Academic

Free!

Posted on June 15, 2009
The free access to scholarly journals continues unabated. ?The signatories think that it is important to publicly align ourselves with the stance taken by many university faculties and administrators on scholarly communication,? Mike Rossner, the Rockefeller press?s director, told The Chronicle by e-mail on Wednesday...

The Joy of Less

Posted on June 12, 2009
In the NYT this week: If you?re the kind of person who prefers freedom to security, who feels more comfortable in a small room than a large one and who finds that happiness comes from matching your wants to your needs, then running to stand still isn?t where your joy lies...

The SPARC Author?s Addendum

Posted on June 10, 2009
Gary King mentions the SPARC Author’s Addendum on his website. Does anyone have experience with it? A preview: Your article has been accepted for publication in a journal and, like your colleagues, you want it to have the widest possible distribution and impact in the scholarly community...

Data from Nixon?s Agency

Posted on June 09, 2009
From TRAC: In cases where the DEA is the lead investigative agency, there are significant geographic variations in the rates at which individuals convicted of criminal offenses get sent to prison. According to Justice Department data obtained and analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse and just published on TRAC’s DEA website, in the Northern District [...

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Issue agenda setting on SCOTUS

Posted on June 08, 2009
Our paper, “Agenda Setting, Issue Priorities and Organizational Maintenance: The U.S. Supreme Court, 1955 to 1994″ (c0-authored with William Gillespie) is now available for download on Social Science Research Network here. The abstract is available after the jump: In this study, we examine agenda setting by the U...

Potential criminal procedure lessons with perhaps the most awesome geek ever

Posted on June 02, 2009
I’m still working on figuring out what constitutional lessons I can glean from the interaction documented in the video below, but I’ll find something for a future criminal procedure class somehow.  I’m not exactly sure what this geek did to get an arrest warrant – maybe he cheated at Dungeons & Dragons or stole something from [...

Recommended Reading: Measuring Judicial Activism

Posted on May 31, 2009
Frank Cross and Stefanie Lindquist’s “Meauring Judicial Activism” is now available on Oxford University Press.  Which U.S. Supreme Court Justices are the most activist in their jurisprudential decisions? Check out this book and you’ll see that answering this question is perhaps a more complex endeavor than you might have originally thought...

Jack Donaghy on Detroit

Posted on May 23, 2009
On the Huffington Post,  Jack “30 Rock” Donaghy (ok, actually it’s just Alec Baldwin) goes off on Detroit automakers and Congress. It’s quite informative and entertaining. Here’s a taste: The heads of these corporations did not spend the last thirty years lying in bed each night, sleepless...

On elite education, Supreme Court appointments, and meritocracy

Posted on May 20, 2009
Following up on our last post on elite education and academic careers, we now look into the role of elite education and Supreme Court appointments – specifically, President Obama’s upcoming appointment to the Court. On the pol sci Law and Courts discussion listserve participants have debated the role of elite education in considering candidates for [...

In Alien v. Predator ? who would you be? Or, why breaking into legal academia is like purgatory for some people

Posted on May 15, 2009
I love great matchups – Alien v. Predator, Ali v. Frazier, Laverne v. Shirley (no, wait that’s a friendship, although I always saw them more as sort of ‘frenemies’). Recently, we have witnessed a small flurry of blogging on the difficulties that non-elite school graduates face in attempting to break into legal academia...

The world of unusual book titles

Posted on May 09, 2009
It seems like Andy and I have gone through endless alternative titles for our book (no, it is not the one pictured above) which should be out this summer on Johns Hopkins Press. However, I’m really glad that none of our tentative titles really rivals (in terms of oddness) any of the titles you will find [...

Justice Souter loves pens

Posted on May 04, 2009
As does Chris Zorn - read here.

Dorf on the future of graduate/professional programs and ?Great Research Universities?

Posted on April 27, 2009
Michael Dorf’s blog includes an interesting post that touches on a lot of related, yet distinct concerns (grad school, tenure, viability of Great Research Universities, etc.). I will touch on just two. First, the referenced NYT article makes an important point about the graduate school model and its possible need of revision...

