Legal Commentary

Is IRAC Good or Evil? The Next in a Series of Posts on LRW.

Posted on October 16, 2008
I say good. Virtually every LRW teacher will teach IRAC in some form or another. For many, it may well be the centerpiece of writing instruction. God knows that there are problems with teaching students IRAC, though. It can make their writing superficial, too structured, too rote, and not analytical enough...

Statutory Interpretation for Toddlers; Or, No Tricycles in the Park

Posted on October 15, 2008
My daughter, who is a few months shy of three, loves to remove her socks and shoes. Yesterday, apparently, she did so in the playground at her daycare program -- something no one noticed until later. Asked why she had done so, she replied: "[The teacher] said, 'don't take off your socks inside...

More on Dunlap: "Pick-up on Noon Street"

Posted on October 15, 2008
My take on the reactions to Chief Justice Roberts's dissent from the denial of cert. in Pennslyvania v. Dunlap is a little different from Steve's. I don't think the reaction was as laudatory as Steve seems to think it was, although I acknowledge I may not have read as much as he did...

Uelman on Conscience and Citizenship in the Catholic Tradition

Posted on October 15, 2008
I don't mean to bogart Rick's MoJ prerogatives, but let me recommend a lovely article recently plugged on that site: "It's Hard Work": Relections on Conscience and Citizenship in the Catholic Tradition, by Amelia Uelman of Fordham, in the Journal of Catholic Legal Studies...

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And the Winner of the "Best Law Porn" Award is...

Posted on October 15, 2008
UCLA! We can judge "law porn" -- the glossy brochures that arrive in the mailboxes of of law professors, lawyers and judges this time of year -- on any number of dimensions: aesthetics, weight, ability to convey excitement, number of articles in top journals per square inch, etc...

A new not-blog: "Public Discourse"

Posted on October 15, 2008
"Public Discourse" is (it insists) the not-blog (though it is kind of like a blog) of the Witherspoon Institute (one of Robby George's projects) at Princeton. Here is the link, and here is a description of the not-blog's mission and a list of the Editorial Board's members...

U.S. News Survey: Vote Quality, Not Reputation

Posted on October 14, 2008
The U.S. News surveys -- the primary determinant of the overall rankings -- are now in the boxes of hundreds of law professors around the country, due in a few weeks. Next month, it's the lawyers' turn. Discussion in the blogosphere and elsewhere have referred to these as "reputation" surveys, which is misleading -- so let's stop doing so...

Law Professors and CLE

Posted on October 14, 2008
While we are on the topic of blogging and blanking without tenure, I wanted to discuss an experience from my recent past (last Friday), but that isn't mentioned by Professor Horwitz as something one might ordinarily do while untenured - namely teaching CLE...

_________ Without Tenure

Posted on October 14, 2008
Verity raises the question -- I guess age-old isn't the right term, but the by now well-worn question -- of whether one should blog without tenure. It's a perfectly fair question, and all of us (at least all of us without tenure) have thought about it from time to time...

Someone is reading us

Posted on October 14, 2008
In August, I criticized the Ninth Circuit decision in In re DRAM Litigation, which dismissed a claim under the Foreign Trade Antitrust Improvements Act (FTAIA) for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, rather than for failure to state a claim, which I believe was the more appropriate ground...

A Dissenting Opinion on the Chief Justice's "Noir" Moment

Posted on October 14, 2008
I decided to make a momentary re-appearance in blog-land because I've been a bit perturbed by the various blog coverage of the Chief Justice's dissent from the denial of certiorari today in Pennsylvania v. Dunlap. Everyone's obsessed with the creativity of the film-noir (or Dragnet-style) opening to the dissent, with a substantial amount of praise for the Chief Justice for doing something original (what does _that_ say about the predictability of Supreme Court opinions that we go nuts for anything remotely different?)...

On Greenawalt on Religion

Posted on October 13, 2008
I'm back from a weekend jaunt to South Bend -- the "gateway to Mishawaka," as Rick Garnett once described it to me -- and I'm happy to say that the Dome is doing as well as ever and that the Law School is flourishing. The occasion was a roundtable discussion on Kent Greenawalt's Religion and the Constitution: Establishment and Fairness, the second in his comprehensive and magisterial two-volume "treatise" on law and religion...

Irony Department

Posted on October 13, 2008
I know this is last week's news, but compare this: McCain's Homeownership Resurgence Plan The McCain Resurgence Plan would purchase mortgages directly from homeowners and mortgage servicers, and replace them with manageable, fixed-rate mortgages that will keep families in their homes...

Macey on Corporate Governance

Posted on October 13, 2008
Jonathan Macey's new book Corporate Governance: Promises Kept, Promises Broken arrives this week. It is available now on Amazon. Here is the publisher's blurb. In the wake of the Enron meltdown and other corporate scandals, the United States has increasingly relied on Securities and Exchange Commission oversight and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which set tougher rules for boards, management, and public accounting firms to protect the interests of shareholders...

More on non-traditional legal writing

Posted on October 13, 2008
I started to include this in the comment I left to Hillel's post on where to place a short, tongue-in-cheek essay that nevertheless explores important legal ideas (I am looking forward to reading the paper). He is looking for suggestions as to where to place the article, noting that the writing game is somewhat "confining...

