Education

PODCAST: Fair Housing On Long Island: Where We Are Since Newsday’s Long Island Divided Investigation

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On this week’s episode of the Touro Law Review podcast we are joined by Ian Wilder and Patrick Fife for a discussion on fair housing on Long Island. The podcast is moderated by Professor Peter Zablotsky. Mr. Ian Wilder is the executive director of Long Island Housing Services and Mr. Patrick Fife is the associate general counsel for the Long Island Board of Realtors. Among other things, Mr. Fife and Mr. Wilder discuss the changes that were made in real estate practices and laws following the Newsday Long Island Divided investigation. Since the investigation, testing and transparency has become a main priority for fair housing and equal treatment in real estate. Additionally, the adoption of the Realtor Code of Ethics has set the industry apart by requiring that all realtors become real estate licensees and that realtors abide by a code of ethics.

Brought to you by the Touro Law Review.   

Our guests today are Patrick Fife and Ian Wilder.

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PODCAST: A Discussion on the Supreme Court Decision, West Virginia v. EPA with Eli Nachmany

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On this week’s episode of the Touro Law Review Podcast, we are joined by Eli Nachmany for a discussion of the Supreme Court’s decision earlier this year in West Virginia v. EPA. In that case, the Court applied the major questions doctrine in interpreting the underlying grant of statutory authority for an Environmental Protection Agency rule that would have required coal-fired power plants to “reduce their own production of electricity or subsidize increased generation by natural gas, wind, or solar sources.”  In his conversation with Associate Dean Rodger Citron, Nachmany discusses a number of administrative law issues raised by the major questions doctrine, including whether the doctrine should be understood as a canon of statutory construction or a development in the nondelegation doctrine.  They agree that, while it is clear that West Virginia v. EPA is an important case, the exact contours of the major questions doctrine will be determined in future cases.      

 

Brought to you by the Touro Law Review.   

Our guest today is Eli Nachmany .

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PODCAST: A Discussion on Appellate Advocacy and Writing with Reyna Marder Gentin

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On this week’s episode of the Touro Law Review Podcast, we are joined by published author and “recovering” attorney, Reyna Marder Gentin.  Gentin is the author of three novels, all written after she practiced law for more than twenty years.  As Gentin discusses with Associate Dean Rodger Citron, she worked in the New York Office of a large international law firm, as a law clerk for a federal judge, and as a public defender.  As a criminal defense lawyer, she worked primarily as an appellate lawyer.   

Though Gentin didn’t realize it at the time, her experience writing briefs helped her become a novelist.  As Gentin explains, being an effective appellate advocate requires the lawyer to be a good storyteller.  When she decided to stop practicing law, Gentin wasn’t sure what would come next.  After taking a class on memoir writing with a friend, Gentin began writing her first novel, Unreasonable Doubts, which is about a public defender on the cusp of making some important decisions.  Gentin discusses the challenges and rewards of writing this novel and two others during the podcast.  And, Gentin says, she’s now working on her fourth novel.  

Brought to you by the Touro Law Review.   

Our guest today is Reyna Marder Gentin .

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PODCAST: Litigating Slavery’s Reach: A Story of Race, Rights, and the Law During the California Gold Rush

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Dred Scott v. Sandford looms over American legal and political history as perhaps the most infamous Supreme Court case of all time. In Dred Scott, the Court struck down the Missouri Compromise, holding that enslaved persons were property under the Due Process Clause and that slaveholders had the absolute right to bring them into any federal territory in the nation.

Did you know that a case raising similar issues as Dred Scott was litigated in California five years before the Supreme Court decided that case? Professor Jason Gillmer provides a thoughtful and detailed account of the California case, In re Perkins, in his forthcoming article, “Litigating Slavery’s Reach: A Story of Race, Rights, and the Law During the California Gold Rush.”  https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=353902. At issue was the California Fugitive Slave Act of 1852, which declared that enslaved persons brought to California while it was a federal territory remained enslaved even after California entered the Union as a free state. Shortly after the statute was enacted, a case arose testing the law’s constitutionality, pitting the freedom of three enslaved men against the alleged Due Process rights of their enslaver. In this Touro Law Review podcast with Associate Dean Rodger Citron, Professor Gillmer explores the story that gave rise to the case, how he researched it, its relation to Dred Scott, and why the story is important to today.

Find Professor Gillmer’s book at https://ugapress.org/book/9780820351636/slavery-and-freedom-in-texas/.    

Brought to you by the Touro Law Review.   

Our guest today is Professor Jason Gillmer.

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PODCAST: New York University President Emeritus John Sexton

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At the start of his legal career, NYU President Emeritus John Sexton achieved an extraordinary clerkship trifecta.  Initially, in 1979, he clerked for Judge Harold Leventhal on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.  Tragically, Judge Leventhal died several months after Sexton began working for him.  He then clerked for Judge David Bazelon, also on the D.C. Circuit.  As Sexton explains, both judges were towering figures on the court of appeals.  Sexton then clerked for Chief Justice Warren Burger, something no other Bazelon clerk ever did.  (Sexton wrote about his clerkship with the Chief Justice for the Journal of Supreme Court History in 2018; see “Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, the Court, and the Nation, 43 J. Sup. Ct. Hist. 173 (2018).)  

In his discussion with Associate Dean Rodger Citron, Sexton talks about each judge and some of the interesting cases and issues that came up while he was clerking.  He concludes with thoughts on what has changed – and what has endured – in the judiciary since he was a law clerk more than forty years ago.  

      

Brought to you by the Touro Law Review.   

Our guest today is President Emeritus of NYU, Dr. John Sexton.

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PODCAST: What to Expect from the United States Supreme Court With Professor Barry Friedman

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On this week’s episode of the Touro Law Review Podcast, we are joined by New York University Law School Professor Barry Friedman, an expert on the Supreme Court and public opinion, discusses the current Supreme Court.  According to the Pew Research Center, “Americans’ ratings of the Supreme Court are now as negative as – and more politically polarized than – at any point in more than three decades of polling on the nation’s highest court.”  (See Views of Supreme Court Far Less Positive After Abortion Ruling Reversing Roe v. Wade | Pew Research Center.)       

Professor Friedman puts this research in historical context, noting that the public’s view of the Court has waxed and waned over time.  During the New Deal, for example, the public’s view of the Court declined during its clash with President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the mid-1930s.  Professor Friedman explains why he believes the situation with the Court today may be different from dips in public opinion in prior eras.  He suggests that this may be due, in part, to the erosion of political checks on the Court that previously were stronger.  Along the way, Professor Friedman and Associate Dean Rodger Citron discuss a number of the current justices and some of the most important cases of the Court’s 2021-22 term.

      

Brought to you by the Touro Law Review.   

Our guest today is Professor Barry Friedman.

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PODCAST: Robin Peguero: With Prejudice

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On this week’s episode of the Touro Law Review Podcast, Associate Dean Rodger Citron talks with Robin Peguero about his first novel, With Prejudice, and his views about the criminal justice system.  After graduating from Harvard Law School, Peguero worked as a prosecutor in Miami, an experience he drew on while writing the novel.       

The conversation begins with Peguero talking about his life-long interest in writing stories.  It then turns to a discussion of the jury – its critical role in a trial, its composition (which is intensely contested by the lawyers trying the case before them), and its operation.  What do we mean when we talk about “a jury of our peers?”  To what extent does deliberation give us confidence in the jury’s verdict?  Peguero addresses these questions and others during the conversation, exploring them from his perspective as a lawyer and a writer.      

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Our guest today is Robin Peguero.

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