-ed for Religion & Politics on the "rhetoric versus reality" about the "Affordable Care Act's requirement that heallth plans include contraception. "The contraception benefit rule strikes a delicate balance," she writes. "It provides broad protections for religiously affiliated employers. At the same time, it protects the freedom of all Americans to live out their own religious and moral convictions." Read More 

2 April: In a preview to his forthcoming Harvard Law Review "The Dangers of Surveillance," Professor Neil Richards told The Blaze: “We only have a vague intuition about [surveillance], which is why courts don’t protect it," he said. "We know we don’t like it, and that it has something to do with privacy, but beyond that, the details can be fuzzy.” Surveillance “menaces our intellectual privacy and it gives the watcher a power advantage over the watched, which can be used for blackmail, persuasion, or discrimination,” he added. The article includes a link to the Harvard Law Review article. Read More 

March 2013

29 March: The St. Louis Beacon quotes Professor Greg Magarian in an article regarding the Supreme Court, DOMA, and gay marriage. I don’t think the court wants to paint a target on its back. At this moment, (same-sex marriage) is still a controversial issue. In 10 years it won’t be; opponents will be utterly marginalized. Tens of thousands of couples will marry in California, more states will keep legalizing SSM, and in 10 years or so the court will issue a…decision that mops up the holdouts.” Read More 

15 March: Professor Hillary Sale is quoted in Business Week commenting on Best Buy Founder Richard Schulze, whose attempt to buy the company had failed. Schulze, who has a "20 percent stake" in Best Buy, according to the article, can nominate candidates for two seats on Best Buy's board of directors or choose to leave the board. "He's preserving his options," said Sale. "He can leverage things better on the outside than on the inside with only two board seats." Read More  

12 March: An article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution quotes Professor Kathleen Clark regarding a bill that would ease bidding rules for the Department of Transportation (DOT). "Allowing DOT the additional flexibility could do just what DOT says and produce better value for the public, Clark said, but in return, government could require “a robust system of checking on conflict of interest.” Read More 

11 March: The Los Angeles Times quotes Professor Pauline Kim's comments on Harvard University's decision to review email of resident deans. Oftentimes in a corporate setting, when a corporation decides it needs to investigate something, they tend to do it in a blanket way," Kim said. "I would actually think that if employers wanted to be careful, they could follow Harvard's example. To the extent that it was justified, they were very narrow in the search. ... That kind of approach is far more sensitive to privacy concerns than what you normally see in the corporate setting." Read More 

February 2013

28 Feb. 2013: Professor David Konig is quoted in an editorial in the Rutland (Vt.) Herald titled "When the Court Protects the Elite" comparing the Dred Scott case to the Supreme Court's 2010 ruling in Citizens United. Of Dred Scott, Konig said, “People at the time talked about the ‘slavocracy.' Slave owners were rich. They were a minority. They were corrupting the political process.” The editorial compares the "elite" slaveowners to the "elite" political interests that have been able to put money into political campaigns in the wake of Citizens United. "In both cases, the court put the interests of a tiny, powerful group above the interests of the nation," the editorial claims. Read More 

13 Feb. 2013: Bloomberg BNA quotes Professor Daniel Mandelker discussing environmental impact statements (EIS) and controversy over whether the environmental impact of ports being constructed to ship coal from the U.S. to China should be evaluated port-by-port or as a whole. “Usually these area-wide or regional EISs are reserved for actions that are close together,” he told BNA, which called him "author of a widely used treatise on National Environmental Policy Act law." Read More 

 13 Feb. 2013: A St. Louis Magazine feature on the region's top attorneys quotes Professors Greg Magarian and Neil Richards. Magarian said of the conflict between state and federal jurisdiction over the legalization of marijuana, “Initially, I think the federal government is going to push back and say, ‘Look, you guys are rogue states.' If they have an opportunity for a major drug prosecution in Colorado, they’re going to do it. But I expect that over time, assuming more states do this, a consensus will emerge.” Richards is quoted from a Wired magazine article about "frictionless sharing" of browsing history on the Internet, “Frictionless sharing of our reading and viewing habits threatens what legal scholars call ‘intellectual privacy’—the zone we need around our reading and watching so that we can think for ourselves without being affected by the often too-harsh judgment of the crowd,” Read More 

7 Feb. 2013: In a Reuters article on the possibility that Moody's Corp. may, like Standard and Poor's, be sued by states and/or U.S. Justice Dept. for defrauding investors, Professor Hillary Sale commented on the fact that the extensive "paper trail" in the S&P case make more difficult for a judge to dismiss a case before it goes to trial. "When you have that kind of evidence that looks bad, you don't want to dismiss the case until you have more discovery," Sale said, adding that a good paper trail "helps you survive a motion to dismiss." Read More 

7 Feb. 2013:  Professor Neil Richards is quoted extensively in an article on drones that appeared in Wired U.K. "The problem with drones is a common problem for new technologies, which is that they make lots of things possible, many of which are good, but some of which are not s o good,"  he said. "The challenge of law (and the challenge of engineers designing the tech) is to find a way to take as much of the good with as little of the bad as possible." Read More 

2 Feb. 2013: Professor Elizabeth Sepper's comments regarding the Obama Administration's revised rules on religious organizations and birth control are quoted in a National Public Radio (NPR) story. “In our legal system and our society, secular, for-profit businesses — like Hobby Lobby — don’t exercise religion and must be regulated to protect their employees and the public,” she said. “Any other rule would just mean corporations could force religious views on their employees, no matter what the employees’ beliefs are.” Read More 

January 2013

31 Jan. 2013: Professor Greg Magarian is quoted in an article on the credit card industry website CardHub.com speculating on the possible implications of a D.C. Circuit Court's ruling that President Obama "overstepped its authority in using recess appointments to fill three seats on the National Labor Relations Board." “The administration was certainly aware of the legal controversy around intrasession recess appointments. But administrations for roughly 70 years have been making such appointments, and the G.W. Bush administration used the process more aggressively than the Obama administration,” he said. “Presidents have simply hoped the courts would not invalidate recess appointments, and in this case, the D.C. Circuit didn’t cooperate.” He went on to say that while the court's action could be "fairly critiqued" as "politically motived," "that doesn’t necessarily mean the decision is legally wrong." Read More 

 30 Jan. 2013: Professor Marion Crain is quoted in an article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, commenting on United Food & Commercial Workers Local 655's quest for a "neutrality agreement" with Whole Foods Market. Whole Foods, whose employees are not unionized, plans to place a store in a new development in the city's Central West End. According to the article, the neutrality agreement would mean Whole Foods will not oppose "employee union organizing efforts." “Unions have gotten a lot smarter about how to organize,” Crain said. “From a union perspective, it levels the playing field.” Read More 

29 Jan. 2013: Professor Kathleen Clark is quoted in a St. Louis Post-Dispatch article about a Sunset Hills alderman who "has business ties" to a developer who wants to build a 24-hour gas station and convenience store in the St. Louis County municipality. The alderman voted to support the controversial development. “When situations such as this arise, constituents are right to question whether an alderman is making a decision in the best interest of his business or the best interest of the public,” Clark said. Read More 

29 Jan. 2013:  The Baltimore Sun quotes Professor Kathleen Clark commenting on changes to the 1939 Hatch Act, which forbids federal employees from taking part in "partisan political activity" at taxpayers' expense. Historically, the act has been "the death penalty to your federal career," Clark told the paper. Read More  

21 Jan. 2013: In a posting on Harvard Law's blog Bill of Health, Professor Elizabeth Sepper commemorated the fortieth anniversary of the historic Roe. v. Wade decision. "Choosing to provide abortions is an act of bravery," she writes. "Abortion providers face threats to their safety and families, targeted and expensive regulations, and professional and community stigma.  They share much in common with human rights lawyers, union organizers, and women’s rights advocates around the globe who are harassed by their governments and the majority....We should acknowledge the courage and commitment of these human rights defenders." Read More  

18 Jan. 2013: In a posting on Harvard Law's blog Bill of Health, Professor Elizabeth Sepper calls for regulation to mandate flu vaccines for healthcare workers. Currently, she writes, one-third of healthcare providers do not get the flu vaccine because they "simply did not want to get vaccinated." She urges state regulations like those in Rhode Island that requires healthcare workers with direct contact with patients to get vaccinated; those not vaccinated must wear surgical masks during flu outbreaks. " Regulation ensures patients need not rely on the goodwill of particular institutions or providers," she writes. "It also avoids the model of employer coercion of employees, and establishes vaccination as a professional obligation. More states should follow Rhode Island’s lead." Read More 

14 Jan. 2013: Business Insider quotes Professor Neil Richards in an article titled “Is There Really A Difference Between Publishing Gun Owners' Addresses And Letting The Government Spy On You?”:  "What I do see happening is big institutions, the government, police forces, tech companies, they're always pushing, they're always asking for more, they're trying to intrude more into personal information and previously private zones." Read More  

14 Jan. 2013: The St. Louis Beacon quotes Professor Greg Magarian's comments about the U.S. Supreme Court's Jan. 13, 1988, decision that restricted speech in a Hazelwood, Misssouri, student newspaper. Magarian says the ruling "remains a very important speech-restrictive decision. The court has put much more energy into expanding the free speech rights of politically or economically powerful speakers while largely disdaining the First Amendment concerns of politically and economically disempowered speakers. Through this lens, Hazelwood represents perhaps the most important instance of the court's steady retreat from protecting students' free speech rights." Read More 

10 Jan. 2013: The Washington Examiner quotes Professor Kathleen Clark's comments about the creation of "a governmentwide code of conduct" for the Washington, D.C., Council. "Some of these ethics standards that are currently on the books invite contempt for the ethics standards because they are absurd and they are not being enforced," Clark says. Read More 

10 Jan. 2013: An article on "social news organization" Buzzfeed quotes Professor Hillary Sale's comments on the possibility of mandating women to be placed on corporate boards in the United States. Sales says that "quotas have been extremely effective in shifting the balance on boards," but that they're unlikely to be passed as law in the U.S. Says Sales, "it takes time. You have to start adding and keep adding. Quotas are not 'the American way. Companies just don't want to be mandated about anything." However, she adds: "Several [American] CEOs and board members have said to me on the side that they sometimes wish we had the quotas." Read More 

2 Jan. 2013: In a posting on Harvard Law's blog Bill of Health, Professor Elizabeth Sepper explains the flaw in the logic of corporations who object to being forced to provide insurance for their employees that includes coverage for contraception. "At heart, it misses a basic fact of health economics:  health insurance, like wages, is compensation that belongs to the employee," she writes. "Study after study shows that employers pay in wages whatever they don’t pay in health insurance premiums....So, when a corporation purchases a health insurance plan that its employees (and their family members) may or may not use to buy contraception, it is no more paying for contraception than it does when employees use their wages to buy it." Read More 

