Monday, September 03, 2018

Note to PrawfsBlawg readers: Appearance of comments

A note to readers and commenters:

Comments to posts now appear newest to oldest. We did this to accommodate our annual faculty hiring post and our semi-annual submission post. Both posts generate hundreds of comments, requiring readers to scroll through multiple pages to read new comments. The old hack for this problem--a jump link--no longer works and Typepad recommended this as the solution. So this is the workable solution--new comments appear immediately below the post.

Unfortunately, we only could make the change globally, so comments must appear this way for all posts.

This format is necessary while the hiring and submission threads are alive and active, which should be another few months. After that, we will evaluate the appearance and decide whether to keep it or switch back. We already have heard from one reader who describes it as "crazy and moronic," so we will take that under advisement.

Posted by Howard Wasserman on September 3, 2018 at 09:27 AM in Blogging, Housekeeping, Howard Wasserman | Permalink | Comments (0)

Thursday, April 02, 2015

Tagging In . . .

Many thanks to Howard and the other folks here at Prawfs for inviting me back to blog.  I’m really looking forward to the mini-symposia, and I also plan on blogging about a few different issues that have come up since I last blogged here years ago . . .

Posted by Carissa Byrne Hessick on April 2, 2015 at 06:07 PM in Housekeeping | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sunday, November 30, 2014

Rotations

As we roll into a new month, we roll into a new set of visiting Prawfs.

Thanks to our November visitors--Michael Helfand (Pepperdine), Adam Kolber (Brooklyn), Jake Linford (Florida State), Kirsten Nussbaumer (Stanford), and Margaret Ryznar (Indiana-Bloomington); they may be sticking around for some final posts this week. Thanks also to Timothy Zick (William & Mary) and Leigh Osofsky (Miami) for their individual solicited posts.

And welcome to our December visitors--Kelly Anders (The Organized Lawyer); Miriam Cherry (Saint Louis); Josh Douglas (Kentucky); Franita Tolson (Florida State); and Steven Morrison (North Dakota). And Richard Re (UCLA) continues his semester-long stay.

And remember that we are always looking for voices to join the Prawfs conversation. If you are interested in joining us for a month in the coming year, please email me ([email protected]) or Paul ([email protected]).

Posted by Howard Wasserman on November 30, 2014 at 12:01 PM in Housekeeping, Howard Wasserman | Permalink | Comments (0)

Saturday, November 01, 2014

Rotations

Thanks to our October visitors, who may be sticking around a few more days to say good-bye.

For November, we welcome back Michael Helfand (Pepperdine), Adam Kolber (Brooklyn), Jake Linford (Florida State), Kirsten Nussbaumer (Stanford), and Margaret Ryznar (Indiana-Bloomington). And Richard Re (UCLA) continues his semester with us.

Posted by Howard Wasserman on November 1, 2014 at 09:31 AM in Blogging, Housekeeping, Howard Wasserman | Permalink | Comments (0)

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

On the Move

Jane Yakowitz and I have accepted offers from the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law. We're excited to join such a talented group! But, we'll miss our Brooklyn friends. Come visit us in Tucson!

Posted by Derek Bambauer on December 14, 2011 at 05:39 PM in Current Affairs, Getting a Job on the Law Teaching Market, Housekeeping, Information and Technology, Intellectual Property, Life of Law Schools, Teaching Law, Travel | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Sunday, November 06, 2011

Sex and the Single Bathroom

I have a confession to make. I’ve recently used the women’s washroom.

Let me explain.  On the 5th floor of Griswold Hall where I have my office, there are two single occupancy bathrooms with locks – one male and one female, not to be confused with the Ally McBeal style unisex bathroom.  Rather, this is a single occupancy bathroom that unlike George Constanza's is not limited to people with disabilities.

It turns out, though, that only the women’s single-occupancy bathroom has Palmolive with which I can wash my glasses before class (one of the assistants who is a woman mentioned this to me one day when I needed to clean them). It is unclear to me why only the women's bathroom has Palmolive,  but I have worried about disrupting something important if I moved it to the men’s. So I’ve started going into the women’s bathroom before class, locking the door, washing my glasses, and then leaving. I have received some funny stares from people who have caught me doing it…but it has caused me to re-examine my single-occupancy bathroom behavior and expand my gender subversive bathroom routine more generally:

If at a restaurant with single use bathrooms there is a line-up for the men’s but none for the women’s, I will walk over to the women’s. This too engenders funny looks, and I’ve noticed I am shyer about doing it when the men in line are more macho … no doubt a form of gender panic on my part.

So I am curious whether I am doing something wrong, and whether all single occupancy bathrooms should be neutered? The strongest argument I can fathom for gendering them is that women and men take different amounts of time in the bathroom, such that separate allocations are desirable. But, if anything, it seems to me that women get the short end of the stick on this one, and both more distributively fair and more efficient then to have both bathrooms be open to both sexes. But perhaps I am missing something?

Posted by Glenn Cohen on November 6, 2011 at 11:28 PM in Culture, Current Affairs, Gender, Housekeeping | Permalink | Comments (42) | TrackBack

Sunday, November 01, 2009

No apologies

Since we all seem to be announcing our arrivals here, I guess I should follow suit.  Thanks to Dan and my other hosts for agreeing to have me back for another tour of blogging duty.  It has been a long time since I was a regular blogger, and an even longer time s ince my last visit here-- a little over three years, I think.  In the meantime I've graduated from law school and clerked for a couple of fantastic bosses.  Because of those clerkships, I most definitely will not be blogging about Bilski. 

I also [not-so-shameless self-promotion alert] published an article laying out my side of a long argument we had here about the limited power of judicial opinions.  Maybe this trip will be similarly fruitful.  At any rate, it should be fun.

[P.S. I can be reached both through comments and through email to william.baude on gmail.]

Posted by Will Baude on November 1, 2009 at 08:13 PM in Blogging, Housekeeping | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Monday, September 15, 2008

irony's tyranny

David Foster Wallace, dead of an apparent suicide over the weekend, was the author of Infinite Jest among other novels, short stories, and journalism -- a young (since I'm around his age, I declare him to be so) and brilliant "postmodern" (whatever that means) writer whose work I've never quite liked, although my wife does. Interviews with him make clear just how smart the guy was; obituaries reveal that he had a long fight with depression which included prescription drugs and, in the past year, periods of institutionalization. There's one passage of his that seems prescient as well as right and worthy of further consideration:

[I]rony tyrannizes us. The reason why our pervasive cultural irony is so powerful and so unsatisfying is that an ironist is impossible to pin down. All U.S. irony is based on an implicit “I don’t really mean what I’m saying.” So what does irony as a cultural norm mean to say? That it’s impossible to mean what you say? That maybe it’s too bad it’s impossible, but wake up and smell the coffee already? Most likely, I think, today’s irony ends up saying: “How totally banal of you to ask what I really mean.” Anyone with the heretical gall to ask an ironist what he actually stands for ends up looking like an hysteric or a prig. And herein lies the oppressiveness of institutionalized irony, the too-successful rebel: the ability to interdict the question without attending to its subject is, when exercised, tyranny. It is the new junta, using the very tool that exposed its enemy to insulate itself.
- “E Unibus Pluram,” A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, (New York: Little Brown, 1997), 67-68.

