Academic

Dancing with the Politicians

Posted on September 29, 2009
So Dancing With the Stars is actually one reality show (reality? I use the term loosely) that I actually don't watch, but the Cleveland Plain Dealer ran a funny story about politicians who SHOULD be on the show and what...

Domain Names and Protest

Posted on September 28, 2009
Tomorrow's Cyber Law class includes a discussion of domain names as an example of the internationalization of legal regimes in relation to the Internet. While running through my final preparations (read: while procrastinating by catching up on my blog reading),...

The Coming Term of the Supreme Court: Salazar v. Buono

Posted on September 28, 2009
I figure it's time to preview some of the important cases that will be heard by the Supreme Court in the coming term. First up, in no particular order, is Salazar v. Buono, 08-472. About 70 years ago a veterans...

More on Facebook and the Perils of User Generated Content

Posted on September 28, 2009
According to CNN, the U.S. Secret Service asked Facebook to suspend the use of an application that allows users to create online polls when someone created a poll asking whether the president should be killed. The possible answers were "yes",...

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Beast Books: Better, Faster, Cheaper ... or at least Faster

Posted on September 28, 2009
The New York Times has an article on a new agreement between Daily Beast and Peasus Books, to create a new imprint, "Beast Books." The idea is to have Daily Beast writers produce books that'll come out sooner than the...

Judge pricks finger, sticks it to plaintiff

Posted on September 28, 2009
The New York Law Journal reports on a case derailed by an apparently small detail: In a case of first impression -- no pun intended -- a Queens, N.Y., judge has thrown out a tort action because, in part, the...

More Embryo Errors

Posted on September 28, 2009
I?ve blogged a few times in the last couple of weeks about sperm and embryo mix-ups, as well as egg misappropriation. Two more cases were in the news this past week. In Louisiana: Ochsner Hospital Elmwood has indefinitely suspended operations...

Antebellum Literary Societies: UGA Version

Posted on September 28, 2009
Time for some fun and photographs. Following up on the occasional series from last spring on pictures of antebellum law schools -- Princeton (yes! they once had a law school) and Litchfield -- it's time for some photos of antebellum...

McAmerica

Posted on September 28, 2009
Via Felix Salmon (created by Stephen Von Worley) a map of the contiguous USA by how far any given point is from the nearest McDonald?s. ?The McFarthest Spot, somewhere in South Dakota, is 107 miles, as the crow flies, from...

Things We Take for Granted

Posted on September 27, 2009
It used to be that when you wanted to find a law review article, you looked it up in the Index to Legal Periodicals, and then you went to the shelf, found the volume, and read or photo-copied it. Today,...

Weekend Links

Posted on September 27, 2009
From the SEC Historical Society: Audio Webcast on New World of Financial Regulation, moderated by Theresa Gabaldon, The George Washington University Law School, and with presenters Jesse Eisinger, ProPublica; Roberta S. Karmel, Brooklyn Law School; and Joseph E...

Top 10 law schools for Constitutional Law & Theory

Posted on September 27, 2009
On his Law School Reports Blog, Brian Leiter ranks, or perhaps more accurately lets readers rank, the top 10 law school faculties for Constitutional Law & Theory. He uses condorcet internet voting to discern who has the top faculties in...

Crazy Bike Skills

Posted on September 27, 2009
From women. Video here. (HT: Chris Bodenner at The Daily Dish) And to think that I still struggle with a simple ?look ma, no hands? move. Of course, I?m not the only one:

The Amazing Race

Posted on September 26, 2009
Season 15 of The Amazing Race gets underway Sunday night. As fans of the show may recall, last season's winners of the $1 million prize were siblings Victor and Tammy. Victor is a partner at O'Melveny & Myers, and sister...

Are Online Networks Company Towns, Shopping Malls, or Neither?

Posted on September 26, 2009
The Southern District of California District Court held last week that the First Amendment does not apply to stop Sony from removing people from its "Playstation 3 Network" based on their speech. Erik Estavillo sued Sony seeking $55,000 in damages,...

