Academic

Iowa Dean Carolyn Jones Stepping Down

Posted on February 07, 2009
The University of Iowa announced yesterday that Carolyn Jones, an Iowa alum and the first female dean of the University of Iowa law school will step down in the summer of 2010. That's a fair amount of advance notice, and...

Call for Papers: Villanova Law and Literature, Oct 1-3

Posted on February 07, 2009
The conference theme for 2009, ?Law, Literature, and Religion?, is broadly conceived. Papers may include but are not limited to papers on any literary, rhetorical, narrative, or textual aspects of law and religion; the exegesis and hermeneutics of legal texts...

Law School Lateral Hire And Dean Search List Updates

Posted on February 06, 2009
If you haven't been checking in, the updated law school lateral list is here and the updated law dean search list is here. I'm posting links, rather than moving the old posts to the top, because in the past my...

Happy Birthday To Us! The Faculty Lounge Turns 1

Posted on February 06, 2009
Thanks to everyone for supporting us through our first full year. We've broken the 170,000 visitor mark - even if some of you arrived as the result of Google searches like "Why Is Barack Obama Famous." (The search apparently yielded...

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Top Cities Where Americans Go To Get Arrested

Posted on February 06, 2009
The LA Times travel section is reporting on the Top 10 places abroad where U.S. citizens get arrrested. For 2008, they are, in order: Tijuana, London, Mexico City, Hong Kong, Nassau (Bahamas), Tokyo, Nogales, Santo Domingo, Kingston, and Nuevo Laredo...

Ginsburg Hospitalized After Surgery for Pancreatic Cancer

Posted on February 05, 2009
Yahoo news report here: Ginsburg, 75, had the surgery at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. She will remain in the hospital for seven to 10 days, said her surgeon, Dr. Murray Brennan, according to a release issued...

Opposition To VA Prayer Bill . . . And The Devil In The Details

Posted on February 05, 2009
Lionel Spruill, the Virginia state delegate who famously attempted to ban "saggy pants" a while back made national news again, this time over a bill to make it illegal to hang "rubber testicles" from a vehicle hitch. Gross. What's getting...

Stunning Prison Scandal: Commodification of Children, Slavery, Or Simple Corruption?

Posted on February 04, 2009
Out of Luzerne County, Pennsylvania - home of Wilkes-Barre - comes one of the most remarkable and appalling public corruption scandals I've heard to date. At least two Luzerne County judges were involved in a plan to send hundreds of...

Upcoming Conferences Of Interest To Law Professors

Posted on February 04, 2009
The AALS is over. Conference season is over. Right? WRONG. The 2009 law professor conference season has just begun! Many of you have already marked your calendar with these events - placed yourself on the program, even. But for the...

Yet more problems at Riker's Island

Posted on February 04, 2009
Last week I posted on how Riker's Island was being sued for its neglect and dangerous mismanagement of adolescent inmates. Today, we learn from the New York Times that Riker's Island is no stranger to lawsuits, having been sued multiple...

Disciplinary Research: Michael Foucault, Meet The US News Rankings

Posted on February 04, 2009
If you're a person who cares about US News rankings (and I include both those who love them and those who hate them) and you find the work of Michael Foucault interesting, compelling, or outrageous...your article has arrived. May I...

New Words and Phrases for 2009

Posted on February 04, 2009
Well, we're not too far into the year 2009 yet, but we already have some new phrases ("We're going to be in the Hudson") and some words have made a comeback, like furlough. That's a phrase that hasn't been much...

Lawsuit Against University of Iowa

Posted on February 03, 2009
Teresa Wagner's lawsuit against the University of Iowa for failing to hire her as a legal writing professor has caught a lot of people's attention and generated the usual discussion about left-wing bias in the legal academy. It's a huge...

Symposia, the Ancient Greek Way

Posted on February 02, 2009
Saturday's New York Times had a great blog post about the original Greek symposium, which differs rather markedly from the typical academic symposia of today. As the author explains, a symposium was: a ?classic moderate drinking-party? common to the wealthier...