December 2012

28 Dec. 2012: Professor Neil Richards is quoted in an article in TechCrunch about the effects of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 Amendments Act of 2008, which the U.S. Senate reauthorized Dec. 28. “Other than the vague threat of an Orwellian dystopia, as a society we don’t really know why surveillance is bad,” Harris is quoted as writing in the Harvard Law Review. Richards then states that “surveillance inclines us to the mainstream and the boring.” Worse, “information collected surreptitiously can be used for other purposes, whether blackmail or the discrediting of opponents by revealing embarrassing secrets. Whether these discoveries are important, incidental, or irrelevant, all of them give greater power to the watcher.”  Read More 

21 Dec. 2012: The Huffington Post quotes Professor David Law's comments about the U.S. Constitution: "The framers made it structurally hard to amend the Constitution, Law told me, and since then, popular American culture has made it 'psychologically and emotionally hard' to amend or even to think clearly about the strengths and weaknesses of the Constitution because we have made what was intended to be a 'concrete plan for a government' into 'the rock on which the nation was founded and the symbol of everything that's great about America.'" Read More 

18 Dec. 2012: An article titled "Does Law School Have a Future?" on the CNNMoney/Fortune website quotes Professor Brian Tanamaha. Tamanaha says that the legal education system is "a powerful juggernaut that has momentum of its own." The article paraphrases Tamanaha saying "that the American Bar Association accreditation system has excessively encouraged a 'scholarly model' where handsomely paid professors teach few courses so they have time to write law journal articles or conduct research. That model may work well for top-tier schools but, Tamanaha argues, it's too expensive for students preparing for careers in public service, pro bono, or similar atttorney positions." Read More 

15 Dec. 2012: The Indianapolis Star quotes Professor Kathleen Clark  in one of a series of articles about "The China Letter," an investigative report questioning "the adequacy of the state's investigation" into allegations of unethical behavior between the Indiana Economic Development Corporation (IEDC), an Indiana state agency, and real estate developer Monica Liang. "How was the state going to protect itself from a rogue agent - from someone who was going to go off and try to use whatever they could to benefit themselves? The federal government requires that there be clarity about someone's status, whether they're an employee or not." The paper then paraphrases Clark saying, "The best practices are to specifically prohibit someone from using their government title or government position to further their own private business interests." Read More 

15 Dec. 2012: In another of its series on "The China Letter" (see above) the Indianapolis Star quotes Professor Kathleen Clark  on the IEDC and Monica Liang, "The concerns about control aren't just about controlling this woman [Laing]. It's controlling these quasi-agencies. Like, does the state want to control it or not?" Read More 

14 Dec. 2012: The Washington Post publishes an editorial by Professor Kathleen Clark about the "Graham affair"--an investigation by the District of Columbia's Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority which found that a 2008 "lottery contract" award by a D.C. Council Member, Jim Graham, had "“pitted the interests of the Council of the District of Columbia against the interests of Metro, and thereby unnecessarily created a conflict of interest, or, at the least, the appearance of a conflict of interest.” Clark writes, "Whether or not the board decides to open a full investigation into Graham’s 2008 conduct, it could provide helpful guidance to District officials who serve on multijurisdictional boards such as Metro to clarify their proper role. The board may also want to address the ethical risks inherent in allowing a legislative body to play a role in a sensitive area such as contracting. The District could benefit not just from a thorough airing of the facts regarding the controversial lottery contract but also from a hard look at its contracting process more generally." Read More 

6 Dec. 2012: Business Insider magazine publishes an article on changes in digital privacy that quotes Professor Neil Richards: "Sometimes it's important to connect all the dots. I really do think the big picture is tremendously important and it tends to get lost. What I do see happening is big institutions, the government, police forces, tech companies, they're always pushing, they're always asking for more, they're trying to intrude more into personal information and previously private zones. We are seeing more intrusion, more watching into people's lives and their activities that previously were secret or shared with only a few people, much more of our lives is getting recorded and digitized and shared. The changes that we're seeing are really cosmic in a sense, they're enormous." Read More  

 2 Dec. 2012: A St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorial on cell phone privacy quotes Professor Neil Richards: “We need to be able to rely on the privacy of our cellphones and our emails the way we can rely on the privacy of our living rooms and our letters." The editorial then paraphrases Richards, saying "That’s not the case now. . . . Our best protection at this point is what is found in the 1986 ECPA law (Electronic Communications Privacy Act)." Read More 

November 2012

13 Nov. 2012: The St. Louis Business Journal publishes comments by Professor Neil Richards article in the U.K. edition of Wired magazine about the decline of automatic sharing software like social reading applications. Richards is cited as writing,  "Users are starting to demand an Internet where we again can choose what we share, when we share it, and who we share it with. And that’s good news. Conscious recommendations, links and criticisms are more valuable because they result from intentional acts of expression, rather than software-controlled surveillance and dissemination."  Read More 

13 Nov. 2012: The blog fiercegovernmentit.com publishes Professor Neil Richards's  comments on the trade-off between privace and freedom of expression: "If it comes down to a value choice between 'We must disclose slightly more details about government surveillance programs...and maybe there are a few more terrorist attacks…' it's the price we have to pay for living in a free society," he says. Read More 

11 Nov. 2012: Writing on the blog Balkinization, Professor Brian Tanamaha cites a new survey of 182 law firms shows profit growth for 2012 "will fall short of 2011's low single-digit profit growth," and that "revenue and demand growth" had also slowed compared to the first half of the year. He writes, "Legal educators take note. Law school deans and admissions officers have been telling prospective law students that this is a great time to go to law school because applications are down. One dean who makes this pitch supports it with a note of optimism: 'We cannot tell the future. Bad job markets have dramatically improved in the past.' This is the worst market for legal employment in at least four decades--with no sign of a turn-around on the horizon. Under these circumstances, to even suggest the possibility of 'dramatic improvement' goes beyond wishful thinking to appeal to unreason." Read More 

9 Nov. 2012: The Supreme Court of the United States' blog features Professor Andrew Martin and Professor Lee Epstein (University of Southern California)'s study of judicial activism in the Roberts court. They write, "The Justices of the Roberts Court, like their immediate predecessors, are neither uniform activists nor committed restraintists. Rather, the Justices’ votes to strike (and uphold) statutes seem to reflect their political preferences toward the policy content of the law, and not an underlying preference for restraint (or activism)." Read More 

9 Nov. 2012: Lab Manager Magazine quotes Professor  Hillary Sale regarding diversity on corporate boards, adapted from her participation in the "Moving the Needle" think tank (see entry for 20 Oct. 2012 below). While Sale says “A recent study by the Credit Suisse Research Institute reveals that companies with women on their boards out-performed those without – in challenging markets,” she states that “the percentage of women directors on U.S. boards stagnated some years ago and remains at or near 12 percent, with fewer than 10 percent of boards having three or more women. “The pressure to add women directors is, however, growing.” Internationally, board diversity is regulated by quotas. “We are talking about quotas in the U.S. because other countries decided that quotas were the best way to make progress on board representation,” Sale says. “The real solution, of course, is leadership.  If every CEO and board chair in the Fortune 1000 sponsored one woman for a board position, we would soon have 1,000 more women on Fortune 1000 boards," though Sale adds that "The Fortune 1000 is just one index. There are many other existing boards, public and private, for which CEOs and others could sponsor women.” The article paraphrases Sale saying that "the effect could yield a corporate landscape that is truly diverse, therefore reaping the benefit of a wide array of cultural and intellectual perspectives that provide the basis for innovation and growth." Read More 

October 2012

27 Oct. 2012: Professor Kathleen Clark was quoted discussing Washington, D.C.'s controversial Chief Financial Officer, Natwar Gandhi. "I believe there were lots of reasons to be concerned before he was reappointed, and yet there seemed to be nothing to be gained politically [from the council holding up his confirmation]," she said. Read More 

 24 Oct. 2012: A National Law Journal article titled "Big Guns Gather to Discuss the Future of Law Schools" discusses "The Law School in the New Legal Environment" symposium and quotes Dean Kent Syverurd: "The predominant view shared by students, practicing attorneys and lawmakers is that law schools are in denial about these challenges, and it's time for law schools to make some serious changes to adjust to the new realities facing law graduates. This symposium will address how American law schools can embrace needed change rather than avoid it. In my view, the changes we have seen thus far pale in comparison to the transformation in legal education that will be necessary in the coming years to help our students, the profession and the clients they serve."  Read More 

20 Oct. 2012: Corporate Board Member magazine quotes and pictures Professor Hillary Sale in a "Think Tank on Boardroom Diversity." Sale, who is executive committee member of DirectWomen, discusses the challenge of quantifying board diversity: “We don’t have any long-running diverse boards, so we couldn’t measure it if we tried. But I think that the other field of academic research that comes out of the organizational behavior area is actually quite strong about diverse teams and how they operate, in terms of innovation and how that leads to growth.” So while it’s very hard to make the academic case, Sale argues, “it doesn’t mean there isn’t value in diversity.” Sale points to the need for sponsorship and advocacy, saying boards need to be “looking out for each individual and getting them over the hurdle and into the boardroom” to further the diversity agenda." Regarding quotas, she states: “The reason why we talk about quotas is because of the absence of leadership. We don’t have that leadership…and as a result, we get pressure for quotas.” Finally, she says, “The U.S. disclosure policy is, like many of our disclosure policies, subject to interpretation. Some companies have chosen to interpret diversity as ‘We have a marketing expert on our board.’ That is clearly not the intent of the guidelines…. We need to be better about holding companies’ feet to the fire on that because we haven’t made much progress in this country.”  WU Trustee Arnold Donald is also quote in the article. Read More 

19 Oct. 2012: In an article on the rising interest in courses that lead to in-house, general-counsel jobs instead of traditional practice in law firms, the National Law Journal quotes Professor  Brian Tamanaha: “You need to look at the bottom line for students,” Tamanaha says. “There’s a point where you have to ask: Is this worth it?”  Read More 

16 Oct. 2012: The New York Times quotes Professor Brian Tanamaha's comments on efforts New York University School of Law is making to revise its third-year curriculum. "There are perennial complaints about the third year of law school being a waste of time," Tamanaha told the Times. "It is important that an elite law school like N.Y.U. is making these changes because the top law schools set the model for the rest of legal academia." Read More 

3 Oct. 2012: In a "Guest Commentary" in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Adjunct Professor Caterina DiTraglia writes to correct statements made in an article about the sentencing of Antonio Richardson, one of two young men charged in the murder of Robin and Julie Kerry and the attempted murder of Tom Cummins. DiTraglia explains how her client, Richardson, who is an African American, was offered a plea agreement to life in prison without parole while his accomplice, who is white, was offered thirty years to life. She concludes, " No doubt when the community seeks to execute one of its members, emotions run high, facts get murky, and true justice is difficult to know. I believe that as long as our very imperfect court system, populated by very imperfect people, exacts this ultimate punishment, race and demographics will play a role in who lives and who dies."  Read More 

