PrawfsBlawg

Bye Bye (and a McSweeney's Piece for the Road)

I just wanted to say farewell for now, as this will be my last Prawfs post for a long while, though I expect to be back for another guest stint in December.  Thank you to Dan and all the Prawfsers for letting me hang out here long after I ran out of anything to say.  If you want, you can always find me somewhere on my webmpire, which includes my personal website where you can view my paintings of goofy pears, click on links to various stories I've written, and read my script for a sitcom about death row; my blog; and of course the webpage for Holy Hullabaloos: A Road Trip to the Battlegrounds of the Church/State Wars, which you might want to buy now if you haven't already because the Boston Globe recently called it "stunning[]" (OK, they said I pulled off an unlikely feat "stunningly") and "zanily irreverent".  There, how's that for one last pathetic smarmy piece of self promotion.

As a parting gift, I'll leave you with this piece I have this morning on McSweeney's about the Sotomayor hearings.  There has been a lot of talk in the blogosphere of course about what might transpire there, but as far as I know, nobody has yet to consider what the hearings might look like if they were held in front of the 1977 Kansas City Royals rather than the Senate Judiciary Committee.  As the law reviews say, I have attempted to "fill this gap."

Supreme Prudes

Remember back in the fall when the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the so-called (by me, anyway) "fuck and shit case"?  The case involved a challenge by various television broadcasters to the FCC's relatively new practice of fining "fleeting expletives," like when Bono said "fuck" at the Golden Globes or Nicole Richie said "Have you ever tried to get cow shit out of a Prada purse?  It's not so fucking simple" at the Billboard Music Awards.  The most interesting thing about the oral argument  was that nobody--not the Justices, not the lawyers, nobody--said "fuck" or "shit."  Instead the lawyers used euphemisms like "the f-word" or "the f-bomb."  Awesomely, Justice Scalia made up a euphemism for "fuck" right in the middle of the oral argument, saying to counsel at one point, "Don't use golly-waddles instead of the F-word."  This "golly waddles" reference attracted a lot of attention in the blogosphere, and I expect that my own investigative contributions to the discourse--interviewing language expert Steve Pinker about the phrase's lingustic origins and ex-porn-screenwriter Eric Spitznagel about the phrase's erotic potential--will soon be earning me my first Pulitzer.

Anyway, the case is in the news again.  Not because of how the Court actually decided the case (it held that that the FCC had not violated the Administrative Procedure Act by changing its position on fleeting expletives without sufficient justification and explanation; the Court was not asked to consider the first amendment arguments in the case, which will be addressed by the second circuit on remand) but because it turns out, according to Justice Ginsburg, who made the revelation at a speech she delivered last Friday, that the reason the lawyers did not say "fuck" or "shit" during the oral argument was because "the lawyers were alerted that some of the justices might find that unseemly, so only the letters 'f' and 's' were used in our court."  Got that?  Some of the justices thought it would be "unseemly" for the words "fuck" and "shit" to be used within the hallowed chambers of the marble palace, and so the Court (probably through the Chief Justice) told the lawyers to use euphemisms instead.  Yeeks.

Ginsburg did not reveal which Justices thought it would be unseemly to have to hear these awful, horrible words.  Nor was there any indication that the justices had instructed the lawyers to use the phrase "golly waddles" instead of "fuck." (Wouldn't that have been glorious?)  So, one question that naturally comes to mind is which justices are most likely and least likely to have been the ones to have issued the order not to say "fuck" and "shit"?  Moreover, one wonders whether this issue will make it into the Sotomayor confirmation hearings in July.  Should the Senate Judiciary Committee ask her point blank if she would mind it if a lawyer said "fuck" in the courtroom?  Or what she thinks of "golly waddles" as a possible euphemism?  I hope these issues come up so much I can hardly stand it. 

(Cross-posted, more or less, on Holy Hullabaloos)

How Do You Write and Publish an Op-Ed?

One thing it seems that a good number of law prawfs do from time to time is to write op-ed pieces for newspapers.  I've tried to do this a number of times.  My attempts have always failed.  Generally, some issue comes up that I think I could say something about, so I write 700 words about it and email it to the editors of some newspapers and then nothing at all happens.  Maybe the pieces are still under consideration, but given that I sent most of them at least three years ago, I doubt it.

So, I'm wondering if those of you who have successfully written and placed op-eds could provide some advice for those of us who would like to publish one but have no idea how to best go about it.  I guess one question is whether people really do just write up op-eds and send them cold to editors and get them published, or whether they are instead generally solicited.  Assuming that they are not all solicited, what are your tips for getting an op-ed published?  To what papers and what people do you send them?  Do you send them to one place at a time or are multiple submissions OK in some circumstances?  What papers are most receptive to unsolicited submissions?  What issues are most likely to grab an editor's attention?  What else?

What's Your Family's Catch Phrase?

