Academic

The other "F" word

Posted on July 14, 2009
Elizabeth Nowicki has an interesting series of posts over at Concurring Opinions (see here, here, and here) about race and gender discrimination in legal academia. One intriguing question she poses - at least it's one I've always wondered about -...

?Wells Fargo Sues Wells Fargo, Wells Fargo Denies Allegations?

Posted on July 14, 2009
Via Calculated Risk, who gets credit for the excellent headline. FOX Business reports: Yet I could not resist asking Wells Fargo Bank NA why it filed a civil complaint against itself in a mortgage foreclosure case in Hillsborough County, Fla....

The Top 100 Best Places To Live

Posted on July 13, 2009
Money Magazine has announced its list of America's top 100 "best small towns." The top ten are: 1) Louisville, Colorado 2) Chanhassen, Minnesota 3) Papillion, Nebraska 4) Middleton, Wisconsin 5) Milton, Massachusetts 6) Warren, New Jersey 7) Keller, Texas 8)...

Did A Wise Woman Justice Change The Outcome Of Safford v. Redding?

Posted on July 13, 2009
Apropos of the start of today's hearings, and all the hullabaloo over Sotomayor's wise Latina comment, it's useful to ask whether the existence of a wise female Justice on the Supreme Court altered the outcome of a major case. Did...

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Advanced Placement for Law School?

Posted on July 13, 2009
Over at propertyprof, Ben Barros (whose scholarship overlaps in surprising ways Justice Alito's work when he was at Yale) has a post on the possibility (unlikely, I know) that law school might be extended from three to four years--and speculating...

Mary Eastman was married to whom?!

Posted on July 13, 2009
Yup--Mary Eastman, author of the important proslavery novel Aunt Phillis' Cabin (notice the parallel title to Uncle Tom's Cabin--Eastman was writing in response to Harriet Beecher Stowe) was married to Seth Eastman, who was a somewhat important landscape artist...

Your Faculty Email: Lessons From Enron?

Posted on July 13, 2009
How?s the traffic on your faculty listserve these days? Quiet? Active? The answer, along with other information about inter-faculty email traffic, may hold the key to predicting both your school?s social health and impending crises. Consider, for example, how the...

Around the Blogosphere

Posted on July 12, 2009
It seems everyone is talking about Michael Lewis?s new Vanity Fair article, The Man Who Crashed the World. From the lead-in: Almost a year after A.I.G.?s collapse, despite a tidal wave of outrage, there still has been no clear explanation...

An Orgasm A Day Keeps The Doctor Away. Is This Really NHS?

Posted on July 12, 2009
Sometimes the real news seems so good that you wonder whether The Onion is mere surplussage. Such is the state of affairs today, as leading British papers the Times of London , the Daily Mail, and the Telegraph notify us...

The Market in Academic Bomb Threats

Posted on July 11, 2009
So, you?ve decided that egg and sperm selling are not for you, and the California IOUs don?t look like such a great investment now that Bank of America, Wells Fargo and JPMorgan have allowed the time limit they set on...

Really Bad Advice

Posted on July 11, 2009
According to this A.P. news account the Marinette County, Wisconsin District Attorney, Allen Brey, advised police that they could remove a US flag being flown upside down by a businessman to protest the town's refusal to grant him a liquor...

Baseball Trivia: Who Am I?

Posted on July 11, 2009
1. I signed African-American superstar and future hall-of-famer Jackie Robinson. 2. I drafted the first Latin-American baseball player, future hall-of-famer Roberto Clemente. 3. I created the framework for baseball's "farm club" system. 4. Some called me "The Mahatma...

Today in 1930 And The Great Mississippi Bubble

Posted on July 10, 2009
Wednesday, July 9, 1930: Dow 219.08 +0.75 (0.3%) Washington Irving's book ?The Great Mississippi Bubble? republished by Random House. "The story was written about a hundred years ago and the actual event occurred more than two hundred years ago, but....

Beware: Summer Rental Scams

Posted on July 10, 2009
The NYT has a very entertaining, albeit alarming article giving advice for summer rental nighmares. It is filled with stories of people showing up to beach or mountain houses filled with vermin, slugs, bats, and landlords with alligator boots and...

