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The View from the Corner Office: Stories Book 2022

ALUMS REFLECT ON THEIR JOURNEY FROM LAW SCHOOL TO THE C-SUITE

The College of Law has produced extraordinary leaders throughout our history. Today, our alumni include the President of the United States, a congressional representative, elected and appointed officials at all levels of government, judges, other public servants, business and nonprofit executives, entrepreneurs, writers, managing partners, and law firm chairs, and so many others in positions of influence.

In this third edition of The View from the Corner Office, we focus on alumni in senior leadership or entrepreneurial positions in medicine and pharmaceuticals. To be sure, the pandemic has placed a spotlight on public health, global health, and healthcare systems. Here are the stories of just a few of the College of Law’s alums who have risen to the daunting task of helping to attain the highest level of healthcare delivery by utilizing their law school training.

Along the way, we learn that for an Orange lawyer, any career benefits from a Syracuse law diploma. Look for more C-suite stories in future issues of the Stories Book, and if you missed them, prior issues, too, on our website.

​Connie Matteo L’91

Assistant General Counsel in Pfizer’s Civil Litigation Group

Connie Matteo L'91
Connie Matteo L’91

Prior to joining Pfizer in October 2009, Connie Matteo L’91 was a Senior Corporate Counsel at Wyeth. Before going in-house, she was a principal of Porzio, Bromberg & Newman in Morristown, NJ, and a member of the firm’s Litigation Department. Her practice focused on complex product liability, including pharmaceutical drugs and medical devices product liability claims. She also counseled pharmaceutical clients on issues related to regulatory compliance.

Matteo has authored a number of articles related to product liability litigation and regulatory compliance, frequently speaks on topics related to such litigation, and serves as a guest lecturer at two law schools.

Her interest in science was prompted by Matteo’s own struggle with lupus, a chronic autoimmune disease. “As a patient, I have a deep respect for the work that pharmaceutical companies do to improve the health of patients,” she says, noting the diagnosis pushed her to hone her focus on the pharmaceutical world.

What was your path to get where you are? 

When I started at the College of Law, I definitely didn’t see myself in my current role. As a first-generation student, my knowledge of the legal profession was fairly limited. I was also a bit shy, so I certainly never saw myself as a litigator. My original goal was to become a human rights attorney and to return to Amnesty International where I had interned in college. I attended an international law symposium during my first year of law school and quickly realized that international law wasn’t for me.

My career path was not typical for an in-house lawyer as I started my career as a plaintiff’s lawyer at a small firm. One of the two partners at the firm was a College of Law alum. As a benefit of working at a small firm, I had the opportunity to get substantive, hands-on experience, especially trial work. By my third year of practice, I recognized that I enjoyed cases that involved science and moved to a large firm’s product liability group in 1994. As an associate and partner, I worked on many matters for Pfizer and Wyeth. In 2007, I joined Wyeth which was later acquired by Pfizer.

How did law school prepare you for your current role?

One of the highlights of my time at Syracuse was participating in the College of Law’s trial advocacy program. I gained so much from that experience. I learned practical litigation skills, such as learning to think on my feet and make decisions quickly. I use the skills gained in the trial advocacy program almost every day.

Is there a professor or mentor during your time at the College of Law that stands out? 

Professor Travis H.D. Lewin. Not only did I gain a tremendous amount from his evidence and trial practice courses, but he was also a mentor and coach for the trial teams.

In light of the pandemic, what innovation has most affected your industry or how you practice law?

Zoom has dramatically changed my practice over the last two years, and I suspect it will continue to have a role after the pandemic. Before the pandemic, I traveled regularly for case management conferences, depositions, and trials. My only exposure to Zoom prior to the pandemic was once, as a guest lecturer at another law school. In the last two years, I’ve participated in roughly 10 mediations over Zoom. I’ve observed many oral arguments, case management conferences, depositions, and several jury exercises. We’ve even had an arbitration over Zoom. The ability to participate in hearings and conferences without traveling is a significant time-saver.

How has your organization overcome challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic?

Pfizer moved at lightning speed to make the impossible possible: Produce a COVID-19 vaccine in less than one year. But we also committed to changing the normal ways of working. We’ve had to pivot from traveling to attend in-person meetings to Zoom, and have adopted this “lightning speed” mentality in all the work that we do. We cut out red tape where we can, and closely collaborate with colleagues and partners to accomplish our purpose—breakthroughs that change patients’ lives. As the litigation lawyer that supports Pfizer’s vaccine team, it has been a very busy past couple of years but the work I’ve done and continue to do is the most meaningful and satisfying work I’ve ever done.

Jeremy McKown L’98

Vice President of Law, Janssen R&D at Johnson & Johnson

Jeremy McKown L'98
Jeremy McKown L’98

In overseeing a global legal team at Johnson & Johnson, most recently pursuing an expedited development of a COVID-19 vaccine, Jeremy McKown L’98 relies on effective communication and practical decision-making. Sometimes, including when facing a global pandemic, he says, solutions must be found both creatively and through compromise. 

“For every facet of the vaccine development process, my team was involved from a contract perspective, but also from a counseling perspective, because we were trying and doing things we hadn’t attempted in the past.”

In his work, he most enjoys negotiating complex license agreements but says he’s had a varied career. “It’s been a very fulfilling journey.” He finds gratification especially in seeing a successful outcome after a patient has benefited from a J&J clinical trial or a newly approved medicine.

“When I see someone whose life we’ve helped or saved, it brings tears to my eyes. It’s the same thing with our vaccine effort over the past two years, when I see what that’s done for society across the globe, I take it to heart. It’s very rewarding, and it’s exciting working on programs that may save people’s lives, or at the very least, make their lives better.”

What is your current position and what was your path to get where you are?

In my current role as head of R&D legal for J&J’s Pharmaceutical Group, I manage around 30 lawyers and professionals across the globe. We focus on transactions and spend much of our time drafting and negotiating clinical trial agreements, complex R&D agreements, and other types of agreements needed for our R&D business. Prior to taking this role in 2019, I worked at J&J as a patent attorney in our pharmaceutical and consumer businesses.

After my first year at Syracuse, I knew I wanted to do intellectual property law. To further investigate, while in school, I took a part-time job downtown with a small IP firm. This helped crystallize that I wanted to be an IP lawyer, particularly focusing on patent law. I first started in Washington, D.C. because I was told this is where all the patent IP firms were. I worked at Dorsey & Whitney and then Wilmer Hale and felt extremely fortunate to find general practice firms that exposed me to patent preparation and prosecution, patent litigation, IP due diligence, and significant transactions including complex license agreements.

How did law school prepare you for your current role?

Learning to think and approach problems differently was the biggest takeaway. Spending my undergraduate and graduate years in science required a different mindset. From the first day in law school, I recognized the need to approach problems from a different perspective. The most beneficial subject matter was taking federal courts and patent law courses and discussing practical examples. The best way to figure out how to draft a patent claim is to actually practice doing it. Professor Theodore Hagelin’s Law Technology Management Program (now known as the Innovation Law Center) was extremely important because it was less about reading textbooks and more about interacting with other law students and companies on projects. The huge benefit there was that we were working on real projects and interacting with different companies on these projects.

