Academic

Obama versus Clinton, county by county

Posted on June 06, 2008
Herewith an intriguing county-by-county look at the 2008 Democratic presidential primary:Barack Obama's counties are in purple; Hillary Clinton's, in green.The comparison with the county-by-county results of the 2004 presidential election is also interesting:The 2004 map follows the color coding that has become familiar since the 2000 presidential election: Democratic counties (Kerry) in blue, Republican counties (Bush) in red...

Schattenfreude II

Posted on June 05, 2008
The dying day weaves sunset's rich brocadeOn shoulders lithe and bare. As shadows fade,Emergent twilight's tender hands caressYour head beneath a crown of light and shade.A quatrain to accompany the original Schattenfreude.

A campaign season for the ages

Posted on June 05, 2008
VictorVanquishedBarack Obama's triumph over Hillary Clinton for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination will be the subject of intense popular and academic scrutiny for years to come. What blogs can do is to capture the heat of the moment and — variable coding skills permitting — to deliver multimedia, bit by byte, to a voracious online audience...

Literary Warrant [31]

Posted on June 05, 2008
"It's hot, real hot. The summer has broken all heat records and those chunks of Antarctica that have broken away have pushed water levels so high that you're surrounded by water. But no chunks of ice. At first you like the heat; it's like having your own hot tub...

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Resilience, in disaster relief as in environmental innovation

Posted on June 01, 2008
Two recent news items, appearing together in the May 31, 2008, issue of The New York Times, highlight that jurisdynamic qualities, resilient decisionmaking and pragmatic judgment.First, cyclone relief in Myanmar:They paddle for hours on the stormy river, or carry their sick parents on their backs through the mud and rain, traveling for miles to reach the one source of help they can rely on: Buddhist monks...

Law among the ruins

Posted on May 30, 2008
Law Among the RuinsTwo paintings by Sir Edward Burne-Jones. Left: King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid (1884). Right: Love Among the Ruins (1893-94).Herewith a new paper, Law Among the Ruins:Hurricane Katrina broke America's collective heart. No previous natural disaster in the nation's history inflicted a grimmer toll...

Dealing with the Polar Bear

Posted on May 29, 2008
There has been a lot of hoopla and controversy focused on the Fish and Wildlife Service's (FWS) recent listing of the polar bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The FWS is taking flak from all sides. Alaska, Canada, and many US industries argue that the agency used insufficient science to designate the bear as threatened, and that the listing will bring doom and gloom to our economies...

Remember the quagga

Posted on May 28, 2008
Olivia Judson, Musings inspired by a quagga, The New York Times: The Wild Side blog (May 27, 2008)The hall is hushed, like a church. No one else is here. The only sound is the clicking of the heels of my shoes. I walk up and down, looking at the animals...

Literary Warrant [30]

Posted on May 28, 2008
What has come to the fore — at least in the West — is the dream of total communication itself. Could anything be more desirable and innocent than the superconductivity of electronic media as they arouse the illusion of complete transparency and universal access? In the revolution of the Information Age, openness, communicability, transparency, have become slogans as inspiring as Kant's "Dare to know" used to be...

The detail of the pattern is movement

Posted on May 27, 2008
The detail of the pattern is movement . . . .T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton, Four Quartets (1943)Herewith the concluding lines to Burnt Norton, the first of T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets:The detail of the pattern is movement,As in the figure of the ten stairs...

Brooklyn Bridge

Posted on May 23, 2008
Brooklyn Bridge is 125 years old. To celebrate, Jurisdynamics presents Hart Crane's poetic tribute, To Brooklyn Bridge:Hart Crane, To Brooklyn BridgeHow many dawns, chill from his rippling restThe seagull's wings shall dip and pivot him,Shedding white rings of tumult, building highOver the chained bay waters Liberty —Then, with inviolate curve, forsake our eyesAs apparitional as sails that crossSome page of figures to be filed away;— Till elevators drop us from our day ...

Too cruel anywhere

Posted on May 23, 2008
As the 2008 presidential primaries wind to a close, Hillary Clinton invokes the assassination of Robert Kennedy as a reason not to end her campaign. In response to suggestions from reporters and Barack Obama's campaign that she should quit the race, Senator Clinton replied: "[H]istorically, that makes no sense...

The love song of the Delaware Court of Chancery

Posted on May 20, 2008
By way of Red Lion Reports, I've learned of The Love Song of the Delaware Court of Chancery. It is an awe-inspiring adaptation of T.S. Eliot's classic poem, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Enjoy!Let us rule then, you and I,When there?s theft of corp?rate opportunityLike a patient over-billed by doctors able;Let us read through certain less well-researched briefs,The nimbly wrought conceitsOf high-paid lawyers in nearby hotelsWho work so hard all day for corporate shells;Days that follow, full of insipid argumentOf questionable intentThat lead some to such aggravating questions ...

Law's double helix

Posted on May 19, 2008
?Beauty is truth, truth beauty,? ? that is allYe know on earth, and all ye need to know.John KeatsOde on a Grecian Urn (1819)The concluding couplet in John Keats's Ode on a Grecian Urn (1819) — ?Beauty is truth, truth beauty,? — that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know...

The Double Helix

Posted on May 18, 2008
James Watson's memoir, The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA, has been described by Sylvia Nasar as "unique in the annals of science writing." The Double Helix describes a "discovery . . . of a magnitude comparable, in terms of scientific and social significance, to the breakthroughs that led to the splitting of the atom and the invention of the computer...

