Saturday, August 17, 2019
Hit Man Podcast
iHeart Radio has a new podcast titled Hit Man, which tells the story of the book "Hit Man: A Technical Manual for Independent Contractors," the murder it supposedly inspired, and the lawsuit against publisher Paladin Press, in which the Fourth Circuit held that the book was not entirely protected by the First Amendment under Brandenburg. Also worth reading is Eugene Volokh's Crime-Facilitating Speech, which sought to develop a speech-protective framework for speech that provides information that can be used for bad purposes but that does not incite or advocate (under which I believe the book would have been protected).
It is in eight parts. The first episode, giving some background to the book, was quite enjoyable.
Posted by Howard Wasserman on August 17, 2019 at 11:18 AM in First Amendment, Howard Wasserman | Permalink | Comments (0)
Friday, August 16, 2019
Nomenclature and the real issue on the scope of injunctions
A Ninth Circuit panel refused to stay a preliminary injunction prohibiting enforcement of new asylum regulations. But a divided court narrowed the injunction from its "nationwide" scope to the extent it applies "beyond the Ninth Circuit," because the district court had not found that beyond-the-circuit scope was necessary to remedy the plaintiffs' harm. The decision, while proper, illustrates the importance of the problems of nomenclature and the misunderstanding of what is at stake.
The plaintiffs in the action were four California-based organizations that represent asylum-seekers; the district court found they had organizational standing because they would lose clients and funding and be forced to divert resources as a result of the regulation.*
[*] The district court also found the organizations within the statutory zone of interest, although that no longer should be part of the standing analysis.
The focus of the scope-of-injunction analysis thus should have been the four organizations, not California. The injunction should have been limited to prohibiting enforcement as to these organizations. But it should have protected those organizations everywhere in the country--states within the Ninth Circuit as well as any other states in which they may represent (or seek to represent) asylum-seekers. Perhaps that means the injunction would reach California and Arizona only, if these organizations only represent clients in those states; outside-the-states application is not necessary to remedy their harm if they do not work outside those states. But to the extent they work outside California and Arizona, their harm is remedied only if the injunction protects them outside of Ninth Circuit states.
And that is why the term "nationwide" does not work. All injunctions should be nationwide in the sense of protecting the plaintiffs wherever in the nation they are--that is the only way to remedy their harm. The problem in this case (and others) is that the district court's injunction purported to prohibit the government from enforcing the regulation beyond these four organizations. The problem is that the injunction was not "particularized" to the parties to the case, but attempted to apply to the "universe" of people and organizations affected by the regulation.
The court thus should have "grant[ed] the motion for stay pending appeal insofar as the injunction applies" beyond the four plaintiff organizations in this action.
Posted by Howard Wasserman on August 16, 2019 at 02:25 PM in Civil Procedure, Howard Wasserman, Judicial Process, Law and Politics | Permalink | Comments (3)
Interview with Gordon Silverstein about Yale Law School's Ph.D. in Law Program
For those of you who have been following my interview series, you know that it generally focuses on VAP and fellowship directors. This interview, like my earlier interview about Berkeley’s JSP program, focuses on a related, but slightly different, trend in law faculty hiring—the increase in the number of entry-level hires with Ph.D.’s. I interviewed Gordon Silverstein, the Assistant Dean for Graduate Programs at Yale Law School, about Yale’s Ph.D. in Law Program. An edited transcript of my conversation with Gordon is below, and I have invited him to respond to any questions in the comments. Thanks, Gordon, for participating in this series!
You can read more about the structure of these interviews and other caveats related to them here.
Q. Can you start by giving me a brief overview of Yale's Ph.D. in Law program?
A. I think it emerged from a few concerns – One was that with a growing number of students interested in law teaching were doing PhDs and other degree programs in addition to their JD, too often student would become great economists, or political scientists and sort of flip the script – instead of being legal scholars who used economics or political science, they became economists who used legal material. This may seem a subtle point, but it’s not: Consider normativity. You won’t get far in legal scholarship without serious normative concerns. But an economics PhD committee will strip the normativity out of your work. Some students can move back and forth, writing very differently for the different fields, but others end up stuck in the middle and satisfying neither.
