(Just Security | Oct. 20) When can the president deploy the federal military on American soil? What are the legal and regulatory restraints in doing so? Throughout the current administration, these fundamental questions of civil-military relations and democratic governance have only grown in importance. This is due, in large part, to the rupture of longstanding norms. Salient examples include the significantly expanded deployment of military troops to the U.S.-Mexican border as well as the use or threatened use of state and federal military forces (many unidentified) in response to protests this summer in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death.
The violent clearing of peaceful protestors from Lafayette Square Park on June 1 by both non-military and military forces brought the issue of domestic military operations to American living rooms—as did the President threatening minutes earlier to invoke the Insurrection Act and send active duty military forces into American cities.
The governance stakes are simply too high to rely upon now-violated norms. Congress should reinvigorate its constitutional role in governing domestic military operations and provide bright legal lines addressing the president’s authority to deploy the military domestically.
In this essay and the one to follow, I highlight four legal authorities governing domestic use of military force that are ripe for clarification and congressional action. This essay concerns the Insurrection Act, and my second essay will address the Posse Comitatus Act, Section 502(f) of Title 32 of the U.S. Code, and military operations in the nation’s capital …
In a national first, Syracuse University College of Law has partnered with legal education nonprofit AccessLex Institute to offer AccessLex’s interactive Helix Bar Review prep course free of charge to all Syracuse Law students.
Helix Bar Review is a state-of-the-art, comprehensive bar review program that offers students full access to the program during their third year of law school, up to 20 weeks before the bar exam. Early access is one of the distinguishing characteristics of the Helix Bar Review, and it ensures that students with multiple responsibilities in law school, at work, or at home, can start their review early and complete the entire course on the schedule they choose. Other bar preparation programs are not fully open to students until much later.
Helix Bar Review’s online, adaptive learning platform uses an integrated content approach, an active learning interface, personalized pathways, and flexible access options designed to adapt to individual learning styles and to help students efficiently use study time to confidently prepare for the bar exam. While Helix Bar Review uses all the traditional components of a bar review course—such as substantive law outlines, practice questions, and flashcards—the program employs active learning and other methods that are based on the most up-to-date learning science and support long-term retention of knowledge.
Learning methods include short videos, illustrations, checklists, and performance tests. In addition, Helix Bar Review uses gamification to provide supplemental practice opportunities, live “Ask the Experts” webinars that target frequently missed questions and misunderstood concepts, and intensive day-long workshops called “Pass Classes.”
“Continuing our track record of innovation in legal education, I am thrilled that Syracuse Law is the first school to partner with AccessLex as they launch their new Helix Bar Review program. This groundbreaking program offers the tools and preparation our graduates need to efficiently and effectively prepare for the bar exam,” says Craig M. Boise, Dean and Professor of Law. “At Syracuse Law, we are laser-focused on student success at every step of the law school journey. This partnership will give our students a distinct edge in studying for the bar exam—setting them squarely on the path to career success—while reducing their debt by eliminating the need to finance a commercial bar prep course.”
“We are grateful, honored, and excited to be partnering with Syracuse Law in bringing Helix Bar Review to its students. At AccessLex, we have long said it is an accident of history that the bar exam preparation industry exists as it currently does, which makes this, potentially, a seminal moment in legal education,” says AccessLex President and Chief Executive Officer Christopher P. Chapman. “As the leader of a law school whose reputation for innovation and progressive action is well known, Dean Boise recognizes that the Helix approach to bar prep tracks with his strategic vision for student success. It is why we feel Syracuse Law is a perfect partner for the public launch of this game-changing endeavor.”
Currently, Helix Bar Review offers study materials for the Uniform Bar Exam (UBE), Multistate Essay Exam (MEE), Multistate Bar Exam (MBE), Multistate Performance Test (MPT), and Multistate Professional Responsibility Exam (MPRE). The non-profit company is currently developing non-UBE state-specific courses and anticipates it will release materials for non-UBE states, such as Florida and California, in 2023. In the meantime, the College of Law is making similar no-cost bar preparation arrangements for third-year students who plan to take the bar exam in those states.
“We know there are law students who do not purchase a commercial bar prep program because of the cost implications,” says Kelly Curtis, Teaching Professor and Director of Academic and Bar Support at the College of Law. “The additional cost of bar prep should never be a barrier to a graduate’s success on the bar exam. With this partnership, we remove that barrier.”
Cuomo’s no stranger to scandal: Why is this moment different? Link
(Syracuse.com | Aug. 6, 2021) Gov. Andrew Cuomo is in an unfamiliar situation.
