James Cooperman (left), executive vice president, business and legal affairs, Wind-up Entertainment, Inc., and Michael Hausman, Michael Hausman Artist Management, Inc., spoke at Web Commerce and Development for Unsigned Artists.

THE MUSIC INDUSTRY & THE WEB “Web Commerce and Development for Unsigned Artists,” a panel of music industry experts, discussed the use of the Web in finding new streams of revenue for developing musical artists. For the third year in a row, the Grammy Foundation®, in partnership with Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal, The New York Chapter of The Recording Academy, and the ABA Forum on Entertainment and Sports Industries, presented programming on campus that examines and debates the most compelling issues facing the music industry.

A panel for students interested in intellectual property careers freatured (from left) Barbara Kolsun ’82, senior vice president and general counsel, Seven for All Mankind; Vejay Lalla ’00, director of legal and business affairs, Lifetime Entertainment Services; William Jelinek ’93, associate counsel, The Estée Lauder Companies, Inc.; Alan Barson ’90, principal, The Law Office of Alan D. Barson, and vice chairman, NYSBA Entertainment, Arts and Sports Law Section; and Jennifer Romano, attorney, NBC Universal, and chair, NYSBA, Young Entertainment Lawyers Committee.

African Women’s Rights Advocate Receives Peace Award

International Advocate for Peace Award-winner Betty Murungi with Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution editors David Evenhuis ’06 (left), and Dustin Adam Stein ’06.

As news of the first woman to be elected an African head of state spread across the airwaves in early November, students of the Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution presented Betty Kaari Murungi, a lawyer and leading figure of Africa’s women’s rights movement, with the 2005 International Advocate for Peace Award. She accepted it “on behalf of the thousands and thousands of women with whom I have worked over the decades … whose courage and conviction allowed me to collaborate in the work for justice and a sense of peace in their lives,” she said. Ms. Murungi’s speech was the keynote address for the conference International Mediation in Times of Conflict: Lessons from Public and Private Dispute Resolution.

Against the historic and emotional backdrop of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s victory in Liberia and Rosa Parks’s death in the United States, Ms. Murungi spoke of growing up on the slopes of Mt. Kenya and the influential role her grandmother played as a respected community mediator. Ms. Murungi said, “She knew and practiced human rights way back in the ’40s and ’50s. She gave voice to young girls and women by offering shelter, food, and counsel.” She credited her grandmother with introducing her to the importance and necessity of conflict negotiation.

Ms. Murungi explained that African women’s lives are shaped by “colonialism, neo-colonialism, imperialism, Christianization, Islamization, globalization, and militarism,” and yet they remain custodians of the old and trusted methods of building peace within communities. She said, “There are many such women all over the world to whom this art of resolving and transforming conflicts comes naturally. They represent the power that women have within their own communities that somehow fails to translate into political power within the formal structures that have evolved such as the United Nations or the African Union.”

Ms. Murungi spoke of the organization she directs, the Urgent Action Fund–Africa, which promotes the rights of women and girls in three main areas: rapid-response grant making, peace building, and transnational justice. The organization undertakes collaborative projects with women and organizations in conflict and postconflict situations.

Because political and security structures are, as Ms. Murungi said, “exclusive male clubs,” African women have resorted to innovative strategies to get their voices heard. She explained how women in Liberia refused to attend church and stayed away from their homes for weeks in order to win a place at the negotiating table during their civil war. Because they found this behavior so disturbing, the men relented and finally invited them to participate. “This was an unprecedented achievement, as an indigenous women’s group never before attended negotiations of this kind in Liberia,” she said.

Ms. Murungi called on the audience to stay vigilant as situations of extreme conflict continue in Western Sudan’s Darfur region, the Congo, Ivory Coast, and Northern Uganda, noting also that the “war on terror” has fueled religious and cultural fundamentalism that is producing repressive antiterror legislation that undermines human rights and sets back progress for women.

In ending, she urged Cardozo students as young advocates to continue on their paths, hold onto their dreams, and always remain open to new ideas, for this is how the law remains committed to the principle of growth.

Series Showcases Stories of the Holocaust

Actress Suzanne Toren in Lea Fridman’s play w/ Hole in the Heart.

The Cardozo Program in Holocaust and Human Rights Studies introduced Stories and the Holocaust: Challenges to the Artistic Imagination, a four-part series of performances and discussions scheduled throughout the academic year that illustrate events connected to the Holocaust and address the limits of artistic freedom in representing Holocaust accounts.