The PhD in law also was meant to engage a conversation about the issue of disciplinarity itself. Is law a discipline like Economics or Chemistry with clear and agreed upon methods? Or more of a field like political science, bound together by the subject under study, the question rather than a uniform method. What does it mean to study the law and how should we go about doing that?
And it was designed to bring greater rigor to the process of training people to become professional students of the law. There would be specific course work, exams, writing requirements and the supervision of a three-member faculty committee among others.
Continue reading "Interview with Gordon Silverstein about Yale Law School's Ph.D. in Law Program"
Posted by Jessica Erickson on August 16, 2019 at 01:04 PM in Getting a Job on the Law Teaching Market | Permalink | Comments (5)
Thursday, August 15, 2019
What about a tablet?
A question for those who do not allow laptops and do not allow students to type notes in class:
What about taking notes using a stylus and tablet (iPad, Surface, etc.)? On one hand, this is writing rather than typing, so the ability/temptation to stenography is absent; it is the same means of notetaking, with fewer dead trees. On the other, I presume the benefit is that the tablet program converts the handwritten notes into typeset notes, which can be cut-and-pasted into a study outline; this eliminates the need or use for retyping of notes, which is an important point at which learning and understanding occurs.
Thoughts? Does anyone familiar with the literature know of any studies comparing writing-on-tablet with writing-on-paper or typing?
(Note: I know many readers believe that my position on laptops is wrong. That is beside the point here, so please do not bother with comments to that effect. My question begins from the premise that laptops and typing for notes are out. Now what?)
Posted by Howard Wasserman on August 15, 2019 at 05:51 PM in Howard Wasserman, Teaching Law | Permalink | Comments (2)
N.C. court recalls opinion on the bird
Earlier this month, the North Carolina Court of Appeals held that flipping-off a police officer provided probable cause to conduct a traffic stop; it was a "rude, distracting" gesture that could cause a reasonable officer to believe a crime was being committed, such as disorderly conduct. This opinion was inconsistent with federal courts that have held that it is clearly established that flipping the bird is protected by the First Amendment. I did not blog about the case, but I had some interesting email exchanges about the case, including how it interacted with last Term's Nieves v. Bartlett.
Today, the court of appeals withdrew the opinion, with the panel retaining jurisdiction to dispose of the case. No idea what that means. It could mean a majority will hold that the officer lacked probable cause to stop the case. Or it could mean a new opinion finding a basis for probable cause that does not involve constitutionally protected expression.
While this is good for the First Amendment, it is hard not to wonder how much the universal derision the opinion received on the interwebs affected the judges and their decision to reverse course (as to reasoning if not result). And it is hard not to think that this is not a good thing for the judicial process. There are processes in place for reconsidering a decision. Those processes should not involve Twitter.
Posted by Howard Wasserman on August 15, 2019 at 01:11 PM in First Amendment, Howard Wasserman | Permalink | Comments (2)
Judicial Review in Britain
The latest chapter of the Brexit saga could lead end up strengthening Britain's Supreme Court. The new Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, says that the UK will leave the European Union on October 31st. Opponents of Brexit (or opponents of a Brexit without a withdrawal agreement) are threatening to bring a no-confidence motion in the Government and trigger a general election if the Prime Minister does not back down.
There is, though, a problem. Who is the Prime Minister during the ensuing election campaign? By tradition, the answer is the incumbent Prime Minister (unless he or she resigns). This means that Johnson could make Brexit happen even after no confidence is voted in his Government. It takes time to vote for no confidence and hold the election. Odds are that process will not be complete until after October 31st. Fait accompli.
Consider a comparable problem. Suppose President Trump is defeated for reelection. After his defeat but before the inauguration of his successor, he makes an important and irrevocable decision (for example, pardoning a zillion people). No one doubts that he would have the legal authority to do this. At some point there might be a crisis of legitimacy, though, for a defeated President taking an important decision.
