Legal Commentary

Signing Off

Posted on January 02, 2010
I want to thank Dan for giving me the chance to blog here this month. Thanks, too, to all those who commented. It's been a fun time, and I hope to do it again soon. To everyone, I hope you have a wonderful new year.

Data collection, the pursuit of knowledge, and intellectual property rights

Posted on January 02, 2010
First, I'd like to thank Dan and the rest of the Prawfs gang for inviting me to guest blog here - it is truly an honor. My posts are usually relegated to a blog with a much smaller following that I run with co-editor Andy Whitford. As Dan noted I am a professor of political science at Binghamton University...

Thanks to the Prawfs Community

Posted on January 02, 2010
It has been a treat to join PrawfsBlawg as a guest blogger for the month of December. My thanks to all for reading and commenting, and my gratitude to Dan for inviting me to participate. I look forward to seeing many of you at the Prawfs Happy Hour on Thursday at the Whiskey Blue Bar in NOLA...

Rotations

Posted on January 01, 2010
Happy new year everybody! It's a brand new month, and so it's time to welcome some new and returning voices to the conversation. Please welcome Lyrissa Lidsky (UF), Caleb Mason (SW), and Jeff Yates (SUNY Binghampton in Poli Sci)! We're also excited to welcome back Wes Oliver (Widener)...

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AALS, Elvis' 75th Birthday, and a Touch of Honky Tonk Music

Posted on January 01, 2010
The scheduling of AALS was this year was a stroke of near-genius. The organizers managed to have the conference overlap with Elvis' 75th Birthday -- which falls on a Friday night. Perhaps the organizers can be faulted for not having the event at the Peabody Hotel in Memphis, or maybe even a venue in Nashville (though Nashville rarely does Elvis well, odd I know, but true), but that is at most a minor flaw...

Couple of teaching thoughts

Posted on December 31, 2009
A couple random teaching-related thoughts. First, take a look at two posts from Jacqueline Lipton (and the Comments) at Faculty Lounge on evaluating faculty on both teaching and scholarship. Second, in my upper-level electives (Fed Courts and Civil Rights), I use a paper/essay exam hybrid the primary evaluation--students choose one topic from a list ("What's the worst doctrine?" or explain the significance of a quotation or comment n the constitutionality of some proposed legislation) and write an essay tied to the doctrine, theory, and ideas covered in the course...

Crime Decline Conundrum

Posted on December 30, 2009
With aviation terrorism and a still lackluster employment market dominating year end headlines, the one piece of good news appears to be a fairly widespread decline in homicides in major cities. New York, as trumpeted in yesterday's NYtimes (read Al Baker's reporting) had a year with fewer homicides than any year since 1963 (essentially before the modern crime wave was evident)...

AALS Happy Hour in NOLA: Thurs Jan 7th, 9pm at the Whiskey Blue Bar, W Hotel

Posted on December 28, 2009
Greetings all! Hope you've had a wonderful holiday weekend. I'm excited to announce that we have settled on a space for next week's gathering in New Orleans for AALS. We'll be meeting at the Whiskey Blue Bar, which is in the W Hotel, located at 333 POYDRAS ST NEW ORLEANS LA 70130...

Choose My Midlife Crisis. Sponsorship Opportunities Available.

Posted on December 26, 2009
Readers, I turn 40 today. As Dante said, midway through the journey of my life, I find myself within a forest dark. As usual, I turn to you for help. For a limited time -- and isn't that kind of the point? -- I invite you to choose my midlife crisis. I am wide open to suggestions...

Tiger Woods, or Why I Am a Bad Person

Posted on December 23, 2009
I must admit that I have been following the Tiger Woods story. Not seeking it out, exactly, but not turning away from it, either. I haven't purchased a copy of "Us," but I did a read a copy of "People" in the doctor's office. Pretty eagerly, in fact. Perhaps I am a bad person...

Sundry

Posted on December 23, 2009
My invariably talented colleague Shawn Bayern puts the fun(k) in funky FSU. Yes, as you suspected, he now has a techno music album up for sale on Amazon. I think some of these tunes might have appeared on a disc he made for Ben-ben. Buy it here. Out of curiosity, what were folks' reax to the pieces today in the NYT re: wikileaks, polarized Scotus clerk careers, quasi anti-vegetarianism (in the name of plants' right to life!), and organ selling?? FWIW, I think Satel's case for modified incentives for organs is quite strong; I'm a little nervous about widespread use...

David Schleicher and I attack zoning for industry

Posted on December 23, 2009
I have already posted my distaste for New York City's dysfunctional zoning regime that excludes residential uses from industrial zones. for those of you who are interested in zoning, here is the article that David Schleicher and I wrote, forthcoming in a U...

Space Remains of the Space Day in 3D. In Space.

Posted on December 23, 2009
In the alterna-world of Facebook, I have ragged on Avatar. Not so much because it's not a fantastic visceral experience, full of awe and wonder, but because it is also godawful. I am not recommending that people not see it. It's fantastic. It's just that it is simultaneously terrible...

Berman on instant replay

Posted on December 22, 2009
Joseph has started quite the conversation on instant replay and standards of review. Mitchell Berman weighs in at Slate today.

