Legal Commentary

America is the Best Place to be a Law Professor

Posted on April 18, 2008
The best kind of law professor to be is an American law professor. You may find my saying this to be virtuous (patriotic, dignified, expressing of contentment and mudita) or reproachable (jingoistic, elitist, narcissistic). But that?s my thesis of the day...

Another reason to avoid Vista

Posted on April 17, 2008
If you needed one. Good lord. HT: FSJ.

The Legality of Your Zombie Escape Plan

Posted on April 17, 2008
At Concurring Opinions, Prof. Wenger wonders about the role of law in (stopping) the end of the universe. His analysis assumes that the world will end thanks to some sort of wormhole-rift-black hole-AP physics type event, rather than the far more likely scenario: a zombie take-over...

You Can Now Vote for the Most Screwed Victim in Caselaw History

Posted on April 17, 2008
I am very sorry for your spoiled ballots. Because of a technical glitch, citizens who tried to vote for the Most Screwed Victim in Caselaw History were thwarted at the polls, their e-mails returned as undeliverable. You were not intentionally disenfranchised...

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Am I my Pastor?s (Priest?s, Rabbi?s) Keeper?

Posted on April 17, 2008
I must confess that I simply do not understand the Reverend Wright ?controversy,? at least as it purports to say something about Barack Obama. Maybe I?m out of touch with ordinary, mainstream media pundits and political operatives. But, since when did a candidate become responsible for all the past statements and views of others to whom he or she is, or has been, connected? Last night?s twenty-first Democratic debate featured two sets of questions directed to Obama about his associations: first, a re-run of the Rev...

The Trivialization of Voting Rights?

Posted on April 17, 2008
Riley v. Kennedy was argued on March 24th and awaits decision by SCOTUS. But the legal question argued is much less interesting than a larger sociological point raised by the case ? a tendency for voting rights litigation today to become bogged down in bureaucratic and legalistic minutiae...

I Want a Famous Face

Posted on April 17, 2008
Teaching Moore v. Regents of California in my Reproductive Technology and Genetics Class this past week reminded me of a side issue I was thinking a lot about when writing my forthcoming article, "The Right Not to Be a Genetic Parent?", but never resolved...

The Iowa Caucuses

Posted on April 16, 2008
As I mentioned in my last post, I spent last weekend at the University of Iowa with 15 or so of the country's leading trademark law scholars. We were discussing the topic of trademark use, which I tried to frame earlier. Rebecca Tushnet and Eric Goldman posted comments about the Roundtable, here, here, here, here, and here...

Most Screwed Victims in Case Law History - Time to Vote

Posted on April 16, 2008
The cases we read in law school present a parade of luckless losers. But who is the most screwed victim in caselaw history? PrawfsBlawg readers responded in droves to my call for nominations. The comments, some of which were quite passionate, show that casebook editors have succeeded over and over again in giving us cases that have the power to bother us long after we read them...

In Praise of "Maniacal Stenographers"

Posted on April 16, 2008
Rick becomes the latest to weigh in against laptops in the classroom, specifically because of the problem of student notetakers becoming "maniacal stenographers, transcribing every word without trying to understand what is being said." I agree 100 % with Rick's comments and his solution to that problem...

Retributivism and Kennedy v. Louisiana

Posted on April 16, 2008
As Sam Kamin notes over at Co-Op, today the SCT is hearing arguments in Kennedy v. Louisiana, a case involving the constitutionality of the application of the death penalty to a person convicted of a non-homicidal crime, in this case, the rape of a child...

Banning laptops, taping classes

Posted on April 16, 2008
A recent post on banning wireless at Chicago Law School prompts me to ask how many readers of this blog ban laptops during class. I do, with one exception. I assign four students (rotated alphabetically) to take notes for each class and post them on the course website...

Call for Papers: Third Annual Colloquium on Current Scholarship in Labor and Employment Law

Posted on April 15, 2008
The Third Annual Colloquium on Current Scholarship in Labor & Employment Law will take place in San Diego from October 23 to October 25, 2008. This year's colloquium will be co-hosted by California Western School of Law, Thomas Jefferson School of Law, and the University of San Diego School of Law...

Punishing Family Status up on SSRN

Posted on April 15, 2008
I'm happy to report that there's now a slightly revised draft of Punishing Family Status up on SSRN. You can download it here. This is an article I wrote with Jennifer Collins and Ethan Leib. As mentioned the other day here, it's forthcoming in the BU Law Review later this year, and it's part of a book project with Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2009, entitled Privilege or Punish: Criminal Justice and the Challenge of Family Ties...

Brain Activity Prior to Conscious Awareness

Posted on April 15, 2008
A recent study in Nature Neuroscience has sent freewheeling free will discussion aflutter. Here's the abstract: There has been a long controversy as to whether subjectively 'free' decisions are determined by brain activity ahead of time. We found that the outcome of a decision can be encoded in brain activity of prefrontal and parietal cortex up to 10 s before it enters awareness...

Asking questions on the job market - Part II: about the offer

Posted on April 15, 2008
So, the hiring chair has called to let you know you?ll be receiving an offer, and the dean will be calling soon. You are ecstatic. Five minutes later you wonder, what do you care about in terms of an offer, what should you ask about? Well, here was my list of things I wanted to know about to the offer for evaluation purposes (excluding a few that might be more individualistic to my needs ? immigration issue, same sex partnership benefits, etc)...