What might happen in Britain? One extraordinary suggestion is that the Queen could dismiss Johnson as Prime Minister if his Government loses a confidence motion. This hasn't happened in forever, but the Crown retains some undefined powers that might include this. The more likely answer, though, is that someone will sue in the courts to have Johnson dismissed. The governing law is the Fixed Term Parliament Act, enacted in 2011. The Court would be asked to interpret this statute, which is silent about who serves as a caretaker Prime Minister after a no-confidence motion passes. Did the statute codify prior practice or change that practice?
This would not be judicial review in the American sense, as an Act of Parliament would be be construed rather than invalidated. The closest analogy would be the Court's ruling after the Brexit referendum, which said that the Government could not withdraw from the EU without some consent from Parliament (based on prior laws about Britain's relationship with the EU). Would the Court, though, actually says that Johnson could not be the Prime Minister and must leave office? That seems pretty far-out. Or would the mere prospect of that cause him to back down from Brexit until after a general election is held?
Posted by Gerard Magliocca on August 15, 2019 at 09:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Law School Hiring Spreadsheet and Clearinghouse for Questions, 2019-2020
I. The Spreadsheet
In the spreadsheet, you can enter information regarding whether you have received
(a) a first round interview at a school (including the subject areas the school mentioned, if any, as being of particular interest, and whether the interview offer was accepted);
(b) a callback from a law school and/or accepted it; or
(c) an offer from a law school and/or accepted it; feel free to also leave details about the offer, including teaching load, research leave, etc. A school listed as "offer accepted" may have made more than one offer and may still have some slots open.
Law professors may also choose to provide information that is relevant to the entry-level market.
Anyone can edit the spreadsheet; I will not be editing it or otherwise monitoring it. It is available here:
II. The Comment Thread
In this comment thread to this post, you can ask questions about the law teaching market, and professors or others can weigh in.
Both questions and answers can be anonymous, but I will delete pure nastiness, irrelevance, and misinformation. If you see something that you know to be wrong, please feel free to let me know via email, sarah*dot*lawsky*at*law*dot*northwestern*dot*edu.
You may want to take a look at the many questions and answers in the threads from 2014-2015, 2015-2016, 2016-2017, 2017-2018, and 2018-2019. In general, there's quite a cache of materials relevant to the law job market under the archive categories Getting a Job on the Law Teaching Market and Entry Level Hiring Report.
Posted by Sarah Lawsky on August 15, 2019 at 09:00 AM in Getting a Job on the Law Teaching Market | Permalink | Comments (16)
Wednesday, August 14, 2019
Junior Prawfs - developing new research arcs Part II
Hi all. This will be my last post—thank you all, and especially to Paul, Howard, and the perma Prawfs for this chance to think through some aspects of the junior interdisciplinary prawf experience.
In my previous post, I raised some questions that I consider (or have been asked) when trying to develop a second research arc. This post focuses a bit more on the process of actually developing that research arc—it’s naturally much more specific to my type of interdisciplinarity, but as always I hope it will resonate with others.
Continue reading "Junior Prawfs - developing new research arcs Part II"
Posted by Deepa Das Acevedo on August 14, 2019 at 11:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Call for Submissions: AALS New Voices in Administrative Law and Legislation
The AALS Sections on Administrative Law and Legislation are pleased to announce their co-sponsored “New Voices in Administrative Law and Legislation” program for the 2020 AALS Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. The New Voices program gives junior administrative law scholars and junior legislation scholars an opportunity to receive useful feedback on their work from more senior reviewers before submitting the work for publication.
Each participating junior scholar will be assigned two designated reviewers. The reviewers are senior administrative law or legislation scholars who will read the junior scholar’s paper in advance and offer constructive comments during the program. Each junior scholar and his or her assigned reviewers are seated together at their own table. Anyone else who is interested in participating in one of the discussions is welcome to join. The New Voices program is scheduled from 3:30 p.m. to 5:15 p.m. on Friday, January 3, 2020.
