Legal Commentary

July Guest Blogger - Gaia Bernstein

Posted on July 09, 2010
Thank you to Dan and the other permanent bloggers at PrawfsBlawg for having me back. I am primarily interested and have written on the social adoption processes of new technologies. I hope to spend my time here this month discussing some legal and policy developments related to the use of new technologies...

I wonder if any dean has ever been tempted to write something like this.

Posted on July 09, 2010
Open Letter to Fans from Cavaliers Majority Owner Dan Gilbert

Rob Vischer on the CLS case

Posted on July 09, 2010
Prawfs guest-blogger Rob Vischer has (what I think is) an excellent essay on the CLS case ("Diversity and Discrimination in the Case of the Christian Legal Society") up at Public Discourse. He writes (among other things) that: Put simply, the case is a lesson in the legal norms surrounding dangerously amorphous concepts such as ?diversity? and ?discrimination,? and is an example of how those concepts can contribute to a robust, thick conception of the common good ...

Email rules: Some thoughts from Citi

Posted on July 09, 2010
Over at the very colorful Dealbreaker, (warning: salty commentary) an internal Citi PowerPoint presentation (the document resurfaced at Clusterstock) found its way into the public arena. The topic: email etiquette. Or at least I originally thought from looking at the summary slide before I saw the rest of the presentation...

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The Expressive Value (?) of Lindsay Lohan's Jail Term

Posted on July 08, 2010
So, after a terrific Prawfsfest! 7 Conference here at BLS, I noticed on the subway ride home that everyone was reading the Daily News' account of Lindsay Lohan's 90 day jail sentence for failing to attend mandated alcohol counseling classes, which had stemmed from earlier DUI charges...

Who Plays Atticus Finch?

Posted on July 08, 2010
This Sunday marks the 50th anniversary of publication of To Kill a Mockingbird, the book that sent many a person to law school. NPR's Talk of the Nation today interviewed Mary McDonagh Murphy, author of a new documentary book on Mockingbird titled Scout, Atticus, and Boo: A Celebration of 50 Years of To Kill a Mockingbird...

Nazi-looted Art - Modern Claims

Posted on July 08, 2010
I promised some info on modern litigation concerning Nazi-looted art. Here is a link to a chart, which shows how the tide in Nazi-looted art claims has completely shifted since a major win for claimants in the United States Supreme Court in 2004. Some profs may remember Republic of Austria v...

Prawfsfest! 7 and the economics of workshops

Posted on July 08, 2010
I'm briefly back in Florida having just returned from a quick trip to lovely (though sweltering) Brooklyn, where Prawfsfest! 7 was graciously hosted by the Friends of Prawfs at Brooklyn Law School. We had ten very interesting early works in progress to discuss by (in no order) Chris Lund, Verity Winship, Howard Wasserman, Mike Cahill, Bill Araiza, Giovanna Shay, Marc Blitz, myself, Hillel Levin, and Katy Kuh...

Off my usual topic, but soliciting thoughts on cheating...

Posted on July 06, 2010
Did anyone have any thoughts about this article about university-level cheating? Like many of you, I've heard that despite our reliance on honor codes, cheating is widespread even in law schools. Perhaps I am too much of a Polly Anna, but I really hope that is not true...

What Television Show Do Prawfs Like Best?

Posted on July 06, 2010
What is the all-time favorite television show of law professors? Let's do a scientific* survey. (I have a prediction for who will win, but I don't want to say just yet.) First, we will need nominations. Please put yours in the comments. Also, of course, you should feel free to gloat in the comments that you don't watch television...

Justice Kennedy sticking around through at least Jan. 20, 2013

Posted on July 06, 2010
Veteran Washington reporter Tom DeFrank reports that Justice Kennedy plans to wait at least until the end of President Obama's first term before he hangs up his robe. Justice Kennedy is 74 years old, and "has told relatives and friends he plans to stay on the high court for at least three more years...

Hiring Chairs 2010-2011: Please Announce Yourselves

Posted on July 06, 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)...

Faculty Hiring at Alabama

Posted on July 05, 2010
Dan has already opened up a thread on faculty hiring committees, but what good is being a co-blogger if you can't open up one of your own? For those who may be interested, the University of Alabama School of Law is doing both entry-level and lateral hiring this year...

Things You Oughta Know if You Teach Intellectual Property

Posted on July 05, 2010
Alanis Morissette is here, to remind you ... that the fair-use rationale for using her image is kinda weak, weak, weak ... (Isn't it ironic?) There are some things you should know if you teach Intellectual Property. As a new IP prawf, it took me some time to get wise to some of this stuff...

History of U.S. Executive Policy Since WWII

Posted on July 05, 2010
My first post focused on the most recent Nazi-looted art appeal in the United States, which was filed in the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. To put this appeal into context, an analysis of federal court cases adjudicating Nazi-looted art claims since 2004 demonstrates a de facto presumption against the legitimacy of these claims...

