Academic

Free Downloads And The Risk Of Viruses: The Case of the Kenneth Feinberg Lecture

Posted on March 22, 2008
What are the odds of contracting a computer virus when you download a free file? I was pondering this question yesterday as I found an apparent link to a lecture I wanted to share with everyone. It's the annual time...

Scholars Ponder The Process of Writin' and Citin'

Posted on March 21, 2008
Howard Wasserman over at Prawfs has a great conversation going on about this narrow but absolutely critical scholarship question: how do you write? Do you draft the piece freestyle, straight from your head, lightly cited? Or do you write 'n...

Two Questions for Senator Clinton (and Lanny Davis)

Posted on March 20, 2008
Lanny Davis, lawyer and political advisor to the Clintons, has written a column, "Two Questions for Senator Obama." Davis asks, in essence, the following: 1. Would you support a white candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination if he attended a...

Lawyers, Hookers, and Parasites

Posted on March 20, 2008
From the NY Times article on the Mayflower Hotel (Washington, DC), describing the historic hotel most recently known as Eliot & Kristen's place: Perhaps, but scandal?s brush occasionally touches many businesses serving the city?s power elite. One Carter administration hand...

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Harvard offers Free Tuition for Public Interest Students

Posted on March 19, 2008
Harvard Law School, with an endowment of $1.7 billion, will no longer charge tuition for students who promise to work five years in a public interest job. On top of their loan forgiveness program, which offers assistance to repaying the...

Bill as Hillary's VP?

Posted on March 19, 2008
Could Hillary Clinton pick Bill Clinton as her VP running mate? The 22nd Amendment says only that "no person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice" and bars any person who has served "more than...

Temple Law Announces Dean Finalists

Posted on March 18, 2008
The Temple Law dean search has yielded three finalists: JoAnne Epps of Temple, Paul Schiff Berman of Connecticut (also a finalist at Arizona State), and Wendell Pritchett of Penn (on leave and currently working for Philly Mayor Michael Nutter). More....

Consecutive Sentences and the Right to a Jury Trial

Posted on March 17, 2008
Exciting news for all you sentencing fans: today the Supreme Court granted cert. on the application of Blakely to consecutive sentences: Oregon v. Ice, No. 07-901. Does the Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial, as construed in the U.S....

Should Male Faculty Wear Suits and Ties--and Wrinkle-Free Shirts?

Posted on March 17, 2008
File this one under: things people are talking about. Case Western Reserve University Law School Professor Erik Jensen has an op-ed, A Call for Professional Attire, over at insidehighereducaion urging faculty to upgrade our appearance. He says of faculty: Instead...

The Backroom Story: Prada, Gucci, And Fendi Knockoffs On Canal Street

Posted on March 17, 2008
Here is one of those Steven Levitt Freakonomics mysteries I've been pondering recently. As many people know, designer knockoff bags are sold by vendors on Manhattan's Canal Street. You can walk up and down the avenue and pop into shallow...

Crack-down on Mothers Using Drugs

Posted on March 16, 2008
The New York Times reports that Alabama has adopted a new law to prevent children from being exposed to drugs--in and out of the womb. The district attorney in Andalusia, AL argues that pregnant women should be prosecuted for using...

Governor David Patterson: A Rare Critic Of Megan's Law

Posted on March 16, 2008
In the search for an understanding of New York's new governor, here's one more tidbit for the pile. When it came to Megan's Law, he was the rare rational legislator. Sexual offender registration and notification laws - Megan's Laws -...

Money Matters

Posted on March 14, 2008
Interesting juxtaposition of two articles out of the ABA Journal this week. Justice Kennedy, speaking to a House Subcommittee yesterday, called for an increase in judicial salaries to keep the nation's best judges from fleeing to private practice. According to...

Graffiti As A Gateway Crime

Posted on March 13, 2008
Call it a blogger confessional. I know that I haven't been putting up hugely substantive posts of late. Those entries take more time and concentration than I can currently muster - in part because I am teaching my entire year's...

One Cheer for One Person, One Vote

Posted on March 13, 2008
The details of a proposed plan to deal with the Democratic snafu in Michigan and Florida has emerged, and it causes me to wonder whatever happened to the franchise. Michigan's delegates would be split equally between Clinton and Obama and...