I confess that I rely heavily on irony in my interpersonal dealings; it's a means of making fun of and drawing attention to the banalties and frustrations of everyday life. But I confess I've become less entertained by it as a means of popular and political discourse. I suppose I have overdosed on Jon Stewart-ness, whose sense of humor is wonderful but whose pervasiveness (made all the more arch and pervasive in the guise of Steven Colbert) transforms irony into an end in itself. There may well be no better way to draw attention to the hypocrisy of public figures than to mock and ironize their foolishness, but after a while irony begins to replace outrage as a response. It creates the expectation that there's nothing but hypocrisy in politics, law, and public life.

That said, I think irony can survive in unexpected places, when its ability to disrupt continues to have really interesting formal and even political effects. Scholarship, and especially legal scholarship, is required to be sincere; one may be allowed to pun in one's title or add a humorous or sarcastic aside in a footnote, but one must not ironize the scholarly endeavor, nor offer a snide meta-commentary on the law review article as a form and practice. Rather, one must identify (Part I); critique (Part II); and propose (Part III). There are of course exceptions in some fora (Green Bag, blogs) and among some writers (in earlier eras Thurman Arnold and less successfully Fred Rodell; more recently Duncan Kennedy; and in our current era, most regularly Pierre Schlag). Done well, scholarly irony can have really interesting effects, insofar as it questions whether scholarship can in fact mean what it says and have the effects it hopes and expects to have. And there remains a risk in scholarly irony: not only the risk that it falls flat and fails, thereby shutting down thinking rather than encouraging it, but also that the author him- or herself will not be taken seriously, whether because the reader and scholarly community thinks s/he in fact has nothing to say or the community wants to enforce the proper rules of the game against someone who would mock or reject them.

I don't mean to sound or be sanctimonious. I will undoubtedly continue to resort to ironic asides in the classroom as a means to keep the students and myself awake as we plunge forward into the byzantine bureaucratic byways of administrative law, where horrific guffaws await. Irony feels natural; it's the regime we live within. But the suicide of someone who both deployed irony and spoke eloquently against it offers a moment when it's worth reflecting on irony's power to amuse and make us its subject.

Posted by Mark Fenster on September 15, 2008 at 04:00 PM in Housekeeping | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Friday, August 01, 2008

Hola

Greetings again to the Prawfs audience, this time from amidst a pile of cardboard boxes in our nation's capital.  Of the two or three readers who remember my first stint, one or two may recall that Dan urged me not to blog about tax, notwithstanding the indisputable success of other tax bloggers (scroll down to "best post ever").  I guess I can see his point.  I mean, sure, tax pays for, y'know, everything, but do we really care about how the rules work?  Yeah, there's questions about justice, but surely there is no concept of justice unique to tax, is there?   

So, in short, I plan to ignore Dan's request, but fear not, loyal reader (s?).  Tax is a capacious field.  I'll be blogging this time around mostly about federalism, politics, non-profit organizations, and the relationships between the three.  Thanks for stopping by.

 

Posted by BDG on August 1, 2008 at 04:09 PM in Housekeeping | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Friday, June 13, 2008

1. Is John McCain a Natural Born Citizen? 2. Goodbye (Especially to Cora, who Broke my Heart)

I have stayed longer than the usual Prawfs visit hoping to write a certain potentially fascinating (yet non-privacy invading or sensational) interview -based post, but for good and substantial reasons, it appears that it will not materialize.  Accordingly, I now sign off with gratitude and hoping that the following will not eliminate me from future consideration for another visit.

I am finishing a project which I hope Prawfs will mention in the near future.   The piece argues that  that under the Supreme Court's current views of the Constitution and the citizenship statutes, John McCain is not a natural born citizen.  It is not an airy-fairy theoretical claim, but based on plain vanilla application of established doctrine.  Thus, the year after Senator McCain was born, Frances Perkins, Secretary of Labor, then responsible for the Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization, explained that people in Senator McCain's position “are citizens in every sense except as a matter of law.”   That is, maybe such people should have been regarded as citizens.  But the law did not make them such, for reasons I explain.

Needless to say, almost everyone disagrees with this bottom line (even me, before I started looking in to it).   Here are blog posts by Althouse, Lindgren, Volokh and Kopel on Volokh,  Turley, Dorf, J. Rebekka Bonner on Balinization, Solum on Legal Theory Blog, The New York Times article, and the Washington Post article, the Senate press release after they passed a resolution saying he was a natural born citizen, and an opinion by Harvard Professor Laurence Tribe and former Solicitor General Theodore Olson.  Also, J. Rebekka Bonner's article on SSRN, and a Yale Law Journal note from 1988.

Thanks again to the Prawfs team for having me.

Posted by Marc Miller on June 13, 2008 at 06:29 PM in Housekeeping | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Tuesday, May 06, 2008

Some news of varying degrees of excitement:0-11

Ah, the beginning of exam-grading period: it is, by my lights, the best time to procrastinate by writing incessantly. And while my wife could have been eating donuts with Jack in Tucson the last few days, I've had the chance to finish assemble cobble from here and there a shitty first draft of Implementing Retributive Damages. Ok, "draft" is overstated; there are still various holes  in the text to write.  But as the second of a trilogy -- you can read a more developed draft of the first part, Retributive Damages, up on SSRN --  Implementing Retributive Damages raises and hopefully resolves all sorts of neat policy questions that I had to defer from the first installment. 

This bricolage comes just in time. On Thursday I'm slotted to present the basic ideas of the paper to my colleagues here at FSU Law over lunch before going on the road with it this summer to Vancouver, NYC, and Palm Beach. If you're in the 'Hassee this Thursday, and interested, please let me know--you're welcome to come munch on Qdoba or some such with us while I talk about pluralism about punitive damages purposes, punishing entities, dirty-handed plaintiffs, and procedural safeguards for civil defendants facing retributive damages.

