The first director of CFPA
by Norman I. Silber
The Hill Congress Blog
August 18, 2010

EXCERPT:

Last month, Congress created an independent regulatory body within the Federal Reserve System, a body designed to address consumer financial products. The near-collapse of the banking system, and the economic and human devastation resulting from a dysfunctional lending market,precipitated this reform.

Echoes of the Wiley drama resound in this modern controversy. The question today is whether Professor Elizabeth Warren of the Harvard Law School and Chair of the TARP Congressional Oversight Panel should be appointed (by the President, with the advice and consent of the Senate) as the first Director of the new Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection.

Read the full article at thehill.com.

According to a new report authored by Professor James Sample, spending on state Supreme Court elections has more than doubled in the past decade, from $83.3 million in 1990-1999 to $206.9 million in 2000-2009, and deep-pocketed special interests play a dominant role in choosing state jurists.

The report, "The New Politics of Judicial Elections, 2000-2009: Decade of Change," features a Foreword by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

In an interview with the Associated Press, included here in the Los Angeles Times, Sample said: “These corporations and trial lawyers have millions of millions of dollars at stake, and they feel if they can just spend a few million dollars to influence the outcome, it’s worth it. We're sort of playing with fire when you're putting this much money into our courts.”

The Associated Press article was picked up by hundreds of news outlets around the country. To listen to a radio interview with Professor Sample on this topic, please click here.

To read the full report, click here.

Professor Miriam Albert was a presenter at the Southeastern Association of Law Schools’ Annual meeting on August 4th. Professor Albert spoke on a panel entitled “Innovative Teaching Techniques for Clinical and Skills Courses,” one of several Teaching Technique Workshops at the conference. She spoke about the challenges of cleanly characterizing teaching as pure skills or pure doctrine, the political and pedagogical dramas that may ensue, and the challenges of adopting a “skills requirement” in light of the inevitable overlap between skills and doctrine.

A deep bench of substitute justices goes unused
By Robert Barnes
The Washington Post
August 9, 2010

EXCERPT:

And, at some point, theory steps aside and reality sets in. "It's an interesting idea," said James Sample, a Hofstra law professor who has specialized in studying judicial recusals. "The challenge is that it's so difficult to divorce discussion of the proposal from the individual justices who might end up replacing the recused justices."

Read the full article at washingtonpost.com.

Professor Barbara Stark presented an overview of international adoption from a U.S. perspective, along with a review of the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption, to a U.S. State Department-sponsored delegation from Kazakhstan and the Kyrgyz Republic at Hofstra on August 9th.