Legal Commentary

Continuing Legal Education for Law Professors

Posted on June 09, 2010
I retain and maintain memberships in both the New York and Oregon bars. I haven't practiced, have no current plans to engage in anything resembling practice, but as they say, you never know. New York seems to be satisfied that law teaching satisfies CLE requirements, or they seem to be satisfied that I'm not really practicing...

Is Libel Dead? (Not So Fast.)

Posted on June 09, 2010
I recently cut twenty pages from the defamation chapter of my Mass Media Law casebook. Maybe I should have cut more. A story by John Koblin in The New York Observer reports that the number of libel cases against media defendants has dropped so dramatically that the Media Law Resource Center is going to report on them on an annual rather than a bi-annual basis...

Law Schools on Flickr

Posted on June 09, 2010
If you take pictures and use Flickr, I'd like to invite you to join the "Law Schools" Flickr group, which I started not to long ago. Flickr, the photo-sharing website, allows you to establish groups - which allows different people to post pictures to a group pool of images...

The Tenure Year(s)

Posted on June 08, 2010
So it?s day eight into my guest blogging stint here at Prawfsblawg, and I?m only now getting around to writing my first post. I?d like to say I have a good excuse?that there was Law and Society stuff (wait, that was May); or AALS Planning Committee stuff; or AALS Mid-Year Meeting stuff (I?m on a ?Race and Sexuality? panel); or scholarship stuff...

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Professorial marking behavior

Posted on June 08, 2010
Walk out into the hallway and look back at your office door and bulletin board. What does it say about you? What is your message? Who is your audience? Is there an institutional norm at your school to favor or to disfavor professorial marking behavior? Are there some things that you (or others) might consider inappropriate outside your office or outside the offices of your colleagues? I took a decidedly unscientific survey of the faculty offices at my law school...

"Acting White," Part IV

Posted on June 08, 2010
This is the fourth post about my book Acting White: The Ironic Legacy of Desegregation, published by Yale University Press on May 25, 2010. What then, you might ask? If the ?acting white? charge arose with desegregation, am I arguing that segregation was better? Of course not...

An inspired student's story

Posted on June 08, 2010
Here is my nomination for one of the most determined and resilient law students ever: Steve Spence. Spence (age 54) made a daily trip of 294 miles from the West coast of Florida to Miami every day to attend law school. He had to commute because he could not move his family -- his wife is disabled and they care for his elderly parents -- his father has Alzheimer's and his mother has had several strokes...

Blog Law Blog - My New Blog

Posted on June 08, 2010
I have started a new blog: Blog Law Blog. It is a blog about the law of blogs. Hence, "Blog Law Blog." There is a long tradition of law blogs - i.e., blogs chasing the law. But Blog Law Blog is about the opposite transaction - the law pursuing the blogs...

Paging Dr. Mengele: Medical Experimentation and the CIA Detainees

Posted on June 07, 2010
[Cross-Posted on Balkinization.] It had seemed, at least until late last week, that intervening events had taken most of the attention away from one of the most significant controversies of President Obama?s first year in office?whether senior Bush Administration officials should be investigated for their role in the documented torture and other abusive treatment of non-citizens detained as terrorism suspects...

Law Professor's Houston Chronicle Op-Ed Gets Arizona Immigration Law Wrong

Posted on June 07, 2010
David Crump, the John B. Neibel Professor at the University of Houston Law Center, wrote an op-ed in the Houston Chronicle about Arizona's new immigration law, SB1070. Nothing indicates the op-ed has been retracted, and it has been featured on The Faculty Lounge and Nuestras Voces Latinas, so it has been disseminated not only to the general public, but also to law professors and the legal community...

The "lost Thurgood Marshall interview"

Posted on June 07, 2010
Here is a fascinating interview, by Mike Wallace with Thurgood Marshall, from 1956. They discuss, among other things, Marshall's disappointment with Pres. Eisenhower. Interestingly, Wallace is smoking a cigarette throughout the interview. After the Marshall interview, Wallace turns to a hilarious plug for the then-new "secret word" game, "Jotto", a game with the motto, "Don't take a tranquilizer, take Jotto...

"Acting White," Part III

Posted on June 07, 2010
This is the third post about my book Acting White: The Ironic Legacy of Desegregation, published by Yale University Press on May 25, 2010. In this post, I briefly explain why desegregation would have led some black students to feel alienated from the "white" world of school...

Back to the future: an online symposium ... totally

Posted on June 07, 2010
Friday, I gave a presentation in Sao Paulo, Brazil to an international group of lawyers, law students, and professors. Then I drove home in time to beat the Miami traffic. The symposium was totally on line. This was a first for me. After the break, I will describe my experience for interested others...

Hello from Bloomington

Posted on June 07, 2010
It's great to be back blogging at Prawfs! I've had a busy two weeks with conference travel--first up to Chicago for Law and Society, then to Kansas City for the Midwest Family Law Consortium/North American Regional Meeting of the International Society of Family Law...

The Casbook Supplement Hassle Factor (& Are Supplements Still Necessary?)

Posted on June 07, 2010
I'm teaching Business Torts in France this summer at the University of Montpellier, but before I leave I must write the annual supplement for my Mass Media Law casebook (with Franklin & Anderson and, in the next edition, Krotoszynski, Jr.). If you have been considering the pros and cons of writing a casebook, you should make sure you've factored in the hassle of writing the annual update memo or supplement...