2 Oct. 2012: In an article published in the Whichita (Kansas) Eagle and other papers, professor Adam Rosenzweig comments on how presidential candidate Mitt Romney used various complex transactions to provide tax shelter for profits made by his capital equity company, Bain Capital. According to the story, "Among the transactions that are piquing interest are those flowing from Bain’s purchase of ownership interests in two U.S. chains, the arts and crafts retailer Michaels Stores and HD Supply Inc., Home Depot’s former home improvement supply arm, whose sales were being hurt by a sharp downturn in the housing market when it was acquired in 2007."  Rosenzweig said that it looked like HD Supply “got to basically recapitalize their company without paying this cancelation of indebtedness tax,”  explaining that Bain converted interest income that would have been taxed at 35 percent into "capital gains" taxed at 15 percent. “It’s a pretty clever structure,” he said, asking, “Is the goal of complying with the system to comply with the literal letter of the law or to comply with the intent of the law? I don’t think anyone can say the intent of Congress in enacting the statutes is (to create) this structure.” Members of Congress, he joked, “weren’t smart enough to think of this.”  Read More 

September 2012

24 Sept. 2012: The St. Louis Post-Dispatch publishes an article on ereaders and privacy that extensively quotes Professor Neil Richards.  "The way we read is really changing," Richards tells the paper. "It used to be we could go to bookstore, with a $5 bill, and there would be no record that we had read that book." He says that when consumers read on devices such as the Kindle, "Amazon knows exactly who you are, all the books you have bought, what you are reading, what page you are on, which passages you've highlighted and how long it takes to read." The article also mentions Richards’ recent article in the Georgetown Law Journal about “social reading" and "frictionless sharing."  Richards says further, "If we give up our ability to read confidentially, we've lost a real freedom of belief and freedom of thought, which I believe are our most important civil liberties." Intellectual privacy is at stake-- "our ability to read and think and make up our minds about what we think about the world without other people watching or hearing." He concludes, "It's important for the same reason we don't like government surveillance of our lives. If we are always being watched, we will turn the entire of our society into the eighth grade, and that would be a real tragedy." Read More 

 19 Sept. 2012: The Associated Press, through The (Biloxi, MS) Sun Herald, quotes Professor Kathleen Clark, former special counsel to the District of Columbia's attorney general, regarding D.C.'s "taking a portion of workers' retirement contributions for 'administrative expenses"'"without telling employees. Part of the money then went "to the accounting firm of embattled businessman Jeffrey Thompson." "The problem, it would seem to me, is the lack of disclosure and transparency," Clark tells the paper, adding that the arrangement with Thompson's firm "is troubling and raises questions about the CFO's judgment" and "may raise not just questions of judgment but whether or not the legal requirements are being met.... As a legal matter, I was really shocked - I was amazed that the chief financial officer, as a fiduciary, hadn't disclosed this."  Read More 

10 Sept. 2012: Legal Theoryblog posted the abstract of Professor David Law’s article on “Sham Constitutions.” "It is often said that constitutions are mere parchment barriers that cannot by themselves limit the power of the state or guarantee respect for rights," Law writes. "There has been little or no empirical scholarship, however, on the global prevalence and severity of constitutional noncompliance. This Article offers the first comparative empirical study of the extent to which countries uphold their formal constitutions." Read More 

7 Sept. 2012: Saint Louis University School of Law Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Development, Anders Walker, paraphrased Professor Brian Tamanaha’s book in a National Jurist blog entry on the resignation of SLU Dean Annette Clark. Walker wrote: “what began as an ugly dispute between the Dean and the President is now morphing into something very different, a [Brian] Tamanaha-esque audit of legal education in its current state, including questions about tuition, faculty resources, and the merits of scholarship. ... The solution, argues Tamanaha, is for law schools to adopt a tiered approach, with elite institutions like Washington University continuing along the scholarly model and non-elite schools like SLU adopting a low tuition, practical skills approach.” Read More 

 3 Sept. 2012: The National Law Journal publishes an op-ed by Professor Kathleen Clark titled "Whistleblowing incentives for lawyers?" regarding the case of U.S. ex rel. Fair Laboratory Practices Associates v. Quest Diagnostics, now before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second CircuitIn the article, Clark concludes: "No matter how the Second Circuit rules in this case, we can expect to see more lawyers seeking financial incentives for blowing the whistle on their clients' fraud."

August 2012

27 Aug. 2012: The St. Louis Post-Dispatch publishes comments from Adjunct Professor Michael Downey regarding the case of Milton Ohlsen III, a suspect in a near-fatal bombing in Clayton in 2008. Ohlsen wants the case thrown out because two of his attorneys breached client confidentiality when they notified police that they suspected Ohlsen was the bomber shortly after the incident. The attorneys consulted with Downey, partner at Armstrong Teasdale LLP, before turning the information over. That article states: "Downey said in a recent interview that the issue was whether there was a 'continuing threat.' Lawyers, he explained, may disclose client information 'to prevent death or substantial bodily harm.'" Read More 

26 Aug. 2012: The St. Louis Post-Dispatch publishes comments from Professor Karen Tokarz on foreclosure mediation. Countering a statement by general counsel of the Missouri Bankers Association that mediation would wreak "havoc" and be "very chilling for home buyers trying to get a loan," Tokarz said, “I don't see any data anywhere in the country that supports that.” Read More 

22 Aug. 2012: The New York Times publishes a letter to the editor by Professor Rebecca Dresser about "shared decision-making, in which doctors describe treatment options and patients choose the one they prefer." Dresser concludes, "In everyday life, arguments with family and friends help us think through the consequences of our choices and sometimes change our minds. Patients and doctors should do the same for one another." Read More 

22 Aug. 2012: An article in Law360 on a Federal Circuit Court ruling "that national security concerns can limit the review of personnel actions taken by federal agencies even against employees without access to classified information" quotes Professor Kathleen Clark: "What this court has done is crafted a very significant exception for employees in sensitive positions. The fear is that it is going to be open season on employees, and that agencies will not have to explain their actions to anyone outside the agency as long as they are going after someone in a noncritical sensitive position." Read More 

22 Aug. 2012: An op-ed in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch written by Professor Karen Tokarz and Todd Swanstrom, the Des Lee professor of community collaboration and public policy administration at the University of Missouri St. Louis Public Policy Research Center, argues for “legislation that would  establish a mediation program to address the foreclosure crisis in St. Louis County.” After analyzing the various costs and benefits of mediation, the authors conclude: “If foreclosure mediation results in even a modest number of agreements in which families save their homes and the lenders avoid big losses, foreclosure mediation will more than pay for itself. . . . Mediation is a win-win-win for homeowners, lenders and St. Louis County.” Read More   

  20 Aug. 2012: In USA Today, Professor John Inazu publishes an editorial supporting Wheaton College's decision to join Catholic University in a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services challenging "the requirement that private employers offer contraception coverage to their employees as a standard health insurance benefit." Inazu writes, "Evangelicals are wise to join this legal conflict, and they would have been wise to have done so even if the mandate had been just 'a Catholic thing.' The legal challenges implicate an interest that all of us — Catholics and evangelicals, religious and non-religious — should value and safeguard: the right of private groups to dissent from the prevailing state orthodoxy." Read More  

  2012 Aug. 14: In a Detroit Free Press article, St. Louis attorney and Adjunct Professor Michael Downey comments on the possibility of a "conflict of interest" between Kwame Kilpatrick and his attorney: “In a case of this size and importance, it’s hard to get distant from it,” Downey said. “It is a very common type of conflict, particularly for high-visibility and complex cases.” Read More 

2012 Aug. 3: Science Magazine publishes an article on the need to align "regulations and ethics in human research." Quoting Professor Rebecca Dresser, the article states "Underlying the research oversight system is a fundamental moral judgment: Human subjects have interests that should not be subordinated to the interests of the patients, researchers, industry stakeholders, and others who gain health and monetary benefits from the research enterprise." Read More 

2012 Aug. 2: Inside Higher Ed publishesan email interview with Professor Brian Tamanaha about his book Failing Law Schools. Regarding the "mismatch" between tuition costs and "job prospects," Tamanaha says, "Law schools are producing streams of economic casualties. I wrote the book in the hope that shedding light on the situation will help prompt reform." Read More 
 2012 Aug. 2: Professor Rebecca Dresser is interviewed by KWMU radio regarding "ethics of human testing": "People should be free to make informed choices about whether they want to be in research. They shouldn’t be forced to be in research. They shouldn’t be put in research without their knowledge. And they shouldn’t be in research that they don’t really understand." Read More 

July 2012

 2012 July 25: The Slate's "Explainer" column publishes Professor Adrienne Davis’s answer to the question, “If we legalize polygamous marriage, how will polygamous divorce work?" Davis and two colleagues say, "State laws do not provide for polygamous divorce, and, because most American polygamists live in insular religious communities, few cases addressing this issue have reached the courts. Judges have a few options." Read More 

 2012 July 14: News-Medical favorably reviews Professor Rebecca Dresser'sbook Malignant, quoting the book, "Since my diagnosis, I had been immersed in a crash course in real-world medical ethics." Read More  

2012 July 12: The St. Louis American writes on the opening of Dark Girls at the Portfolio Gallery and Education Center, quoting Professor Kim Norwood who led a discussion on the exhibit: “This is happening, now,” Norwood said. [speaking of bias based on skin color]: “We have a 2012 example. We’re not making this stuff up. This still happens and something we have to deal with. This is an issue we as a community and as a society have to get over. The only way to do that is to keep this issue on the front burner of our minds and work through it. One thing we know for sure:  this issue simply is not going away on its own. This is going to require work, hard work, and deep soul searching in order to get at the root of what is going on.” Read More 

June 2012

2012 June 29: iVillage quotes  Professor  Greg Magarian on the Supreme Court's health care ruling: "The result is what I was expecting on the mandate, but the way they got to it is not at all what I was expecting. It sounds to me that the court was trying to be as cautious as it could in wading into the constitutional issues. What it found was the narrowest way to uphold the mandate and therefore uphold the rest of the Act. I think the result is the right result under my best understanding of the law so I'm very happy with what the court did. But it really is a curveball in terms of how they got there."Read More  

2012 June 28: In an article on the Supreme Court's ruling upholding President Obama's Affordable Healthcare Act in The Street, Professor  Greg Magarian says that "[Chief Justice John] Roberts sees himself, as most Chief Justices do, as the guardian of the court's institutional credibility." The article states that "Roberts' opinion was bizarre for a couple of reasons." First, Magarian says the court "took a 'two-step' on the tax interpretation." Second "is that Roberts even reached the Commerce Clause and Necessary and Proper Clause Issues": "If you're imagining a Chief Justice writing this as a judicial politician trying to satisfy constituencies -- you know, give the conservatives something of a bone, don't strike the thing down, write something narrow -- I think you couldn't be much more crafty than this. Roberts is kind of being a master politician here." Read More   

2012 June 28: In another article on the Supreme Court's healthcare decision, The Street mentions the fact that "the five justices in the majority agreed that Congress could not impose a penalty on the states, and quotes Professor  Greg Magarian: "So technically, the Court does not find that even that part [Medicaid expansion] of the statute is unconstitutional." The article states that "Magarian said that Roberts proved to be the true swing vote in the decision. . . . Magarian admitted, though, that he expected Kennedy to side with Roberts." Read More  

2012 June 27: A Wall Street Journal blog postingon the Massachusetts School of Law's decision to cap tuition for the next three years, Professor Brian Tamanaha's May New York Times op-ed is quoted, regarding placing a cap on the amount of money students can borrow from the governement: “Law schools would then be forced to set tuition with this limit in mind." The blog then quotes Tamanaha directly:  “I’m all for keeping tuition down; it’s a good thing, the problem is: that level of tuition is still too high.” 

