Law Students

It's 9:55 PM on a Friday Night. Do you know where you are?

Posted on April 26, 2008
I'm at home, but working. You?I have no kids to wonder where they are. But I suspect that one day, I will be home and working and my kids will be out having fun. That will bother me. Either because I was raised to not have fun by psycho strict Asian parents and work all the time (And thus feel guilt every time I have fun rather than work...

two views of the same river

Posted on April 24, 2008
The last class of the seminar on foundations of L&S today. It wasn't a terrible class, at all, but the class was strained to the hilt by the laboriousness of the readings, the occasionally stilted nature of the discussion, and the weird dynamics that pitted political scientist against economist against sociologist...

A Possibly-Serious, Possibly-Not Last Word on Law Journals, OR Belated Mobblogging, OR a Case Study in Perverse Incentives.

Posted on April 23, 2008
A few facts about publications, and tenure.Probability of faculty members getting tenure (plus status, good lateral transfers, jobs in the first place, etc.) increases in number of publications.Expected number of publications increases in a) number of ideas cognitively available, and b) probability of acceptance from journals...

Noodle Kugel

Posted on April 23, 2008
I'm inviting people over on Sunday to do a dry run of my dissertation oral defense. That is very nice of everyone during finals/paper writing hell to come to my aid. I have to feed them. I have to feed them well. On the menu is spinach mushroom quiche, blueberry coffee cake, and noodle kugel...

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Where in the world is Belle Lettre?

Posted on April 23, 2008
When I'm not here, I'm at Scatterplot.Otherwise, until I get my new laptop and only have Firefox and install Leechblock to prevent myself from surfing, I'm leaving behind the laptop and spending the day at the library surrounded by stacks of articles and books...

a seat at the (conference) table

Posted on April 22, 2008
Part of being a good institutional citizen of your school/university is attending paper talks. No, not just those free food ones sponsored by this and that student org or law firm. Go to those too, although you will get sick of pizza. If you are the type that goes just to get food but not from interest, well, that's a little mercenary of you, but who am I to parse and judge motives? No, I am talking about the true test of intellectual interest and commitment: the brown bag paper talk...

Excerpt of the day: Gravity. It isn't just a good idea. It's the law.

Posted on April 21, 2008
I am pondering posting a "Concept of the Day: Structure vs. Agency", but I am not sure that I understand it myself. I should stick with employment discrimination law. However, going over that concept would allow me to introduce another topic of blogging delight, or "great beefs in the annals of academia"--apparently, the structure/agency camps are very polarized and contentious...

I don't do it all, so I don't have it all. Oh well.

Posted on April 20, 2008
Alternate title: public shaming, home office edition.This is more like the secret shames that occur in the privacy of one's home office/living room. I really wish I had an office at school. This was one of my recommendations to Legal Theory Prof for making his school's VAP more attractive...

Blog Spotlight #2: Wicked Anomie

Posted on April 20, 2008
I am quickly getting sucked into the world of sociology blogs. Fear not, legal scholars--I have not abandoned you yet. In fact, I often say to myself in my pup tent on the cold mountains of Wyoming, "I wish I could quit you, Law."But anyway, through my marauding travels in Scatterplot, I have been discovering awesome sociology blogs...

Blog Spotlight: Mybackstage by Pitse1eh

Posted on April 20, 2008
This blog is awesome. I too, love fun socks. I have no idea how to pronounce that handle. The blog author seems to be taking a blog break. I want to encourage this wife, lover of bad television and fun socks, social psychologist and sociologist to keep blogging though...

Breaking Matzoh With Belle

Posted on April 20, 2008
I'm hosting a kosher dinner next week for friends. No, not a seder--that's only the first and second nights of Passover, or the 15th/16th days of Nisan. Why do I know all of this? I took religious studies classes in college and can remember a whole lot from this course called "Jewish Nationalism and Literature...

Diplomacy: The Game

Posted on April 20, 2008
No joke. TD suggests that we get a bunch of people together and play the game. On my computer.I got the rules. You got any tips? I am not known for my military strategist skills, or knowing how to form international alliances. Also, I am bad at figuring out which countries to fuck over in my quest for strategic alliance and global dominance...

Elevators and the American Legal System

Posted on April 18, 2008
It's a long and storied history. Cookies to the first person who finds me the oldest case. But remember Portee v. Jaffee? I do, because my 1L memo was based on it--the Hubble Memo, we called it, about a mother's claim of negligent infliction of emotional distress over watching her son die, only our twist was that the mother was not actually present and observing...

The Wayback Machine: '80s Protest Songs

Posted on April 18, 2008
The '80s were times of political change. Reaganomics, The Apartheid, the Cold War. Lots of good stuff.These are the greatest '80s protest songs?!Somehow, there was something lost in translation. I don't think anyone really gets this from "Rock the Casbah" from the great band, The Clash: This song is quite obviously about mideast peace, with the incredibly cheesy image of the rabbi picking up the Arab in a Longhorn Limo in the video...

A Tale of Two Classes

Posted on April 18, 2008
I am taking two classes from the same professor this semester, who coincidentally also happens to be my advisor. She is quite awesome, both as an advisor and as a professor--knowledgeable, always prepared, solicitous, helpful, understanding--particularly since I seem to be competing for the Worst Grad Student Ever award...

More from the religion and politics files, OR: Take That, Rawls!