Did anyone else here catch the show that was on the other night which counted down the fifty top funniest phrases in TV history?  It was a pretty funny program, although the absence from the countdown of either Good Times' "Dyn-o-mite!" or Different Strokes' "What you talking 'bout Willis?" was really inexcusable.  Among the fifty were such gems as "Two wild and crazy guys," "Aaaaay," "Nanu-Nanu," and "Up your nose with a rubber hose."  The top phrase was "Yada Yada Yada" from Seinfeld.

The program got my family thinking that maybe we should have a catch phrase.  Doesn't every family really need one?  I talked to my wife and son about it, and we decided to adopt the phrase "Daddy Doesn't Know" as our catch phrase.  It's something I say all the time in response to their questions because I don't really know a damned thing.  The catch phrase, though, involves more than just saying the words.  There's kind of a special way to say them and some body movement as well.  If you're interested in checking it out, we've posted a very short movie on YouTube, and I invite you to give it a look.

Does your family have a catch phrase?  If so, I hope you will share it with us here.

Amazon's "Tag Suggestions"

I was curious what happens when you tell Amazon that you want to write a review, so I clicked on the relevant link on my book's Amazon page, and it took me to a screen where I could enter a review (no, I didn't actually enter a review of my own book).  Under this, though, it asked if I wanted to "tag" the book.  I don't really know what it means to "tag" a book, but I was a little taken aback by the following "tag suggestions" offered by the nice folks at the Amazon corporation (reported here verbatim):

crappy, humorous, foreign relations, murder, suspense, educational, jay wexler, sex, oh john ringo no

What to make of this, I have no idea?  Do you?

When is the Movie Better Than the Book?

Well, for my 40th birthday last month my wife did not get me a Ferrari (do they even make those in an automatic transmission?) but she did get me something almost as good: a rare, perfect condition, first edition copy of Cameron Crowe's 1981 book Fast Times at Ridgemont High: A True Story.  For those of you like me, who didn't know at least until pretty recently, that this was a book before it was a movie, let me tell you that it was a book before it was a movie.  That's right, before Cameron Crowe made the film that launched the careers of not one not two not three but four, yes four academy award best actor/actress nominees (three have won the award), he wrote a book that was based on his experiences as a 22 year old impersonating a high school senior for an entire year at an actual high school in Redondo Beach.  The principal only let him do it because Crowe knew Kris Kristofferson, who apparently the principal was very fond of, and only a few teachers were in on the plot.  Anyway, once I found out the thing had been a book before it was a movie, I knew I had to get it, and my wife, bless her heart, obliged.

The thing is that Fast Times at Ridgemont High, the book, is no Fast Times at Ridgemont High, the movie.  It's fine, and maybe if I had read the book before having seen the movie 14 times and before the movie permanently imprinted itself upon my consciousness, I would have loved reading the book.  But as it is, I find it interesting because of course I'm comparing it with the movie, but not any sort of great piece of even kitschy literature.  This "movie better than the book" thing, of course, is pretty rare.  Anyone who knows anything knows that you're always supposed to say that the book is better than the movie.  And indeed, it's almost always true.  Just looking at my bookshelf here, I realize that even some really good movies that came from books, like Trainspotting for example, were better books.  But from time to time there must be books that became better when they were turned into movies.  I'm thinking off the top of my head of "Election," which I liked as a book but loved as a movie.  So my question for you is: name one or more movies that were better than the books they came from.  Or, if you'd prefer not to do that, then don't.

Now, lest you think that this post has nothing to do with the law, let me just use this whole discussion to pathetically segue into announcing that my book Holy Hullabaloos is now available from Amazon.  I assure you that when this does get turned into a movie starring Steve Buscemi as me and Seth Rogen as the cell-phone-using-cigarette-smoking-motorcycle-accident-recovering-from-hatless Amish guy I talked to in New Glarus (home of the famous Yoder case), it will be much better than the book.  But since that won't be out until 2012 or perhaps sometime later than that, like never, maybe you'd like to purchase the book that Christopher Buckley, author of Supreme Courtship, has called "the sharpest, the most insightful, the most side-splittingly funny book on law since--Supreme Courtship." 

Style and Scholarship

Bill Stuntz's recent post on the virtues of nominating Pam Karlan for Justice Souter's seat on the Supreme Court has gotten some well-deserved attention in the blogosphere.  Stuntz argues that Karlan, because she is a "spectacularly gifted" writer, would be a good counterweight to Justice Scalia, "whose outsized influence stems from his ability to write captivating, scathing, and often funny opinions."  I couldn't agree more with this, and indeed suggested much the same thing last Friday, although I focused on how Karlan could parry with Scalia during oral argument rather than through her writing. 

But here I wanted to talk about something else Stuntz says.  At the end of his post, Stuntz makes a point about legal scholarship.  He writes, "productivity and intelligence count far more heavily in academic hiring decisions than a knack for the perfect turn of phrase.  That is a mistake.  The legal and academic markets are filled to overflowing with smart opinions and law review articles.  The ones that stand out are fun to read--and those are few and far between."  I wonder what people think of this.  My view is that style is wildly undervalued in legal academia, whether it's in hiring decisions or law review placement decisions or tenure evaluations or anything else that makes a difference in the legal academy.  In my experience, although one sees from time to time a mention of a scholar's style in an appointments reference letter or a tenure evaluation letter, it invariably is thrown in as an afterthought, once the letter evaluates the scholar's (or potential scholar's) analytic skills, capacity for original thought, and productivity.  Likewise, I can't remember ever being at a workshop where someone has made a serious comment about the style of a piece as opposed to its content. 