2012 June 28:  Another article on the Supreme Court's healthcare decision, The Street mentions the fact that "the five justices in the majority agreed that Congress could not impose a penalty on the states, and quotes Professor  Greg Magarian  

2012 June 27: A Wall Street Journal blog article on the Massachusetts School of Law's decision to cap tuition for the next three years, Professor  Brian Tamanaha's May New York Times op-ed is quoted, regarding placing a cap on the amount of money students can borrow from the governement: “Law schools would then be forced to set tuition with this limit in mind." The blog then quotes Tamanaha directly:  “I’m all for keeping tuition down; it’s a good thing, the problem is: that level of tuition is still too high.” Read More  

2012 June 26: In a St. Louis Beacon article, Professor Greg Magarian calls the Supreme Court's rejection of three provisions of Arizona's "controversial immigration law" "a big win for the administration." Read More  

 2012 June 22: In a Chicago Tribune article titled “Loans, lawsuits pile up as law school grads face worst job market in more than 30 years,” Professor Brian Tamanaha is quoted, “citing ABA statistics”: “The fact that only about 1 out of 2 graduates is getting a job as a lawyer is bad enough. But the situation is worse than that. Many who do obtain jobs don’t earn enough to make their monthly payments on their debts.” Read More 

2012 June 22: An eNewsletter from Suny Buffalo Law School covers a panel discussion of law school administrators about various challenges facing law school students and law education generally (e.g., weak job market, high student loan debt, etc.). Dean Kent Syverud is pictured several times and quoted extensively: “You have some advantages here [at SUNY] that I envy. You have very good faculty members. You have spectacular tenure-track hiring that promises a bright future. You have low tuition, almost half the tuition rate of an elite private law school, which translates into lower student debt at graduation. You are the only state university in New York and the only law school in a three-hour radius, which is very unusual in the Eastern part of the United States. And your University leadership is not hostile to law as a discipline. You have no idea how wonderful and rare this is. . . . Those are potent strengths in the challenging environment we are facing now.” Syverud is quoted further: “Before I became a dean my attitude was, ‘Leave me alone. I’m very good at what I do, I work very hard in the classroom and in research. Please just protect me so my talents can flower in peace and you can get the benefits of it.’ The problem with that is it sounds a lot to the outside world.” The article then paraphrased Syverud’s next comment: “Instead, [Syverud] said, every professor should help students with job placement, embrace new teaching technologies, be open to the best learning from other academic disciplines, and build relationships that enable effective fund-raising.” 

2012 June 15: In an editorial in the Daily Beast, Professor Brian Tamanaha writes, “Law schools will always manipulate whatever metric U.S. News employs in its ranking, ethics be damned.” However, “in the end [the rankings] are just numbers; human beings choose how to use—or misuse—them. The sad irony is that many law professors are liberals who claim to fight for the less privileged in society, yet through our own conduct we are further enhancing the advantages of the one percent.” Read More 

2012 June 4: Commenting to Fox Business on Bank of America Corp.’s alleged failure to provide investors with enough information regarding its purchase of Merrill Lynch & Co., Professor Hillary Sale says “In all cases of securities fraud, the fight is always about who knew what, when. . . . This deposition shows that before the actual shareholder vote, there was knowledge that the numbers were different. Call it large, call it substantial, but it is likely material.” Read More 

May 2012

2012 May 31: In an editorial in the New York Times, Professor Brian Tamanaha writes that “The economics of legal education are broken. The problem is that the cost of a law degree is now vastly out of proportion to the economic opportunities obtained by the majority of graduates.” He concludes, “If we don’t change the economics of legal education, not only will law schools continue to graduate streams of economic casualties each year, but we will also be erecting an enormous barrier to access to the legal profession." Read More 

2009 May 15:  In Newswise, Professor Leila Sadat says of President Barack Obama’s recent establishment of  an Atrocities Prevention Board, “For the first time, the National Intelligence Council will prepare an estimate on the global risk of mass atrocities and genocide. . . . By sensitizing the diplomatic and intelligence communities to atrocities risk and systematizing responses to potential crises, the policies of the Atrocities Prevention Board could significantly change U.S. foreign policy.” Read More 

2012 May 9: Professor John Inazu’s comments at an American Enterprise Institute/Federalist Society panel are quoted by BLT: The Blog of Legal Times. Regarding the use of the assembly clause of the Constitution to defend against discrimination, he says "unlike association, [assembly] actually shows up in the text of the Constitution." Read More 

2012 May 9: Professor Neil Richards states in a posting on PrivacyRevolution.org titled “The Perils of Social Reading,” “The choices [regarding intellectual privacy] we make today will be sticky. They’ll have lasting consequences for the kind of networked society we will build, and whether there’s a place in that society for intellectual privacy and for confidential, contemplative, and idiosyncratic reading. Sharing might be cool, but some things, like intellectual privacy and our centuries-old culture of solitary reading, are more important. We need to preserve them; we need to choose intellectual privacy.” Read More 

2012 May 3: In the Huffington Post, Professor John Inazu comments on the National Day of Prayer: “Some religious believers will likely use the Day of Prayer to call attention to what they view as a regrettable and consequential court decision [in Engel v. Vitale]. . . . But there’s an important distinction between official school or government prayer or a public school or public space that allows prayer. The key is that it’s voluntary and the guidance is made as non-sectarian and as general as possible.” Read More 

2012 May 2: In a St. Louis Post-Dispatch article on the May 1, 2012 ruling in Turner vs. Clayton, Professor Kimberly Norwood says—regarding the Clayton School District’s move to name taxpayers as parties to the case—”I think that’s going to be pretty powerful. . . . What saved this was the fact that taxpayers intervened.” Read More 

 April 2012

2012 April 19: Professor Kathleen Clark participated in a Legal Talk Network’s podcast discussion of MECA—the Mutual Educational and Cultural Exchange Act. The 1961 law allows members of Congress to accept trips funded by foreign countries without the same degree of disclosure that is required when they take trips funded by private companies. In her comments, Clark opens the discussion to broader transparency issues and her concerns about passing laws in reaction to “scandals” rather than looking at congressional travel more generally. “There are more general problems of disclosure to consider, such as providing information only on paper documents that are not electronic and not searchable,” she said. “Federal, state, and local governments need to make information accessible in a meaningful way.” View podcast  

2012 April 16: Professor Gregory Magarian writes in The National Law Journal regarding President Barack Obama’s mishandling of comments he made about judicial power. The article provides a thorough analysis of the rhetoric that is percolating through all levels of the media, and the power that it can have on the process.

2012 April 15: Professor Peter Joy comments in an article in St. Louis Today about the clash between culture and law when immigrants and refugees are unaware of new cultural norms and laws : He said that the cultural issue alone was not much of a defense for Marbati in a country that has long since drawn the line against a number of practices – for example, certain kinds of drug use or body mutilation – which are acceptable elsewhere.

2012 April 15: In the Globe and Mail, Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedom was touted as a gift to the world, drawing comments from Professor David Law: “Some countries may be especially prone to borrow from the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom because they perceive themselves as sharing the same goals and values as Canadian society.”

2012 April 9: The Cooley Law School Blog comments on Professor Brian Tamanaha’s opinions on the problems of too many new lawyers without a practical aspect to their legal education. Cooley goes on to continue that while they agree with Professor Tamanaha’s opinion that law schools lack a practicality to their education, they believe that there are not too many new lawyers. In their opinion, lawyers are wealth-creators and have a greater productive capacity than non-lawyers do.

2012 April 6: As the debate in the Supreme Court over the Affordable Health Care Act continues, there will continue to be a dialogue about the process. In Health News Digest, Professor Gregory Magarian states: “Presidents from the beginning of the republic, notably including Jefferson, Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt, have verbally castigated the court in terms that make President Obama’s comments sound like a fan letter.”

2012 April 1: As the number of lawsuits against law schools for fraudulent reporting of employment statistics increases, the shockwave continues to be felt. In the ABA Journal, Professor Brian Tamanaha comments on the problem: “This is a systemic problem. [Law schools] cost too much for the economic opportunities [students] get in return. I don’t think it will come down to voluntary changes [by law schools]. Ultimately these changes will be forced on us. No matter what happens, it will be quite devastating to law schools.”

March 2012

2012 March 31: In St. Louis Today, Professor John Inazu comments on the fervor surrounding the new health care plan mandate that would require religious institutions to provide coverage for contraception to female employees. Inazu said that one explanation for the “religious liberty” rhetoric from Catholic leaders is the contraception mandate’s connection to a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision, known as Hosanna- Tabor.

2012 March 30: Professor Brian Tamanaha, whose new book Failing Law Schools comes out in July, comments on the dismissal of the NYLS case in the ABA Journal: “No one should celebrate a judicial ruling that representations by a law school cannot be relied upon by reasonable people. Law Schools, after all, are educational institutions charged with training competent and ethical lawyers. In the opinion of the judge, people should view law schools with the same skepticism they view used car dealers – beware – investigate – double check claims about mileage per gallon and blue book value.”

2012 March 30: In a story in the Street, Professor Gregory Magarian weighs in on the Supreme Court ruling procedure that will occur with Obamacare: “On Friday they [Supreme Court] will take a vote, and that vote will be probably the final vote, although it’s not binding and the justices can change their minds later.”

2012 March 30: In a legal theory blog, Professor John Drobak posted an article entitled “Personal Jurisdiction in a Global World: A Comment on the Supreme Court’s Recent Divisions in Goodyear Dunlop Tires and Nicastro.”

2012 March 29: An article in the New York Times features Professor Andrew Martin and his method for scoring the political ideology of the Supreme Court to rank it as being more conservative or liberal. The article goes on to discuss that through this method, the Supreme Court may be the most conservative it has been in modern history.

2012 March 29: In a piece by the U.S. News & World Report about the constitutional review of the new health care bill, Professor Gregory Magarian comments on the Supreme Court hearings: “Before the arguments started, if you asked me my prediction, I would have told you that I thought it would be a very close case and I would put my money on the court upholding the law by a 5-4 decision – and that’s still what I would say. It’s hard to look at it and say it’s a slam-dunk that they’re going to uphold the thing [though].”

2012 March 28: Professor Gregory Magarian is featured in an article in the Street about the oral arguments heard by the Supreme Court regarding severability and Medicaid Expansion: “[The hearings] are an opportunity, basically, to remind the court about the implications of striking down the individual mandate. One of the themes that the government keeps hitting on is all of this stuff fits together.”

2012 March 27: In the JD Journal, Professor Brian Tamanaha comments on law schools that have been falsifying statistics for graduates: “It would be naïve to assume that no law schools have falsified employment numbers.”

