Legal Commentary

Riot in Eugene

Posted on September 30, 2010
Last Friday?s party-turned-riot in Eugene, Oregon was a pricey one. Over 400 people strong, it took 50 police officers to disperse the bottle-throwing, car-window breaking, street-sign-vandalizing crowd. The total cost, including tear gas, police overtime, sign replacement, and clean up, exceeded $10,000...

Greg Giraldo, R.I.P.

Posted on September 30, 2010
The comedian and Harvard Law graduate died of an apparent accidental overdose. Condolences are being left on his Facebook page. Ten years ago Giraldo was one of the HLS grads profiled for the Esquire story "Who's Killing the Great Lawyers of Harvard?"

Cross-ideological consensus on free speech?

Posted on September 30, 2010
Michael Dorf summarizes his interesting recent talk on the development of cross-ideological consensus for broad protection of free speech. Pointing to last term, he argues that while three cases (Holder, Citizens United, and CLS) divided along predictable ideological lines, there was broad consensus in favor of the free-speech claimant in two other cases (Stevens and Doe v...

This Is The End: My Guest Blogging Postmortem And A Call For Future Posts/Polls

Posted on September 30, 2010
As I did the last time I guest blogged here, I thought that I would wrap up this guest blogging stint with a post listing my expectations for the various polls that I posted here and the actual results of those polls. As you can see from that prior post, I wasn't exactly the Amazing Kreskin in predicting the responses last time around...

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Hostile Student Speech About School Officials

Posted on September 30, 2010
Thanks so much to Dan and the rest of PrawfsBlawg for letting me guest-blog this month. In this final post, I wanted to briefly talk about my current paper, Badmouthing Authority: Hostile Speech About School Officials and the Limits of School Restrictions, which will be published in the William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal next year...

Cheers

Posted on September 30, 2010
Today marks the end of my first guest stint here at Prawfs. Thanks much for having me. It's been an enormously enjoyable and engaging experience, and I definitely look forward to bumping into Prawfs posters and readers -- whether electronically or in person -- in the future...

Lawyers and Law Profs: Not Apples and Oranges

Posted on September 29, 2010
In an earlier post on the value of experienced lawyers as full time legal academics, I made the argument that the academy undervalues such experience - a position that undoubtedly resonates with me because the category includes people like me. But, while I argue that substantial experience has value that our colleagues often do not recognize, I also wanted to respond to the implicit criticism that what law profs do has little to do with what lawyers do...

Adding Insult to Injury?: Amanda Knox Charged with Slander

Posted on September 28, 2010
Amanda Knox, the American college student convicted of murder in Italy, now faces charges that she slandered the Italian police by claiming they hit her in the course of questioning her about the murder. The charge could end up adding another six years to her 26-year sentence for murder...

Do Traditional Office Hours Still Make Sense?

Posted on September 28, 2010
My office hours after we discuss hearsay, students get their "results" back from their ungraded midterms, or in the days before the final: There's a line outside of my office, and it might take a student 30 minutes before he or she sees me. My office hours on some random Thursday or after we have a class on a topic such as the rape shield rule that won't be covered on the exam: nary a soul in sight...

Legal ESP

Posted on September 28, 2010
One of my favorite writers, Martin Gardner, wrote (years ago) of an interesting fact: in percentage terms, more physicists believed in ESP than did psychologists. The difference was small, and both groups overwhelmingly did not believe; something like 94% of psychologists and 88% of physicists were nonbelievers, if memory serves...

The Latest from AALS on SF labor dispute

Posted on September 28, 2010
In short, no move, described as "the best between two bad choices". Here is the statement below. Important Message Concerning the 2011 AALS Annual Meeting & San Francisco Labor Dispute Dear Faculty and Staff, We write to you now to share our enthusiasm about the Association of American Law Schools' upcoming Annual Meeting on January 5-8, 2011...

Benedict (and More) in Westminster Hall

Posted on September 28, 2010
I hope Prawfsblawg readers won't think it's out of line, or even just weird, if I pass on this link to the Pope's September 17 address in Westminster Hall. His remarks might be of interest to lawyers, legal scholars, and law students, given that he shared them conscious of the privilege afforded me to speak to the British people and their representatives in Westminster Hall, a building of unique significance in the civil and political history of the people of these islands...

FSU and ACS Criminal Justice in 2020 Conference: Updated Schedule and Registration

Posted on September 27, 2010
As mentioned in these pages earlier, FSU and the ACS are hosting a really neat conference on the future of criminal justice here in funky t-town. The schedule I circulated earlier has been updated somewhat (see below) but I hope y'all are marking your calendars for Oct 7-8th! If you're a crim prawf, lawyer, law student, or just someone interested in criminal justice issues, I hope you'll come to this (free) conference at FSU...

Prawfs Happy Hour at the Meat Market...Thurs Oct 28th at Zoo Bar Cafe

Posted on September 27, 2010
I won't be able to join the fun with my appcomm colleagues in DC at the AALS meat market this year -- we're expecting baby boy #2 on Oct 22, so my wings have been justifiably clipped during that period. However, a friend just asked if there was going to be a Prawfs happy hour, so I'll make the odd suggestion that y'all hook up on Thursday evening October 28th from 8-11pm at the Zoo Bar Cafe near Woodley Park and the Marriott hotel...

Podium Filling Visitor Spots for 2011

Posted on September 26, 2010
I received a request from a reader recently to put up a thread in which schools can share information about the need for podium visitors starting anytime in 2011 (including spring or summer of this academic year). If you think your school may be interested in having a summer visitor or any other kind, please use the comments on this thread to share the relevant information about which school, which subjects and the contact info of the relevant person(s)...

