Academic

More Cancer--Stuntz

Posted on April 03, 2008
My cancer has been promoted: I?m officially in stage 4. My doctors have found two cancerous nodules?a euphemism for ?small tumors??one on each of my lungs. I started chemo this week. Next week, I?ll see a thoracic surgeon who will,...

Beware of the Home Owner's Loan Corporation Mirage--Skeel

Posted on April 01, 2008
As the Bush administration begins its defense of the new Treasury Department proposal to revamp U.S. financial regulation, Democrats are arguing, rightly in my view, that the more urgent concern should be to directly address the mortgage crisis. Unfortunately,...

Frida Kahlo and Immigration--Skeel

Posted on March 30, 2008
The hottest ticket in my neighborhood these days is the Frida Kahlo exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. One of the most arresting images in a show filled with startling images is a 1932 painting called ?Self-Portrait on...

Hospitals and Cancer Treatment Centers--Stuntz

Posted on March 28, 2008
I?ve spent a fair bit of time around hospitals over the years: two major abdominal surgeries, three lower-back fusions, and more injections and films and tests of various sorts than I can count. The Boston-area hospital I?ve come to know...

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Clinton's Bank-Friendly Populism--Skeel

Posted on March 27, 2008
Hillary Clinton has just rolled out her most extensive recipe yet for addressing the subprime crisis. The plan, which includes $30 billion to purchase troubled mortgages and for foreclosure auctions, as well as a freeze on foreclosures and interest...

Easter--Stuntz

Posted on March 23, 2008
Every year, it staggers me. Mostly, I think it?s the improbability of the enterprise that knocks the wind out of me, leaves me utterly shattered. The notion that the God of the universe would submit Himself to all the ugliness...

Race and Crime: More Thoughts--Stuntz

Posted on March 22, 2008
Thanks for the thoughtful comments on yesterday?s post. A few responses: 1. Several posts suggested that high crime in urban black neighborhoods might be due to the ?don?t snitch? movement and to rising levels of jury nullification. I think this...

Battling Cancer--Stuntz

Posted on March 22, 2008
I?ve spent the month of March, so far, recuperating from surgery for colon cancer. You read a lot when you?re getting over surgery?and, if you?re like me, you watch a lot of ?Law and Order? reruns (preferably, any episode that...

Race and Crime--Stuntz

Posted on March 21, 2008
Like many who heard it, I was powerfully impressed by Barack Obama?s speech in Philadelphia this week. But I found the speech unsatisfying, because it all but ignores the issue that is central to racial division in twenty-first-century America: crime...

Angry Churches--Stuntz

Posted on March 21, 2008
Judging by Jeremiah Wright?s sermons, Barack Obama?s church seems to be an angry place?angry at white America for the many ways it has held back and held down the black community represented in its congregation. I want to write about...

Should Obama Leave His Church?--Skeel

Posted on March 21, 2008
In the furor this week over the anti-American comments of Jeremiah Wright, the pastor of Barack Obama?s church in Chicago, the one question that?s gotten surprisingly little attention is the most obvious one: Should Obama leave his church?...

Bear Stearns and its Shareholders--Skeel

Posted on March 20, 2008
Many of Bear Stearns? biggest shareholders are screaming about its proposed sale to JPMorgan for $2/share. This is a good sign. It is important that shareholders bear the costs of the bank?s missteps in the subprime market. But their...

Giotto and the Art of Heaven--Skeel

Posted on March 17, 2008
Like nearly everyone who loves Italian Renaissance art, I?ve often wondered why hell seems so much more interesting than heaven in the Last Judgment paintings. My own answer has usually been that, because we are sinful, we understand sin...

Spitzer, Bear Stearns and the Uses of Corporate Criminal Law--Skeel

Posted on March 17, 2008
Bill speculated several days ago that prosecutors? use of criminal law to pursue the executives of firms that go spectacularly bust may often serve no other purpose than to discourage firms from engaging in the kinds of risks that...

The Fall of the House of Spitzer: Notes from Rome--Skeel

Posted on March 14, 2008
Shortly after I learned of Spitzer?s resignation, I was at dinner with several Italian lawyers. At the table next to us at a lovely restaurant near the Trevi Fountain sat the leading director of soft core porn movies in Italy....

Punishing Corporate Crime--Stuntz

Posted on March 14, 2008
David?s post about Spitzer and his excesses prompts a thought: I wonder whether those excesses might be hard-wired into the enterprise of prosecuting corporate crime. Think about it this way. Thieves who never quite manage to steal anything aren?t likely...

The Debate Over Wiretapping Liability--Stuntz

Posted on March 14, 2008
I confess I don?t understand the current debate in Congress about legal liability for telecom companies that cooperated with the government in the wake of September 11. The issue isn?t whether the kinds of assistance those companies provided ought to...

Spitzer-Stuntz

Posted on March 12, 2008
I have two related reactions to the Eliot Spitzer story. First, it seems to me that we have to expect this sort of thing when we ban conduct like prostitution but tolerate upscale call-girl networks like the one Spitzer apparently...

King Lear and the Culture Wars--Stuntz

Posted on March 10, 2008
The two sides in America?s long-running culture war disagree about much, but agree about something very important: both sides believe law shapes cultures, not the other way around. Sometimes, it seems to work that way. The civil rights legislation of...

My Condition--Stuntz

Posted on March 10, 2008
My surgery happened about ten days ago; I?ve been home from the hospital for a week. The surgery went well, as these things go: the tumor was sizeable but they apparently got all of it, which is good news. Cancer...

The Most Famous Evangelical Intellectual You've Never Heard Of--Skeel

Posted on March 09, 2008
Thanks to Crazy for God, a new tell-all memoir by his son Frank, Francis Schaeffer is back in the news in evangelical circles. Twenty-four years after his death, the height of his fame has long since passed, but Schaeffer...

More on Subprime: Bernanke and Bankruptcy--Skeel

Posted on March 06, 2008
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has now called on banks to forgive portions of the principal owed by struggling subprime borrowers, which suggests that a major intervention may be coming. As between jawboning (the Republican inclination) and a bailout (the...

Evangelicals and the Choice of Democratic Nominee--Skeel

Posted on March 03, 2008
The standard storyline about religion and the nomination process has been the failure of evangelicals to agree on a single preferred Republican candidate. But the choice of Democratic nominee has more momentous implications. If Clinton is the nominee, evangelicals...

Pain and Ugliness-- Stuntz

Posted on March 02, 2008
Physical pain hurts, ugly things look bad, nasty smells smell nasty. What do these basic realities have to do with one another? I?m pretty sure the conventional response is: not much. Ugliness is an aesthetic judgment, and aesthetics seem somehow...

Michelle Obama's Pride--Stuntz

Posted on February 28, 2008
A lot of ink has been spilled on Michelle Obama?s comment that ?for the first time in my life, I am really proud of my country.? I?m a McCain man myself, but the criticism seems dumb to me. She isn?t...

The Subprime Mess-- Skeel

Posted on February 28, 2008
As Obama, Clinton, and everyone else tout their remedies for the subprime crisis, I?m reminded of the old joke about a group of blind men who encounter an elephant. The man who grabs the elephant?s leg tells the others...

On Being Weary-- Stuntz

Posted on February 28, 2008
I?m unbelievably tired these days, and I know I?ll feel more so after this week?s surgery. I?m tired from the drugs I take, tired from the pain in my back and leg, and now tired from the tumor inside me....

Welcome

Posted on February 28, 2008
Greetings, and welcome to those who have found their way to this site. I have no experience at blogging, so I?m not quite sure how to begin. But a bit of autobiography seems in order. Like David, I?m a law...

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