Asking questions on the job market - Part 1: before the offer

Posted on April 15, 2008
Throughout the various rounds of the process someone will inevitably ask you: ?do you have any questions for us?? You might think this is the time to sit back and relax, the grilling is over, just ask whatever you?ve been thinking about. You would be wrong...

John Adams and the Alien and Sedition Acts

Posted on April 15, 2008
The most recent episode of John Adams also depicted Adams dealing with the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, mostly his agonizing over whether to sign the bill and discussions of the bill with his cabinet and with Jefferson, with his decision finally coming down to a sense of majoritarianism (if a majority of the People's representatives wanted this law, he would not stand in the way)...

Buddy, Can You Spare a Billable Hour?

Posted on April 15, 2008
The legal market has been on a rampage for several years now. Students, even ones without the shiniest of credentials, have had considerable success in landing good jobs right out of law school. After a shaky period precipitated by the Dot.Com boom-gone-bust early in the decade, firms started hiring again, volumes of legal work increased, and, recently, salaries even began to spike upwards again...

Yay!

Posted on April 14, 2008
Just a note to share some exciting news. Ethan Leib, Jennifer Collins and I have recently signed a contract with Oxford University Press to publish in 2009 a book tentatively titled, Privilege or Punish: Criminal Justice and the Challenge of Family Ties...

Citron on "The Greening of America"

Posted on April 14, 2008
The New York Law School Law Review has a reasonably engaging new symposium on legal scholarship, and also on the connections between law and legal writing and popular writing. It's available here. Of particular interest, I think, is this piece by Rodger Citron on "The Personal History of [Charles Reich's] The Greening of America...

Kafka in the Classroom

Posted on April 14, 2008
A very interesting conversation has been circulating about the future of law school education (most recently on Madisonian.net). This conversation is one we have been having at my own institution as well. I begin from the premise that interdisciplinary study in law is imperative to legal education, even in non-elite law schools (for the other view, see here)...

Leadership Education in Law Schools

Posted on April 14, 2008
Last Friday, the Program on Law and Leadership here at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law hosted its final event of the year. A group of 15 students and I had a wonderful lunch discussion on facilitative leadership and consensus building with Prof...

It's Not You, It's Me

Posted on April 14, 2008
Maroon-colored irony dripped from the coverage over the past few weeks of the University of Chicago's decision to cut off wireless internet access in its law school classrooms. A school known for its faith in markets and preference for individual rather than collective solutions to legal and policy problems embraced a top-down, market-rejecting approach to classroom management...

John Adams and the Midnight Judges

Posted on April 14, 2008
Last night's episode of HBO's John Adams covered Adams's one-term presidency, focusing primarily (spoiler alert) on his ultimately successful efforts to avoid full-out war with France and to remain above the fray of partisanship between Hamilton's Federalists and Jefferson's Republicans...

Weekend Trivia Challenge

Posted on April 13, 2008
According to the latest Washington & Lee University rankings of law reviews (2007, combined score), which non-U.S. journal is the highest ranked, and what country is it from? To give you a fighting chance, we'll do it multiple choice style. European Journal of International Law, from the U...

...Because things are not so bad the way they are? (on the law review front)

Posted on April 11, 2008
In response to a lot of interesting and important thinking about law reviews, law schools and legal education this past week, for example here and here, I thought I would try and offer a partial defense of the-way-things-are-right now on the law review front: Don?t romanticize the alternative: When one begins to publish in the peer-reviewed world, the whole romantic notion of blind review becomes somewhat tainted -- in all of the fields I am familiar with -- psychology, economics, business, political science, history and sociology reviews (and also in the fields I am less familiar with, according to my...

Duke Lacrosse and Extra-Judicial Speech

Posted on April 11, 2008
An unexpected issue in the lawsuit filed against Duke University and the City of Durham by the 38 current and former lacrosse players who were not indicted in the scandal over false sexual assault claims (See here, here, here, and here). The plaintiffs' legal team (or PR professionals associated with the legal team) has started a blog called Duke Lawsuit, as the "official source of information" about the lawsuit, containing links to all the documents, filings, and events related to the case, as well as a column of quotations from commentators about how badly the players were mistreated...

More on "What Kind of Institution Should Law Schools Be?"

Posted on April 11, 2008
Here is my contribution -- thoughts on "institutional pluralism" and religiously affiliated law schools -- to the conversation over at Madisonian.net, "What Kind of Institution Should Law Schools Be?"

Symposium on Morse v. Frederick

Posted on April 11, 2008
The Lewis & Clark Law Review has posted online the various contributions to their symposium, "Speech and the Public Schools After Morse v. Frederick." In the symposium, Kenneth Starr "explores the divided factions of the Court"; Erwin Chemerinsky considers the opinion's implications and urges that Justice Alito's opinion take center stage going forward; Sonja West offers reasons for concern that the ruling could have a "chilling effect on even protected expression"; Stephen Kanter asks what a close reading of the various opinions suggests about the Court's future direction; Doug Laycock "explores the extent to which inculcating particular ideas can be...

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