New York City Bar Association Podcasts -NYC Bar

Opportunities to Raise Public Awareness about Climate Change and the Need for Action   - All Parts

Presented by: Asian American Business Development Center and One Hundred Black Men, Inc.

After NYPD Officer Peter Liang was convicted of second degree manslaughter in the fatal shooting of Akai Gurley, Asian American and African American communities responded in different ways, leading to rising tensions between these two communities. Asian American Business Development Center and One Hundred Black Men have come together to organize a panel of community, civic and political leaders to discuss race relations, communications, and collaborations between the two communities.

Moderators: CeFaan Kim, Reporter, WABC Eyewitness News; L. Joy Williams, Founder and Principal, LJW Strategies

Welcome & Opening Remarks: Michael Garner, President, One Hundred Black Men; John Wang, President, Asian American Business Development Center

Different Community Reactions to the case of Peter Liang: Two Perspectives: Sandra Leung, Board Member, Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund; Lumumba Akinwole-Bandele, NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund

Exploring Common Issues Facing the Two Communities: Ron Kim, New York State Assemblyman; Walter Mosley, New York State Assemblyman

Common Areas for Future Collaboration: Peter Kwong, Distinguished Professor of Asian American Studies and Urban Affairs, Hunter College; Rev. Jacques DeGraff, Associate Pastor of Canaan Baptist Church

Co-sponsor: The City Bar Committee to Enhance Diversity in the Profession and Committee on Minorities in the Profession; Asian American Bar Association of New York (AABANY)

The debate over cannabis law and policy is developing quickly in New York City as concern grows over the use of “synthetic marijuana” and the expected opening date for medical marijuana retail and manufacturing establishments in the City approaches. Join the Committee on Drugs and the Law for a discussion of current events in this uncharted area of law.

Moderator: Ellen C. Yaroshefsky, Clinical Professor of Law, Cardozo School of Law

Panelists: Honorable Rafael Espinal, New York City Council, 37th District-Brooklyn; Alyssa Aguilera, Political Director, VOCAL-NY; Ed Manchess, Director of Harm Reduction ServicesBoom!Health; Eric Sawyer, MPA, ACT-UP, Founding Member; Housing Works, Co-founder; Health GAP, Co-founder; New York State Senator Jeffrey D. Klein, Senate Coalition Leader and Democratic Conference Leader, 34th Senate District

This event, which is open to the public, explores whether individuals who rely on prosthetics or other devices to perform daily activities should be able to sue for personal injury when their prosthetic/device has been damaged by another. Currently, if someone’s prosthetic gets damaged in an accident, they cannot recover their lost time from work or lost enjoyment of life. They have only suffered property damage and are only entitled to recover the cost of the repair. Also, to the extent that advanced neural prosthetics are extensions of the human body, should they be covered under standard medical coverage as opposed to coverage for durable medical equipment?

Sponsoring Committee(s): Science & Law Committee, Henry P. Behnen, ChairModerator: Jon D. LichtensteinGordon & Silber, P.C.Author of “Rights of Cyborgs: Is Damage To Prosthetic a Personal Injury?” and “Updating Tort Law for Advances in Prosthetics “

Speakers: Georffrey Ling, M.D., Ph.D. Retired Colonel US Army, Director, Biological Technologies Office DARPA*; Neuro Critical Care Physician, former Assistant Director of Medical Innovation White House Office of Science and Technology. * “The views expressed by Dr. Ling are his own and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government. “ *

Dan IgnaszewskiDirector Government Relations and Marketing, Amputee Coalition

Fred DownsRetired Director US Department of Veterans Affairs, VA

Professor Mark Geistfeld NYU Professor of Tort Law

Jodie McElwain-RodriguesIndependent Living Specialist - Westchester Disabled on the Move

David McGillVice President Reimbursement & Compliance,Ossur Corporation

Sander Rabin MD JDDirectorThe Center for Transhuman Jurisprudence, Inc.

Virtual reality (“VR”) is one of the hottest new technologies. In the next 18 months, Google, Facebook, Samsung, and others will release cutting edge VR hardware, and many are enthusiastically developing software and hardware. But how should VR innovators protect their work? Join us for an animated discussion on intellectual property protections that apply to the exciting world of VR

Moderator: Henry Behnen, Schiff Hardin LLP

Speakers: Eric Greenbaum, Greenbaum PC

Steven Masur, Cowan DeBaets Abrahams & Sheppard LLP.

Christopher G. Reid, The Law Offices of Christopher G. Reid.

Sponsoring Committee(s): Science & Law Committee, Henry P. Behnen, Chair

International lawyers and law students have different cultural blueprints and use this blueprint to evaluate advice and task instructions. We only appreciate and implement advice that is sound and whether advice is sound is determined after it has been passed through the filter of our cultural conditioning. International lawyers and law students do not always interpret our advice or instructions the way we mean it.This panel will discuss the issue of whether misinterpretation and misunderstanding is common and whether it affects job performance, employer satisfaction and professional development. The program is geared towards law students, international lawyers, law school staff and professional development professionals.

Speakers:

Kandice Thorn, Director of International and Non-J.D. Programs, Fordham School of Law

Desiree Jaeger-Fine, Principal, Jaeger-Fine Consulting, LLC

Carl van der Zandt, Hand Baldachin & Amburgey LLP

Vicente I. Cordero Becker, Visting Attorney at Chadbourne & Parke LLP

Irina Gomelskaya, Senior Director of Employer and Alumni Relations at New York Law School

Sponsored by:

Law Student Perspectives Committee, Desiree Jaeger-Fine, Chair and Committee on Career Advancement and Management, Aisha Joseph, Chair

"Conflict minerals" in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) fuel conflict and finance armed groups committing horrendous human rights abuses. To halt this situation, Congress passed Section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank Act requiring the SEC to adopt rules requiring publicly traded companies to disclose whether conflict minerals used in their products come from the DRC or an adjoining country.