Does this comport with other people's experiences?  If so, is it something to bemoan?  Shouldn't we care if someone can write beautifully or poetically?  Shouldn't we want scholars to write with wit or passion?  Shouldn't we provide incentives for such writing?  Shouldn't we reward it?

Me for Supreme Court Justice

So, it looks as if Justice Souter will be retiring.  That's a shame, but of course it will make life very interesting for those of us in the legal academy who will spend endless hours thinking about and debating who should be/will be the next Supreme Court justice.  We will all have our official hopes and predictions, whether they are Diane Wood or Elena Kagan or Jerry Springer or whomever, but let's be honest with ourselves: aren't we all sort of secretly hoping and thinking that maybe, just possibly, with a little luck, we could be the next justice?  Isn't it at least possible that our friend who works in the Justice Department will make an offhand mention of our name to someone "at a higher paygrade," and that person will in turn become intrigued by the possibility of this stealth choice and do some research into our scholarship and records of past service and decide that yes, indeed, this obscure law professor from wherever would make the perfect nominee?  I think that maybe we all do this, but that we are all too humble, and modest, and "well brought up by our parents" to actually come out and say it.  Well, I say screw that: I'm endorsing myself for the next justice of the Supreme Court.  And here's why.

For one thing, since I'm not a federal judge and have only written enough scholarship to barely get tenure, I don't have a long paper trail and therefore should be easily confirmable.  Yes, so I've written a short story about how I got caught making out in the girl's bathroom at a seventh grade dance, but since when do sexual improprieties such as this render one unfit for the bench?  Second, while I may be smart enough to write a decent Supreme Court opinion, I'm not too smart that I would write opinions that nobody could understand.  See, that's the problem with all the hoity toity candidates.  They all have "subtle" and "sophisticated" views of the law and see "connections" between various areas of law that seem unconnected.  I don't see those things.  And therefore my opinions will be straightforward and easy to understand and, moreover, will be fundamentally unsound at anything beyond a purely superficial level, which will in turn give legal academics a lot to gripe about and critical law review articles to write, which will be fine by me since who the hell cares, I'm a Supreme Court justice.  Finally, since I'm on facebook, I will be able to open the process up far more than it is now, as I comment on pending cases in my daily status reports.  Hell, I might even be convinced to tweet from the bench during oral argument.

So, President Obama, what do you think?  Call me.  (now I better write down the area code for Washington DC so I can look at caller ID and know when he's on the phone).

Can I Say "Hullabalooza?"

So, I'm in Moscow, hoping that I'll get over this stomach bug in time to give a series of talks about church/state matters around town on Friday.  It should be interesting, and if something comes up that seems worth sharing here, I certainly will.  My current concern, however, is this.  Since my book is called "Holy Hullabaloos," the temptation to say the word "hullabalooza" like a million times a day is quite strong.  For all those IP people out there, can I do this, or does Perry Ferrell or whoever own some sort of IP right--copyright?  trademark?  patent?  I really don't know anything at all about IP--that would stop me?  I assume that I can whisper the word "hullabalooza" to my wife in the confines of our own bedroom, of course, but what can I do beyond that?  Can I make a t-shirt that says "hullabalooza"?  Use it in a marketing campaign?  Would it change things if I added an "o" so it was "hullabaloooza"?  Or more "o"s: "hulabaloooooooooooooooooza"?  What if I instead went for the darker, more conflicted, "hullabaloser"?

In any event, if anyone's interested in reading the starred review Publisher's Weekly gave HH, you can do so here.

Admit it! It Sucks! Law Prawfs Version

Fans of Joe Queenan will recall a series of articles he wrote for Spy Magazine in the early 90s called "Admit it!  It Sucks!" in which he skewered various things--jazz, "San Francisco"--that all good serious cultured intellectuals are supposed to say they love but that, if they were honest with themselves, would admit actually suck.  So, for example, in his jazz column, he runs a hypothetical: your friend calls you up with two tickets to see Wynton Marsalis's 11:00 pm show at the Blue Note, and you beg off, citing various excuses about how your mother is coming to visit you that night and how cigarette smoke "isn't really good for your asthma."  But, he says, "after you put down the phone, you know that it's time to be honest with yourself.  You blew off your friend because deep down inside, gnawing away in your bosom, is an ugly, horrible secret that you dare not share with anyone else--even though everybody else in the country shares it.  Jazz sucks."  He continues:

Admit it and you'll feel a whole lot better.  You've never had the slightest interest in an art form dominated by guys named Toots and Dizzy and Philly Joe Something-or-Other.  From the first time you heard Art Tatum playing "Tea for Two," you've always felt that jazz is a dipshit idiom that chomps the big one. 

