As BC Law’s thought leaders figure more prominently in public discourse, their commentary and perspectives are generating media coverage and influencing the debate on many pressing issues.
Professor Robert Bloom, for example, was a top legal authority on the Dzhokhar Tsarnaev marathon bombing case. More than thirty-five media outlets and programs, among them ABC, NBC, and Reuters, sought his opinion on everything from whether Tsarnaev would take the witness stand to why the sentencing phase of the trial would be when the case would be won or lost.
Writing in the Boston Globe before the jury sentenced Tsarnaev, Assistant Professor Kari Hong took issue with carrying out a death sentence with drugs: “There’s an underlying problem with the protocol, which is to spare us from having to face the reality of what it means for society to sanction a killing. It’s less disturbing to visualize someone drifting off into a fatal sleep than to imagine a bullet-riddled corpse. Put another way, if we can’t stomach the rifle, we should be equally squeamish with the needle.”
Even Gasson Chair Professor Frank Brennan, SJ, who has returned to Australia after his year at BC Law, commented on the case in EurekaStreet, saying that “the death penalty is always political, macabre, and undermining of the rule of law regardless of which legal system attempts to apply it.”
Professors were also consulted on other timely matters: George Brown, author of “Stealth Statute—Corruption, the Spending Power and the Rise of U.S.C. § 666,” spoke to the New Jersey Recordabout the wisdom of using the statute to build a case against Governor Chris Christie staffers involved in the George Washington Bridge lane closure. Brian Quinn weighed in with Reuters on T Rowe Price’s challenge to the Dell buyout. Professor David Olson penned an op-ed in the Chicago Tribune on music streaming. Cathleen Kaveny talked to Bloomberg about the new Indiana religious freedom law. Kent Greenfield spoke to the New York Times about the Etsy IPO.