We worked on projects we knew would have an impact on large Fortune 500 companies or small start-ups. To sit across the table with business leaders and discuss our research and tell them what plans we’d developed and how they could maximize their intellectual property was an important skill-building tool. It was as close as you could get to a real-world experience, and that hands-on experience was extremely valuable.

Is there a professor or mentor during your time at the College of Law that stands out? 

Professor Lisa Dolak L’88, who taught patent law and federal courts, was great because she had industry and legal experience. It wasn’t just theoretical like reading a textbook, it was a real-world experience that she was sharing with students. On top of that, during my third year, under Professor Hagelin, I was a teaching assistant for the Law Technology & Management program. The combination of learning from both professors really solidified my interest in IP.

In light of the pandemic, what innovation has most affected your industry or how you practice law?

Zoom has been incredibly important. Before we would do conference calls, but you never really knew if people were paying attention. During the pandemic, it was an extremely important tool to be able to visually connect and talk through issues. It didn’t solve every problem, but it made things more personal. From a mental health aspect, it was essential given that many of my team members were isolated in their apartment buildings. After meetings, I often received comments about how connected people felt thanks to this medium. This was really gratifying to hear and made me feel better as a team leader.

The pandemic also made people think differently about how and what tools can be used to get things done quicker and more efficiently.

Consider artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, which have grown by leaps and bounds. We are now piloting AI tools to make the practice of law more efficient. We look at complex transactions a different way than simple transactions. Confidentiality agreements (CDAs) and non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) are the simplest forms of contracts we work with. If we can use an AI tool to craft the CDA or NDA and redline it when it comes back from another party, it makes a lower priority – but essential – task much more efficient. Then we can focus on higher-priority work. There’s not an AI tool or company out there that I’m aware of that has solved every issue, but we are spending time looking at different tools that will make contracting more efficient, and, I think, easier for attorneys to spend more time on higher value work.

Can you talk about your legal role in the COVID-19 vaccine rollout?

I have a number of examples. To run a clinical trial, you need to have a clinical investigator and other health care professionals work with the trial subjects. In many situations, people didn’t want or couldn’t go to a hospital or clinic because of the many restrictions related to COVID-19. This was completely understandable given the pandemic. We had to think about new ways of working, e.g., how to allow nurses and other healthcare professionals to go into people’s homes. My team—which includes Carrie Kissick Rabbitt L’03 and Michael McCabe L’06—worked with our clinical and R&D teams to develop creative solutions, in a compliant manner to make this happen. Given the benefits of these new practices, we continue to use some of these new ways of working.

For the vaccine itself, we were part of Operation Warp Speed (OWS), which was formed under the Trump administration and continues under the Biden administration. The goal of OWS was to accelerate the development of safe and effective vaccines for COVID-19.

This required my team to quickly draft and negotiate agreements together with a number of different stakeholders within the federal government, including the National Institute of Health and Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, and develop budgets and flexible contract language, while also focusing on clinical data transfer and privacy issues.

Another significant issue was identifying clinical trial sites and recruiting patients while managing staff shortages, supply chain bottlenecks, and pandemic fatigue. We worked closely with our scientific teams as they utilized AI tools to predict the right hotspots three to four months in advance at the country, state, province, and county levels. Setting up our clinical sites in the right locations was critical to evaluating the safety and efficacy of our vaccine. We had weekly meetings with our vendors and partners to ensure we were on track. As you can imagine, there were so many moving parts in the vaccine clinical trial.

And at times, the contracts weren’t exactly the way we wanted them, but we had to move quickly and balance the level of risk with the time necessary to negotiate the perfect contracts because, in a global pandemic, every day that went by was a delay of a getting a vaccine to the global population. People’s lives were at stake. The amount of time we put in was unbelievable— the team gave up vacations, holidays, and weekends, and reprioritized other projects. It was a heroic effort by everyone, from the scientists to the lawyers, to get things across the finish line.

Dean A. Rosen G’90, L;90

Partner at Mehlman Castagnetti Rosen & Thomas

Dean Rosen G'90, L'90
Dean Rosen G’90, L’90

As an expert on America’s complex health care system, Dean Rosen G’90, L’90 says health care became his focus by accident but has endured because of his work’s important interplay and intersection with policy and people’s lives. 

“Health care has been such an interesting career focus,” he says, “because it makes up one-fifth of our economy; because, at the federal level, it is the most heavily regulated portion of the economy, and because the government is a major payer for health care services.” The federal government, in his view, is more important to healthcare stakeholders than to almost any other constituent because of the unique nature of the sector—government programs impose detailed rules and regulations and set rates and reimbursement parameters and protocols.

Rosen played a leading role in developing and advancing health policy through influential posts on Capitol Hill for 15 years. On the Hill, he divided his time between traditional labor issues, law reform issues, and health care, which, he says, were the “Super Bowl of legislation” in the early ’90s. His efforts helped to create the Medicare Prescription Drug Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003 and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), among others.

Rosen says that lobbying and policy are a very “hands-on, personal services business” where one’s background is a driving force for success. Thus, his own experience and credibility on the Hill and his knowledge helped him grow the then Mehlman Castagnetti lobbying firm from a dozen clients to now approaching 150, half of whom are in the healthcare field

What was your path to get where you are? Did you see yourself in this role or field while in law school?

Initially, my interest was in a law career that embraced communications, which is why I did the dual degree with Newhouse. I was flexible on what that would be.

I loved the study of law, but I found the practice of it in a big firm setting not enjoyable. After a couple of years working in the law firm setting, I volunteered on political campaigns and eventually took a leave of absence to work on Capitol Hill. That time really underscored for me that I wanted to have a career in government and politics, and not at a law firm.

In 1993, I was hired by my home state senator from Minnesota, David Durenberger, a healthcare expert. Bill Clinton had just been elected president, and his highest priority was comprehensive health reform. Senator

Durenberger served on two key committees in the Senate that dealt with health care, and I was hired because of my legal background and the work I’d done as an employment lawyer. When it was clear that the Clintons were going to really push on health care, Durenberger deployed all of us on his staff to work on the issue. I had to learn the issues really quickly, and I rapidly developed a deep interest in them.

So, health care was really by accident. After spending years working in various positions on Capitol Hill as a senior staff person for various committees that dealt with health care, policy issues, and Congressional leadership, I joined the firm Mehlman Castagnetti, which was at that time a five- or six-person lobbying firm. We’ve now grown to about 20 full-time lobbyists. We’re one of the biggest government relations firms in D.C. and have been ranked in the top 10 for the last couple of years.

Now day-to-day, I use a lot of the skills and the strategic insights that I gained from working in government to help clients navigate through a number of issues, whether it be trying to pass or stop legislation, helping to shape regulations, or helping clients understand what’s going on in Washington, and how that may impact their strategic goals and business.

How did law school prepare you for your current role?

