Academic

Schadenfreude in Campaign Finance

Posted on December 05, 2008
From the NYT:President-elect Barack Obama brought in nearly $750 million for his presidential campaign, a record amount that exceeds what all of the candidates combined collected in private donations in the previous race for the White House, according to a...

Christmas Gifts For Lawyers: From The Mundane To The Sublime

Posted on December 03, 2008
Was I the only one slightly taken aback by an email from West touting the legal publisher as a producer of "perfect holiday gifts"? Admittedly, they only imagine their books are well suited to "legal professionals". Still, I'm suprised they...

Hillary Clinton and the Emoluments Clause: Even More

Posted on November 30, 2008
Since I last posted on this topic Eugene Volokh has posted two examinations of the issue, one that gives his views and the other that gives extended views of Michael Paulson. I continue to think that the "Saxbe fix," by...

Slow Down in Publishing

Posted on November 30, 2008
First it was the easily predictable news that a slow-down in hiring of law professors is brewing. Now there's news, through the Harvard University Press blog, that Houghton Mifflin has placed a freeze on acquisition of trade titles. Yikes. (Houghton....

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My Life with Barbeque

Posted on November 29, 2008
Well, this post has been a long time in the making. In fact, it streches back to somewhere around the fall of 1990 or maybe spring of 1991. Even to the spring of 1988 if I include talk of Ollie's...

Books to Watch For

Posted on November 26, 2008
As I'm about to head out the door for Thanksgiving break, I'm sitting here trying to clear my desk. And so let me call your attention to three books in the University of California Press catalog that you may want...

De Turkey and De Law

Posted on November 26, 2008
Well, as you prepare for Thanksgiving (and in my case the property exam), it may be time to think about Zora Neale Hurston's often-overlooked play, "De Turkey and De Law." It's ab out two men who come to blows over...

It's November. Don't Toy With A 1L's Laptop.

Posted on November 25, 2008
How much is a laptop worth? If you're a first year law student, one hell of a lot. That's a painful lesson freelance burglar Gabriel Saucedo learned when he broke into the apartment of Arizona State 1L Alex Botsios. Saucedo,...

Best Cafes And Coffeehouses In America: A Random City Guide

Posted on November 23, 2008
I like to create lists of useful food-related information. Foodies will surely want to consult my list of America's Best Restaurants before hitting the road. So here, as a result of mildly exhaustive research, is my fully un-guaranteed but still...

Barista Tipping: Starbucks Versus Independent Cafes

Posted on November 23, 2008
I've noticed that tip baskets in local independent cafes often seem overstuffed compared to the jars at Starbucks. Blog commenters have previously noted that neighborhood Starbucks stores garner more tip revenue than tourist and mall locations. This makes sense, I...

Errand into the Wilderness

Posted on November 21, 2008
This title of this post is taken from Perry Miller's essay on the Puritan mission--which itself from taken from a seventeenth century sermon. But it's about the Washington Post's story this morning about the Federalist Society annual meeting. The article...

Army Schedules First Execution Since 1961

Posted on November 21, 2008
The U.S. Army has set December 10 as the execution date for Pvt. Ronald Gray. He is slated to be killed at the Federal Correctional Institution in Terre Haute, Indiana. Gray was a specialist with the 82nd Airborne, at Fort...

Nader - Gonzalez Gift Missouri To McCain

Posted on November 20, 2008
The results from the Show Me State are finally in, and it turns out that McCain beat Obama in Missouri by a paltry 3,632 votes. It may be a minor detail, true enough, but it's worth noting that Ralph Nader...

Is Hillary Clinton Constitutionally Eligible to Serve as Secretary of State?

Posted on November 20, 2008
David Cohen (Drexel Law) brought to my attention the fact that the salary of the Secretary of State was increased from about $186,000 per year to slightly in excess of $191,000 per year in January of 2007, the month Senator...

The Obama Victory Relived: A Collection Of Nov. 5 Political Cartoons

Posted on November 20, 2008
I love political cartoons. Effective artists can capture events so perfectly that their very success demonstrates, by implication, the limits of words. Res ipsa. At bigpicture's posterous we find a collection of political cartoons that bring back the amazing sensation...