OK, so I actually love jazz, but you know Queenan has a point here.  And the question that follows for this group of readers is what about the legal academy: What are the things that we as purportedly serious intellectual scholars are all supposed to say we love, love, love, but actually, deep down sort of think kind of actually suck?  Here are some nominations: (1) peer-reviewed journals (I mean, come on, we whine and whine about student edited law reviews, but for the 95% of us out there that don't write groundbreaking scholarship--and here I'm making the controversial assumption that there is a distinction between "good" legal scholarship and "not good" legal scholarship--isn't it better that we can blame the "ignorant" students when the Harvard Law Review once again rejects our article on the original understanding of the Weights and Measures Clause?); (2) interdisciplinary work (really--if I wanted to hear about philosophy all the time, I would have gone to philosophy grad school . . . and taught six classes a year for $46,000); (3) workshops and conferences (oh, great, here's another "comment followed by a two part question" to which the speaker "will take the second question first" (incidentally, do you ever wonder what would happen if the person giving the talk actually took the first question first?)); (4) pursuing "social justice" (OK, never mind, I guess that one's pretty solid).

What do people think?  Any of these fit the bill?  Other ideas?  Anonymous comments are welcomed and danced with, vigorously.

Should I Be Sad?

So, I recently read somewhere in the blogosphere that the deadline for accepting a visiting position at another law school during the 2009-2010 school year has just passed, and so I'm wondering whether I should feel sad that one more year has come and gone without anyone asking me if I'd like to visit at their nice law school. I mean, I don't think I know anyone who hasn't visited somewhere. Most people I know have visited many places and are scheduled for visits already right through the 2013-2014 season--"yeah," they'll say, "I'm set up for a visit at Fordham in spring 2010 and Michigan for fall 2011 and am working on getting something together at the not-yet-quite-created Brown Law School for the January term 2013." It's not like I'm exactly itching to visit somewhere--I love where I teach and how do people see their "families" when they teach halfway across the country, anyway?--but still, I wonder--in the same way that I wonder, when I'm on the subway and there's an empty seat right next to me and the person standing right next to the empty seat won't just sit down, why why why doesn't the person sit down, what is wrong with me, what do I smell like anyway?--why no law schools want me to visit. How does this whole visiting thing even work? It's not like I don't answer my phone. Indeed I sometimes sit whole days staring at my phone waiting for it to ring with a visiting offer, occasionally picking it up and listening to the dial tone to see if it's still working, but nothing, and then it's another evening of coming home, hanging up my hat, and facing the inevitable question from my wife: "Did anyone ask you to visit today, dear?" she says, and I have to put my head down and say "no" and even though she always smiles politely and pats me on the head and says "that's OK, dear," I know what she's thinking, and not just because she turns to my five year old son and says, "sorry, honey, nobody asked daddy to visit again," and he cries.

Is Working for House Like Clerking?

For those of you who watch the television show "House," do you feel like those people who work for House are kind of like law clerks working for a judge?  I mean, I realize there are some important differences.  For example, the people who work for House are doctors, while the people who work for judges tend to be law clerks.  Also, House's workers do things like save lives, while law clerks write memos.  But, still, there are some parallels, right?  The close knit quarters, the ego stroking, the long hours.  And if I'm right that working for House might be like clerking for a judge, then what judge is most like House?

What Does it Mean to Have a Theme Song for a Book?

A few weeks ago, Chris Lund asked whether it was "crazy" to ask what it meant when I pointed out that Mike Newdow, of "under God" fame, had agreed to write the theme song for my book Holy Hullabaloos.  I don't think it was crazy to ask such a thing.  Let me explain.  I realized after finishing my book that there were two things I could do.  Either I could just stay silent and let the book come out without any fanfare, or I could work to publicize the book so that people would buy it (yes, yes, I understand there are many points in between doing nothing and doing what I've done).  As much as I feel smarmy when I do all this self-promotion, and as much as I realize there are people out there who are going to say, please please let this guy shut up about this stupid book if I have to hear about Holy Hullabaloos one more time I'm going to puke, I figured that this state of affairs would be better than the alternative, which is to have worked for two years to write something I'm very proud of and then have it come out and stay at #1,742,389 on the amazon rankings and be read by seventeen people, which is basically the number of people who have read my law review articles (including the several external reviewers for my tenure file who panned it).

Doing the smarmy publicity is made much more fun and palatable by the internet and all the multimedia opportunities there are to publicize a book these days.  It's sort of like turning the book into something bigger--an all consuming multi-dimensional art project or something.  I don't have a video book trailer yet, which is something that people are doing a lot of these days, but having a blog and a website and my 4 year old son "reading" the book on YouTube  ("blah blah blahbetty blah," he says, over and over) has been a great deal of fun.  So one day I was thinking about what else I could do and I thought, aha, why not a theme song, and my wife suggested that maybe Mike Newdow would agree to do it, and since I'm a huge fan of his, I asked him, and luckily for me he said yes.  Well, the other day he sent it to me, and I'm delighted.  I can't stop listening to it over and over and over.  He captured the idea of the book and some of the details while still putting his own distinctive personal stamp on it.  For example, the ending lyrics, which pick up on my observation regarding Marsh v. Chambers (holding legislative prayer basically constitutional) that it was written by Justice Burger in five minutes on the can, Newdow sings:

A case that many think was one where the court did shrink
From its job they sure did stink that time.
In five minutes sitting on the can, Chief Justice Burger wrote pure slime.
Not a single word about equality, absurd
Was that decision like a turd to flush.
Anyone who's proud of our great nation reads that case and then does blush.
Religion can do wondrous work.
But government should never shirk
From making sure not to confuse
The seat of legislation and our pews.
Hey don't you all just sit around and snooze.
Keep watching out for Holy Hullabaloos.

