Legal Commentary

Hillary Clinton for the Supreme Court?

Posted on May 07, 2008
There has been much talk about Barack Obama naming Hillary Clinton as his running mate. This seems most unlikely, for the basic reason that they seem to dislike each other intensely. Moreover, having the former first couple as the new second couple would create an endless nightmare of message control (if Hillary has trouble keeping Bill on script, how could Obama?)...

Cassell on McCain

Posted on May 07, 2008
I have little doubt that Paul Cassell has forgotten more law than I will ever learn, and I trust Tom Smith's repeated assurances that his brother-in-law is a capital fellow. I enjoyed a number of his rulings as a federal district court judge. But his post yesterday on John McCain's speech setting forth his "judicial philosophy" was not his finest moment...

Assumption of Campaign Debt

Posted on May 07, 2008
Last night some of the MSNBC commentators were bandying around the possibility of an Obama-Clinton deal in which Clinton withdraws from the election in exchange for Obama's campaign assuming her campaign debt, among other consideration. I find myself uncomfortable at the thought of a political bargain based upon the assumption of campaign debt...

Blasphemously elitist thoughts on the politically inattentive

Posted on May 07, 2008
What should a democrat think about the political participation of the politically inattentive? My immediate inspiration for this question comes from the Daily News , which reports that a voter stated as follows: "I'll be honest with you. Barack scares the hell out of me...

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Defining Sport

Posted on May 07, 2008
Since I recently wrote about the importance of defining terms before we can have discussions or debate, how about an attempt to define "sport"? I long have been toying with a definition that requires objectivity in scoring and determining winners. Thus, if it is about objective questions such as who runs faster or who scores more points, it is a sport; if it is about getting a 5...

Dep't of Unfortunate Pseudo-Trends

Posted on May 07, 2008
How you can write a whole article about "steampunk" -- in the author's words, "a subculture that is the aesthetic expression of a time-traveling fantasy world, one that embraces music, film, design and now fashion, all inspired by the extravagantly inventive age of dirigibles and steam locomotives, brass diving bells and jar-shaped protosubmarines" -- without mentioning Neal Stephenson's classic The Diamond Age is quite beyond me...

Some news of varying degrees of excitement:0-11

Posted on May 06, 2008
Ah, the beginning of exam-grading period: it is, by my lights, the best time to procrastinate by writing incessantly. And while my wife could have been eating donuts with Jack in Tucson the last few days, I've had the chance to finish assemble cobble from here and there a shitty first draft of Implementing Retributive Damages...

The Paper Chase - the TV Series

Posted on May 06, 2008
Thanks to Dan and the Prawfs gang for inviting me to visit at Prawfs. I teach constitutional law and legal history at UC Davis. I hope to post on substantive legal matters, but that's proving a bit difficult in the middle of exam season, so let me begin with something a bit lighter...

Situationism v. Dispositionism

Posted on May 06, 2008
Many thanks to Dan and the gang for this opportunity -- this is my first guest-blogging gig, and I'm very much looking forward to it! I teach at the University of Colorado School of Law, where my interests include constitutional law, employment discrimination and employment law, civil rights, and torts...

Noah Feldman on Colbert

Posted on May 06, 2008
Noah Feldman can officially be recognized as a celebrity law prof. Within the course of one month he was subject to a caustic broadside from Leon Wieseltier in The New Republic and interviewed on the Colbert Report. The Colbert interview was particularly strange; it seemed to me that Colbert shed his TV persona when talking with Feldman...

The Economics of Baseball Fandom

Posted on May 05, 2008
From Daniel Hamermesh at Freakonomics: A recent article notes that attendance in Major League Baseball parks is actually above last year, despite, so the story says, the economic downturn (recession?). But despite is incorrect ? it should be ?because? of the economic downturn...

More on "Bush Lied, They Died"

Posted on May 05, 2008
Two more interesting procedural points on the "Bush Lied, They Died" t-shirts lawsuit. First, there is a nice personal jurisdiction question here. Frazier lives in Arizona and runs his company from there, selling his products via the web. The lawsuit was brought in Tennessee (the plaintiffs' home state) and most of the complaint is devoted to jurisdictional allegations showing the defendant's contacts with Tennessee...

Axing Dr. Wright: Sorry, We Think You'll Be a Downer

Posted on May 05, 2008
Via AbovetheLaw, and admittedly a couple days late, I learned that Northwestern University has just disinvited the controversial Dr. Jeremiah Wright from its commencement ceremony. With recognition that Dr. Wright has become, um, a polarizing figure in national politics, I still think this is a bit weird...

Why even lawyers often don't like lawyers

Posted on May 05, 2008
Dan Frazier runs a company called Lifeweaver, which sells t-shirts, bumper stickers, and other items bearing liberal messages. The company is best-known for t-shirts with the message "Bush Lied" on the front and "They Died" on the back, superimposed over a white-on-black listing of the names of the 4000+ U...

"The Most Famous Non-Deal in Tech History"

Posted on May 04, 2008
That's what Ben Worthen at the WSJ is calling it, although that title is misleading. Worthen's piece opens: "The drama is over: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer just withdrew his company?s offer for Yahoo. For now." Worthen is torn between dissecting the end of the deal and recognizing the possibility that this wasn't the end...