2012 March 22: In an article about the Supreme Court case on the Affordable Care Act, Professor Gregory Magarian comments on the difficulties that the 26 opposing states have: “It’s been some time since the [Supreme] court has struck down a major piece of federal legislation on the theory that it exceeds Congress’ constitutional authority.”

2012 March 21: In an interview with the New York Times about the United States constitution, and its decreasing relevance and importance to other countries’ constitution writing, Professor Brian Law says: “Nobody wants to copy Windows 3.1.”

2012 March 20: In a panel about sexual assault of African-American women, Vice Provost and Professor Adrienne Davis addresses claims of sexual assault in the Duke University lacrosse case in 2006, using this example as a microcosm of the challenges African-Americans face in the law. She notes that the roots of this extend back to slavery, which took control of both African- Americans and their sexual lives—a type of behavior that continued even after slavery was abolished, as a white man was not convicted of raping a black woman until the 20th century.

2012 March 19: Solo Practice University Blog runs an article on Professor Brian Tamanaha’s new book Failing Law Schools and the statistics inside. The article states, “American law schools, he reports, produce 45,000 new graduates each year; but recruiters expect only 25,000 job openings annually through 2018.”

2012 March 16: An article on misreporting law school data runs in the Wall Street Journal Blogs featuring comments from Professor Brian Tamanaha. Tamanaha says, “The best solution, in my view, is to have law schools highlight one number above all else: What percentage of the graduating class obtained jobs as lawyers?”

2012 March 14: Professor Brian Tamanaha comments in an article in US News Education on the declining job opportunities for law school graduates. “The message isn't to be a dream-breaker,” says Tamanaha.” It's to make informed choices."

2012 March 14: An article in the LA Times World features comments from Professor Leila Sadat on Syria and the International Criminal Court. According to Professor Sadat, "The Syrian situation is frustrating many people. It should be at the International Criminal Court. But if two of the powers want to stop it, they can.”

2012 March 9: In the Los Angeles Times, Professor Leila Sadat comments on the ICC and why it tackles cases in Africa. She states, "There’s a fair perception that one reason Africa has gotten Security Council referrals is the general political weakness of Africa. Why should Syria get a pass?"

February 2012

2012 February 24: An article on Legal Theory Blog discusses Professor Gregory Magarian’s views on the relationship between the First and Second Amendments. The article states, “When the Supreme Court in District of Columbia v. Heller declared that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms, it set atop the federal judicial agenda the critical task of elaborating the new right’s scope, limits, and content. Following Heller, commentators routinely draw upon the First Amendment’s protections for expressive freedom to support their proposals for Second Amendment doctrine. Professor Magarian advocates a very different role for the First Amendment in explicating the Second, and he contends that our best understanding of First Amendment theory and doctrine severely diminishes the Second Amendment’s legal potency.”

2012 February 22: The Legal Theory Blog posts an article by Professor John Inazu on virtual assembly. “This Article provides one of the first scholarly considerations of the constitutional boundaries for online groups,” Inazu writes. “It explores both why and how we should protect these groups by asking two related questions. The first question is theoretical: do online groups implicate the kinds of values that warrant elevated constitutional protection. The second question is doctrinal: what is the best framework for providing constitutional protection to these groups.”

2012 February 20: An article on Professor Brian Tamanaha’s new book, Failing Law Schools, is featured in the New York Times Opinionator. Tamanaha states in the article, “Research oriented schools will remain as they are. Practice-oriented schools will be staffed by experienced lawyers; … research institutions will be staffed by scholars mainly engaged in research; other schools will be staffed by both types.”

2012 February 16: Professor Neil Richards discusses the rights to privacy involved with Facebook and Twitter in an article in Tech News Daily. According to the article, “The lawsuit raises the question of whether it is ethical for social networking sites to hand over the online communication records of users. Neil Richards, a Washington University professor who specializes in privacy law, said that since there is not an extensive series of laws set up to protect against invasion of privacy, a social media user’s main protection comes from the companies that hold the records.”

2012 February 15: Both The Street and the New Haven Register run an article on mudslinging in the Republican Presidential race that features comments from Professor Greg Magarian. He states in the article: “Gingrich, I think, was a very flawed candidate even at his peak. . . . He had a very checkered personal history. . . . He’s just not a very likable character; I think going negative against him was easy.”

2012 February 14: Professor Susan B. Appleton writes an article on “Reproduction and Regret” on the Reproductive Rights Prof Blog addressing the “legal significance of regret following a reproductive decision or outcome.” She writes, “The importance of the jurisprudence of reproduction and regret transcends the particular disputes that exemplify it. . . . An analysis of reproduction and regret thus offers a window into family law’s foundational values and contests writ large, providing insights into the principles, themes, and clashes dominating family law today.”

2012 February 13: The New York Times runs an op-ed by Professor Laura Rosenbury on the legal ramifications of the institution of marriage. Rosenbury writes, “The state supports one form of relationship between adults—marriage—to the exclusion of all others. It’s therefore unsurprising that marriage equality has dominated legislative and litigation campaigns. Yet by channeling more people into marriage, we limit our imaginations about life outside the marital couple form.”

2012 February 13: The St. Louis Beacon cites research by Professor David Law on the U.S. Constitution’s “declining global appeal.” The article writes, “That’s a key comparison that Washington University professor David Law makes in his research on why few countries around the world have been using the constitution drawn up by the Founding Fathers in 1787 as a model for how they want their countries to be governed in the 21st century.”

2012 February 12: the Bloomberg View cites research on the declining influence of the U.S. constitution by Professor David Law. According to the article, “A study to be published this summer in the New York University Law Review shows that the U.S. Constitution is now copied less frequently by countries writing new constitutions than in the immediate aftermath of World War II, the peak measured by the study’s authors, David S. Law of Washington University in St. Louis and Mila Versteeg of the University of Virginia.”

2012 February 10: Professor Brian Tamanaha gave comments on law schools misreporting data in a Thomson Reuters News & Insight article. He says, “Standalone law schools are especially vulnerable because there is no institutional support behind them to help out in difficult financial times. At lower-ranked law schools . . . the situation can quickly deteriorate if they experience year-after-year double digit declines in the numbers of applicants.”

2012 February 9: The Foreign Policy Blog cites research on the constitution by Professor David Law. “‘Among the world’s democracies,’ Professors Law and Versteeg concluded, ‘constitutional similarity to the United States has clearly gone into free fall. Over the 1960s and 1970s, democratic constitutions as a whole became more similar to the U.S. Constitution, only to reverse course in the 1980s and 1990s. The turn of the twenty-first century, however, saw the beginning of a steep plunge that continues through the most recent years for which we have data, to the point that the constitutions of the world’s democracies are, on average, less similar to the U.S. Constitution now than they were at the end of World War II.’”

2012 February 8: The Huffington Post interviews Professor David Law, leading to a New York Times article by Adam Liptak, “‘We The People’ Loses Appeal With People Around the World.” Law is quoted, “It is quite popular in other countries to have some kind of restriction in the constitution on property rights, how property can be used. Property rights have to be consistent with social welfare. You can’t use property in such a way that it harms society. If you think of a corporation as a bundle of property rights, those specific clauses provide a basis for regulating corporations. You don’t have that kind of a limitation in the U.S. constitution on property rights. There is more of a constitutional basis for regulation corporations than there is in this country.”

2012 February 8: Adam Liptak’s New York Times article featuring Proessor David Law‘s Scholarship is discussed in the New Yorker: “Law and Versteeg make an irrefutable case that foreign bills of rights have gone well beyond our 1791 model and its supplementary amendments, such as the Fourteenth (due process) and Nineteenth (women’s suffrage). Like ours, almost every constitution on earth claims to uphold freedom of religion, freedom of speech and the press, the right of assembly, and protection from arbitrary arrest and imprisonment. Unlike ours, though, other constitutions have increasingly specified additional rights and freedoms, like equality for women, freedom of movement, the right to form unions and go on strike, and the right to an education.”

2012 February 8: Professor David Law’s research is discussed as pertaining to Canadian constitutional supremacy in a Wall Street Journal Blog. The article starts: “Adam Liptak at the Times had a fascinating story yesterday on the waning influence of the U.S. Constitution. It was based largely on a new study by David S. Law of Washington University in St. Louis and Mila Versteeg of the University of Virginia.”

2012 February 7: An article on Macleans.ca mentions Professor David S. Law’s scholarship in regard to increasing Canadian constitutional influence. “The study, ‘The Declining Influence of the United States Constitution,’ written by David S. Law, a Washington University in Saint Louis politics professor and Mila Versteeg of the University of Virginia law school, and published in the New York University Law Review, cites Canada’s constitutional innovation as a powerful influence in, among other places, South Africa, Israel, New Zealand and Hong Kong.”

2012 February 7: Professor David Law’s scholarship on the Constitution was featured in a UPI column. “Professor David Law of Washington University, one of the study’s authors, said, ‘Nobody wants to copy Windows 3.1.’”

2012 February 6: An article of the Atlantic Wire mentions Professor David Law’s research on the Constitution in relation to Adam Liptak’s article in the New York Times, stating, “To be fair to David S. Law and Mila Versteeg, the professors behind the research, there is data that suggests they’re onto something. ‘The study, to be published in June in The New York University Law Review, bristles with data,’ The Times’ Adam Liptak writes. ‘Its authors coded and analyzed the provisions of 729 constitutions adopted by 188 countries from 1946 to 2006, and they considered 237 variables regarding various rights and ways to enforce them,” with Professors Law and Versteeg concluding, Among the world’s democracies . . . constitutional similarity to the United States has clearly gone into free fall.”

2012 February 6: Professor David Law’s empirical research on the U.S. Constitution’s declining global influence is discussed in a New York Times column. “‘The U.S. Constitution appears to be losing its appeal as a model for constitutional drafters elsewhere,’ according to a new study by David S. Law of Washington University in St. Louis and Mila Versteeg of the University of Virginia.”

2012 February 1: Professor Hillary Sale appears on Marketplace to discuss the criminal charges expected from ex-Credit Suisse traders. She says: “Individual bonuses would have been based to some extent on, actually, completion of these trades. And then there was just the incentive to get them off the books and out.”

2012 February 1: An article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on the privacy issues of Internet monitoring for sports teams features comments from Professor Neil Richards: “On the one hand, the actions of an athlete can bring the university disrepute. But so can any ordinary student, and I think people would find it highly objectionable to apply this to all students. Maybe the actions of a star wide receiver can impact a school’s reputation, so the university has an interest in his social media. But what about the 10th player on a Division III golf team? He’s more like an ordinary student. So, the question becomes should the standard be different for some athletes.”

2012 February: An article for the Bureau of National Affairs features comments from Professor Ronald Levin on President Obama’s recent recess appointments: “Ronald Levin, professor of law at Washington University School of Law, in St. Louis, said this is an area where there is little judicial authority. It is not clearly constitutional or unconstitutional, and there are good arguments both ways, he said. This is a situation that cries out for a political resolution, because there is a need for the president to appoint people to positions, Levin said. There is also an interest in the Senate in its confirmation function, he said. ‘When the system breaks down, then you get responses that push the envelope of constitutional issues that have long remained unresolved,’” Levin said.