If you'd like to listen to the song, I've put it on my blog and website.  Enjoy.

Justice Ginsburg's Footnotes

In the shameless plug department, I just thought I'd let the world know that I've posted this piece about Justice Ginsburg's footnotes on SSRN.  It's a contribution to a symposium on the jurisprudence of Justice Ginsburg that is being held at the New England School of Law on Thursday.  In the piece, I develop a nine-part taxonomy of Supreme Court footnotes and demonstrate, once and for all, that unlike the late, great David Foster Wallace, Justice Ginsburg never uses her footnotes to demonstrate the fractured nature of reality in her work. 

Can I Get Through Without Saying "So . . ."?

In about 90 minutes I'm scheduled to do a workshop here at BU on my new book project, The Odd Clauses: Twelve Parts of the Constitution You Might Not Know About But Should.  I think the title tells the story of what the book will be about, although I've only written one chapter, that being one about the Titles of Nobility Clauses, which weirdly became slightly newsworthy yesterday when it was announced that Sen. Kennedy was getting knighted by the Queen of England.  Over at Volokh, Eugene Volokh reported that several people had asked whether this violated the Titles of Nobility Clause of Article I, section 9, and he rightly suggested that it did not, because members of Congress do not hold an "office" as that term is used in the Constitution.  In any event, I hope I get lots of good comments and questions at the workshop, but most of all, I'm going to try as hard as I possibly can to avoid using that "So . . ." formulation that we've talked about before here when beginning an answer to some inquiry from the floor.  I am not optimistic, but I'll let you know later today how it went.

What's a Mentor?

The other day I was wondering what I should do with the rest of my life, and I thought, boy at this point it would be great to have a mentor.  But then I thought, what is a mentor, anyway?  Have I ever had one?  Have I ever been one?  I really don't know.  Do you?

I know I've had a lot of great advisors, but I take it that a mentor is not the same as an advisor.   Am I right about this?  A mentor does more than just respond with some advice when you send him/her an email saying, what judges should I apply to or what schools should I interview with or to what literary journal should I send this prose poem written in the voice of a just-neutered Abyssinian Blue kitten, doesn't he/she?  Is a mentor someone who plays a more active role in your life, who comes down to your office or calls you up without invitation to suggest that you pursue a Guggenheim and then offers to write a letter for you?  If that's what a mentor is, then I'd reiterate the earlier suggestion that I would like one.

Or am I too old?  How old can you be and still get a mentor?  (I turn 40 in a month.)  I suppose this turns on whether you're looking for a mentor in your own field rather than a new one.  So, I guess it would be a lot harder for me to find a legal academic mentor (though I'm sure I could use one) than it would be if I decided to scrap it all and go to med school, in which case I suppose even a much younger person than me could be my mentor, assuming that he or she was a successful doctor of some sort.  This raises a further question of whether there are different types of mentors: more general life mentors vs. mentors for specific goals or purposes.  How targeted can a mentor be?  Can I have a mentor who only helps me work on my omelette making?  I have a good friend who tells me that when he was learning how to drive back in high school, his driving instructor took a really active interest in teaching him and keeping him informed about the road conditions, even going so far as calling him one night to let him know that the roads were apparently covered by black ice.  This is exactly the kind of thing I'm looking for.  Which raises the final question: How does one go about applying for a mentor?  Can you get one on Craig's List?

Law and Religion Toy Idea

So I had in mind the Summum case with the competing religious monuments over the weekend when my son and I were playing with his Colorform Thomas the Tank Engine toy, Colorforms being those popular old-school toys with vinyl cut-out pictures that you can stick to a background and then remove them and restick them and remove them and restick them a million times because they never turn non-sticky, when it occurred to me that someone should make an "Endorsement Test" Colorform set.  It would provide hours of fun trying to predict what the Supreme Court would do with any given religious display, and students could use it to review their understanding of Lynch v. Donnelly!  The set would include a creche, several menorahs of varying sizes, the hypothetical 18 foot high dreidel from Allegheny, a Summum monument, a statue of Ganesha, a sitting Buddha, a giant Confucius, a Ten Commandments monument (or, better yet, three monuments, representing the Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish versions, since they're all different), and of course the teddy bear, elephant, and clown from Lynch.  Lots of municipal greenery, too.  Have you ever wondered whether a floral frame really brings extra attention to a creche on public property?  This would be your chance to find out. 

