Legal Commentary

Happy New Academic Year & Shana Tova

Posted on September 09, 2010
I like how the Jewish calendar is synchronized with the academic calendar. Rosh Hashana is always a good time to make resolutions, define goals, make plans, spread goodwill, and make amends. That's basically what we all want to do at the beginning of the school year, thinking about our new research agendas, our travel commitments, our work/family balance...

Justice Scalia Throws Down (sort of) at Marquette

Posted on September 09, 2010
As some of you know, we at Marquette recently moved into a spectacular new building. Yesterday, we dedicated Eckstein Hall and heard remarks from, among others, Antonin Scalia. Justice Scalia decided to comment on the perceived divide between the legal academy and practicing lawyers...

Fashionably Late ...

Posted on September 09, 2010
Thanks to Dan for another stint at Prawfs. I am one of those odd people who came to full time law teaching after many years (26!) in practice. My own special mid-life crisis was to find a job where I ahd to work twice as hard for a fraction of the pay...

It's All in the Numbers: How Can We Increase the Percentage of Students Completing Student Evaluations?

Posted on September 09, 2010
Student evaluations. Some people love them. Some people hate them. Some claim that they are reliable and reasonably valid. See, e.g., Arthur Best, Student Evaluations of Law Teaching Work Well: Strongly Agree, Agree, Neutral, Disagree, Strongly Disagree, 38 SW...

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I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream For Law & Ice Cream

Posted on September 09, 2010
At yesterday?s dedication of Eckstein Hall at Marquette University Law School, Wisconsin Supreme Court Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson referred to Justice Scalia? s admonition that students not take courses in Law and Ice Cream. Speaking later, Justice Scalia confirmed that advice and added his relief that Marquette offers no such course...

Why the Scorecard Matters: A Response to Ben Wittes

Posted on September 08, 2010
Over at the new "Lawfare" blog, Ben Wittes has a post up outlining some objections to the media's increasingly common use of the Guantanamo "scorecard"--the unofficial tally of the 50-something post-Boumediene detainee habeas cases that have thus far been adjudicated on the merits...

Supreme Youth

Posted on September 08, 2010
Since 1900, no Supreme Court justice (nor any nominee) has been under the age of 40. One reason may be politics. Supreme Court justices sit for life, and a younger justice will likely serve a longer term. Political opponents of the nominating president will be more hostile to a younger nominee...

How Much Teaching Do You Do In Your First Class?

Posted on September 08, 2010
At some point in the last few weeks, most of us have taught our first class of the semester, so I guess that now is as good a time as any to ask: How much teaching do you do in your first class? After introducing myself and the material, I do a full class session...

Should the Government Call Koran-Burning "Un-American?"

Posted on September 08, 2010
Like other supporters of the rights of American Muslims to live on equal terms with other Americans, I was pleased to see this story in which a group of religious leaders came together to express their concerns about anti-Muslim sentiment, not just with respect to the New York mosque but elsewhere in the country -- indeed, more disturbingly elsewhere, since the many recent objections to mosques and Muslims elsewhere in the country lack even the fig leaf of the supposed sacredness of a site two blocks away from Ground Zero...

Post-racial America, in black and white

Posted on September 08, 2010
A recent blog post by Taunya Lovell Banks addressing the race requirements for running for student office at a Mississippi public school caught my eye. For the past thirty years, the Nettleton Middle School allowed only white students to run for eighth grade class president or reporter...

For Law Clerk Diversity

Posted on September 08, 2010
Lawyers and law bloggers love a Supreme Court story, even when it doesn't present much news that is "new." So it is with Adam Liptak's Times story about ideological polarization among Supreme Court law clerks. (It's unfortunate, but understandable, that he focuses his attentions on the high court rather than the federal appellate courts...

Let's Get Personal: Did You Prefer the Pre-ExpressO Law Review Submission Days?

Posted on September 07, 2010
I started submitting articles to law reviews in the summer of 2003, just after I graduated from law school. At the time, it seemed as if most journals only accepted paper submissions, which was cost-prohibitive for many outside of the legal academy. That said, there was a very useful listing of law reviews which accepted Electronic Submissions...

The Guantanamo Litigation and the D.C. Courts

Posted on September 07, 2010
One of the more under-reported stories arising out of the post-Boumediene Guantanamo litigation has been the quiet but very real disagreements between the judges of the D.C. district court and different panels of the D.C. Circuit on virtually every question that matters, including the fundamental propriety of the entire post-Boumediene project...

The Value of the Casebook Method?

Posted on September 07, 2010
When I was in my first year of law school, I remember periodically returning to the same thought about the way law school classes were taught: "This is so inefficient." I was actually enjoying most of my classes, but still, the basic approach of having us read cases on our own and then spend class time answering questions about them seemed backward to me...

What Might Retributive Justice Be?

Posted on September 07, 2010
I have a new draft up on SSRN. Those of you teaching criminal law or sentencing law this semester or next may find it of interest as a possible teaching supplement. The paper is titled, What Might Retributive Justice Be? Here's the abstract: There are many conceptions of retributive justice...

oh... and, by the way, hello!