I have a nontraditional career. I’m a lawyer in the sense that I keep my bar license and use my legal training, but I really don’t practice law. I work as a lobbyist, but just as I did on Capitol Hill, I utilize the skills I learned at Syracuse Law. My clients are trying to figure out, every day, how they can comply with the law, and how they can change laws. I apply what I learned from my coursework in administrative and regulatory law specifically, as well as more broadly what I gained in legal reasoning and interpretation skills. Beyond that, law school gave me the ability to look critically at an issue, analyze a document, to think creatively about how to solve problems. I use that every day, whether I’m drafting a piece of legislation or analyzing a regulation.

Is there a professor or mentor during your time at the College of Law that stands out? 

Professor Theodore Hagelin, who led the Technology Commercialization Law Program,(now known as the Innovation Law Center), really cared about and understood the intersection between law and the technology sector. He was also my Law Review note advisor. My Law Review note was about a Federal Communications Commission regulation that I felt needed to be reexamined given the evolution of technology. Because it was a complex issue, I don’t think I would have been able to write it without somebody like Professor Hagelin who understood and had a passion for this area. Also, Professor Travis H.D. Lewin, who led the moot court program, stands out. He had a way of making law fun, and he was passionate about his students. Public speaking is a big part of what I do now, and he helped me gain the confidence I need to advocate for issues in front of small and large audiences.

In light of the pandemic, what innovation has most affected your industry?

The rapid development of vaccines is the most significant. I think the fastest development of a vaccine before COVID-19 was five years, and the COVID-19 vaccine was developed within a year. Additionally, while doctors and nurses had begun using telehealth, the pandemic accelerated the use and acceptance of telehealth as a healthcare delivery method because of necessity. I personally worked on that front, in order to help providers secure the waivers and greater flexibility they needed for telehealth. There are strict government restrictions in place, with Medicare in particular, around how seniors can get care. These restrictions have been waived during the pandemic. I think that the new modality may be one of the biggest changes in our healthcare system brought on by the pandemic. We have such a shortage of providers, especially in mental health, I believe this is an area where telehealth is going to expand and change how we deliver much-needed care to patients moving forward.

G. Randall Green L09

Division Chief of Cardiac Surgery and Director of Upstate Heart Institute, SUNY Upstate Medical University; Founder at Phairify, Inc.

Dr. Randall Green L'09
Dr. Randall Green L’09

Day-to-day, G. Randall Green L’09 is a heart surgeon. In the midst of his decades-long medical career, he’s also completed both law and business degrees, which he utilizes within and outside of his demanding work at Upstate.

Green’s time in legal practice focused on transactional health law. He represented physicians and physician groups in contract negotiations with hospitals. During this time, he says, it became clear that physicians struggled to define their fair market valuation. “In that process, I learned that fair market value was rarely what it seemed to be,” he says because it is based on “horrendously bad information.”

The reason: The body of market research done by several third-party providers relies on a sample size of about 3% of physicians. This is often only representative of large, multi-specialty groups. Based on all he learned while representing physicians, and what he has observed in the field as a practicing physician and a medical team leader, Green decided to help solve the problem.

In 2019, he founded Phairify, a web-based platform that helps physicians measure their professional value based on aggregated and specialty-specific data. The platform also helps recruiters to better understand and price the market for physicians and inform recruitment practices.

What elements of your legal training do you apply in your current work?

I think the practical aspect of working with clients tops the list. In the third year of law school, I worked with two different clients, one from Rochester and one locally through the College’sTechnology Commercialization Law Program (now known as the Innovation Law Center). These companies told us about a problem they had and, working in a four-person group, we analyzed the problem and the intellectual property around it. Efforts included commercialization opportunities, device research, examination of the finances, etc. It was a great opportunity to dive into a problem like an entrepreneur and then be meticulous in terms of parsing out the problem, understanding it, and then going through a series of solutions to be successful. It’s now the same thing my team does with our company.

The Innovation Law Center now continues this work, and things came full circle when we became a portfolio company in the center. I saw in action now what I saw in my third year. Students did their review and gave us ideas on what could be protectable intellectual property.

Is there a professor or mentor during your time at the College of Law that stands out? 

Professor Ted Hagelin, who founded and served as director of the Technology Commercialization Law Program, was spectacular. This program was heavy into patent law, and IP, and very much about how you start with an idea, protect the idea, and commercialize the idea. Entrepreneurship was a big part of my life. Professor Hagelin really opened my eyes to what in a business is a protectable asset as intellectual property. He made it very clear how one can run a business up to the margin of the law. He helped me discover that I really understood very little about business. That’s why I went on to Cornell University for business school immediately following law school. Professor Hagelin had a massive impact on my understanding of the commercialization process, and how business and law intersect.

Additionally, Professor Lisa Dolak L’88 was a powerful influence as well. I think she was a spectacular educator and taught me a great deal about patent law and, indirectly, business.

How has your work been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic?

I approach everything from a transactional health law perspective, centering on physicians and hospitals working together. I would have to say, COVID has strained that relationship. COVID put all healthcare providers in a trying position, by having to provide care to a great number of people in the setting of scarce and constrained resources. We are at an all-time high, I think, of physician burnout. Physicians are leaving their practices in large numbers, which exacerbates the looming problem of a predicted shortage of physicians. Many are leaving current roles to look for better offerings, with greater resources, and a solid percentage of physicians are permanently leaving. Many physicians are also near retirement, which exacerbates the problem.

Health care doesn’t happen for patients unless physicians and hospitals work together… hospitals can’t deliver care without physicians. We are heading into an era where there are going to be very few physicians. We’re looking at a shortage of about 140,000 physicians by 2035. As physicians become increasingly scarce, we see a real opportunity in empowering physicians and helping them to quantify their market value and exert control over the jobs they seek and get; in turn, that information allows employers to come in and shape jobs that meet physicians’ expectations and advance their delivery needs.

How do you balance running a company and a full-time role as both a cardiac surgeon and hospital leader?

Any startup really has to be done in your spare time. And, you just have to make the time.

They’re incredibly resource-needy. My hospital job takes precedence: I’m a heart surgeon all day long. I fit in all the other activities on nights and weekends. I’m lucky to have three outstanding co-founders. We meet Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday nights for two hours, no matter what.

We schedule additional meetings as needed. But you’re always doing something: you’re either raising money; selling the product, both to society and physicians; generating marketing and advertising content, or overseeing the design of the application.

Final thoughts?

As a practicing physician, an attorney, and an entrepreneur, I credit a great deal of whatever small success I’ve had to Syracuse University College of Law. It was a great experience. It’s a phenomenal law school, and I’m very proud to be an alumnus.

Professor Nina Kohn Reacts to Big Law Firms Join Nursing Homes, Hospitals in Fight Over Liability for COVID-19 Deaths

Professor Nina Kohn

In the New York Law Journal story, “Big Law Firms Join Nursing Homes, Hospitals in Fight Over Liability for COVID-19 Deaths”, Professor Nina Kohn notes that the introduction of more high-powered attorneys signals that providers—which are often large, chain entities that own facilities across multiple jurisdictions—might be stepping up efforts to secure appellate victories.

Prolonging—and winning—the battle over where these cases are heard also benefits providers because it increases the expense for plaintiffs’ counsel and potentially discourages other individuals from bringing suits, Kohn said.

