Academic

Do We Execute Mentally Ill People Or Just Put Them To Sleep?

Posted on May 30, 2008
From Sentencing Law and Policy, Texan Scott Panetti has been found competent for execution by Judge Sam Sparks in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas. He was convicted of killing his wife's parents. The problem is...

Nineteen Years

Posted on May 29, 2008
Nineteen years passed between the California Supreme Court's 1948 decision in Perez v. Lippold and the US Supreme Court's 1967 decision in Loving v. Virginia. Nineteen years before the Supreme Court caught up with California, and recognized that when it...

Harper Lee Before Atticus Finch: Witty Chain Smoking Red?

Posted on May 28, 2008
Jessica Lacher-Feldman, from the Hoole Special Collections Library at the University of Alabama, recently unearthed some fun old clippings from the collection. It seems that Nellie Harper Lee, author of To Kill A Mockingbird and an Alabama icon, was once...

Ohio State Dean Nancy Rogers Named Ohio AG

Posted on May 28, 2008
Mostly we report on law school deans who join new law schools. Today, however, we learn that Nancy Rogers - dean of the Moritz College of Law at Ohio State - is leaving OSU to serve as interim Attorney General...

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Weed Deliver: Tokyo Customs Official Fumbles A Marijuana Plant

Posted on May 28, 2008
Seems that the customs folks at Narita International Airport, in Tokyo, aren't ready to win the war on drugs. Last week, an agent delivered five ounces of cannabis into the bag of an unsuspecting flier. His goal was to test...

Uncle Sam Wants: Vegans?

Posted on May 27, 2008
Look out, kid. Apparently, the FBI is recruiting ?friendly personable? youngsters to infiltrate vegan potluck suppers ? those simmering hotbeds of sedition -- to gather information about possible RNC protests. One young man approached by the FBI was told he...

Obama Adopted by Crow Nation

Posted on May 26, 2008
In Montana, Barack Obama made a speech to the Crow Nation, proposing a renewed recognition of the government-to-government relationship between tribes and the federal government. He also proposes increased funding for tribal colleges and Indian health care...

Why We Fight

Posted on May 26, 2008
As today's Memorial Day, I thought it would be the right time to honor someone who gave her life for democracy over 60 years ago. Milada Horakova was a Czech freedom fighter, democratic MP and campaigner for women's rights, who...

Solove's Advice for Entering the Teaching Market

Posted on May 26, 2008
Well, I'm in the office on memorial day packing. I'm adding to my series "this is why", a new one: "this is why it's so difficult to recruit laterals." (No one who's moved recently will ever want to go through...

When Dining and Dancing Insult Democracy

Posted on May 25, 2008
Remember back in 2003 when Representatives Bob Ney (R-Ohio) and Walter Jones (R-NC) insisted that cafeterias in certain House office buildings change the name of "french fries" and start selling "freedom fries" instead? Remember - they were responding to France's...

Governor Paterson's Immigration Reform

Posted on May 24, 2008
Governor David Paterson did something very laudable on Friday: he pardoned hip-hop artist Ricky Walters who had previously been convicted (and served time) for attempted murder. Under federal immigration law, Walters - who was born in the UK but moved...

A DA Who Wants To Deport Crime Victims

Posted on May 23, 2008
Ron Wright, over at Prawfs, has flagged down an amazing letter from a DA explaining why he won't prosecute an assault case involving both a complainant and a defendant who were in the country illegally. After suggesting that the two...

Electioneering in the Wild West

Posted on May 23, 2008
So Tuesday was an exciting day for Oregon?the MSM actually focused their flickering and fickle attentions on our Democratic primary. Obama?s win was a surprise to no one?but here are some more subtle points that were lost in the general...

Spivack on Law in Hamlet

Posted on May 23, 2008
Thanks to Mary Dudziak, I see that Carla Spivack's new article on Law in Hamlet is up on ssrn. It looks downright terrific. Here's her abstract: Many readers have noted the abundant references to law in Shakespeare's Hamlet. Indeed, a...

A Crisis In Sexual Orientation And Gender? Or Just Bashful Bladder?

Posted on May 22, 2008
This has been one lousy week for social conservatives. First the California Supreme Court decided to legalize gay marriage in America's largest state. (For non-lawyers, note that this decision will not be reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court because it...