Merrill Peterson (1921 - 2009)

Posted on September 26, 2009
From H-Law comes the news that this year has seen the close of the life of another great American historian, Merrill Peterson. He was an emeritus professor at the University of Virginia. You may recall we've already spoken about the...

Mercer Law Dean Daisy Hurst Floyd Stepping Down

Posted on September 25, 2009
It's that time of year when deanship transitions begin in earnest. Now we learn that Mercer's dean, Daisy Hurst Floyd, will be stepping down and returning to the faculty this summer. She has been dean since 2004. Her six year...

Securities Regulation and the Global Economic Crisis: Conference at Seton Hall Law School

Posted on September 25, 2009
On behalf of the editors of the Seton Hall Law Review: "The Seton Hall Law Review will be hosting its annual Symposium on October 30, 2009, to address the impact of securities regulation on the current global financial crisis. Specifically,...

Faces in the Crowd

Posted on September 25, 2009
Tomorrow marks the 49th anniversary of the famous (or infamous) debate between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, which is widely credited as the catalyst for giving rise to the importance of television in politics. The BBC offers an interesting...

Cupcake Law

Posted on September 25, 2009
For some students, law school can be a piece of cake. For others, it is difficult. And for some very, very specific others, graduating from law school is a cupcake. Recent New York Law School graduate Lev Ekster, eschewed the...

More on The Decline of Print Journals: Northwestern's TriQuarterly

Posted on September 25, 2009
We've been talking for a long time about the declining fortunes of academic presses (OUP and CUP had layoffs at the beginning of the year; YUP laid off staff later in the year; HUP shut its display room this summer;...

The Jurisprudence of Second Life

Posted on September 24, 2009
My colleague Richard Myers will be serving as a judge in the first trial ever conducted in Second Life on September 25. The trial is based loosely on the Michael Vick criminal case. "Just like a regular mock trial, they...

Charting Law Schools Over Time

Posted on September 24, 2009
Gary Rosin has a new post, "Do We Need More Law Schools," up at Law by the Numbers, which charts the growth in the number of law schools from the early twentieth century to today. There are now 199 law...

A Good Week For Justice Brandeis

Posted on September 24, 2009
Pantheon Books (a division of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, itself part of Random House, Inc.) is releasing a new biography of Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis this week. The book is titled Louis D. Brandeis: A Life and is...

Stripping the Student Body? UC Walkout Goes Naked

Posted on September 23, 2009
(Thank goodness it?s the students and not the faculty) As we reported earlier, the UC faculty walkout is planned for tomorrow, September 24 ? the first day of class for eight of the ten UC campuses. Many events, including teach-ins,...

'What's Law Got To Do With It?'

Posted on September 23, 2009
This past spring I was fortunate enough to attend a mini-conference at the University of Indiana Maurer School of Law that ostensibly drew upon Tina Turner's classic "What's Love Got to Do With It" for its title. It was a...

Mid-week Links

Posted on September 23, 2009
Chicago on ?The Chicago School? and its critics (U of Chicago Magazine. HT: Mark Thoma) Because housing prices always go up . . . Ginnie Mae?s buy versus rent calculator accepts only positive values for Yearly Home Value Increase Rate....

Elyn Saks, Southern California Law Professor, Wins MacArthur Genius Grant

Posted on September 22, 2009
The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is announcing its new fellows today and one of the winners of these so-called "genius grants" is Elyn Saks. Saks is Associate Dean and Orrin B. Evans Professor of Law, Psychology, and...

An Antebellum Bookcase

Posted on September 21, 2009
One of my most favorite works of history, the Brown University Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice's Report, begins with a very elegant line: "Let us begin with a clock." I absolutely love first lines, like Marshall Sahlins' line in...

Consensus about Consensus?

Posted on September 21, 2009
I've been reading The Five Dysfunctions of a Team (Patrick Lencioni) which is marketed as a "leadership fable" based largely on corporate life although it may have some interesting applications to academia. Three things I found notable about Lencioni's theory...

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