3Ls Kevin Casserino and Angelica Judge prevailed over 2Ls Daniel Bonsangue and Gavin Gretsky in the 45th Annual Lionel O. Grossman Trial Competition. Casserino was selected as the Best Advocate.
Final round judges were the Hon. Glenn T. Suddaby L’85 (Chief U.S. District Court Judge, Northern District of New York), the Hon. Bernadette Romano Clark L’89 (Oneida County Supreme Court Judge), the Hon. Jeffrey Leibo L’03 (Administrative Law Judge for New York State), and Julie A. North L’89 (retired, partner, Cravath.)
In Onondaga County, virtual arraignments, enacted during the COVID pandemic on an emergency basis, continue to be used by Syracuse City Court. Professor Gary Pieples, Director of the Criminal Defense Clinic, explained that “virtual arraignments prevent attorneys from adequately being able to talk to clients, and prevent clients from asking questions of their lawyers during hearings.”
Syracuse University College of Law has hired Trinity Curtis as Program Manager to guide and promote its Orange Advance pipeline partnership with Clark Atlanta University and Morehouse and Spelman Colleges. Orange Advance seeks to promote careers in law among students at the three Atlanta-based HBCUs (known as the AUC, or Atlanta University Center), with pre-law, law school admissions, and legal career path programming for undergraduate students who are considering law school.
As Orange Advance Project Manager, Curtis will be based in Atlanta where she will work with students directly, facilitate counseling and educational events on the ground, and activate networking opportunities with Atlanta-area alumni of the College of Law and Syracuse University. Curtis will also take the lead in designing and implementing the Orange Advance Summer Residency at the College of Law—an immersive, week-long introduction to Dineen Hall, our faculty, staff, and alumni, as well as the SU campus and the City of Syracuse.
“Because of the positive reception to our Orange Advance program at the AUC, we need a dedicated, College of Law staff member in Atlanta to help students discover and explore career opportunities in the law and navigate their path to law school, says College of Law Dean Craig M. Boise. “Trinity brings the perfect mix of legal, project management, and educational counseling experience to guide students as they explore careers in law and as the College of Law does its part to diversify the legal profession.”
“This is an exciting, innovative program that has the potential to positively impact the diversity of the legal profession,” says Curtis. “As a current student at Clark Atlanta pursuing my master’s degree in criminal justice, I have direct knowledge of our partner schools, the experiences of their students, and our shared goals. The College of Law has tremendous resources, including a world-class faculty and extraordinary alumni, whose depth of experience I plan to leverage as we continue to develop and grow Orange Advance.”
Curtis obtained her B.S. in Psychology with a minor in Criminal Justice from Valdosta State University. She is a current candidate for an M.A. in Criminal Justice from Clark Atlanta University, May 2023. Before joining the College of Law, Curtis worked in the Dekalb County Magistrate Court as a Clerk. Previously, she was an assistant program manager at STEAM Center Valdosta and a tutoring center coordinator in the Lowndes County School District.
Orange Advance is just the latest example of Syracuse Law’s innovation in legal education. JDinteractive expands access to legal education by delivering Syracuse Law’s JD program online to anyone who wishes to pursue a career in law from anywhere in the world. Orange Flex places third-year law students in the city of their choice in externships that align with their career goals, with opportunities to complement their experiential learning with online courses.
Acquan is the first African American and first African American Woman to hold this title.
The JGRO is a biennial academic journal run by Syracuse University College of Law students and serves as a platform for cutting-edge legal scholarship and research in the area of human rights.
Professor Jack Graves provides insight into the lack of regulation in domestic and international cryptocurrency exchanges and its risks and implications to consumers at Crypto Compass.
Graves explains that whereas exchanges reminiscent of Coinbase are licensed cash transmitters, they don’t seem to be broker-dealers. “As soon as you talk about broker-dealers of securities, that triggers a bunch of disclosure and custody requirements,” Graves states. “I happen to use Fidelity as my brokerage company, and if Fidelity goes bankrupt, I’m not an unsecured creditor in bankruptcy. So, I have a claim to my assets before all the unsecured creditors.”
Professor Mary Szto has published the paper “Barring Diversity? The American Bar Exam as Initiation Rite and its Eugenics Origin” in the Connecticut Public Interest Law Journal. The article appears in 21 Conn. Pub. Int. L.J. 38 (2022).
Abstract
The American bar exam is an initiation rite that bars diversity in the legal profession.
According to the 2020 census, the US population is over 42% minorities. However, only 14% of the legal profession is. In 2020 the American Bar Association released data that the first-time bar exam pass rate was 88% for Whites, 80% for Asians, 78% for Native Americans, 76% for Hispanics, and 66% for Blacks.
Initiation rites often involve a separation from society, a liminal period, an ordeal, and then reincorporation into society. The bar exam follows this pattern. However, many minority candidates cannot afford months of unpaid isolated study, much less further bar attempts.
Racial disparities in first time bar passage rates are not coincidental, but rooted in the eugenics origin of the bar exam. Bar admissions standards arose amid teachings about Anglo-Saxon white supremacy in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Eugenics theory was then mainstream science and held that non-whites should be denied access to property ownership, education, and the legal profession. Minorities were excluded from most law schools, and there was widespread fear of immigrants diluting the US white population and the legal profession.
Eugenics-inspired federal redlining policies from the 1930s also led to huge racial wealth gaps then and now. Homeownership is the chief way Americans build intergenerational wealth. Redlining prevented non-whites from owning homes by blocking access to federally subsidized home mortgages. Thus, in pre-pandemic 2019 White families had eight times the wealth of Black families and five times the wealth of Hispanic families. Therefore, to diversify the legal profession, we must acknowledge this eugenics history and racial wealth gap and institute the diploma privilege, or create sequenced open book bar exams or other alternatives that do not require costly isolated study and bar preparation courses. Healing reform will help all candidates, and the public we serve.
2L Jennifer Arinze was elected the Editor-in-Chief of the Syracuse Journal of International Law and Commerce (JILC) for the 2023-2024 academic year. Arinze is the first African American and first African American Woman to hold this title.
First published in October of 1972, the Syracuse Journal of International Law and Commerce is one of the oldest student-edited international law reviews in the United States. In the forward to its inaugural issue, the Journal was described as an “organ of expression for students with an interest in international legal and commercial studies,” with the primary purpose of training students in the skills of legal writing and research.
Professor Roy Gutterman L’00, Director of the Newhouse Schools’ Tully Center for Free Speech, appeared on CBS News to discuss free speech and censorship issues surrounding the recent revisions to Roald Dahl’s children’s books.
“You would think that publishers, who are generally at the forefront of free expression and free expression rights, would be more cognizant of the message this is sending to other authors and readers…that message is we’re going to edit, we’re going to censor, we’re going to change language that sometimes falls out of favor or might offend people through a 21st-century model.”
College of Law Professor Nina Kohn, Distinguished Scholar in Elder Law at the Solomon Center for Health Law & Policy at Yale Law School, and Irina D. Manta, Professor of Law and the Founding Director of the Center for Intellectual Property Law at the Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University, have co-authored “Hospitals That Ditch Masks Risk Exposure” at Bill of Health, the blog of the Petrie Flom Center at Harvard Law School.
The post focuses on the potential legal risks to hospitals and other healthcare providers that have ended routine masking requirements even though COVID-19 cases remain high. Kohn and Manta say, “Ending routine masking in hospital settings is a dangerous move. It puts patients and staff at risk for infection, and its potential long-term effects. It also exposes hospitals to the risk of liability.”
