Law Students

Critique of the Day: What is Sexual Harassment? by Abigail Saguy

Posted on January 31, 2008
Citation: Saguy, Abigail C. What is Sexual Harassment? From Capitol Hill to the Sorbonne, University of California Press (2003).DescriptionThis book is a comparative empirical study of sexual harassment law in the United States and France. Using mixed methods of 1) in-depth interviews with prominent feminist activists and sexual harassment scholars and managers of American and French companies, 2) a content analysis of legal texts and popular mainstream media articles about sexual harassment that was then coded into variables that were empirically assessed, and 3) short interviews of French and American managers and lawyers to assess how they would respond to eleven different sexual harassment scenarios, Saguy paints a relatively full and compelling portrait of the similarities and differences in sexual harassment law between the United States and France...

It Started As A Comment: Why I Am Not a Marxist

Posted on January 31, 2008
But it's too long. I'll put it here, a response to Patrick O'Donnell on why I am not Marxist:Wow, thanks Patrick! I love your bibliographies.To be fair and not snide, my critique of the Marxist critique of relative autonomy of law was in the spirit of Critical Race Theory's critique of Critical Legal Studies' trashing of legal rules...

Speaking of "Norms", What Do Sociologists Mean By "Normative"?

Posted on January 30, 2008
In addition to my posts on "is the word 'normative' academic jargon" here and here,a political theorist friend asks:Why do sociologists use "normative" in a different way other than the common understanding? I found it so confusing when I encountered this secondary usage: a sociologist of deviance I knew used it to mean "conforming to expected behavior"; as in, "the opposite of deviant...

Googling Reveals Norms, Settles Many a Debate

Posted on January 30, 2008
Apropos of the previous post on whether "normative" is "academic jargon" (an issue which you all should still vote to determine, although it looks like The Dude is winning this argument), a Google search revealed this thread from Ask Metafilter (from four years ago) when searching for "normative jargon":What does "normative" mean? Is it a useful word? I only ever see it used in obscure, academic writing, which makes me suspect it's worthless...

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Because You'll Judge Me No Matter What

Posted on January 30, 2008
In the end, this will go above the couch, for the bargain price of $7.95 for a 16"x20" giclee poster print from Winkflash, and an on-sale $10 (buy one, get one for $0.01) black wood frame from Aaron Brothers. I dunno. I like it. This and the photograph of the Calder mobile at the National Gallery...

The Random Five

Posted on January 30, 2008
1. Whenever I walk through a steam vent from the underground subways or the tunnels on campus, I can't help but hear the theme song to "Shaft" and strut a little. "Who's the man that would risk his neck for a brother man? Shaft! Can ya dig it?" Admit it...

Jeremy Freese Defines "Normative" w/r/t Sociology

Posted on January 30, 2008
An answer to the question!The question:Why do sociologists use "normative" in a different way other than the common understanding?The answer (which will no doubt be supplemented in the comments):?Normative? has two separate senses and what is considered the primary usage differs...

Norms, Normativity, Normalcy in the Academy, or WTF is that Jargon?!

Posted on January 29, 2008
Among other startling revelations of the past weekend, which I'll blog on later, it has come to my attention that I'm occasionally prone to slipping in "academic speak" in casual conversation with non-academics.You know what I mean by "academic speak...

Excerpt of the Day

Posted on January 29, 2008
From What is Sexual Harassment: From the Capital Hill to the Sorbonne by Abigail Saguy:THE INADEQUACY OF ESSENTIALIST NATIONAL CHARACTER EXPLANATIONSThat sexual harassment is conceptualized differently in the United States and France makes intuitive sense to many people...

Movie Review: Atonement

Posted on January 28, 2008
Not quite as good as the book. And yes, I did like the book, a lot. I like imaginative historical fiction, and this one was beautifully written. Appropriate, for a book about the power of words to destroy lives or express remorse or attempt atonement...

judge me, judge me, say that you judge me

Posted on January 25, 2008
I'd print these as 5"x7" or 8"x10"; I'm going to blow up to 16"x20" giclee prints some wonderful photography of Larry Solum's. But what do you think of these? Frameable?

Movie Review: Persepolis

Posted on January 25, 2008
Beautifully drawn, visually stunning, and emotionally resonant. As good as the books. Worth seeing on the big screen.This is no light praise. I am a big graphic novel fan. Praise for Marjane Satrapi's "groundbreaking" memoir is well deserved. They assign the book at West Point for good reason...

Work/Family Articles and Books

Posted on January 25, 2008
I assembled a list of links to mainstream media articles and popular press books to post on the class website for my Empirical Analysis of Gender Discrimination class (okay, that is not the real title of the course, but you get the idea). Perhaps you would also be interested...

Big Vegetable

Posted on January 25, 2008
For a few weeks during finals last term, I was hardly eating except when food was magically brought to me by the nice pizza guy or even more nicely, by The Dude. But except for those non-pizza meals, I wasn't getting much protein or vitamins. I ate a lot of cereal and pizza...

Marginalia

Posted on January 25, 2008
Ben Wolfson has a most lovely post about reading books in which his mother has scribbled (helpfully) in the margins, and how re-tracing her thoughts and translations is endearing, charming, and humanizing:I'm moved to post this because one of the old books with which I came away a few weeks ago was a copy of Frisch's Homo Faber that she read while taking classes at, I assume, a UCLA extension program when teaching in LA...