“This isn’t just defeating a claim in a particular facility or even in a particular jurisdiction but looking out for the interests of a large organization that may span many different states,” Kohn said. “If you can take care of a bunch of states in one fell swoop, that’s efficient. … As plaintiffs’ attorneys are trying to figure out what is viable under COVID and what is not, a few key wins at the federal level could have a desired chilling effect from the industry’s point of view.”

S.J.D. Cohort Featured by Syracuse University

The College of Law’s first cohort of Doctor of Juridical Science in Law (S.J.D.) students and their academic pursuits are profiled in the Syracuse University story, “Elevating Law Research”.

Learn how Renci “Mercy” Xie LL.M. ’20, Ricardo Pereira LL.M. ’18, Jawad Salman LL.M. ’18, and Yohannes Zewale LL.M. ’19 have come from around the world to the College of Law to complete their Doctor of Juridical Science in Law degrees, focusing on employment discrimination class actions, tax law, and disability law.

Professor William C. Banks is Interviewed on Those Facing Subpoenas in the January 6 Inquiry

Professor of Law Emeritus William Banks

Professor Emeritus William C. Banks is quoted by the New York Times in the article, “Facing Subpoenas, Trump Allies Try to Run Out the Clock on Democrats.” Professor Banks notes that for those facing subpoenas in the January 6 inquiry, “The law is not on their side at all, so the only thing they can do is what often happens in litigation, which is to drag it out and seek to delay because the elections are coming.”

Professor Mark Nevitt in Just Security: Reforming the Insurrection Act

(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 …

Syracuse Law Announces Plans to Offer Helix Bar Review to Students at No Charge

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.”

Syracuse Law Leaders in Public Service

Headshot of John Katko L’88

John Katko L’88

Elected for a fourth term in the US House of Representatives in November 2020, Rep. John Katko L’88 serves New York’s 24th Congressional District, which includes all of Onondaga, Cayuga, and Wayne counties, as well as the western portion of Oswego County in Central New York.

Currently, Congressman Katko is Ranking Member on the House Committee on Homeland Security—leveraging his years as a federal prosecutor litigating narcotics and gang cases—as well as a member of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.

Serving as a Congressman is the latest position in a distinguished public service career for the Central New York native. Today, Congressman Katko resides in Camillus with his wife, Robin, a registered nurse, and is the proud father of Sean (currently a second lieutenant in the US Army), Logan, and Liam.

After earning degrees from Niagara University and the College of Law, Congressman Katko began his career at Washington, DC, firm Howrey & Simon. He then worked at the US Securities and Exchange Commission before becoming an Assistant US Attorney for the US Department of Justice, serving as Special Assistant US Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia and with the DOJ’s Criminal Division, Narcotics and Dangerous Drug Section. In this capacity, he served as a Senior Trial Attorney on the US-Mexico border in El Paso, TX, and in San Juan, PR.

“It’s clear that the College provided both President Biden and me with a high-quality education that we’ve relied on for our successes.”

Later, Congressman Katko returned to Central New York as a federal organized crime prosecutor in Syracuse for the US Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of New York, spearheading high-level narcotics prosecutions.

Throughout his 20 year career as a federal prosecutor, Congressman Katko was repeatedly tapped to train prosecutors in Central and South America, Eastern Europe, and Russia. He also was selected to serve as the only foreign prosecutor to lead an investigation and prosecution of government troops in Albania who shot and killed numerous protestors. He was awarded top prosecutor awards by three different Attorney Generals.

Notably, in the mid-2000s, Congressman Katko led the Syracuse Gang Violence Task Force, which employed the Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations Act, along with other federal statutes, to prosecute gang-related crime in the city. Between 2003 and 2012, the Task Force prosecuted 90 suspected members of six Syracuse street gangs.

While first running for Congress in 2014, Congressman Katko referred to his work breaking up Syracuse gang violence in a Syracuse Post-Standard interview: “If I can get gang bangers to cooperate, I can certainly work with the knuckleheads in Washington and help them straighten things out.”

We recently caught up with Congressman Katko to ask him about his service to his community and the nation, how Syracuse Law prepared him for life as a prosecutor and Congressman, and what it takes to lead in Washington, DC, in the midst of a highly partisan atmosphere.

What led you to pursue a law degree at Syracuse Law?
As a student, I quickly developed an interest in public service and found that I enjoyed working on issues that supported my community and our nation. That, combined with the appreciation I always had for Syracuse University growing up, sort of instinctively led me back to the College of Law after my undergraduate degree, and that turned out to be a great decision.

When did you know you wanted to be a federal prosecutor and later seek public office?
I still remember the first time I was at the podium while serving at the US Securities and Exchange Commission and was introduced as “John Katko on behalf of the United States of America.” That was the moment where everything clicked for me, and I knew what I wanted to do.

How did Syracuse Law prepare you to become a federal prosecutor?
I remember how fired up I would get for trial practice classes, and how much that feeling stuck with me. Those classes really prepared me to pursue a career as a prosecutor.

Why is public service important to you, and what should the public understand about the role of public servants in a democracy?
As a federal prosecutor, it was drilled into your head to always be non-political and to only look at the facts. Integrity and ethics always came first and foremost, and it was important to remember that I was in that role to seek justice, not just to win cases.

Those principles date back to my earliest classes at Syracuse Law. It was hammered into our heads as students that upholding the law is a tremendous responsibility to be entrusted with, and therefore we have to be as objective as possible in every decision we make.

Now, as a member of Congress, I still make every decision by analyzing the facts and assessing the evidence in front of me. Sometimes, that leads to a choice that’s not popular with everyone, but ultimately, I’m here to do what’s right.

Many alumni serve the public—from your perspective, is that a coincidence or the result of a Syracuse Law education?
Syracuse provides a lot of opportunities to serve our communities, such as the legal clinics and other chances to deliver pro bono service to give back and make a difference. I learned very quickly that there was a lot of good that someone could do with a law degree, and you could tell the College of Law deliberately worked to instill this lesson in us.

All Syracuse Law students should know that it’s a distinct honor to serve the public and to realize our ability to have a positive impact on society. There’s no better reward than being able to help people and feel good about the work done along the way.

In your opinion, what makes a good leader? How do these skills relate to your work as a Congressman?
People have to recognize when they don’t have all the answers and learn to value other sides of an argument. In Congress, I interact with a lot of different opinions on just about every issue imaginable. Whether I’m listening to constituents or working on a bill with members of Congress representing different districts across the country, I always want to keep an open mind and find ways to make compromises.

I’ve been fortunate enough to be elected to Washington, DC, and to advocate for policies that help my district. It turns out that writing off half your colleagues as enemies isn’t the most effective strategy to get this done, so I’ve been willing to work with anyone, regardless of party, who shares my concern for an issue.

Rep. John Katko L’88 meets with Washington, DC, externs in November 2019.
Rep. John Katko L’88 meets with Washington, DC, externs in November 2019.

What are your thoughts on a fellow alum being elected President while you are serving in Congress?
I’m proud of our school. It’s clear that the College provided both President Biden and me with a high-quality education that we’ve relied on for our successes. It’s exciting to see that we’re just two of the many distinguished alumni who have come out of Syracuse Law, and I hope the school continues the tradition of providing a superb education that helps students do good in the world.

