Faculty Awareness Bulletin

For more details, read the Choi (NYU), Gulati (Duke) & Posner (UChicago) article that was recently posted to SSRN: Which States Have the Best and Worst High Courts?

Topics: News & Events

Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly reported this week that the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination will now apply the Massachusetts Maternity Leave Act to both men and women. 

MLW explained that “in what the employment bar is calling a “bombshell decision,” the MCAD has quietly announced it will apply the Massachusetts Maternity Leave Act to both women and men.  The revelation came at a recent Foley Hoag client event at which the guest speaker, MCAD Commissioner Martin B. Ebel, told the crowd of about 200 surprised lawyers and corporate officials that, effective immediately, his office plans to prosecute MMLA cases in a gender-neutral fashion.”

For more details, read the full MLW article here.

Topics: News & Events; Family Law

For more details on the changes and trends that have taken place in the Federal courts over the last ten years, take a look at this interesting report.

Topics: Civil Procedure; News & Events

The bill  passed by a vote of 8-4 on Monday, Dec 3rd and is designed to replace capital punishment with life in prison.  This new piece of legislation could pave the way for New Jersey to abolish the death penalty.  For more details, with direct links to the text of the bill and various Senate reports, go here. 

 Topics: Death Penalty; News & Events

Four new uniform acts were approved by the ABA’s House of Delegates at the mid-year meeting that was held in Miami from Feb 7 - 13.   Each of the 4 uniform acts was drafted and approved bt the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws in 2006. Read more here. 

Topics: News & Events

For more details, read the full article that was published in the Portland Press Herald this week.

Topics: News & Events; Legal Education 

According to an article in today’s New York Law Journal, “a Manhattan federal judge has ruled that the BAR/BRI bar exam review comprises separate state-specific and multistate components that could potentially be tied and forced on consumers in violation of antitrust laws.”

Topics: Legal Education; News & Events

For more details, take a look at this Washington Post article that ran today.  Reporter Robert Barnes explains that “after decades of decline in its caseload, the court is once again on track to take its fewest number of cases in modern history.”

Topic: Constitutional Law; News & Events

The Christian Science Monitor recently published “The YouTube World Opens An Untamed Frontier for Copyright Law” by Daniel Wood.

 Topics: Intellectual Property; News & Events 

More than 32 states adopted new laws that went into effect on January 1, 2007.  For a complete list, go to the National Conference of State Legislatures website. 

Topic: News & Events