Rotations and Sundry

Greetings and Happy June!

This month I'm delighted to welcome back Dean Dan Rodriguez from NW, Hadar Aviram (Hastings), and Chad Oldfather from Marquette. I'm also excited to introduce Naomi Goodno from Pepperdine, who's with us for the first time. Our May guest Kristen Osenga from Richmond will stay on for another month too. Many thanks to you all from May and earlier  for joining us (again).  Belated thanks also are due to Richard Re, who's joining the UCLA faculty and is going to be one of our designated Court-watchers for a while. Next, although he himself abjures all moral relevance of desert, John Pfaff from Fordham warrants our gratitude for his important (and intermittent) series on the failings of the conventional narrative of prison growth. My hope is that John's continued platform here will shift the national conversation on criminal justice matters more productively.  Finally, as SCOTUS winds down its term, I imagine Jack Chin will chime in with his excellent series on the legal academy and its influence on the Roberts Court.

It's an auspicious time to be part of the conversation. Prawfs celebrated its 9th anniversary in April and now had (according to Sitemeter) the highest traffic in terms of page views that we've ever had: over 279,000 in May. We're slated to have another great book club later this month thanks to Matt Bodie's efforts.  And I'm happy to report that West Academic has invested some confidence in this site with sponsorship efforts that I hope will continue and strengthen over time.  Please check out their coursebook catalog through the button ad and consider getting in touch with them (Pam Siege Chandler) if you're thinking of working on a casebook!

That's all for now.

Oops, one last reminder. Carissa Hessick (a regular contributor to Prawfs) and I are going to be locking down registration for the CrimFest 14 Conference at Rutgers this week, so if you've not already registered please do so today or tomorrow. You can find the relevant information at this link. Carissa recently had a baby, so what better way to celebrate the new addition to the Hessick family than saying: Hey, I'll come hang out with that baby's mama in Newark in July!