Speaking of FSU Law, some really great news in the last few days has emerged. First, our graduates just led the state in bar passage--again. Florida State ranked first among Florida’s ten law schools in the passing rate on the February 2008 administration of the Florida Bar Examination. Our first place passing rate of 93.6% was followed by UF’s passing rate of 88.3%. The overall passing rate was 76.4%. Florida State Law has had the highest passing rate in four of the last five administrations of the Florida Bar Exam.  Second, and at least equally impressive, the Dean recently announced that according to data recently released by the ABA, Florida State Law has the 13th best alumni giving rate among the nation’s law schools, at 26.1%, with only two state schools ahead of us, UVa and UCLA.  Given FSU's relative youth and its status as a public law school, I think that sense of alumni engagement says something quite good about the school -- and our development office!  Moreover, it looks like this coming year we will have a burgeoning smatter of criminal justice-related activities and initiatives that I'll be coordinating with Wayne Logan. More on that to follow.

Last, though definitely not least, Prawfsfest! is coming!! After two successful incubator workshops at Miami and Loyola LA the last two Decembers, we are now contemplating a move toward doing them on a semi-annual basis instead of an annual one. Well, that's the ambition; that, and warm weather hosts during the winter.  Toward that goal, I'm thrilled to announce that Dean Nora Demleitner and her colleagues at Hofstra will be hosting Prawfsfest! this coming July. Details are still being worked out, but we will gather in NY before the SEALS Conference. Stay tuned for more info on this great match: Hawfsfest! at Prawfstra. Er, I meant Prawfsfest! at Hofstra.

Posted by Administrators on May 6, 2008 at 05:02 PM in Dan Markel, Funky FSU, Housekeeping, Life of Law Schools | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Sunday, December 02, 2007

If you're anywhere near Princeton next Saturday, you'll want to be at this event

Our own Rick Garnett will be part of a rock-star event (for con law nerds)  next week at Princeton. Here's the info:

Former CBS News anchor Dan Rather will host a panel discussion on "Church and State: Separation Anxiety" at 6 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 8, in the Rockefeller College Common Room.  The event will be taped for broadcasting on "Dan Rather Reports," his program on the HDNet television network. It is open to the public, but tickets are required. Doors will open at 5 p.m., and final seating is at 5:30 p.m. The panelists will discuss the history of the religion clauses of the First Amendment and give their opinions about how government should interact with religion. The panelists are:

• Christopher Eisgruber, University provost and the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Public Affairs in the Woodrow Wilson School and the University Center for Human Values. Eisgruber is the co-author, with Lawrence Sager, of "Religious Freedom and the Constitution." 

• Richard Garnett, associate professor at the University of Notre Dame Law School. Garnett teaches courses in criminal and constitutional law and served as a clerk to former Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist.

• Holly Hollman, general counsel for the Baptist Joint Committee, an organization serving 14 Baptist denominations that advocates free exercise of religion and minimal state connection to religious institutions.

• Michael McConnell, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit and one of the country's foremost constitutional law scholars.

Tickets for students, faculty and staff with Princeton University ID cards will be available starting Monday, Dec. 3, at the Frist Campus Center ticket office. The office is open weekdays from noon to 6 p.m. Campus community members may bring up to two PUIDs, but can only pick up one ticket per PUID. Tickets for the general public, with a limit of two per person, will be available from noon to 2 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 6, at the Richardson Auditorium box office while quantities last. The discussion is sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, the Program in Law and Public Affairs, the University Center for Human Values, the Center for the Study of Religion and the Department of Religion.

Posted by Administrators on December 2, 2007 at 08:27 AM in Housekeeping | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Friday, November 30, 2007

It's Great to Be Back

Thanks to Dan and the rest of the permaprawfs for inviting me back to the 'Blawg, and best wishes to all for a happy holiday season.  Congratulations to the professors, especially the first-year ones, who are wrapping up their fall semesters and preparing exams.

It is with some sense of pride that I make this return visit.  When I was last here I touted the talents of Frank Caliendo, whose impressions struck me as hilarious.  Apparently others agreed--though I'm usually anywhere but on the pulse of America--and Frank now has a late-night show of his own, which airs at 11:00 on Tuesdays.  TBS has made available the first two entire shows on its website.  If you like impressionists, check out the skit where he plays DeNiro and Pacino as movie-critics.  It's in the third segment of episode 2.

Thanks again for the invitation, and I look forward to the rest of the visit.

Posted by Michael Dimino on November 30, 2007 at 06:21 PM in Housekeeping | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Tuesday, September 04, 2007

Signing Off

I should have done this back when I stopped posting things here, but hey, if I'd realized at the time how completely the end of summer was going to overwhelm me with trips and tasks, I'd have done a lot of things differently. Thanks to the Prawfs crew for having me aboard on this cruise; it's been a lot of fun, and the comment quality here is second to none.

Posted by James Grimmelmann on September 4, 2007 at 06:38 PM in Housekeeping | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Monday, June 04, 2007

Cheerio.

With the arrival of a new month and a band of new guests here at PrawfsBlawg, I will take my leave, with much gratitude to Dan Markel, his fellow Prawfs, and the reading & commenting public. Thank you for being such kind hosts. I look forward to seeing just how much a year of experience aids in the academic endeavor. 'Til then, I return to grading my stack of exams (and checking my email).

Posted by William Birdthistle on June 4, 2007 at 08:53 AM in Housekeeping | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Thursday, May 31, 2007

Greetings from sunny Tallahassee

Thanks to Dan and PrawfsBlawg for inviting me to blog.  By way of background, I am just finishing my first year as an Assistant Professor of Law at Florida State University College of Law where I teach Laws of War, Torts, and Employment Discrimination.  I ended up in academia by way of a Bigelow fellowship, so I thought I might also touch on some of the benefits of these pre-tenure track positions. I know several people have extolled the virtues of fellowships, but I think there are even more benefits than meet the eye.

In upcoming weeks, I also plan on blogging about the areas in which I'm reading and writing which include international law, laws of war, and norm theory.  My scholarship tends to explore the intersection of security and human rights issues as well as emphasize some of the non-legal roles of international law.

Posted by Lesley Wexler on May 31, 2007 at 10:19 AM in Housekeeping | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Friday, March 09, 2007

Who am I? (with apologies to Admiral Stockdale)

My name is Jonah B. Gelbach, and I’m currently associate professor of economics at the University of Maryland at College Park. As of the coming fall semester, I’m moving to the department of economics at the University of Arizona’s Eller College of Management.

Allow me to write a few grafs of background, which hopefully will clarify what in the world I’m doing as a guest blogger here at PrawfsBlawg. For the present academic year, I’ve been a visiting professor at the College of Law at Florida State, which is how I met Dan Markel, who has graciously invited me to guest blawg here.    

