Welcome to another edition of St. John’s Law Faculty News, our quarterly newsletter featuring our full-time faculty’s publications, activities, and achievements.

Last month, St. John’s Law faculty members participated on panels and received awards and nominations at the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) 2026 Annual Meeting in New Orleans, LA. Associate Dean for Faculty Scholarship Eva Subotnik shares highlights from a busy and impactful event in this Faculty Focus blog post.

For our Law Matters story series, Dean Jelani Jefferson Exum interviews faculty members about their teaching, research, writing, and work in the field. Read the Q&As with Professors:

We share these and other stories from St. John’s Law on our website’s News & Media page.

Professor Ashley B. Armstrong is a Deputy Editor for the 2025 ABA Section of International Law Year in Review, a comprehensive survey of international legal developments produced in cooperation with SMU Dedman School of Law.

Professor Robin Boyle-Laisure’s latest book, Taken No More: Protect Your Children Against Traffickers and Cults (Bloomsbury) has been published. In his book review, forensic psychologist Steve Eichel says, “There is no other book that provides such specific advice tied to a child’s, adolescent’s, or young adult’s developmental level for both recognizing manipulators and coping with exposure to cultic or trafficking processes.”

Professor Miriam Cherry’s article, “Abuse of Contract,” has been accepted for publication in the William and Mary Law Review. 

Professor Sandeep Singh Dhaliwal’s article, “What’s Left of the New Deal State?”, appears in the Michigan Law Review’s online edition, MLR Online. In it, he reviews legal historian Anthony Gregory’s book, New Deal Law and Order: How the War on Crime Built the Modern Liberal State (Harvard University Press).

Professor Evelyn Malavé and Brooklyn Law Professor Cynthia Godsoe co-wrote an amicus brief in a New York Court of Appeals case, with assistance from WilmerHale. The issue presented was whether the Office of Court Administration’s confidential memos advising judges on how to interpret the law should be released under the Freedom of Information Law (FOIL), which Professor Malavé favored, or whether the memos were subject to attorney-client privilege. In a 7:0 decision (PDF), the majority sided with Professor Malavé’s position. 

Professor Patricia Montana’s article, “Getting the Reader to Say “Yes”: Applying Negotiation Principles from the Books Getting to Yes and Getting Past No to Achieve Effective and Persuasive Legal Writing,” was published in the Loyola University Chicago Law Journal. Her article, “Invoking the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment (“PPRA”) to Safeguard Student Privacy Rights: My Three-Year Battle to Enforce the PPRA Against an Intractable New Jersey School District,” has been accepted for publication in the Mississippi College Law Review.

Nicolás Maduro’s arrest in Venezuela and his subsequent appearance in federal district court in Manhattan have raised significant legal questions. In a post for First Things, Professor Mark Movsesian addresses one of them: How can the United States arrest a foreign head of state for violating U.S. narcotics laws when the alleged conduct occurred outside the country and the foreign state did not consent to the arrest? Professor Movsesian’s article, “Status, Conduct, Belief, and Message: The Wedding Vendor Cases,” appears in a symposium issue of the Chicago-Kent Law Review.

Professor Michael Perino completed “The Wolves of Wall Street,” a chapter in the forthcoming book Regulation and Imagination: Legal, Historical, and Literary Perspectives on Highway Robbery (The Green Bag Press). In it, he examines depictions of Wall Street in popular literature at the turn of the 20th century.

Columbia Law School's Blue Sky Blog and Harvard Law School's Bankruptcy Roundtable blog featured Professor Ray Warner's recent article, “Sustainable Bankruptcy” (forthcoming in the American Bankruptcy Institute Law Review).

Professor Kate Klonick offered key context in a recent Politico story on the social platform X’s escalating disputes with foreign governments over content moderation. In a guest spot on WNYC’s Radiolab, she gave her take on the evolution of free speech online over the last 15 years. Professor Klonick interviewed NYU Law Professor Rick Pildes for the Lawfare Daily podcast about how social media has contributed to the downfall of democratic systems and institutions. She also contributed to recent episodes of NPR’s Open to Debate podcast and Lawfare’s Rational Security podcast.

Professor Michael Perino is quoted in a New York Law Journal story on how securities class actions have transformed in the 30 years since Congress passed the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.

Professor Ashley B. Armstrong presented at the Legal Writing Institute’s Teacher Training Bootcamp 2.0, a virtual workshop hosted by Stetson University focused on second-semester 1L persuasive legal writing. She shared an exercise designed to help students craft clear, impactful preliminary statements.

