Legal Commentary

Putting Expresso Out of Business?

Posted on March 26, 2009
John Doyle (the librarian par excellence at W/L) writes: A new, free, law journal submissions system will be launched by mid-April. "LexOpus" will not simultaneously submit works to multiple journals. Instead, an author selects an ordered list of journals and the system makes the work available to each journal serially on a 7 day exclusive basis...

A few interesting law review issues

Posted on March 26, 2009
After the jump, I thought I'd spotlight a few law review issues that caught my eye recently, including the new Mich LR books issue, a Penn symp on the Eighth Amendment, and a Loyola LA symp on the "frontiers of tort law." MICHIGAN LAW REVIEW Volume 107 Number 6 April 2009 2009 SURVEY OF BOOKS RELATED TO THE LAW FOREWORD WHY WRITE? Erwin Chemerinsky 881 CLASSIC REVISITED BRADBURY: FAHRENHEIT 451 Rodney A...

Do Cities Have Any Role in Regulating Executive Comp?

Posted on March 25, 2009
A combination of recent headlines and Richard Schragger's recent piece "Mobile Capital, Local Economic Regulation and the Democratic City" (which suggests, among other things, that "[t]he new 'regulatory localism' challenges the proposition that industrial policy, redistribution, and other responses to global economic restructuring must be addressed at the national level") prompt me to wonder about the role of cities in economic regulation...

The Schlagfest in Geo. L. J. and a mild defense of SSRN emails...

Posted on March 25, 2009
As some of you saw on Co-Op the other day, there's an unusual exchange going on in the pages of the Georgetown LJ this month. Pierre Schlag has written a(nother) polemic against legal scholarship, and folks as varied as Daniel Ortiz, Richard Weisberg, Richard Posner and Robin West respond...

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Innovation in Legal Writing Programs...

Posted on March 25, 2009
Last year, Prawfs had a number of good discussions on various aspects of legal writing programs, including posts of who should teach legal writing, the components of a legal writing program, and an exchange over the use of 3L writing instructors. I thought I would return to the state of law school's legal writing programs, spurred by an email I received from Catherine Wasson, the Director of Elon's Legal Research and Writing Program about the 2008 Law School Survey of Student Engagement (LSSSE)...

Rosenkranz on "An American Amendment"; or, Do 9 and 11 Equal 28?

Posted on March 24, 2009
Nicholas Quinn Rosenkranz has posted on SSRN a short paper called An American Amendment. It argues, in an admirably succinct fashion, for a constitutional amendment banning the reliance on foreign law in interpreting the Constitution. The proposed amendment reads, in its entirety: "This Constitution was ordained and established by the People of the United States, and so it shall not be construed by reference to the contemporary laws of other nations...

My Spring Break...

Posted on March 23, 2009
So my spring break was mostly lost to work, but a really fun part of that work was interviewing the two current congressional chaplains -- the Rev. Barry Black on the Senate side, and the Rev. Daniel Coughlin on the House side. They are quite remarkable people and they have quite a remarkable job...

Multiple-Choice Law School Exams

Posted on March 23, 2009
I've informally asked around over the last few years about giving multiple-choice (or partially multiple-choice) exams and have noticed: Views (and institutional norms) are strong Whether multiple choice is considered acceptable varies among subject areas (civ pro ok? con law no way?) Some of these strong positions are linked to issues about "teaching to the bar" So, multiple choice - pro or con?

Comments on Prawfs

Posted on March 23, 2009
We've been getting tons of spam comments lately that have been escaping the usual spam filters at Typepad. Consequently, we're going to experiment with a requirement that the comments come from "authenticated" users (those with typepad accounts). Hopefully we'll revert to the prior strategy soon enough; but if it's not effective, we might have to hold comments before they get published...

Should Sara Jane Olson Get to Leave California and Serve Parole in MN?

Posted on March 22, 2009
In today's NYT, noted author Caitlin Flanagan pens an op-ed on the intricacies of parole decisions. Flanagan, you may recall, is the frequently interesting and controversial social critic usually perched at the Atlantic, and formerly of the New Yorker...

Greenhouse Joins ACS Board

Posted on March 21, 2009
Via Orin Kerr comes the news that Linda Greenhouse, the former New York Times Supreme Court reporter, has joined the board of the American Constitution Society. The ACS press release praises Greenhouse and the other new board members for the ability to help the ACS "promote discussion, debate and understanding of a progressive legal and public policy vision...

Downloading the Download of the Week on Contracts and Friendships

Posted on March 21, 2009
I was pleased to see Larry Solum recommending my paper "Contracts and Friendships" as the Download of the Week. This is a competitve week in light of the submission season and I'm glad to get a little extra attention for what I think is a hard but rewarding paper to read...

Justice Jackson on Umpires and Judges

Posted on March 21, 2009
This post was written by John Q. Barrett of St. John's and the Robert H. Jackson Center; it was sent to the Jackson List and was forwarded by my FIU colleague, Tom Baker. Jackson's comments are in line with arguments I have made against Chief Justice Roberts's views of the judge-umpire connection...

Tit-for-tat in the Law Review Submission World?

Posted on March 20, 2009
Today over lunch I heard about a very interesting form of self-help from a colleague (unnamed!). S/he mentioned that when law reviews fail to acknowledge receipt of the manuscript during the submission cycle, or receipt of the request for the expedite, s/he simply doesn't inform those schools of when the manuscript has been accepted elsewhere/withdrawn from availability...

