Legal Commentary

A web pitch for a Webb VP pick

Posted on April 05, 2008
The folks at Politico have this new piece about possible VP picks for the Democratic nominee, and I cannot help but add my two cents: I strongly favor Senator Jim Webb as the VP choice for the Dems. Let me explain as a matter of political strategy and policy substance: Political Strategy: As detailed in his official and wikipedia bios, Senator Webb was born in Missouri and elected to the Senate from Virginia...

Torture and Necessity: Yoo's Worldview

Posted on April 04, 2008
Others have begun to delve into the legal arguments employed in(here), the institutional questions raised by (here), and John Yoo?s personal culpability for (here) the latest "Torture Memo," which became public this week. What initially strikes me about the memo, and the executive branch worldview it exemplifies, is the utter lack of recognition that principled legal constraints are in fact, well, constraints when it comes to torture and other interrogation practices...

You Don't Want to Miss Out on Law and Extraterrestrial Economics

Posted on April 04, 2008
Forgive me, but I?m going to take this opportunity to plug my humor blog, The Backbencher. Every Monday you can tune into The Backbencher to read my latest post. I?ve re-posted a few of my Backbencher posts here on PrawfsBlawg, including my spirited defense of using words in class that I don?t fully understand, as well as my coverage of the 2008 AALS conference in New York...

Signing Off and Music Bleg

Posted on April 03, 2008
The announcement of the new rotation (which includes my excellent colleague Geoff Rapp) and reference to the Magnetic Fields in posts below prompt me to sign off with my traditional (well, this is the second time) request for suggestions for Cool, New, and/or Really Good music in the alt-rock vein...

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A Critical Tax Conference at FSU

Posted on April 03, 2008
Some of the nation?s leading tax law faculty members will be at Florida State College of Law on April 4-5 for the 2008 Critical Tax Conference. Event hosts are Florida State prawfs Joseph Dodge, Brian Galle and Charlene Luke. The annual conference has been in existence for about a decade and is hosted by a different institution each year...

Optimally Bad Teaching

Posted on April 03, 2008
When just-signed-off Joe Slater won the University-wide teaching award here at Toledo today, I was forced to remind him of the old maxim that if you never get pulled over, that means you aren't driving fast enough. Speedy driving gets you where you need to be sooner, and once there, you can do useful (or fun) stuff...

God Denied Tenure; Low TCEs Cited

Posted on April 03, 2008
The story is here.

From the Subprime Crisis Department: Charitable Foundation Hit Hard

Posted on April 03, 2008
According to news reports, the McCune Foundation, one of the nation?s largest grantmakers with more than $600 million in assets (as of 2006), by my guesstimate among the nation?s 150 largest foundations by asset size, has suffered severe losses attributable to the subprime mortgage mess...

Michael Barone on Obama, Jacksonians, and Academics

Posted on April 03, 2008
On March 24th, I posted the observation that Obama might have trouble attracting "Republicrats," a term that I use to refer to the descendants of 19th century New England Republicans who are now living throughout the northern section of the USA, from Massachusetts to San Francisco, because Obama was dependent on the union vote...

And the Court saith, "it is more blessed to receive than to give"

Posted on April 03, 2008
Out of the 24 decisions handed down so far by SCOTUS this term, I award the coveted "Golden Blinkers" prize for most Senselessly Formalistic Statutory Interpretation to Watson v United States (06-571). Issued on December 10th, 2007, Watson held that receiving an unloaded gun in exchange for drugs is not ?using? the gun in a drug transaction under 18 U...

Pedagogy for beginners

Posted on April 03, 2008
A friend of mine from Harvard?s education school expressed surprise that law professors had no explicit course in teaching techniques. It is a shame that pedagogical tips of the trade have to be discovered by trial and error or, at most, get passed down within faculties or existing academic social networks...

Some more reading suggestions

Posted on April 03, 2008
I had the sense I would later forget these, so let me just flag some interesting looking law review articles and symposia that just came across my screen thanks to Brian Quigley at UTexas. First, the new issue of Virginia LR contains not only our own Matt Bodie's paper on "Information and the Market for Union Representation," which I hope Matt will blog (more) about, but also a really neat and ambitious paper I read this past summer in draft by Tali Fisher and Issy Rosen-Zvi, entitled: Overcoming Procedural Boundaries...

From Analog to Digital

Posted on April 03, 2008
Every time my wife and I have moved house over the last nearly 20 years of our marriage, we?ve schlepped with us a huge stack of vinyl LPs. Having long since switched over to CDs (though not yet to MP3s), we hardly ever listen to them. Still, the idea of getting rid of these physical remnants of our youth has been too painful to contemplate...

Must-Read New Republic articles

Posted on April 02, 2008
While on the road this past weekend, I had the chance to sit down with the 4/9/08 issue of the New Republic, and I highly recommend the following articles as especially thoughtful or funny or both. Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler's excerpt from their new book on "choice architecture," entitled Nudge (Yale University Press)...

When your parents are in town...

Posted on April 02, 2008
Do you invite them to attend your classes? My parents are here, all the way from Israel, until the end of Passover. When I was little, I used to enjoy sitting in my mom's psychology lectures and hanging out in my father's research lab. But up till now, the thought of them sitting in one of my lectures has given me the chills...

Friends as Fiduciaries

Posted on April 02, 2008
I am delighted to make available my paper, Friends as Fiduciaries. I have just uploaded it to SSRN; it is forthcoming in the Wash. U. L. Rev. Here's an abstract: The Article argues that the law of fiduciary duties provides a good framework for friends to understand their duties to one another better, gives courts a useful set of rhetorical and analytical tools to employ when they are forced to entertain disputes that arise between close friends, and, finally, can help direct courts to furnish betrayed friends certain kinds of remedies that are most appropriate for achieving justice within that...

Spitzer and Retributive Suffering

Posted on April 02, 2008
In this post, Prof. Ellen Podgor suggests that Eliot Spitzer may have already been punished enough (at least, enough that it may be a poor investment of state resources to seek to formally punish him). I don't have a particular view on this issue (for one court's view of the topic, see United States v...

Larmore on Taylor

Posted on April 02, 2008
Dan has already mentioned Charles Larmore's review, in the latest New Republic, of Charles Taylor's "A Secular Age." Larmore finds the book "deeply disappointing". Larmore is, no doubt, smarter and more learned than I am, but I was not "disappoint[ed]" (even if I was exhausted) by Taylor's book at all...

Statutory Stare Decisis

Posted on April 02, 2008
The Supreme Court often observes that stare decisis ought to have "special force" in the context of statutory interpretations. The Court usually advances one of two rationales for the rule. Sometimes, it claims that congressional silence following a statutory interpretation opinion reflects congressional acquiesence in it...

Visiting or Hosting a Visitor Next Year?

Posted on April 02, 2008
Dan Filler at the Faculty Lounge is attempting to collect information on law professors (and aspiring law professors) who will be visiting at other law schools next year. If you are visiting yourself, or if your law school will be hosting a visitor, please pass that information along to danielmfiller@gmail...

"My Super Sweet 16" as a Law Teaching Tool?

Posted on April 02, 2008
Greetings and many thanks to Dan and his colleagues for inviting me to guest blog here at PrawfsBlawg. I teach Business Associations, Nonprofit Organizations, and a leadership development course (?Lawyers as Leaders?) at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law...

We Must Use Big Words

Posted on April 01, 2008
As law professors, we must use big words. Nay, allow me to restate, viz., it is incumbent upon us to deploy brobdingnagian lexemes. Coming from a journalism undergraduate education, I grew up with a disdain for big words. If something can be said simply, so much the better...

Garvey on "Institutional Pluralism"

Posted on April 01, 2008
In his address at the January 2008 Annual Meeting of the AALS, the new AALS President, Dean John Garvey (Boston College) discussed "institutional pluralism." Here is a bit from a Boston College Law School-affiliated site: In a speech in January at the 2008 Annual Meeting of the American Association of Law Schools (AALS) in New York Dean of Boston College Law School and AALS President John Garvey talked about shifting the axis of the legal academy?s discussion over diversity...

Pole Taxes and Sexual Assault Victims

Posted on April 01, 2008
It is a busy time for state efforts to tax nude dancing establishments as a way to support sexual assault victims--what have come to be known as "pole taxes." A bill pending in the Illinois legislature would impose a $ 1 per patron tax on nude-dancing establishments, with the money earmarked to cover a $ 1...

Out of Our Armchairs and Into the Lab

Posted on April 01, 2008
Greetings, and thanks to PrawfsBlawg for having me back for another go at the cyber-soapbox. Last time, as I recall, I talked mostly about white collar crime. This time, I plan to range a bit more widely. One of the most intriguing books I?ve read in recent months is Kwame Anthony Appiah?s Experiments in Ethics, an engagingly-written exploration of how new findings in empirical psychology and neuroscience can illuminate age-old problems in moral philosophy...

The Meat Market Is Like...The Meat Market

Posted on April 01, 2008
Perhaps inspired by one of my favorite Magnetic Fields Songs, I thought that this is the best way to introduce this series of posts on the job market. Many of my friends would laugh when I told them that I was going on "the meat market," but in truth it really is a lot like that other meat market, dating, especially internet dating...

Lovely to be back

Posted on April 01, 2008
Thanks to the Prawfsblawgers for having me back. The last time I was here, I blogged about the merits of fellowships, and how they prepare you for the job market, as well as some of my substantive interests. This time, in a sort of "Through the Looking Glass" style, I'll blog about the job market having gone through it, cue music...

Rotations

Posted on April 01, 2008
Just back from NYC where I presented Punishing Family Status to a wonderful group of faculty at Hofstra. Many thanks to my gracious hosts there: Joanna Grossman, Liz Glazer, Grant Hayden, Nora Demleitner, Bennett Capers, and Katy Kuh. So it's the first of the month and time to wish all a Happy April Fool's Day...

The Sketchy Documentary Record

Posted on March 31, 2008
I've been reading up on the history of law reporting. Though I'm primarily interested in what we today owe to the future by way of a clear documentary record, it's also fascinating to see how profoundly our understanding of earlier ages of law is shaped by the fragmentary reporting of previous generations...

Pacing a Course

Posted on March 31, 2008
As a rookie prawf, I've found pacing to be one of the biggest challenges. Generally, I find myself not covering as much as I hoped to. I feel a little like a kid in a candy store, with eyes bigger than my maw. When drawing up a new syllabus, it's hard to know how much material can realistically be covered in a class session...

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