Welcome to See infra, our e-newsletter delivering a sampling of news from St. John's Law.

IN BRIEF

Teaching In
This week, students, faculty, and administrators came together online for the inaugural Racial Justice Teach-in. Leading criminal law scholar Paul Butler opened the day-long event with a talk about race and criminal justice. Attendees also heard student perspectives on fostering an antiracist Law School before moving into virtual breakout rooms for discussions on a range of topics, including Discrimination in Real Estate, Navigating Identity in Professional Settings, and Lessons Learned from the Bell Case.

Taking a Stand
What must we, as lawyers charged with serving justice and as a Law School community committed to being actively antiracist, do in the face of these acts of violence against the AAPI community?

We come together.

We come together in support of our extended AAPI community. We come together to reaffirm the Law School's commitment to calling out, and standing against, racism. We come together in solidarity with anyone and everyone who is subject to racist violence and hatred in their many forms.

This is an excerpt from messages of solidarity with the AAPI community that Dean Simons shared with students and alumni before and after the devastating events in Atlanta.

Succeeding at the Virtual Auction House . . .
One day. One fundraiser. One months-long, student-led effort. It all came together beautifully as St. John's Law, our Public Interest Center, and our Public Interest Law Students Association hosted the 25th Anniversary Public Interest Auction. The event raised close to $118,000 to fund 29 Summer Public Interest Fellowships, making this by far our most successful Public Interest Auction in recent years. Many thanks to all who donated, bid, and otherwise supported the Auction.

. . . and in the Virtual Courtroom
Over three days, law students on 34 teams nationwide came together from homespun courtrooms and, along with 90 volunteer judges and brief graders and 25 U.S. federal judges presiding, participated in the virtual St. John's Law-ABI Duberstein Bankruptcy Moot Court Competition.

Advancing Dispute Resolution
Avital Mentovich, a Professor at the University of Haifa's School of Criminology, J.J. Prescott, the Henry King Ransom Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School, and Orna Rabinovich-Einy, an Associate Professor on the Law Faculty at the University of Haifa, will receive our Hugh L. Carey Center's 2021 Dispute Resolution Advancement Award.

ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT

You've Got News. Let's Hear It!
Class Notes is now online at stjohnslawseeinfra.com. Whether it's a new job, a promotion, an honor, or an activity of note, share your good news with your fellow alumni. Our next edition will publish in early June. Please submit your news to mckeevec@stjohns.edu.

Need CLE Credits?
Join us online this month for our April Showers CLE Series as we present “Silent Cyber Risk in your Supply Chain: How to Identify and Address Cyber Risk from Third Party Vendors” (4/14) and “Navigating the Changes in Elder Law—What You Need to Know” (4/28). You can register for the CLE series here and email questions to mckeevec@stjohns.edu.

FACULTY FOCUS

Scholarly Work
Marc O. DeGirolami, St. John's Cary Fields Professor of Law and co-director of our Center for Law and Religion, has had two pieces accepted for publication: “Reconstructing Malice in the Law of Punitive Damages” will appear in the Journal of Tort Law and “Establishment's Political Priority to Free Exercise” will be published by the Notre Dame Law Review.

Professor Sheldon A. Evans's paper, "Interest-Based Incorporation: A Statutory Story of Federalism, Delegation, and Democratic Design," has been accepted for publication in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review. It follows up on themes he explored in "Categorical Nonuniformity," which appears in the Columbia Law Review.

Professor Elayne E. Greenberg's article, “Unshackling Plea Bargaining from Racial Bias,” has been published in the Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology. It traces the origins of racial bias in plea bargaining by chronicling the historical relationship among three societal developments: the continuation of slavery, the development of our criminal justice system, and the evolution of plea bargaining.

In Print & On the Air
“These things are very important for training moderators, and they establish the nitty-gritty detail of the community standards,” Professor Kate Klonick said in a story for the Guardian about leaked guidelines for Facebook's and Instagram's outsourced content moderators.