In the past, he’s won battles with unions, won over environmentalists and flatly denied any mistakes made involving Covid-19 deaths and nursing homes. Three years ago, he watched as one of his closest allies went to prison in a pay-to-play scheme.
Then Cuomo won a third term.
Even as women this spring began calling him out for acting inappropriately at work, the governor held his ground and stayed in office …
… At their core, workplace harassment laws consider the impact on the worker, not the intent of the boss, Rusnak said, who works for Bond, Schoeneck & King and also leads workplace harassment training for clients.
Emily Brown, a Syracuse University law professor and labor lawyer who has represented private and public workers and employers, agrees. “That’s the point,” she said. “Even if he fails to recognize it, it should not absolve him of responsibility.”
In New York, workplace harassment is about what a reasonable person would find more offensive than a petty slight or annoyance, Brown added. That’s a relatively new and lower standard that became law after Cuomo signed updated legislation in 2019 …
On March 22, 2021, students from the Spring 2021 Washington, DC, Externship Program (DCEx) heard from Joseph Di Scipio L’95, who offered a seminar discussing FCC compliance issues for broadcasting stations.
Di Scipio is an accomplished legal expert in FCC regulatory compliance who currently serves as Senior Vice President, FCC Legal & Business Affairs and Assistant General Counsel at Fox Corporation. He is responsible for all FCC regulatory matters relating to Fox Corporation’s television stations, including negotiating retransmission consent and other distribution agreements, spectrum issues, M&A activity, and other special projects.
Also holding an M.P.A .from Syracuse University Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Di Scipio serves on the National Association of Broadcasters Board of Directors and has previously served as the President of the Syracuse University Law Alumni Association. Di Scipio continues to provide support to Syracuse Law students and alums.
In preparation for the seminar, students viewed various political candidate and issue-related advertisements along with substantiation documents which compared claims made in the advertisements to the facts collected from the public record.
After presenting these recent case studies, Di Scipio led an in-depth analysis and discussion surrounding FCC compliance with respect to political and issue-related advertisements. Di Scipio discussed with students his decision-making process, which includes a step-by-step analysis and risk-balancing test that takes into account the brand’s reputation, candidate rights to air advertisements, and sustaining ad revenues.
Amazon company workers at a warehouse in Bessemer, AL, are trying to organize a union, what many analysts see as a milestone event for the American workforce, while Amazon continues its efforts to disrupt a possible “yes” vote.
The Voice of America Eurasia Division asked labor law expert Professor Emily Brown for her analysis.
(China Daily | Jan. 5. 2021) New leader is on the way, but wounds could take time to heal in a polarized nation
The year 2020 has passed into history with a series of cascading events in the United States ranging from racism protests to a traumatic presidential election－all played out against the backdrop of a deadly pandemic.
The past year will make itself felt in 2021 as a more divided country grapples with twin health and economic crises.
The US casualties from the novel coronavirus, which the nation’s scientists now believe first infected people there in mid-December 2019, had surged past 351,000 on the first days of 2021. That’s roughly one of every 1,000 residents, the most in the world for a single nation.
But the pandemic wasn’t the only event that shaped the year.
William Banks, distinguished professor emeritus at Syracuse University College of Law in New York, summed up 2020 in three phrases: COVID-19, racial justice, and democracy threatened.
The pandemic will mark 2020 as equivalent to 1918 when a similar pandemic killed huge numbers of people, Banks said.
“The lessons learned hopefully are preparedness, planning, and leadership,” he told China Daily. “The US lacked all three this year” …
Each of you came to Syracuse to learn the law. You were no doubt driven by various conceptions of what the law means, whether our laws are just—or justly applied—or what a career in the law might look like for you.
As your faculty, we pride ourselves on our knowledge of the law, and it is our role to help you learn it, interpret it, analyze it, apply it, and—yes—challenge it, even criticize it.
But yesterday’s violent storming of the Capitol by a mob angry with the outcome of the election illustrates more dramatically than any classroom instruction the most important function of the law—to serve as the framework for maintaining a peaceful, orderly, and well-functioning society.
Acts like those perpetrated on Jan. 6, 2021, not only are unprecedented in our country’s history, they also threaten the very roots of our democracy and chillingly demonstrate its fragility.
Whatever your political persuasion, we can surely agree that the rule of law must always be paramount, that disagreements are to be resolved through the democratic process, not violence, and that the periodic transfer of power must take place peacefully. A colleague reminded me yesterday of Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson’s statement in his concurring opinion in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer:
… [W]ith all its defects, delays, and inconveniences, men have discovered no technique for long preserving free government except that the Executive be under the law, and that the law be made by parliamentary deliberations. Such institutions may be destined to pass away. But it is the duty of the Court to be last, not first, to give them up.