Lighten up: The Carolla Podcast

Posted on April 26, 2009
You may know Adam Carolla from television, radio, or movies, but he also has a very successful podcast. You can check it out for free here. It’s also available free on ITunes. I’ve listened to several podcast and can tell you that it is entertaining, informative (sort of), and sometimes even enlightening...

On the future of state courts research

Posted on April 17, 2009
I recently posted on SSRN an early version of a short essay that is forthcoming at Justice System Journal, “On The Future of State Courts Research.” The essay emanates from a panel at last year’s American Political Science Association meeting in which the participants discussed trends and concerns in the study of state courts...

Why I?m not on Facebook

Posted on April 15, 2009
A lot of political scientists and other academics are on Facebook, but I find it to be entirely too complicated. I mean, there are so many intricate social rules and mores - as the PSA below demonstrates.

Recent shift in racial incarceration disparity

Posted on April 15, 2009
A recent study found that the nation is experiencing a shift in racial incarceration disparity - minority incarceration rates are down and white incarceration rates are up. The primary reasons cited are the development of drug courts and the recent escalation of meth use and dealing...

What is the ?King of Careers? now?

Posted on April 12, 2009
A New York Times article questions what will take the place of finance for the nation’s “best and brightest” after the fall of Wall Street. Apparently, the economic downturn has driven more undergraduates into public administration  and government programs than in days past:  Graduate schools of government and public policy are seeing a surge of applications...

Building a better legal profession?

Posted on April 10, 2009
Simple Justice blog reports a recent conference on the “building a better legal profession” movement. Here’s an excerpt (quote from the National Law Journal) that briefs it well: Gathering at Stanford Law School over the weekend, about 50 students from Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Stanford and other premier law schools were part of Building a Better Legal [...

What does Miranda mean?

Posted on April 06, 2009
And what should it mean? The Simple Justice Blog has an interesting post on these questions and discusses a case that might make the SCOTUS docket which may redefine the parameters of the famous Miranda warnings.

Race in the War on Drugs: The Social Consequences of Presidential Rhetoric

Posted on April 03, 2009
The Voir Dire team has recently publicly posted on the Social Science Research Network their paper from the Empirical Legal Studies conference, “Race in the War on Drugs: The Social Consequences of Presidential Rhetoric.”  The abstract is available below the fold...

Judicial decision making and the ?Foxermeasaluppycat?

Posted on April 01, 2009
Last week I attended the “What’s Law Got To Do With It?” conference on judicial decision making, hosted by Indiana School of Law. I encourage you to check out the above hyperlinked website for the conference since it provides many of the papers that were presented...

2008 Law School rankings by moot court performance

Posted on March 19, 2009
Can be found here. But, for now, here’s the top 5: 1. South Texas 2. UC Hastings 3. Georgetown 4. Washington University - St. Louis 5. Mississippi College

Determining the top quality legal journals

Posted on March 13, 2009
Leiter’s Law School Reports has an interesting post on the question of what are the top quality law journals. A poll was conducted and it seems that, initially, peer review and faculty edited journals did well, but in the home stretch the well known student edited law reviews took over...

Your brain on the War on Drugs

Posted on March 09, 2009
This is a really funny cartoon attached to an interesting post on the ACS Blog. To be fair, I think that you could insert just about any government policy you wanted in the second panel of the cartoon and it would be just as funny.  

SCOTUS to take on state judicial campaigning

Posted on February 28, 2009

Casual Friday: Martha Edition

Posted on February 20, 2009

A decline in the legal profession?

Posted on February 18, 2009
On the Volokh Conspiracy Blog there’s a discussion on the coming law firm hiring crises. They examine the odd situations that law firms have essentially made for themselves in which they lay off their existing associate attorneys while at the same time interviewing and hiring a crop of brand new graduates - not exactly moneyball, [...

Levitt taunts Lott

Posted on February 13, 2009
Well, kind of… or maybe he’s just showing off his powers of prediction. Here’s the entirety of the text from the Freakonomics blog post announcing his legal victory:   The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals upholds the earlier decision in my favor in the defamation lawsuit filed by John Lott against me...

Casual Friday: Squirrels Edition

Posted on February 13, 2009

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