Legal Commentary

Roger Ebert the Writer

Posted on July 22, 2008
Roger Ebert is best known as half of the pair of film critics who brought movie reviews to television. Time Magazine has an interesting article about Ebert's departure from the show that made him a celebrity. As Ebert's announcement explains, Disney "has decided to take the program named 'Siskel & Ebert' and then 'Ebert & Roeper' in a new direction...

The Dark Knight and the MPAA

Posted on July 22, 2008
The Motion Picture Association of America has long been a target of criticism for its secret, often-arbitrary, moralistic, and frequently non-sensical movie ratings. The focus is totally on sex, nudity, profanity, and (as of recent years) drug use, while violence often gets a free pass...

Is Chicago a Super-Elite School...and Better than Yale?

Posted on July 21, 2008
For the last two weeks, I have been blogging about the annual U.S. News survey of law professors, lawyers, and judges, and how we might use that survey to create a real race to the top in legal education. On Thursday, I offered a sample "Voters' Guide" to the U...

Yahoo's Eleven

Posted on July 21, 2008
Yahoo's board has reached an agreement with investor-advocate Carl Icahn. Icahn will drop his proxy challenge, and he and two others will join the Yahoo board. One member of the current board will exit and two new board slots will be created, moving the board from nine members to eleven...

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Friends as Fiduciaries: Comments at The Conglomerate

Posted on July 21, 2008
In connection with the Fourth Annual Conglomerate Junior Scholars Workshop, several comments on my paper Friends as Fiduciaries will appear on The Conglomerate on July 30. I'll be making an effort to engage my critics in the comments there (though I may be on the road for some of the day)...

Profiles in Courage; Or, Tenure By Another Name

Posted on July 21, 2008
While I'm copping stuff from the NYT Week in Review section, I also enjoyed yesterday's piece on think-tank conservatives rethinking conservatism. Not so much for its content, which has been written about elsewhere, but for this kicker: Indeed, to [libertarian blogger Megan] McArdle, the possibility of a Republican defeat holds a certain romantic appeal...

On "Smart" Lawyers

Posted on July 21, 2008
I haven't been reading Jason's series of posts about "super-elite" law schools, but it strikes me that this piece, which I was going to excerpt anyway, may be something of a response to his own comment on his latest post. The New York Times yesterday linked to an interesting piece in The American Scholar by William Deresiewicz, The Disadvantages of an Elite Education...

Technological Bleg

Posted on July 21, 2008
Help--I am looking for a technological suggestion. Next week, I am moderating a roundtable discussion at SEALS and I want to audio-record the proceedings (for later transcription and publication). The conference itself cannot do any recording. Is there a way I can do this myself on the relatively inexpensive, using something strong enough to pick up both people who are miced and people in the audience who probably will not be miked? Any suggestions are welcome.

Prawfstra! and a NYC Happy Hour

Posted on July 21, 2008
As mentioned last week, about a dozen of us are going to be in the NYC area this Thursday and Friday for Prawfsfest! at Hofstra, aka Prawfstra! I'm very grateful to Hofstra's Dean, Nora Demleitner, for hosting us so generously. Attendees include: Ethan Leib (Hastings); Katherine Kuh (Hofstra); Steve Vladeck (American); Bennett Capers (Hofstra); Adil Haque (Rutgers Newark); Julian Ku (Hofstra); Michael Cahill (Brooklyn); Alice Ristroph (Seton Hall); Michael O'Hear (Marquette), Verity Winship (Cardozo); Adam Kolber (San Diego, visiting at Brooklyn); Ekow Yankah (Cardozo); and me...

Is LA Gov. Jindal about to flip-flop on capital child rape?

Posted on July 20, 2008
As reported here at SCOTUSblog, tomorrow "is the deadline to seek rehearing in Kennedy v. Louisiana (07-343), though there has been no indication the state of Louisiana will seek rehearing...." I will be very disappointed if Louisiana does not petition for rehearing, especially given that, as detailed here, Governor Bobby Jindal has stated in this official press release that the Supreme Court "got this case wrong, plain and simple" and that he "will do everything [he] can to see that this decision does not stand...

Selective Exceptionalism?

Posted on July 19, 2008
Adam Liptak?s series on ?American Exceptionalism? in the NY Times, the latest installment of which treats the exclusionary rule, connects in some counterintuitive ways with the relatively recent brouhaha about the Supreme Court?s deployment of foreign sources of law...

Johnny Sack is a Union Boss, Apparently

Posted on July 18, 2008
You may remember Vincent Curatola from "The Sopranos" -- he played a rival boss to Tony who suffered the indignity of attending his daughter's wedding in federal custody. Now, Mr. Curtola is still living off his Sopranos fame by portraying a mobster. Well, at least he seems to be a mobster...

Tales from a new jury system

Posted on July 18, 2008
In case you missed it, here's an interesting story about Korea's new jury system -- and how citizens and the system are adapting to it. I've written about jury systems around the world in this recently published essay. It appears that contrary to the information I had at the time of writing, Korea is asking jurors to produce unanimous verdicts (though since the jury verdicts are never binding for now -- even when unanimous -- it is hard to know what Korea will do about unanimity when and if they choose to keep the jury system as a permanent and/or...

The Virtual Conference Cocktail Party

Posted on July 18, 2008
After hearing of a fifteen-foot-high Cass Sunstein being stationed on a screen behind the other participants at a recent conference panel, I started to wonder whether virtual attendance at professional events might soon become the norm. Between our awakening guilt over climate change, the astronomic rise in fuel prices, and the economic and operational woes of the airlines (sidebar vent: US Airways recently cancelled my flight, failed to rebook me, and told me the best option was ?ground transportation?), it seems like Skype and other forms of remote convening could become increasingly appealing...