The first event featured Bernhard Schlink, author and Cardozo visiting professor, who read from his acclaimed novel The Reader, about a young contemporary German who must confront his country’s Nazi past. During a roundtable discussion, Clayton Koelb, chair of the department of Germanic languages at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, said the novel raises the question of how to put a human face on evil. Cardozo Professors Richard Weisberg and Julie Suk and Visiting Professor Uriel Procaccia also offered their perspectives on the novel.

SEXUAL SLAVERY Sulia Chan of the Chinese Alliance for Memorial & Justice illustrated her discussion of WWII Korean comfort women at Sexual Slavery: New Approaches to an Old Problem. The symposium, sponsored by the Women’s Law Journal and the Program in Holocaust and Human Rights Studies, addressed the current rise of the sexual slavery trade and offered ways to combat the problem on the national and global level.

Later in the semester, the new play w/ Hole in the Heart, a powerful family story of Holocaust survival, was performed. Written by Lea Wernick Fridman, a professor at Kingsborough Community College, the play focuses on how the daughter of a Holocaust victim deals with her mother’s incomplete descriptions of the past by attempting to fill in the holes in her mother’s stories and reconstruct history. During a discussion moderated by Professor Weisberg, Lillian Kremer, the university distinguished professor emerita at Kansas State University, said the play shows how difficult it is to capture the past as it really was. Professor Schlink said the play shows how the Holocaust’s effects are felt by the second generation and that he’d like to see it performed in Germany.

Hate Speech Regulation Examined at Floersheimer Center Conference

Lord Bhikhu Parekh of the English House of Lords at A Comparative Examination of Hate Speech Protection

Constitutional experts from Europe, Israel, Canada, and the United States gathered to discuss the legal controversies surrounding the regulation of hate speech at A Comparative Examination of Hate Speech Protection, sponsored by the Floersheimer Center for Constitutional Democracy.

Different countries approach the issue in different ways; the goal of the conference was to better understand the regulation of hate speech in a comparative perspective. In the United States the courts have generally looked unfavorably on regulating hate speech. By contrast, restrictions on hate speech are accepted in other parts of the world.

Bhikhu Parekh, a member of the English House of Lords, gave a keynote address titled “Is There a Case for Limiting Hate Speech?” Calling himself an “oddity” in the gathering because he is not a lawyer, Parekh defined what hate speech is, discussed what is wrong with it, and spoke about whether the law is the best way to deal with it.

Parekh said that 148 countries regulate hate speech and that he supported hate speech regulation in the United Kingdom. “Free speech is a great value, but it’s not the only value,” Parekh said. Even in the United States, some forms of communication, such as child pornography, are now subjected to restrictions, and, according to Parekh, in certain societies hate speech needs stronger regulations. “Let us not judge all societies in terms of a single model,” Parekh said.

As part of a larger project on the study of hate-speech regulation, a follow-up meeting will be held this spring at Central European University in Budapest, where participants will address, among other topics, the challenges presented by hate speech on the Internet.

Prominent First Amendment Scholar Discusses Recent Book

Prof. Geoffrey Stone

Geoffrey Stone, one of the nation’s leading First Amendment scholars, participated in a lively discussion about his most recent book, Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime from The Sedition Act of 1798 to The War on Terrorism. The book, called by Prof. Michael Herz “a classic effort to study the errors of history so as not to repeat them,” examines how free speech protections have been diluted in America during times of war.

According to Stone, speech enjoys its special legal status because it is the means through which we make decisions in our society. When speech is restricted, the ability to make wise decisions is lost. “I think speech is valuable because it does have power,” he said. “That’s why we need to protect it, but it’s also why we need to fear it.” Nonetheless, Stone said, the government consistently overreacts to apparently dangerous speech during wartime.

Stone, the Harry Kalven, Jr. Distinguished Service Professor of Law at the University of Chicago, responded to the comments of Dean Rudenstine and Professors Herz and Richard Weisberg, and joked that he wished he had the benefit of their remarks before his book was published.

Cardozo professors who clerked for Supreme Court Justices— (from left) Monroe Price, Marci Hamilton, Richard Bierschbach, and Michael Herz—discussed their experiences at “Inside the Supreme Court.” The panel was part of Conversations on the Constitution, a series that addresses current Supreme Court cases and issues, and is sponsored by the Floersheimer Center.

Corporate Election Reform Is Bauer Lecture Topic

Prof. Lucian Bebchuck

Lucian Bebchuk, a professor of law, economics, and finance at Harvard Law School, shared his ideas on reforming corporate elections at Cardozo’s annual Uriel and Caroline Bauer Memorial Lecture.

