Orientation 2015 Prof Talks

Wednesday, August 26
Session 1: 10:30 a.m. – 11:15 a.m.
Session 2: 11:30 a.m. – 12:15 p.m.

Session 1 (10:30 a.m. – 11:15 a.m.)

1. Esther Baron & Steven Reed: REPRESENTING ENTREPRENEURS IN TRANSACTIONAL MATTE

As Chicago’s entrepreneurship scene has grown, there has been an explosion of demand for affordable start-up legal serves. Entrepreneurs require legal assistance early on in order to lay a solid foundation for future development. We will share our experience conducting workshops at several entrepreneurial hubs around Chicago. We will also discuss our work with a business-to-business employee motivation company, which included drafting a customer agreement and online policies, and advice on trademark matters.

2. Julie Biehl: SECOND CHANCES FOR JUVENILES AND DEINCARCERATION

“It is easier to build strong children than repair broken men.” Fredrick Douglass. Professor Julie Biehl will discuss recent cases and projects aimed at building strong children who have been in conflict with the law. The policy reforms advance childrens’ access to justice, community based sanctions instead of incarceration and second chances. In particular, Professor Biehl will discuss reform efforts to: shorten the statutorily mandated length of time youth spend on parole; petition the court to remove youth from the sex offender registry; and remove statutory and practical barriers for juvenile expungement.

3. Leigh Bienen: ABOLISHING CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IN ILLINOIS

How bold, imaginative, tedious, time consuming, nitty gritty legal research, as well as large shifts in public opinion and changes in the legal landscape, resulted in the abolition of capital punishment in Illinois, and how this kind of work relates to and compares with other kinds of legal and policy oriented research and advocacy in this state, in other states, and in the federal system.

4. Bernard Black: HEALTH POLICY AND THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT

Why is US health care, which is believed to be both good and expensive, in fact only expensive. What effect does law, in the form of medical malpractice lawsuits, have on health care quality? What effect do state rules, requiring hospitals to report their infection rates, have on actual infection rates? What effect does health insurance have on health? (The elderly aside, for whom the answer is unknown because they are all insured, the answre is: less than you might think.) What effect will the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) have on access to health insurance? On the cost of health care? On the quality of health care? These, like much else in law, are empirical questions. We’ll discuss the evidence, and my own research in these areas.

5. Steven Calabresi: JUDICIAL REVIEW AROUND THE WORLD

This talk will look at the origins and growth of judicial review in the U.S., Canada, Australia, India, Germany, France, and the EU.

6. Karen Daniel: TALES OF WRONGFUL CONVICTIONS

Liars. Coerced confessions. Mistaken eyewitness identifications. Family member betrayals. All can send innocent people to prison for crimes they did not commit. Professor Karen Daniel, Director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions, will discuss some of her clients who are behind bars with compelling claims of innocence.

7. Grace Dodier & Martha Kanter: DISCARDING THE FICTION OF THE PRACTICE-READY LAW GRADUATE

Our article, “Discarding the Fiction of the Practice-Ready Law Graduate to Reclaim Law as a Profession, ” will be published next Spring. In it, we discuss the short-comings of the current practice-ready trend in legal education and argue that it is an unachievable and misguided goal. At a time when legal education is the subject of much scrutiny, our article examines the genesis of the practice-ready movement and some of its pitfalls. We argue that the practice-ready movement fails to recognize that effective lawyering is rooted in professional formation that develops with experience. Consequently, a law school might better prepare its students to enter the legal profession by abandoning the emphasis on practice-readiness and instead integrate experiential training and professional formation into its curriculum. Northwestern Law is taking steps in this direction.

8. Daniel Gandert: THE SPECTRUM OF QUESTIONABLE BEHAVIOR IN SPORTS

I conduct my research on international and Olympic Sports Law. Over the last couple of years, I have worked to create the “Spectrum of Questionable Behavior in Sports.” The acceptable end of the spectrum consists of intentional fouling in basketball and other behaviors that either violate the rules or the spirit of a sport but are generally considered acceptable. On the unacceptable end of the spectrum lies match fixing, doping, and other behaviors that are generally deemed to be unacceptable. Other questionable behaviors, such as deflating footballs, losing on purpose, and faking injuries in soccer are mapped out on the spectrum based upon their level of acceptability and I am attempting to make the spectrum as comprehensive as possible. I am also working on analyzing the 2015 changes to the World Anti-Doping Code, which increase the minimum penalty for a first doping offence from two years of ineligibility to four years.