I don’t have a J.D., so a lot of my econ friends and others were surprised to hear that I’d want to teach in a law school (and, in general, more surprised that a law school would want me to teach!).  But I’ve been a law junkie for a long time. (Last summer my mom gave me a bunch of old stuff from my high school days, and I was amused to find a copy of the Stamford High School Roundtable, where I used to write a column back in the 1980s. I had to smile last summer when I read my column on the SCOTUS nomination of Robert Bork.)

Until this year, my interests in law were mostly in con law and legal theory (people tell me that I’m the only economist they’ve met who knows the difference between original intent and original meaning originalism). I also had a small interest in antitrust (I was extremely lucky as a grad student and got to TA for Franklin Fisher during the Staples-Office Depot merger case and some of the preliminary parts of the DOJ’s case against Microsoft). And then there’s the large interest in “legal” TV shows like LA Law, Ally McBeal, the Practice and Boston Legal (yes, I know, that doesn’t really recommend me to write on a law blog….but it’s what I got).

Last fall I taught two classes to FSU law students: Statistics for Lawyers and Social Insurance. I absolutely loved teaching the statistics class. I’d never taught basic statistics before, and that alone was fun. But it was really great finding and thinking about legal applications to use (for background, I used Finkelstein & Levin’s Statistics for Lawyers, which was very useful). The other class was interesting as well, and I had the added bonus of learning from my students, each of whom had to find and discuss a case that involved the social insurance system in the U.S.

This semester I’m teaching Law & Economics and co-teaching/-hosting an empirical workshop with Jon Klick. Both have been a lot of fun for me so far.

One thing that Dan mentioned might be useful for me to write about is what it’s like to be an economist in a law school. Maybe the most surprising thing to me is how much of the language of economics is spoken by law professors, even those without substantial formal training in economics. Just about every faculty workshop I’ve been to brings some reference to agency theory, selection bias, externalities, and so on. I hear this stuff enough that I’ve started to wonder whether lawyers didn’t come up with these terms first (given economists’ penchant to absorb—some might say take over and warp—other disciplines’ terms and ideas, it wouldn’t surprise me if you all had lots of the ideas first, too).

I’ve also been pleasantly surprised at how well folks in the law school at FSU have treated me. I admit to having had a good bit of anxiety when I got here. It’s a weird feeling to be on the faculty of a professional school in a discipline for which you have no formal training. In fact, people have been welcoming and respectful from the git-go (except Curtis Bridgeman, who calls me mean names and makes fun of my hair—hey Curtis: we can’t all wear $100 suits to work everyday!).

Anyway, hanging out here at FSU has given me a chance to think about moving my research in the law & econ, and in a couple possible cases, the law, direction, and that has been a really wonderful opportunity for me.

Over the next couple weeks, or however long it takes Markel to get wise and banish me back to my lately dormant 20-hits-a-day-except-that-time-I-got-Mark-Halperin-on-the-phone-the-night-before-the-election blog CardCarryingMember, I’ll be sharing my thoughts with you about topics that will hopefully be relevant to law types, most of which will usually have some basis in economics as well. I look forward to any comments you all might have—just, please, no hard fouls.

Posted by Jonah Gelbach on March 9, 2007 at 05:14 PM in Housekeeping | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Rotating In: Jonah Gelbach

Just a quick heads up: I'm pleased to announce that Jonah Gelbach, a visiting prawf at FSU this year from the Economics Dep't at the U. of Maryland, will be joining us for a stint the next few weeks. Actually, Jonah is heading to Jack Chin's neighborhood this fall: he'll be joining the B-school at the U. of Arizona. You can see Jonah's CV here. At FSU, he's been teaching various courses related to empirical methods and law, as well as a class on social insurance, one of his particular interests. He has a blog of his own so we're glad to have him share with us some of the insights and antics he's been demonstrating this year at FSU. Welcome Jonah!

Posted by Administrators on March 9, 2007 at 03:32 PM in Housekeeping | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Monday, January 15, 2007

The Long and Short of it...

Just wanted to say "thank you" to all the folks here at prawfs for having me on this extended guest stay.  This semester will be filled with prep for two new classes, finishing an article in the next month, an essay, and work on two books (sleep?  obviously a luxury!).

Before I go, I wanted to ask a final legal scholarship-type question.  We all know that some law reviews impose word limitations, and thus one should therefore try to confine one's verbosity down to 70 pages or so.  But is there any sort of minimum length?  I ask because I am currently working on an essay - developing a hypothetical into a "thought piece" that I'm planning to present at the Second Annual Contracts conference.  To those of you who have had success in placing essays, how long have they been?

Again, thanks everyone!  Ya'll stay in touch! 

Posted by Miriam Cherry on January 15, 2007 at 06:10 PM in Housekeeping | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Monday, January 08, 2007

Farewell, and a Final Question on Small Classes

It has been delightful to be a visitor here these past few months.  I am very thankful to Dan and the rest of the crew for inviting me, and I hope to re-join for another visit at some point.  I especially enjoyed meeting so many bloggers and blog readers at the party last week.

Before I leave completely, though, I wanted to get some thoughts about teaching small classes.  My federal courts class, which begins tonight, currently has three students enrolled.  I teach seminars that have fewer than ten students, and last year I taught legislation with four students, but having three students in a doctrinal class seems like a particular challenge.  How should I modify my teaching style?  How quickly should I expect the class to move through the syllabus?  Please feel free to comment on any other ways the size of the class should affect the way it proceeds.

Incidentally, a great many spring electives  at Widener are suffering low enrollment ever since we (taking a cue from the ABA's relaxation of its standard on the subject) lessened the residency requirement and permitted students to assume part-time status in their last semester of study.  Have other schools seen the same result occur?

Thanks again for a wonderful visit.  Best wishes to all for a wonderful 2007!

Posted by Michael Dimino on January 8, 2007 at 03:08 PM in Housekeeping | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Monday, January 01, 2007

Happy New Year! Come Celebrate in DC with us!

All of us at Prawfs would like to wish you and yours a happy new year, full of blessings and laughter, insight and serenity, wisdom and love. It's amazing to me that this blog is almost two years old now. A billion thanks for your ongoing engagement and patience as we continue to educate ourselves in public.

Please keep in mind that along with our friends at Concurring Opinions, we are co-sponsoring a happy hour for prawfs visiting for the AALS conference in DC. The event is this Wednesday, January 3d, and the venue will be Cloud, located at One Dupont Circle, Washington, DC (right off Dupont Circle at New Hampshire Avenue). The fun begins at 9pm, and we'll be meeting around the back bar area, where we were last year (if you remember!). Feel free to pass on the info to your colleagues or others who might be interested, including significant others. And if you're feeling especially industrious, please drop me a line in advance so I'll know to look out for you.

