News Center

This Week's Experts – February 6, 2007

Overview

Stanford Law School faculty are available to offer legal analysis/commentary on the following news topics this week:

World

  • Iraqi Security Plan

Nation

  • Congressional Debate Over President's Plan to Send More Soldiers to Iraq
  • Climate Change/U.S. Government Reports/UN Report/Rising Sea Levels/China
  • I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby Perjury & Obstruction Trial
  • U.S. Business
    • Ninth Circuit Ruling Allowing Class Action Discrimination Suit Against Wal-Mart
    • SEC Probe into "Frontrunning"/Insider Trading
    • Apple CEO Calls for End of Digital Music Copy Protection
  • Detention/Terrorist Suspects & GITMO
  • Supreme Court of the United States/Docket & Rulings

California

  • State Prisons & Criminal Sentencing Reform
    • Proposed Sentencing Commission, Little Hoover Commission Report
    • SCOTUS Ruling on California Sentencing - Cunningham v. California
    • Prison Overcrowding

World

Iraqi Security Plan

Allen S. Weiner
Associate Professor of Law (Teaching), Warren Christopher Professor of the Practice of International Law and Diplomacy, and Co-director of the Center on International Conflict and Resolution
650 724.5892 or 650 724.4818
Expertise: Contemporary Security Threats, International Security, Nuclear Proliferation, International Law, Laws of War, Human Rights

Nation

Congressional Debate Over President's Plan to Send More Soldiers to Iraq

Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar
Associate Professor of Law and Deane F. Johnson Faculty Scholar
650 723.9216
Expertise: International Law and the Economy, Separation of Powers
Jenny S. Martinez
Associate Professor of Law
650 725.2749
Expertise: Separation of Powers, Civil Procedure and Litigation, Comparative Law, Constitutional Law, Human Rights, International Law, Detention related to Terrorism/GITMO

Climate Change/U.S. Government Reports/UN Report/Rising Sea Levels/China

Margaret "Meg" Caldwell
Director, Environmental and Natural Resources Law and Policy Program; Senior Lecturer, Stanford Institute for the Environment
650 723.4057
Expertise: Coastal Law, Science, and Policy; Environmental and Natural Resources Law. She is also chair of the California Coastal Commission and an expert on the implications of rising sea levels
Deborah A. "Debbie" Sivas
Director, Environmental Law Clinic and Lecturer in Law
650 723.0325
Expertise: Environmental Law, Climate Change/Global Warming, litigates environmental protection cases in federal courts

I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby Perjury & Obstruction Trial

Robert Weisberg
Edwin E. Huddleson, Jr. Professor of Law and Director of the Stanford Criminal Justice Center
650 723.0612
Expertise: Criminal Law and Criminal Justice, Criminal Procedure, Defense Strategy, White Collar Crime, Grand Juries

U.S. Business: Ninth Circuit Ruling Allowing Class Action Discrimination Suit Against Wal-Mart

William B. Gould IV
Charles A. Beardsley Professor of Law, Emeritus
650 723.2111
Expertise: Labor Law, former head of the National Labor Relations Board under Clinton
Amalia Kessler
Associate Professor of Law
650 725.5800
Expertise: Civil Procedure (can address the class certification aspects, which are the focus of this ruling)

U.S. Business: SEC Probe into "Frontrunning"/Insider Trading

Joseph A. Grundfest
W. A. Franke Professor of Law and Business, Co-director of the Arthur and Toni Rembe Rock Center for Corporate Governance
650 723.0458
Expertise: Corporate Law, Securities Regulation, Mergers and Acquisitions, Venture Capital

U.S. Business: Apple CEO Calls for End of Digital Music Copy Protection

Anthony Falzone
Executive Director, Stanford Law School's Fair Use Project
650 736.9050
Expertise: Copyright, Trademark, Rights of Publicity, Intellectual Property

Detention/Terrorist Suspects & GITMO

Jenny S. Martinez
Associate Professor of Law
650 725.2749
Expertise: Argued Rumsfeld v. Padilla (alleged enemy combatant) in 2004, Civil Procedure and Litigation, Comparative Law, Constitutional Law, Human Rights, International Law

Supreme Court of the United States/Docket & Rulings

Multiple experts available, depending on ruling or area/law. Please e-mail/call judith.romero@stanford.edu / 650.723.2232 to match expert with ruling/opinion. Or use expert lists at: http://www.law.stanford.edu/news/

California

State Prisons & Criminal Sentencing Reform: Proposed Sentencing Commission, Little Hoover Commission Report

Kara Dansky
Executive Director, Stanford Criminal Justice Center
650 724.5786
Expertise: Criminal Law, Criminal Sentencing Policy, Member of California's Little Hoover Commission
Robert Weisberg
Edwin E. Huddleson, Jr. Professor of Law
650 723.0612
Expertise: Criminal Law and Criminal Justice, Criminal Procedure

State Prisons & Criminal Sentencing Reform: SCOTUS Ruling on California Sentencing - Cunningham v. California