Professor Bebchuk, the first corporate law scholar to give the Bauer lecture, explained the importance of corporate elections, saying that directors make critical decisions, such as selecting and/or firing the CEO and delegating day-to-day decisions to the CEO. Directors need to have the right incentives. “Independence is beneficial, but independence is inefficient,” he said, in determining who will make a good director. Noting that at present shareholders do not have the power to change the entire board, he argued that to increase shareholder power they should have the ability to replace all of the directors in one up-or-down vote. “We need to have some mechanism for accountability,” Bebchuk said. He also proposed holding more meaningful elections every two or three years instead of every year.

Who is Judge Alito?

As the debates and Senate hearings on Judge Samuel Alito’s nomination to the US Supreme Court were ongoing, the Cardozo Democrats and the NYU Democrats held a panel in the Jacob Burns Moot Court Room to discuss “Who is Judge Alito?” The panelists were Mark Tushnet, Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Constitutional Law, Georgetown University Law Center (who spent three weeks at Cardozo during the fall); Prof. Michael Herz, a former clerk to Justice Byron White; Prof. Ed Zelinsky, Alito’s classmate at Yale; and Kate Pringle, a partner at Kriedman Kaplan Seiler & Adelman LLP and former law clerk to Judge Alito. Adam Liptak, national legal reporter for The New York Times, was the moderator.

The panelists all had high praise for Alito’s ability and integrity, but were divided on the substance of his judicial decisions. The discussion also delved into the standards that the Senate should apply in exercising its constitutional authority to “advise and consent” on the appointment of US Supreme Court justices. Pringle, who received some attention in the press as a liberal Democrat who strongly supported the appointment, suggested that the Senate and the citizenry have the right to demand smart people who respect the Court and different points of view on it. Zelinsky stressed that it was important to look at the whole candidate and not to dissect individual decisions.

Insider Discusses Iraqi Constitution

Cardozo students were treated to a rare insider’s view when Iraq’s deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, Feisal Amin al-Istrabadi, spoke about the writing of the Iraqi constitution that was approved in a referendum in October 2005. He was one of the principal drafters of the Interim Constitution and also of the Bill of Fundamental Rights of the Interim Constitution.

Istrabadi described the hope and excitement his countrymen have because “politics are going on in Iraq for the first time in 35 years.” He said that the National Assembly election in January 2005 marked “the first time in our history when we didn’t know who was going to win the election before we voted.”

He did say that the constitution is not as liberal as he would have hoped, but stressed that the process was important: “Giving life to constitutionally defined political institutions is far more important to the course of Iraq’s immediate future.” He compared writing the constitution to horse trading, explaining that when the drafting process broke down, draftees added a provision to gain the participation of Sunni Arabs. The Parliament, elected in December with wide Sunni participation, can propose a new package of amendments, which may represent Sunni interests more favorably.

He noted that critics, notably The New York Times, have said the constitution didn’t offer adequate protection for women and minorities. He argued, “There is a clearly expressed equality before the law in that document.” Later he applauded the Iraqi political progress that took the country from a brutal tyranny to an elected government and noted that 31 percent of the National Assembly members are women, whereas in the United States only 14 percent of the members of the House and Senate are women.

Other especially contentious issues that surfaced during the drafting process included federalism and how to determine control of natural resources, applicability of federal laws to different regions, international treaties, representation in foreign capitals—for example, can a Kurdish leader have a regional office in California?—and how to work religion into the legal life of the country. The constitution now states, he said, that Islam is a source of legislation, but not the only source.

Despite Iraq’s varied ethnic concerns and complicated political ambitions, he thinks federalism will work best and said it is the “only key to the reunification of the country.” He compared the constitution’s federalist arrangement to systems such as those in the United Kingdom and Spain, where Scotland and the Basque regions, respectively, are under self-rule.

He also provided a snapshot of Iraq before the United States invaded in March 2003. “There was one Iraq legally, yes, but de facto there were two or three.” In Kurdistan there were two states, he said, and “they shared a common parliament but had their own prime ministers, were under international protection, had a healthy economic and cultural life, and used Iraq’s old currency for their currency. Baghdad, under the control of Saddam Hussein, had its own court of causation, used a different currency, and suffered a shrinking economy, primarily because of international sanctions. The country was in fact dissolved.”