Women and service in the academy

Posted on July 18, 2008
Insider Higher Ed had a short column examining several recent and forthcoming studies of the increased school and university service and committee responsibilities given to women (especially newly tenured women) which, while important and potentially influential, distract from their scholarly work that remains the coin of the realm in academe...

The Justices, balls, and strikes

Posted on July 17, 2008
It seems fair to say that, among legal scholars, Chief Justice Roberts's reference to the work of baseball umpires, and his suggestion that the work of the Court's justices should resemble, somehow, that of umpires, has not been greeted with wild approval...

Hiring Chairs 2008-09: Announce Yourselves!

Posted on July 17, 2008
Update: Note that this will be moved periodically to the front of the page. As is tradition here, it's time for law schools' appointments committees around the country to congregate here and share: a) the name of the chair (s) of the committee b) the law school c) whether your school divides work between entry-levels and laterals, and if so, who's responsible for which segment d) the names of other persons on the appointments committee(s) e) any particular subject matter expertise you're focusing on f) other information you think might be relevant...

Stanford, Harvard, Yale: A Sample Voters' Guide for This Fall's U.S. News Survey

Posted on July 17, 2008
I think it makes sense to start at the top. Because we have a relatively well-defined market -- the schools that, for students with a choice to go anywhere, are the ones from which to choose. The schools which have been the top three in the U.S. News rankings for years: Harvard, Yale, Stanford...

Grading Student Certainty

Posted on July 17, 2008
Just a quick post based on a conversation I had with a colleague the other day: he mentioned that he might give three questions on an exam and ask students to answer all of them. But he also asks them to choose one of the questions they think they did the best on so that will be worth twice as much...

Is Blogging Just Another Boys' Club?

Posted on July 17, 2008
In my last post, I asked Do Women Blog?, and more specifically, do female law professors blog anywhere close to their numbers in the academy. Two comments prompt me to ask another question, which will hopefully generate more discussion. The first comment is from Orin Kerr...

Irony and context

Posted on July 17, 2008
As you would expect, a cartoonist, Tom Toles in the Washington Post, captures the context debate. (H/T: Kathleen Bergin at The Faculty Lounge): This reflects an additional about what about the importance of context. It is not just cartoon v. factual reportage...

Paul Caron, Moneyball, and the Most Important Chart In the History of Legal Education

Posted on July 16, 2008
I?ve been talking about how to compare "value added" across law schools for the annual U.S. News survey of law professors, lawyers and judges, which amounts to 40% of the overall rankings. Yesterday, I laid out the kind of data we?d want to see in a Voters? Guide to U...

Bikini-clad reporters and academic freedom

Posted on July 16, 2008
After leaving Chicago last year, I don?t keep up much on the goings-on in that city, great city though it is. But earlier today, I ran across a juicy local news item. About a year ago, Amy Jacobsen, formerly a reporter for local Chicagoland station NBC 5 was covering the disappearance of area woman Lisa Stebic...

Socrates and Obediance to the Law

Posted on July 16, 2008
As Brian Tamanaha recently noted, it sometimes seems as if Plato anticipated most of the major issues in the philosophy of law. One of these issues is the question of when, if ever, it is appropriate to disobey the law. This issue is presented squarely in the Crito, where Socrates and Crito debate whether Socrates should flee into exile or should accept the jury?s sentence of death...

We've Got the U.S. News Survey!

Posted on July 16, 2008
Or at least a copy from last year. Unfortunately, with Bob Morse out of the office last week, we had to go on what their website said, which was simply to judge the "quality" of each school's "program." Here's what the question actually says: "Identify the law schools you are familiar with, and then rate the academic quality of their J...

Do Women Blog?

Posted on July 16, 2008
Do female law professors blog? I mean, I know a few of them do. Orly Lobel is one of the regular PrawfsBlawg bloggers, and several other women, including Katy Kuh, Liz Glazer, Miriam Cherry, Laura Appleman, and Elaine Chiu, have guest blogged here. But do women really blog anywhere close to their numbers in the academy? Skimming the list here, women are decidedly in the minority...

The En Banc Fourth Circuit Decides al-Marri, Sort Of...

Posted on July 15, 2008
I suspect very few people will make it all the way through the en banc Fourth Circuit's 216 pages of opinions handed down today in al-Marri (who is the one non-citizen held as an "enemy combatant" in the United States), so here's the short, short version: One 5-4 majority held that the AUMF authorizes al-Marri's detention...

Media starting to rethink their Icahn summer romance

Posted on July 15, 2008
As I've noted several times before, I've been surprised about the kid-gloves used when discussing Carl Icahn's Yahoo proxy bid. His Time-Warner proxy bid flamed out so spectacularly that I expected folks to remember when he started up at the same game...

A Short Guide To Answering A Business Organizations Essay Question

Posted on July 15, 2008
A couple of my former students mentioned that they were covering business organizations in BarBri this week. I was reminded that many Bus Orgs students have a hard time getting their heads around the course as a whole. Bus Orgs is a big survey class, and it can be hard to pull out comprehensive themes...

With friends like this...

Posted on July 15, 2008
Jonathan Alter, trying to set the record straight on Obama's religion, writes in Newsweek that: ?Obama's father, whose name was also Barack Hussein Obama, was born to a Muslim family in Kenya but become an atheist long before he came to Hawaii in 1959, where he met Obama's mother...

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