Legal Writing and Research Commons^™

Cardozo Law News Brief: January 24, 2025, Benjamin N. Cardozo School Of Law

Cardozo Law News Brief 2025

Highlights from the January 24, 2025 Cardozo Law News Brief include:

• Professor Saurabh Vishnubhakat spoke to The Guardian and ABC News about the Trump administration’s approach to delaying enforcement of the TikTok ban.

• Professor Peter Markowitz published an op-ed in the New York Daily News critiquing Mayor Adams' shifting stance on NYC sanctuary city laws.

• Adjunct Professor Gary Galperin was quoted in Gothamist discussing public perception and legal reasoning surrounding Daniel Penny’s acquittal.

Cardozo Law News Brief: January 17, 2025, Benjamin N. Cardozo School Of Law

Cardozo Law News Brief 2025

Highlights from the January 17, 2025 Cardozo Law News Brief include:

• Professor Saurabh Vishnubhakat spoke to Law360, USA Today, The Verge, Politico, and ABC News about legal challenges surrounding the U.S. TikTok ban.

• Professor David Rudenstine published an op-ed in The Hill urging the Supreme Court to adopt a formal code of ethics.

• Professor Matthew Wansley was quoted in The Washington Post on privacy concerns related to Elon Musk's involvement in a Cybertruck explosion investigation.

• Assistant Professor Emmanuel Hiram Arnaud’s article “Colonizing by Contract” was published in the Columbia Law Review.

Cardozo Law News Brief: January 3, 2025, Benjamin N. Cardozo School Of Law

Cardozo Law News Brief 2025

Highlights from the January 3, 2025 Cardozo Law News Brief include:

• Professor Jessica Roth spoke to The New York Times about the legal basis for Luigi Mangione facing both federal and state murder charges.

• Professor Betsy Ginsberg discussed jail conditions in Gothamist, emphasizing the need for systemic reform.

• Adjunct Professor Gary Galperin explained to Gothamist how legal strategy and timing are determined when dual prosecutions occur.

• Professor Jocelyn Getgen Kestenbaum appeared on The FoRB Podcast with Visiting Professor Dmytro Vovk to discuss global responses to the 2014 Yazidi genocide.

Through A Glass Darkly: How Securities Disclosures Give A Distorted View Of The Economy, Gerald F. Davis

Seattle University Law Review

Our understanding of the American economy often relies on stylized facts derived from mandatory disclosures by listed corporations. Data vendors like Standard & Poor’s vacuum up 10Ks and proxy statements into databases, and scholars distill these into tentative maps. This may have been adequate for a postwar economy centered on asset-heavy manufacturers, but it is increasingly out of step with an information-based economy. Companies listed on the stock market are fewer in number and less representative than they were, light in tangible assets and people, and heavy on IP. Basic facts such as what industry they are in are increasingly …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Corporate Scenarios: Drawing Lessons From History, Madison Condon

Seattle University Law Review

As corporations are increasingly pressed to reveal information about their exposure to climate-related risks, they are often asked to undertake and disclose the outcome of “scenario analysis.” In this exercise, corporations, including financial institutions, examine how their business would fare under different pathways the future may take. One oft-used scenario, for example, is the International Energy Agency’s “Net-Zero by 2050: A Roadmap for the Energy Sector.” This Essay presents a history of the use of scenarios as a corporate planning tool, particularly in the oil industry, arguing that it is key for understanding our present moment and the role of …

Shareholder Expression In A Time Of Heightened Political Tension, Aaron A. Dhir

Seattle University Law Review

In this article, I provide context for my forthcoming research project on shareholder proposals and racial equity audits. Since the murder of George Floyd in May of 2020, progressive shareholder actors have increasingly used the proposal mechanism to advance diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice-related goals. These proposals have frequently gone beyond requesting the usual corporate fare of diversity trainings, intersectionality workshops, affinity groups, etc. Instead, a more ambitious type of proposal asks corporate America to conduct racial equity audits, defined as “an independent, objective and holistic analysis of a company’s policies, practices, products, services and efforts to combat systemic racism …

