Academic

Web Free Zones: Should Schools Ban Internet Surfing In Class?

Posted on April 20, 2008
The University of Chicago Law School announced this week that it is now blocking student web access in classrooms. Not everyone is on board. Doug Berman argues that: I have never thought that my experience in the classroom, rather than...

File Under: Articles I need to read

Posted on April 20, 2008
Working on some stuff related to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 tonight. And so I call up this twenty-year old but still vivid memory, from first year constitutional law. Then-Professor (now Judge) Lynch was talking about Katzenbach v. McClung...

Osama Obama: Invidious Racism?

Posted on April 19, 2008
Very recently, I heard someone refer to Barack Obama as "Osama Obama." My response was that the comment was clearly racist, but another person disagreed, arguing that it was a legitimate way to express a founded anxiety over the political...

Podgor on Blogs and the Promotion and Tenure Letter

Posted on April 19, 2008
One of the things I enjoy doing (and hope to do some more of in the faculty lounge) is talking about scholarship. Ellen Podgor's just posted a short essay, "Blogs and the Promotion and Tenure Letter," which appeared in the...

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Lapel Pins, and Other Nonsense

Posted on April 17, 2008
Much was made in last night's Democratic debate about the absence of an American flag lapel pin from Barack Obama's suits. Nothing was made of the absence of an American flag lapel pin from Hillary Clinton's suits. Can you say...

Watch Chelsea Clinton Live From Drexel Law This Afternoon

Posted on April 17, 2008
Chelsea Clinton will be visiting Drexel Law this afternoon to chat with our law students in her typical Q&A format. We will be webcasting this conversation (which is expected to last a bit over an hour) starting a little after...

Saving the Constitution from Lawyers: Part I

Posted on April 16, 2008
Despite the apparent gauntlet toss reflected in this title, I revere the law and deeply respect lawyers and the legal profession. Even though I?m a political scientist, I?ve spent many years studying the Constitution and aspects of American law, and....

Dept. Of Archives: Photos From Japanese Internment Camps

Posted on April 16, 2008
Eric Muller points us to a small but compelling collection of high resolution photos from the camps where Japanese Americans were incarcerated during World War II. You can find them directly here. Photo of Corporal Jimmie Shohara by Ansel Adams.

Robert Spitzer Guest Blogging

Posted on April 16, 2008
I'm pleased that Robert J. Spitzer of SUNY--Cortland's political science department will be guest blogging with us for a bit. He is the author, among many other books, of Saving the Constitution from the Lawyers: How Legal Training and Law...

Megan's Law And The National Consensus For Death

Posted on April 16, 2008
I've been reading over the briefs in Kennedy v. Louisiana, today's Supreme Court case considering the constitutionality of capital punishment for child rapists. Yesterday I noted that the amicus brief of several states appropriated the overblown rhetoric of the child...

One to Watch: A New Feature in the Faculty Lounge

Posted on April 16, 2008
Ever wonder what?s the buzz in Franklin County, Florida? How about Nemaha County, Nebraska? Wetzel County, West Virginia? Believe it or not, these places have courts, fully functioning legal systems in fact, and its where some pretty interesting cases play...

Death Penalty For Child Rape: Rhetorical Games In Supreme Court Briefs

Posted on April 15, 2008
One ongoing issue in the debates over child sexual abuse is the tendency of certain advocates to play games with statistics. In Making the Case for Megan's Law: A Study in Legislative Rhetoric, I noted that advocates for sex offender...

Delta And Northwest Merge. What Is The Future Of The Minneapolis Hub?

Posted on April 14, 2008
One of the less talked-about aspects of airline mergers and consolidation is their impact on hub cities. While some airline hubs are located in towns that generate substantial traffic on their own, many are not - and these cities stand...

He Wrote 200,000 Books (but Computers Did Some of the Work)

Posted on April 14, 2008
Now, that's something! We really need to think about how the technology harnessed here could be put to use in the legal biz. Alfred Brophy

Rape In The Military: The Other Inbound Wounded

Posted on April 01, 2008
Representative Jane Harman has a disturbing post up at Huffington (which is also an LA Times op-ed) discussing the frequency of rape in the military - and particularly the extent that woman soldiers are sexually assaulted. Everyone knows I'm a...

