Legal Commentary

When is a Majority Opinion Really a Plurality Opinion?

Posted on November 02, 2010
A student and I have been fighting over United States v. Verdugo-Urquidez -- the 1990 Supreme Court decision that is cited for the proposition that the Fourth Amendment categorically does not apply to non-citizens outside the territorial United States...

Hi, back soon

Posted on November 01, 2010
Hi folks. This is a fly over post, I apologize. For reasons that are now obscure, I decided the best way to celebrate my first sabbatical was to spend October presenting two new and different papers at two separate venues while also reviewing a bunch of proposals for a granting agency...

Whoa...

Posted on November 01, 2010
Not sure how I missed this earlier, but Larry Tribe's letter to POTUS re: SCOTUS nominations from last year was leaked earlier in the week. His written candor is admirable (crazy?), though now he believes the gist of his counsel was misguided. Still, I don't think too many of LT's RA's will be Sotomayor's clerks anytime soon...

Rotations

Posted on November 01, 2010
It's a new month and so it is time to give thanks to our wonderful crew of guests this past month and to welcome the new and returning voices to Prawfs. While our October guests may take a moment to sign off, we have a bunch of brand new folks guesting this month: please welcome Sergio Campos (U Miami); Elizabeth Dale (U...

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Good-bye, and one last self-promotion

Posted on November 01, 2010
I suppose it's time for me to wrap up my guest stint here at Prawfs, but I can't resist my final opportunity for one last act of shameless self-promotion, so I will let you know that a special online symposium issue of the Duke Journal of Constitutional Law and Public Policy is now available, here, featuring short essays on cases from the Supreme Court's most recent term...

Signs from the Rally to Restore etc.

Posted on November 01, 2010
are here at the WaPo blog. My favorite:

Grades, Elitism, and Gloom and Doom in Post-Law School Hiring

Posted on November 01, 2010
It's good to be back, and thanks to the Prawfs crew for having me. With the Bilski case now done, I'll have to find something else to grouse about. Today, it's predictions of gloom and doom for law schools. A colleague sent this article around the other day, and it got me thinking, especially when there's other discussion about the best ways to get a job in the blogosphere...

Hello Everyone!

Posted on November 01, 2010
To quote a former guest blogger, I am a long-time Prawfs reader, first-time guest blogger, so I want to start my own guest stint by thanking Dan Markel for allowing me to post here this month. I have been an avid reader of Prawfsblawg since the beginning, and am thrilled that I can now contribute to it...

AT&T v. Concepcion

Posted on November 01, 2010
Thanks a lot to the prawfs community for letting me blog here in October. Just as a final FYI, if you're into contract law, arbitration, federalism, fed courts, cell phones, or just whacktastically difficult Supreme Court cases, be sure to check out oral arguments in AT&T v...

O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-klahoma

Posted on November 01, 2010
I'm really excited to be here at Prawfs for the month, particularly to post on topics related to religious commercial law and, one of my favorite topics, religious arbitration. The topic has gotten pretty hot in the blogosphere of late (check out some recent blog posts here and here) and has recently hit some maintstream press (here's Stanley Fish's take in the NYTimes and some of what was featured in The Economist)...

Bye!...and a short review

Posted on November 01, 2010
Thanks to Dan and friends for the time here. I want to follow in Jessie Hill's footsteps and conclude by directing you very gently toward this little review of Steven Shiffrin's terrific book, The Religious Left and Church-State Relations, which I just put up...

Overcoming My Fear of Blogging

Posted on November 01, 2010
I have resisted blogging for many years, first because I did not really understand it, and then because I was scared to do it. Five years ago ?Ivan Tribble? published an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education cautioning academics (particularly junior scholars) about the dangers of blogging...

Should Hiring Committees ask "Recruits" to Incur Some Bonding Costs?

Posted on October 28, 2010
N.B. The following post is meant to be offered strictly in my personal and professorial capacity, but not as indicative of my views or others sitting on the appcomm at FSU. I'm a rank amateur in this realm (at least so far), but in the realm of agency theory, my understanding is that agents are frequently encouraged to "assure the principal that certain actions inconsistent with the principal's interest will not be taken...

Another AALS Post: When Do You Read?

Posted on October 28, 2010
As I am preparing to get on a plane to DC later today to interview faculty candidates, it occurs to me to ask a question that has bothered me since the last time I served on the appointments committee a few years ago: When do you sit down to read a candidate's scholarship? In the past, my practice was to read a few pieces here and there before the AALS interviews, usually when a candidate had written something in my field and/or was particularly interesting to me on paper...

4-year-old capable of negligence?

Posted on October 28, 2010
For you Torts professors out there, here's a case to share with your students: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/29/nyregion/29young.html?_r=1&hp

I'll take "Moving Abroad" for $1000, Alex

Posted on October 28, 2010
I love NY Magazine. But this article is just a blatant attempt to sell magazines by scaring the willies out of the liberal intellegensia with a ridiculous nightmare scenario. Isn't it? ISN'T IT?

