Our professors are renowned scholars and practitioners—experts who shape the study and practice of law. I'm proud to share a sampling of their recent scholarship with you. The energy and engagement exhibited by our faculty continue to make Cardozo a leader in legal education.
Melanie Leslie became dean of Cardozo Law School on July 1, 2015. She is the first Cardozo Law graduate and the first woman to hold the position.
Dean Leslie was the driving force behind a number of important initiatives at the intersection of law, technology, intellectual property, and business, including The FAME Center for fashion, art, media and entertainment law, which prepares students to work in the creative industries through its extensive curricular offerings; The Cardozo/Google Patent Diversity Project, which seeks to increase the number of women and minority innovators receiving patents; The Blockchain Project, which offers classes and symposia on blockchain and regulation; The Center for Rights and Justice; and The Center for Real Estate Law and Policy.
A Cardozo professor since 1995, Dean Leslie is a leading scholar in trusts & estates, fiduciary obligations and nonprofit governance. Courses taught include Property, Trusts and Estates, Nonprofit Governance, and Evidence. She has been presented the “Best First-Year Professor” award by three graduating Cardozo classes. She served as Cardozo’s Vice Dean from 2014-15.
Dean Leslie is a prolific scholar whose work has been published by the NYU Law Review, Boston College Law Review, Florida Law Review, William & Mary Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal, and Indiana Law Journal, among others. She is the co-author of a leading casebook, Estates and Trusts, Cases and Materials, as well as Concepts and Insights: Trusts and Estates. Dean Leslie has been a Visiting Associate Professor of Law at New York University School of Law, and a Visiting Professor of Law at Columbia Law School. She has served on the NY State Bar and NYC Bar Joint Committee on the Uniform Trust Code, as a Legal Fellow of the American College of Trusts and Estates Counsel (ACTEC), and on the executive committees of the AALS Sections on Trusts & Estates and Nonprofits and Philanthropy.
Prior to joining the Cardozo Law faculty she clerked for Justice Gary S. Stein of the New Jersey Supreme Court and practiced commercial litigation at Debevoise & Plimpton, Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, and McCarter & English.
A native of Las Vegas, Dean Leslie received her B.A. in Theater from the University of Oregon, with honors, before moving to New York City, where she spent several years working as a professional actor and vocalist. She then received her J.D. from Cardozo Law magna cum laude in 1991, where she was the Executive Editor of the Cardozo Law Review.
U.S. News & World Report
U.S. News & World Report
Heald & Sichelman
“Without widescale reforms of public policies, pointing to credit scoring, of any variety, as a way to help the economically disenfranchised will perpetuate the idea that merely ranking people has the potential to improve access and financial outcomes. In reality, the range of credit scoring techniques serve as another cog in wealth and economic inequality.”
“Realist and critical legal scholars often have pointed out that overlegalization and over-judicialization are inappropriate, expensive, and possibly even counterproductive ways to address human rights violations. Little evidence exists, however, to suggest that international human rights law is over-legalized or over-judicialized.”
“The COVID-19 pandemic has placed in stark relief just how difficult it is for those in prison to get a hearing on the merits of their claims for emergency relief. The three types of solutions proposed in this article—the interpretative solution, the state or local solution, and the federal legislative solution—either alone or in combination, would alleviate some of the difficulties faced by incarcerated plaintiffs seeking emergency relief, increasing the possibility that courts would hear prisoner rights cases on the merits.”
“Separation of powers may be a splendid or flawed system for allocating authority among the constitutionally established branches of government. But that the framers adopted a particular structure for the apex of government—and grounded it in the idea that the accumulation of different types of power in the same hands is to be avoided—provides no grounds to suppose that the internal structures of the component parts must also follow those same lines.”
“The rise of the digital economy and the corresponding tax challenges requires new solutions. In response to the specific obstacle of untaxed consumption in the digital platform economy, policy makers in Maryland and abroad have found such a solution in the form of a DST. DSTs provide a reasonable answer to this problem (and others) and should not be dismissed easily.”
“The criminal legal system remains an addictive “solution” for progressives engaged in work on behalf of those denied their rights, and sometimes their humanity, by our heteropatriarchal, white-dominant society. As I have argued, breaking this addiction is central to the work of radical decarceration.”
“Was Purdue Pharma a theft plan? We say no. The plan as written just expresses the concept of res judicata. It does not release third parties from tortious behavior they themselves committed. It gave precious little or no protection to the Sackler family, to the extent the Sacklers were tortfeasors.”
“Too little attention has been paid to the fact that funders seek to bind lawyers with agreements intended to protect the funder’s interest in receiving their property held by the lawyer after the resolution of their clients’ matters.”
“The presidency is a massively powerful institution. We can debate the desirability of that power and its consistency with constitutional design, but no one should want an unchecked president. It is a truism that the people represent the ultimate check on the president. As long as we have the Electoral College, that is no meaningful check at all.”
“Not all disasters, however, are
created equal. Although advances in
modeling technology and judicious
use of modern financial instruments
expand the availability of insurance
against disasters, some risks may
remain uninsurable."
“The strict remedial approach of Arthrex reveals that the strategy used a decade ago to cure the CRB’s similar constitutional problem in Intercollegiate is no longer valid. Because patent law has made CRJs unconstitutional (again), action is necessary, and the best fix is for Congress to make CRJs Presidential appointees subject to Senate approval."
“If venture carveouts successfully commercialize AVs, the engineers who built the technology will rightly receive credit. But they should save some champagne for the lawyers.”
“We identify a more fundamental challenge posed by algorithmic pricing: in many markets it will raise prices for consumers even in the absence of collusion. The result could be a massive redistribution of wealth from buyers to sellers.”