January 2012

2012 January 31: Professor Gregory Magarian comments on the intense mudslinging in the race for the Florida primary in an article in the Independent and the New Zealand Herald: “Most political scholars think talk of a brokered convention and a new candidate is fanciful, however. ‘More dramatic steps might conceivably happen, including the entry of a new candidate,’ agrees Gregory Magarian, an expert in US elections at Washington University in St Louis, before adding: ‘In my view, this is extremely unlikely.’ Which means whoever wins will wear bloody bandages into the election.”

2012 January 26: The idea that no current GOP presidential candidate deserves to win was presented in an article in the Guardian, including comments from Professor Gregory Magarian. He says in the article: “One of these candidates is still likely to go to Tampa with a majority of delegates, and the favourite is still Romney.”

2012 January 25: MissouriNet.com runs an article on the Voter ID Bill that features comments from Adjunct Professor Denise Lieberman. The article states: “Ron Berry, a lobbyist with the Secretary of State’s Office, says the fiscal note on the bill is $2 Million, but Denise Lieberman, who says she represents about two dozen organizations opposing the bill and is a professor at Washington University specializing in voting rights and election law, says the cost of such a measure could be much greater.”

2012 January 22: Professor Kathleen Clark speaks out against comments made by ABA President William Robinson in an article in Wells & Drew: “Robinson focuses on the individuals who incurred debt rather than the institutions that induced them to incur that debt. Individuals can be held responsible for their decisions, but we should also examine the responsibility of institutions that have benefited from those individuals’ ill-advised decisions.”

2012 January 18: An article from physorg.com noted that Professors Kevin Collins, Gregory Magarian, and Neil Richards had signed a letter to Congress opposing SOPA and PROTECT IP. Margarian says, “The proposed statutes use vaguely phrased standards for determining the identity of infringing websites, and they would allow the government to bar transactions with, and even links to, cites that it finds to infringe.” Richards adds, “Copyright holders already have substantial powers under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and other statutes, and new copyrights granted today can last for a century or more, at the expense of the vibrant public domain that makes any creativity possible. . . . “Values of free expression are coded into the current structure of the Internet, and SOPA and the Protect-IP Act would try to change the nature of the Internet, making it closed rather than open. Given this reality, it should be no surprise that virtually all of the big Internet companies have come out in opposition to these terrible bills.”

2012 January 17: An article in Thomson Reuters News & Insight on Jed Rakoff and the Citi appeal case features comments from Professor Hillary Sale: “Certainly, Rakoff made it clear he was foreshadowing the appeals argument.”

2012 January 12: A book review featured in the New Republic takes a closer look at Professor John Inazu’s new book on the freedom of assembly, stating that “John Inazu’s Liberty’s Refuge: The Forgotten Freedom of Assembly and Timothy Zick’s Speech Out of Doors: Preserving First Amendment Liberties in Public Places investigate the disappearance of the First Amendment ‘right of the people peaceably to assemble’ in contemporary America. Although Inazu and Zick wrote their books before the Occupation emerged, their histories help to explain — and even to justify — the Occupy Wall Street movement’s extreme mode of assembly: an assembly that insists on peculiar decision-making procedures, engages in twenty-four-hour protest, and refuses to cooperate with government officials and their permitting regimes.”

2012 January 11: Professor Gregory Magarian is featured in an article in the Washington Park Profile (Denver) on the freedom of assembly as pertaining to the Occupy movement. “‘In theory, the government has very limited authority to curb expressive activity in what the law calls “public forums” (parks, open spaces, etc.),’ says Gregory P. Magarian, JD, constitutional law expert and professor at Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. ‘The Occupy protests should lead us to take a hard look at how our legal system protects—or fails to protect — meaningful opportunities for political dissent.’ Only specific, well-documented government concerns about public safety or public order should justify government restrictions on the protests, he says.”

2012 January 9: A discussion on National Public Radio on the Texas redistricting case in the Supreme Court features comments from Professor Gregory Magarian: “Four new congressional seats in Texas were created largely because of a booming Latino population, but because Texas has a history of discrimination, it’s required to pre-clear any redistricting plan before putting it into effect. Texas leaders want an interim redistricting plan which favors Republicans to go into effect. A court says the district court should have just gone along with the Texas legislature. ‘That really takes a lot of the teeth out of that pre-clearance requirement,’ says Washington University law professor Gregory Magarian.”

2012 January 6: The ABA President William Robinson’s comments about unemployed law-school graduates sparked a response from Professor Kathleen Clark: “Robinson focuses on the individuals who incurred debt rather than the institutions that induced them to incur that debt. Individuals can be held responsible for their decisions, but we should also examine the responsibility of institutions that have benefited from those individuals’ ill-advised decisions.”

2012 January: 5 In the Canadian Medical Association Journal, an article about medical fundraising and the impacts it can have on the failing healthcare system in America features comments from Professor Rebecca Dresser: “‘You might say to the extent it [a fundraising website] relieves the burden, it takes pressure off society and people in government to have a more effective healthcare system.’ Dresser suggests it might be more effective to donate that money to a registered charity or a nonprofit group that has a systematic way of distributing funds.”

2012 January 3: The St. Louis Post- Dispatch features comments from Professor Neil Richards in an article about the Parkway School District’s program that requires some students to wear wristwatch-like devices that track activity and sleep patterns: “‘The school district eventually will be engaging in surveillance of kids’ sleep and exercise patterns outside the school day,’ he said. ‘Though physical activity is important and obesity is a problem, the district could not require kids to wear them because I think it would be a violation of their and their families’ Fourth Amendment rights, which is pretty easily unconstitutional.’ And wearing them voluntarily doesn’t eliminate privacy concerns, Richards said. ‘They’ll create a record of medical information about children around the clock,’ he said. ‘Even if it serves laudable public health goals, it’s a fairly Orwellian step for a school district to engage in.’”

2012 January: In an article in Washington Park – The Profile, Professor Gregory Magarian comments on finding the balance between preserved constitutional human rights and public order: “In theory, the government has very limited authority to curb expressive activity in what the law calls ‘public forums’ (parks, open spaces, etc.). The Occupy protests should lead us to take a hard look at how our legal system protects – or fails to protect – meaningful opportunities for political dissent. Only specific, well- documented government concerns about public safety or public order should justify government restrictions on the protests.’”

December 2011

2011 December 28: Professor Peter Joy comments in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on the wrongful death lawsuit against August Busch IV. “The lawsuit brought against August Busch IV for the wrongful death of a woman who died of a drug overdose at his mansion was given new life after a Missouri appeals court ruled that the woman’s parents may join the legal action. Professor Peter Joy said the situation may put pressure on everyone to agree and resolve the issue, lest it end up before a jury.”

2011 December 23: Professor Peter Joy comments in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on the rights of Christopher Coleman, who was convicted of murdering his wife and children, to select a burial plot for his children: “‘His parents do have some rights,’ acknowledged Peter Joy, a law professor at Washington University. ‘They weren’t involved in any way with what happened.’”

2011 December 16: The WIA Report (Women in Academia) mentions Professor Leila Sadat’s International Association of Penal Law Book of the Year Award: “Leila Nadya Sadat, the Henry H. Oberschelp Professor of Law at Washington University in St. Louis, received the 2011 Book of the Year Award from the American National Section of the L’Association Internationale de Droit Penal. Her book is entitled Forging a Convention for Crimes Against Humanity (Cambridge University Press).

2011 December 9: Professor Dan Keating’s comments on the bankruptcy of Lee Enterprises are featured in the St. Louis Business Journal. “’Sometimes the extra time will enable you to make fundamental changes to turn around your business model,’ Keating said. ‘Other times it’s a fundamentally flawed business model doomed to failure and all the time in the world isn’t going to change the ultimate outcome. And, at this point, we don’t know which of those two scenarios we’re talking about.’”

2011 December 7: Professor Gregory Magarian’s comments on Occupy’s loss of public places for protesting appear in an article in the Christian Science Monitor: “‘The privatization of public spaces where people can be seen and heard is a very dangerous shift,’ he says. He points to the origins of the Occupy Wall Street movement in the privately owned Zuccotti Park in New York City: ‘Whoever chose that park understood the importance of that symbol.’”

2011 December 7: Above the Law features comments by Professor Pauline Kim related to Judge Posner’s opinion in the Gonzalez-Servin case and the granting of a forum non conveniens motion. Kim writes, “I have a different issue with Posner’s opinion. Why does he repeatedly refer to forum non conveniens ‘transfers’ to the courts of Argentina or Mexico? I’ve always taught students that grant of a forum non conveniens motion results in dismissal — there is no way to transfer the case (as in a 1404 transfer) to a foreign sovereign, and no way to insure that the litigation will actually proceed in the alternative forum. Am I missing something?”

2011 December 6: Professor Brian Tamanaha is cited on recent law school graduates’ employment rates in an article of Thomson Reuters News & Insight. “The American Bar Association on Saturday approved a comprehensive questionnaire that will ask law schools to provide substantially more detailed information on where, how — and in some cases, if — their recent graduates are employed. Sen. Barbara Boxer of California has accused the association of ‘resorting to half measures’ regarding the gathering of job-placement data, instead of “tackling a major problem head-on.’ Boxer cited research by Brian Tamanaha, a professor at Washington University School of Law in St. Louis, Missouri, concluding that at least 30 law schools sent no more than half of their 2009 graduates into jobs that required a law degree. Yet most law schools reported that nearly all their graduates were employed shortly after graduation. The disconnect is ‘very troubling,’ Boxer wrote.”

2011 December 2: The St. Louis Business Journal features a profile of Professor Hillary Sale: “Hillary Sale gave up private law practice with a big firm in Boston — what’s now WilmerHale, with more than 1,000 lawyers worldwide — to become a law professor. She’s been in the field 14 years, and along the way she’s developed a reputation as a big-name legal scholar in corporate and securities law. Sale, 50, a professor at Washington University, regularly is called on for her expertise in the field by American Public Media’s Marketplace.”

2011 December 1: A CNN/Fortune Magazine article features Professor Hillary Sale’s comments on the rejection of the SEC-Citi deal: “‘Settling is a tradeoff,’ agrees Hillary Sale, a professor at Washington University’s School of Law in St. Louis, ‘but if there is actual wrongdoing and individuals are held accountable, that would be preferable to today’s shareholders having to bail out companies for past misdeeds. . . . This is Judge Rakoff’s attempt to hold the SEC’s feet to the fire, she says, adding that ‘he is looking for individual accountability.’”

November 2011

2011 November 22: An article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on the St. Louis Desegregation program mentions work by Professor Bruce La Pierre: “Hungate’s special master, Washington University law professor D. Bruce La Pierre, worked out the plan under which the suburban districts agreed to accept 15,000 African-American students from the city, along with a much smaller transfer of white county students to magnet schools in the city. The state also had to pay to improve the quality of education for the students left behind in city schools - a part of the program that never worked well.”

2011 November 19: Professor Gregory Magarian’s article “Justice Stevens, Religion and Society” is included in a list of scholarship on speech and religion on the First Amendment Law Prof Blog.