I've been delivered

Posted on May 16, 2008
The WallflowersI've been deliveredBreach (2000)In many ways, this lyrically rich song is an anthem for Jurisdynamics. From the opening lines — nothing's hard as / getting free from places / I've already been — to the closing — I can't fix / something this complex / any more than I can build a rose — I've been delivered expresses some of the core principles of complexity theory...

The wives and times of William O. Douglas

Posted on May 15, 2008
A warm and welcome e-mail message from Thomas E. Baker showed the error of my ways. In The Mystery and the Mastery of the Judicial Power, 59 Mo. L. Rev. 281 (1994), I asserted that William O. Douglas is the only Supreme Court Justice ever to marry a law clerk...

Trouble in bear country

Posted on May 15, 2008
As rising temperatures change life on a global scale, we should not be surprised that Ursus maritimus, the eponymous bear of the far north, has now come under the aegis of the Endangered Species Act.Threatened

Sugar, sugar

Posted on May 14, 2008
  Memorandum  Fellow members of the Barack Obama campaign, we're about to seal the deal. We just scored endorsements from NARAL and John Edwards. One little matter does warrant our attention:In addition to bitter and cling, please remind Senator Obama to drop the word sweetie from his vocabulary:Our candidate is the smoothest orator in the recent history of American politics...

Just do it: Obama's victory lap in Eugene, Orgeon

Posted on May 11, 2008
Above: a brilliant piece of political photography by Bruce Ely of the Associated Press, published in connection with the Washington Post's coverage of Barack Obama's campaign stop in Eugene, Oregon.

Almost heaven

Posted on May 10, 2008
John Denver, Country RoadsAlmost heaven, West VirginiaBlue Ridge MountainsShenandoah River —Life is old thereOlder than the treesYounger than the mountainsGrowing like a breezeCountry roads, take me homeTo the place I belongWest Virginia, mountain mamaTake me home, country roadsAll my memories gather round herMiners' lady, stranger to blue waterDark and dusty, painted on the skyMisty taste of moonshineTeardrops in my eyeCountry roads, take me homeTo the place I belongWest Virginia, mountain mamaTake me home, country roadsI hear her voiceIn the morning hour she calls meThe radio reminds me of my home far awayAnd driving down the road I get a feelingThat I should have been home yesterday, yesterdayCountry roads, take me homeTo the place I belongWest Virginia, mountain mamaTake me home, country roadsCountry roads, take me homeTo the place I belongWest Virginia, mountain mamaTake me home, country roadsTake me home, now country roadsTake me home, now country roads

Hillary's last great hope

Posted on May 09, 2008
From Hillary Clinton's explosive interview staking claim to a "broader base" among "hard-working Americans, white Americans":West Virginia and Kentucky are the next battleground for swing, working-class voters. These are the people you have to win if you're a Democrat in sufficient numbers to actually win the election...

The platypus genome

Posted on May 08, 2008
The platypus genome has been sequenced. Some of the cooler details:Sex determination. It has been known that platypuses have not one but five (!) pairs of sex chromosomes. Male platypuses exhibit an XYXYXYXYXY genotype. And those sex chromosomes bear some connection to the ZW sex determination system found in birds...

Are administrative patent judges unconstitutional?

Posted on May 06, 2008
Apparently, yes:As amended in 1999, 35 U.S.C. § 6 authorizes the Director of the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) to appoint all administrative patent judges of the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences [BPIA]. That method of appointment is almost certainly unconstitutional, and the administrative patent judges serving under such appointments are likely to be viewed by the courts as having no constitutionally valid governmental authority...

Loving

Posted on May 06, 2008
By way of The Daily Kos and Pharyngula, I've learned that Mildred Jeter Loving died on May 2, 2008.Mildred Loving and her husband, Richard, were the subject of Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1. (1967), the Supreme Court case that invalidated laws prohibiting interracial marriages...

A campaign picture worth a thousand words

Posted on May 05, 2008
The above image is what Fox News used to illustrate Hillary Clinton's announcement that she had challenged Barack Obama to a Lincoln-Douglas debate. A tip of the stove-top hat to The Faculty Lounge, Feminist Law Professors, and Bitch Ph.D..And in the interest of preventing that image from becoming too strongly associated with the real Lincoln-Douglas debates, the ones that took place 150 years ago and involved a Democratic Senator from Illinois who would go on to win his party's nomination for President, I offer this image from 1858:

Benediction

Posted on May 05, 2008
In response to Red Lion Reports' exam-inspired "Prayer for a busy day," Jurisdynamics offers yet another benediction. Herewith Numbers 6:24-26:24 The Lord bless you and keep you:25 The Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you:26 The Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace...

Jazzfest 2008

Posted on May 05, 2008
The New York Times took note of New Orleans' annual Jazz and Heritage Festival, a.k.a. Jazzfest:Like the city it celebrates, the annual New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival is steeped in local memory. . . .At this year?s Jazzfest it was clear that New Orleans performances have added a new and possibly permanent custom: an acknowledgment of the scars left by [Hurricane Katrina]...

The Law of Rock

Posted on May 04, 2008
By way of the Daily Californian, Jurisdynamics and MoneyLaw have learned a matter of earthshaking importance in legal education:Josh Keesan, a law student at the University of California-Berkeley, has recorded The Law of Rock, Volume 1. To the best of my knowledge, this album represents the first, full-length, studio-recorded effort to express legal doctrines as works of rock 'n' roll...

Rhapsodizing further on insects

Posted on May 02, 2008
Elaborating further on Rhapsody in iridescent blue: A quartet from "The Theater of Insects," in Jurisdynamics' preferred variation on the theme of synesthesia:I. The Theater of Insects RevisitedImages from Jo Whaley, The Theater of Insects, © 2000-2007...

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