Posted on April 18, 2008
So Rawlsians often cite (liberal) Catholicism as an example of a religion totally compatible with political liberalism. Here's what the Pope just said to Catholic universities (via NYT): Catholic universities and colleges have come under fire for inviting speakers who favor abortion rights, like Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Eliot Spitzer and Stanley Tucci, the actor, who was dropped from an event at Catholic University...

Bob Sutton Has A Blog?!

Posted on April 18, 2008
All I know of Bob Sutton is his older work on the endogeneity of law. The Legalization of the Workplace, for example. Or, The Strength of a Weak State, which I once reviewed for class. That's the problem with survey courses. You have to start somewhere, and that's usually somewhere in the 1980s or 1990s, which is considered "recent...

April Is National Poetry Month

Posted on April 18, 2008
Did I forget to mention?I hardly write poetry anymore. I was That Sad Poetry Writing Girl in high school and college, and president of my high school Literary Club. Okay, I was also its founder. We had five members. I was not popular, no.Here is a FAQ on poetry by Robert Pinsky...

Photography Vote

Posted on April 18, 2008
16x20 mounted Giclee Print above my dining table. Help me decide.For context, and for a peek into my inner sanctum/home office, this is what my house looks like.

You Don't Think The Onion Is Funny? What, Too Lowbrow for You?*

Posted on April 16, 2008
Ever write something funny, in the manner of an Area Person kind of article, and chuckle to yourself and send it to your friends and loved ones, and think that maybe this is the stuff of blog gold, and then suddenly become circumspect and realize that it's probably TMI and perhaps not that funny, and would not reflect well on you professionally and that you've outed yourself to too many law profs (because hey, blogging is great networking, and you never had the benefit of social capital being a state schooled poor immigrant kid, and so hey indeed) such that you can no longer blog the way you would have blogged if your blog had never become actually read by other people?Yeah, me too...

Irony Is

Posted on April 15, 2008
Reading Arlie Hochschild's "The Time Bind"  as your partner works late into the night after receiving an after-hours work assignment to turn-over numbers by tomorrow morning.  Augh.Incidentally, if you were wondering what I was referring to when I mentioned accusations of academic "Taylorism" in the sum up post on the Madisonian...

MobBlog at Madisonian.net: What Kind of Institution Do We Want a Law School To Be?

Posted on April 14, 2008
(The MobBlog is Over. Updated Links and Descriptions. Apologies for slight editorializing.)Deven Desai kindly emailed me the following (as if I wasn't reading Madisonian.net religiously, but I appreciate each and every personal email and link tip):As you have followed and pondered the way in which legal education works, I wanted to let you know that Madisonian...

Olderwoman on the "R-Word"

Posted on April 14, 2008
Yet another interesting, insightful post by Olderwoman over at Scatterplot, this time on the discursive disjunction between White and Black use/interpretation of the word "racist," and how deleterious disparate impact should be thought of as not only invidious individual discrimination, but as an institutional, structural, societal problem.

Critique of the Day: Ewick and Silbey, The Common Place of Law

Posted on April 14, 2008
Not sent to the class: this book kind of makes you want to never live in some parts of New Jersey (as does the movie Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle), but Frank Pasquale might tell me otherwise. Then again, who am I to talk. I once worked for a summer near South Central LA, am from boring Orange County, CA, and currently live in one of the few U...

I have to see this movie.

Posted on April 14, 2008
And so do you.And hey, bonus, John Cho is going to be Sulu. But wasn't Matt Damon supposed to be Kirk?! And how about Adrien Brody as Spock?!WTF is this untalented pretty boy doing as Kirk? Good thing I like Simon Pegg (from Hot Fuzz and 28 Days Later!) and Eric Bana (who, I'm sorry to say Amber, will be playing Henry DeTamble from that book you hate so violently...

In Which Belle breaks Ben Wolfson's and Paul Gowder's hearts, loses Bryan D. Brown's friendship, but delights Amber Taylor*.

Posted on April 13, 2008
I just bought this girl's album.Hey, it was super cheap, it sounds pleasing and happy, and it's 79 degrees today and I'm stuck indoors and cleaning and doing work. I bailed on a sailing date, and I am regretting this.Yes, yet another YouTube content-less post as a stop-gap filler...

History of Hallelujah

Posted on April 10, 2008
I forgot which academic blog tipped me off to this, but I thought you might like to learn about The History of Hallelujah.Hipster Law Prof started listening to Leonard Cohen back in college, which to me sounds like forever ago. I love the early '90s, but I was you know, 11 in 1991...

Do you hate pop music? Does this mean you hate America, too?

Posted on April 10, 2008
Lite blogging continues. The sudden deluge means that I'll be offline and trying to finish a book/bookreview and researching for one of my many damned papers.Six months ago, there was an awesome day, that led to more awesomeness, which continues to be awesome...

Paging Patrick J. and The Best Friend

Posted on April 10, 2008
TD and I were talking this morning as we listened to NPR's report on the turmoil in Tibet. We start talking about other recent instances of unrest and violence: Darfur, Rwanda, Basque, the neverending Israeli-Palestinian conflict.He posits that at least in developing countries like Africa, if we could solve the problem of hunger, then people would fight less...

Yes. A YouTube Post. Fine, Judge Me for Lack of Content.

Posted on April 10, 2008
I have three draft posts on legal pedagogy and work/life. They are so long. I may have to stop doing long essay posts and just link to stuff or something, like most bloggers. But you come here for content, not frequency of postings, right?I'm also buried underneath work...

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