(incidentally, I actually like the endorsement test, but look, I'm as prone as anyone to use it for joke-making purposes)

(if anyone wants to read a little interview thing with me about my upcoming book and take a look at my painting of Justice Alito with a small green bunny on his shoulder (which my editors cut), check out Religion Dispatches, a cool religion website)

Monday TV Quiz (with associated legal point)!

OK, here's the quiz: name the two hour-long dramas in the history of television (I think) that were spinoffs of half hour sitcoms.  Answer, and associated legal thing, after the jump.

The answer is (1) Lou Grant, spun off from Mary Tyler Moore; and, more controversially, (2) Trapper John, MD, spun off from M*A*S*H.  Why is #2 controversial?  According to this unbelievably great website, which catalogs all of the spinoffs and crossovers in TV history (a "crossover" being when the reality of two shows intersect, like when the Bewitched characters became animated and appeared on the Flintstones), there was a legal batttle over whether people involved in the original M*A*S*H TV show would share in profits from Trapper John, and so the creators of the latter styled it as a spinoff of the original movie rather than of the TV show.  But still, come on, who are we kidding?

Anyone have any ideas for similar types of spinoffs?  I would actually like to see an example of the reverse situation: "Medevoy," a 1/2 hour sitcom spinoff of the hour long drama NYPD Blue, starring that red headed goofball detective who is always getting himself in wacky situations!

Workshops and Wine

Like many schools, we at BU have a weekly workshop in which someone from the faculty or someone invited from outside presents a work-in-progress, takes questions, defends their arguments, says "So . . ." and then reformulates the question to suit their purposes before responding, etc.  But one thing I've noticed over the past 8 years is that, while lunch is regularly provided, we never have any booze.  I've always wondered how the workshop would be different if people were drinking.  I remember in graduate school I took a workshop-like class that met at the professor's house and there was wine.  The class was still terrible, but I'm pretty sure the wine made it slightly less so.  I'm wondering whether workshops at other schools involve alcohol.  If so, what type?  Just wine and beer, or the hard stuff as well?  And if the latter, is it top shelf or rotgut?  How does the booze affect the discussion?  Does the speaker drink as well as the audience?  Any information would be greatly appreciated.

Mike Newdow is Doing My Theme Song, etc.

Hello.  I would like to echo Dan's Happy Valentine's Day or Not message.  Unlike Dan, though, I didn't get to the movie theater.  Indeed, the last time I actually saw a movie in a theater was about a year ago when I saw the awful "21" in the theater on the bottom floor of the Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw.  I did rent Miranda July's "Me and You and Everyone We Know" and I have to say that I've since been wondering whether I want to live in a world where that movie did not get nominated for best picture.

I would also like to apologize for falling down on my guest blogging duties and being silent for a while.  I was busy giving talks on evolution-related topics at Liberty University and West Virginia University, where the faculty I must say consists of some of the friendliest and funniest people I've ever met in legal academia (or anywhere else, really).

I have an announcement regarding my book that leads to a general question.  I'm delighted to say that Mike Newdow, the guy who sued (successfully, for a time) to have "under God" removed from the Pledge of Allegiance, and who is also a musician in addition to being a lawyer and a doctor, has agreed to write and perform the theme song for my book Holy Hullabaloos.  I'm a big fan of Mike's, and I think he gets a bad rap in the media.  If you go to his website, I think you can tell that he's not interested in anything like establishing an atheist country; he simply wants the government to stop discriminating against atheists like him (and me).  You can also buy some of his very funny (to me, anyway) CDs, of which I own and enjoy two.  My question, I guess, is am I wrong about Mike?  What do people in law school and the academy think of him?  Isn't he just a guy who is standing up for the rights of a minority?  Don't we generally approve of that sort of thing?

Only Children as a Suspect Class?

The suggestion is in jest, of course, but has anyone else noticed how incredibly OK it seems to be to insult only children, even right to their faces?  I'm an only child, and my son is an only child, and my son will almost certainly remain an only child (or, to put it another way, if he ends up with a brother or sister, that brother or sister will carry the name "Mistakey"), and people will occasionally say to me something like, "Oh, you're going to have another child, right?" or "Only children are so spoiled and weird" or "Why would you put all your eggs in one basket?" or something equally irritating.  I usually do that thing that the sitcom characters do and look around me and then look at the speaker and say, "You know, I'm right here, right?" 

Sometimes I also suggest that, just as I don't dilute my love for my wife by having other wives, so too do I not wish to dilute the love I have for my son by having another child.  I usually say this only when particularly cranky, for some reason or other.

Blurb-o-Licious

So, I'm in the process of trying to get some blurbs for my book, Holy Hullabaloos: A Road Trip to the Battlegrounds of the Church/State Wars, and it's stressing me out.  Blurbs, of course, are those little quotes from famous people on books, telling you that the book is worth reading.  My editor has sent out galleys to maybe 15 people, half academics and half people who are not academics, and now I just sit and wait and see if anyone says anything nice.  I wonder if it would be less stressful if you received rejections from authors who have been requested to give blurbs ("Unfortunately, we receive many requests for blurbs each year and can only respond to a select few") but I have a feeling that either I'll get a nice blurb or I just won't hear anything back at all.  In this way, it's sort of like interviewing with the University of Michigan at the AALS.