Gay Marriage: John McCain's 2008 Confederate Flag Moment?

Posted on May 22, 2008
Take a look at John McCain's face during his interview with Ellen DeGeneres today. She confronts him about his view on her right to marry the woman she loves. His answer, fresh from a can, is that they have a...

What?s the World Coming To, Part II

Posted on May 22, 2008
In addition to gay marriage, gay soldiers and unisex bathrooms comes the fourth horseman: transgendered elementary school students. A recent article in the Philadelphia Inquirer told of a school district in the suburbs that had called a school assembly to...

Comparing Caffeine In Soda

Posted on May 21, 2008
Count this among the questions that I never thought to ask: does house brand soda - Publix Cola, Sam's Cola, Diet Dr. Thunder, and the like - have different caffeine levels than name brands? I'd long assumed that coffees were...

Faith Based Prisoner Re-entry

Posted on May 21, 2008
Alabama has a problem. Its prison system releases 11,000 prisoners each year and there's no money to help them with the challenges of re-entry. If you're a governor who has already been severely chastised once over proposed tax increases, how...

Pack 'n Pay: American Airlines Ends Free Checked Baggage

Posted on May 21, 2008
American Airlines announced today that it will begin implementing a $15 charge for checked baggage on its flights. I'm sure this will generate some fresh revenues for the airline (as would pay-per-sheet toilet paper), but it will also make the...

Encyclopedia of Southern Culture: The Law Volume

Posted on May 20, 2008
I'm absurdly--and I do mean absurdly--busy with the move and whatnot. So I hadn't planned on putting up much. However, this morning's mail brought a very important and much-anticipated volume, the tenth volume of the New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture--on...

Peggy Orenstein on Gender and Power

Posted on May 20, 2008
This past Sunday, Peggy Orenstein published a column in the New York Times magazine about what the many personal, gender-based attacks on Hillary Clinton say about how American society views powerful women. Orenstein laments the double-edged message that Hillary?s candidacy...

Elemore Morgan

Posted on May 20, 2008
Kathryn Bettis brings the sad news that Elemore Morgan, a Louisiana landscape painter, has passed away. Morgan was for many years a professor at the University of Southwestern Louisiana. The Louisiana Indepedent Weekly recalls, he "changed the way we see...

Most Creative Moments in American Legal History

Posted on May 20, 2008
Thanks to Mary Dudziak's always fabulous legalhistoryblog, I see that Robert Blomquist has an article up on ssrn about the most creative moments in American legal history. Robert polled legal historians back in 2005 about our opinions on the most...

Road Double Stuffed With Oreos

Posted on May 19, 2008
Oh the horror! Folks are stumbling into work today, in Morris, Illinois, after an Oreo truck driver fell asleep at the wheel. The vehicle rolled over, spilling 28,000 pounds of the double stuffed treats onto I-80. Don't be surpised if...

Mistreatment Of Iraq Vets: One Wife Just Said No

Posted on May 19, 2008
I have heard few more powerful or upsetting stories as Military Wives Fight Army to Help Husbands, a twelve minute in-depth piece on NPR last Friday. Ryan LeCompte returned from Iraq with a clear case of PTSD, that fully ripened...

Landsberg Reviewed in Yale Law Journal

Posted on May 18, 2008
When the discussion was afoot about the changes in the size (and focus) of the Michigan Law Review's annual book review issue, I meant to weigh in with comments on their decline in reviews in legal history. I think that's...

Anderson Revisits the Imperial Scholar

Posted on May 18, 2008
How, how could Rachel Anderson's important new article "Revisiting the Imperial Scholar: Market Failure on Law Review?" have escaped my reading until now? I love talk of law reviews (rankings, ways to improve them, the whole deal). Anderson revisits Richard...

Jack Rose In A Sidecar? Making Law School More Practical

Posted on May 17, 2008
We all know the ongoing debate in law schools: theory versus practice. But perhaps even our view of practice is a little skewed. Maybe clinics don't teach students all the necessary useful arts. Many successful lawyers share a common practical...

Happy Anniversary....

Posted on May 17, 2008
of Brown v. Board of Education. It was decided May 17, 1954. Alfred Brophy

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