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.

SEC's fraud case against Wyly brothers may be strong, experts say
By ERIC TORBENSON
The Dallas Morning News
August 8, 2010

EXCERPT:

The Wylys likely violated the federal laws governing stockholder disclosures, said Ronald Colombo, a law professor at Hofstra University School of Law who recently published research on the disclosure law and its history. What that means in terms of penalty isn't clear; typically violators are required to simply disclose their positions accurately and possibly pay a fine, Colombo said.

"It's pretty rare that the SEC goes after anybody just for failing to correctly disclose their positions," he said. "They usually bring it with other allegations," because the consequences usually aren't that dire for failing to disclose ownership of shares.

Read the full article at dallasnews.com.

Conservative Jurist, With Independent Streak
By JOHN SCHWARTZ
New York Times
August 5, 2010

EXCERPT:

Monroe H. Freedman, an expert in legal ethics at Hofstra Law School, said that while bias could lead to recusal in rare cases, “you could say, ‘If a gay judge is disqualified, how about a straight judge?’ There isn’t anybody about whom somebody might say, ‘You’re not truly impartial in this case.’ ”

Mr. Freedman cited a 1975 opinion by Judge Constance Baker Motley of Federal District Court, an African-American jurist who was asked to disqualify herself from a lawsuit alleging unlawful discrimination. “If background or sex or race of each judge were, by definition, sufficient grounds for removal, no judge on this court could hear this case, or many others,” she wrote.

Read the full article at nytimes.com.