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Academic

Adjunct Law Prof Blog

By Mitchell H. Rubinstein

Post Frequency: 42.5/day

Last Entry: April 01, 2011 at 01:00:00

How to handle the student who gets a "B" but thinks she deserves an "A"

Posted on January 27, 2010
This post is for all our adjunct prof readers (and full-timers too). Each of us has developed our own strategies for dealing with students who email or come see us after the semester ends demanding to know why they didn't...

Rubinstein, Privacy Legal Issues in the Public Sector

Posted on January 26, 2010
I was invited to submit an article in connection with NYU Annual Conference on Labor in 2005. My article was written in 2005, updated in late 2009 and just published. The abstract describes my article as follows: This article appears...

Center For Labor and Employment Law at St. John's Law School

Posted on January 26, 2010
I am delighted to be part of The Center For Labor And Employment Law at St. John's University School of Law. Download Current bulletin of the center-1 Under the leadership of Professor David L. Gregory and Dean Michael A. Simons,...

Parents sue district alleging officials ignored repeated anti-Semitic harassment of son

Posted on January 26, 2010
Courthouse News Service reports on a suit filed by a parent in federal court, where the parent claims her son was subjected to "unbearable" anti-Semitic harassment, including having "burn, Jew, burn" scratched onto his locker, while attending High School in...

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Supremes Recognize the Importance of Blogs

Posted on January 26, 2010
Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission, 558 U.S. ___, slip op at 49 (Jan. 21, 2010) appears to be the first time the Supreme Court recognized the importance of blogs and in fact used the term "blog." Specifically, the Court...

Union Membership Continues To Decline

Posted on January 25, 2010
On Jan. 22, 2010, the BLS issued its annual report on union membership. Union membership has continued to decline. As the report states: In 2009, the union membership rate?the percent of wage and salary workers who were members of a...

What Ever Happened To Employee Free Choice Act

Posted on January 25, 2010
As readers to this blog all know, I am a strong supporter of EFCA and have debated its merits at Columbia and Cardozo Law Schools. However, the reality of life is that the legal landscape has changed. The Democrats no...

Testing employees for unlawful drug use a mandatory subject of collective bargaining

Posted on January 25, 2010
Matter of Deitch v City of New York, 2009 NY Slip Op 52402(U), Decided on November 30, 2009, Supreme Court, Kings County, Justice Arthur M. Schack [Not published in the Official Reports.] Terence J. Deitch was terminated from his position...

Agriculture adjunct busted for growing pot

Posted on January 25, 2010
The Chronicle of Higher Edis reporting that the police busted a couple of adjunct professors at SUNY-Albany, including one who teaches in the school of agriculture, for growing pot. Scott R. Davidson, a part-time lecturer in marketing at SUNY-Albany, was...

The Madoff Affair

Posted on January 24, 2010
PBS Frontline did a special report on the Madoff Affair. It includes several interesting interviews and a timeline. This material is not legal, but some professors may want to use it in class to stimulate discussions about ethics, the law...

New Jersey enacts medical marijuana law; no employer accommodation required

Posted on January 24, 2010
New Jersey enacted the Compassionate Use Medical Marijuana Act and became the 14th state in the nation to legalize medical marijuana. The law removes statewide penalties for the possession and use of up to two ounces of marijuana when a...

Craig Becker Renominated To The NLRB

Posted on January 23, 2010
As expected President Obama renominated Craig Becker as a Member of the NLRB. I know Craig and think he would make an excellent Board Member. However, I also know that the legal landscape has just changed. The Democrats no longer...

7th holds police sergeant was not transferred to other units in retaliation for activity protected under Title VII.

Posted on January 23, 2010
O'Neal v. City of Chicago, ___F.3d___(7th Cir. Nov. 17, 2009), is an interesting case.A Seventh Circuit panel has affirmed a court's grant of summary judgment for the Chicago Police Department (CPD) on an African-American female sergeant's retaliation claim under Title...

Parents of ten-year-old student suspended for written statements stated 1983 First Amendment claim

Posted on January 22, 2010
Cuff v. Central Valley School Dist., ___F.3d___ (2d Cir. 2009), is an interesting decision. Allegations by the parents of a ten-year-old student that the student's suspension, for writing "blow up the school with all the teachers in it" on an...

Moody's says financial future of higher edu is negative

Posted on January 22, 2010
The credit rating agency Moody's predicts that the near-term financial future of higher edu is negative (and here). Of course, your results may vary but Moody's says: that the "partial recovery in equity markets" has helped many colleges and that...