2011 November 18: Professor Robert Kuehn comments in the Baltimore Sun on the conflict between the University of Maryland Law School and Governor Martin O’Malley involving an environmental law case: “Robert R. Kuehn, associate dean of the Washington University School of Law in St. Louis and immediate past president of a national association of legal clinics, called O’Malley’s letter ‘stunning’ and said he was ‘disappointed’ that the governor would use his political position to try to influence the case by getting the law school to drop out.”

2011 November 15: Professor Bruce La Pierre comments on the Affordable Care Act reaching the Supreme Court in an article in the St. Louis Beacon: “Bruce La Pierre, professor at Washington University Law School, predicted in an email that ‘the court will uphold the individual mandate as a valid exercise of the commerce power.’ But he added a warning. ‘The real action is the Medicaid component of the ACA,’ he said. ‘Any decision to limit Congress’ power to attach conditions to the expenditure of national funds would go to the heart of our federal system.’”

2011 November 14: An article in the Los Angeles Times features comments from Professor Daniel Mandelker on using environmental law as a legal tool to combat rivals: “Other states followed California’s lead in drafting state environmental laws. But only New York and Washington extended their laws’ reach to private development, and Washington’s is far less stringent, said Daniel R. Mandelker, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis.”

2011 November 11: Professor Brian Tamanaha comments on the rising issues in legal education and the job market in the National Law Journal: “We should be clear: Law schools are not in crisis. The real crisis is suffered by our recent graduates, who find themselves burdened by mountainous debt, with limited employment opportunities. Nearly 90% of graduates have law school debt. The average debt for the class of 2010 was $92,500 (not including undergraduate debt). To comfortably manage the monthly payment on this debt, a graduate needs to earn $120,000; if she could squeeze expenses, a salary of $86,000 might suffice. Now consider that, according to NALP, only 64 percent of the class of 2010 secured full-time lawyer jobs, with a median salary of $63,000. At least half of the graduates who landed lawyer jobs earned far less ($20,000 less) than the minimum salary required to manage the average debt. And let us not forget the more than one-third of graduates who failed to land full-time lawyer jobs at all. Thousands upon thousands of law graduates have debt far above what their salaries can bear. Meanwhile, law schools are doing fine, thank you.”

2011 November 8: Professor Susan Appleton’s comments on a ballot measure on Mississippi’s unprecedented restrictions on abortion appeared in a National Journal article. “Susan Appleton, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis, said the personhood measure would raise thorny issues for Mississippi lawmakers. State anti-abortion laws almost always target doctors, she noted. But defining embryos as people could subject pregnant women to criminal prosecution if they try to obtain an abortion.”

2011 November 7: Professor Susan Appleton’s complete op-ed on the Personhood movement is featured on metro.us.  

October 2011

2011 October 30: This Week in Military Justice mentions the CAAF Special Session at the law school.

2011 October 27: BND.com features Professor Judy Cates in an article on her running for 5^th District Appellate Court: “Cates, a Democrat, has served as president of the Illinois Trial Lawyers Association and was selected by her peers as a ‘Super Lawyer.’ She also served on the rules committee for the U.S. District Court of Southern Illinois. She is an adjunct professor at Washington University School of Law and St. Louis University School of Law.”

2011 October 24: Professor Brian Tamanaha is mentioned in a Q&A session with Bruce Pardy on Natural Law, Markets, and Ecosystems that runs in The Percolator: “The premise of the rule of law is that government decision-makers are not free to do as they think best because they are bound by generally applicable, abstract rules that bind governments as well as citizens. Brian Tamanaha of Washington University Law School has aptly pointed out that instrumentalism and the rule of law are the two core ideas of the American legal system, but in certain crucial respects they conflict. Although governments today widely claim to believe in the rule of law, their behavior is predominantly instrumentalist in nature.”

2011 October 22: Hound.com runs an article featuring comments from Professor Brian Tamanaha on the increasing difficulty law graduates face in the job search. “In 2009, Brian Tamanaha, a Washington University School of Law professor, stated that more than 50 percent of graduates from at least 30 accredited law schools did not get jobs requiring a law degree. This was concluded from data assembled by U.S. News & World Report.”

2011 October 22: Professor Steven Legomsky is mentioned in an article on stltoday.com about his new position at the St. Louis Immigration Office: “As it happens, Mr. Mayorkas soon will have a resource available to him at USCIS who could prove invaluable: Stephen Legomsky, a professor at Washington University’s School of Law and nationally renowned authority on immigration law and policy. Earlier this month, the university announced that he would take a leave of absence from his academic duties to become chief counsel at USCIS in Washington, D.C.”

2011 October 20: Professor emeritus Merton Bernstein is featured in a USA Today article about the recent increase in social security benefits due to the cost-of-living-adjustment (COLA): “‘The COLA increase is good news, but it doesn’t do the whole trick,’ Bernstein says. ‘It doesn’t cope with the higher out-of-pocket medical cost of seniors and disabled people.’

2011 October 16: Comments from Professor Katherine Goldwasser are featured in a St. Louis Post-Dispatch article about the missing body and murder of a Missouri woman: “‘Charging someone with murder when the body hasn’t been found isn’t impossible, but it isn’t easy.’ She continued on to say, ‘With a body-less murder prosecution you don’t have direct evidence that there’s a person who died. You don’t have evidence of how they did it, or what the person died of. So it’s kind of a daunting task. But it has been done.”

2011 October 14: A Washington Post blog article entitled, “Could Rick Perry dismantle the EPA on his own” features comments from Professor Robert Kuehn stressing that attempts to dissolve the EPA to a state-level authority could create a competition for weakened environmental rules in order to convince factories to choose one state over another. In addition, the state agencies would be overwhelmed by the scope of environmental lawsuits and enforcement.

2011 October 11: An article in the National Law Journal features Professor Brian Tamanaha and a recent post he made on the legal blog Balkinization, stating that “LSAC apparently views its primary loyalty as properly oriented toward law schools – that is – toward protecting its constituent members.” He continues on to say that the committee [LSAC] could “blow the lid off this tomorrow” by verifying reported LSAT scores.

2011 October 7: An article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch features comments from Professor Peter Joy on due process. “Other counties should take note of the federal judge’s order and review their procedures, said Peter Joy, a Washington University law professor. If Bauer could have afforded an attorney, he almost certainly would have been released sooner, Joy said: ‘If anybody had taken a closer look, they would have determined they didn’t have any authority to be holding him.’”

2011 October 6: Research by Professor Brian Tamanaha was featured in a National Law Journal article on Barbara Boxer putting pressure on the ABA over law school reporting: “U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer has re-entered the debate over law school consumer data following a four-month hiatus. She joins other senators who have repeatedly pushed the American Bar Association in recent months to account for questions over whether law schools are providing accurate information about the number of graduates who land legal jobs. In an Oct. 6 letter to ABA President William Robinson III, Boxer expressed concern over the lack of independent oversight of the jobs statistics reported by law schools. She cited a Sept. 28 report by The National Law Journal concerning research by Washington University in St. Louis School of Law professor Brian Tamanaha. He concluded that at least 30 law schools sent 50% or fewer of their 2009 graduates into jobs that required a law degree. However, most law schools reported that nearly all their graduates were employed shortly following graduation. The discrepancy was ‘very troubling,’ Boxer wrote.”

2011 October 4: Professor Stephen H. Legomsky was recently appointed Chief Counsel, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, according to an article in Immigration Profs Blog. A similar article ran in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: “Stephen H. Legomsky, the John S. Lehmann University Professor at the Washington University School of Law, has been appointed Chief Counsel, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, effective October 24, 2011. Steve is an authority on U.S., comparative, and international immigration, refugee, and citizenship law and policy. His book, Immigration and Refugee Law and Policy, has been the required text at 175 law schools since its inception. He has won several awards, including the American Immigration Lawyers Association’s annual award and Washington University’s Arthur Holly Compton Award.”

September 2011

2011 September 29: An article in the Des Moines Register featured comments from Professor Merton Bernstein on partial privatization of Social Security. “Scholars who have studied the Social Security program say the problem is that such private accounts typically offer little or no guarantee that retirement benefits will be available, particularly if they are tied to the stock market during a time of economic downturns. . . . ‘The notion of substituting something so undependable and so variable as private accounts just makes no sense. It ignores recent history,’ said Merton Bernstein, a retired law professor from Washington University in St. Louis, Mo., and a nationally recognized Social Security scholar.

2011 September 28: Merton Bernstein comments on how the Social Security system works in “The Ins and Outs of Tapping Social Security,” featured on Bloomberg.com. When benefits begin, Social Security makes a cost-of-living adjustment based on the percentage increase in the Consumer Price Index. “This is a fairly unique benefit of Social Security,” says Merton Bernstein, professor emeritus at Washington University in St. Louis. “There is a tremendous reluctance among other pension funds to offer full cost-of-living adjustments because it is regarded as a burden on the pension.”

2011 September 26: Brian Tamanaha discusses law school job placements reports in The National Law Journal. “By all accounts, 2010 is the worst of a series of very bad years so far,” said Brian Tamanaha, a professor at Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. “And now, owing to this decision, law schools do not have to say precisely how bad it was. NALP [the National Association for Law Placement] will still ask the question, but it publishes only aggregate data, not data on individual schools.” Tamanaha analyzed data compiled by the advocacy group Law School Transparency and concluded that for the class of 2009, 30 ABA-accredited law schools had 50% or fewer of their graduates in jobs that required a law degree after nine months.

2011 September 22: David Konig comments on Thomas Jefferson’s views on government in an article in Rebel Yell. “I like a little rebellion now and then. It is as necessary as a storm in the atmosphere,” said Konig, quoting from a letter that Jefferson wrote in response to Shay’s Rebellion. However, Jefferson was not an opponent of government, but instead for a government that best serves the concerns and needs of the people, according to Konig. This occasional need for citizenry upheaval was a common theme throughout the evening’s discussion. Konig said Jefferson felt that government should not discourage rebellion too much. It keeps them on their toes.

2011 September 21: Merton Bernstein comments on Social Security issues and politics in an article on Bankrate.com. “The argument against Social Security in the 1990s was ‘You aren’t making enough money on the money you were putting into it. If only you had a chance to invest in the market. ...’ Since then, the market is a mess. I know all kinds of people of modest means with 401(k)s who can’t retire because the value has disappeared. The gloss is off that plan to the extent that there ever was any.”

2011 September 19: Article mentions Leila Sadat lectured at Loyola University on Nazi war criminals, according to JewishJournal.com. Leila Nadya Sadat, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis and director of the Crimes Against Humanity Initiative, said that the Eichmann case set important precedents in the area of international law, enabling courts in one country to try alleged perpetrators of war crimes committed in another country. Sadat said she was a distant relative of former Egyptian president Anwar Sadat. “My father is Muslim, my mother is Jewish, and I was raised as a Christian,” she said. “I’m lucky I was born in the United States, otherwise everyone would be out to get me, one way or the other.”