He ended by saying he looks forward to the day when the United States can leave Iraq a secure and safe place and the two countries can enjoy friendly relations and healthy trade. “Rome was not built in a day. It will take at least a generation to rebuild Iraq.”

JUDGE STEIN Judge Sidney Stein of the US District Court for the Southern District of NY addressed LL.M. students on the future of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines. His visit was sponsored by the Office of Graduate and International Programs and the Graduate Law Society.

MEXICAN VISITORS Early in the semester, students and recent graduates of some of Mexico City’s law schools, including Escuela Libre de Derecho, Universidad Iberoamericana, Universidad Panamericana, and the UNAM Instituto de Investigaciones Juridicas visited Cardozo to learn more about the master of laws programs. They met with Dean Rudenstine and members of the faculty; attended classes, including a special presentation on trademark law by Prof. Barton Beebe; met with Judge Miriam Cedarbaum at the US District Court for the Southern District of New York; and toured Greenwich Village. Dean Rudenstine visited the Mexican law schools last year with Toni Fine, director of the LL.M. program (third from right).

ON DOUBLE-SUPER-SECRET BACKGROUND Viveca Novak, the Washington correspondent for Time who was called to testify in the Valerie Plame leak case, discusses dealing with and protecting confidential sources at On Double-Super-Secret Background: Managing Confidential Sources. Other panelists were (from left) Mark Bowden, national correspondent, the Atlantic Monthly; Mark Feldstein, director of the journalism program and associate professor of media and public affairs, George Washington University; and Victor Kovner, partner, Davis Wright Tremaine LLP.

TRUST LAW IN THE 21ST CENTURY Prof. Gregory Alexander of Cornell University Law School joined Prof. Stewart Sterk on a fiduciary duties panel at Trust Law in the 21st Century. The conference focused on significant developments in the growth of the perpetual trust and the move by many states and offshore jurisdictions to increase the availability of trusts for asset protection purposes. The event was cosponsored with The American College of Trust and Estate Counsel Foundation of Los Angeles, CA.

PAULSEN MOOT COURT COMPETITION Paulsen Moot Court Competition winner Baruch Gottesman ’07 and runner up Arkadia Delay ’08 are joined by competition judges (from left) Roy Barnes, former governor of Georgia; Mrs. Jenny Paulsen; and Judges Dora Irizarry, US District Court, Eastern District of NY; and Robert Katzmann, US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

Students Start Program for Youth

Cardozo Youth Advocates founders (from left) Sarah Hudson-Plush ’07, Aron Zimmerman ’06, and Lauren Kaeseberg ’07, at The Door.

In the fall, 19 law students began working with the newly founded Cardozo Youth Advocates. Started by Sarah Hudson-Plush ’07, Lauren Kaeseberg ’07, and Aron Zimmerman ’06, this program is intended to get young people thinking and talking about the law. The Cardozo students have been working with The Door, a youth services center, where they share responsibility for teaching a weekly class called Law Talk, in which they cover a variety of topics and facilitate conversations about such legal issues as the death penalty, same-sex marriage, the First Amendment, and children’s rights. Hudson-Plush said similar sessions will begin in the spring at Washington Irving High School, located near Cardozo, where about 500 students are part of the high school’s law and public service program. Plans are also under way for a Law Day, an evening program when high school students will visit Cardozo for mock classes and opportunities to meet informally with law students.

Innocence Project Gains Another Release

On September 29 at the Innocence Project office, Barry Scheck held a press conference to discuss the exoneration that day of his client Barry Gibbs, 57, who was wrongfully convicted in 1988 of murdering a Brooklyn woman.

In an emotional statement, Mr. Gibbs, a Navy veteran and former postal worker who is free after serving 19 years in prison, said he was both humbled and overwhelmed, and cautioned that what happened to him could happen to anyone. He added that the judge’s words overturning his conviction were the best he ever heard in his whole life. The first thing he did after his release was take a two-hour bath.

His murder conviction was vacated after new evidence revealed that ex- NYPD officer Louis Eppolito, who is under indictment for mob-related activities, pressured an eyewitness to falsely identify Gibbs.

Innocence Project attorney Vanessa Potkin (far left) and Scheck acknowledged the efforts of the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office, the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District, and the DEA, whose agents worked with the Innocence Project to reopen and reinvestigate the case. Scheck said this was originally a case of law enforcement gone bad, but now it’s a case of law enforcement corrected. As of press time, 175 prisoners have been exonerated with the help of the Innocence Project. Mr. Gibbs was the 166th to be released.