9. Tonja Jacobi: INTRODUCTION TO JUDICIAL DECISION-MAKING

This talk will look at how we can analyze Supreme Court decisions in aggregate, rather than on a case-by-case basis, and what this tells us about strategic judicial behavior.

10. John McGinnis: MACHINES V. LAWYERS

Machines are coming to disrupt the legal profession. I will focus on the relentless growth of computer power in hardware, software, and data collection capacity. Machine intelligence is not a one-time event that lawyers will have to accommodate. Instead, it is an accelerating force that will invade an ever-larger territory and exercise a more firm dominion over this larger area. I then will describe five areas in which machine intelligence will provide services or factors of production currently provided by lawyers: discovery, legal search, document generation, brief generation, and prediction of case outcomes. Superstars and specialists in fast changing areas of the law will prosper but the future of the journeyman lawyer is very insecure. In the long run, the role of machine intelligence in providing legal services will speed the erosion of lawyers’ monopoly on delivering legal services and will advantage consumers and society by making legal services more transparent and affordable. I hope to make students recognize that their career will be lived among machine complements and competitors and plan their legal education accordingly.

11. Destiny Peery: LAW & PSYCHOLOGY: BEYOND JURIES, EYEWITNESSES & CRIMINAL PROFILING

What can psychology tell us about the law? It’s not uncommon for people to ask what law and psychology have to do with one another, and if people see the connection they go in predictable directions: jury selection, eyewitness testimony, and criminal profiling. As a law professor trained in social psychology, my research and teaching are informed by the underlying psychology of law, which is woven throughout most aspects of the legal process and the institution as a whole. Let’s discuss some of my research and the broader, important intersection of law and psychology in areas including criminal law and discrimination law.

12. Leonard Riskin: MENTAL MODELS, STRESS, SATISFACTION, AND PERFORMANCE DURING AND AFTER LAW SCHOOL

In law school and law practice, a person's mindsets and internal maps of the world and of lawyering, whether conscious or subconscious, dramatically affect their interpretations, understandings, performance, and satisfaction. I study, write and teach about how law students, lawyers and mediators can become more aware of their mindsets and other aspects their consciousness, so that they can make choices about how to respond to these phenomena and to the desires, thoughts, sensations, and emotions that arise in themselves and in others with whom they interact. More specifically, I study and teach about how to integrate Tools for Managing Conflict (e.g., trial, negotiation, mediation) and Tools of Awareness (especially mindfulness, qi gong, and other contemplative practices) to help members of the legal profession deal better with stress and feel and perform better.

13. Max Schanzenbach: WHAT IS A FIDUCIARY?

A fiduciary is someone who is obligated to act on behalf of and for the benefit of another party. The law imposes fiduciary duties in such circumstances. Fiduciary duties are ubiquitous in the law, but there is no separate course on them in law school. This short talk will introduce the concept of fiduciary duties in an easy to understand way that will apply across a number of courses, including tort, employment, securities, and corporate law. I will cover what makes one a fiduciary, what the duties of loyalty and care are in different contexts, and discuss a proposed regulation by the Department of Labor to make financial advisers in Individual Retirement Accounts fiduciaries.

Session 2: (11:30 a.m. – 12:15 p.m.)

14. Erin Delaney: CONSTITUTIONAL CHANGE IN ESTABLISHED DEMOCRACIES: BRITAIN’S NEW CUP OF TEA

For those interested in studying constitutional design and constitutionalism, the twenty-first century has presented ample opportunity—from constitution building in Iraq and Afghanistan to the Arab Spring and related change in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, and other states. These new constitutional processes and regimes demand attention; they present the possibility of far-reaching democratic expansion in the midst of often violent power struggles. But dramatic constitutional change can also occur in a more orderly fashion and within established democracies. In this set, no country has seen more striking shifts in its constitutional design than the United Kingdom. This talk will highlight critical questions of constitutional design and constitutional change through the lens of the United Kingdom.