2011 September 18: Merton Bernstein comments on the validity of Florida Sen. Mark Rubio’s claim that Social Security is unsustainable in a Kansas City InfoZine article. “These are attempts to muster political support by appealing to long-held prejudices to satisfy those who never accepted Social Security,” Bernstein says. “To use them as guides to public policy would undermine our country’s most successful family protection program.”

2011 September 16: Adrienne Davis discusses pet inheritance and trust and estates law on Mother Nature Network. Between 12 and 27 percent of pet owners provide provisions for their pets in their wills, according to the Washington University School of Law. In fact, pet trusts have become so popular that 39 U.S. states now have statutes outlining them. In most cases, these trusts are relatively small—typically in the $30,000 range—but some pampered pets inherit millions of dollars, in addition to property, jewelry and a lifetime of prearranged pampering.

2011 September 14: Marion Crain comments on unions in an article in Human Resource Executive Online. “It’s hard to generalize,” says Marion Crain, law professor at Washington University School of Law in St. Louis. “Most of the state governments are initiating these kinds of moves out of the desire to cut their budgets.” Labor compensation and benefits are some of the “largest [budget] items. It’s the logical place for them to look. It’s totally predictable,” Crain says.

2011 September 9: The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that Adrienne Davis (and two others) were named to the Laumeier Sculpture Park Board of Trustees. Professor Adrienne Davis is renowned for her scholarship and teaching on gender and race relations; theories of justice and reparations; feminist legal theory; and law and popular culture. She has written extensively on the gendered and private law dimensions of American slavery and is the co-editor of the book, Privilege Revealed: How Invisible Preference Undermines America (NYU Press), as well as numerous articles and book chapters.

2011 September 9: Adrienne Davis discusses pet inheritance options on Dog Talk on NPR – Hamptons.

2011 September 1: Maxine Lipeles discusses Ameren’s waste pond in an article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “The government hasn’t required Ameren to do anything,” said Maxine Lipeles, co-director of the Washington University Interdisciplinary Environmental Law Clinic, which represents the Labadie Environmental Organization in opposing a new, 400-acre coal ash landfill at the site. “On the other hand, Ameren has known about it. ... And as far as we know, they haven’t done any testing in the area.”

August 2011

2011 August 24: Hillary Sale is profiled for a feature article in Missouri Lawyers Media – Missouri Lawyers Weekly. Forget the ivory tower. In Professor Hillary Sale’s world, questions are practical, applicable and ultimately affect the bottom line. “Corporate law is about power and relationships—what could be more interesting than that?” says Sale, who is in her second year at Washington University School of Law. She has the no-makeup, all- natural beauty that’s seemingly …”

2011 August 24: Hillary Sale is profiled for a feature article in Missouri Lawyers Media – Missouri Lawyers Weekly. Forget the ivory tower. In Professor Hillary Sale’s world, questions are practical, applicable and ultimately affect the bottom line. “Corporate law is about power and relationships—what could be more interesting than that?” says Sale, who is in her second year at Washington University School of Law. She has the no-makeup, all- natural beauty that’s seemingly …”

2011 August 15: Adrienne Davis comments on pet inheritance in Reuters. “Although pet inheritance in America was recognized in 1923, and despite several recent innovations, the law remains unstable,” said Washington University Law Professor Adrienne Davis. She said trusts must be properly drafted and should name caretakers who are willing to comply with the trust terms. If a final resting place is desired for the pet, lawyers should check that it will accept animals. A similar article ran in the Sydney Morning Herald and the Berkeley-East Bay Humane Society Newsletter.

An article in Reuters on pet inheritance mentions comments from Frances Foster’s law review article. Legal complications stemming from billionaire hotel operator Leona Helmsley’s $12 million bequeathal to her now-deceased Maltese, Trouble, brings to light the pitfalls of leaving your fortune to your pet. Between 12 and 27 percent of pet owners provide for their pets in their wills, according to researchers at Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. But "although pet inheritance in America was recognized in 1923, and despite several recent innovations, the law remains unstable," said Washington University Law Professor Adrienne Davis. Washington University Professor Frances Foster believes legal changes are needed, noting that for many Americans today "their pets, not their human family members, are their nearest and dearest."

2011 August 12: Rebecca Dresser was appointed to the NIH Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee, according to an article in Missouri Lawyers Weekly. Rebecca Dresser, a Washington University in St. Louis professor of ethics in medicine and a law professor, was appointed to the Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee of the National Institutes of Health. The committee’s primary directives are to consider the current state of knowledge and technology regarding recombinant DNA and then to advise the NIH on how such matters can affect safety guidelines. RAC members are also responsible for considering the ethical, legal and societal risks and implications of ongoing research. Dresser holds a joint appointment at the School of Law and School of Medicine.

2011 August 9: Laura Rosenbury discusses the lack of regulation for summer camp in the Huffington Post. It is shockingly easy for individuals to go into business and exploit families simply by applying a veneer of professionalism, not just in the world of summer camps but also in the world of competitive children’s after school activities. Parents invest a great deal of money in their children’s participation, and many teachers, coaches, and camp owners are there with their hands out, ready to accept whatever people can give. Legal scholars, like Laura Rosenbury of Washington University in St. Louis School of Law, have written about how unregulated the space between school and family life is, using examples like the Boys Scouts. Competitive children’s activities—and summer camps—certainly occupy this unregulated space as well, with potentially life- threatening consequences.
2011 August 7: Maxine Lipeles discusses a hog farm’s environmental impact in an article on KansasCity (Star).com. Supporters of the student program said it was worthy and would have been effective in determining whether an odor problem still existed at Premium Standard operations. “DNR has funding challenges that affect a combination of manpower and timing,” said Maxine Lipeles, co-director of an environmental law clinic at Washington University who has advised citizen groups fighting the hog operations. “The odors are at night when people are home. The school is close by. It made sense to work with Truman State.”

2011 August 4: Hillary Sale is mentioned in an article on political spending and a petition to the SEC in The Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation. A group of ten corporate and securities law experts submitted yesterday a rulemaking petition (the “Petition”) to the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Petition urges the Commission to develop rules to require public companies to disclose to shareholders the use of corporate resources for political activities. The Committee on Disclosure of Corporate Political Spending, which we co-chair, is composed of ten academics whose teaching and research focus on corporate and securities law. In addition to the two of us, the members of the Committee include Bernard Black (Northwestern), John Coffee (Columbia), James Cox (Duke), Ronald Gilson (Stanford and Columbia), Jeffrey Gordon (Columbia), Henry Hansmann (Yale), Donald Langevoort (Georgetown), and Hillary Sale (Washington University in St. Louis).

2011 August 4: Peggie Smith discusses the plight of domestic workers in EHS Today. Domestic workers may face an increased risk of working in unsafe, abusive, or otherwise exploitative conditions and the United States must take steps to protect these workers. “Domestic workers are routinely subjected to harsh working conditions, including sexual harassment and other forms of physical abuse, exposure to health and safety hazards, inadequate accommodations for live-in work and excessive working hours,” said Peggie Smith, JD, an employment law expert and professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis. “Despite its importance, domestic work is poorly paid and offers workers few if any benefits, such as access to health care or maternity leave.”

July 2011 "

2011 July 27: Peter H. Ruger is mentioned in the Webster-Kirkwood Times as being named a Life Member of the National Association of College and University Attorneys (NACUA) during its 51st annual Conference in San Francisco.

2011 July 18: Merton Bernstein comments on the current state of Social Security in “Segment on Social Security” on KRLD Dallas radio station.

2011 July 16: Brian Tamanaha discusses law school employment prospects in The New York Times—Business Day. “The broken economic model Matasar describes appears to be his own template,” wrote Brian Z. Tamanaha, a professor at Washington University Law School in St. Louis, in a blog posting about Mr. Matasar last year. “Are his increasingly vocal criticisms of legal academia an unspoken mea culpa?”

2011 July 12: Ronald Levin discusses the debt ceiling in an article on PolitiFact.com. Ronald M. Levin, a professor at the Washington University School of Law, said, “I interpret the president to be saying, ‘Stopping Social Security checks would be hugely costly, but other curtailments would also be hugely costly. ... Something will have to give, and I cannot responsibly guarantee that it won’t be Social Security.’ That is not quite what he said, but to my mind it’s close.”

2011 July 8: Merton Bernstein comments on AARP’s statements on Social Security in an article entitled “Social Security Group Skirmishes with AARP” in the Mehlville-OakvillePatch. Merton C. Bernstein, a law professor at Washington University, said in a statement that the AARP’s stance on the issue doesn’t change “the fierce and solid public support for an unimpaired Social Security program for current retirees, near-term retirees and all future retirees —the major victims of possible benefit reductions.” “Whatever stance AARP has taken, it does not provide ‘cover’ for the Obama Administration to agree to cut benefits now, soon or in the future,” said Bernstein, who serves as the Walter D. Coles Professor Emeritus at Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. “If AARP does not vigorously and clearly repudiate what some see as willingness to accept benefit cuts, AARP will be the loser.”

2011 July 5: Peter Joy comments on the Casey Anthony case in an article in The Telegraph. The Anthony verdict garnered the most reader responses of any story the Telegraph ever has posted on Facebook. That doesn’t surprise law professor Peter Joy, who teaches criminal justice at Washington University School of Law in St. Louis. The passionate reactions of readers on the Telegraph Facebook page is to be expected from a televised trial, Joy said. “It’s hard for me to remember a case in recent memory that has gotten this much media attention and this much coverage from start to finish,” Joy said.

2011 July 5: Katherine Goldwasser comments on the Casey Anthony case in an article in The Telegraph. While some Telegraph readers expressed vehement reactions to the jurors themselves, former federal prosecutor and Washington University law Kathy Goldwasser said the jury found Anthony “not guilty,” not “innocent.” Goldwasser said the jury had to base the decision on the case the prosecution presented. “There’s sort of a gut reaction some people may have which is, ‘Oh my God, (Anthony)’s a terrible person,’” said Goldwasser, who teaches trial practice and criminal procedure. “She may be, but that doesn’t mean that the prosecution proved her guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of murdering her daughter. People can look at what may seem like technicalities and say the law is crazy, the justice system doesn’t work. But boy, if I were charged with a crime, that’s how I would like it to be. I don’t want it to be easy to convict people of criminal conduct; that’s definitely the way our system is set up.”

2011 July 1: Peter Joy and Robert Kuehn comment on the importance of clinical education in a letter to the editor in ABA Journal. “Lawyer ethics rules and the ideals of the profession have long recognized the responsibility to make legal services available to those unable to pay. This extends to not interfering with an opposing party’s access to services. Indeed, a lawyer acting with business and political leaders to induce a lawyer to drop his client also undermines the fair administration of justice, which requires the availability of competent lawyers for anyone with a legal dispute. As teachers of professional responsibility, the shelter story illustrates to us why it is necessary for the ABA to focus more attention on educating law students and lawyers about the need to respect the profession’s ideals and history about access to representation. This would be a concrete step toward ensuring that all lawyers, even those working for the haves against the have-nots, will set a good example about how our commitment to justice should work in this country.”

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• News Highlights Report (October 2009 - March 2010) [view PDF]
• Notable Quotes (August 2009-June 2010) [view]
• University Communications [view 

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