Please join us for a in depth conversation hosted Associate Dean Michelle Zakarin with Assistant Dean Regina Burch regarding the switch from the Universal Bar Examination (UBE) to the NextGen bar examination (NextGen), rolling out in phases starting July 2026. Dean Burch discussed what is now tested, the new format, and gave tips on how students and schools can smoothly adjust to NextGen.
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Few lawyers know who Martin Manton was. Even fewer, if any, law students learn about Manton while in school. That may change with the Hon. Gary Stein’s recent biography of Manton, Justice for Sale: Graft, Greed, and a Crooked Federal Judge in 1930s Gotham. (See Justice for Sale: Graft, Greed, and a Crooked Federal Judge in 1930s Gotham: Stein, Gary: 9781493072569: Amazon.com: Books)
Judge Stein tells the history of Judge Manton’s rapid rise – President Woodrow Wilson appointed Manton, then 36-years old, to the federal district court in 1916, then elevated him to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit two years later. As a judge, Manton continued to be involved in a number of businesses, including real estate ventures on which he had given mortgages. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, Manton desperately needed money and turned to selling his office, repeatedly soliciting payments from lawyers and litigants arguing cases before him. Judge Stein calculates that Manton received improper payments of about $823,000 – about $17 million today. Ultimately, in 1939, Manton was publicly exposed. This led to his resignation, prosecution, conviction, and imprisonment.
As Judge Stein discusses with Associate Dean Rodger Citron, the story of Manton’s corrupt conduct on the bench is an extraordinary tale. Manton was friends with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, served on the Second Circuit with, among others, the Hon. Learned Hand, and nearly was appointed to the United States Supreme Court in the 1920s. This may seem like ancient history, but Judge Stein’s book reminds us that judges – even federal judges – are human, subject to the same flaws and foibles as the rest of us. That is a timely lesson that is still instructive today.
Brought to you by the Touro Law Review.
Our guest today is Magistrate Judge Gary Stein.
Continue readingCybercrime has become a topic of discussion in the last few years. In this week’s Touro Law Review podcast moderated by Associate Dean Michelle Zakarin, Nicole E. Osborne joins us. Nicole is an Associate at the Law Firm of Ruskin Moscou Faltischek, P.C. and is a member of the firm’s Cybersecurity and Data Privacy Practice Group. Nicole gives advice to students who are interested in this practice area. She noted that there are a lot of traditional practice areas that lend themselves perfectly to a career in cybersecurity, such as health care law.
The law of cybersecurity, Nicole states, is unpredictable; everyday is different as it is an interdisciplinary area of law. She then dives into the specifics of data breaches– something Nicole deals with frequently and is very passionate about. She follows by discussing the importance of addressing these issues quickly and the different laws and regulations of each state, as well as federal legislation that might come into play. As the conversation continues, Nicole discuses, threat actors, ransomware, and “double extortion.” Nicole also discusses the documents typically stolen by threat actors and ways to avoid breaches. Notably, she provides generally applicable tips and recommendations for all businesses because threat actors target small businesses just as much as large companies.
As a parting note, Nicole reminds us that this area is evolving rapidly and that it is very important to stay on top of these laws, even if it seems difficult.
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Our guest today is Nicole E. Osborne, Esq.
Continue readingUnited States Magistrate Judges play a vital role in the operation of the federal courts. In this week’s Touro Law Review podcast, Magistrate Judge James M. Wicks discusses why he became a federal magistrate judge, the process for applying and being selected, and his various responsibilities for criminal and civil cases in the Eastern District of New York.
Judge Wicks was inspired, in substantial part, by his clerkship with the Hon. Arthur Spatt and becoming a judge was a “calling” for him. As Judge Wicks explains, the selection process for a federal magistrate is thorough and lengthy, entailing a written application, panel interviews, and an FBI background investigation. In the last part of the discussion with Associate Dean Rodger Citron, Judge Wicks describes his work on criminal and civil cases and provides guidance for attorneys on how to navigate a familiar challenge in civil litigation – discovery disputes – and offers some thoughts on how artificial intelligence (AI) may affect the practice of law.
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Our guest today is Magistrate Judge James M. Wicks.
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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/.
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Our guest today is Professor Jason Gillmer.
Continue readingAt 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.
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Our guest today is President Emeritus of NYU, Dr. John Sexton.
Continue readingOn 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.
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Our guest today is Professor Barry Friedman.
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