For Interested Junior Scholars
To participate, junior scholars must be full-time faculty members, including full-time visiting assistant professors or fellows, at AALS member schools. Papers that have been posted on scholarship networks such as SSRN, but not yet published, are eligible for consideration.
Please email Professor Kent Barnett, Chair-Elect of the AALS Administrative Law Section, at [email protected] by Friday, November 8, 2019, to be considered for participation in the program. In your email, please include the title of your paper and attach an abstract or working draft. Please also include in the email your school, tenure status, years in the position, any prior legal academic positions, and whether you have previously participated in the New Voices program for either the administrative law or legislation section.
If your paper is selected for participation in the program, you must submit a draft via email to the above address no later than Friday, December 13, 2019. This deadline is important to provide the designated reviewers ample time to read their assigned drafts before the program. The draft submitted does not need to be completely polished and ready for law-review submission; reviewers welcome papers in earlier stages when the author can most benefit from feedback about the project.
For Senior Scholars Interested in Serving as Reviewers
If you are interested in serving as a reviewer this year, please email Professor Jarrod Shobe [email protected] as soon as possible.
Please be aware that selected participants and commentators are responsible for their own travel expenses to the AALS Annual Meeting, including the AALS registration fee. Please submit any questions about the New Voices Program to Professor Kent Barnett at [email protected].
Posted by Ethan Leib on August 14, 2019 at 04:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Punishing female attorneys
The Supreme Court of Missouri suspended the licenses of two female former assistant prosecutors in St. Louis who helped cover up a police officer beating of a suspect in 2014. A third female prosecutor, who was more directly involved by filing false charges against the victim, was disbarred in 2016. The officer pleaded guilty to a § 242 violation and was sentenced to 52 months.This represents the exceedingly rare case in which police and prosecutors faced sanctions for their roles in misconduct within the criminal-justice system.
But it is difficult not to notice that this rare case involved three female prosecutors. It thus echoes the fallout from the Central Park Five, in which the only people facing professional consequences (informal, but still) were two female assistant prosecutors, but no man involved in the case.
Posted by Howard Wasserman on August 14, 2019 at 11:43 AM in Howard Wasserman, Law and Politics | Permalink | Comments (5)
Tuesday, August 13, 2019
Welcome back 1Ls
We see similar things every year around this time. This is from Lawprofblawg, an anonymous prawf writing at Above the Law. It is good advice.
Posted by Howard Wasserman on August 13, 2019 at 10:18 PM in Teaching Law | Permalink | Comments (1)
Monday, August 12, 2019
Chief Justice Classifications
We are familiar with the practice of describing the Supreme Court by reference to the Chief Justice at the time. The Marshall Court, the Warren Court, the Roberts Court, etc. But when did this practice get started. And why?
I don't know the answer. But it's an interesting question. A quick search indicates that this sort of terminology was not used by law review articles or by the Supreme Court until the 1930s. Perhaps the usage came earlier in books or treatises, but that will take more time to check. Why this change occurred is even more elusive. Some Chief Justices, of course, do wield great influence over the Court. Most, though, do not. The urge to classify can be irresistible, but is that the best explanation?
Posted by Gerard Magliocca on August 12, 2019 at 08:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Getting to Know Peter Lederer
One of the benefits of publishing or blogging is the chance to connect with fascinating people. One of those, in my case, is Peter Lederer (pictured, left), who is an adjunct professor at the University of Miami School of Law, and one of the founding members (along with Michele DeStefano) of LawWithoutWalls.
From Peter's bio at Miami, here are the bare bones:
He served many years as a partner of Baker & McKenzie, the global law firm, having joined the firm as its 17th partner. After seven years in Zurich, where he opened the Firm’s office, he returned to New York, serving as the Senior Partner of that office until 1994. He also served for many years as a member of the Firm’s top global management bodies. For some 25 years Peter served as general counsel to the electric utility owned insurance company, Nuclear Electric Insurance Limited. He also acted as counsel for the establishment of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, the international accounting firm, then serving as its general counsel from 1989 to 1994.