Last, it's the beginning of the month, and some of our guests have left the premises or are rotating off shortly. Let me say a word of thanks to Alex Long and Geoff Rapp for their December contributions. Miriam Cherry, Scott Moss, Mike Dimino, and Elaine Chiu will have a couple more posts this week or next. And in the meantime, let me thank Anders Kaye (from TJSL) who has joined us for the next few weeks.

Posted by Administrators on January 1, 2007 at 03:33 PM in Housekeeping | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Thursday, December 14, 2006

Congratulations!

Big congratulations to Tung Yin (Iowa) and Mark Fenster (Florida), two of our PrawfsBlawg alumni! Their colleagues had the good sense to vote them tenure in the last few days. Woohoo! Tung follows Orin Kerr and Dan Solove down the line of blogging junior prawfs who got tenure. There's obviously not enough data yet, but perhaps the title of his co-authored paper, Blogging While Untenured and other Extreme Sports, will be retired soon...

More good news: today is also the birthday of Ted Frank, the voracious wordsmith who often appears in our comments and is the force majeure behind calamities such as Lagniappe and Overlawyered. Just kidding. Happy Birthday, Ted!

Update with breaking news: Jim Chen has just accepted the Deanship of the Brandeis School of Law at the University of Louisville. Congrats Jim! This is fantastic news for legal education mavens. Jim will start his duties there in four weeks or so. As Brian Leiter notes, it will be very interesting to see how Brandeis evolves in light of Jim's commitment to the development of MoneyLaw strategy. Here's one piece of advice, Jim: my closest friend from high school now teaches philosophy of law, among other things, in the philosophy department at the U of L. Be sure to synergize with co-opt Avery Kolers!

Posted by Administrators on December 14, 2006 at 09:47 AM in Housekeeping | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Friday, December 01, 2006

Rotations

Happy December 1st! As the semester winds down, you might be wondering the same things Andy Perlman is: Where's the Thunderous Applause? Prawfs has had some interesting discussions in the past about end of semester homiletics. You may want to check them out also. If you're a prawf at the end of your first (or second or nth) semester, please feel free to share any interesting stories and reflections in the comments.

Anyway, to get you through the doldrums of grading exams, we have Elaine Chiu, Jeremy Blumenthal, Ron Wright, Alex Long, and Adam Scales, slated to join us for parts or all of December. We we will continue to enjoy the delightful provocations of Joe Slater, Scott Moss, Adam Kolber, Geoff Rapp, and Melissa Waters for a few more weeks. We are truly blessed to have so many talents joining us. And we are also grateful for the recent contributions of Avi Bell, Deb Ahrens, Andy Siegel, and Jay Michaelson to our conversations.

Next Thursday and Friday marks the first Young Scholars Half-Baked Ideas Conference that PrawfsBlawg is organizing here in Miami. We are planning on doing this at least on a yearly and perhaps semesterly basis, if it goes well. Exciting times. Also, mark your calendars for AALS week in January in DC. Prawfs is tentatively co-hosting with the good folks at Concurring Opinions a happy hour on Wed Jan. 3d. Location and time to be firmed up soon. In the meantime, have a great weekend.

Posted by Administrators on December 1, 2006 at 04:15 PM in Housekeeping | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Welcome

For the weekend, you might want to check out two new voices in the blogosphere. The other day, USC Law and History Prawf, Mary Dudziak, started the Legal History Blog. Though it is independent, I wonder if it might turn into a ripe target for acquisition from the Caron Blog Empire.

Also, Prawfs alumni, Gaia Bernstein and Frank Pasquale (both of sizzling Seton Hall) have announced the launch of the a new blog: Law & Technology Theory. As Gaia explained to me, the goal of this new venture is to inquire if there is room for a broader approach regarding whether we should have a general theory of law and technology that will formulate general principles of how the law should react to technological change.

They have assembled an international group of young scholars working in the United States, Canada and Australia, who have started to think about the possibility of a counter- specialization trend. They also wanted to create a new forum for discussing ideas that is more open and participatory than the average academic conference, but a bit more focused than the average blog. So they decided to have a blog that would focus on a series of "speakers," with each taking "center stage" for a different week. Chalk this up on the board of Law School Innovation!

Posted by Administrators on December 1, 2006 at 03:56 PM in Housekeeping | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Nice to Meet You, Too...

at the Federalist Society's annual Lawyers' Convention last weekend.  It was a delightful conference, and gave me an opportunity to meet a great number of wonderful people, including several people whose Internet postings I had seen, but whom I had not otherwise been personally acquainted.  The conference featured a startling number of high-profile jurists, practitioners, and academics, including (as is typical) a substantial minority who hold left-of-center postions.  Dave Lat has posted some highlights of the conference on Above the Law.
My journey to my parents' home in Buffalo for Thanksgiving requires that I refrain from blogging from tomorrow to Sunday, but I shall return next week, eager to use any convenient distraction from writing and grading exams.  Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Posted by Michael Dimino on November 21, 2006 at 04:49 PM in Housekeeping | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Prawfs Happy Hour in NYC: Monday Nov. 6 at 8pm

If you're in NYC, please join Ethan and me for drinks and munchies at Calle Ocho this coming Monday night at 8pm on the Upper West Side (Columbus near 81st). Monday nights are Mojito Mondays, so if the pleasure of our company is not the inducement, perhaps the sauce will suffice. If you get the chance to rsvp to me, that would be great, but it's not required. Also, please tell your colleagues (at least the funny and kind ones who don't drool in public). (The excuse? The Fletcher conference at Cardozo.) Hope to see you there!

Posted by Administrators on November 1, 2006 at 03:14 PM in Housekeeping | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Rotations

Many thanks to Kristi Bowman and Brooks Holland for their recent stints. Our other guests will be sticking around for a little longer. In fact, I'm happy to announce that both Miriam Cherry and Mike Dimino have agreed to stay with us until the end of the semester, winding up sometime in December. Additionally, November will see the debut at Prawfs of Melissa Waters (WLU, public int'l), Elaine Chiu (St. John's, crim), and Deb Ahrens (SCarolina, crim), as well as the return of our friends Joe Slater (Toledo, employment), Adam Kolber (USD, neurolaw), and Jeremy Blumenthal (Syracuse, psychlaw). Welcome all!

Posted by Administrators on November 1, 2006 at 01:03 AM in Housekeeping | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Monday, October 16, 2006

Rotations

Many thanks to Bill Araiza for his decanal perspective on the life of law schools these past few weeks.  We're looking forward to seeing him again around these parts in the spring.  In the meantime, I'm pleased to announce a new addition to the guest roster, Alexandra ("Alexi") Lahav, of UConn Law.  Alexi teaches and writes about issues related to Civ Pro, Legal Ethics, and Wal-Mart (more on that to come soon!).  Welcome Alexi, and thanks Bill!

