News

Professor Shubha Ghosh Discusses Google Antitrust Ruling With Techopedia

Professor Shubha Ghosh, Director of the Syracuse Intellectual Property Law Institute, spoke with Techopedia for their article, “Can Internet Search Survive Google Antitrust Ruling?” Recently, a federal judge found that Google maintained an illegal monopoly on the internet search engine market.

Ghosh says that the ruling could lead to a point where the court would force Google to rework some of its contracts with partners.

“The ruling could help move internet search into a purer regime where search companies can finance search engines without distorting them. The court will likely move to rework contracts with vendors and advertisers. But there is only so much the court can do,” says Ghosh.

Syracuse University Institute for Security Policy and Law Hosts New York State Board of Elections Election Security Workshop and Tabletop Exercises

The Syracuse University Institute for Security Policy and Law (SPL) recently hosted a New York State Board of Elections Election Security Workshop and Tabletop Exercises in Dineen Hall. The purpose of the event was to ensure readiness by all entities as the general election approaches, offering a collaborative opportunity for government authorities, election administrators, law enforcement, and information technology experts, alike.

The County Boards of Elections, the Cyber & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the New York State Executive Chamber, the New York State Division of Homeland Security & Emergency Services (DHSES), the New York State Police (NYSP), and the New York State Office of Information Technology Services (ITS) participated in the event.

SPL faculty observed the exercises and networked with participants to generate future collaborations and opportunities for SPL students.

“Stuck Her Chin Out” Professor Emeritus William C. Banks on Judge Aileen Cannon Throwing Out the Donald Trump Documents Case

Special counsel John L. “Jack” Smith recently filed an appeal with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit to reverse an order made by Judge Aileen Cannon that threw out the case saying the appointment of a special counsel was unconstitutional.

Speaking with Roll Call, Professor Emeritus William C. Banks said Cannon “stuck her chin out” with that ruling. Banks said Cannon’s ruling cut against decades of court decisions upholding the constitutionality of special counsels as well as the prior independent counsel statute.

“Prosecutors, attorneys general have had discretion to appoint officials for all sorts of circumstances since the beginning of the republic,” Banks said.

University Professor David Driesen Discusses Potential Legal Battles Surrounding the Presidential Election

University Professor David Driesen spoke with Business Insider for the article, “The courts could decide this presidential election, and both campaigns are gearing up for an ugly legal fight.”

“You now have, in the swing states of Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, about 70 election deniers and commissions that are supposed to count the electoral votes, and already there have been about 20 cases where officials in recent elections have refused or delayed certification of results,” Driesen says. “So what Trump is going to do is claim some kind of fraud and then try to get the officials who believe him to delay or prevent certification on election results.”

Professor Shubha Ghosh Provides Insight into RealPage Antitrust Case

Professor Shubha Ghosh recently spoke with Legal Dive on the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) antitrust case against RealPage. The DOJ has sued RealPage under the Sherman Antitrust Act for deploying an algorithm that helped rental property owners turn into price-fixing collaborators.

Ghosh notes that the Supreme Court has made it clear it distinguishes between anticompetitive behavior among companies and the tools they use to reach their pricing decisions. That means the DOJ must show “a physical agreement to price-fix” to prove a Sherman Act violation.

By focusing on the rental algorithm, Ghosh says, the agency appears to be sidestepping this essential requirement and instead is “creating an inference of an agreement from the use of the algorithm. This shift would undermine traditional antitrust safeguards for competition.”

“Profoundly Weak” Professor Nina Kohn on State of Texas v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

Professor Nina Kohn recently spoke with Law360 on the lawsuit State of Texas v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, et al. that seeks to overturn minimum nursing home staffing levels as set by the U.S Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in April.

In the article “With Billions At Stake, Texas Suits Target Nursing Home Rule” states, Kohn says allegations that the rule is arbitrary and capricious, are undermined by research on the staffing levels necessary to avoid neglect and the full regulatory review CMS carried out before issuing the standards.

“Already, nursing homes were required to have sufficient staff to meet resident needs,” Kohn told Law360. “The problem is that they routinely didn’t. And because there was no set number of staff hours per day set, it was hard for regulators to hold nursing homes accountable for not having the staff needed to avoid neglect.”

The full article may be behind a paywall.

Thomas M. Leith Joins Syracuse Law Faculty and Named Director of the Criminal Defense Clinic

Thomas M. Leith has joined the faculty of Syracuse University College of Law and was named Director of the Criminal Defense Clinic (CDC.) Leith is an Associate Teaching Professor who teaches Legal Communication and Research and Trial Practice courses.