Bits without Borders Conference

Posted on September 25, 2010
I am at the fabulous Bits Without Borders conference at Michigan State University College of Law. I am presenting my paper entitled either Public Forum 2.0 or All the President's Tweets, depending on how I'm feeling. Yesterday featured a host of great papers, including one by James Grimmelman from New York Law School on the lessons about the rule of law we can learn from the failed experiment of Sealand...

Geographies of IP

Posted on September 25, 2010
I am at a terrific conference at American University, The Second Annual ISHTIP workshop. ISHTIP, the International Society for the History and Theory of Intellectual Property is a deeply interdisciplinary association, bringing together historians, philosophers, musicologists, art and literary scholars, politcal scientists, and legal scholars...

Inside Job and Academics

Posted on September 25, 2010
The new documentary about the recent financial crisis takes a look not just at financial insiders, politicians and journalists, but also at academics. Here is a taste via the WSJ: "As "Inside Job" notes, research and for-hire reputations are a big business...

Mainstreaming Women in Disaster Recovery Efforts

Posted on September 24, 2010
This post continues my discussion of social justice issues concerning women and disaster. Again, an adequate legal framework for development and recovery planning must recognize that women are vulnerable to disaster harm, including gender-based violence, and that they should be encouraged to participate fully in disaster recovery efforts...

"How weird is that?"

Posted on September 23, 2010
In the course of an on-blog joint effort to "decode[]" Christine O'Donnell, Slate's senior editor and frequent commentator on things legal and Court-related, Dahlia Lithwick, writes: I have been fascinated by Christine O'Donnell's constitutional worldview since her debate with her opponent Chris Coons last week...

Moral panic in public schools

Posted on September 23, 2010
I could never have been a public school teacher, much less administrator. And I have tremendous respect and admiration for those who do that job, especially those who do it well. But then there are those who don't do it well or who repeatedly fall prey to moral panics ...

The Centenarian Who Wasn?t, NASA v. Nelson, and the Constitutional Right to Information Privacy

Posted on September 23, 2010
Approximately thirty years ago, Sogen Kato became involved in an argument with his relatives, and then retreated into his bedroom to sleep. He never came out. Evidently none of the family members who shared his apartment went in to disturb him. This past July, after Kato ostensibly became Tokyo?s oldest living man, Japanese government officials sought to contact him to congratulate him on his longevity...

Do You (Or Do You Not) Answer Student Substantive Questions Over E-mail?

Posted on September 23, 2010
Yesterday's post about the efficacy of e-mail office hours prompted an interesting and (to me at least) unexpected discussion in the comments section. As you can see, a few commenters indicated that they tell students that they won't answer substantive questions over e-mail for a variety of reasons, including: (1) if students can get answers over e-mail, they won't approach professors (as much) after class and during office hours, which leads to negative consequences; (2) e-mail exchanges are not pedagogically effective (because the student isn't quite asking what the e-mail suggests and/or because it is just the professor feeding the...

Creating a Conference from Scratch

Posted on September 23, 2010
Tomorrow Wash U and SLU will be hosting the Fifth Annual Labor and Employment Law Colloquium. It's a terrific event, with close to 70 presenters, and I'm very excited to be one of the hosts. The event itself is a testament to the power of a good idea and hard work by a few folks -- in this case, Scott Moss, Joe Slater, and Paul Secunda...

Justice Scalia at Hastings: Sex, Lies and Originalism

Posted on September 23, 2010
When I last chatted with you all, I remarked upon Justice Scalia's remarks upon the dedication of our wonderful new building here at Marquette. I once again bring news of Nino. During a question and answer period at a Constitution Day event at Hastings College of Law, Justice Scalia announced the view that the Constitution does not forbid sex discrimination...

HeinOnline, Be My Valentine

Posted on September 22, 2010
I love HeinOnline. Who?s with me? Like all loves, I can?t completely explain it. Maybe reading seventy-year-old law review articles on obscure topics like subrogation makes me subconsciously imagine a pudgy yet staggeringly brilliant assistant professor reading my work in 2080; maybe the hoary print aesthetics have more heart-pleasing character than the electronically-neutered text on Westlaw; maybe I?m a tenth-level black belt nerd oddly smitten with dusty legal arcana...

Jewish Law, secular law, and flowing beards

Posted on September 22, 2010
I am a few days late commenting on Dan's pre-Yom Kippur post considering the link (or disconnect) between what we do as secular law professors and a higher calling to be a mensches. Ironically, the rabbi's sermon where Jen and I went to synagogue (at her childhood synagogue in Baltimore) was on a related issue--the link (or disconnect) between Jewish law ("Halakhah") and secular law...

Shieber on the Yale Biographical Dictionary of American Law

Posted on September 22, 2010
The Co-Op's series of reviews of new law books (to which I contributed) has been excellent so far. Allow me to point readers to a recent effort in that series: William Shieber's review of the recently published Yale Biographical Dictionary of American Law...

Rodney King to Marry Juror No. 5

Posted on September 22, 2010
Unlike most normal human beings, I subscribe to the riot news ticker through Google. My excuse is that I write about riots and must keep up on the latest. Setting aside any scholarly agenda, though, the stories range from the heartbreaking to the bizarre, and I thought I would share some recent news: Rodney King, whose vicious beating by LAPD sparked the Los Angeles Riot of 1992, is engaged to marry Cynthia Kelly, who was Juror No...

Media Alerts on Federal Appeals Court Decisions

Posted on September 22, 2010
After years of being internet-shy (at least in terms of posting anything!), this has been a banner month for me. In addition to this guest-blogging stint, I've also been overseeing the launch of a new program at Pace Law School through which a colleague and I are working with students to summarize noteworthy Second Circuit decisions for a new ABA website...

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