You can't stop Moneyball; you can only hope to contain it.

Posted on July 10, 2009
I'm not the only one who likes to draw Moneyball analogies. Here's one on the topic of health care reform on The New Republic's health care blog. (The topic: devising metrics for evaluating reform proposals.) Also: more bad news for...

Predicting change... for lawyers

Posted on July 09, 2009
In my last post, I noted that statistical models typically out-perform experts at predictive tasks. What's true of baseball managers and talent scouts is true of many other professionals, too. Go here for a list of relevant studies (pp. 22-24),...

The Prominence of Plagiarism

Posted on July 09, 2009
We recently received a request at the Lounge to do a post on plagiarism in law schools from someone who said that (s)he had experienced significant instances of plagiarism in his/her school. The concerns raised include the fact that many...

Supreme Interview

Posted on July 09, 2009
Emily Bazelon (pictured), affiliated with Yale Law School and a contributor to Slate magazine, has a lengthy interview with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg appearing in The New York Times, available for your reading pleasure here. (Hat tip: The BLT.) In....

Glad To Join The Lounge

Posted on July 09, 2009
What a lovely welcome, Dan! Since I don?t have Tim?s wit, I?ll just thank Dan for inviting me to join the Lounge and thank all of the other Loungers and Lounge readers for making me feel so welcome here. Al,...

Kim Krawiec Joins The Faculty Lounge As Permanent Blogger

Posted on July 09, 2009
We're very pleased to announce that Kim Krawiec is our newest permanent blogger here at the Faculty Lounge. As many of you know, Kim is a Professor of Law at Duke University. She is a graduate of North Carolina State...

A New Meaning to ?Nest Egg?

Posted on July 09, 2009
From Tuesday?s USA today: Sperm, egg donors increase during recession By Judy Keen, USA TODAY CHICAGO ? Sperm banks and donor agencies say the recession is prompting a surge in calls from people who hope to make money by donating...

Massachusetts AG Brings Suit to Declare DOMA Unconstitutional

Posted on July 09, 2009
Martha Coakley, the Massachusetts Attorney General, has filed suit in Boston's federal district court, seeking a declaration that section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional. Read the Complaint here. Section 3 of DOMA stipulates that for federal...

Should GPA Count In Selecting Law Review Members?

Posted on July 08, 2009
Summertime. Long days. Hot nights. And large numbers of rising 2L's wondering whether they'll be selected for Law Review. One of the factors that most law school Law Reviews seem to consider, in picking their new editors, is classroom success....

Why July drives your dean crazy

Posted on July 08, 2009
After surviving the end of the June 30th fiscal year, July should be a good month. For many, it?s a great time to go away on a restorative vacation. A lot of law school deans go away in July for...

It's okay, but it wasn't as good as the first one.

Posted on July 08, 2009
Following the less than rosy reviews for the Transformers sequel recently released in cinemas, I thought it might be fun to test the adage that sequels are never as good as the first movie in the series. This summer appears...

Update on Ward Churchill Saga

Posted on July 08, 2009
The Denver Post has the story on yesterday's ruling here.

No End To Men

Posted on July 08, 2009
Since, here at the Faculty Lounge, we never bypass an opportunity to publicly discuss sperm (see, e.g. Live Sperm, Dead Donor and More Live Sperm, Dead Donor) I bring you news that scientists have created human sperm from embryonic stem...

The Epistemology of Baseball (or, Joe Torre and an actuary walk into a bar...)

Posted on July 07, 2009
... where, of course, they watch a baseball game. Let's say it's the bottom of the 9th inning, the game is tied with no one out, and there's a runner on first base. Should the home team bunt? The bartender...

Former AG To Be Red Raider

Posted on July 07, 2009
Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is joining Texas Tech University, working in a variety of roles. Story here. Hat tip to The BLT.

FAR and Away (Again)!

Posted on July 07, 2009
Steven Erickson, an Olin Fellow at Penn, has informed me (and a visit to the AALS website has confirmed) that AALS is now accepting payments of $400 for FAR form submissions (DON'T MISS THE DEADLINE OF AUGUST 5!). This must...

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