Legal Commentary

Why We Need the Bailout

Posted on October 02, 2008
Do you really want them to set up a hedge fund inside your local Wal-Mart between the optical center and the portrait studio? I didn?t think so. You wouldn?t be able to get from the self-checkout to the greeter table without some pinstriped MBA trying to sell you a collateralized derivative-backed forward-swap debenture...

Lawyers and Legal Scholarship

Posted on October 02, 2008
This wasn't where I'd planned to start, but since I've got some thoughts on the scholarship-practice divide I might as well add my two cents. I spent just over eight years in practice before entering academia, so I have some understanding for the practitioner perspective...

Signing Off

Posted on October 02, 2008
Thanks to Dan and the rest of the Prawfs for the opportunity to guest blog this past month. September has ended, so this will be my last post. Bye!

Radio panel on the Court and the election

Posted on October 02, 2008
I did the "On Point" radio show the other day, with Prof. Larry Tribe and Jan Crawford Greenburg. It was fun, if a bit testy in places. It is fair to say, I think, that the host, Tom Ashbrook was pretty skeptical about my skepticism concerning the claim that the election of Sen...

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Guest Blogging on LRW, the Meat Market, and Whatever Else Strikes My Fancy

Posted on October 02, 2008
Thanks for having me back--glad to be here! During this guest-blogging stint, I'm going to try to focus on three things: I plan to do a series of posts on the role of Legal Research and Writing in the law school curriculum. For reasons that I will explain, I think that this subject is unfortunately overlooked on blogs like this...

Rotations

Posted on October 02, 2008
It's a new month and with that we have some rotations. First, a word of great thanks to the Big Squeeze Book Club participants (Steven Greenhouse, Noah Zatz, Melissa Hart, Orly Lobel and Matt Bodie). Second, I'd like to thank our wonderful guest bloggers from August and September...

Open Thread on Palin-Biden Debate

Posted on October 02, 2008
I'm heading shortly to Amherst MA for a conference on the death penalty to get some feedback on this hastily cooked paper, but as I'll be off the box a bunch, I'll be curious to see if by my return there's any fallout from the debate tonight. It seemed tamer than I anticipated...

Bailing Out

Posted on October 01, 2008
I'm off tomorrow morning to Chicago, for the Midwestern Law & Economics Association Conference, where Lesley Wexler and I will be presenting our paper Passive Discrimination, co-authored with Jon Klick. Then I'm headed to a wedding, and then to a publisher's meeting...

Abortion/Criminal Law Bleg

Posted on October 01, 2008
In an interview broadcast last night, Katie Couric asked Sarah Palin the following question: "If a 15-year-old is raped by her father,you believe it should be illegal for her to get an abortion. Why?" Here's part of Palin's answer (after Couric followed up by repeating the question): I'm saying that, personally, I would counsel the person to choose life, despite horrific, horrific circumstances that this person would find themselves in...

Some links on the crisis

Posted on October 01, 2008
Here are some links worth reading concerning the financial crisis: 1. Justin Wolfers, an original signatory of the economists' letter concerning the original Paulson plan, which some have taken to be a compelling argument against the plan defeated Monday...

The Comparative Nature of Punishment

Posted on October 01, 2008
The law measures most harms by comparing two conditions: a harmed condition to a baseline condition. If you crash into my car, we measure the value of the car after the crash compared to its value immediately beforehand. The difference in value represents the amount of the harm...

No Pretextual Stops in CA?

Posted on October 01, 2008
I'm teaching Terry stops and reasonable suspicion this week, and came across this on the ACLU of Northern CA website. Nearly four years [after a lawsuit was filed against the CHP for a non-consent search with no PC - HA] a settlement was finally reached, and CHP committed to making wide spread reforms...

My Op-Ed on the Bailout

Posted on September 30, 2008
Here's an op-ed I wrote that was published in today's Arizona Daily Star (Tucson's newspaper). Note that I didn't choose the title (my suggestion was something like "We Need a Bailout Bill"). Also note that I had a 550-word budget and a lot of ground to cover...

Does combat experience make one a better President?

Posted on September 30, 2008
How much weight should a voter place on combat experience when selecting a President? McCain?s military experience is, of course, an important part of his Presidential appeal. But military heroics historically have been an important resume builder for many Presidential hopefuls ? sometimes (as with Winfield Scott, the Whig who lost to Franklin Pierce in 1852) their only qualification for office...

The Paulson bailout and Andrew Jackson's attack on the "Monster Bank"

Posted on September 30, 2008
In the wake of the House of Representative's rejection of Paulson's bailout measure, I cannot help but think that the spirit of Andrew Jackson lingers among America's electorate. The rhetoric among members of Congress, op-eds, blogs, all sound suspiciously similar to Jackson's message accompanying his veto of the renewal of the Bank of the United States' charter...

And now for something completely different . . .