15. Peter DiCola: SPOTIFY, APPLE, AND TAYLOR SWIFT: THE LAW BEHIND THE TWITTER BATTLES

Recording artists and songwriters are speaking out more and more about webcasting and streaming services. The services themselves are competing with increasing intensity--in the marketplace and in Washington. This talk will explain the aspects of copyright law (and antitrust) that set up today's fights over Internet music.

16. Carolyn Frazier: CHALLENGING EXTREME SENTENCING FOR YOUTH IN THE COURTS AND IN THE CAPITOL

Come join Clinical Professor Carolyn Frazier to hear about her work challenging the practice (unique to the United States) of sentencing young people to die in prison for crimes they committed when they were under 18 years old. Professor Frazier will spend the first part of the talk discussing preparations for a resentencing hearing for her developmentally-delayed client, Gerald Rice, whose natural life sentence was vacated in June after the United States Supreme Court held that mandatory life sentences for youth are unconstitutional. The second part of the talk will focus on the Children & Family Justice Center’s legislative advocacy efforts to end these kind of extreme sentences for youth in Illinois and throughout the country.

17. Richard Hoskins: THE RULE OF LAW AS POLITICAL THEOLOGY

The German legal scholar Carl Schmitt stirred immense controversy that still resonates today when he wrote in 1922, “All significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts.” This was in his influential book, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty. He was focusing on state sovereignty as the source of law, so his argument extends to all significant legal principles. My research as a Ph.D. candidate in theology and political thought centers on “political theology,” that is, the intersection of political and religious ideas in the history of western thought. My talk will explore the interactions of political, legal, and religious concepts as they constitute the foundations of state sovereignty, including the rule of law.

18. Emily Kadens: STUDYING A 16TH-CENTURY COURT IN THE ENGLISH ARCHIVES

Between the late 15th and the mid-17th century, a court flourished in England known as the Court of Requests. Begun as a poor man’s court, it eventually attracted suitors of all economic levels with disputes concerning all manner of issues. Despite being quite popular in its time, the Court has gone almost entirely unstudied by historians. Professor Kadens will talk about working in the extensive archive of this court and about the interesting stories she has found there about ordinary men and women, foreign merchants, pirate attacks, shipwrecks, Elizabethan actors, and even the pretender to the throne of Portugal.

19. Jay Koehler: IS FORENSIC SCIENCE AN OXYMORON?

Forensic science evidence (e.g., DNA, fingerprints, hair, & bite marks) is widely considered to provide powerful proof of identity in both criminal and civil trials. But how well does the science back up the strong claims that are made? Some people say the science just isn’t there. In April, Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick went so far as to say that “the FBI faked an entire field of forensic science.” Is she right? Time-permitting, we will discuss an ongoing study that looks at whether the biases that affect ordinary people in ordinary life also affect DNA analysts when they examine DNA evidence.

20. Andrew Koppelman: GAY RIGHTS, RELIGIOUS ACCOMMODATIONS, AND THE PURPOSES OF ANTIDISCRIMINATION LAW

Religious conservatives feel that it would be sinful for them to personally facilitate same-sex marriages, for example by baking wedding cakes or photographing the ceremonies. They have sought to amend the laws to accommodate their objections. These efforts have been fiercely resisted. I will catalogue the interests at stake and consider some possible resolutions.

21. Bruce Markell: SAVING THE WORLD THROUGH BANKRUPTCY: DRAFTING AND REVISING BANKRUPTCY LAWS FOR TROUBLED ECONOMIES

Country bailouts aren’t costless. The IMF and other organizations lend money with strings attached. Ever since 2008, these strings have included overhauling and rewriting a nation’s bankruptcy laws as a condition of receiving financial assistance. Recently, I have worked in Ireland, Greece, Bosnia and Kosovo, advising them and their lenders how to write and update their bankruptcy laws. In particular, this past summer I finished drafting a new bankruptcy law for Kosovo, a country that didn’t exist ten years ago. I will talk about the challenges inherent in this type of country assistance (including how I discovered why grocery stores may hold the key to creating an effective bankruptcy law in Kosovo, and why you may want to be a “dentist’s wife” in Greece).