How would you define your legacy in public service?
I’m a normal guy who’s been granted some extraordinary responsibilities in my life. I guess I want to be remembered as someone who never let these get to his head and as someone who used his good fortune to give back to the community he grew up in and loved.

Workplace Harassment & Gov. Cuomo: Professor Emily Brown Speaks to Syracuse.com

Emily Brown

Cuomo’s no stranger to scandal: Why is this moment different?

(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 …

Read the full article.

Long-Term Care After COVID: A Roadmap for Law Reform

By Professor Nina A. Kohn


Professor Nina Kohn, a white woman with brown shoulder-length hair, wearing a black blazer over a tan sweater, with gold necklaces and earrings, smiles in front of a window. She is holding a dark blue book.Professor Nina Kohn

Professor Nina Kohn has become a leading voice for reforming long-term care in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. Her recent articles on regulating nursing homes and other forms of long-term care have been published in The Washington Post, The Hill, Georgetown Law Journal Online, and elsewhere. She has been quoted in more than 600 news stories in the past year, and has testified on long-term care issues before the New York legislature.

Also the Solomon Center Distinguished Scholar in Elder Law at Yale Law, Kohn is the author of Elder Law: Practice, Policy, and Problems (Wolters Kluwer, 2d ed. 2020). At Syracuse Law, she teaches torts, elder law, and trust and estates. This short article was originally published in Spring 2021 in Bill of Health, the blog of Petrie-Flom Center at Harvard Law School.


Long-Term Care ReformLong-Term Care Reform

Between May 2020 and January 2021, 94% of US nursing homes experienced at least one COVID-19 outbreak.1 And nursing home residents—isolated from family and friends,2 dependent on staff often tasked with providing care to far more residents than feasible, and sometimes crowded into rooms with three or more people3—succumbed to the virus at record rates. By March 2021, nursing home residents accounted for a quarter of all US COVID-19-related deaths. 

The poor conditions in nursing homes that have been exposed by the pandemic are symptomatic of long-standing problems in the industry.
Fortunately, as I discuss in the Georgetown Law Journal Online,4 there are a series of practical reforms that could readily improve the quality of nursing home care, in large part by changing the incentives for nursing home providers.

The Danger of Chronic Understaffing 

A key problem exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic is the danger of chronic under staffing in nursing homes. Low staffing levels—and especially low levels of nursing staff 5—predict facilities’ inability to control COVID-19 outbreaks and avoid fatalities.6

The dangers of understaffing were an open secret long before the pandemic. Even before the pandemic, researchers had shown that most facilities lacked the staff necessary to avoid systemic neglect.7 Likewise, pre-pandemic nursing homes’ inspection reports provided ample evidence of facilities lacking the staff needed to care for residents, such as those needed to help residents eat without choking, maintain mobility, or simply stay clean. ProPublica’s database of nursing home inspection reports, for example, turns up scores of cases of residents with maggot-infested wounds and skin in the two years preceding the pandemic.8

Chronic understaffing doesn’t just result in bad care: it can be lethal. 

For example, when staff members are not available to assist residents who need help to stand or walk, residents may fatally injure themselves attempting to get about on their own. Understaffing is also associated with abusive practices. 

A 2018 Human Rights Watch report found that US nursing homes routinely over medicate residents with dementia to make them docile and easier to control.9 This practice can increase the risk of death and strip residents of their personalities—as one daughter put it, her mother became a “zombie.” Nevertheless, as a 2017 review found, understaffed facilities appear to use psychotropic medication as a “cost-saving alternative to hiring additional RNs.”10
Understaffing is commonplace because while federal regulations set expected outcomes for facilities, regulators do not hold nursing homes accountable for those outcomes. Instead, when nursing homes are found to have violated federal regulations designed to protect residents, they typically face no fine or other penalty; they are simply directed to correct the deficiency. 

Therefore, unscrupulous providers can increase profits by short-staffing facilities. Indeed, private equity firms continue to buy low-quality nursing homes11 because of the profit such facilities can generate—especially when owners are willing to sacrifice resident safety to maximize profit.12

The Power of the Federal Wallet

To address this issue, federal regulators could change the way nursing home penalties are assessed and enforced, imposing more significant fines and using the full range of penalties that federal statutes already authorize. This includes not only monetary fines but also holds on new admissions and suspensions of payment.

Regulators also could require facilities to have minimum direct care staffing levels that accord with what researchers have found necessary to provide humane care (slightly over four hours per resident, per day).13

In addition, regulators could require facilities to use a substantial portion of their revenue to care for residents. For example, New Jersey has adopted legislation requiring nursing homes to spend 90% of annual aggregate revenue on direct resident care. This approach could prevent unscrupulous providers from pocketing funds needed for resident care. 

The key will be to require financial transparency so that facilities cannot hide profit as expenses and to set spending minimums high (such as New Jersey’s 90% requirement and unlike the 70% threshold New York adopted as part of its 2021 Budget Bill).14

The federal government—the primary payer for long-term care services in the US—could use the power of its wallet to incentivize better care. It could pay nursing homes that provide high-quality care more than those that provide substandard care. Elsewhere in the US healthcare system, pay-for-performance is the norm. But nursing homes that provide excellent care are generally still paid the same as those that provide shoddy care.

“The good news is that, by exposing the dangers of the current system, the
pandemic could create an opening for these types of meaningful law reform.”

The federal government also could improve long-term care by fixing a fundamental market failure that it has created. The federal statute governing Medicaid requires states to cover long-term care services provided in nursing homes to Medicaid beneficiaries, but it allows states to choose whether to cover those services in more integrated settings. 

States that wish to provide home and community-based services (HCBS) to Medicaid beneficiaries needing long-term care typically apply for a “Section 1915(c)” waiver from the federal government. Under this waiver program, states are not required to provide HCBS on equal terms with institutional long-term care services, but rather they may cap the number of beneficiaries served under the waiver and the cost of services provided. 

The result is that most states have waiting lists for at least one type of Medicaid-funded HCBS care, and approximately three-quarters of states limit how many hours of care they provide to beneficiaries receiving services through an HCBS waiver program. This institutional bias could be eliminated by amending the underlying statute, as draft legislation being circulated by Michigan Congresswoman Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) and a handful of US senators would do.15

But Is There an Appetite for Reform? 

The good news is that, by exposing the dangers of the current system, the pandemic could create an opening for these types of meaningful law reform.

Unfortunately, the political response to COVID-19 provides a reason for skepticism about the extent of reform it will spark. At both the state and federal levels, policymakers’ primary response to concerns about COVID-19 transmission within nursing homes was not to protect nursing home residents, but rather to protect the nursing home industry.

As I outline in The Hill, roughly half the states in the US granted immunity to nursing homes amid the crisis (some even went so far as to grant immunity from criminal liability and from acts that would otherwise be construed as gross negligence).16 Similarly, the US Secretary of Health and Human Services used his authority under the Federal Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act (the “PREP Act”) to bar state and federal claims against nursing homes that unreasonably administer or use infection “countermeasures” such as masks and testing.17 

In addition, policymakers responded by waiving—and even eliminating in some cases—existing requirements designed to protect residents. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services initially responded to the COVID-19 pandemic by waiving a series of regulatory requirements for nursing homes and suspending most enforcement actions. Arkansas even rolled back its minimum staffing requirements in response to industry lobbying.