Skittles - The Crunchy Candy Contraband

Posted on March 13, 2008
We used to think my brother loved pickles. I'd hear him in the morning while our Mom was packing our lunch for school, "two cups, Mom, don't forget!" We found out later, about 20 years later, that my brother didn't...

It's Always the Politicians, Rebublicans, and Evangelists

Posted on March 12, 2008
Personal guilt of a self-articulated crime has become common parlance of contemporary political life. Gov. Spitzer?s recent allegations of involvement with a prostitution ring, high-class or not, only prove this truth further. The most righteous of public figures have the...

The Cure for Bad Writing Skills?

Posted on March 12, 2008
Mark Bauerlein, an English professor at Emory, has written an essay challenging the full-time, tenured professoriate to take on the tough, unrewarding task of teaching basic grammar and composition skills to college freshman. I have no quarrel with that proposition,...

Kansas Supreme Court Uses Separation of Powers to Nix Funeral Picketing Ban

Posted on March 12, 2008
When Kansas enacted its Funeral Privacy Act, it prohibited picketing, defined as "protest activities," "before or about any cemetery, church, or mortuary" at any time from an hour before a funeral to two hours after the start of the funeral....

Amusing Comments to Blog Entries

Posted on March 12, 2008
In keeping with my theme of stupid things that bloggers do to mess up our careers (with apologies to Dr. Laura Schlesinger--haven't heard her in years, but what entertainment I'm missing) I thought that I'd post a couple of links...

Eliot Spitzer: Commentary And Primary Materials

Posted on March 11, 2008
Belle Lettre has a good list of interesting posts on Eliot Spitzer here. As always, sometimes, the Smoking Gun has the primary documents here and here. Update: I'm behind the curve. The "sealed" complaint is here.

A Different Sort of Law Firm Promo Video

Posted on March 10, 2008
The San Francisco law firm of Hanson Bridgett has a different way of promoting itself. Check out the accompanying You Tube video, and if it grabs you, check out their web site.

The Community's Right to a Jury Trial

Posted on March 10, 2008
Despite the fact that a good 95% of criminal indictments are disposed through guilty pleas, the jury trial--and the right to a jury trial--still looms large in the American imagination. For better or for worse, our nation is obsessed with...

Who Knew College Teachers Had To Sign Loyalty Oaths?

Posted on March 10, 2008
Apparently they do in the California State University system. This from the SF Chronicle: As a Quaker, [Cal State East Bay teacher] Kearney-Brown is committed to nonviolence and was unwilling to sign the state oath of allegiance that required her...

New York Review of Books: A Way to Think About Eating

Posted on March 09, 2008
My favorite librarian was excited to see a Walker Evans photograph used to illustrate a story in the most recent issue of NYROB. It appears with Jason Epstein essay on Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food. The story (entitled "A...

Surveillance And Mail Search At The USPS

Posted on March 08, 2008
I'm surprised that there isn't greater coverage of the revelation in Thursday's USA Today that: U.S. postal authorities have approved more than 10,000 law enforcement requests to record names, addresses and other information from the outside of letters and packages...

Marion Cotillard Meet Lisa Kudrow: Moon Skeptics All

Posted on March 08, 2008
This week we learned that Oscar winning best actress, Marion Cotillard, thinks that the World Trade Center may have been taken down by Americans seeking to avoid the high costs of building renovation. Oh, and that maybe people never actually...

No Constitutional Right to Home School?

Posted on March 07, 2008
The California Court of Appeal has ruled that the portions of the California Education Code that require children to be educated in either a public or private school, or instructed by a tutor possessing state-certified teaching credentials do not violate...

New Data On Effectiveness Of Megan's Law Sex Offender Community Notification

Posted on March 07, 2008
Sex offender community notification laws - sometimes known as Megan's Laws - have been a popular way for legislators to establish their anti-crime bona fides. We've known that these laws have a disparate impact on people of color. To date,...

Are Law Reviews Guilty of Letterhead Bias?

Posted on March 06, 2008
Unlike the rest of the academic world, legal scholarship is largely published by students. Those 2Ls and 3Ls we teach in our classes are the editors of our articles, the basis of our promotions, and the gatekeepers of placement. Students,...

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