2010 AALS Annual Meeting

Posted on December 22, 2009
I'm looking forward to attending the 2010 AALS Annual Meeting, my first, which is being held in New Orleans from January 6-10. The AALS has assembled a terrific program. There are so many panels I can't count them all! Having done a first-pass through the program, several offerings caught my eye...

The Ongoing Bush II DOJ Saga

Posted on December 21, 2009
Much of the history about Bush II and the DOJ is well known: the politically motivated hiring of Federalist Society members and graduates of law schools such as Regent, the blacklisting of liberals, the politically motivated firing of U.S. Attorneys, etc...

Our Student Bodies, Ourselves

Posted on December 21, 2009
Maybe it?s because of the current glut of apocalyptic movies, or the closing of the decade, or helping students scramble for jobs, but recently I?ve been thinking a lot about the bursting of legal academia?s bubble and what it means ? and will mean ? for law professors...

All-Nude Exam Writing

Posted on December 19, 2009
At the Faculty Lounge, Tim Zinnecker has a post complaining about students confusing "it's" and "its" on their exams. One commenter who identifies himself as a law student notes that he recently misused the word on a recent exam but, because time was short, was required to "hurry right along, and there just wasn't any time to correct errors...

Teaching Undergraduates

Posted on December 19, 2009
This past semester I taught a seminar for undergraduates in the UGA Honors Program. It was a great experience overall and one that I would repeat, but not because of the compensation package (a few hundred dollars of extra travel money). The class was entitled "Climate Change, Sustainability, and the Law," which is a rather grand title for a one-hour pass/fail class...

Estate Taxes and Natural Experiments

Posted on December 18, 2009
As the NYT reports this morning, the controversial estate tax is going to enjoy a one year repeal before it arises again in 2011. Empiricists: now's your chance to start looking at the tax effects on death. As the Congressman says, "If you are at the checkout counter, you might want to expedite things...

Tiger Woods and the Wall Street Journal

Posted on December 18, 2009
There's a fascinating story in the WSJ about efforts by Tiger Woods to hide past indiscretions. However, this paragraph within the story reminded me that Tiger is not the only one who made a deal with the tabloids: The woman purportedly photographed with Mr...

Anticipating teaching Iqbal

Posted on December 18, 2009
One (I would argue the only) benefit to having civ pro as a spring-semester course is that I get an extra five months to digest the events of the prior term and figure out how to incorporate them into the class and how they change everything I'd done previously...

One More Pain in the Ass: Holiday Cards in the Age of Facebook

Posted on December 18, 2009
***WARNING: THIS POST INVOLVES NO LAW. REPEAT: NO LAW*** It used to be bad enough?designing a holiday card to send to friends you haven?t laid eyes on for decades. First, spend days selecting the perfect picture from the past year, the one that captures the essence of your beautiful family...

Why no philosophy of language in Law School?

Posted on December 18, 2009
We are in the business of interpreting words, so it seems odd that prominent philosophers of mind, meaning, and language are virtually invisible in legal scholarship. Aside from Michael Moore (the jurisprude, not the movie maker), I cannot think of any legal academics who have written about the relationship between semantics and moral theory...

"A Law School Carol"

Posted on December 18, 2009
This story ("Going to law school? Proceed with caution") discusses and links to a video that is making the rounds: Make no mistake: A Law School Carol is no heartwarming holiday tale of redemption. The computer-animated video, which has been circulating on YouTube for several weeks, focuses on a law student named Steve who is visited by the ghost of Ralph Marley's disappointing legal career (Ralph Marley being the law student who used to rent Steve's apartment and now does document review somewhere in New Jersey)...

What's Under Construction in Copenhagen?

Posted on December 17, 2009
I'm in Copenhagen for the UN climate conference this whole week. Below is a cross-post of something I wrote for Grist, and I'll be posting more here as we hit the final days of the conference. If you're interested in more details, the New York Times just posted this story about the current play of negotiations...

Waiting for "The Call"

Posted on December 16, 2009
My environmental law exam is set to start in a few minutes, and so I've come to the office early to sit here and wait for "the call." By "the call," of course, I mean the hypothetical call from the registrar or someone else that I could conceivably receive sometime during the next three hours informing me that something has gone terribly, terribly wrong on my exam...

Mack Brown's $2 million raise

Posted on December 16, 2009
Having complained about Jim Calhoun's $1.6 million salary, I think I'm obligated to take issue with a raise that dwarfs Calhoun's entire salary. Mack Brown is now making $5.1 million a year as a football coach through the year 2016 (or until the next raise)...

The Power Of A Single Sentence: Traffic Stops

Posted on December 16, 2009
I wonder how often the Supreme Court has nonchalantly wiped off the law books an entire jurisprudential debate with one blithe sentence. That is exactly what the Court did last term in Arizona v. Johnson, 129 S. Ct. 781 (2009). For very good reasons reflecting the Court?s own muddles, federal and state courts had for many years struggled to define the contours of the police?s search power during traffic stops, and unsurprisingly had come up with widely varying doctrinal formulations...

Okay, fine

Posted on December 15, 2009
Just a note: due to the underwhelming response to my previous post on OLC and Second City, I have officially shelved the OLC book project. But come on, surely some of you Chicagoans have seen the new iteration of Coed Prison Sluts--how is it?

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