In the latest episode of their Legal Spirits podcast, Professors Mark L. Movsesian and Marc O. DeGirolami and their guest, Italian political scientist Lorenzo Castellani, discuss the growing role of technocratic elites in politics and law in the United States and European Union. Listen in wherever you get your podcasts.

Activities & Achievements
Professor Elayne E. Greenberg presented Disclosing Third-Party Funding in IP Mediations: Ethics, Economics & Power at the University of Texas School of Law's 20th Annual Intellectual Property Law Journal Symposium. She presented I'm So Smart, Why Won't My Clients Follow My Advice at Turnaround Management Association's Distressed Investing Conference. Professor Greenberg was also elected Regent Chair of the Executive Board of the AALS ADR Section.

Professor Anita S. Krishnakumar participated in a virtual panel discussion, Progressive Theories of Statutory Interpretation: Responses to Textualism and Beyond, sponsored by the Harvard chapter of the American Constitution Society. The event brought together several prominent statutory interpretation scholars who shared their views about the current state of statutory interpretation in the U.S. Courts.

Professor Jeff Sovern was elected a Fellow of the American College of Consumer Financial Services Lawyers (ACCFSL). ACCFSL Fellows include many lions of the consumer finance bar and leading consumer law professors.

STUDENT SUCCESS

Competitions
Ramona Miller '23 and Julie Choe '23 edged out Alex Bisogno '23 and Jordan Milite '23 to win this year's 1L Internal Negotiation Competition. In this annual competition hosted by the Law School's Dispute Resolution Society, first-year students apply the negotiation skills they learned in their January intersession Lawyering course.

At the Frank S. Polestino Trial Advocacy Institute's internal Brian Peterson Memorial First-Year Trial Competition, 1Ls Michael Allain, Gabriella Blum, Ryan Fenn, and Kayla Nieves took top honors.

The St. John's Law Moot Court Honor Society team of Stephanie Lamerce '22 and Molly Sheehan '22 were finalists in the National Energy and Sustainability Moot Court Competition hosted by WVU College of Law.

Awards & Honors
Three St. John’s Law 1Ls have been named New York City Bar Diversity Fellows for Summer 2021. Julie Choe will spend the summer at Haynes and Boone, LLP, Billy Michaca will work at Bessemer Trust, and Yujie Stulberg will participate in the summer program at New York Life Insurance Company.

Another trio of 1Ls have earned Summer 2021 Long Island Legal Diversity Fellowships. Gabriela Andrade will work at Citizens Bank, Christopher Belalcazar is spending the summer at Lazer Aptheker, and Nadia Khan will be at Cullen and Dykman.

First-year student Kimberly Henry has been selected to participate in the Sonia & Celina Sotomayor Judicial Internship Program for Summer 2021. She will work in Kings County Family Court.

Michael Fraser '23 will start the summer working at Pfizer through the pharmaceutical company’s 1L Summer Scholar Program. Later in the summer, he’ll work at NYU Langone as the recipient of the Diversity Summer Fellowship in Health Law sponsored by the New York State Bar Association’s Health Law Section.

Student Stories
Gathered in a makeshift hearing room at St. John's Law and connected virtually to the presiding judge in Nassau County Family Court, Sam Gagnon '21 was less nervous than she expected to be for her first court appearance, a proceeding that would change the life of her Child Advocacy Clinic client. Read all about it.

Comments, Suggestions, or Content Ideas?
Please email Lori Herz, See infra's Managing Editor and Lead Writer, at herzl@stjohns.edu.

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IN BRIEF

ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT

FACULTY FOCUS

STUDENT SUCCESS

Comments, Suggestions, or Content Ideas? Please email Lori Herz, See infra's Managing Editor and Lead Writer, at herzl@stjohns.edu.

Comments, Suggestions, or Content Ideas?
Please email Lori Herz, See infra's Managing Editor and Lead Writer, at herzl@stjohns.edu.