Kara Dansky
Executive Director, Stanford Criminal Justice Center
650 724.5786
Expertise: Criminal Law, Criminal Sentencing Policy, Member of California's Little Hoover Commission
Robert Weisberg
Edwin E. Huddleson, Jr. Professor of Law
650 723.0612
Expertise: Criminal Law and Criminal Justice, Criminal Procedure

State Prisons & Criminal Sentencing Reform: Prison Overcrowding

Kara Dansky
Executive Director, Stanford Criminal Justice Center
650 724.5786
Expertise: Criminal Law, Criminal Sentencing Policy, Member of California's Little Hoover Commission
Robert Weisberg
Edwin E. Huddleson, Jr. Professor of Law
650 723.0612
Expertise: Criminal Law and Criminal Justice, Criminal Procedure


Bios

Margaret “Meg” Caldwell

Caldwell was selected as the chair of the California Coastal Commission, and also serves on the board of the California Coastal Conservancy and as a member of California Marine Life Protection Act Blue Ribbon Task Force. She is an expert on the environmental effects of local land use decisions, the use of science in environmental and marine resource policy development and implementation, and developing private and public incentives for natural resource conservation, as well as implications of rising sea levels. Caldwell holds a joint appointment as a Senior Lecturer with the Woods Institute for the Environment.

Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar

Cuéllar is an affiliated faculty member with the Stanford Center for International Security and Cooperation and served as senior advisor to the U.S. Treasury Department's Under Secretary for Enforcement. He has published the leading academic paper on the operation of federal money laundering laws. Cuéllar is an expert on complex criminal, regulatory, and transnational problems, and the federal and international organizations responsible for managing them.

Kara Dansky

Dansky is an expert on California sentencing policy and a member of the Little Hoover Commission Advisory Committee on Sentencing Reform. Previously, she was a staff attorney, with the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and a staff attorney for the Society of Counsel Representing Accused Persons.

William B. Gould IV

Gould served as Chairman of the National Labor Relations Board under the Clinton Administration, has been a member of the National Academy of Arbitrators since 1970. He has arbitrated and mediated more than 200 labor disputes, including the 1992 and 1993 salary disputes between the Major League Baseball Players Association and the Major League Baseball Player Relations Committee.

Joseph A. Grundfest

Grundfest, a former SEC Commissioner, is a nationally prominent expert on capital markets, corporate governance, and securities litigation. He has served on the staff of the President's Council of Economic Advisors as counsel and senior economist for legal and regulatory matters. Grundfest heads the award-winning Securities Class Action Clearinghouse and co-directs the Arthur and Toni Rembe Rock Center for Corporate Governance at Stanford Law School.

Anthony Falzone

Falzone, an intellectual property litigator with more than eight years of experience, has represented technology and media clients in a wide array of intellectual property disputes including copyright, trademark, rights of publicity, and patent matters. Prior to joining Stanford Law School, he was as a partner in the San Francisco office of Bingham McCutchen LLP.

Amalia D. Kessler

Kessler’s research focuses on the evolution of commercial law and civil procedure, and her current scholarship addresses the forgotten history of equity procedure in the Anglo-American tradition, and its implications both for comparative legal scholarship and for issues of due process. Before joining the Stanford Law School faculty, she was a trial attorney in the Civil Division of the U.S. Department of Justice and clerked for Judge Pierre N. Leval of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

Jenny S. Martinez

Martinez argued the 2004 case of Rumsfeld v. Padilla in the U.S. Supreme Court, seeking to clarify the constitutional protections available to post-9/11 "enemy combatants" who are U.S. citizens. Martinez performed the rare feat of a clerkship triple crown, clerking on a federal appellate court, the United States Supreme Court (with Justice Stephen Breyer), and the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (with Judge Patricia Wald). Martinez's scholarship makes the first major attempt to synthesize and analyze the important new phenomenon of an increasing number of international tribunals operating in a globalized environment, but without any supervening sovereign authority to which they are all bound.

Deborah A. "Debbie" Sivas

Sivas has been the Director of the Stanford Environmental Law Clinic since 1997.She is a 1987 Stanford Law School graduate, clerked for a federal court, serves as president of the board for two NGOs, and has litigated many significant environmental cases in federal court on behalf of nonprofit organizations.

Allen S. Weiner

Weiner is the co-director of the Stanford Center on International Conflict and Resolution. For more than a decade, he served at the United States Department of State, first as Attorney-Adviser in the Office of the Legal Adviser, and then as Attaché and Counselor for Legal Affairs in the United States Embassy in The Hague. He is an expert on international law and the response to the contemporary security threats of international terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, including in North Korea and Iran.

Robert Weisberg

Weisberg is director of the Stanford Criminal Justice Center. A frequent commentator and expert on white-collar crime, criminal law and procedure, sentencing, and criminal justice reform, he has served as a consulting attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund and the California Appellate Project, working on death penalty litigation in the federal courts. He is also versed in commercial law and secured transactions.