Posted on September 07, 2010
Hello, all, and thanks very much to Dan Markel and the rest of the Prawfs crew for having me back on Prawfsblawg. I write on social justice issues in disaster law and policy and look forward to discussing some of my work in this area with you. At the moment, I?m researching women in the context of disaster as well as corporate entities and their role in development and disaster recovery...

Banning the Raising of Hands in the Classroom?

Posted on September 06, 2010
Here's a report concerning a small study of 13-year-old schoolchildren suggesting they learned significantly more when they were banned from raising their hands in class. Instead, every child had to write the answer to the teacher's question on a whiteboard and raise it at the same time...

Labor Day Trivia

Posted on September 06, 2010
Labor Day, as I tell my labor and employment law students, is (and definitely used to be) more than just about the end-of-the-summer-beginning-of-the-football season bbq. Here are a couple of questions, with answers after the jump. Where was the first Labor Day celebrated in the United States and when? (here is an image of the place) Why is the national Labor Day slotted in September? Answers: Union Sq...

Studies of studying

Posted on September 06, 2010
The New York Times today reports on studies of effective studying. You law profs out there might want to share this article with students. Some of the results are surprising. For example, studies indicate that students retain material most effectively when they study it in several different locations and when they study several different but related topics in one study session...

Multilingual Disaster Warnings

Posted on September 05, 2010
On August 16, Lisa Fowlkes, Deputy Bureau Chief of the Federal Communication Commission?s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau, blogged on the official Blog of the FCC about the issue of multilingual emergency alerts. She discussed the importance of receiving timely alerts and warnings during times of disaster and described the dire situation of non-English speaking individuals who are unable to receive disaster warnings in their own language...

Hamdan and the En Banc CMCR: A Stalling Tactic or a Noteworthy Development?

Posted on September 05, 2010
Apparently lost in the pre-Labor Day weekend rush on Friday was the story that the Court of Military Commission Review (CMCR) has decided to hear the appeal of Salim Hamdan's military commission conviction en banc, rather than before a three-judge panel...

Postscript on Crawford v. Metropolitan Government of Nashville

Posted on September 05, 2010
For those of you who teach Crawford v. Metropolitan Government of Nashville in employment law, here are some interesting facts about what happened after the Court's decision, taken from this Nashville Post article : The district court denied summary judgment on remand (2009 WL 3348233)...

A "web alternative to peer review"?

Posted on September 05, 2010
The NYT ran, a few days ago, this piece, "Scholars test web alternative to peer review," in which the author notes, among other things, that: [S]ome humanities scholars have begun to challenge the monopoly that peer review has on admission to career-making journals and, as a consequence, to the charmed circle of tenured academe...

Gonzaga Law and the Curran Chair in Legal Ethics

Posted on September 03, 2010
Curran Chair Gonzaga University School of Law seeks applications for the newly established Donald Curran and VaLena Scarpellli Curran Professor of Legal Ethics. The purpose of this chair is to advance teaching and scholarship in the areas of ethics and professionalism...

Hiring Chairs 2010-2011: Please Announce Yourselves

Posted on September 03, 2010
N.B. This will get bumped to the front every now and then. It's that time again. I've been getting requests from some aspiring prawfs, so here's the post: law school hiring chairs for entry and lateral candidates, please announce yourselves in the comments and please feel free to share who's on the committee and whether the search is limited in a particular way (or not)...

Law School Hiring Thread, 2010-11, Thread One

Posted on September 03, 2010
NB: This thread will be moved to the front every ten days or so. This thread is for both law professors and people who are on the market this coming year for becoming a law professor. We invite those on the market and those who are prawfs to leave comments (anonymously if they prefer) regarding: a) whether they have received a first round interview at a school, and if the school mentioned the areas they were looking into, and whether the interview offer was accepted b) a callback from a law school and/or accepted it and b) whether they have...

A Clearinghouse for Questions

Posted on September 03, 2010
N.B. This thread will get bumped to the front every 10 days or so. The first second batch of FAR forms were distributed the other day and so we can officially say that the new year's hiring market has begun. We'll have two posts to get things started...

The Millennium Trilogy and the Death of An Author

Posted on September 03, 2010
I have just finished reading the three Stieg Larrson books and am happy not only to have read them, but also to now be done with them. They are good. But they are good in their genre ? detective type thrillers with suspense and conspiracies, interesting characters and lively fast paced action...

Hello

Posted on September 02, 2010
I'm very excited to be doing my first-ever blogging stint on PrawfsBlawg. I'm in my fifth year on the faculty at Pace Law School, where I teach Education Law, Employment Law, Civil Procedure, and (for the first time next semester) Constitutional Law. I'm especially interested in K-12 public school students' speech rights...

Pro Bono/Public Service Graduation Requirements: Yay or Nay?

Posted on September 02, 2010
According to A Handbook on Law School Pro Bono Programs, published by the AALS in June 2001, "123 law schools currently have pro bono opportunities available for their students." These programs are relatively new, with Tulane in 1987 becoming "the first American law school to institute an administratively supported service program for the express purpose of instilling an ethic of pro bono service within all law students...

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