The events of January 6 remind us of the truths in this statement, that “free government” is not inevitable—it may “pass away”—and that the Courts, and we lawyers, as officers of the Courts, are afforded both the privilege and the profound responsibility of being the last defense against its demise.
Shortly after the outbreak of the Civil War, Frederick Douglass wrote that “nations are taught less by theories than by facts and events.” Take stock of the facts and events that have unfolded before you—yesterday and throughout this election process—and as you prepare to resume your studies this semester, know that you are being offered the most valuable lesson of your legal education.
Most importantly, I urge you to commit yourself in whatever way you are able to work toward preserving the framework of law that has secured the freedom we have for so long enjoyed.
Several College of Law faculty members will be among the participants in the 2021 Society of Socio-Economists (SOS) Annual Meeting. Hosted by the College of Law and titled “Pressing Social Issues,” the meeting will take place via Zoom on Jan. 10, 2021.
The issues to be discussed include wealth and income distribution; race, gender, and class justice; environmental sustainability; inclusive capitalism; the economics of war and peace; corporate fiduciary duties, social responsibility, and governance; and the ethical dimensions of economic analysis.
Included among the featured participants are Syracuse University College of Law professors Robert Ashford, Christian Day, David Driesen, and Shubha Ghosh. The full program can be found at societyofsocio-economists.com.
For more information, contact Professor Robert Ashford, Program Co-Chair for the AALS Section on Socio-Economics.
Read Professor Ashford’s introductory overview of socio-economics can be read at SSRN.
U Law Professor Saddened, Concerned About Democracy’s Future Link
(Spectrum News | Jan. 7, 2021) Sadness: That’s how Syracuse University Law Professor Bill Banks felt when he watched a mob rush the Capitol on Wednesday. A group of people took extreme measures to vindicate a president who refuses to accept defeat, he said.
“It’s quite an ironic and disturbing spectacle to have the president of the United States engage in sedition,” said Banks. “That is in violent, illegal attempts to overthrow the government of the United States.”
Capitol police were overwhelmed Wednesday afternoon. The logistics are still unknown.
Law enforcement in Washington, D.C., is unique because the Defense Department usurps the city’s power, said Banks. He says either the police misapprehended where the group was or they were underprepared.
“They simply didn’t have the numbers to stand up to the thousands of violent thugs who were using any means available to them to break into the building,” said Banks …
CNY Reactions to Washington D.C. Attack on Congress from Disgust to Anger to Blaming Trump Link
(WAER | Jan. 7, 2021) Reactions to the storming of the U.S. Capitol building by a large number of President Trump supporters Wednesday sparked some strong reactions from New York’s Congressional delegation and political experts in Central New York …
Syracuse University Professor William Banks, founder of the Institute for Security Policy and Law says the mob and its activities fall short of a coup attempt, though said it was appropriate for police to use force to quell rioting …
Eight College of Law faculty members, including Dean Craig M. Boise, will moderate panels and present their research at the Association of American Law Schools Annual Meeting (“The Power of Words“), taking place Jan. 5-10, 2021. Among the topics Syracuse faculty will address are the effects of COVID-19 on legal education, mental health, people with disabilities, and national security; Brexit and European law; the future of the Americans with Disabilities Act; capital acquisition; and climate change law and policy.
Professor Kristen Barnes (Chair, Section on European Law), “Comparing Data Protection Structures in the European Union and the United States” (Co-Moderator)
January 5 | 1:15 p.m. Sections on European Law and Defamation and Privacy Joint Program
Professor Kristen Barnes (Chair, European Law Section), “EU Mixed Agreements Under Brexit, Refugee Women, and Gender Equality” (Moderator)
January 6 | 4:15 p.m. Section on European Law: Works-in-Progress Panel
January 7 | 1:15 p.m. “This panel will examine the challenges and pitfalls of providing mental health services in the current moment.”
Professor Mark Nevitt, “Is Climate Change a National Emergency”
January 7 | 4:45 p.m. Section on Environmental Law
Professor Arlene Kanter, “Times are Changing: The Right to Remote Work Under the Americans with Disabilities Act”
January 8 | 2:45 p.m. AALS Hot Topic Program: “Disability and COVID-19: Lessons from Disability, Lessons from the Pandemic” (Moderated by Professor Doron Dorfman)
Professor Robert Ashford, “Ameliorating Wealth Concentration by Broadening Capital Acquisition with the Earnings of Capital”
January 8 | 1:15 p.m. Section on Socio-Economics: “For Whose Benefit the Corporation? Perspectives on Shareholder and Stakeholder Primacy”
Dean Craig M. Boise, “The Future of Legal Education: Online Teaching Post-COVID-19”
