Legal Commentary

Laptop Policies

Posted on March 10, 2010
Jonathan Adler has a post on laptop policies, pegged to a Washington Post story on the subject. Jonathan's post moves me to disclose my own laptop policy, which I introduced this semester. My problem with laptops was threefold. First, of course, there was the effect on class discussion...

Legally Blind Grading, Take 3: Are Law Professors Given Too Much Latitude in Boosting or Docking Student Grades?

Posted on March 10, 2010
I have written two posts (here and here) so far about what I call "legally blind grading" in law school, i.e., the grading process under which law professors are deprived of information which would allow them to match exams with names but under which law professors can dock or boost student grades based upon insufficient or exceptional class participation (As you can see from the polls in those posts, many more law professors boost student grades than dock them)...

The Legal A-to-Z Cure

Posted on March 10, 2010
In yesterday's New York Times, the cartoonist Roz Chast explained that she combats insomnia by generating lists of diseases in alphabetical order. Her poster of diseases, including zombiosis, is pretty phenomenal. See Roz Chast, The A-to-Z Cure. I believe Chast's insomnia cure could readily be converted for use by lawyers...

Speedy Recovery to Michael Froomkin

Posted on March 10, 2010
Apologies for my even-lighter-than-usual blogging of late. I've been trying to manage a few different submissions and projects while enjoying a slight reprieve here in glorious Seaside before heading to Phoenix for this conference at ASU put together by Doug Sylvester, who may be yet another Canadian in the American prawf ranks...

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Bad Teachers, Part IL

Posted on March 09, 2010
As President Obama pursues reform of public education in the primary schools, a major issue is what to do about bad teachers. Be assured, however, that bad teaching is not restricted to grades K-12. Law schools ostensibly have measures in place to detect bad teaching...

Half-Bake(r)ed: More on the "Constitutional Seven"

Posted on March 09, 2010
The folks at the Volokh Conspiracy have had a lot of valuable things to say about the tempest-of-the-week concerning Liz Cheney et al.'s ad criticizing the DOJ for not revealing more information about the so-called "Al Qaeda Seven," and criticizing the lawyers themselves for taking on this work...

Privacy Threats That Bridge the Virtual and the Real

Posted on March 09, 2010
Thanks to Dan and the others for welcoming me to Prawfs for the first time. This month, I plan to share some thoughts about the future of legal research, my recent experiences teaching statistics to law students, and, to start, some ideas about my primary area of research, information privacy...

Orbach on The Centennial of the Johnson-Jeffries Fight

Posted on March 09, 2010
2010 marks the hundredth anniversary of the fight between Jack Johnson, the first African American heavyweight champion, and James J. Jeffries, "the great white hope" who failed to win back the title for his race. Barak Orbach has written a wonderful paper on the fight, The Johnson-Jeffries Fight and the Censorship of Black Supremacy, explores the wave of movie censorship arising within days after Johnson's shocking win...

New Sex Offender Law Proposal: Restricting Access to Social Networking Websitest

Posted on March 08, 2010
Kamala Harris is proposing a new law that would forbid registered sex offenders from joining or maintaining accounts on social networking websites. Her website explains: Today, one in five children have been sexually solicited online. Only 25 percent of those children ever told their parents...

Westboro Baptist goes to SCOTUS

Posted on March 08, 2010
The Supreme Court today granted cert in a case arising from the obnoxious military-funeral-protest practices of Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church. Albert Snyder, whose son was killed in Iraq, sued the Church, Phelps, and several of Phelps' family members for intentional infliction, based on signs displayed at the son's funeral and information posted on the Church website...

"Building a Better Teacher" in the NYT

Posted on March 08, 2010
Even though "Building a Better Teacher" is focused on pre-collegiate teachers, I think there's a lot of advice that translates for law school profs as well. The article focuses in part on the debate at education schools over their curriculum, and that debate sounded fairly familiar...

Legally Blind Grading, Take 2: Do You Boost Student Grades For Exceptional Class Participation, And If So, Why?

Posted on March 08, 2010
Last week, I posted an entry asking about whether readers of this blog dock student grades in non-seminar classes based upon insufficient class participation. As of this writing, the results of my poll on the issue are that 22 responders answered "Yes," 27 answered "No," and 10 answered "It depends on the class...

Should Hitler Street be Renamed?

Posted on March 08, 2010
It's not just the South that has morally questionable monuments. The New York Times recently reported on a controversy over a Milltown, New Jersey street named after Henri Phillipe Petain, a French officer who was a World War I hero and in WWII, head of the Vichy government, which participated in the holocaust...

The Church of Scientology (Reformed?)

Posted on March 06, 2010
I will always be grateful, more or less, to the Church of Scientology for providing me with the fodder for one of my first forays into law and religion -- Scientology in Court: A Comparative Analysis and Some Thoughts on Selected Issues in Law and Religion, 47 DePaul L...

The Act of State Doctrine Down Under

Posted on March 06, 2010
In a string of decisions from Underhill v. Hernandez (1897) to W S Kirkpatrick Co., Inc. v. Envt?l Tectonics Corp., Int?l (1989), the U.S. Supreme Court has declined to scrutinize certain sovereign acts of foreign states within their own territory under the ?act of state doctrine...

"Laica" in Mexico

Posted on March 06, 2010
A worth-reading piece by the Becket Fund's Luke Goodrich in the Wall Street Journal: . . . Last week, Mexico's lower house of Congress began the process of amending the Mexican Constitution to formally declare the country to be "laica"?meaning "lay" or "secular...