Posted by Administrators on October 16, 2006 at 09:03 PM in Housekeeping | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Thursday, October 12, 2006

Late Entry

Inspired by Andrew Siegel's remarks of yesterday, I'd like to jump in here and make my belated entry as well, with thanks to Dan for the invite, and apologies to all those on whom I will be inflicting my opinions in days/weeks to come.  I hope you have enjoyed the respite.

Posted by Avi Bell on October 12, 2006 at 12:23 AM in Housekeeping | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Signing On (A Bit Late)

Thank you to Dan and his fellow bloggers for inviting me to visit this month.  Though Dan introduced me more than a week ago, I join you today, delayed by the unique combination of academic plate-clearing and a whirlwind three-day weekend at Disneyworld with the kinder.

For the bulk of you who don't know me (and are too lazy to click on the link on the right), I am an Assistant Professor at the University of South Carolina School of Law, where I teach and write primarily about constitutional law and legal history.

In the coming weeks, I hope to offer a diverse set of posts, including some Supreme Court commentary, discussion of a few of my recent and ongoing scholarly projects, some conference promotion, and the requsite navel-gazing serious contemplation of the life of a young(ish) legal academic.  Of course, like all agendas--scholarly and otherwise--that plan is subject to change without notice for any (or no) reason.

I trust I'll have fun.  I hope you will too.

Posted by amsiegel on October 10, 2006 at 02:10 PM in Housekeeping | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Monday, October 02, 2006

Programming note

Many thanks to Mark Fenster for another great return visit. Dave Fagundes and Bill Araiza will be lingering for a few more days, and Mike, Tung, and Miriam are also sticking around for little while longer. I'm happy to announce that Brooks Holland will be returning this month, and please give a warm welcome to some new voices on Prawfs, Kristi Bowman (law, Drake, visiting at Ole Miss this year), and Andy Siegel (law, South Carolina), who will be joining us this week. You can learn more about them by looking at their profiles on the Guests column. Welcome all, and happy October!

Posted by Administrators on October 2, 2006 at 11:42 PM in Housekeeping | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Sunday, September 24, 2006

Thanks for the space

Thanks to Dan and his co-bloggers, Ethan Leib, Rick Garnett, Rob Howse, Paul Horwitz, Matt Bodie, Steve Vladeck, and Orly Lobel for the opportunity to post this week. I hope Dan does not regret the invitation too much.   Whatever the status of blogs, they serve a great function for distributing works that one may not want to develop into full articles.   There is room for the half-baked.  After all, raw cookie dough has become a delicacy, working its way into ice cream and the centers of various forms of chocolatey goodness.  I am willing to bet that my posts this week have been just as nourishing.

All the best.

Posted by Shubha Ghosh on September 24, 2006 at 05:55 PM in Housekeeping | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Friday, September 22, 2006

Rotations and Rosh Hashana.

As Rosh Hashana descends on (some of) us this evening, I just wanted to dash a quick note to the Prawfs community of readers and writers and wish you all a sweet and happy new year, filled with laughter and love, joy and peace. Tis also the season of contrition, so let me ask those whom I have given offense to for their forgiveness. Normally, specific requests for forgiveness are typical, but in the blogversations we have here, I may not know whom I've offended, so please feel free to let me know in an email.

And while I'm at it, let me also welcome Professors Bill Araiza (Loyola LA) and Avi Bell (Fordham and Bar-Ilan), who will be joining us next week as guest contributors. Shana tova and have a good weekend.

Posted by Administrators on September 22, 2006 at 04:41 PM in Housekeeping | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Monday, September 18, 2006

A quick note of thanks

Many thanks to Bobby Chesney for his first time visit here at Prawfs the last few weeks. We wish you well with your new co-adventure with Steve V. and Tung over at www.natseclaw.com, and we are looking forward to seeing you back here in the new year.  Also a warm welcome to returning guest blogger, Mark Fenster, whose first post on this stint can be found here, and to Shubha Ghosh (antitrust/IP law, SMU) who is appearing this coming week for a quick visit before returning in January for a longer sojourn.  Shubha will be doing a series of posts constituting a review essay this week.  Next week, we'll be welcoming Bill Araiza from Loyola Law  in LA.  Our other guest bloggers will be sticking around for a  while longer.  Many thanks all.

Posted by Administrators on September 18, 2006 at 12:10 AM in Housekeeping | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Thursday, September 14, 2006

Reminder: Happy hour tonight in NYC

Just a reminder to NYC area prawfs and readers, please join me and some others for drinks tonight at Calle Ocho, at 446 Columbus (near 81st), on the UWS.  The mojo mojitos and sangria start to pour at 930pm.  If you get a chance to drop me a line to let me know whether you're coming, I'll keep an eye out for you.  And please tell your fun and friendly colleagues who might not be the loyal readers (gulp!) that you are.

Posted by Administrators on September 14, 2006 at 09:36 AM in Housekeeping | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Thursday, September 07, 2006

Who Am I? Why Am I Here?

A quick thank you to the good folks here at Prawfs for inviting me as a guest blogger.  I’m delighted that I’ll have the opportunity to contribute to the dialogue.

My dog Winnie and I recently drove cross-country (okay, I did most all of the driving) so that I could join the faculty of Pacific-McGeorge. 

During the next few weeks, I plan to write about current events and legal developments in some of the areas I study most closely (contracts-employment-business associations, all loosely defined), and you can check out some of my work here.  I will likely also be offering other random and sundry observations on our life in law. 

Warning for those who have allergies:  Some of these observations may contain puns.

Posted by Miriam Cherry on September 7, 2006 at 06:55 PM in Housekeeping | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Introducing the "National Security Advisors" Blog

I am extremely pleased to announce the inception and launch of a new blog, "National Security Advisors," starring Bobby Chesney from Wake Forest, Tung Yin from Iowa, and yours truly... The URL is http://www.natseclaw.com.

The timing is a bit ironic, since Bobby and Tung are both currently visiting with us here at Prawfs, but today's introduction of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (detailed by Bobby both here at Prawfs and in somewhat more detail at "NSA"), Monday's impending five-year anniversary of 9/11, and the extent to which Bobby and I, as Mets fans, have a September that, for once, is free of either drama or regret, all prompted the launch. (Well, okay, maybe not the last one.)

As we explain in our welcome message, "Few areas of law or policy have been as important as national security during the five-year period following 9/11, and none have been as controversial.  We are a group of three relatively-junior law professors who have diverse political perspectives, but who share a commitment to open-minded and even-handed discussion and debate regarding these issues."