To mark the Nuremberg trial's 80th anniversary, Professor John Q. Barrett gave a lecture on Justice Robert H. Jackson through the Supreme Court Historical Society. As a trustee of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum, he assisted in presenting the Roosevelt Institute’s 2025 Freedom from Fear medal to Dr. Simon Adams, President and CEO of the Center for Victims of Torture. Professor Barrett was the principal speaker at a U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania program and reenactment titled Trial of the Twentieth Century: The 1935-1937 Tax Trial of Andrew W. Mellon in the Western District of Pennsylvania.

As part of its MLK Celebration, the Office of Equity and Inclusion at St. John’s University honored Professor Noa Ben-Asher for their work on advancing justice and expanding opportunity. 

For a recent webinar hosted by the Federal Bar Association and myLawCLE, Professor Robin Boyle-Laisure and Heather Gram, Teaching Professor at Wake Forest School of Law, discussed The Art of Clear Legal Writing: Advanced Tools for Structuring Arguments and Drafting Contracts without Ambiguity.

Professor Miriam Cherry spoke at the Annual NYU Conference on Labor and Employment Law on Executive Orders and Disparate Impact Litigation. She presented her work on a hybrid employment category for digital platform workers at the Regulating for Decent Work Conference at the United Nations – International Labor Office in Geneva, Switzerland.

At Touro Law Center’s 36th Annual Honorable Leon D. Lazar Supreme Court Review, Professor Catherine Baylin Duryea addressed key developments in administrative law, including the regulatory ban on ghost guns, the future of independent agencies, and the distinction between principal and inferior officers.

Professors Elissa Germaine and Christine Lazaro participated in Practising Law Institute’s annual program, Securities Arbitration 2025. Professor Germaine presented on the panel Staying Ahead of the Curve: Hot Topics and Future Trends and contributed an article titled “Securities Arbitration Case Law Update 2024–2025.” As a panelist, Professor Lazaro offered insights on Avoiding Ethical Mine Fields in the FINRA Forum and contributed a short article, “Ethical Considerations When Using Social Media in Securities Arbitration Cases.”

The Supreme Court Fellows Commission appointed Dean Jelani Jefferson Exum to serve on the Academic Advisory Board for the Supreme Court Fellows Program during the October 2025 Term. In this role, she provides scholarly and professional guidance to a Supreme Court Fellow assigned to conduct research at the U.S. Sentencing Commission.

Professor Kate Klonick spoke at McGill Law School’s Attention conference on the Perilous Free Speech Environment. She presented her paper, “Ban Cookie Banners,” at Berkeley Law School, served as a discussant at Northwestern Law School’s STEM and Law conference, and was a speaker at the Mozilla Festival in Barcelona, Spain.

Professor Mark Movsesian was a Discussion Leader at a conference titled The Constitution of Practice: On Law and Tradition hosted by the Georgetown Center for the Constitution. He spoke about incorporation of the First Amendment’s Religion Clauses at 80 Years of Religious Liberty, a two-part conference at the University of Seoul and Doshisha University (Kyoto). 

Professor Colleen Parker moderated a student well-being panel for the Tri-State Well-Being Consortium and co-presented with Professor Robin Boyle-Laisure at the Nassau County Bar Association on ethical issues related to artificial intelligence. 

Professor Jeremy Sheff spoke on a panel addressing Discretionary Denial and the Court-PTAB Standoff organized by the Hon. William C. Conner Inn of Court.

Professor Michael A. Simons was a featured presenter at a AALS symposium on Impact, Excellence, Resilience: Contemporary Views on Pioneering Legal Education Scholarship. Sponsored by UC Irvine School of Law and New York Law School, the symposium invited contemporary scholars to reflect on some of the most critical scholarship that has appeared in the Journal of Legal Education.

As a panelist at the University of Pennsylvania Law Review’s symposium on The Future of Law and Multiracial Democracy, Professor Cheryl L. Wade discussed the future of corporate diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. She also participated in a UCLA School of Law symposium marking 25 Years of Critical Race Studies, serving on a panel titled Sound as Legal Resistance: Hip-Hop’s Role in Critical Race Theory’s Future.

For more St. John’s Law faculty news, visit our Faculty Focus blog produced by Associate Dean for Faculty Scholarship Eva Subotnik. Professor Subotnik also organizes our annual Faculty Workshop Series that brings scholars from across the country together to discuss their current research and receive feedback on their works-in-progress from our faculty.

Please email Lori Herz, our Director of Strategic Communications, at herzl@stjohns.edu.

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