That said, there are some promising measuring under consideration. For example, at the federal level, there is the Dingell proposal, as well as a Senate bill introduced by Pennsylvania’s senators that would expand the number of poorly performing nursing homes subject to additional inspections.18 Moreover, the Biden Administration has proposed an additional $400 billion (over eight years) for HCBS, which would help increase access to alternatives to nursing home care, although it would not eliminate Medicaid’s bias in favor of institutional care.

States also are considering reform.  For example, proposed legislation pending in Rhode Island would require nursing homes to provide the 4.11 hours of care per resident, per day19 that research has indicated is necessary to avoid neglect (see footnote 13).

In short, policymakers interested in improving long-term care have a variety of straightforward options available to them. Accordingly—as I suggested in The Washington Post, examining the politics of nursing home reform20—the key question is not what can be done to fix America’s long-term care crisis. The key question is whether there is the political appetite to make the changes that are so clearly needed. 


Endnotes

[1] “COVID-19 in Nursing Homes: Most Homes Had Multiple Outbreaks and Weeks of Sustained Transmission from May 2020 through January 2021,” US Government Accountability Office (May 2021).
[2] “Is Extended Isolation Killing Older Adults in Long-Term Care?” AARP (Sept. 3, 2020).
[3] “Black and Latino Nursing Home Deaths in Illinois Linked to Overcrowding,” WMAQ-TV (NBC Chicago) (April 30, 2021).
[4] “Nursing Homes, COVID-19, and the Consequences of Regulatory Failure,” Georgetown Law Journal Online Vol. 110 (Spring 2021).
[5] “Nurse Staffing and Coronavirus Infections in California Nursing Homes,” Policy, Politics, & Nursing Practice Vol. 21, No. 3 (August 2020).
[6] “Staffing Levels and COVID-19 Cases and Outbreaks in US Nursing Homes,” Journal of the American Geriatrics SocietyVol. 68, No. 11 (November 2020).
[7] “Registered Nurse Staffing Falls Short in Most Nursing Homes,” Skillednursingnews.com (March 15, 2018).
[8] “Nursing Home Inspect,” Propublica.org (May 2021).
[9] “’They Want Docile:’ How Nursing Homes in the United States Overmedicate People with Dementia,” Human Rights Watch (February 2018).
[10] Variation in Use of Antipsychotic Medications in Nursing Homes in the United States: A Systematic Review,” BMC Geriatrics Vol. 17, No. 1 (January 2017).
[11] “Private Equity Ownership Is Killing People at Nursing Homes,” Vox.com (Feb. 22, 2021).
[12] “Does Private Equity Investment in Healthcare Benefit Patients? Evidence from Nursing Homes,” NYU Stern School of Business (Nov. 12, 2020).
[13] “The Need for Higher Minimum Staffing Standards in US Nursing Homes,” Health Services Insights Vol. 9 (April 2016).
[14] State of New York, Budget Bill S.2507/A.3007 (Jan. 20, 2021).
[15] “Draft: A Bill to Amend Title XIX of the Social Security Act to Require Coverage of Home and Community-Based Services Under the Medicaid Program” Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-MI) (2021).
[16] “Nursing Homes Need Increased Staffing, Not Legal Immunity,” The Hill (May 23, 2021).
[17] “Guidance for PREP Act Coverage for COVID-19 Screening Tests at Nursing Homes, Assisted Living Facilities, Long-Term-Care Facilities, and Other Congregate Facilities,” US Department of Health & Human Services Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health (Aug. 31, 2020).
[18] US Congress (116th), Nursing Home Reform Modernization Act of 2020 S.4866 (October 2020).
[19] State of Rhode Island, Nursing Home Staffing and Quality Care Act S.0002 (January 2021).
[20] “Covid Awakened Americans to a Nursing Home Crisis. Now Comes the Hard Part,” The Washington Post (April 28, 2021).

The Three Global Hotspots of the Climate-Security Century

By Professor Mark Nevitt

Adapted from an article first published in the Tufts Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy’s Fletcher Security Review.

“Humanity is waging war on nature. This is suicidal. Nature always strikes back, and it is increasingly doing so with growing force and fury … we must use 2021 to address our planetary emergency.1  —António Guterres, State of the Planet Speech, Columbia University (December 2020)

Professor Mark Nevitt

The climate-security century is here. With global temperatures rising, climate change is poised to massively destabilize the physical environment.2  This century may well be defined by our ability (or inability) to reduce our collective greenhouse gas emissions. We must also adapt and respond to climate change’s multivariate security impacts. From raging wildfires in Australia and California to melting ice sheets and permafrost in the Arctic, climate change acts as both a threat accelerant and a catalyst for conflict.3

Climate change is also unlike any other traditional security threat. It accelerates and exacerbates existing environmental stressors, such as sea level rise, extreme weather, drought, and food insecurity, leading to greater instability.4  Climate change impacts are already taking center stage this century, forcing us to think more broadly about climate change’s relationship with human security and national security.5

Complicating matters, climate-driven temperature increases do not rise in a neat, uniform fashion around the globe. The pace of climatic change unfolds unevenly and erratically. Some parts of the world—such as the Arctic—are warming at a rate two to three times faster than the rest of the world. 

Three specific climate-security “hotspots” foreshadow greater destabilization and serve as climate “canaries in a coal mine”—a sneak preview of our climate-destabilized future:
The Arctic—transformed by climate change and a new operational environment, opening trade routes and sparking a potential race for natural resource extraction in the High North.

Pacific Small Island Developing States—where climate-driven sea level rise is swallowing nations whole, raising the specter of climate refugees and possible nation extinction.

The African Sahel—where climate change is leading to increased drought and food insecurity, serving as a tinderbox for resource conflicts. 

Hotspot #1: A Climate-Transformed Arctic


Global Hotspot #1
Due in large part to the pace of climate change, the Arctic is quickly emerging as a region of increasing military and economic importance. The Arctic is warming faster than the rest of the planet, driven by a self-reinforcing feedback loop known as the albedo effect, which accelerates the melting of polar ice caps and permafrost.

In turn, melting polar ice sheets are forming new trade routes through Canada (the Northwest Passage) and along the Russian border (the Northern Sea Route). Along the Arctic’s continental shelf, climate change is renewing interest in natural resource extraction, where close to 30% of the world’s untapped natural gas resides. 

The “Law of the Arctic” is largely governed by the work of the Arctic Council, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), and an assortment of laws and bilateral agreements among the eight Arctic states. 

In contrast to its South Pole cousin—governed by the comprehensive Antarctic Treaty System (ATS)6 —there is no Arctic Treaty. The Arctic Council is characterized by an evolving “soft law” system of collaboration among the eight Arctic Council states: Canada, Denmark (via Greenland), Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden, and the United States. Critically, China is not a voting member of the Arctic Council, although China has declared itself a “near-Arctic” nation and has increasing ambitions in the region. Of these eight members, Denmark, Russia, United States, Norway, and Canada are Arctic “coastal states”—with a continental shelf in the Arctic Ocean—and can potentially extract natural resources. 