Posted on September 30, 2008
Jonah has the whole financial-crisis thing well in hand, it seems -- lucky for me, since all I have to offer is (a) I doubt Sarkozy's right; (b) I doubt Sen. McCain is more to blame than, say, Rep. Frank; and (c) I'm glad the Dow is up today -- and so I thought I'd register my regret that the intrusion of Serious Events overshadowed the news (or, maybe, "newslet") that I'd been anticipating for several weeks, i...

Liquidate It, Baby!

Posted on September 30, 2008
As part of my one-man assault on PrawfsBlawg's bandwidth, I thought it might be helpful to recall some Great Depression Greatest Hits. All of what follows is drawn from Brad DeLong's "Slouching Towards Utopia?: The Economic History of the Twentieth Century"...

More on Credit Markets

Posted on September 30, 2008
Here's a WSJ blog post with more on the state of credit markets, and the limited relevance of stock markets (which as off this writing are still up a good bit) for understanding the current crisis. Emphasis in the original. September 30, 2008, 11:09 am Overnight-Lending Markets Still Flashing Red Posted by Editor Min Zeng and Mark Gongloff report...

The Risks of Inaction

Posted on September 30, 2008
Here's a post from William Buiter, over at FT. Read the whole thing (especially the paragraph ending in "Those who genuinely hold these views are mad, but honest and principled. I wish them a good depression."). Here's a lengthy excerpt concerning what might happen if nothing is done (emphasis added): What is likely to happen next? With a bit of luck, the House will be frightened by its own audacity and will reverse itself...

Credit Markets

Posted on September 30, 2008
In an earlier post, I criticized as "wrongheaded" the idea that what happens in the stock market is an appropriate metric for the severity of the financial crisis. A commenter suggests that if I'm so smart, I should write something about credit markets...

intellectual histories of intellectuals (legal and otherwise)

Posted on September 30, 2008
I hereby commend Neil Gross's sociological study of Richard Rorty, a book that's noteworthy even if you're not particularly interested in Rorty or philosophy and would prefer to think instead about the sociology of law professors and the legal academy...

Email I Just Sent Raul Grijalva's Campaign Manager

Posted on September 29, 2008
Hi Michelle I just called the main campaign number and was told I should contact you by email. I made a donation to Congressman Grijalva's campaign earlier this year, at a house party. I believe it was $50, though perhaps it was $100. After hearing that Congressman Grijalva voted against the bailout, I would like my money back...

legal strategies

Posted on September 29, 2008
This morning the University of Florida Law School hosted a symposium in honor of our colleague of 51 (!!) years, Walter Weyrauch. Walter was studying social norms and the unwritten laws of small groups well before such study was cool; his recent book on the oral law of the Romani is illuminating and brilliant (Gypsy Law: Romani Legal Traditions and Culture, U...

Advice for Beginning Scholars

Posted on September 29, 2008
The other day, I asked Jeff Lipshaw to look over the paper of a person in his area who was going on the market after a few years in practice. I thought the feedback Jeff offered was the sort that could fruitfully apply to a number of aspiring scholars...

Disaster

Posted on September 29, 2008
The House has just voted 206-227 to kill the bailout bill. It seem unclear what will happen next. Unclear, that is, except that if nothing is done, our economy is headed for disaster. From everything I've read, this bill was far from perfect. But it was above the line, given the possible costs...

Fey as Palin Redux

Posted on September 29, 2008
I saw Tina Fey's second skit as Sarah Palin on SNL this weekend. I said, "That's pretty good, but it would be even funnier if they used some lines actually spoken by Sarah Palin." Turns out, they did!

"Freedom of Memory Today"

Posted on September 29, 2008
Someday, we may be able to pharmaceutically dampen or erase traumatic memories from the recent past. Such technologies raise many interesting legal and ethical questions. On occasion, though, questions about memory erasure already arise. In this four-page article in the journal Neuroethics, I discuss a real-life case of intentional memory erasure and some of the issues it raises...

Season of atonement

Posted on September 29, 2008
Tonight marks the onset of the Jewish New Year and with it, the ten days of Awe culminating in Yom Kippur. It's traditionally a period of asking for forgiveness and seeking with humility opportunities to repair wrongs and harms that one has caused. In that spirit, let me ask the readership of Prawfs for their collective forgiveness for the shortcomings you've found in my blogging or administration of the website...

"Text More Than We Talk"

Posted on September 29, 2008
Apparently, Americans now send and receive more text messages per month than they make or receive phone calls. See here. (Of course, more information is likely transmitted per phone call than per text message, but the headline is nevertheless interesting...

Shareholder Primacy and How It Squeezes America's Workers

Posted on September 29, 2008
Once upon a time, when I was circulating the proposal for my book, The Big Squeeze, several publishers asked me , "Who are the potential audiences for my book?" Among the target audiences I mentioned were not just classes in labor relations and sociology, but also classes in ethics, business ethics, human resources...

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