Legal Commentary

A Random Thought re: Immigration Policy

Posted on May 02, 2010
I have a confession. Every now and then I check out The Spine, the TNR blog of Marty Peretz, for whom I spent two glorious summers house-sitting back in 1994 and 1995. That's not the confession though. Really. Marty, I don't think I ever told you this, but somehow, under circumstances I can no longer recall precisely, I broke the ceramic lid on your toilet...

Theme warning: First thing we do . . .

Posted on May 01, 2010
Not that blogs need to have themes, but it occurs to me that the common link between Jonathan's post on the call for a non-lawyer Supreme Court justice and Dave's post on the movie about the Bonds baseball (which I must see) is the public's lack of respect for lawyers, legal knowledge, and the legal system...

Legal Education v. Medical Education

Posted on May 01, 2010
It must be curricular-reform day at Prawfs, as Jeff kicks off with a discussion of Stanford's new model. But the never-ending conversation over how to improve legal education never ends. Reformist eyes often turn to the medical school model of two years of classroom learning, two years of entirely clinical learning (with little or no classroom component), and an apprenticeship of internship/residency...

"The Most Significant Curricular Change Since Langdell": Stanford's New Model for Legal Education

Posted on May 01, 2010
Howard's last post about common sense is on to something, though I'd engage with him on whether you can just tell lawyers, after three years of law school inculcation, just to employ common sense. So was Larry Cunningham's post yesterday at Concurring Opinions, discussing Louis Menand's essay on the anxiety inherent in academic interdisciplinarity...

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Slicing Prosciutto and Other Metaphors

Posted on May 01, 2010
Marc has joined the fray and I don't think he's a wet blanket at all. I started to write a comment and quickly concluded it would turn into a post of its own, suggesting that he's a catalyst. Moreover, wet blankets aren't fun, and I've just spent an hour writing this post, which I wouldn't do if it weren't fun (or if I had a life, but such are the benefits of empty-nester-dom: I can do whatever I damn please on a Saturday afternoon)...

Inculcatorium

Posted on May 01, 2010
Since Howard and Jeff have been talking legal education reform in their interesting recent posts, I thought it'd be fun to be the wet blanket. One of the catch-phrases of legal education reform is "values education." It is often teamed with teaching "skills" but it seems to me to be rather ambiguous by comparison...

Guest blawger Katy Kuh, signing on.

Posted on May 01, 2010
Thank you to Dan for inviting me to join PrawfsBlawg for another guest blawging stint. With my grades just submitted, I'm looking forward to a month of research, writing, and blawging. Oh, and in my spare time, chasing after a 17-month-old who moves at the speed of light, believes everything could benefit from a dip in the toilet, and already identifies the computer (and w-o-r-k, which we have to spell out in this household) as his nemeses...

"Up for Grabs"

Posted on April 30, 2010
I conclude the acquisition by capture section of my property class with a discussion of the controversy that erupted over the ownership of Barry Bonds? 73d home run ball back in 2001. For those who don?t know the story, when Bonds hit the record-establishing homer into the right-field stands at PacBell Park, it ended up in the hands of a fan named Patrick Hayashi...

Rotations

Posted on April 30, 2010
We've had a great month here at Prawfs to celebrate our 5th Anniversary and so it is with great thanks that we bid farewell to our April guests, some of whom may linger as they get some remaining thoughts off their collective chest. We hope to see you here again soon! As May Day approaches, I'll be tuxedo-clad and reaching (in good Lowell fashion) for champagne, strawberries, and now bagels and lox, as others twirl around their maypoles...

It Went By So Fast

Posted on April 30, 2010
Today's post was my last for this guest appearance. As always, it's been a pleasure guesting on Prawfs for the month. Thanks to Dan Markel and everyone at Prawfsblawg for the invitation. Readers who have enjoyed my posts -- or who will miss being annoyed by them -- can continue to follow me on my usual blog, Law Prof on the Loose.

Nonlawyer Justice?

Posted on April 30, 2010
As is usual when a vacancy comes up on the Supreme Court, some people suggest that the President nominate someone other than a sitting judge, to give the Court some more diverse experiential background. That's not such a bad idea -- the Court could benefit from having some people who know what it's like to run for office, manage a large law firm, or run a government agency...

Funny You Should Ask

Posted on April 30, 2010
Before grading comes (come?) office hours. It's generally a low key time; you set aside time for the generally appropriate, sometimes excellent and, sadly, sometimes depressing questions from your students (including those of the "can you please summarize civil procedure to me" variety...

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year - Reprise

Posted on April 30, 2010
Thanks to Dan for inviting me back for the fourth year in a row. I'm soon going to turn my attention to REALLY SERIOUS STUFF and the kind of shameless self-promotion that comes from posting on a mega-elite Top Twelve Blog as opposed to my merely Tier 1 home blog (Legal Profession Blog: A Member of the Law Professor Blogs Network) where I've been pontificating over the last few weeks about God's gift to securities law professors: synthetic CDOs, SEC v...

Still no Bilski

Posted on April 29, 2010
Another sitting of the Supreme Court has come and gone, and the Court still hasn't decided In re Bilski, which promises to be a big deal in patent law. I was teaching Intellectual Property this term, and I kept putting off teaching patentable subject matter in the hopes that the Court would decide the case, but no such luck...