Anyone have any tips for getting blurbs, or good stories about getting or giving blurbs, or anything to say about whether you look at blurbs when you're deciding to buy a book.  And is there anyone out there who would like to contribute a blurb for my book?  I don't have any more galleys to send you, but I can vouch that the book is "A wild ride.  Like no other book you've ever read" and "Will make you cry with tears of joy in between convulsions of laughter so raucous they will wake the neighbors" and, as my wife (who is no big fan of anything I write) has offered to contribute, "A little better than I expected.  I only barfed once."

And does anyone know Sarah Vowell's address?

Regulation and the Religious Voice

So here's a half-baked idea for a project that I've been thinking about doing for a long time but have never gotten around to.  Maybe if I put it out there, someone can tell me how bad an idea it is, and I can put it to bed forever.  Or maybe people will have good ideas that will spark me to get going on it. 

The project would be at the inters . . . that's right, I'm going to say it, despite every fiber of my being telling me don't don't don't say it no no-- the intersection (ahh, it's done) of two fields I teach in--law and religion, and administrative law.  I've thought about and written about this debate that I know has been aired here on Prawfs before regarding whether it's appropriate for religious citizens to rely on their religious beliefs when reaching decisions on public issues and to articulate their views in religious terms.  I think the answer to this is generally yes.  It's also clear I think (right?) that as a practical matter, religious groups and citizens do attempt to influence policy through lobbying at the legislative level.  But since so much important policy is made by federal agencies, I wonder whether religious groups and citizens participate in the notice and comment process before agencies to influence agency decisions on policies that matter to them.  Since I teach environmental law, I often think about this in those terms: do religious groups that, for example, support protecting endangered species and worry about global warming submit comments to agencies during notice and comment on rules that implicate these concerns, and if they do, what kind of language do they use?  Is it explicitly religious, or do they translate this religious language into the language of secular policymaking?  And if it's the latter, is this something we should applaud or worry about?  What should an agency do if it receives an explicitly religious comment from a prominent group.  Should ignoring it be considered arbitrary and capricious?  Would considering it violate the Establishment Clause?  So many questions.

Anyone think this is an interesting project to pursue?  Anyone know of work already done on it?  There would certainly be an empirical part--combing through online comments in rulemaking proceedings to see whether I can find comments from religious groups and individuals and what those comments say.  But how would I pick which rulemakings to look at?  How many would I choose?  Etc.

Who is the Ideal Law School Graduation Speaker?

Forgive me if this is a topic that has already been discussed at length in the blawgosphere, but I'm interested in what people out there think about your typical law school graduation speaker.  It seems, from my experience, that the typical speaker is a lawyer who has "made it to a prominent position in public life" (though perhaps you cannot tell, I am saying this in a sort of mockingly overly serious and grumpy manner).  Usually these speakers are dull and uninspiring and sometimes have some agenda of their own that they are interested in putting forth instead of really thinking about what the graduating law students would really like to hear or benefit from (I'm thinking here of a prominent judge who a bunch of years ago gave a graduation speech that basically consisted of a somewhat sophisticated lecture about administrative law, followed by a plea for increased judicial salaries).  There are exceptions, of course.  We had David Gergen speak at BU a few years ago, and I thought he was terrific.  He actually seemed to be speaking extemporaneously at some points, and these were the highlights.

A few years ago I had the occasion to come up with a list of possible alternatives to the dominant model of graduation speakers.  I was looking for people who were lawyers, or at least who had studied law, but who had taken alternative career paths that might have made them interesting speakers.  I didn't find all that many.  Paul Simon, the singer, I believe, studied a little law.  (Art Garfunkel didn't, so far as I know, but I would support him for speaker--or Poet Laureate--any day).  Steve Young the football player went to law school.  There are others.  My choice for ideal law school graduation speaker is Peter Garrett, the ex-lead singer of Midnight Oil who is a lawyer (he has an LLB from University of New South Wales), a social and environmental activist, and a government official.  I don't know if any U.S. law school has ever invited him to speak and if one did, whether he would come, but I bet he would be terrific (though perhaps you cannot tell, I am dancing somewhat stiffly and strangely and singing "Beds are Burning" as I say all this).

Anyone out there want to share either horror stories of past graduation speakers or ideas for future ones?  I think it would be particularly interesting to hear from students on this question--who would you like to hear at your graduation?

If You Want to Make an Omelette . . .

As many of us head back to our offices and classrooms this Monday morning, here is another little quiz from the Freshness of Legal Discourse Department.  How many results does a Westlaw "allcases" search for "Humpty Dumpty" turn up?  Answer after the jump.

The answer is 535.  Some of these refer to people who are nicknamed "Humpty Dumpty" for various reasons, and others refer to the names of businesses (the "Humpty Dumpty Laundry") etc., but most of them are quotes from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass, usually made to demonstrate some sort of statutory interpretation point or another.

I guess judicial writing isn't as fresh as it's cracked up to be.