22. Candice Player: RETHINKING KENDRA’S LAW

In the wake of deinstitutionalization and its failures, one of the most important questions in mental health policy may be this: how can we care for psychiatric patients in the community who require care, but resist treatment nonetheless? In New York, Kendra’s Law authorizes court ordered assisted outpatient treatment (“AOT”) for people living with a mental illness in the community. Court ordered outpatient treatment has been associated with significant improvements for people with mental illnesses; however not all patients consent to AOT. Therefore, treatment over their objection requires some justification. This talk will some of the ethical and constitutional questions surrounding outpatient commitment, as well as the empirical research on assisted outpatient commitment programs.

23. Stephen Presser: ARE AMERICAN LAW PROFESSORS A THREAT TO THE RULE OF LAW?

Professor Presser will discuss work he is doing on a book about law professors. It is a study of the teaching and writing about law from Blackstone to Barack Obama, and outlines the development of the history of actual and fictional law professors in the eighteenth, nineteenth, twentieth and twenty first-centuries, exploring, in particular, how American teachers of law have conceptualized, explained, and occasionally misunderstood what they are doing.

24. Sue Provenzano: BRAIN SCIENCE AND APPELLATE ADVOCACY

Appellate judges insist that only law and logic persuade them, but brain science suggests otherwise. From the way they construct arguments to the stories they tell to the words they choose, advocates can influence judicial cognition in deep and lasting ways. In this talk, I will explore how advocates harness the power of cognitive science in appellate argument. I will also discuss more generally the myths and realities of appellate persuasion.

25. Martin Redish: AMERICAN CONSTITUTIONALISM AND JUDICIAL INDEPENDENCE

Professor Redish will discuss his new book, “The Paradox of American Constitutionalism: The Role of Judicial Independence in a Democratic Society,” which is a defense of the traditional theory of judicial review against revisionist attacks by modern constitutional scholars.

26. Meredith Rountree: THE AMERICAN DEATH PENALTY: CAN IT BE MENDED OR MUST IT BE ENDED?

In upholding the constitutionality of capital punishment, the Supreme Court has emphasized that the death penalty is reserved for the worst of the worst – the most irredeemable killers who commit the most heinous crimes – and it has developed an extensive jurisprudence to further this goal. Several Justices have declared the American death penalty project a failure, however. Most recently, in a June 2015 opinion, Justice Breyer wrote that he thinks it is “highly likely” that the death penalty violates the Constitution and he called on the Court to tackle this question. This talk will discuss the Justices’ critiques, as well as my own research on capital punishment.

27. David Scheffer: THE TOUGHEST COCKFIGHT: INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE IN CAMBODIA

Professor David Scheffer describes his 20-year journey to bring to justice the architects of the Khmer Rouge atrocity crimes in Cambodia during the late 1970s, when at least 1.7 million Cambodians perished. He negotiated the creation of the war crimes tribunal to prosecute Pol Pot’s comrades while he was U.S. Ambassador at Large for War Crimes Issues during the Clinton Administration and for the last four years has marshaled investigations and trials before that tribunal as the U.N. Secretary- General’s Special Expert on U.N. Assistance to the Khmer Rouge Trials. A fusion of domestic and international law, the “Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia” have experienced both political turmoil and historic verdicts. The current major “Nuremberg" trial before the tribunal includes charges of genocide and forced marriage.

28. Jeffrey Urdangen: A MAN CONFESSES TO A MURDER FOR WHICH HIS BROTHER WAS WRONGLY CONVICTED

Michael Winston and his older brother were in a convenience store when a scuffle broke out. One of the participants was shot and killed. Michael was put on trial and convicted of the crime based on the dubious testimony of two career criminals who were part of the altercation. After the appellate court vacated the conviction, the Center for Criminal Defense successfully defended Michael at his retrial. This is the story of our client’s ordeal, and his brother’s righteous efforts to correct this injustice.