Amicus Brief - Cert Petition: Legislative Jurisdiction/Extraterritoriality

Posted on March 06, 2010
First, thanks to Dan for inviting me back to Prawfs. This is my third stint, and it's good to be back. I wanted to begin by reaching out to law professors who might be interesting in signing on to a amicus brief in support of a petition for writ of certiorari...

Square Pegs and Round Holes by Chimene I. Keitner (cross-posted at Opinio Juris)

Posted on March 05, 2010
The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments on Wednesday in the case of Samantar v. Yousuf (briefs and transcript available here), which asks the Court to interpret the 1976 Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. Commentators have reported that the Justices seemed ?unconvinced by all sides? (according to Julian Ku at OpinioJuris ) and that none of the lawyers ?seemed to make a convincing case? (according to Lyle Denniston over at ScotusBlog)...

Smith & Garnett on "The Unknown Justice Thomas"

Posted on March 05, 2010
The New York University Journal of Law & Liberty convened, a while back, a conference on "The Unknown Justice Thomas." (You can find video of the conference, here, and the full published symposium here.) My colleague Stephen Smith contributed a paper called "Clarence X?: The Black Nationalist Behind Justice Thomas's Constitutionalism"...

Greetings

Posted on March 05, 2010
My name is Michael Waterstone, and I teach at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. I am also one of our associate deans. My research is primarily in disability and civil rights law, and I also teach civil procedure and employment law. This is my first venture into blogging, and I'm pleased to be visiting Prawfs with my colleagues Kurt Lash and Sasha Natapoff...

Proof of laptop use

Posted on March 05, 2010
I did not learn this until this morning, but apparently the legal world was atwitter for about 30 minutes yesterday morning over rumors, first reported in RadarOnline.com, that Chief Justice Roberts was stepping down for health reasons. (H/T: My colleague, Tom Baker)...

Advice for Foreigners in the U.S. Law School Market: Part III

Posted on March 05, 2010
Part I was an intro to the issue; some of the challenges faced by foreigners in the law school market were discussed in Part II. Here are a few things to consider if you're thinking of a position at a U.S. law school: Get a U.S. degree. Aim for a JSD rather than an LLM if possible (an LLM is regarded by some institutions as a degree aimed for foreign attorneys, rather than a milestone in an academic career)...

Advice for Foreigners in the U.S. Law School Market: Part II

Posted on March 05, 2010
Here's Part I. As a foreigner on the market, what sort of challenges might you expect? Your credentials are a mystery. While many American law schools are familiar with foreign universities, some aren't, and the value of your degrees will not necessarily be immediately apparent to people reading your CV or your FAR form...

Advice for Foreigners on the U.S. Law School Market: Part I

Posted on March 05, 2010
A couple of months ago I got a phonecall from a European acquaintance of mine, who was about to embark on an LL.M. degree in the United States. She had a Ph.D. from a respectable foreign university, and had been teaching for several years as a faculty member in Europe, as well as publishing in various journals, mostly in English...

Thoughts on McDonald v. Chicago

Posted on March 04, 2010
It?s an honor and a pleasure to have a return engagement here at Prawfsblawg. As most readers of this blog already know, proponents of the ?privileges or immunities? theory of incorporation had a bad day this last Tuesday. Representing the petitioners in McDonald v...

"Law, Religion & Ethics: A Multi-Faith Dialogue"

Posted on March 04, 2010
Bob Cochran (Pepperdine) has started a new group blog, "Law, Religion, and Ethics," that will be of interest, I suspect, to many prawfs. The contributors are many, diverse, and (excluding me) interesting. Here, just for a taste, is Steve Smith, on questioning the "boundarires" between "law", "religion", and "ethics"; here's Rob Vischer, on the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and the ways religious law professors engage the academy; and here is Marie Failinger, on the religious liberty of children.

The Socratic Method, Love The One You're With?: Do You Allow Students to Opt Out of Class Participation for a Given Class Session or Sessions?

Posted on March 04, 2010
In a post on The Faculty Lounge, Jacqueline Lipton recounts her experience at the AALS meat market, with candidates invariably indicating that their teaching style is "soft socratic." Professor Lipton then notes that she would probably describe her own teaching style as soft socratic, and I think that most professors would do the same (Personally, I describe my teaching style as soft socratic method combined with the problem method [more on this in a later post])...

All that Glisters is Not Gold (Yes, I spelled Glisters right.)

Posted on March 04, 2010
If you haven't read The Merchant of Venice lately, let me be the first to urge that it is your duty as a lawyer to do so. First, all the cool lawyers (oxymoron?) are reading it. In fact, Shakespeare has been cited in over 800 judicial opinions. Second, you will be amazed that your legal training gives you a different perspective on the play than you had when you read it in high school or college...

The Right to Lie?

Posted on March 03, 2010
Thanks for Dan for what I think is my third stint on Prawfs. Perhaps one of these times I'll get it right. I also blog at our Marquette University Law School Faculty Blog, the Manhattan Institute's Point of Law and on my personal blog Shark and Shepherd...

Paging Dr. Durkheim

Posted on March 03, 2010
Its been a busy week, but I would be remiss to let Campbell Robertson's fine story on murder, capital punishment, and wrongful conviction in post-Katrina New Orleans go by with out a comment. Early one morning in June 2006, when this city was only half full and in many areas still desolate from the flooding after Hurricane Katrina, five men were shot to death in an S...

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