Friday, November 30, 2018

A Quest for Reparations

By Professor Stanley A. Goldman

This excerpt adapted from Prof. Goldman's new book, Left to the Mercy of a Rude Stream: The Bargain That Broke Adolf Hitler and Saved My Motheroriginally appeared in the Nov. 30, 2018 edition of the Los Angeles and San Francisco Daily Journal. It is available from Amazon and Potomac Books.

In the late 1950s, four decades before the better-known and more all- encompassing German slave labor reparations cases of the late 1990s, a legal brief authored by the Conference on Jewish War Material Claims arrived at the Krupp Corporation. The document included the following allegations: “The firm of Krupp [had] exploited the prisoners’ labor without ever paying them for it, nor did it ever attempt to compensate its forced laborers for the injuries to life, health, freedom, and honor which were sustained,” and demanded that the company provide a financial settlement.

In response, the corporation’s representatives were adamant that any discussions of settlement that they might agree to participate in could not involve possible payments to the heirs of those already deceased, nor would they consider making any charitable contributions on their behalf. Furthermore, perhaps fearing that it could involve tens of millions of dollars in additional payouts, the company took the position that a Conference on Jewish war claims was not empowered to negotiate on behalf of potential gentile, as opposed to Jewish, plaintiffs.

The plaintiffs’ pro bono counsel in the negotiations, Benjamin B. Ferencz, who had been the youngest of the Nuremberg lead prosecutors, was appalled by these pre-negotiation restrictions. Ferencz was particularly eager that formerly subjugated Jews and gentiles should remain unified whenever possible and detested the suggestion that the discussions be limited to only certain former slaves. However, sadly concluding that Krupp would never make payments to non-Jewish victims based on a claim asserted by a Jewish organization, Ferencz agreed to the demands.

Krupp had been quite generous when providing retroactive compensation to his former German employees. In 1953, once he had felt secure at the head of his family business again, he sold off some of his land in order to make good on back payments owed to the company’s pensioners, and Ferencz believed a quick settlement could be reached by requesting a relatively modest sum.

Unfortunately, the very thought of compensation to non-German forced laborers, even in such a minimal amount, was abhorrent to Krupp, and negotiations between his designated agents and the plaintiffs’ Jewish lawyers proved fierce and unpleasant. “Each session was marred by recriminations, accusations of bad faith,” and even with what Ferencz later described as “anti-Semitic remarks” from the corporation’s representatives.

Wednesday, November 28, 2018

Remembering Professor Emeritus Dan Lazaroff, Founder of the Loyola Sports Law Institute

By Dean Michael Waterstone

Prof. Dan Lazaroff
I am saddened to share that Daniel Lazaroff, emeritus professor of law, has passed away.

Dan was very much a part of our Loyola community. He taught at the Law School from 1983-2015. During his tenure, he held the Leonard Cohen Chair in Law and Economics and served as the Director of the Loyola Sports Law Institute. Dan wrote extensively in the area of antitrust and sports law, contributing articles to the Pepperdine Law Review, Oregon Law Review, UC Davis Business Legal Journal, Sports & Entertainment Law Journal, Georgia Law Review and many more.

Early in his career, as a John Norton Pomeroy Scholar at NYU, Dan was a staff member of the NYU Law Review. After graduation, he practiced with the law firm of Kaye, Scholer, Fierman, Hays & Handler in New York. In 1978, he joined the faculty of the University of Detroit, Mercy School of Law, where he taught for five years before joining the Loyola Law School faculty, where, fortunately for us, he spent the rest of his career.

Dan was a truly dedicated teacher and scholar. He also provided many hours of service both here at Loyola and within the legal profession, especially in the sports law area.

Professor Bryan Hull said, “I will always remember our many conversations on a wide variety of subjects, Dan’s intelligence and his sense of humor. He will be missed.”

Please keep the Lazaroff family in your prayers.

A funeral service will be held at Hillside Memorial Park and Mortuary on Sunday, Dec. 9 at 11 a.m. A reception will follow at Spago, 176 North Canon Drive, Beverly Hills, CA 90210.

Cards may be sent to:

Barbara Lazaroff
805 North Sierra Drive
Beverly Hills CA 90210
LEAVE A TRIBUTE TO PROFESSOR DAN LAZAROFF:

Tuesday, November 13, 2018

The Intersection of LGBTQ Domestic Violence and Criminal Defense Issues

By Professor Christopher Hawthorne and Mieko Failey '13

This article originally appeared in the Los Angeles Daily Journal.

Domestic violence is a significant public health epidemic that impacts people across gender identity and/or sexual orientation. Similarly, in the LGBTQ community, domestic violence is just as common, and oftentimes, more common. For some communities, such as for transgender people and bisexual women, the rates can be more than double or nearly triple those of non-LGBTQ people. And while LGBTQ people experience many of the same imbalances of power within an intimate partner relationship, a significant difference is that LGBTQ survivors confront many barriers in access to resources because of discrimination on the basis of gender identity and/or sexual orientation, including the threat of outing, explicit and implicit bias, transphobia, biphobia, and homophobia, and a lack of training for essential legal system actors. When LGBTQ people experience violence, this happens within a broader social context of anti-LGBTQ bias and oppression.

The dominant narrative about domestic violence often includes a cisgender, heterosexual framework. The experiences of LGBTQ survivors are often left out of this narrative. LGBTQ people experience higher rates of mutual arrest and/or wrongful arrest when law enforcement responds. This is often related to the perception that there is gender equality/equity and therefore an impossibility of a power imbalance. Law enforcement, who lack training on LGBTQ domestic violence issues, often conduct assessments based on gender expression, body size, and other physical characteristics. Once arrested, LGBTQ people report substantial rates of police misconduct based on gender identity and/or sexual orientation when they interact with law enforcement. Primary aggressors rely on these dangerous system actor responses as a tool to continue to maintain power and control over the survivor.