Despite the potential for conflict and tension, the Arctic Council has enjoyed some success in managing competing Arctic interests. It has demonstrated a remarkable capacity to tackle increasingly complex issues, such as an agreement addressing unregulated fishing and Arctic search and rescue. 

However, in the face of climate change, tension points are starting to emerge. By its own mandate, the Arctic Council is prohibited from addressing matters of military security.7  This is largely left to NATO and individual nations to navigate. Canada, Denmark, Iceland, Norway, and the US are original NATO members, providing a counterweight to growing Russian militarization. As Russia has invested heavily in Arctic military infrastructure, the NATO members of the Arctic Council have shown a renewed interest in military exercises in the region. 

While the Arctic Council’s 2008 Ilulissat Declaration reaffirmed the Arctic Council’s commitment to the Law of the Sea framework, one key Arctic Council member—the United States—remains an outlier as a non-party to UNCLOS.8 This international treaty, often referred to as the “Constitution of the Oceans,” largely governs maritime issues in the Arctic Ocean to include the increasingly important rights of Arctic innocent and transit passage.9  Additionally, UNCLOS establishes the Commission for the Limits on the Continental Shelf (CLCS), which provides technical expertise to help ascertain the breadth of each individual nation’s continental shelf claims.10  

Four of the five Arctic coastal states have submitted information to CLCS in support of continental shelf claims. The United States has not made a similar submission for its enormous Alaskan continental shelf. As a non-party to UNCLOS, the US likely will not be able to avail itself of the CLCS process.

In 2007, Russia shocked the world by planting its flag on the North Pole. This was an act of no legal significance but nevertheless signaled broader Russian ambitions in the Arctic. Today, Russia claims an outer continental shelf that extends to the Lomonosov Ridge—an enormous area with vast untapped oil and natural gas resources that overlaps with the North Pole. 

While remaining a non-party to UNCLOS, the US has nevertheless served as a good law of the sea partner. For example, the US views UNCLOS’s key navigational provisions as binding customary international law. Additionally, the US Navy has complemented and enforced many key UNCLOS provisions via freedom of navigation operations and diplomatic assertions around the world. 

Despite the US Senate’s failure to provide its advice and consent to UNCLOS ratification, a remarkably diverse coalition of American national security experts, environmentalists, and business interests support the US becoming a party to the convention. The U.S. should ratify UNCLOS as it is contrary to our long-term national security and economic interests in the Arctic and elsewhere.11 

Outside of natural resource extraction, two seasonal waterways—the Northwest Passage and the Northern Sea Route—are both found in the Arctic. Canada has long viewed the Northwest Passage as their internal territorial waters.12  While the US and Canada have “agreed to disagree” on the legal status of the Northwest Passage, tensions have risen regarding Russia’s authority to regulate shipping along the Northern Sea Route. Russia has increasingly asserted an expansive view of its authority over ice-covered areas along the route, requiring prior notification from foreign ships before transiting.

Perhaps most importantly, what happens in the Arctic does not stay in the Arctic. The melting permafrost in Greenland and Arctic tundra increases the possibility for cataclysmic “green swan” events causing dramatic sea level rise, impacting coastlines and small islands, as discussed below.

Hotspot #2: Small Island Developing States & Nation Extinction


Global Hotspot #2
Far away from the Arctic, scientists predict that four Pacific Small Island Developing States (SIDS) may become uninhabitable by mid-century due to climate change-driven sea level rise and wave-driven flooding.13

The specter of potentially “stateless” UN member states—Kiribati, Maldives, Republic of Marshall Islands, and Tuvalu—strikes at the core of the UN Charter system, raising novel questions of both international law and environmental justice. It also exposes a governance gap in international law, which does not adequately protect climate migrants fleeing from climate-driven weather impacts and uninhabitability. The 1954 World Refugee Convention, for example, is silent on migrants fleeing environmental or climate disasters.

Since  World War II, the UN Charter has played an important role in stabilizing international order by upholding national territorial integrity and the sovereign equality of each member nation.14  While SIDS are relatively small, they have equal standing as sovereign nations. 

Several questions now arise: With climate change undermining the territorial integrity and sovereignty of these nations, what is the responsibility of developing nations to alleviate this slow-moving tragedy? Can international governance institutions afford to remain silent while nations face climate-driven statelessness? What are the legitimate costs of both action and inaction?

The plight of global climate migrants is an issue of increasingly grave concern.15  By one estimate, more than 150 million people will be displaced by rising sea levels by the year 2050.16  One recent study found that two-thirds of the world’s population faces severe water shortages, a catalyst for cross-border human migration.17  

In addition, many small island nations are uniquely vulnerable to extreme weather patterns. Scientists now link climate change, rising temperatures, and the increased likelihood of extreme weather,18 to which small island nations often lack the capacity to adapt and respond. In 2020, when Cyclone Harold struck several Pacific island nations, it triggered an estimated 99,500 displacements.19 

Finally, critical US national security infrastructure in the region is increasingly at risk. The US operates a key military installation and radar facility at Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands that helps protect the US from North Korean missiles. Rising seas may cause parts of the Marshall Islands to become uninhabitable as early as 2035.

Hotspot #3: The African Sahel and the Climate-Conflict Nexus


Global Hotspot #3
In a cruel twist, climate change disproportionately harms nations that contributed the least to global greenhouse gas emissions and have the fewest resources to adapt to climate change’s impacts. This includes both SIDS and the poverty-stricken African Sahel, an area already suffering from climate-exacerbated food insecurity and conflict.20

The Sahel region of West Africa, for example, is one of the poorest regions in the world with 40% of the population living on less than US$1.90 per day. The region’s population is growing at an astonishing rate, expected to double by 2045,21 yet the climate is warming in the Sahel far faster than in the rest of the world.

In a recent Security Council debate on climate and security, the World Meteorological Chief Scientist stated that climate change has a multitude of security impacts “increasing the potential for water conflict; leading to more internal displacement and migrations … it is increasingly regarded as a national security threat.” 22 

There is a growing body of scholarship that connects climate change’s multivariate impacts and violent conflict.23  In 2020, the International Committee of the Red Cross estimated that 12 of the 20 most vulnerable countries to climate change were in a state of conflict.24  An estimated 1.25 million people have been displaced in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger due to extreme rainfall and flooding.25 

Climate change’s destabilizing role in the African Sahel is forcing international legal institutions to reimagine what role they might play in addressing underlying causes of conflict and instability.  

Consistent with its mission to maintain international peace and security,26 the UN Security Council (UNSC) has begun to address climate change. It first recognized the link between environmental security and international security in the aftermath of the Persian Gulf War (1992) and the destruction of oil fields.27  Recognition of other non-traditional security threats followed, such as HIV/AIDS (2000) and Ebola (2014).