Barack Obama is more Famous Than Jesus

Posted on November 19, 2008
One of the early commercials in the presidential campaign sharply criticized Barack Obama for his rock star magnetism, stadium-filled appearances, and screaming followers. The commercial, showing pictures of celebutantes Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, bizarrely bemoaned Obama for being "the...

Senator Shelby: Foreign Automaker Protectionist Or Bailout Skeptic?

Posted on November 19, 2008
This morning, on NPR, I heard Alabama Senator Richard Shelby criticizing proposed bailouts of the auto industry. This isn't a crazy position. Perhaps Shelby, the ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee, was just taking a rational non-interventionist view...

Good Sense on the Auto Bailout

Posted on November 18, 2008
The best summation of what should be done to bail out the auto industry is to be found in Andrew Ross Sorkin's essay in today's New York Times . In essence, Sorkin calls for a "government sponsored bankruptcy" of a...

Will Indigent Defense Be A Hidden Victim Of The Economy?

Posted on November 16, 2008
Thanks to Patrick O'Donnell for pointing me towards this post over at Legal Ethics Forum. There's been a good discussion - with valuable links - pondering the future of indigent criminal defense funding. As states feel serious tax revenue loss,...

Intemperate Speech: True Threat? Incitement of Crime?

Posted on November 16, 2008
The Drudge Report carries a story of a man in Bonner County, Idaho who has posted a sign on his property calling for a "free public hanging" of President-elect Obama, Senator Kerry, Speaker Pelosi, and Al Sharpton. Christine Holbert, the...

Another View of Pleasant Grove

Posted on November 16, 2008
Professor Paul McGreal has published an essay in the on-line edition of the Northwestern University Law Review that argues for an approach analogous to the law of easements for deciding Pleasant Grove v. Summum. In essence, he argues that the...

Optional Movies Outside of Class

Posted on November 16, 2008
This past week, I invited my corporations students for an optional evening screening of the 2005 documentary Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. I thought that the movie helped to identify a number of the most interesting aspects of...

Summum's Seven Aphorisms

Posted on November 15, 2008
In the reporting on Pleasant Grove v. Summum, the case before the US Supreme Court involving an unusual tangle of free speech and establishment clause principles, there has been almost no reporting of the substance of the Seven Aphorisms. The...

Post-AALS FRC Arbitrage Opportunities?

Posted on November 15, 2008
Corporate law prof spots are often difficult to fill. I think one of the reasons for this has nothing to do with supply but instead that faculties are self replicating and existing law school faculties are heavily into public law....

Law School For Non-Lawyers

Posted on November 14, 2008
Most U.S. law schools offer degree programs for lawyers (JD, LLM, SJD). However, lawyers are not the only people who regularly interact with law and regulation. Compliance officers in a number of regulated industries such as finance, insurance, securities, telecom,...

Sad Or Sick? Nebraska Parents Rush To Abandon Teens

Posted on November 14, 2008
Surely the headline of the day: Nebraska Parents Rush to Leave Kids Before Law Changes In the one of the most stalwart family values states, parents rush to dump their teenage children. This clip of the story is so depressing,...

An Obama Christmas? Podgor's White Collar Crime Wish List

Posted on November 14, 2008
Over at White Collar Crim Prof Blog, Ellen Podgor has her White Collar Crime wishlist for the Obama administration. Some very good ideas - and the good news is that these folks might even believe in such ideas as: don't...

Another Reason to Avoid Blogger's Disease

Posted on November 13, 2008
The New York Times is reporting the candidates for a position in the Obama administration have to fill out an extensive questionaire on their background--including controversies they've been involved in and email that is potentially embarassing, as well as ...

Welcome Academic Condottieri!

Posted on November 13, 2008
During the Renaissance, Italian city states fielded armies made up of hired foreign mercenaries - the condottieri. It strikes me that in times of academic belt tightening (though not exclusively during such times), law schools might want to think about...

Never Trust Any Media

Posted on November 13, 2008
If you needed any more reasons to be skeptical of anything reported by the media, consider today's exposure by the New York Times of the elaborate hoax that apaprently convinced a number of news outlets to report that McCain campaign...

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