Stupid Monkey Commands

Posted on January 24, 2008
In which I finally sort of start understanding how to do basic commands in STATA:My task:1. Figure out the path to the sampledataset.dta file2. Compute the Mean and Standard Deviation of the sample_variable3. Figure out how many standard deviation units below the mean the figure 19 is4...

A Modest Update

Posted on January 24, 2008
After the freakout of leasing my apartment before finding a new one and going into conniptions over the thought of paying double rent for a month, everything is settled. I got the rent deposit back, miraculously, did not pay as much as I thought I might have to (as in, total was under $2000) for the new place, and oh yes, I have a new place...

Tamanaha and Solove on Legal Education, Take Three

Posted on January 23, 2008
(Be sure to go to the original posts to read the full versions. They are both quite compelling.)Brian Tamanaha has yet another provocative, interesting post on what is wrong with legal education:The accreditation process is justified as the means to insure a quality legal education so that the public will be served by competent lawyers...

The Significance of Heath Ledger's Death

Posted on January 22, 2008
I found out that Heath Ledger died today through Googlechat:The Journalist:heath ledger is dead!that is your pop culture news brief of the dayi thought for sure we'd hear about britney spears committing suicide orsomethingbut not this guyAnd then she sent me links to the Washington Post and the New York Times, which grew in length and detail over the course of the day...

True Colors

Posted on January 22, 2008
Good question from Dean and Friend Jim Chen:So here's the question. Imagine yourself a member of the hippest clique in today'slegal academy, doubly credentialed interdisciplinarians. You are attending aconference with equal numbers of professors in law and in your nonlegal discipline...

Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Posted on January 21, 2008
Here are a few good posts in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr.:Adrien Katherine Wing at BlackProf on "Our Kind of People"Jon Hanson on The Situationism of Martin Luther King, Jr.Mary Dudziak on Thurgood Marshall and Martin Luther King, Jr.Frank Pasquale on Social Equality, Fellowship, and LoveMichael Dorf on MLK v...

Wow, Thanks!

Posted on January 21, 2008
My temper tantrum late last night, as I was trying to read STATA guides (a weird use of time, I felt, when I could have been reading interesting articles on gender discrimination), was answered kindly and sensibly by Jeff Yates of Voir Dire:Belle, stupid monkey commands and feeling frustrated and inept for no good reason are all an integral part of the development of a social science scholar...

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know/Read on Interdisciplinary Legal Scholarship

Posted on January 21, 2008
(Posts in bold are the "must read" posts)1. Original Post by Brian Tamanaha at Balkinization.2. Brian Leiter asks for comments . Read Matt Lister's and John Oberdiek's comments and Tamanaha's response.3. Dan Solove has a thoughtful response at Concurring Opinions about the benefits that do accrue to students from having interdisciplinary teachers...

I Hate STATA and I Hate You Too

Posted on January 21, 2008
STATA is the worst program in the history of the world, and if I didn't need to know how to read/do statistics better, I'd want to drop the class. If I wasn't concurrently enrolled in an awesome Empirical Analysis of Gender Discrimination course, I would definitely drop it, except that I actually want to get an article out on sexual harassment by the summer, and I sort of argue for the use of empirical analysis of discrimination by courts and the EEOC...

Tamanaha and Solove on the High Cost of Legal Education

Posted on January 18, 2008
Brian Tamanaha clarifies his post on why interdisciplinary studies may be bad non-elite law schools:My point was not to be anti-intellectual but to get us to think about a growing crisis in non-elite law schools.Signs of the crisis are evident in many recent reports...

An Essay on Safety and Exercising Judgment in the Face of Judgment

Posted on January 18, 2008
I went to college in one of the safest cities in America--Irvine, CA. Low crime rates. Good crime stats at the college too, and there were plenty of blue safety lights and night walking programs. But there was a big park in the middle (Aldrich Park) that I would never want to walk through unescorted at night, just because it was so dark...

Responses to Tamanaha on Interdisciplinary Legal Studies

Posted on January 17, 2008
1. Original Post by Brian Tamanaha at Balkinization.2. Brian Leiter asks for comments . Read Matt Lister's and John Oberdiek's comments and Tamanaha's response.3. Dan Solove has a thoughtful response at Concurring Opinions about the benefits that do accrue to students from having interdisciplinary teachers...

In Which I Discover That I Am The Demographic Trend

Posted on January 17, 2008
From the Washington Post, an article on young professionals who choose to have children while still relatively young:Rexroth, a former congressional aide, and her husband, Philip, 27, who works for the Department of Homeland Security, are defying the norm for their class and age group: They are raising a child...

Question

Posted on January 17, 2008
Surely, but surely, two able-bodied and relatively fit young women can load up and unload a 1 bedroom apartment?I live on the ground floor, and in my future place, on the first floor right past the lobby. The heaviest things I own are an Ikea full-sized Daselv bed frame with a foam mattress (truly, it benefits me that I am young and my spine is correctly aligned); two big 18 gallon tubs of books (okay those are heavy, but two of us can lift onto a dolly, and two off us can unload off a dolly); several more boxes of books (ditto); a chest of drawers which will be emptied, and an arm-less chair that I have lifted by myself...

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