Academic

Fighting for His Life: A Georgia Man Makes Final Plea for Death Penalty Commutation

Posted on September 23, 2008
Attorneys for death row inmate have made a final request for the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles to commute the death sentence of Troy Davis. Davis is scheduled to be executed today, September 23, 2008, at 7pm. Last year,...

Does deterrence work?

Posted on September 22, 2008
I've always had my doubts, quite honestly. And now adding to my disquiet is a new paper by David Lee and Justin McCrary, called Crime, Punishment & Myopia, which takes a law & econ look at deterrence:Economic theory predicts that...

Single Sex Education in the Public Schools

Posted on September 22, 2008
A Virginia middle school is teaching "language arts" (English, anyone?) to boys and math to girls in single sex classrooms. The rationale is derived from Carol Gilligan's work (In a Different Voice) and Leonard Sax's more recent work, Why Gender...

Student Evaluations of Teaching: Reliable?

Posted on September 22, 2008
The Sunday NY Times had an interesting article that included summaries of various studies about how students evaluate teaching. I think my favorite is the study where a charming, witty and credentialed "professor" (they call him Dr. Myron Fox, but...

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Candidates In Our Living Rooms: Nielsen Report Shows High Convention Viewership

Posted on September 22, 2008
The Nielsen Company - those old-tech folks who track TV viewership - has just released a report analyzing the extent to which Americans watched the Democratic and Republican conventions. Here's the punch line: a ton of folks tuned in. Specifically,...

My Morty

Posted on September 21, 2008
Well, I'm sitting here working over the text of my talk (on ideas of progress and the rule of law in antebellum literary addresses) for the conference honoring Morton Horwitz, which is this Friday and Saturday. I'm thinking a lot...

The Radical Vision: Essays for the Seventies

Posted on September 21, 2008
Fresh from my trip to Berkeley--and most interested in the history of that town, since I've now seen a bunch of the sites made famous during the 1960s--I pulled a reader off my shelf, The Radical Vision: Essays for the...

Is All Law Local? Minnesota Teen Prosecuted For Flag Desecration

Posted on September 20, 2008
Proving that the Supreme Court really does have limited power, Winona, Minnesota police arrested a 14 year for flag desecration - viz, writing on, shredding, and burning a flag. He faces three misdemeanor counts. In the end, a conviction could...

The Kindest Rankings of the ?Top 25" Law Reviews

Posted on September 19, 2008
Talk of rankings--particularly of rankings of law journals--is a favorite of the legal academic blogosphere. And it's fall, so it's time for hiring committee and promotion and tenure committee meetings. So in the spirit of feeling good about our placements...

The Credit Crisis Explained

Posted on September 19, 2008
I know I'm not alone in feeling like I understand about 35% of what's going on on Wall Street these days. (And yes, I recognize that this 35% number is surely hubris; it must be more like 8%.) For those...

Professor Nareissa Smith - Welcome to the Lounge!

Posted on September 18, 2008
Welcome to Professor Nareissa Smith, our latest guest blogger at the Faculty Lounge! Professor Smith teaches Constitutional Law, Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure at Florida Coastal School of Law, and focuses her research on civil rights issues. She's a graduate...

More Playtime Vice Presidential Sweepstakes And Some Genuine Betting News

Posted on June 14, 2008
I've previously mentioned the CQ Vice-Presidential brackets, which predicted a Huckabee - McCain ticket and have now entered the second round of Democratic predictions. (I'm still smarting over Chuck Hagel's first round loss.) Now MSNBC is entering the fray with...

Tim Russert Is Dead

Posted on June 13, 2008
He died this afternoon, after collapsing at work, at age 58. I, like many others, have spent countless hours watching Russert serve as a premier political commentator and reporter. This is sad news indeed. Many of us will experience this...

Gas Prices As Urban Plannning

Posted on June 13, 2008
As gas prices soar, among the biggest losers are those folks who bought into far flung suburban developments. We've long known that the American metropolitan landscape is the result of widespead automobile ownership. People move dozens of miles from their...

Report Challenges Asian "Model Minority" Stereotype

Posted on June 12, 2008
A report funded by NYU, the College Board, and other interested parties has raised good questions about Asian-Americans and higher education. It challenges perceptions of Asian-Americans as categorically gifted in science and math fields, and of over-representation at elite colleges...