Corporate Governance Speech, Sarah C. Haan

Seattle University Law Review

The State has always regulated the intra-firm communications that make corporate governance possible, most commonly by mandating disclosures of information by a corporation to its shareholders. Some such laws are labeled “securities regulation,” but securities regulation is a broad category that extends to speech by actors who are outside the corporate enterprise as well. Also, the conventional securities regulation category does not capture all such laws; other examples, including informationforcing mandates, can be found in state corporate law. This Article uses the term “corporate governance speech” to describe the communications among shareholders, directors, and officers through which corporate governance is …

Dark Accounting Matter, Colleen Honigsberg

Seattle University Law Review

Physicists calculate that approximately 85% of the matter in the universe is composed of “dark matter” that “does not absorb, reflect, or emit electromagnetic radiation and is therefore difficult to detect.” The S&P 500 currently trades at a price-to-book value of 4.2, suggesting that book value accounts for less than 20% of the S&P 500’s market value. The remaining 80% appears nowhere in these firms’ balance sheets—it is invisible to contemporary accounting techniques and constitutes “dark accounting matter.”

Some “dark accounting matter” is composed of factors commonly described as components of “ESG.” Human capital, for example, is an intangible asset …

The Employees’ Dilemma: Balancing Internal Reporting, Whistleblowing, And Insider Trading Risks, Geeyoung Min

Seattle University Law Review

The Essay examines how recent developments in insider trading regulations and whistleblower reward programs can lead to unintended and counterproductive results of discouraging employees from using internal reporting channels within corporate compliance programs. While the presence of a robust and well-functioning corporate compliance program is a critical factor both in mitigating the level of public enforcement actions against companies and in protecting corporate managers from liability in private litigation, these programs often provide little incentive for employees to report potential misconduct internally.

Corporate compliance programs are designed to promote the upward information flow within the company, which is essential for …

How The Antidiscrimination Law Of Commercial Transactions Really Works, Helen Norton

Seattle University Law Review

A variety of businesses now cite 303 Creative when seeking First Amendment protection for their refusal to serve certain customers based on those customers’ protected class status. How this litigation will play out remains to be seen. But future courts need not, and should not, repeat the 303 Creative Court’s misunderstanding of how the antidiscrimination law of commercial transactions actually works.

Part I of this Essay explains the Court’s longstanding understanding of the antidiscrimination law of commercial transactions, and then describes the Court’s failure to engage with this precedent in 303 Creative. Part II then identifies the 303 Creative decision’s …

Why Academic Law Librarians Quit: Results Of The Law Librarian Exit Survey, Laura J. Ax-Fultz

Faculty Scholarly Works

The pandemic exposed the struggles of workers everywhere. The complexity of handling family, work, illness, and a host of other issues led many to reconsider their employment. The phrase “The Great Resignation” summed up the zeitgeist of the early pandemic. Concurrently, open positions for academic law librarians were increasing. I sought to unravel the apparent surge in open positions by surveying academic law librarians to discover why they resigned from their positions or considered leaving them during the period of January 2020 through June 2023.

These findings were evaluated within the context of a high volume of job postings in …

Effectiveness Of Research Plans: A Case Study, Thomas "Tj" Striepe, Savanna L. Nolan

Faculty Datasets

This article presents a case study examining whether the creation and use of research plans enhance the effectiveness of legal research by law students. Despite their emphasized role in legal research pedagogy, research plans are often underutilized by students in their summer jobs, clinical work, and post-graduate employment. Through a three-part study, the authors surveyed upper-level students about their use and impressions of research plans, analyzed performance outcomes from a research simulation involving a legal hypothetical, and evaluated five years of assessment data from a 1L Legal Research course. While the experimental study did not yield statistically significant results, students …

Flexibility And Resilience Are Essential Legal Skills, Margie Alsbrook

Articles

The legal profession is facing an era of change driven by technological advancements, environmental crises, shifting client expectations, and evolving societal norms. This article argues that flexibility and resilience are not just positive personality traits but essential legal skills that should be intentionally cultivated in law school curricula. By integrating adaptability into legal education—through emphasizing the evolving nature of law, incorporating interdisciplinary approaches, reshaping assessments, and fostering collaborative learning—law schools can better equip students to navigate an unpredictable future. Encouraging law students to embrace flexibility and resilience as a professional skill will not only enhance their long-term success but also …

Green Dividends: A Case Study In Green Dividends And The Conditions For Private Ordering Solutions, Anne M. Tucker

Seattle University Law Review

This Essay introduces a novel private ordering solution to facilitate corporate investments in pro-social and environmental initiatives: Green dividends. Green dividends are an optional increase in shareholder dividends that are returned to the company to be reinvested in environmental initiatives or kept by a shareholder.