A Belated Sign-Off

Posted on May 04, 2008
Thanks to Dan, Rick and the Prawfs gang for having me here during April (even though I very likely brought down the post-per-blogger average). Someday perhaps I'll be able to find the time to contribute more regularly, if they'll have me back. Until then, it looks like another great crop of visitors is coming through this month.

Hello, and Important Dining Information for Clinicians Visiting Tucson

Posted on May 04, 2008
Thanks to Dan and the rest for having me back. I've just finished my 13th year in the law Prawf business, my fifth at the University of Arizona, and although my writing may appear eclectic, I consider the unifying theme to be race and criminal law--that's what links immigration, felon disenfranchisement, criminal procedure, and access to counsel...

Teaching Financial Products and Transactions

Posted on May 03, 2008
Anyone who has even perused the newspapers from the last few years has probably encountered references to securitization and MBS and servicers and CDOs and CDS and SPVs and PMI and SIVs. Some of these terms might be vaguely familiar to those who were around in the Enron years...

Stdnts: U. Shld. Try Out for L. Rev.

Posted on May 03, 2008
[By request, I am reprinting here this post from my humor blog, The Backbencher.] Ah, spring! To borrow some words from Browning and Tennyson: The hill-side's dew-pearl'd, the lark's on the wing, and a young law student's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of law review ...

Stuntz on Illness, Luck, and Moral Desert

Posted on May 02, 2008
Prof. Bill Stuntz, who has written so meaningfully and openly about his experiences with chronic pain and worse, informs us that, alas, he continues to struggle with his cancer. I won't call it heartbreaking, because he clearly refuses to be heartbroken...

1L Attrition and Law School Tuition Structures

Posted on May 02, 2008
Some pretty interesting stats on 1L attrition here. Michael Froomkin has some insights on the phenomenon here. (Hat tip to Leiter for this topic) As the stats show, there is great variation in 1L attrition rates, ranging from 51.4% at Whittier down to 0% for a number of schools...

Hi

Posted on May 02, 2008
Thanks to Dan and the other prawfs for inviting me to blog. I suppose I should give a bit of an introduction. I?m one of those lucky people who fell into teaching without going through the AALS process. I?ve spent the last year as a visitor from nowhere at Arizona State?s law school, teaching administrative law, civil procedure, and a seminar on the Supreme Court and politics, and I recently received an offer for a tenure track position (hooray)...

Academic Freedom and Law School Accreditation

Posted on May 02, 2008
A number of interesting academic freedom issues are in the news and I hope to post on a number of them in the next few days. To begin, I have finally had an opportunity to read what Dan calls "USD Prawf Gail Heriot's sparky op-ed in the WSJ . . . about how the ABA pressures schools like George Mason on diversity objectives...

As if Any More Reasons Were Needed to Favor Obama Over Clinton....

Posted on May 02, 2008
Sorry for the openly partisan title on this one, but I can't resist. Mickey Kaus offers us the useful reminder, if one were needed, that "if we elect Hillary, we're going to get Sid [Blumenthal] as part of the package." Need one say more?

Honesty in Friendship

Posted on May 02, 2008
Solove at the Co-Op writes: "[P]eople might not be pleased to know precisely where on one's relationship matrix they stand. Jack might think he's good friends with Jill, but Jill might classify him as merely a distant acquaintance whom she merely wants to associate with for the purpose of climbing hills...

Rotations

Posted on May 02, 2008
It's time to grade exams or procrastinate exam-grading by writing, blogging, and drinking--though not necessarily in that order for all. What a great month we've had here to celebrate our first 3 years of Prawfsiness. Happily we have another month of wonderful visitors, old and new, to join us...

Debate without definition

Posted on May 02, 2008
Richard Ford at Slate's Convictions writes about a new announcement from the LAPD that a departmental investigation into more than 300 accusations of alleged racial profiling found that none could be sustained. Ford is not surprised by the result, because the department defines racial profiling as an officer-initiated confrontation solely because of race; and of course it virtually never will be the case that an officer stops someone solely because of race, even if race (along with other characteristics) is a factor...

JD-MBA Programs and the Shortcomings of Business Law Education

Posted on May 02, 2008
While I'm being a player-hater (one of my favorite occupations), let me dump a bit on joint JD-MBA programs. I don't think there's a lot of value in the joint degree. Consider the cost-benefit trade off. Students have to pay an extra year of tuition and forego an extra year of earnings...

Why Is Legal Education an Advanced Degree?

Posted on May 02, 2008
I've recently been puzzling over why legal education is done as an advanced degree in the US (and a handful of other countries). There's no prerequisite body of knowledge or prerequisite approach to knowledge for law school. Nor is any particular maturity level required (as if age were ever a good proxy for maturity)...

By Way of Introduction

Posted on May 02, 2008
Who is this nut job who's suddenly flaming the Prawf Blawg site with his ill-tempered rants about legal education you ask? It seems that I forgot to introduce myself. Briefly, I'm an associate prof at Georgetown, where I teach the all too timely topics of bankruptcy and commercial law--lending and payments...

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