Boumediene

Posted on June 12, 2008
Boumediene is out this morning. In a nutshell: Guantanamo detainees do have a right to petition for habeas and the process for reviewing CSRT appeals provided by the Military Commissions Act is not an adequate alternative. Yeah! The 134 page...

Private Sector Censorship: Cuomo Outsources Content Ban

Posted on June 11, 2008
As both Corey Yung and Orin Kerr noted yesterday (along with large and small news outlets), New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo reached an agreement with three major Internet Service Providerss (ISP's) (Sprint Nextel, Verizon, and Time Warner Cable) to...

First Circuit Upholds "Don"t Ask, Don't Tell"

Posted on June 10, 2008
The First Circuit released its decision in Pietrangelo v. Gates yesterday, upholding the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy against a due process, equal protection and First Amendment challenge. The Second, Fourth, Eighth and Ninth circuits had previously upheld the...

Gay Bishop Gets Civil Union

Posted on June 10, 2008
From the NY Times: V. Gene Robinson, the Episcopal bishop at the center of the Anglican Church?s global battle over homosexuality, has entered into a civil union with his longtime partner at a private ceremony. About 120 guests gathered at...

Time for Olympic Change

Posted on June 08, 2008
I suppose some members of the International Olympic Committee hoped to focus world attention on human rights abuses in China when it awarded the 2008 games to Beijing. But two months shy of opening ceremonies there's not much reform to...

Obama Vice Presidential Brackets

Posted on June 05, 2008
CQ did vice-presidential brackets for John McCain a few weeks back - and guess what? Voters ended up picking The Huck as McCain's wing mate. While I think that's as likely as monkeys flying out of my...you know what...I also...

Why Obama Should Not Pick Hillary as VP

Posted on June 04, 2008
The media says it's over, but with the Clintons, it's never over. Obama could end it by anointing Hillary as VP (with Bill as designated Rasputin), and the implicit threat from the Clintons is that they will mount a credentials...

Fables Of The Deconstruction, Or, Comments That Matter

Posted on June 03, 2008
Ahh, such fresh blogger enthusiasm! Rick Hills has burst onto the Prawfs scene, battling to defend Phyllis Schlafly, scorning Judith Butler, and now claiming the mantle of anti-intellectual. He has been scorched by Brian Leiter, Kevin Heller, and Patrick O'Donnell,...

Missile Mail, Silos, And The Case For University Service

Posted on June 02, 2008
When Drexel was considering starting a law school, way back about an hour and a half ago, existing faculty and staff were committed to creating a college that avoided the traditional academic silos. People really wanted interaction between colleges and...

Skepticism about "Law and ...."

Posted on June 02, 2008
It's practically part of the legal acadamy's catechism now to hire only PhDs with a law degree. I remain unconvinced of the wisdom of this new orthodoxy. Some disciplines are directly relevant (e.g., economics, history, engineering for patent types, hard...

The Road to Serfdom in Cartoons?

Posted on June 02, 2008
It's summer, which means it's time for reruns. This rerun of part of a post back at propertyprof last August is inspired by reading George Leef's article on Alan Kors' recent opinion piece. Kors reflects on his days as an...

Best Restaurants and Dining In America: A City By City Guide

Posted on June 01, 2008
It's summertime which means it's time to travel. To a summer job. Or perhaps just on vacation. Over at ATL, they're putting together a summer associate lunch guide city by city. Part of the project is to include some best-of...

Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry: The Really Important Dialogue?

Posted on June 01, 2008
I see from the LA Times that there's going to be a box set of Dirty Harry movies. Although the LA Times thinks it is somewhat surprising, Eastwood is re-embracing the movies. As the LA Times says, Harry's "darkly whispered...

Thomas Dew

Posted on June 01, 2008
Download The_Pro_slavery_Argument.pdf

Another Anniversary Passes: Tulsa Riot of 1921

Posted on May 31, 2008
Well, it was 87 years ago today that the Tulsa Tribune story hit the streets and ignited the Tulsa riot of 1921. The story--called by the Oklahoma City Black Dispatch "the false story that set Tulsa ablaze"--said that "Diamond" Dick...

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