If such minerals originate in the covered countries, companies must submit to the SEC an annual report describing the source and chain of custody of their conflict minerals (defined in the Act as columbite-tantalite (coltan), cassiterite, gold, wolframite, or their derivatives (tin, tungsten, and tantalum)). The second annual reporting date is on June 1, 2015.

The panelists will discuss the effectiveness of the legislation, the reporting required by it, and the Court of Appeals' decision on First Amendment grounds in the litigation that upheld most of the SEC's conflict minerals rule.

Moderator: Elizabeth Barad, International Law and Gender Consultant

Speakers: Holly Dranginis, Policy Analyst for the Enough Project, focused on the Democratic Republic of the Congo; Michael Littenberg, Schulte Roth & Zabel, where he advises on the Conflict Minerals Rule and oversees SRZ's Conflict Minerals Resource Center; Zorka Milin, Senior Legal Adviser, Global Witness.

Sponsored by: Committee on African Affairs, Elizabeth Barad, Chair; Cyrus R. Vance Center for International Justice, Committee on Securities Regulation, Sandra Flow, Chair; Committee on Financial Reporting, Michael Young, Chair; Committee on International Human Rights, Elisabeth Wickeri, Chair

In defense of American federalism, Justice Brandeis once touted the states as laboratories for social experimentation. With Colorado and Washington legalizing marijuana in 2012, and others following or poised to follow their example, legal professionals, policymakers, and businesspeople are now tasked with the challenge of reconciling overlapping and often contradictory laws.

In this forum, we will explore this emerging, tangled legal terrain. Along with focusing on the effect of inconsistencies between federal, state, and local cannabis law, we will ask whether states and municipalities can influence higher levels of government and, if so, how. Over the last two decades, numerous local governments, including Oakland, Denver, Montclair NJ, and the District of Columbia, have been experimenting with cannabis legalization policies to widely varying degrees. Are they outliers, or do they illustrate the catalytic role cities play in the federal laboratory? Join the Committee on Drugs & the Law and the New York City Affairs Committee to learn from those who have addressed these questions firsthand.

Speakers: Hon. Liz Krueger, New York State Senate, 28th District; Hon. Mark Levine, New York City Council, 7th District; Malik Burnett, M.D., Policy Manager, Drug Policy Alliance, Washington, D.C.; William J. Caruso, Of Counsel, Archer & Greiner P.C.; Steering Committee member, New Jersey United for Marijuana Reform; former Executive Director, New Jersey Assembly Majority Office; Robert Raich, Cannabis Attorney, Oakland, California; Rachelle Yeung, Government Affairs Manager at Vicente Sederberg LLC, Washington, D.C. (formerly Denver, Colorado office)

Moderator: Eric Sterling, President, Criminal Justice Policy Foundation

Sponsors: Committee on Drugs and the Law; New York City Affairs Committee

The release of the executive summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on the CIA's detention and interrogation program has renewed calls both domestically and internationally to hold accountable those responsible for America's use of torture after 9/11. This program will examine the possibility of criminal prosecutions for torture as well as the implications of the current policy of looking forward, not backward.

Moderator: Jonathan Hafetz, Associate Professor of Law, Seton Hall University

Speakers: Laura Pitter, Senior National Security Counsel, Human Rights Watch; David Raskin, Clifford Chance; former chief of the Terrorism & National Security unit, U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York; Michael Richter, Joseph Hage Aaronson; former intelligence officer with the Defense Intelligence Agency and Office of the Director of National Intelligence; Hina Shamsi, Director, ACLU National Security Project

Sponsored by: Task Force on National Security and the Rule of Law & the International Human Rights Committee

Increasing numbers of pro se litigants with limited proficiency in spoken English seek justice in New York City's courts each year. While the court system employs nearly 300 full-time court interpreters and spends more than $6.5 million for per diem interpreters annually, these services cannot fully address the need for language access assistance within the courts. Not only have the courts lost interpreters due to recent funding shortfalls, the responsibility of judges in deploying limited interpreter resources and ensuring meaningful access to justice for LEP litigants is far from clear.

Our esteemed panel will discuss, among other things, recent cases involving judicial responsibility to ensure language access, proposed amendments to New York's rules on judicial conduct, the role of multilingual attorneys in courtroom interpretation, and unique challenges facing pro se litigants who communicate in sign language and less commonly spoken languages.

Speakers: Liberty Aldrich, Director, Domestic Violence & Family Court Programs, Center for Court Innovation; Hon. Juanita Bing-Newton, Dean of the New York State Judicial Institute; Professor Oscar G. Chase, Russell D. Niles Professor of Law at New York University School of Law; New York Councilman Rory Lancman, Chair of the Courts and Legal Services Committee at the New York City Council; Rena Micklewright, Deputy Coordinator, Court Interpreting Services, New York State Unified Court System; Trinh N. Tran, Staff Attorney, Sauti Yetu Center for African Women and Families

Sponsored by: Women in the Courts Task Force, Rebecca Berkebile, Chair; Committee on Civil Courts, Gina Calabrese, Chair; Committee on Domestic Violence, Anna Ognibene, Chair; Committee on Family Court and Family Law, Marshall Cook, Chair; Committee on Litigation, Cary Samowitz, Chair; Committee on Minorities in the Courts, Natacha Carbajal, Chair; Committee on Pro Bono and Legal Services, Brenna DeVaney, Chair; Committee on Social Welfare Law, Peter Kempner, Chair