Supervisor's occasional gender-based inappropriate comments did not rise to the level of a hostile work environment.

Posted on January 22, 2010
Scruggs v. Garstt Seed, ___F.3d___(7th Cir. Nov. 20, 2009) is an interesting case. A supervisor's occasional gender-based inappropriate comments were not sufficiently severe or pervasive to rise to the level of a hostile work environment under Title VII...

Citing Wikipedia In Court

Posted on January 22, 2010
A law review article was recently posted on SSRN about citing Wikipedia in court. It's entitled Wikipedia in Court: When and How Citing Wikipedia and Other Consensus Websites is Appropriate. The abstract provides: Practitioners and courts are relying more and...

Motorcyclist's intoxication did not preclude injury from being "accidental" under AD & D ERISA policy.

Posted on January 21, 2010
Kovach v. Zurich American, ___F.3d____(6th Cir. Nov. 13, 2009), is an interesting case. An Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) plan administrator's decision to deny accidental death and dismemberment (AD & D) benefits to a beneficiary, based on its conclusion...

Looking for examples on how to draft learning outcome goals for your online course?

Posted on January 21, 2010
Then here's a very helpful post from the Best Practices for Legal Education blog (the language below can also be adapted to brick & mortar classes as well): COURSE GOALS: By the end of the course, students who participate fully...

DOJ To Spend More Than 150 Million Dollars On Legal Research

Posted on January 21, 2010
Legal Blog Watch ran an interesting Dec. 2, 2009 story stating that DOJ will spend about 150 million dollars in legal research. This article was obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests. As the article states: The documents were obtained....

Lawyer who lied about grades on his law school transcript is fired and then suspended

Posted on January 21, 2010
The ABA Journal is reporting that a U. of Chicago law grad who altered grades on his law school transcript in order to get a summer associate job with Sidley & Austin was not only fired, but also suspended from...

Circuit Split On Cat's Paw Theory Of Liability

Posted on January 20, 2010
Circuit Split Over Cat's Paw Theory is an interesting Nov. 23, 2009 National Law Journal article. The issue is whether an employer can be liable for discrimination when the decision maker does not hold any animus. Rather, a lower level...

Should Court Proceeding Be On TV?

Posted on January 20, 2010
Justices Better At Precedent Than Prescience is an excellent Jan. 18, 2010 NY Times article which raises several issues. First, it notes that the Supreme Court recently ruled 5-4 that a big gay marriage case arising in the 9th Circuit...

Top 20 movies for first year law students

Posted on January 20, 2010
Here's a list of the best legal movies every law student should see based on an informal survey of some law profs as published in the National Jurist Magazine: To Kill a Mockingbird Twelve Angry Men Anatomy of a Murder...

Today's generation of students - "lazy" or "industrious and creative?"

Posted on January 20, 2010
There's no shortage of opinions about today's students - some believing they are "industrious and creative" while others think they are lazy as heck. This article from Inside Higher Ed does an excellent job compiling several studies, books and expert...

Tentative deal reached in U. of Hawaii faculty union dispute

Posted on January 19, 2010
According to the Honolulu Advertiser: A day after its members received their first paychecks reflecting a 6.7 percent pay cut, the University of Hawai'i Professional Assembly announced that a tentative contract agreement had been reached with the University of Hawai'i...

Should federal student financial aid be based on a debt to potential earning ratio?

Posted on January 19, 2010
With so much discussion lately about the changing economic viability of a law degree, one wonders whether this proposed department of education regulation might, or should, be applied to graduate programs like law school. From Inside Higher Ed: The U...

Individual Who Signed Independent Contractor Agreement Found To Be An Employee

Posted on January 19, 2010
As readers of this blog (and my students) know, employee status is often litigated in employment law. Matter of O'Connor v. Commissioner of Labor, ___A.D.___(3d Dept. Nov. 25, 2009), illustrates an important point. Independent contractor agreements are not binding on...

Circuit Split Over Whether Independent Contractors Can Sue Under The Rehab Act

Posted on January 19, 2010
9th Circuit Widens On Rights of Independent Contractors is an interesting Nov. 24, 2009 article from the National Law Journal. It is about the recent 9th Circuit decision in Fleming v. Yuma Regional Medical Center. As the article explains: The...

Supremes Grant Cert In Commerical Arbitration Case That Has Labor Implications

Posted on January 19, 2010
Workplace Prof Blog reported on Jan. 18, 2010 that the Supremes granted cert in a commercial arbitration case that has labor law implications. The issue is who has the authority to rule on the issue of mandatory arbitration clauses being...

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