Although I'll continue my regular duties here, and will also cross-post here most of the stuff that I publish "over there," I hope that Prawfs readers will trek on over to "NSA" for their national security fix, and, once their stints here are over, to continue to read Bobby's and Tung's excellent work.

Posted by Steve Vladeck on September 7, 2006 at 06:06 AM in Blogging, Current Affairs, Housekeeping, Steve Vladeck | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Friday, September 01, 2006

Rotations and Parties and a small paradigm shift

First a note of thanks to our truly stellar group of guests this past month: Jeff, Paul, Kim, and Michael. Bobby got a late start and so will tarry into September. Joining him in the next few days and weeks we have repeat visits from Tung Yin (Iowa), Dave Fagundes (UChi. Bigelow) and Mark Fenster (UFla.), and new visits from Mike Dimino (Widener), Miriam Cherry (McGeorge), and Bill Araiza (Loyola LA) (who will shed some decanal light on these pages toward the end of the month). Please welcome them with your engagement as they come aboard.

Speaking of nuptials: I'm headed to NY this weekend to attend the wedding that will win the ATL tournament if only because of connections. Dave Lat, here's the scoop: my former roomies, Adam and Steve (your former Crimed boss), are getting 'married' -- I'll proudly recognize it even if damn NY won't. If you're one of the poor saps stuck in the city without a Hamptons invite this weekend, drop a line; a little gathering may yet be planned. Doubtless, that is too last-minute for most of you busy New Yorkers. If so, mark your calendar now for a more official Prawfs happy hour in NYC on Thursday Sept 14th, probably at Calle Ocho, though place and time to be confirmed. Columbia will be hosting its tort law conference that weekend, and I'll be there to find readers jonesing for insights into the "retributive damages" work in progress. With some luck, both Ethan and I will be at the happy hour on the 14th. Please make sure to bring your fellow prawfs to that.

Finally, you may be heartened by the news JJ Goldberg provides in this very interesting article from the Forward, which explains why Israelis now think the recent battles in Lebanon provided substantially greater grounds for optimism than previously thought.

Posted by Administrators on September 1, 2006 at 12:01 AM in Housekeeping | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Wednesday, August 09, 2006

Welcome

Just a quick note to welcome Paul Secunda to our ranks for the rest of August. Paul teaches employment law-related classes at Ole Miss, and is a regular contributor to the Workplace Prof Blog.  You can see his scholarship listed here.  Recently, I had the chance to hear Paul present his provocative (yet persuasive) article at SEALS, where it garnered distinction.  The paper is entitled: The (Neglected) Importance of Being Lawrence: The Constitutialization of Public Employee Rights to Decisional Non-Interference in Private Affairs, 40 U.C. Davis L. Rev. (forthcoming Fall 2006).  Welcome Paul!

Posted by Administrators on August 9, 2006 at 12:56 AM in Housekeeping | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBack

Monday, July 03, 2006

Rotations and Happy Hour

A word of great thanks to Yair, Nicole, Frank, Jason, and Scott, our guest bloggers of recent weeks.  Below, you'll see the debut post of Russ Covey (Whittier, criminal law). In the days and weeks ahead, we have scheduled return visits from Will Baude, Doug Berman, Dave Fagundes, and Fernando Teson, as well as Prawfs debuts by Kim Kessler Ferzan (Rutgers, criminal law) and Bobby Chesney (WFU, national security law).  Welcome (back)!   

Also, I'm interested in putting together a group for dinner (say, around 7pm) on Thursday night of young crim law/procedure scholars in Baltimore. If you're interested, please drop me an email. Here's the happy hour information:

Just wanted to announce the PrawfsBlawg Happy Hour in Baltimore, which we're excited to co-host with the folks over at the Glom.  We'll be meeting at 930pm(ish) on Thursday July 6th at the James Joyce Pub, which is located on 616 S. President St., right near the Marriott Waterfront Hotel, where the Law and Society Conference will be held that weekend.   If you're coming in from DC or elsewhere, there are some maps and driving directions to the pub over here.  Looking forward to seeing you.  Tell your colleagues (at least the ones you like) to join us.

Important: please rsvp to me via email if you can make it or are thinking of coming just so we can get a sense of numbers and appropriate space at the Pub. Thanks.

UPDATE: Given that we'll be meeting at the James Joyce Pub, you may wish to peruse this very interesting report about James Joyce's grandson in the New Yorker--and how Larry Lessig might stop him from copyright misuse!

Posted by Administrators on July 3, 2006 at 08:38 AM in Housekeeping | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Monday, June 05, 2006

Rotations

A quick word of welcome and thanks to Jason Solomon, Brooks Holland, and Nicole Stelle Garnett, who'll be joining us for the next few weeks here.   Frank, Scott, and Yair will also continue dipping in intermittently if conference schedules permit.  In the meantime, many thanks to Sasha Natapoff, Marcy Peek, and Ron Wright for their recent visits with us. We look forward to seeing you again soon.

Posted by Administrators on June 5, 2006 at 03:12 PM in Housekeeping | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Wednesday, May 17, 2006

How's our blogging?

Inspired by Lior's recent post and paper, entitled: “How’s My Driving?” for Everyone (and Everything?) (forthcoming NYU Law Review, Nov. 2006), I was thinking we should take another celebratory moment to note that the other day we passed a milestone: according to our sitemeter, we have passed over 1 million page views and over half a million visitors.  But in the frenzy of celebration of our one year anniversary and our growth in readership, not to mention the near-end of grading for the semester, we have collectively forgotten to ask our beloved community of readers what you would like to see happen in this space in the next year.  So shoot me an email with suggestions about how to redesign the web-page to make it better, whom you'd like to see guest-blog, or how to improve our collective driving...

Posted by Administrators on May 17, 2006 at 11:27 AM in Housekeeping | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Tuesday, May 09, 2006

Welcome

Just wanted to issue a quick welcome to another of our May guest bloggers, Scott Moss. Scottmoss  Scott teaches and writes about employment discrimination, con law and complex litigation at Marquette's law school.  His guesting with us, like others before him including Joe Slater, is a consequence (some might say a benefit!) of commenting on these pages under your real name.  We've invariably enjoyed his reactions to others and now we're excited to have Scott come aboard for the rest of the month with his own provocations for us to mull.  Welcome, Scott!

Later this month Marcy Peek (law, Whittier) and Madhavi Sunder (law, UC-Davis) will be joining us for a few weeks.