Being the 17th partner at Baker & McKenzie ought to tell you something, but that short description belies the richness of his life journey, involving modern world history, an iconic figure in legal academia, the explosion of the global legal profession, and a mind that doesn't rest just because the body is aging.
He introduced himself to me a couple years ago by way of a couple emails, mentioning a couple people we knew in common. The first note expressed a certain frustration with academic book pricing. In his words, "I have the temerity to ask: how does your new book wind up on Amazon with a sticker price of $118.33? With even the ephemeral Kindle version nearly $50? I may have to spring for it. One of the reviews suggested parallels to some of Karl Llewellyn's thinking; I was his research assistant ages ago, and that's a sure hooker." Then later asked who had turned me on to Llewellyn, as Peter "had worked for him for a couple of years when he was doing The Common Law Tradition, and that was certainly one of the shaping experiences of my life."
I did answer the question about pricing* but at some point the arithmetic dawned on me.
Continue reading "Getting to Know Peter Lederer"
Posted by Jeff Lipshaw on August 12, 2019 at 10:06 AM in Deliberation and voices, Lipshaw | Permalink | Comments (0)
Protest (and be punished) like it's 1968
At the Pan Am Games, fencer Race Imboden knelt on the gold-medal podium during the anthem and hammer-thrower Gwen Berry raised her first. Both face sanction, because not much has changed since 1968. The U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee offered this internal contradiction: "Every athlete competing at the 2019 Pan-American Games commits to terms of eligibility, including to refrain from demonstrations that are political in nature,” although "[w]e respect his rights to express his viewpoints.” No, you clearly do not respect his rights to express his viewpoints when those viewpoints are political in nature. Because standing at attention during a national anthem while playing "for your country" is never political.
The USOPC (did not realize the "P" had been added) is not bound by the First Amendment and can restrict athlete speech however it wishes. But do not pretend that you also respect the athletes' rights to express their views.
Posted by Howard Wasserman on August 12, 2019 at 09:39 AM in First Amendment, Howard Wasserman, Sports | Permalink | Comments (7)
Junior Prawfs - developing new research arcs
Hi folks. This is the fifth in a series on being a junior, interdisciplinary, multi-subject prawf—you can find the first four posts here, here, here, and here.
In this post, I’d like to consider what comes after a capstone project in a particular research area, when it’s time to develop a new research arc. Many of us face this at some point pre-tenure, and some may even face it during the period before their first major internal review (i.e., before year 3-4). Since the job market essentially requires candidates to develop a research arc in the form of an agenda you’d think doing so again within a few years would be easy enough. In my experience so far, however, that hasn’t been the case—it’s not harder, but it comes with a slightly different set of considerations than the first time around.
Continue reading "Junior Prawfs - developing new research arcs"
Posted by Deepa Das Acevedo on August 12, 2019 at 08:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Sunday, August 11, 2019
One inning, three runs, three true outcomes (non-law)
Thinking about baseball today, so that prompts this non-law post.
Baseball analysts emphasize the concept of "three true outcomes"--walk, home run, or strikeout. These are the possible results of a pitcher/batter confrontation that reflect the "true" results of that one-on-one encounter, unaffected by any other players. The focus on these outcomes drives recent concerns for style and pace of play. Batters look to hit home runs, are less willing to offer at pitches out of the strike zone, and accept increased strikeouts as a cost. All three true outcomes are up, creating a slower and (some believe) less exciting game.
In Saturday night's Braves-Marlins game, the Braves scored three runs in an inning featuring nothing but those three true outcomes. The inning went: Walk, Strikeout, Walk, Strikeout, 3-run HR, Walk, Walk, [pitching change], Strikeout. No fielder other than the pitcher and catcher was involved in any play. No baserunner was at risk of being put-out on the basepaths.