"So" Hits the Big Time

Posted on June 06, 2010
I've been busy finishing a book manuscript, and I'm afraid I have been a little too occupied to read the newspaper lately. That is the only explanation for how I could have missed this story in the New York Times about the habit of beginning sentences with "So," which I have written about here before...

"Acting White," Part II

Posted on June 06, 2010
This is the second post about my book Acting White: The Ironic Legacy of Desegregation, published by Yale University Press on May 25, 2010. As an initial matter, it might be useful to clarify the following. Segregation was like a cancer. But a powerful anti-cancer drug may have side effects -- such as crippling nausea...

My New Book: "Acting White"

Posted on June 05, 2010
Thanks to my old friend and law school classmate Dan Markel for allowing me to guest-blog here. In this and a few subsequent posts, I will describe the thesis of my book Acting White: The Ironic Legacy of Desegregation, published by Yale University Press on May 25, 2010...

Samantar and the TVPA

Posted on June 05, 2010
In case you haven't noticed (as the fictional Harry Doyle would say "and, judging by the attendance, you haven't!"), I'm going to be guesting for a little while over at Balkinization. My latest post -- wondering out loud whether the Torture Victim Protection Act has a lot more to do with Monday's Supreme Court decision in Samantar than the Court itself seemed to realize, is available here.

de Toqueville and the Dean

Posted on June 04, 2010
This is my latest installment in a series of posts, aiming to help faculty understand their deans better. Lately I've been reading Leo Damrosch's new book, Tocqueville's Discovery of America. It's not a profound re-interpretation of de Tocqueville's work, but the biographical background does help me appreciate the work more fully...

Citations to Authority on Law School Exams?

Posted on June 04, 2010
So after grading about 160 1L criminal law exams this semester, I ended with the usual questions for myself of whether I am testing student preparation and performance effectively. This year I'm wondering about the importance of student citations to authority on a traditional timed doctrinal exam...

A heads up about the US Judiciary's new website

Posted on June 03, 2010
The federal judiciary has completely revamped, reordered, and renewed its website: www.uscourts.gov. If you teach a course on civ pro, fed courts, etc., this link belongs on your course web page. The website has always been a useful source of information and statistics for Third Branch wonks...

Conglomerate's 5th Annual Junior Scholar Workshop

Posted on June 03, 2010
Our friends at the Conglomerate are doing great public service to the profession by hosting their 5th annual junior scholar workshop. If you are a rising prawf or junior prawf, please consider submitting your paper for consideration. Please also disseminate the Call for Papers (CFP) to other untenured business/tax folks you know and consider volunteering to be a commentator by telling Christine Hurt or the other Glommers of your interest...

What a Student Owes His or Her Teacher

Posted on June 02, 2010
This is my first posting as a guest of PrawfsBlawg -- indeed, this is my first posting on any blog -- and I am grateful for the invitation to be invited to the conversation. Teachers have duties to their students, to be sure. What those duties are and whether we live up to them are the subjects of some future postings, perhaps...

The Misguided Battle over Eminent Domain in New York

Posted on June 02, 2010
The New York Court of Appeals heard oral arguments yesterday in the eminent domain case involving the Urban Development Corporation's effort to take over "Manhattanville," a 17-acre area in West Harlem, on behalf of Columbia University. The judges yesterday were pretty ornery, peppering both sides with questions about the studies underlying the "blight" designation and the "public" character of Columbia University's educational activities...

Understanding Centers of Excellence

Posted on June 02, 2010
Yesterday, I wrote about a new center of excellence that has been built at my university. Careful readers may have noticed that I never explained what, exactly, a "center of excellence" is. Why didn't I? Well, the thing is, centers of excellence have become such a prominent trend in American higher education, it is no longer considered necessary to offer a definition whenever the topic comes up...

Elena Who?

Posted on June 02, 2010
If it's June, it must be PrawfsBlawg. It's great to be back for another one-month gig. I guess the fact that you all keep inviting me back means that I'm not too bad. Of course, the one-month time-limit also suggests that, perhaps, I'm not that good. :-) Oh well, whichever it is, it's great to be back...

Using teaching assistants

Posted on June 01, 2010
I am considering hiring a teaching assistant for Civil Procedure next year, picking one of the top performers from this year?s class. My vision is for someone who can hold weekly office hours/review sessions to answer questions, particularly questions some students may feel to shy to ask me directly...

Music in the Classroom

Posted on June 01, 2010
Many thanks to Dan and the Prawfs community for allowing me to return for a stint at this blog! Following a busy May, I will submit my grades this Friday, after which I will receive my student evals. I'm particularly interested in reading student comments on my course this semester--two full sections of criminal law--because I tried something new for me: daily music selections...

Rotations and sundry

Posted on June 01, 2010
Hope everyone had a meaningful and restful Memorial Day weekend. I'm now back from Chicago, where I attended a number of fantastic panels at Law and Society, and hung out with the wonderful crew of ImmProfs at their great conference at DePaul. The ImmProf crowd is an especially inviting group--there were other babies there to keep Ben company, and they have a tradition of a sing-along at their dinner (and various prawfs bring instruments to boot! Anyway, today marks a new month and so we have some new and returning voices here at Prawfs...

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