Why Barack O is Cool

Posted on March 20, 2009
Aside from the little slip about the Special Olympics, it's hard not to think POTUS 44 is pretty awesome, as politicians go...here's the link to the extended interview he did with Leno this week. Enjoy the weekend.

Souter, Cromwell, and "intellectual lobotomy"

Posted on March 19, 2009
Justice Souter raised a few eyebrows recently when he said, before an audience at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, that -- as Tony Mauro reports -- "he undergoes a 'sort of annual intellectual lobotomy' when the Supreme Court term begins in October, a condition that he said lasts until the end of the term the following summer...

New Article: Duplicative Foreign Litigation

Posted on March 19, 2009
I posted on the topic of antisuit injunctions and international parallel proceedings last week, and mentioned an article I had written. A few suggested I do an Article Spotlight (the polite PrawfsBlawg way of saying "shameless plug and self-promotion")...

Recovering Money from Madoff's Investors

Posted on March 18, 2009
Whereas lots of attention has been paid to recovery from Madoff (and his wife), another source of funds may be from investors who redeemed shares before the Ponzi scheme fell apart. (Although the investors would have to return money, presumably they would eventually get their pro-rata share...

"Outside" Information in the Law Review Submission Process

Posted on March 18, 2009
Yesterday the NYT reported on the growing use of PDAs and the Internet by jurors in the midst of trial and deliberations. Although sometimes the problem is information flowing out from the jury, in many cases the jurors are trying to do their own investigation beyond the parameters of the court...

Is Working for House Like Clerking?

Posted on March 18, 2009
For those of you who watch the television show "House," do you feel like those people who work for House are kind of like law clerks working for a judge? I mean, I realize there are some important differences. For example, the people who work for House are doctors, while the people who work for judges tend to be law clerks...

What's in a Name?: The "New Doctrinalism"

Posted on March 18, 2009
Cumberland's Brannon Denning has a very interesting and enjoyable piece in the new Tennessee Law Review titled The New Doctrinalism in Constitutional Scholarship and District of Columbia v. Heller. It's available on Westlaw, of course; for those who don't have subscriptions, an earlier draft is available on SSRN here...

Erie meets the First Amendment

Posted on March 17, 2009
The Maryland Court of Appeals last month established a standard for when a defamation plaintiff suing an anonymous on-line poster can enforce a subpoena against the non-party ISP to obtain the identities of the anonymous speakers. Commentary on the case here...

Faculty Influence on Article Selection at the Law Reviews

Posted on March 17, 2009
I wanted to build on Dan's comments about the fascinating thread over at Brian's Leiter's place but then take them in a different direction. What I found most interesting were the comments about faculty influence on the selection process. Here are a few examples: from Elisabeth: "HLR and YLJ get multiple faculty reviews before publishing anything...

Some more blather about "best journals"

Posted on March 17, 2009
The other day Brian Leiter trotted out his new favorite toy (condorcet-compatible voting tools) to do a ranking of the "best law journals." Brian editorialized: "is there really any legal academic who thinks the quality of articles in, say, the Harvard Law Review is really higher than the quality of articles inJournal of Legal Studies or Oxford Journal of Legal Studies or almost any of the faculty-edited journals? I find that quite hard to believe, but I am open to being persuaded otherwise...

Law Firms, Compensation Cuts, and Public Interest Deferrals...

Posted on March 17, 2009
Last week, I mentioned the depressing news over law firm layoffs. Since that post, the trend has continued with numerous other firms announcing massive cuts (you can find a detailed "Layoff List" on AmericanLawyer.com). Some estimate over 1300 lawyers and staff were given pink slips last week alone...

Anonymity, Signaling, and Silence as Speech

Posted on March 17, 2009
Looking for something to read over March break? Here's my latest, a short paper called Anonymity, Signaling, and Silence as Speech. It's a reply to an interesting symposium paper by Professor Martin Redish of Northwestern. And here's the abstract: This short article responds to a paper delivered by Professor Martin Redish at a symposium on Speech and Silence in American Law at the University of Alabama School of Law; the symposium proceedings will be published by Cambridge University Press...

Getting New Prawfs Off the Ground

Posted on March 16, 2009
Earlier I received an email from someone about to start teaching. He asked: This fall, I will begin teaching at ___. As of writing, I anticipate that my classes will consist of torts, criminal procedure, and American legal history. As I prepare for the academic year, I wonder whether you know of any source(s) for course outlines, syllabi, casebook recommendations, and other materials relating to these classes, as may have been provided and collected by other professors...

Globalization and Nationalism

Posted on March 16, 2009
Paul Krugman had an interesting Op-Ed piece in the New York Times -- The Great Illusion. In it, he questions whether the international economic crisis might lead to the end of globalization. He does this by reminding readers of a prior era when globalization existed only to be undone by nationalism (leading to WWI)...

Tri-4-Gey, and an update from Steve Gey

Posted on March 15, 2009
The folllowing is a press release that I thought would interest the academic legal community as well as the numerous fans of Professor Steve Gey outside the professoriate. I am also posting Steve's most recent update, which is both, and again, heart-breaking and inspiring...

The Bard's Tale

Posted on March 13, 2009
I just found a downloadable version of The Bard's Tale online and had to share my discovery. Oh, the hours I used to waste playing this game on my parents' Apple IIgs (remember the Apple IIgs? -- it was like an amped up Apple IIe). Anyway, it's all there: the game, the spell book, the maps...

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