I have never seen anything like that.
Posted by Howard Wasserman on August 11, 2019 at 07:51 PM in Howard Wasserman, Sports | Permalink | Comments (4)
Saturday, August 10, 2019
"The Grievance Studies Affair," purpose, and result
FIRE's So to Speak podcast interviewed the three authors (Jim Lindsay, Helen Pluckrose, and Peter Boghossian, the latter of whom is on the faculty at Portland State) behind the "Grievance Studies Affair." The three wrote and submitted a series of papers designed to show that certain humanities disciplines, which they call "grievance studies," lack scholarly rigor and feature a broken peer-review process. Seven papers were accepted, four were published, and seven were still in play when everything was exposed last fall. Boghossian was sanctioned by his university (subscription required) for failing to obtain IRB approval for a study on human subjects (the editors and reviewers who read the papers).
Critics of the the authors and their hoax accused them of trying to get people fired and departments shut down, comparing them with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban's efforts to ban gender studies at Hungarian universities. The authors reject this criticism; they insist they respect academic freedom and did not want to see anyone fired or any departments closed. Instead, they hoped universities would use the information they exposed to recognize the defects in these fields and thus discount scholarship in these fields and these journals when making tenure and hiring decisions.
Continue reading ""The Grievance Studies Affair," purpose, and result"
Posted by Howard Wasserman on August 10, 2019 at 02:17 PM in First Amendment, Howard Wasserman, Teaching Law | Permalink | Comments (1)
Friday, August 09, 2019
Lawyering Somewhere Between Computation and the Will to Act: The Last Outtake
I've now posted my summer project on SSRN (it's my contribution to the "Lawyering in the Digital Age" conference I mentioned earlier). The title has changed since I first posted a week or so ago - and that turns out to be one of last outtakes. It's now Lawyering Somewhere Between Computation and the Will to Act: A Digital Age Reflection, with the following abstract:
This is a reflection on machine and human contributions to lawyering in the digital age. Increasingly capable machines can already unleash massive processing power on vast stores of discovery and research data to assess relevancies and, at times, to predict legal outcomes. At the same time, there is wide acceptance, at least among legal academics, of the conclusions from behavioral psychology that slow, deliberative “System 2” thinking (perhaps replicated computationally) needs to control the heuristics and biases to which fast, intuitive “System 1” thinking is prone. Together, those trends portend computational deliberation – artificial intelligence or machine learning – substituting for human thinking in more and more of a lawyer’s professional functions.
Yet, unlike machines, human lawyers are self-reproducing automata. They can perceive purposes and have a will to act that cannot be reduced to mere third-party scientific explanation. For all its power, computational intelligence is unlikely to evolve intuition, insight, creativity, and the will to change the objective world, characteristics as human as System 1 thinking’s heuristics and biases. We therefore need to be circumspect about the extent to which we privilege System 2-like deliberation (particularly that which can be replicated computationally) over uniquely human contributions to lawyering: those mixed blessings like persistence, passion, and the occasional compulsiveness.
The deleted title (before the colon) was Unsure at Any Speed, a bit of just-a-tad-too-clever wordplay on my part.
Continue reading "Lawyering Somewhere Between Computation and the Will to Act: The Last Outtake"
Posted by Jeff Lipshaw on August 9, 2019 at 10:33 AM in Article Spotlight, Legal Theory, Lipshaw, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)
Money talks
People are calling for a boycott of Equinox in the wake of disclosure that owner Stephen Ross is hosting a Trump fundraiser. Expect more of this following the release by Texas Rep. Joaquin Castro of a list of Trump donors. Ross issued a nonsense statement that first tries to shame critics for, unlike him, "sit[ting] outside the process and criticiz[ing]." He then insists that he supports the President's economic policies (read: big tax cuts for him) while supporting racial equality and inclusion, and that he is not ashful about disagreeing with the President or about expressing his opinions (although he did not specify whether he expresses those contrary opinions to Trump--given what we know about Trump, I doubt it).