Movement in US News Peer Assessment Scores, 2008-09

Posted on March 31, 2008
Bradford Hardin's comment on my first takes on the US News law school rankings led me to look at the difference between 2008 and 2009 Peer assessments in the 104 Tier-1 schools. As the table below shows, most schools (55)...

Some more takes on US News, Peer and Lawyer/Judge Assessments

Posted on March 31, 2008
While I should be working on my comments about Justices Catron and McLean for a conference on "neglected justices" I'm going to at the end of the week, I'm thinking about the US News peer and lawyer/judge assessments. (Yeah, there...

Dith Pran: New York Times Photojournalist

Posted on March 30, 2008
This morning's New York Times brings the sad news that Dith Pran, the photographer portrayed in the 1984 movie The Killing Fields has passed away, at age 65, in Woodbridge, New Jersey. His obituary is a compelling story, detailing his...

He Who Does Protest Too Much: Scalia and Washington Grange

Posted on March 29, 2008
Justice Scalia is fond of excoriating his more centrist colleagues for blurring the line between politics and judicial decision-making. The decision to strike down a Colorado measure that discriminated against gay, lesbian and bisexual individuals was "an act, not of...

Seeking an Injunction to Prevent a Black Hole?

Posted on March 29, 2008
This morning's New York Times brings "Asking a Judge to Save the World, and Maybe a Whole Lot More." A taste of the article: [T]wo men pursuing a lawsuit in federal court in Hawaii ... think a giant particle accelerator...

First Takes on US News

Posted on March 28, 2008
I've been absurdly--and I do mean absurdly--busy of late. But US News is out and the feeding frenzy's begun. (More than 1100 comments to this post at abovethelaw.com! Now that's a feeding frenzy.) Here are some initial takes on the...

California Court of Appeal to Rehear Home Schooling Case

Posted on March 28, 2008
The California Court of Appeal has agreed to rehear In re Rachel L. , the case in which the Court of Appeal initially decided that there is no constitutional right to home schooling. My earlier post on this case is...

Free Books! Dan Solove Channels Radiohead

Posted on March 27, 2008
Who doesn't like a free book? Dan Solove's two excellent volumes, The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet, and The Digital Person: Technology and Privacy in the Information Age are now downoadable for free! This will...

The Russian Army Sings A Love Song To Alabama

Posted on March 26, 2008
Call me hyperbolic, but it simply does not get much better than this. Watch the Red Army Choir (alongside Finnish rockers The Leningrad Cowboys) express their heartfelt love for the State of Alabama. I've always thought that folks like Jeff...

US News 2009 Law School Rankings Leaked - Alabama Rises Again

Posted on March 26, 2008
OK, so I agree with Brian Leiter that the overall US News law school rankings don't tell you that much (although to be fair, over time they produce what they claim to describe). And it's also true that I no...

Medellin: Treaties and Domestic Law

Posted on March 25, 2008
The Supreme Court's decision today in Medellin settles some issues but leaves others in abeyance. If there was ever much doubt that a non-self-executing treaty is not enforceable as domestic law without legislation to do so, there isn't any doubt...

In Search Of Days On Market Data For Home Sales

Posted on March 25, 2008
A rational investor presumably seeks out all the available data about housing markets. One paticularly alluring piece of information, it seems to me, is the national days-on-market average - the mean time it takes to sell a house. Studied over...

Does Gore Have A Better Shot Than Hillary?

Posted on March 24, 2008
I think so. Howard Kurtz at the Washington Post notes that many pundits have written off Hillary. But he says that he's not ready to declare the race over yet - what if Hillary scores a big win in Pennsylvania?...

Baby Boomer Theme Songs for the Clinton Campaign

Posted on March 24, 2008
Dan's post earlier today about Gore being more likely than Clinton got me thinking. Then I found this essay from the UK's Guardian on real clear politics and I started thinking some more. (Irrelevant aside: When Al Gore's father upset...

Must Sex Offenders Vote Absentee?

Posted on March 23, 2008
Massachusetts state legislator Demetrius Atsalis has proposed that high risk sex offenders be prohibited from voting at polling places located in libraries and schools. As he explained, "if someone has to use a bathroom, there's an excuse to go down....

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