Legal Commentary

Ricci and the appellate process

Posted on June 29, 2009
Dan asked for initial thoughts on Ricci. I have not had a chance read it, but here are a few initial comments on the procedure and politics of the decision, piling on earlier comments from Media Matters and from Jonathan Adler. First: Appellate courts get reversed; that's why we have a three-tiered judiciary (two in Nebraska) and appellate review...

The Daily Show -- Stewart and Huckabee on Abortion

Posted on June 29, 2009
This is a joint post with June Carbone In mid-June, Jon Stewart conducted another of The Daily Show?s multiple part interviews with former Governor Mike Huckabee. While the previous show had focused on gay marriage, Stewart asked Huckabee to choose a topic he?d like to discuss...

Sentence Explanations . . . and South Park

Posted on June 29, 2009
I have a new paper on SSRN entitled "Appellate Review of Sentence Explanations: Learning from the Wisconsin and Federal Experiences." As I observed in an earlier post, I've become very interested in the way that sentences are explained to defendants, and how appellate review of explanations can potentially contribute both to procedural justice goals and to substantively better sentences...

In praise of "The Wire"

Posted on June 28, 2009
Sorry for the long blogging silence. I had promised myself that I would complete (fully sourced) the penultimate draft of my current article, so I have spent just about every working minute of the past couple weeks filling in footnotes. That fun now complete, I can return to some blogging...

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A Real Thriller

Posted on June 27, 2009
NB. Back to the front... I can?t think of any law school who could pull this off singlehandedly, but a group at the College of William and Mary managed quite a feat on April 19 ? a world-record number of people completed the infamous dance sequence en masse from Michael Jackson?s Thriller...

Progress on LGBT Issues?

Posted on June 26, 2009
Like many, I was relieved when President Obama signed a memorandum last week that gives access to some benefits to the same-sex domestic partners of federal employees, and I?m pleased that the White House is drafting guidelines that would ban workplace discrimination for transgender employees of the federal government...

The Legal Blogosphere Falls Behind

Posted on June 26, 2009
One of the supposed signal virtues of the legal blogosphere is that it can respond immediately to current events. And yet I am surprised to see that it has had virtually nothing to say about the recent and tragic death of Ed McMahon. Keep up, folks! UPDATE: I am now informed that, not only has Ed McMahon died, but apparently actress Farrah Fawcett has passed away too! Where are the media on this? I expect to hear about it when famous people die! Some people really don't keep up with the news.

New Symposium on Originalism in NW U. L. Rev.

Posted on June 26, 2009
Via Tarlton, I just saw word of a great looking symposium on originalism in the Nw U L. Review. I've posted the Contents after the jump. Congrats to EIC Dave Baltmanis and his team on putting this together. NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW Volume 103 Number 2 Spring 2009 SYMPOSIUM ORIGINAL IDEAS ON ORIGINALISM FOREWARD: ORIGINAL IDEAS ON ORIGINALISM Brian A...

A Good Idea Gone Awry

Posted on June 25, 2009
In my last post, I introduced Section 230 of the CDA, which immunizes online providers against suits based on the content of materials posted by another content provider. While I argued that the underlying policy behind the section is sound, I believe that there are some fundamental flaws with the way it has been applied in certain cases...

It's Never to Early to Start Thinking About Exam Questions . . . .

Posted on June 24, 2009
Over at the Marquette Law School Faculty Blog, I've been tracking new criminal cases in the Seventh Circuit since October. This is the first time that I've ever systematically read a court's advance sheets. (As an aside, though, I was charmed by the story I heard in law school - perhaps apocryphal - that Arthur Corbin passed away at age 93 in the Yale Law Library while reading the latest contracts advance sheets; ever since, I've thought of that as the ideal way for a law professor to go...

U.S. News tomfoolery

Posted on June 24, 2009
What can one say but "d'oh!" It appears the Gainesville Sun got hold of University of Florida's President J. Bernard Machen's U.S. News rankings form. According to the University of Florida's president, the country's "distinguished" undergraduate programs are Stanford, Cal-Berkeley, Yale, Harvard, MIT, Michigan, Princeton, Columbia ...

God, Philosophy, Universities

Posted on June 24, 2009
A few times here at Prawfsblawg, the question of law schools' institutional character -- their "mission" -- has come up. I've had a few posts, for example, on what John Garvey has been calling "institutional pluralism", and on the contributions that (I think) meaningfully religious law schools can make, precisely by being distinctive, to the academy and to the profession...

Nazis, Highway Signs, and the Government

Posted on June 24, 2009
If you spend much time in your car, you?re probably familiar with adopt-a-highway programs, in which states erect signs bearing the names of organizations that have agreed to pick up litter along particular stretches of road. As the New York Times this week reported here and here, certain groups? efforts to participate in those programs continue to generate controversy: a half-mile of Missouri highway, for example, is marked by a sign recognizing the clean-up efforts of a neo-Nazi group...

So Long, and Thanks....

Posted on June 23, 2009
This is going to be my last post on Prawfsblawg for now. I just wanted to thank Dan and everyone else here at Prawfsblawg for this opportunity, and I'm looking forward to doing this again in the future. I also wanted to thank everyone who posted comments or sent me emails about my posts...

Apple News

Posted on June 23, 2009
There?s been lots of Apple news over the past few days: Steve Jobs [probably] had a liver transplant a few months ago, at least according to the Wall Street Journal. Apple has sold more than a million of its newest Iphone within the first three days of making it available...

