Articles in the Jan. 3 Bloomberg News and the Jan. 20 Legal Times reported on a comment letter from George Cohen and a group of other law professors supporting the SEC's proposal to make corporate lawyers report suspicions of securities fraud. "If the recent scandals and those of the past have taught us anything, it is that the boards of some companies are either kept in the dark by management or are reluctant to oppose management actions that are or may be illegal," the letter said. "In those situations, illegal conduct will be stopped or rectified if everyone knows that the company's attorneys will have to exit noisily."

Kim Forde-Mazrui was quoted in the Dec. 2002 issue of Trial magazine, on lawsuits over slavery reparations. "Even when something is unconstitutional, it is extremely difficult to get money out of the government, due to all kinds of sovereign immunity and official immunity," he said."But for those seeking reparations from the government or corporations, how do you get around slavery being constitutional at the time it was practiced? As much as I hate to admit it, slavery was legally sanctioned."

A Jan. 19 Washington Post article on dual citizenship included David Martin's observations that U.S. diplomats a century ago agreed that multiple citizenship was "an aberration to be stamped out as much as possible." Their goal, he said, was to protect immigrants from demands (such as conscription) that their countries of birth might continue to impose on them.

A Jan. 21 Bioworld Today report on a meeting of the President's Council on Bioethics noted Richard Merrill's comments about a potential court challenge over the FDA's authority to regulate human cloning. "I can't say whether the agency would win or lose because they haven't put their best foot forward on this and proven their case," he said. "The agency would have been wiser if it had asserted its statutory authority over cloning in the Federal Register and allowed the public to comment on it."

John Monahan was quoted in a Feb. 9 Virginian-Pilot article on grade inflation, which mentioned that the law school had raised its mean to B+ in 1998. He explained, "When all the competition changes their grading policy so as to give higher grades, there's not much choice other than to move in that direction, unless you want to penalize your own students." A Feb. 21 National Law Journal story about a psychiatric clinic's successful defense of a wrongful-death suit over a slaying by one of its patients noted that Monahan's testimony about the impossibility of predicting violent behavior made him "the trial's most compelling defense witness."

The Jan. 2003 issue of Washington Lawyer featured John Norton Moore's comments in a debate over whether preemptive war is legal under international law. Moore noted that the U.S. decision to pursue a doctrine of preemption in fighting terrorism was a "serious blunder" and a strategic mistake. Nothing the United States is doing or planning in regard to the war on terrorism or Iraq, he said, would violate existing principles of law under the U.N. charter, but the phrasing of the doctrine of preemption allows America's enemies to say that the United States wants to act unilaterally and run roughshod over the charter. It may be, he said, that the Bush administration "knows less about international law" and has "sort of a neorealist" philosophy. Moore's views on preemptive force were also featured in a Feb. 23 San Francisco Chronicle article on a symposium at the University of the Pacific's McGeorge School of Law.

A Jan. 10 Chronicle of Higher Education article on new policies at some public universities, making it easier to fire tenured professors or limiting the kinds of job benefits guaranteed to tenured faculty members, included Robert O'Neil's comments that the changes are "cause for grave concern." He said universities should simply deal with problematic faculty members individually, rather than establish rules that erode the value of tenure for all. The new policies, he said, "share an implicit premise at the board level that tenure and academic freedom are somehow privileges rather than integral components of faculty status."

In a Roanoke Times & World News Feb. 2 article on the possible nomination of Roanoke lawyer Maryellen Goodlatte for a federal judgeship, George Rutherglen commented that her marriage to Representative Bob Goodlatte did not raise conflict of interest concerns. Noting that federal judges in the Western District of Virginia are rarely called upon to rule on litigation by or against members of Congress, Rutherglen said he anticipated that Maryellen Goodlatte would recuse herself if the rare case of a potential conflict arose.

A Feb. 12 Daily Progress story on the eight-year sentences a couple received for providing alcohol to teens at their son's 16th birthday party included Stephen Smith's views that deterrence was a likely reason for the severity of the sentences. "It seems to me one of the reasons why you punish people is to send a message to the public," he said. "It might have had the quality of killing a fly with a sledgehammer. But I think that the judge was right to impose a tough sentence. I think the parents in this case showed incredibly poor judgment. Drinking and youth do not mix."

Rip Verkerke was interviewed in a Jan. 25 NPR Weekend Edition story on the Washington Redskins' attempt to abolish worker's compensation for its football players. Questioning why the Redskins deserve to be the only employer in the state excluded from the compensation system, he commented: "There are many hazardous occupations, so it does seem a wrong-headed approach, carving out a particular industry for special legislation."

George Yin was quoted in a Feb. 6 Kansas City Star article on turmoil at Sprint Corporation over a questionable tax shelter allowing executives to defer taxes from on-paper profits received for stock options in 1999 and 2000. "At this point it's not clear to me whether there's any legitimacy to what was being done at all," he said. Yin's subsequent appointment as chief of staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation was noted in several news sources, including the Feb. 27 Wall Street Journal.