One issue we discussed during a SEALS panel on expressive conduct is how we handle the fact that consumers increasingly base their choices on their politics and conscience--avoiding businesses that support certain causes or that are owned by individuals who support certain causes. Contrary to Ross's statement, that is a form of direct engagement and support for (or opposition to) the things one deeply cares about (since we can't all put on million-dollar fundraisers).
But if buyers can express their political preferences through their consumer choices, why not sellers? Is it the difference in power, since the seller often is the only game in town? Is it because a seller's choices would look not like political preferences but like identity-based discrimination, which customers are allowed but businesses are not? We did not reach any great theoretical resolution on the panel. The question shows that it is not as simple as "this is a business transaction," because so much more is involved in both sides of that transaction.
Posted by Howard Wasserman on August 9, 2019 at 06:57 AM in First Amendment, Howard Wasserman | Permalink | Comments (2)
Interview with Adam Feibelman about the Academic Fellowships at Tulane Law School
I’m excited to announce the next latest interview in my series interviewing VAP and fellowship directors. This interview is with Adam Feibelman, the Sumter Davis Marks Professor of Law at Tulane Law School and Director of the Program in Regulation and Coordination at Tulane’s Murphy Institute. Adam has historically helped manage Tulane’s academic fellowships, although he is quick to note that Kristin Johnson, Tulane’s incoming Associate Dean for Faculty Research, will have a significant role with these fellowships going forward. An edited transcript of our conversation is below, and I have invited Adam to respond to any questions in the comments. Thanks, Adam, for participating in this series!
You can read more about the structure of these interviews and other caveats related to them here.
Q: Can you tell me about the different fellowship programs at Tulane?
A: Until this year we've had two programs. One is the Forrester fellowship, which is a long-standing part of our legal research and writing program. A few years ago, we created a visiting assistant professorship, which is funded by the Murphy Institute’s program in regulation but dedicated to the law school. This year, we created a Yongxiong fellowship, which is a component of our new Yongxiong-Tulane Center for International Credit Law, a partnership with Xiangtan University in Hunan Province, China.
Posted by Jessica Erickson on August 9, 2019 at 06:39 AM in Getting a Job on the Law Teaching Market | Permalink | Comments (0)
MAGA student speaks (with minor edits)
So now we know. The MAGA-hat-sporting student that Gonzaga Prawfs Jeffrey Omari described is Austin Phelps, a rising 3L who has taken to the pages of the same ABA Journal to give his side of the story.
Phelps' version differs from Omari's in two important respects. Phelps makes it sound as if the MAGA hat was not a late-semester sartorial one-off; it sounds as if he had worn the hat and a Trump-Pence 2020 shirt at various points in the semester and that his laptop was festooned with similar stickers.* He also says Omari did not call on him "with the frequency that left-leaning students enjoyed." Omari described a conservative student who participated in class (enough to make his views known) but how had to that point "not . . . donned any political paraphernalia in the classroom."
[*] Yet another reason to ban laptops.
He also complains about called out for wearing a build-the-wall t-shirt to his "university-affiliated internship," which he attributes to Omari's op-ed. The internship enforced a neutral (although never-before-enforced) rule banning t-shirts with slogans while at work.
The rest of the piece combines a defense of free speech, with an explanation for his support for the President (including filling two SCOTUS seats "with conservative posteriors," so glad he writes like a serious future lawyer). All of which reflects "my struggle" as a conservative law student--which might not have been the best choice of phrase, considering the context.
Posted by Howard Wasserman on August 9, 2019 at 06:23 AM in First Amendment, Howard Wasserman, Teaching Law | Permalink | Comments (6)
Junior Prawfs - advice on advising
Hi folks. Since we’re at the end of summer as well as the beginning of application and job market season I thought I’d consider a slightly different aspect of junior prawfing. Specifically, I’d like to get some advice on… giving advice. Over the last couple of years I’ve found myself speaking to aspiring legal anthropologists. Sometimes they’ve been referred to me, sometimes they find me on their own. The conversation lasts anywhere from 45 minutes to 1.5 hours and, in almost all cases, I know I’ve left them feeling more than a little shattered even though that is not what I intend to do.