Solemnize with Pomp and Parade

Posted on July 04, 2010
Letter from John Adams to Abigail Adams, July 3, 1776: (Mr. Adams was off by a few days...) ...The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival...

Some fresh eyes at One First Street

Posted on July 02, 2010
I just saw the link to this wonderful portrait of the Supreme Court on its last day of proceedings earlier this week. It was authored by Mike Sacks, a 3L at Georgetown Law. If he's interested in legal journalism, as his bio says, I think this is a great example of both coverage and insight...

Thanks for the Invitation - My Topic: Historical Cultural Property Claims

Posted on July 02, 2010
Thanks to Dan Markel and everyone else at PrawfsBlawg for the invitation to write this month. Since 1999, I?ve been working as a practitioner and then an academic on Holocaust-era claims. My posts will focus on cultural property law, a subset of property law and international law...

Hello, Pot. Kettle Here.

Posted on July 02, 2010
Over at the National Review's Bench Memos blog, Ed Whelan writes, concerning Elena Kagan's praise for former Israeli Supreme Court President Aharon Barak (about whom I have written somewhat critically), that it may be part and parcel of her "meteoric rise in two environments -- legal academia and D...

Return trip

Posted on July 02, 2010
Hello everyone, it's nice to be back again. I blogged here exactly one year ago, when Bernard Madoff was on the tip of everyone's tongue (well, everyone in my world - I specialize in white collar and corporate crime). Nowadays, I find myself waiting to see what happens to Goldman Sachs, although I highly doubt anything will come of the criminal investigation (just a billion dollar fine or thereabouts from the SEC)...

Happy 4th and Goodbye

Posted on July 02, 2010
Thank you all for allowing me to have another stint on Prawfsblawg. I have enjoyed it immensely!

French Connection

Posted on July 02, 2010
I am currently teaching Business Torts to a class of about 25 American and 25 French students. I've been thinking a lot this week about how to make sure my teaching methods meet the need of both groups of students, and I've been struck forcefully by how hard it is to reach an audience when you don't know what their base of background knowledge is...

The ABA's "Student Learning Outcomes" proposal

Posted on July 02, 2010
As Paul Caron recently reported (here), the ABA has proposed a number of changes to its law-school-accreditation standards. The proposed new Chapter 3, regarding "student learning outcomes", might be of the greatest interest to law teachers. Dan Filler endorses the "assessment of student learning" aspect of the proposal here, but what about the rest of it? For example, what will it mean, in practice, to require (see proposed Standard 307) law schools to "ensure that all students have reasonably comparative opportunities to take advantage of the school's educational program, co-curricular programs, and other educational benefits"? What about the list of...

Can you call a judge a "narcissistic, maniacal mental case"? Not if you're a lawyer

Posted on July 02, 2010
You may, perhaps, have already heard about Illinois lawyer Melvin Hoffman, who after 35 years without a blemish on his law license, is facing a six-month suspension, primarily for calling an administrative law judge for the Department of Children and Family Services a "narcissistic, maniacal mental case" who "should not be on the bench" in a phone conversation with the judge and opposing counsel...

Hasta La Vista Amigos

Posted on July 01, 2010
It's time for me to sign off. I am very grateful to have had the opportunity to guest blawg again. My sincere thanks to everyone. I am leaving with the feeling that I've left at least one thing unfinished. I got so much flak for one post I did, Federal Law Should Require Online Availability of Instruction Manuals, that I'm going to have to save a rebuttal for my own blog, Pixelization...

Rotations and Sundry

Posted on July 01, 2010
It's a new month and so we say thanks to all the wonderful guests from June, some of whom may linger as they get some last things off their mind, and welcome (back) to a few fresh voices this month. Miriam Baer from BLS and Gaia Bernstein (Seton Hall) are both veterans of the Prawfs tour of duty...

Oped on Taxing Punitive Damages

Posted on July 01, 2010
Happy Canada Day! Well, I guess now that summer's indisputably here, it's the season for prawfs to start writing more opeds. As you saw the last few days, Ethan and Eduardo recently penned something for a broader audience. And Ethan also deserves a shout-out for a SCOTUS citation to his criminal juries piece...

Goldstein on popular misunderstanding of SCOTUS

Posted on July 01, 2010
Tom Goldstein has a great discussion of why the popular-press and political discussions (the ones we just had to sit through the last three days) about SCOTUS and the individual Justices are wrong--or at least too simplistic. Worth a read.

Ciao

Posted on July 01, 2010
Many thanks to the Prawfsblawg community for permitting me another stint here to think out loud, and a special thanks to the folks who took the time to comment on my posts. Now I'm off to dig into my growing list of work items to complete before the Fall semester begins...

Did Kagan bury the umpire analogy? Maybe

Posted on July 01, 2010
Elena Kagan took on the judge-as-umpire/ball-and-strike meme yesterday in response to a question from Sen. Klobuchar and knocked it out almost as successfully as she could. No transcripts to be found, but here is the video and some thoughts after the jump...

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