In 2017, UNSC took the historical step of linking climate change with the deteriorating security situation in the African Sahel. In Resolution 2349, the “adverse effects of climate change and ecological change” in destabilizing the security situation in the Lake Chad Basin is specifically highlighted.28  Since this Resolution was issued, the Council followed up with additional resolutions for Somalia, Darfur, West Africa, and the Sahel, and Mali.29

While it has yet to make the formal determination that climate change effects are a “threat to the peace” within the meaning of UN Charter Article 39,30  there is a growing precedent for UNSC to use its authorities to address non-traditional security threats. 

As the earth warms, climate hotspots such as the African Sahel will increasingly bear the brunt of climate change’s impacts. In the coming years, the UN will be under increasing pressure to address climate-driven security matters in some fashion.31  An Article 39 declaration serves as the legal key, opening the door for the Council to use its awesome Chapter VII authorities.  

A Climate-Security Reset for the United States?


United States Reset
Within a month of taking office, President Joseph R. Biden Jr. L’68 released two important executive orders on climate-security matters: (1) “Executive Order on Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad” and (2) “Rebuilding and Enhancing Programs to Resettle Refugees and Planning for the Impact of Climate Change on Migration.”

“Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad” makes clear that the world faces a “profound climate crisis” and that US international engagement “is more necessary and urgent than ever.” 32 In the EO, President Biden makes it clear that climate considerations “shall be an essential element of US foreign policy and national security.” In re-energizing climate-security matters, the new Administration understands that it is simply too important to be left solely in the hands of the defense or state departments. 

By elevating several people within his Cabinet who have deep experience in climate change and security matters, and by favoring a whole-of-government approach, President Biden acknowledges that climate change requires integrated national security planning. For example, as Special Envoy for Climate former Secretary of State John Kerry will have a seat on the National Security Council—a historic first. Additionally, former EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy serves as the nation’s first National Climate Advisor, leading a new interagency National Climate Task Force.

President Biden’s EO on resettling refugees emphasizes that human migration is often due to climate change impacts.33  This order reinvigorates the role of the United States Refugee Assistance Program throughout the immigration process “in a manner that furthers [American] values as a Nation.” 

This EO also requires that National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan develop a comprehensive report for the President on climate change’s impact on migration as well as its international security implications. While it remains unclear how the results of this report will be implemented, this signals an important willingness to think broadly about the relationship between climate change and immigration patterns.  

Relatedly, a reinvigorated role for climate-security matters in the forthcoming National Security Strategy (NSS) is expected, a document that sets the tone for the new administration’s national security policies. 

Since President George H.W. Bush, every US president has issued an NSS that squarely addresses climate change and national security. For example, President Barack Obama’s 2015 NSS stated that “The present-day effects of climate change are being felt from the Arctic to the Midwest. Increased sea levels and storm surges threaten coastal regions, infrastructure, and property. In turn, the global economy suffers, compounding the growing costs of preparing and restoring infrastructure.”34 

In a prescient nod to the importance of recognizing non-traditional security threats, the 2015 NSS made clear the high priority of “meet[ing] the urgent challenges posed by climate change and infectious disease.” 

While climate change was omitted from the Trump Administration’s 2017 NSS, the Biden Administration’s Interim NSS states that “The climate crisis has been centuries in the making … if we fail to act now, we will miss our last opportunity to avert the direst consequences of climate change for the health of our people, our economy, our security, and our planet.”35

Endnotes
[1] Quoted in The Washington Post (Dec. 15, 2020).[2] J.B. Ruhl and Robin Kundis Craig, 4°C (2021 manuscript).[3] “Threat Multiplier: The Growing Security Implications of Climate Change—A Conversation with Sherri Goodman,” Fletcher Security Review (July 2018); Center for Naval Analyses, “National Security and the Threat of Climate Change,” (2007).[4] Marwa Daoudy, The Origins of the Syrian Conflict: Climate Change and Human Security (Cambridge 2020).[5] “Climate Tipping Points: Too Risky to Bet Against,” Nature Vol. 575 (2019, corrected April 2020).[6] “Polar Opposites: Assessing the State of Environmental Law in the World’s Polar Regions,“ Boston College Law Review Vol. 59 (2018).[7] Declaration on the Establishment of the Arctic Council/Ottawa Declaration (1996).[8] The Ilulissat Declaration, Arctic Ocean Conference (May 2008).[9] UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, Art. 17 (Right of Innocent Passage) and Art. 38 (Right of Transit Passage).[10] UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, Art. 76 (Definition of the Continental Shelf).[11] “Polar Opposites: Assessing the State of Environmental Law in the World’s Polar Regions,“ Boston College Law Review Vol. 59 (2018).[12] “The US-Canada Northwest Passage Dispute,” Brown Political Review (April 8, 2020).[13] “Most Atolls Will Be Uninhabitable by the Mid-21st Century Because of Sea Level Rise Exacerbating Wave Driven Flooding,” Science Advances Vol. 4, No. 4 (2018).  [14] UN Charter, Art. 2, Para. 1.[15] “Forced Migration After Paris Cop21: Evaluating the ‘Climate Change Displacement Coordination Facility,’” Columbia Law Review Vol. 116, No. 8 (Dec. 2016).[16] “Refugees Flee from the Earth,” The New York Times Magazine (July 26, 2020).[17] “Two-Thirds of the World Faces Severe Water Shortages,” The New York Times (Feb. 12, 2016); Human Rights Commission, Figures at a Glance (August 2020).[18] “Explaining Extreme Events of 2017 from a Climate Perspective,” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society Vol. 100, No. 1 (January 2019).[19] World Meteorological Organization, Provisional Report on the State of the Global Climate 2020 (December 2020).[20] “Addressing Security Council, Pacific Island President Calls Climate Change Defining Issue of Next Century, Calls for Special Representative on Issue,” United Nations (July 11, 2018).[21] “Climate Change in the Sahel: How Can Cash Transfers Help Protect the Poor?” Brookings Future Development (Dec. 4, 2019).[22] “Climate Change Recognized as ‘Threat Multiplier’, UN Security Council Debates Its Impact on Peace,” UN News (Jan. 25, 2019).[23] “Climate Wars? A Systematic Review of Empirical Analyses on the Links between Climate Change and Violent Conflict,” International Studies Review Vol. 19, No. 4 (December 2017).[24] “Climate Change and Conflict Are a Cruel Combo that Stalk the World’s Most Vulnerable,” ICRC (July 9, 2020).[25] WMO, State of the Global Climate 2020.[26] UN Charter, Art. 24.[27] UN Security Council, “Provisional Verbatim Record of the Three Thousand and Forty-Sixth Meeting” (Jan. 31, 1992).[28] UN Security Council, Res. 2349 (March 31, 2017).[29] UN Security Council, Res. 2408 (March 27, 2018).[30] UN Charter, Art. 39.[31] “Is Climate Change a Threat to International Peace & Security?” Michigan Journal of International Law (forthcoming 2021).[32] “Executive Order on Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad,” Executive Office of the President (January 2021).[33] “Executive Order 14013: Rebuilding and Enhancing Programs To Resettle Refugees and Planning for the Impact of Climate Change on Migration,” Executive Office of the President (February 2021).[34] “National Security Strategy,” Executive Office of the President (February 2015).[35] “Interim National Security Strategic Guidance,” Executive Office of the President (March 2021).