Still no Bilski

Posted on April 29, 2010
Another sitting of the Supreme Court has come and gone, and the Court still hasn't decided In re Bilski, which promises to be a big deal in patent law. I was teaching Intellectual Property this term, and I kept putting off teaching patentable subject matter in the hopes that the Court would decide the case, but no such luck...

More South Park

Posted on April 29, 2010
I wrote last week about the controversy involving South Park and a Fundamentalist Islamic organization over the show's depictions or near-depictions of Muhammad and Comedy Central/Viacom's editing of the show by bleeping all mention of Muhammad's name, as well as a lengthy end-of-show speech about the problems of using fear and intimidation to chill others' speech...

Punitive Damages and Private Ordering Fetishism

Posted on April 29, 2010
In two recent response essays by distinguished torts scholars, Professors David Owen and Michael Krauss, I was charged with "aggravating punitive damages" and instigating the "death of private ordering." Who, me? In seriousness, I have a somewhat more considered and elaborated answer, and I've got a draft of that reply in a new essay up on SSRN by the title of Punitive Damages and Private Ordering Fetishism...

One More Note on Health Care

Posted on April 29, 2010
The argument against the constitutionality of the health care reform legislation continues to evolve. In yesterday's Wall Street Journal, Randy repeats many claims I've already challenged. He has a new one, though. After appearing to concede that any federal statute that is called a tax and that raises revenue is within the taxing power, he asserts that the individual responsibility requirement fails this test because Congress didn't call it a tax...

Details re: upcoming Prawfsfest!

Posted on April 29, 2010
I'm very excited that, with the end of the semester, I can now turn to start writing (or revising) some projects that have been on the back burner. And with that in mind, I also am thinking about the next Prawfsfest!, which is being graciously hosted by our friends at Brooklyn Law School this coming July 6 and 7th (and dinner on Monday the 5th)...

In Praise of Potentially Unconstitutional Laws

Posted on April 29, 2010
It's still early in the process, but I'm wondering if the recent Arizona immigration law will generate some interesting constitutional debate out in public. Obviously we have constitutional controversies all the time. But I wonder if this one will be different in that it won't cut closely along the Democratic-Republican divide...

Something to Teach Harvard Law Students: Emails Can be Forwarded

Posted on April 28, 2010
A (female) Harvard 3L sent another student an email stating, among other things: I absolutely do not rule out the possibility that African Americans are, on average, genetically predisposed to be less intelligent. I could also obviously be convinced that by controlling for the right variables, we would see that they are, in fact, as intelligent as white people under the same circumstances...

"Formation is a very basic existential analysis": Thoughts on the Rent-a-Center Oral Argument

Posted on April 28, 2010
Those who are interested in contract law, arbitration, labor & employment law, and federal courts should check out the oral argument for Rent-A-Center, West v. Jackson. The quote above is from Robert Friedman, counsel for Rent-A-Center, and as a Contracts professor I enjoyed the sentiment...

New Dean at Notre Dame Law School

Posted on April 28, 2010
The news is here. Can an interim appointment to the Supreme Court be far behind?

Here Comes Grading

Posted on April 27, 2010
My exams arrived yesterday, so I will spend the next two weeks in the semiannual ritual of grading them. Blogging may be reduced. As bad as grading is -- and it's pretty bad -- it at least has the advantage that the task is very clear. Most of a professor's life is unscripted...

Upcoming CrimProf Conference at Law and Society, Chicago, May 2010

Posted on April 27, 2010
Friends, those of you coming to Law and Society in Chicago next month should note that the following 12 panels will be part of the "shadow CrimProf" gathering that Alice Ristroph and I have tried (somewhat ineptly) to assemble in the face of the staggeringly odd Law and Society panel rules...

Could you please summarize civil procedure for me?

Posted on April 27, 2010
Unlike some of my fellow Prawfs, I am not yet in the grading phase of the semester- rather, I am still in the answering-of-frantic-questions-about-civil-procedure phase. I am often amazed, in this phase, at how often I receive massively long emails from students, containing a large number of questions that either 1) ask me to repeat for them things that I am absolutely certain I covered in class, or 2) ask me to do the work for them of "summarizing" a relatively complex concept or area of law ("Could you summarize the Erie doctrine for me? What do we need to...

Just in time for exam season

Posted on April 27, 2010
This little video should help students and profs remember some essential concepts from criminal law. (H/t: one of my crim law students!).

Law & Society Panel Preview

Posted on April 27, 2010
If you are attending the Law & Society conference in Chicago, I'd like to put in an early plug for a panel that will be held at 10:15 on the last day of the conference (Sunday, May 30th). The panel is called Government Actions Affecting Information, Expression & Belief Systems: Emerging Issues...

Adventures in Federalism, Judicial Supremacy, and Originalism ... and Other Stuff Too

Posted on April 27, 2010
If you're a Con Law professor scratching around for an exam hypo, you could do a lot worse than the Montana Firearms Freedom Act, a Montana law purporting to restrict federal regulation of firearms manufactured with borders of the state. The operative part of the law (Section 4) declares, in relevant part, as follows: "A personal firearm, a firearm accessory, or ammunition that is manufactured commercially or privately in Montana and that remains within the borders of Montana is not subject to federal law or federal regulation, including registration, under the authority of congress [sic] to regulate interstate commerce...

The Lost History of Usefulness

Posted on April 26, 2010
In my last post, I introduced my forthcoming article, Reinventing Usefulness, by describing three conceptions of usefulness - operable, practical, and commercial. I discuss all three in depth in the article, but I want to focus on commercial usefulness here...

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