Rankings, rankings everywhere

Posted on October 27, 2010
So the US News surveys are out (I managed to escape the task of filling it out--my reign as most-recently-tenured at my school lasted all of one year). Like the Rose Bowl, the US News rankings remain the "Grand[parent] Of Them All." Meanwhile, other surveys and rankings proliferate like so many Motor City Bowls--albeit without corporate sponsorship, but subject to just as much criticism...

Prawfs Happy Hour at the Meat Market...Thurs Oct 28th at Zoo Bar Cafe

Posted on October 27, 2010
Bumped to the front: For reasons announced earlier, I won't be able to join the fun with my appcomm colleagues in DC at the AALS meat market this year. However, a friend asked if there was going to be a Prawfs happy hour at the meat market, so I'll make the odd suggestion that y'all hook up on Thursday evening October 28th from 8-11pm at the Zoo Bar Cafe near Woodley Park and the Marriott hotel...

Academic Illusions About Work and Retirement

Posted on October 27, 2010
Now that the protests in France against the raising of the retirement age from 60 to 62 are quieting (the protesters having lost), I can't help but comment on this piece in Le Monde from a few days ago by Robert Redeker, who styles himself (a) "philosophe...

So you want to go to grad school?

Posted on October 27, 2010
You've probably seen the one about becoming a lawyer via Leiter. The life choice of becoming (trying to become rather) a humanities professor certainly doesn't seem more appealing to these animated folks. Nor do the Simpsons think much of it.

US News Ballots are Out--Please Stop Sending Me Brochures

Posted on October 27, 2010
In my part of the postal coverage area, at least, US News law ranking ballots have arrived (as Howard noted this morning). This means that all of the law school Deans kindly sending me massive quantities of now-recycled material can throttle back. Of course, I read every word, since I didn't want there to be even a single law school on which I could not form a defensible position...

Should the Girls Gone Wild Plaintiffs Be Able to Sue as Jane Does? A New Approach to Pseudonymity

Posted on October 27, 2010
The Washington Post reports on a civil suit against Girls Gone Wild founder Joe Francis, one of many filed against him. In this suit, four women who were allegedly between the ages of 13 and 17 at the time that Francis's company filmed them wish to proceed using pseudonyms...

"Dissenting in Large Part"

Posted on October 26, 2010
We may need a new Bluebook rule in light of today's dissent by Chief Judge Kozinski in Gonzalez v. Arizona (see pg. 63 of the slip opinion). What's next? "Mostly dissenting" (a la Princess Bride)? Or "Only Concurring a Little?"

Reception of Religiously Affiliated Law Schools at AALS

Posted on October 26, 2010
If you are planning to attend the upcoming hiring conference, consider stopping by a reception -- sponsored by the AALS Section on Law and Religion -- of Religiously Affiliated Law Schools. It's on Thursday night, at 7:30, in the Hoover Room (at the Wardman Park).

Flip Teaching

Posted on October 25, 2010
...is all the rage: upload your lectures at night and have the kids apply the concepts in class during the day.

A Writer's Time

Posted on October 25, 2010
I came to the study of law because it seemed like a good career for someone who loved reading, writing, and analyzing texts but was not creative enough to make it as a novelist nor independently wealthy enough to risk becoming a medievalist. I also thought that studying law would allow me to make things happen in a way that studying the venerable Bede might not...

Do 1Ls or Upper-Level Students Need / Benefit From Midterms More?

Posted on October 23, 2010
At various points in the past, different folks have posted on Prawfs about the costs and benefits of giving midterm exams, and the various approaches to doing so (for example, see Colin Miller's posts here and here). I've always given midterms in my two "big" classes -- Constitutional Law and Federal Courts -- because I think they're pedagogically useful in (1) requiring the students to put things together earlier in the semester; (2) giving the students two different opportunities to show their stuff / have a bad day (my midterm is usually worth half of the grade; the final worth...

Wikileaks, Genies, and Bottles

Posted on October 23, 2010
Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, is at it again. First he released 77, 000 secret government documents from the war in Afghanistan, and he has now released 391, 832 field reports from Iraq. The New York Times profile of Assange gives some indication of his motive...

Fellows Versus Permanent Legal Writing Faculty

Posted on October 22, 2010
From 2007 to 2009, I taught Legal Research and Writing at UC Berkeley. Unlike some of its peer schools, Boalt doesn't use Fellows to teach LRW. Instead, it has a group of full-time, permanent lecturers, often with substantial practice backgrounds. (I ended up with a kind of unofficial Fellowship, since I got the job only a few years out of law school and eventually went on the tenure-track market...

Things You Oughta Know If You Teach Tax

Posted on October 22, 2010
As a new tax professor, you have joined an active and friendly community. Tax law professors are a diverse bunch, but because we are bound together by a love incomprehensible to many others--love of the tax code, of course--we are, I think, an unusually cohesive and supportive group...

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