The Gun Totin' Gals Of Drexel

Posted on February 02, 2009
OK, so they weren't Drexel Law students. And I doubt that a single sharpshooter from this gang still lives on today. But once upon a time - in 1925, specifically - Drexel University (or, as it was then, Drexel Institute)...

Football Rules and Title IX

Posted on February 02, 2009
It's probably the result of watching the Super Bowl, but I have been thinking about the wisdom of returning to limited substitution rules for college football. From about 1953 to 1965 college football played under rules that effectively prevented two-platoon...

Is President Obama "Post-Partisan?"

Posted on February 02, 2009
It's been a shade less than two weeks that President Obama has held the office , but the President's approach to the "Stimulus Bill" may be instructive. A legion of respected economists have agreed that the bill is larded with...

A New Restrictive Covenant from Tuscaloosa

Posted on February 02, 2009
Ryan Hendley, one of my former students sent me this. I absolutely love it. I've been sitting on it for a while, because I knew I wanted to use it as a final exam question and couldn't blog on this...

Seward Johnson

Posted on February 01, 2009
Ah, it's that time of the semester again when we talk about Nina Zagat and Seward Johnson in trusts and estates. This is core law of People Magazine material. And you know what? People ran a long story about the...

Nixon Tapes, part 113

Posted on February 01, 2009
Patricia Cohen of the New York Times is giving extensive coverage to a dispute over the transcription and use of Nixon tapes that one of the lions of the history profession (and the legal history sub-discipline at that), Stanley Kutler,...

A Different Inaugual Address

Posted on January 31, 2009
I've been reading some inaugural addresses from the antebellum period for a paper I'm moving heaven and earth to finish up this week. And so admist all the comparisons of Obama's inaugural address to Lincoln's second inaugural and others, I...

Paul Jones' Art Collection

Posted on January 30, 2009
Thanks to a pointer from a Scott England, I learn that today's Tuscaloosa News has a nice article about Paul Jones' collection of African-American art at the University of Alabama. This story is decades in the making. It starts back...

Law School Lateral Hire And Dean Search List Updates

Posted on January 29, 2009
If you haven't been checking in, the updated law school lateral list is here and the updated law dean search list is here. We have several new listings on both lists, including just announced finalists in the Maryland dean search....

Honestly, Obama Has Good Taste In Tea

Posted on January 29, 2009
I learned today what some others have long known: Barack Obama is an Honest Tea lover. What a fine choice! I first discovered this excellent, fairly low cal brew at Tuscaloosa's health food nirvana, Manna. Let's face it: there aren't...

"It is just an old picture of a person best left unremembered.?

Posted on January 29, 2009
Well, that's the question, isn't it? No sooner have I finished writing about last night's fabulous lecture by Justice Albie Sachs about how South Africa's Constitutional Court is made the site where a terrible prison once stood, but I see...

News of the Weird Classic: Family Law

Posted on January 29, 2009
Walt and Kathy Viggiano of Wichita, Kan., convinced Judge James Burgess to return their four children from foster care in 1999, following their removal the year before because of the unsanitariness of the family's mobile home. Unlike in many such...

Football Causes Brain Damage. Why Isn't It A Crime?

Posted on January 28, 2009
The Times reports that an unusual form of brain damage, sometimes seen in boxers, has been found in a sixth former NFL player. ?This is a medically significant finding,? said Dr. Daniel P. Perl, the director of neuropathology at the...

A Question About Snow in Boston

Posted on January 28, 2009
Do people at Harvard University Press really listen to Black Sabbath to pass the time while it's snowing?! (And you thought, based on the title, I was going to ask about why those who shovel out a parking space are...

In Memory of John Updike

Posted on January 27, 2009
For those of you who haven't heard, John Updike, celebrated Pulitzer-Prize winning novelist and short story writer, died today. He was 76. This is a tremendous loss for the literary community and all of us who care about wonderful storytelling...

Lindsay Waters on the (possibility of a) shift away from scholarly monographs

Posted on January 26, 2009
Not quite sure how this important discussion has escaped our comment here in the lounge. Thanks to a link from HUP's publicity blog, I see that the extraordinary Lindsay Waters, executive humanities editor at Harvard University Press, is writing and....

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