Sprawl and Climate Change

Posted on June 23, 2009
Here's a fix for fellow land-use junkies. Kaid Benfield (of NRDC) has an interesting post up on the links between land use policy and carbon emissions. A taste: Smart growth and smart transportation choices can reduce the amount Americans need to drive - as measured in vehicle miles traveled (VMT) - by 10 percent per capita from 2005 levels...

I Do What I Want!

Posted on June 22, 2009
One of my favorite refrains from South Park is Eric Cartman's declaration that "I do what I want!" on the Maury Povich show. The phrase reminds me a bit of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which immunizes web sites and "interactive computer service" from liability stemming from content provided by "another information content provider...

Thoughts on Yeager: Role of Appellate Judges, Special Verdicts, and the Meaning of a Hung Jury

Posted on June 20, 2009
Last week, in Yeager v. United States, the Supreme Court resolved a longstanding tension between two aspects of Double Jeopardy law: the collateral estoppel rule, which precludes relitigation of issues previously found in the defendant's favor, and the hung jury rule, which permits relitigation of charges as to which a jury does not reach agreement...

Beer Law

Posted on June 19, 2009
My love of good beer (and my part-time gig as a home-brewer) means that every now and then I think about designing a course in Beer Law that would explore various beer-related cases and what they tell us about the law. Leading my draft syllabus so far are the following: In Craig v...

Justice at Guantanamo?

Posted on June 19, 2009
I've just started reading Justice at Guantanamo: One Woman's Oddysey and Her Crusade for Human Rights, and it provides a wonderfully human?as well as legal ? approach to various detainee issues. It is written by Kristine Huskey, a friend and a clinical professor at UT-Austin, who has been to Guantanamo more than 15 times, and was one of the first attorneys to represent Guantanamo detainees...

DA's Office v. Osborne: Bad Facts Make Tough Cases

Posted on June 19, 2009
I've only had a chance to read the SCt's opinion in DA's Office v. Osborne rather quickly, but I thought I'd share a tentative reaction or two and invite some conversation on the topic. (You can get the opinion here, and Liptak's got a summary of the issues here...

Voices from Iran

Posted on June 19, 2009
My fellow Dorot alum, Bari Weiss, from the WSJ oped page was able to elicit some very interesting and powerful reflections from a panoply of voices inside Iran this week. These are on the WSJ oped page today. I should note parenthetically that while my sympathy lies with the challengers to Khamenei and Ahmadinejad, it's not entirely clear to me that Mousavi is a much better option...

The Soccer-Liking Lawprof

Posted on June 18, 2009
I?m a fairly big sports fan, and my enthusiasm includes (though is by no means limited to) serious appreciation for soccer on both the club and international levels. Liking soccer is a bit of a rogue taste in the U.S., where all manner of critics from reasonably smart essayists like Chuck Klosterman to brain-dead blowhards like Jim Rome are eager to go on at tiresome length about why the sport is evil and awful...

Head Above Water

Posted on June 17, 2009
Dear Friends, I am reappearing in the bloggosphere after a while of silence. Dan, Ethan and all our prawfs friends have been patient and kind enough to allow me a sort of leave (are there formal sabbaticals for bloggers?) in a year of baby, tenure, book, travels and a million other things that don't seem as significant right now...

Hiring Chairs for 2009-10: Announce Yourselves Here Please

Posted on June 17, 2009
As is customary around this time of year, we are hoping law schools will use this space to share some relevant information regarding hiring for the coming year. Specifically, if you're a prawf, please share the following information related to the Fall 2009 and/or spring 2010 hiring season: a) your school, b) who's the chair and who are the members of your appointments committee (please also identify whether entry levels are separated from laterals, etc) and, c) if there are any special areas you're looking to fill...

French Fries

Posted on June 17, 2009
Shorter MoDo: Obama should eat more steamed fish and organic vegetables so I can mock him for his effete eating habits.

How We React to Racism

Posted on June 17, 2009
In discussing last week's shooting at the Holocaust Museum, Charles Blow's latest NYT column cites a recent study that deserves our attention if we, as a society, are truly committed to addressing racism. In this study, authors Kerry Kawakami, Elizabeth Dunn, Francine Karmali, and John Dovidio sought to examine the extent to which folks' attitudes about racism aligned with their actions...

Cognitive Bias and Innocence Commissions

Posted on June 17, 2009
I received word last week of the official demise of the Wisconsin Criminal Justice Study Commission, a law-reform organization of which I had been a member for two years. The Commission emerged from heightened state-wide concerns over wrongful convictions following the DNA-based exoneration of convicted rapist Steven Avery in 2003...

NY Times on Sotomayor Property Rights Case

Posted on June 16, 2009
Adam Liptak had a story in yesterday's Times on the Didden v. Port Chester case, in which the Second Circuit, by summary order (and with Judge Sotomayor on the panel), affirmed the district court's dismissal of a complaint brought by an aggrieved developer/landowner whose land was condemned as part of a redevelopment project in the Village of Port Chester...

Commenting on Commenting

Posted on June 15, 2009
I was a commentator at a really great conference last week at GW law school. The conference explored a variety of issues relating to software and business methods patents, with wide variety of views. I commented on three interesting papers relating to whether business methods should be patentable subject matter - the papers approached the question from very different angles...

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