Is there a place for non-traditional legal writing in the legal publishing universe?

Posted on October 13, 2008
I love being a law professor. I love thinking about the law. I love teaching and engaging with students. I love writing. I love hanging out with law professors. And I love the many personal and professional benefits that come with being a professor. (Do all junior professors feel this way? Does it wear off?) One of the very few things I don't like about being a professir is that it is confining...

Parroting Dicta

Posted on October 13, 2008
In my last post on this topic, I introduced the basic argument that any type of invention should be patentable, so long as it falls into one of the statutory categories ? process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter ? and so long as it meets all of the other requirements of patentability...

Blogging Without Tenure

Posted on October 13, 2008
I know many of us blog without tenure, but is it really a good idea? Some advise that blogging doesn't help. For one, it may not always look like it, but blogging takes time. And that time could be spent writing law review articles. That's the theory, at least, although in my experience it is nice to have a variety of projects of different lengths, media, etc...

Follow up to "Is There a Place for Non-Traditional Scholarship?"

Posted on October 13, 2008
Yes! There is! And more than one! See the comments for direction. Thank you all for your advice on placement, as well as for the positive feedback on the piece. Some follow-up points upon reflection: I think that Howard and "anon." are probably right that legal academia is not quite as confining in this respect as I made it out to be (and thought it was)...

Googling Years Gone By (with the Google of Years Past)

Posted on October 11, 2008
If there are a few Web searches you forgot to do back in 2001, you now have a second chance: Google is celebrating its 10th anniversary by allowing you to search the 2001 version of the Web with that year?s version of the Google search engine. Monica Hesse uses this as a launching point for an interesting discussion of Web archiving in today?s Washington Post...

Ugly political rhetoric v. Unlawful political rhetoric

Posted on October 11, 2008
Bloggers, and belatedly the mainstream media, have been sharply criticizing McCain and his campaign for the increasingly angry, ugly, and personal tone of their campaign rhetoric, which has played up the Obama-as-terrorist-Muslim-traitor-secret-communist, and which has prompted the over-the-top rage and hatred it has stoked and provoked in the crowds at McCain and Palin rallies...

Breaking: Connecticut Supreme Court Rules on Same-Sex Marriage

Posted on October 10, 2008
A divided Court held that Connecticut must allow same-sex couples to marry. This makes Connecticut the third state to recognize same-sex marriages, though California may yet roll back.

Who Should Teach LRW?

Posted on October 10, 2008
Broadly speaking, there are three choices that schools have in choosing LRW teachers. In some schools, the programs are taught by professors or full-time instructors; in other schools, part-time faculty teach LRW; and in still other schools, the program is taught by fellows who will, after 1-3 years, go on the tenure-track market...

Law Professors as Creative Writers

Posted on October 10, 2008
Perhaps because I had little else to do during my free time yesterday during Yom Kippur, I started brainstorming about my final. I think it is really a great one - a compelling story, complex but not overly so, broad class topic coverage, realistic, etc...

Laptops in the Class -- Take 2

Posted on October 10, 2008
OK. I guess the post below on laptop free classroom was not quite accurate. For one thing, the video is not really my class ? although it would be nice to think I could somehow generate the same energy level in class discussions that legendary Argentina rocker Indio Solari generates in his concerts...

An Energy-Filled, but Laptop-Free,

Posted on October 09, 2008
An Energy-Filled, but Laptop-Free, Class After seeing the film Wall-E with my five year old daughter about a month ago, and watching that scene in the film where human beings of the future are blocked from meaningful contact with each other, and their surroundings, by video screens that constantly hover in front of their faces, I decided it was time to see if my law school class would be more engaged in the class without computer screens constantly in front of their faces...

Baseball Metaphors and Judicial Opinions

Posted on October 09, 2008
A long time ago - so long ago, in fact, that the editing process was conducted entirely via Fed Ex and (gasp) telephone* - I published an article on the use of baseball metaphors in judicial opinions. It is one of 19 hits in the Westlaw JLR database for "Kirby Puckett," one of four for "Kent Hrbek," and the only law review article ever written that mentions Puckett, Hrbek, and Ron Gant...

Were You a High School Debater Too?

Posted on October 09, 2008
Now, we weren?t as cool as the cheerleaders and football players, but we often hung out with them. (When I explain this to my wife, I can tell she doesn?t want to harsh on my reality, but she can?t help her mouth from involuntarily screwing up into an uneven grimace of dubiety...

Innovative Part-Time Programs and U.S. News

Posted on October 09, 2008
PrawfsBlawg has had a number of interesting posts related to the U.S. News and World Report Rankings over the last few months -- from, among many, Adam Kolber's post on "part-time program 'gaming,'" to Jason Solomon's earlier posts on alternative rankings, to Jason Solomon's and David Fagundes' "Race to the Top Project...

Free Sage Journals and Shanske on Aristotle's Doctrine of Equity

Posted on October 08, 2008
It seems that Sage is running a good deal this October: Register here and then you get tons of free access to its journals for the rest of the month. Once you do that, you'll be able to download Darien Shanske's "Revitalizing Aristotle's Doctrine of Equity" from the current issue of Law, Culture, & the Humanities...

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