How Much Poetry Should a Law Professor Write?

I wanted to follow up on some of the later comments in Paul's excellent recent post about what prawfs ought to be doing prior to getting tenure.  David Zaring "mildly disagrees" with what he takes to be Paul's suggestion to "write your bliss" and says that a prawf who is inclined to write about his/her favorite poet's views about liberty might have more fun actually writing poetry.  Paul responds that David has misunderstood him and says "I'm not suggesting someone go off and write poetry."  All this makes me wonder: just how much poetry should a law professor be able to write?

I'm assuming nobody would say that a law professor can't throw off a few verses from time to time, but what if prawf wanted to make a serious commitment to becoming a poet, in addition to being a law professor?  The prawf wants to spend a good amount of time perfecting his/her craft, submitting to poetry journals, participating in poetry workshops, etc.  Since being a prawf and writing legal scholarship isn't a typical 9-5 job, and since most of us could always work a little harder to write yet another law review article if we wanted to sacrifice other things, would this commitment to writing poetry be a problem?  Say that for every 5 poems the prawf writes, he/she could have written one 40 page law review article.  Does writing the 5 poems make him/her a worse prawf?  Is he/she letting his/her school/colleagues/students/dean down?  Does it matter whether, if in addition to the 5 poems, the prawf also writes 2 law review articles?  1 law review article?  1 article every 2 years?  Never writes a law review article?  Does it matter whether the prawf is pre- or post-tenure?  And is there a difference between writing poetry and pursuing other non-writing hobbies, like painting or kayaking?  It doesn't seem like it should matter, but somehow the fact that poetry involves writing makes it maybe more problematic than kayaking, if indeed our job demands that if we are writing, we should be writing about law.

Amazon.com: Great, but really really weird

First of all, I'd like to thank Dan and the rest of the Prawfers for inviting me to stay around for another few months.  I've really enjoyed posting here and look forward to posting throughout the rest of the winter and spring.  Perhaps I may even get around to posting something substantive, rather than twisted and deviant.  Not today, though.

I can tell already, with still five months until my book Holy Hullabaloos comes out, that I will be spending way too much time looking at the Amazon.com page for the book.  It's so full of weird stuff.  Not just the sales ranking, which is itself so fascinating that I'm already checking it daily (right now it's at about 738,000, which I think is pretty decent for a book that won't come out until June), but also my current favorite, the "Customers Who Bought Items Like This Also Bought" list.  Note that this is not a list of items that are similar to your book, or even items that people who bought your book also bought, but rather items that people who bought books similar to your book also bought.  How they even decide what books are similar to other books is beyond me.  But, hey, what do I care?  The number one book on the list of items that people who bought books similar to my book that hasn't come out yet also bought is Sarah Vowell's Assassination Vacation, which is the book that inspired me to write my book.  So that's pretty sweet, right?  The next book on the list is Vowell's new book, and then after that are the new books by John Hodgman and David Sedaris.  I'm a little more confused by why Season 2 of 30 Rock is on the list, not to mention Vicki Ryan's Dewey: The Small-Time Library Cat That Touched the World, but again, what do I care?  I'm just so psyched that people who are buying books that are similar in unknown ways to the book that I wrote that won't come out for another five months and that therefore nobody has ever read are also buying books by Vowell, Hodgman, and Sedaris.  It's enough to put a smile on my face for the whole entire day.  Yay, Amazon.

(cross-posted on Holy Hullabaloos: the blog)

Late to the Party, Again

So, regarding my recent post on fantasy law professor leagues, I was googling around yesterday to see if the idea had been taken up over at Gawker or the Times or whatever when I realized that Joseph Liu already came up with this joke/idea over at Concurring Opinions more than 3 years ago!  I guess I need to start doing "preemption checks" for blog posts now.  Next thing you know I'm going to find out they've already come up with my toothbrush of the month club idea!

Happy New Years!

Fantasy Prawfs

A few years ago I sat down to write a little Green Bag-esque article where I planned to set out some proposed rules for a fantasy law professor league, based on the popular fantasy sports leagues that lots of people play and can't ever stop talking about--fantasy baseball, fantasy football, fantasy scrabble, etc. etc.  (my own fantasy scrabble team is taking a huge hit this year, and I blame it all on Edley's recent troubles, but that's something for another post.)  Sadly, I wasn't able to come up with anything satisfactory, and so I shelved the project.

Now that I've started hanging out in the blogosphere, I thought maybe I'd try to revive the idea and see if my fellow blogospherians can help fill out the details.  There are at least two major issues that must be considered: (1) what are the key stats; and (2) what constitutes a team?  On #1, citation counts, SSRN downloads, publications, conference appearances, committee assignments (weighted to reflect more onerous assignments), and teaching evaluations would be likely choices, if indeed the data on these things are available (the latter would be made a lot easier if more students would start using the rate my professor website--indeed, perhaps that website could be brought on as a sponsor).  On #2, maybe each team would consist of one public law prof, one law and econ prof, one historian, and one crit, or something like that.  I'm very open to ideas on this, and I hope you'll share them in the comments.