At the CDC, Leith will oversee Syracuse Law student-attorneys as they represent clients charged with misdemeanors and violations in Syracuse City Court and town courts in Onondaga County. Clients are represented at pretrial hearings and trials and are assisted in managing the civil consequences related to their criminal cases. All criminal cases are assigned to the Clinic through the court.

Prior to joining Syracuse University, Leith was the Managing Attorney of the Criminal and Appeals Programs at Hiscock Legal Aid Society (HLAS) in Syracuse, New York. He joined HLAS in 2020 as a Staff Attorney in Appeals. As Managing Attorney, he oversaw programs at HLAS representing indigent clients in their criminal, Sex Offender Registry Act, and family court appeals, post-conviction advocacy, and indigent parole clients in their hearings and appeals.

Leith spent the previous ten years as a trial-level public defender: first with Brooklyn Defender Services in Brooklyn, NY, then with the Law Offices of the Shelby County Public Defender in Memphis, TN. In his years in the courtroom, he has defended every type of criminal case, from violations and misdemeanors to clients charged with first-degree murder.

Before his roles in public service, Leith was in private practice at law firms in New York City. Leith also clerked for then-Chief Judge Raymond J. Dearie of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York.

Since 2023, Leith has been an adjunct professor at the College of Law, teaching trial practice.

Leith earned a J.D. from New York University School of Law and a B.A. from the University of Wisconsin – Madison.

“A Clever Ploy” – Professor Gregory Germain on the Upcoming Sentencing of Donald Trump in His Criminal Case

Professor Gregory Germain spoke with Salon for an article about the September 18 sentencing of Donald Trump in the New York criminal case and efforts made by Trump’s attorneys to have the sentencing postponed until after the upcoming election.

“I think Trump’s request to delay sentencing is a clever ploy to make a record to argue in federal court that the judge was politically motivated to interfere with the federal election,” says Germain. “I doubt that the court will delay sentencing, but it will give Trump an additional argument to challenge the sentencing on appeal, or collaterally in a habeas corpus case if he’s sentenced to prison.”

Professor Lauryn Gouldin’s Research Uses Artificial Intelligence to Improve Fairness of Criminal Court Scheduling

 College of Law professor who is an expert on criminal court pretrial appearance is partnering with computer science faculty to see if artificial intelligence tools and optimized data analysis can improve fairness and efficiency in scheduling defendants’ court dates.

Headshot of woman in glasses smiling.

Lauryn Gouldin (Photo by Marilyn Hesler)

Lauryn Gouldin, Crandall Melvin Professor of Law and a 2022-25 Laura J. & L. Douglas Meredith Professor of Teaching Excellence, is one of three researchers on the project, “End-to-End Learning of Fair and Explainable Schedules for Court Systems.” She and Fernando (Nando) Fioretto, assistant professor of computer science at the University of Virginia (formerly of Syracuse University) and William Yeoh, associate professor of computer science and engineering at Washington University in St. Louis received a $600,000 National Science Foundation (NSF) grant for the research. They are examining three issues: the uniformity and fairness of criminal court-date scheduling processes, if individual circumstances are considered when setting court dates, and whether a “smarter” computerized system can produce more equity and efficiency in those processes.

Ensuring that defendants who are released before trial return to court as scheduled is one of the primary goals of the pretrial process, Gouldin says. “Fortunately, data across jurisdictions suggest that most defendants show up for court as required. With bail reform efforts in many jurisdictions leading to higher rates of pretrial release, courts are focused on ensuring that pretrial appearance rates remain high,” she says.

Scheduling court appearances on dates and at times that work for defendants will help keep pretrial appearance rates high and avoid court system inefficiencies, she believes. Many factors—often legitimate hardships—can influence whether a defendant appears in court when scheduled. Gouldin says those factors are not consistently considered by courts and there is little uniformity in how appearance dates are scheduled from court to court.

The researchers are working to produce a system that predicts dates and times when defendants are more likely to appear versus being assigned an arbitrary court date or time. They believe having that knowledge, along with more flexibility in scheduling court dates—such as setting evening or weekend appearance dates—could improve pretrial appearance rates and create a more equitable scheduling process overall.

Continue reading here.

Shannon Chamberlain L’24 Wins Top Student Paper in the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication Law and Policy Division Competition

Shannon Chamberlain L’24 wrote the Top Student Paper in the Law and Policy Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) competition and presented the paper at their recent conference.

Chamberlain’s paper is ESCAPING LIABILITY FOR THE “GRAVEST OF THREATS”: EXPANDING ARTICLE 1, SECTION 6 IMMUNITY AND NARROWING BRANDENBURG INCITEMENT.

“This was an exceptional paper on a novel and contemporary issue with a compelling legal analysis and argument.  I know the judges were impressed, too,” says Professor Roy Gutterman L’00. “Congratulations to Shannon for this achievement in a very competitive media law scholarship competition.”