Green dividends pose an alternative to the current gridlocked debate that corporations can’t, won’t, shouldn’t, and shouldn’t even try to act in pro-social or environmental ways. Turning the common refrains on their head converts each narrative into an element for a successful private ordering solution: authority, accountability, shareholder buy-in, and government- backed enforcement. With Green …

Does Climate Disclosure Work To Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions? Emerging Evidence Suggests Cautious Optimism, Cynthia A. Williams

Seattle University Law Review

Significant regulatory resources have been spent developing global, voluntary climate and sustainability disclosure standards, such as the TCFD, TNRD, and ISSB’s Sustainability and Climate Disclosure standards, or domestically required disclosures, such as in the EU and in the U.S. Thus, it is important to evaluate whether this disclosure, particularly voluntary, qualitative disclosure, will have the power to shift the allocation of capital, will have a significant effect on the management of climate risk within firms, and ultimately will reduce climate change risk and biodiversity loss.

In this Article, several interrelated questions will be discussed. First, what does the empirical evidence …

Social Justice, Practical Lawyering, And The Elephant In Solitary Confinement: Why Animal Law Belongs In The Legal Writing Classroom, Conley Wouters

Animal Law Review

Animal law has grown exponentially since its genesis in the late 1970s. It is the subject of survey courses, seminars, clinics, and law reviews. But animal law per se has not made its way into the legal writing discipline, and its absence creates missed opportunities for legal writing instructors to improve our teaching and help our students develop critical lawyering skills. This Article argues that we should seize these opportunities and incorporate animal law into legal writing classes.

The Article begins by summarizing the argument and offering a gen-eral description of how legal writing professors and their students stand to …

Technology Competency Road Map In Rhode Island: Reforming Professional Rules And Continuing Legal Education With Modern Educational Frameworks And Instructional Design Principles To Protect Clients, Myrta L. Ventura

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Grading Legal Research, Julie Tedjeske Crane

Faculty Scholarship

Law school grading practices often conflict with legal research instruction goals. Small class sizes render norm-referenced (curved) grading unreliable, and the emphasis on ranking students detracts from learning essential skills. Drawing on scholarship on legal education and other disciplines, this article examines several grading approaches that may better serve students and instructors, including criteria-referenced, specification-based, and equitable grading systems. It offers practical suggestions for improving grading practices, such as working with colleagues on assessment design, being intentional about grading formative work, and using anonymous grading. The article concludes with a call for more discussion about grading in legal research courses.

Best Practices For Creating Hypotheticals For Legal Research And Writing, Olivia Smith Schlink, Aimee Self-Pittman, Theresa Tarves, Melissa Strickland

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Integrating Academic Success, Krishnee Coley, Laura A. Webb

Law Faculty Publications

Over the past few years, Richmond Law has taken several intentional steps to address one of ASP’s perennial challenges: the students who most need help may not be the ones who find their way to optional ASP sessions. By integrating academic success into orientation programs and collaborating with doctrinal professors, we’ve succeeded in reaching all our 1L students despite the lack of a mandatory 1L ASP course.