Posted by Administrators on May 9, 2006 at 11:35 PM in Housekeeping | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Tuesday, May 02, 2006

Rotations

Just a quick note of thanks to our recent guests who have been helping us pick up the slack while we've been occupied with grading.  A few are (happily!) staying on for the next few days or week, but we're very glad to have introduced you all to the provocations of first-time bloggers Gaia, Gowri, Nelson, Joe, and Sasha.  And, of course, we're thrilled to have Ron Wright and Laura Appleman do return stints with us and to borrow Peggy from Opinio Juris.

While I'm sitting in the casting director's chair, let me note with pleasure the arrival of two old mates who are making their debut on these pages this week.  An economist with a law degree or a lawyer with a Phd in Ec--not sure how he identifies himself--Yair Listokin will begin his career as a prawf later this summer at Yale  the Yale Law School.  His first post is below.  Also beginning this month is Frank Pasquale (law, Seton Hall), who has been a shrewd commentator both here and at Co-Op.  We're delighted to have you both here.  Welcome!

Posted by Administrators on May 2, 2006 at 08:57 AM in Housekeeping | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Monday, April 24, 2006

Greetings

Thanks so much to Dan and the other Prawfs for this opportunity to try blogging.  It's my first time so I hope the veterans will bear with me. I’ve been teaching at Loyola (Los Angeles) for nearly three years now, writing about the criminal justice system, raising my seven-year-old son, and adjusting to LA’s juxtapositions (decaf hybrid pastel Hummer, anyone?) I’m looking forward to contributing to this conversation.

Posted by SashaNatapoff on April 24, 2006 at 04:58 PM in Housekeeping | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Monday, April 17, 2006

A couple more guests lurking

We're very fortunate to have a couple more guests to join our April ranks of visitors.  First is Nelson Tebbe, who teaches professional responsibility, as well as law and religion, at St. Johns's in the NY area.  We also have another blogger in the form of Peggy McGuinness, who you may recognize from either Opinio Juris or from U. of Missouri-Columbia, where she teaches in subjects related to international law.  Our other guests are still helping to hold the fort down for the next couple weeks.

By the way, today was my last "official" class of the semester for criminal law.  One of the pieces of advice I left them with, which I should also follow, was that they should try to avoid allowing too many of the habits of mind -- picking apart others' arguments, contentiousness, etc. -- we inculcate in the classroom from penetrating too deeply into their social relations.  I mention this because I see how hard it is to drop parts of the legal lingo sometimes.  Just this evening I wrote my mother-in-law, who is not a lawyer, to send me a copy of her son's K for me to review.  Seeing this notation, my brother-in-law (the plastic surgeon cum MTV artist) wrote: "I like the fact that you refer to a contract by the letter "K."  Tons of street cred.  I suggest totally pimping out the word by changing it to "kontrax,"   and when you write the word, draw the "K" backwards."  Sigh... First prawf. Now Kontrax.  What other idiot-words will I help generate?  Wait, don't answer that.
 

Posted by Administrators on April 17, 2006 at 10:27 PM in Housekeeping | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Saturday, April 08, 2006

Yet Another New Guest Blogger: Gowri Ramachandran

Thanks to all the permaprawfs for inviting me on for a guest visit!  I’m a visiting professor at FSU with Dan, and in the fall, will be joining Paul at Southwestern.  Add to that my friendships from law school with Ethan and Steve, and I have to admit feeling like some kind of privileged crony, albeit only in the context of Prawfsblawg.

My academic focus is on employment discrimination, constitutional law, federal jurisdiction, and queer/postfeminist theory.  But I’m also an avid follower (and very occasional producer) of film, television, fashion, and other elements of popular culture, in ways that aren’t always separate from my academic work.  So peppered among my thoughts on how to avoid identity politics, without reducing one’s beliefs to what Steven Seidman calls a “politics against identity,” you may occasionally see my passionate response to the latest front page of Sunday Styles—the portion of the New York Times I most love to hate.

So here's hoping my perspective contributes to the diversity of the views presented here, not just along the axes for which I am typically thought of as “different” in the legal academy, but along some other ones, too.

Posted by Gowri on April 8, 2006 at 02:18 PM in Housekeeping | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Wednesday, April 05, 2006

Happy Anniversary Prawfs!

I'll have something more to say later today, but I wanted to make available an open-thread to begin the celebrations.  Wednesday April 5th marks our one year anniversary from when we posted this welcome and just a day later I posted this first reflection on the problems of expressive politics in the context of urinal fragrance devices.  Shortly thereafter, Ethan came aboard, then Hillel and we were off to the races.  I'm very grateful to Ethan and the rest of the gang  (writers and readers) for having helped make this space such an enjoyable and instructive one for me, and I hope for others.  As for those of you who wonder how PrawfsBlawg got its name, it's short for raw law professor blogging.  Raw in that most of us aren't tenured and our ideas are usually not yet fully baked...

Some of our former and future guestprawfs will be offering their thoughts today, in posts and comments on this thread.  Enjoy!

Posted by Administrators on April 5, 2006 at 12:38 AM in Housekeeping | Permalink | Comments (20) | TrackBack

Friday, March 31, 2006

Rotations

A super big thanks to Adam, Orly and Jeremy for their guest stints this past month.  They will be signing off in the next few days, though I'm hopeful they will be back with us again soon.

And for April, we have a handful of guests starting soon, including returning guest-Prawfs Ron Wright (WFU, crim law) and Laura Appleman (Hofstra Law VAP, frawsh at Willamette starting this summer). We also have Gaia Bernstein from Seton Hall, Joe Slater from Toledo, and my colleague Gowri Ramachandran visiting us for the next few weeks.  Gowri will be joining permaprawf Paul Horwitz at Southwestern in LA this summer.  Please give them all a hearty welcome.

Also, I'm excited to note that next Wednesday April 5 marks our 1 year anniversary.  Prawfs will be hosting a "prawfs-in" where we invite all former, current, and future prawfs to weigh in, though we don't quite yet know on what we will do.  We're taking suggestions...

Posted by Administrators on March 31, 2006 at 04:16 PM in Housekeeping | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Tuesday, March 14, 2006

Rotations

Having been off the box for much of the last month, I have been remiss in thanking our most recent batch of guest contributors, including: Linda Beale, Jonathan Zittrain, Ed Lee, and Bill Henderson.  Let me add a welcome to our returning prawf Orly Lobel, as well as to Adam Kolber and Jeremy Blumenthal, both of whom are visiting here for the first time. Welcome.

Let me also take a moment to especially thank Hillel Levin for his many contributions to Prawfs during our first ten months or so. (I can't believe our 1st birthday is coming up in April!!)  Hillel is taking a mini-sabbatical for the next few months.   

We have a great line up of visitors scheduled for the next few months so stay tuned.

Posted by Administrators on March 14, 2006 at 08:29 AM in Housekeeping | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack