Legal Commentary

Do We Already Have a "National Security Court"?

Posted on February 04, 2008
[An edited version of this post also appears at National Security Advisors.] Jonah beat me to the punch re: a post on the new Super Bowl champions, which leaves me to talk substance on this dreary Washington Monday morning... I was very lucky to play a part in last Friday's conference here at WCL asking "Do We Need a New National Security Court?", where the star was undoubtedly the keynote speaker, Judge Leonie Brinkema of the Eastern District of Virginia, who has presided over the Moussaoui and Al-Timimi cases, among others...

Take Note(s): Students, Laptops, and Power Point

Posted on February 04, 2008
While I was out, the topic of laptops in the classroom rose again, beginning with yet another account of how a laptop ban improved the apparent quality of class discussion. More, with excellent comments, here. The usual arguments came out about paternalism, our responsibility to make class interesting in order to keep students from surfing, the uniquely distracting nature of laptops and the internet, and why the net is different from The Times crossword puzzle or the doodling that law students did in the prehistoric pre-internet days (which for me was 1994)...

A Message from Paul Robinson and Kim Ferzan about Criminal Law Conversations

Posted on February 04, 2008
We invite criminal law scholars around the world to contribute to an exciting peer engaged project of criminal law "conversations" to be published collectively as a book. Concise "core" papers, not to exceed 5000 words (approximately ten single spaced pages), each summarizing a theory or position, will each be followed by a number of short (normally no more than 800 words two pages or less) comments, with a final reply to the comments by the original core paper author...

Weighing in on Law School Exams: Two Cents from a 1L Professor

Posted on February 04, 2008
Thoughts at the VC and this blog have turned to law school exams early this year. Here are the two cents of a 1L constitutional law professor: 1. Exams are all about answering the Next Question. In law, lawyers are often hired to figure out how to solve a problem that hasn?t been solved before...

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Sunday Music Blog

Posted on February 03, 2008
Thanks to Dan and the Prawfs for having me back. I'm glad to be here. It's Sunday, let's talk music. I'd like to start things off with two recent obsessions. The first is Matt Costa, whose second full-length album, Unfamiliar Faces, was released in late January...

GO BIG BLUE!!!!!

Posted on February 03, 2008
I know my role here on PB is supposed to be about politics. But I can't help it: I'm a lifelong Giants fan, and, dammit: All I can say is....OMG!!!!! Eli, I was wrong about you. You are the man, and I will buy you a drink any time....Eli, just comment here and tell me where to meet you!!

The Right to Bear Arms and the Myth of Strict Scrutiny

Posted on February 02, 2008
I've been giving a lot of talks lately about the Second Amendment thanks to D.C. v. Heller. When I propose that the Supreme Court follow the state courts and apply a reasonable regulation standard, invariably people object that strict scrutiny absolutely must apply...

Exam Essay Length and Grades

Posted on February 02, 2008
Eugene at the VC has a post raising the question whether longer answers yield better grades for law school exam essay questions -- the usual format of most issue-spotters on law school exams. As he notes, his data set is limited. What's his conclusion? In brief: grades improve with length up to roughly the length of the median student essay; beyond that point students realize no grade gains for longer answers...

Teaching, Blogging, and Pimping

Posted on February 01, 2008
How intimidating is it when one of your students is quoted in the local campus paper saying: "Powerful people should use their words carefully. . . When people mispronounce things it conveys a definite impression to people[?]" Not terribly -- unless your student is also the creator of a Facebook group, "I Judge You When You Use Poor Grammar," that has over 200,000 members, has garnered press attention from the New York Times, sells its own T-shirts, and may give rise to a book deal...

McCain, Staffer Patronage, and the GOP

Posted on February 01, 2008
Josh Marshall links to this March 2007 story from The Hill regarding John McCain's flirtation with leaving the Republican Party back in 2001. I remember that at the time there were such rumors (I was living in DC and reading the WaPo religiously in the first half of 2001, so it was hard to miss)...

The Jewish Americans

Posted on February 01, 2008
Thanks again to Dan and Co. for inviting me back again. I plan on getting my feet wet by writing about a couple things that came up in January that I would have written about had my guest stint already started. Better late than never. I want to begin with some thoughts on The Jewish Americans, the six-hour PBS documentary on the history of Jews in America that aired last month (and still can be seen on some stations this month)...

DC v. Heller: The Primary Importance of the Secondary Question

Posted on February 01, 2008
DC v. Heller will be the first Supreme Court decision on the Second Amendment in nearly 70 years, so it has naturally drawn much attention. Most of the discussion has centered on what we might term the "primary" question at issue in the case: does the Second Amendment protect an individual right to bear arms or just protect state militias from federal interference? Thanks to the ambiguous language and history of the Second Amendment ("A well regulated militia, being necessary for the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be...

Occasions of learning

Posted on February 01, 2008
I teach English; which is to say, I help students work toward answers while trying to avoid asking the questions. I'm interested this month, as a guest blogger, in asking whether the Socratic mode of legal education helps or hurts budding lawyers, morally speaking...

City of Berkeley Disses Military

Posted on February 01, 2008
Thanks to Dan and the rest of Prawfsblawg for inviting me to blog with them this month. We had our first snow day today, but that doesn't stop the blogging! Check out this intriguing story about the City of Berkeley, which voted to brand the resident military recruiting station an "uninvited and unwelcome intruder...

Arlen Specter Kicks His Dog

Posted on February 01, 2008
The New York Times reports that Sen. Arlen Specter wants NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee to explain and justify the league's destruction of the videotapes that the New England Patriots took of opponents' sideline signals, a violation of league rules that resulted in fines and a loss of a draft pick earlier this year...

Collaborative Governance at Hastings

Posted on February 01, 2008
Should you find yourself in the Bay Area today, drop by a Hastings conference on Collaborative Governance. Even if you don't want to come to hear me and fellow PB-er Orly Lobel, there are really great speakers throughout the day.

Starbucks: The Need for a Grande, Non-Fat Federal Panel

Posted on January 31, 2008
The news at Starbucks is grim and lean (unlike the drinks). Among the "action steps" on the "transformation agenda" of Starbucks bigwig Howard Schultz (must they talk that way?) is the closure of "approximately 100 underperforming stores." Of course, one supposes they might ultimately end up closing even more stores than that...

PBS Frontline Program on VP Cheney

Posted on January 31, 2008
A student alerted me to a very interesting PBS Frontline program on Vice President Dick Cheney, "Cheney's Law," which explores Cheney's views and impact on executive power and other constitutional and policy issues that have arisen during the Bush Administration...

Ethics of blogging; citing to blogs; citing to us!

Posted on January 31, 2008
Over at TVC, Eugene shares his views on why it's a good practice to check with people before responding to their blog posts and to a lesser degree, their law review articles. He and I are on the same wavelength, as I blogged a bit more than a year ago about the ethics of legal scholarship...

Rotations

Posted on January 31, 2008
We have an extraordinary few months ahead of us here at Prawfs. I'm particularly pleased to announce some some of the new voices joining the conversation this coming month. Please welcome for the first time to Prawfs Eric Johnson, who just started teaching IP law at UND and blogging at Pixelization and BackBencher...

Science Ruins Everything*

Posted on January 30, 2008
It's bad enough that they've given me reason to doubt Bishop Ussher, modern geocentrism, and the efficacy of my grandmother's mustard poultice. Now those white-coated so-and-sos explode two more of my most fondly held beliefs. From a story in today's NY Times reporting on studies performed by Prof...

Michigan Law Review (FI) Symposium on the Electoral College

Posted on January 30, 2008
I'm happy to direct readers to check out a new symposium up at Michigan Law Review's First Impressions on the Electoral College. I have a short piece (co-authored with Eli Mark) on democratic principle and Electoral College reform; many of the ideas discussed in the piece were aired here at PB first...

Coded Racisms

Posted on January 29, 2008
Check this out: In the U.S. south, is Canadian a new racial slur? So wrong in so many ways. Discuss. (H/t: Buck)

Disqualifying Judges through Contributions

Posted on January 29, 2008
In his Sidebar column today in the NYT, Adam Liptak spotlights a forthcoming study of judicial voting in Louisiana by Tulane prawf, Vernon Palmer. Palmer thought it improper that the Justices on Louisiana's Supreme Court failed to recuse themselves in cases where they received campaign donations from one of the litigants...

"Selling" Symposia

Posted on January 29, 2008
While there is ample information available about the traditional law review submission process, I haven't been able to find any information on submitting symposium ideas to law reviews. In the coming months, I will be in some very distinguished company on a couple of panels at the 2008 SEALS Meeting and, hopefully, at Lavender Law 2008...

Appearances of Impropriety

Posted on January 29, 2008
As a teacher and student of election law, I am reasonably familiar with the argument that the government sometimes needs to act--even to the point of interfering with the people's constitutionally protected rights--to prevent other people from thinking, incorrectly, that government is behaving corruptly...

What is Stanley Fish Thinking (Again)?

Posted on January 28, 2008
Over at his great perch on the NYT website, Stanley Fish has launched the claim that constitutional theory doesn't really matter, especially in the context of presidential candidate selection. In part a review of Jim Fleming and Sotirios Barber's new book on the basics of constitutional interpretation, Fish's post advances the argument that in terms of adjudicating the merits of the positions withing the complex debate among "strict constructionism, originalism (in several versions), textualism, pragmatism, the living constitution, etc," "there are no practical issues at stake in this debate...

SC to Clintons: It's Time for You to Go*

Posted on January 28, 2008
Well, I guess we know what South Carolina Democrats think of the slash-and-burn tactics that the Clintons have been employing in their third campaign for the White House. What bothers me about the Clintons isn't that they play rough. Frankly, after the unrelenting, and frequently personally based, Republican attacks of the past 15-20 years, I think it's really important that the Democratic nominee for president (heck, the Democratic nominee for anything) be prepared to fight back...

Garnett in USA Today, Today...

Posted on January 28, 2008
Our own Rick Garnett has an op-ed in today's USA Today entitled "When Catholicism Was the Target." Here's the intro: In April, Benedict XVI will make his first visit to the USA as pope. When he does, some will complain about clean-up costs, traffic snarls, rescheduled television shows and other inconveniences...

On the Durability of Written Constitutions

Posted on January 28, 2008
I don't know if this paper is up on SSRN yet, but Tom Ginsburg (Law & Political Science, Illy) is presenting a paper on the durability of written constitutions at Berkeley's Law & Society bag lunch series today. It can be downloaded here. It looks like a very interesting project: Written constitutions, though designed to endure, are remarkably fragile, with a mean lifespan of only 17 years across all countries since 1789...

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