For The Reasons Elucidated Above: Lessons From Judge Selya On Law, Writing, And Life, Stefanie D. Fischer, Colten H. Erickson

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Law Library Blog (January 2025): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

Online Inclusivity: Mission And Best Practice, Colin P. Marks, Zoe Niesel

Faculty Works

This essay examines the role of inclusivity as a foundational principle in online legal education, arguing that it is essential to fulfilling institutional missions, aligning with established pedagogical best practices, and enhancing the overall learning experience. Drawing on the development of a fully online J.D. program, the piece outlines how inclusivity can be embedded at both the institutional and classroom levels. It highlights strategies for fostering a sense of community among geographically dispersed students, including integrating online learners into broader academic and co-curricular activities, designing courses that balance synchronous and asynchronous instruction, and implementing consistent instructional standards. The essay further …

Generative Ai And Finding The Law, Paul D. Callister

Faculty Works

Legal information science requires, among other things, principles and theories. The article states six principles or considerations that any discussion of generative AI large language models and their role in finding the law must include. The article concludes that law librarianship will increasingly become legal information science and require new paradigms. In addition to the six principles, the article applies ecological holistic media theory to understand the relationship of the legal community’s cognitive authority, institutions, techné (technology, medium and method), geopolitical factors, and the past and future to understand the changes in this information milieu. The article also explains generative …

Just Research And Citation, Amanda Levendowski

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Contemporary research and citation practices are often unjust. Data cartels like Westlaw and Lexis have parent companies that prioritize profits in ways that threaten immigrants. Even before the Dobbs decision, search engines could be deployed to weaponize data against pregnant people seeking reproductive care. Women and people of color have been legal scholars for more than a century but, as many scholars have observed, colleagues consistently under-cite, mis-cite or appropriate those scholars’ work with minimal recourse. Citation materials are often inaccessible to disabled people, poor people, or the public due to poor design, paywalls, or unpreserved content that falls prey …

The Systematic Devaluation Of Legal Scholarship In Criminology And Criminal Justice, Henry F. Fradella

Touro Law Review

Certain bibliometrics have become important indicators of scholarly impact despite their many weaknesses. This Article presents data demonstrating the shortcomings of using citation counts and journal impact factors for law-based scholarship. Moreover, the Article argues that reliance on these flawed metrics is just one example of how scholars in criminology and criminal justice (“CCJ”) systematically devalue legal scholarship.

The Article begins by offering quotations from social scientists that provide insights into the negative ways they view legal scholars and their work. It also quotes from interviews conducted with CCJ scholars who hold a law degree and either earned or are …

Getting The Reader To Say “Yes”: Applying Negotiation Principles From The Books Getting To Yes And Getting Past No To Achieve Effective And Persuasive Legal Writing, Patricia G. Montana

Faculty Publications

This Article explores the relationship between the strategies of principled negotiation and effective persuasive legal writing as articulated in the best-selling books, Getting to Yes and Getting Past No. Though there is substantial scholarship advocating adding a negotiation component to legal writing instruction, there is little scholarship addressing how to apply the concepts of principled negotiation to persuasive writing itself. In this Article, the Author explains the foundational concepts of principled negotiation and then shows how they relate and apply to drafting an effective piece of persuasive legal writing. Looking at written advocacy through a negotiation lens reinforces good …

Ai Lawyering Skills Trainers: Transforming Legal Education With Generative Ai, Alexandria Serra

Journal of Law, Technology, & the Internet

The integration of generative AI (GenAI) tools in legal education is not just an innovation—it's a transformative shift redefying how law students acquire and refine advocacy skills. This article examines AI’s critical role in modernizing legal education, emphasizing its potential to offer personalized, one-on-one coaching that enhances student learning and engagement. As AI reshapes the legal profession, law schools must evolve to prepare students for an AI-driven future.

Serving as a practical guide, this article provides a step-by-step framework for educators and institutions to develop AI tools that simulate real-world courtroom scenarios and provide continuous, personalized feedback. It also highlights …

The Role Of Tradition In Classical And Contemporary Argument, Laura A. Webb

Law Faculty Publications

Integrating tradition in legal arguments remains an effective persuasive strategy, serving as a source of legitimacy and appeal, fostering the establishment of a shared identity between the speaker and the audience, and cultivating a sense of belonging to a distinct group with defined notions of its identity. This chapter examines the strategic utilization of the concept of tradition in forensic rhetoric. It investigates how communicators shape and influence discourse within forensic settings by leveraging enduring cultural norms, purported intentions and beliefs of esteemed historical figures, and narratives concerning a people's historical trajectory. By examining cases from the popular courts of …