All posts filed under: Faculty Commentary

The Trump Indictment: What’s Happened and What’s Next

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A New York grand jury has indicted former President Donald Trump on fraud charges, marking the first time in US history that a former or current president has faced criminal charges. Professor Lauren Ouziel, a former federal prosecutor who teaches and writes about criminal law and criminal procedure at Temple Law, explains what’s happened so far and what’s likely to happen next. Temple Law School: How do indictments work? Lauren Ouziel: A grand jury, which is a group of randomly selected people (in New York, the group is composed of 23 people), meets to hear the testimony of witnesses and review any documentary evidence. At the close of the presentation of evidence, the prosecutors will usually then present the grand jury with a proposed indictment containing the charges against the defendant. The grand jury then deliberates and considers whether there is probable cause to believe the defendant committed the crimes charged in the indictment. The grand jury then votes, and if at least 12 of the grand jurors vote in favor, the indictment is issued. …

Temple Law at Bar-Ilan University: Teaching There, Looking Back Here

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Tuesday, December 27, 2022, I taught my last of 8 classes in Problems in American Criminal Law. My location? Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, Israel, a suburb of Tel Aviv. This culminated a two-year journey, one interrupted by COVID and fraught with concerns about the world I would be entering, the tolerance I was hoping for, and a goal of supporting the bridge between our two law schools. The beginning of this story is simple. Bar-Ilan and Temple Law are collaborating, and as part of that process I was asked to create a course for an intersession program Bar-Ilan offers, 1- and 2-credit English-language courses for students nearing the end of the formal law school education (followed, unlike in the U.S., by a required internship before sitting for the Bar). Problems in criminal law were the focus, using the successes, failures, and dilemmas of the U.S. system as a tool to offer a comparative perspective and engender discussions about topics that know no boundaries – guns, capital punishment, race and class, the allocation of power …

Professor Kenneth Jacobsen Hosts Italian Executives on Philadelphia Cultural Tour

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As the fall semester got underway, Professor Kenneth Jacobsen took advantage of the cooling temperatures to host twelve executives from northern Italy on a cultural tour of Philadelphia. They started with a private tour of the National Constitution Center, followed by a private audience with the Honorable Cristiana Mele, the Consul General of Italy in Philadelphia, with whom they discussed strategies for expanding business from their region in Italy to the Philadelphia metropolitan area and other parts of Pennsylvania. The group also enjoyed a presentation by the Honorable Felipe Restrepo, Judge of the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, at the US Courthouse on Market Street, on the differences between the state and federal judiciaries in the American legal system. The afternoon was spent on a private guided trolley tour of Philadelphia, with stops at the Art Museum, the Italian Market, the Comcast Tower, and more. The group rounded off their visit at a private meeting with Mayor Kenney in City Hall’s ornamental Reception Hall. The afternoon was spent at the Phillies game, where …

Dobbs, The Supreme Court, And the Sins of Omission

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In Catholicism, the sin of omission occurs when a person ignores doing that which is good, needed and expected. In judicial decision-making, the sin of omission occurs when judges ignore inconvenient truths, facts beyond dispute. The Dobbs decision overruling Roe v. Wade warrants condemnation on many grounds – the end of the 14th Amendment as a source of individual liberty, the reliance on incorrect history, the freezing of rights as of 150 years ago. But also worthy of condemnation is the repeated act of omission. First to be omitted are two words – rape and slavery. Nowhere does the majority even say the word “rape.” Nowhere does it explain how Due Process permits a state to force a rape victim to bear a child. To the majority, rape does not exist. And the relevance of “slavery?” For a majority claiming to use history as a guide to what liberties are protected, the 13th Amendment banning slavery and “involuntary servitude” must be considered. A horrific and recurring act of slavery was forced childbearing. Essential history, ignored. …

Why Was He Kneeling At My Front Door, Hands Raised?