Continue reading "Junior Prawfs - advice on advising"
Posted by Deepa Das Acevedo on August 9, 2019 at 12:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Hiring: The Ohio State University College of Law
The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law is conducting four separate faculty-line searches this year. Here are the details:
Continue reading "Hiring: The Ohio State University College of Law"
Posted by Howard Wasserman on August 9, 2019 at 12:27 AM in Teaching Law | Permalink | Comments (0)
Thursday, August 08, 2019
Number of FAR Forms in First Distribution Over Time - 2019
The first distribution of the FAR AALS forms came out this week. Here are the number of FAR forms in the first distribution for each year since 2009.
(All information obtained from various blog posts, blog comments, Tweets, and Facebook postings over the years and not independently verified. If you have more accurate information, please post it in the comments and I will update accordingly.)
First posted August 8, 2019.
Posted by Sarah Lawsky on August 8, 2019 at 02:09 PM in Getting a Job on the Law Teaching Market | Permalink | Comments (7)
Workshop on Comparative Business and Financial Law - Call for Papers
Posted on behalf of the Younger Comparativists Committee:
The Younger Comparativists Committee (YCC) of the American Society of Comparative Law (ASCL) is pleased to invite submissions for its Fifth Workshop on Comparative Business and Financial Law to be held on February 7-8, 2020 at the University of Akron School of Law in Akron, Ohio. The purpose of the workshop is to highlight, develop, and promote the scholarship of new and younger comparativists in accounting, banking, bankruptcy, corporations, commercial law, economics, finance, and securities.
The deadline to submit proposals is October 25, 2019. For more information, please see the Call for Papers.
Posted by Sarah Lawsky on August 8, 2019 at 08:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Wednesday, August 07, 2019
University of Alabama School of Law Faculty Hiring Announcement
I'm delighted to pass along this hiring announcement for the University of Alabama School of Law:
The University of Alabama School of Law seeks to fill one or more entry-level/junior-lateral tenure-track positions for the 2020-21 academic year. Candidates must have outstanding academic credentials, including a J.D. from an accredited law school or an equivalent degree (such as a Ph.D. in a related field). Entry-level candidates should demonstrate potential for strong teaching and scholarship; junior-lateral candidates should have an established record of excellent teaching and distinguished scholarship. The primary focus of the search is criminal law, however, qualified applicants in other areas may be considered. We welcome applications from candidates who approach scholarship from a variety of perspectives and methods. The University embraces diversity in its faculty, students, and staff, and we welcome applications from those who would add to the diversity of our academic community.
Interested candidates should apply online at facultyjobs.ua.edu. Salary, benefits, and research support will be nationally competitive. All applications are confidential to the extent permitted by state and federal law; the positions remain open until filled. Questions should be directed to Professor Jenny Carroll, Chair of the Faculty Appointments Committee ([email protected]).
Link to Ad:
https://facultyjobs.ua.edu/postings/45299
Posted by Paul Horwitz on August 7, 2019 at 12:42 PM in Paul Horwitz | Permalink | Comments (0)
Legal innovation website -- a valuable new resource
The ABA Center for Innovation (whose council I chair) has collected information here about regulatory innovations in legal services delivery. This includes, but is not limited, to lawyer regulation and various reforms to the Model Rules. The picture painted is of a large amount of business as usual, with some tantalizing examples of forward-looking reform efforts.
Among other contributions, this legal innovation survey should be of value to legal scholars looking closely at issues of access to justice and the delivery of legal services in the contemporary U.S. Much more careful research in this space is required and the data provided here is one important step in facilitating such research.
Shout-out to the Open Society Foundation which supported this project financially.
Posted by Dan Rodriguez on August 7, 2019 at 12:10 PM in Daniel Rodriguez | Permalink | Comments (1)