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It was 4:55 a.m. when the door bell rang. Who could it be at this hour?  I looked out and saw him – crying, shivering in 20 degree cold, he waited.  And when I opened the inner door he backed away, raised his hands in the air, and kneeled down.  To tell me he was lost and needed directions.  That he approached my home because the living room light was on and the computer screen, with me at it, visible.  Kneeling, like a soldier surrendering to their captors. Growing up in the era of Ozzie and Harriet, Leave it to Beaver, and My Three Sons, this was not the image of how someone sought help.  The goofy or errant teenager could still turn to a neighbor, not fearing violence but perhaps expecting a stern headshake, and then having an arm put around his shoulders and taken to the kitchen for a warm drink, some fatherly advice, and a ride home. That is what my son could expect, even decades later.  A neighbor – even a …

Can we make ‘Sense’ of the Kyle Rittenhouse Acquittal?

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It is no surprise that many feel dismay over the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse and see the verdict as resulting from the American tolerance of gun culture; a nearly all-white jury favoring a white defendant; a baby-faced [in the jurors’ eyes] teen who did not match a stereotype of a ‘gun-toting’ marauder; and a reaction against the purported violence of racial justice protests. But those views impose social concerns on what is ultimately a trial, a process where a jury must confront two competing narratives.  Sorting out the possible social and cognitive contributing factors cannot be done with precision and in fact such an exercise may be fruitless.  But self-defense law Wisconsin style and the conduct of Rittenhouse’s trial offer easy explanations of how a ‘not guilty’ verdict was reached either because jurors simply followed the law or made the defense story fit with their implicit (or express) biases. What were the stories?  The prosecution’s was simple, laid out in the opening statement: [T]he defendant Kyle Rittenhouse, who was 17-years-old at the time, had armed …

Photo of Professor Melissa Jacob

Q&A with Professor Melissa Jacoby

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In September of 2019, Purdue Pharma LP filed for Chapter 11 protection after facing a wave of lawsuits over its opioid painkiller drug, OxyContin. The Sackler family, who own the pharmaceutical company, have attempted to use a controversial tactic to get bankruptcy-like protections to without filing for bankruptcy in order to protect their personal assets and holdings. On Wednesday, June 15th, according to Bloomberg, “U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain approved an investigation into whether the drugmaker’s owners, members of the billionaire Sackler family, have had undue influence on an independent committee of Purdue board members,” a win for the advocacy group of parents whose children died as a result of opioid abuse. Professor Jonathan Lipson, Harold E. Kohn Chair and Professor of Law at Temple Law School, was of counsel to the movant. His colleague, Professor Melissa Jacoby, Graham Kenan Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, put the ruling into context.  Temple Law School: In in the June 15th ruling, Judge Drain approved an investigation, which will give an …

Transgender Pride Flag of blue, pink, and white stripes

How Cisgender Advocates Can Honor Transgender Day of Visibility (Everyday)

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Last year, at the start of (our awareness of) the coronacrisis, I read the story of anthropologist Margaret Mead being asked by a student what she considered to be the first sign of civilization in a culture. The student expected Mead to talk about hunting tools, the wheel, grinding stones, or clay pots. Instead, the anthropologist answered that the first evidence of civilization was a 15,000-year-old fractured femur found in an archaeological site. The bone, which links hip to knee, had been broken and healed. Mead explained that in the animal kingdom, if you break your leg, you die. You cannot run from danger, get to the river for a drink, or hunt for food. You become easy prey for prowling beasts. A broken femur that has healed is evidence that someone helped a fellow human and took time to stay with the one who fell, rather than abandoning them to save their own life. The message was that we feel more human when we help others, and that generosity and altruism are (or should be) …

Prof. Carpenter speaks to a lecture hall with seated students

About Your First Semester Grades: What Ought to Come Next?

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So here we are again – it’s the beginning of another Spring semester for America’s law students. This time of year means a lot of different things for a law school; it’s the beginning of the end for some of you who are getting ready to (finally!) graduate, but for 1Ls, it’s the end of the beginning – that bewildering first semester when you have absolutely no idea how you’re doing. Well, 1Ls: now you know how you were doing. The question for you now, is this: what ought to come next? As a prof who primarily teaches in the first year and also experienced my own share of law school grades that were sometimes relieving, sometimes disappointing, and frequently confusing, I’d like to offer a few words of advice. If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands – and then immediately get back to work. For those of you who received above-the-curve grades, you’re probably pretty pumped right now, and it’s appropriate that you should be! I’m sure you worked really hard, …