Academic

Elite or Joe Six Pack? Who Has What

Posted on October 05, 2008
Given that there has been a lot of rhetoric in the presidential race on “being a regular guy (or woman),” Paul Caron’s post on the candidates’ released tax returns is informative. Much has been made concerning the candidates’ relative charitable giving...

Letterman?s Top 10 list ?

Posted on October 04, 2008
… of messages left on Sarah Palin’s answering machine after the debate.       

The Intersection of Judicial Attitudes and Litigant Selection Theories

Posted on October 04, 2008
I recently posted a paper of mine, “The Intersection of Judicial Attitudes and Litigant Selection Theories: Explaining U.S. Supreme Court Decision Making” on SSRN. It is co-authored with Elizabeth Coggins, a graduate student at UNC-Chapel Hill...

McSweeney?s things that can cost you your thesis?

Posted on October 02, 2008
 … including footnotes, endnotes, and parentheticals. Perhaps this presents a good opportunity to think about the most absurd things we’ve ever seen in a thesis or dissertation. Here’s a partial list below; more here.   3. Who, although a gifted academic, is still a douche...

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Marquette law faculty blog

Posted on September 28, 2008
The faculty of Marquette Law School have entered the blogosphere. Of course, some of the faculty are already quite well known in the legal blogging world.  Blog editors include: Michael O’Hear, Bruce Boyden, Jessica Price, Paul Secunda, Richard Esenberg, and John Kircher...

Assessing the debate

Posted on September 27, 2008
A poll taken friday night reveals that Obama was the “winner” of the presidential debate; however, it’s more likely that it was closer to a draw. Here’s an excerpt from the CNN story relaying the poll results:   A national poll of people who watched the first presidential debate suggests that Barack Obama came out on top, [...

Is America a good financial bet?

Posted on September 25, 2008
Well, I’d like to think so. However, China apparently may have some reservations. Chinese regulators have told domestic banks to stop interbank lending to U.S. financial institutions to prevent possible losses during the financial crisis, the South China Morning Post reported on Thursday...

Obama discusses strategy with President Bartlet

Posted on September 24, 2008
Or at least that’s how ‘West Wing’ creator Aaron Sorkin imagines it in Maureen Dowd’s NYT column. An excerpt below the fold… BARACK OBAMA knocks on the front door of a 300-year-old New Hampshire farmhouse while his Secret Service detail waits in the driveway...

Extremely belated lateral move announcement

Posted on September 21, 2008
Namely, mine (Jeff, not Andy). As of this fall I can be found in the department of political science at Binghamton University. I was waiting to post this until I finished getting my Binghamton web page put together and it took me a little longer than I had anticipated since, as I came to find [...

Argument starter? Talking about (judicial) ideology

Posted on September 20, 2008
Bryan Lammon has posted a paper on SSRN titled “What We Talk About When We Talk About Ideology: Judicial Politics Scholarship and Naive Legal Realism.” As you might expect from the title, it takes on political science accounts of judicial decision making and suggests that political science conceptions of judicial ideology are “quite unsatisfying...

Presidential candidate commercials through time

Posted on September 16, 2008
While the satirical candidate public service announcement video (below), starring Tina Fey (as Sarah Palin) and Amy Poehler (as Hillary Clinton) is good fun, if you want to see the actual presidential candidate commercials they are available on “The Living Room Candidate...

Barack Rolled II: Rick Astley Strikes Again

Posted on September 08, 2008
I am going to continue to post these until either McCain or Obama makes a campaign promise to appoint Rick Astley to the Supreme Court. But I want to be reasonable — so they could alternatively appoint to a Supreme Court seat, collectively, Journey...

The words they used - analysis of convention buzzwords

Posted on September 06, 2008
A recent graphic in the NY Times provides an interesting take on what words were predominant in the respective conventions. Check it out after the jump…

Update: McCain & Obama speech accessibility scores

Posted on September 05, 2008
I have now updated the table on yesterday’s post regarding the readability (accessibility?) scores for the candidates’ speeches. The short story is that while Palin had the highest grade level score among the four speakers (McCain, Obama, Biden & Palin), her running mate had the lowest level...

VP Candidates speak to the people - but at what level?

Posted on September 04, 2008
With all of the recent hoopla over the VP candidates’ speeches (especially Palin’s speech), it seemed appropriate to do the geeky pol sci thing and analyze their speeches. Rather than provide pundit reactions to the speeches or discuss my feelings about them, I decided to try something a bit more systematic...

Check it out - ?Predictably Irrational?

Posted on September 03, 2008
                  I have taken to listening to books on tape - or, more accurately on IPod - during my commute to work. Recently, I began listening to a book written by a behavioral economist, Dan Ariely. In “Predictably Irrational” he argues that, contrary to the assumptions we typically see in [...

The Republican convention and Comic-Con to merge?

Posted on September 01, 2008
Sorry, I just couldn’t resist. This is an awesome photo.  (hat tip to Volokh blog)

Intriguing Law & Courts panels at APSA

Posted on August 26, 2008
The upcoming American Political Science Association conference in Boston has a good number of interesting panels to attend. So, if you are not sightseeing in Boston and would like to sit down for a while, you might check out some of the particularly noteworthy Law & Courts panels listed below...

On the Constitutionality of Tennessee?s method of selecting judges

Posted on August 21, 2008
Brian Fitzpatrick has recently posted an interesting paper on SSRN concerning Tennessee’s method of selecting (appellate) jurists and its Constitutionality. But, then again maybe we’re just biased given that here at Voir Dire we find all things Tennessee fascinating...

Jeff Harrison on ?behaving for success?

Posted on August 15, 2008
Over on the Class Bias in Higher Education blog Jeff Harrison has an interesting post on how to behave for success. Here’s his setup paragraph: It’s not an official term but what I use to describe those with working class backgrounds who end up in the world of academics is “socioeconomic displacement...

Who pays for what?

Posted on August 11, 2008
This Marginal Revolution post on faculty subsidization is, um… interesting. And here I was thinking that football paid all faculty salaries Actually, more interesting is a comment from the post which I provide below the fold. There may be a way to find out how much the professors within a given department are subsidized by [...

Rejection letter stories - what is your best story?

Posted on August 10, 2008
On Legal Profession Blog they have an interesting post on rejection letters with links to actual rejection letters and the stories behind them. Pretty much everyone has received rejection letters, regardless of their field or profession. These links focus on law firm rejection letters and there are some good ones (or should I say “bad [...

Barack Obama - ?I?m never gonna give you up?

Posted on August 10, 2008
From the blog who once Rick rolled you (sorry) - we bring you the sweet sound and dance sensation that is Barack Obama! (hat tip to Gawker)

Congress! Congress! Congress!

Posted on August 09, 2008
Yes, there are not one, not two, but three papers on the Social Science Research Network on congress that I’d like to highlight. The papers, by Samuel Kernell, Ann Laquer Estin, and Matilde Bombardini & Francesco Trebbi,  are set forth below the fold along with their abstracts...

?Old Advertisements? added to ?Old Polls? feature

Posted on August 05, 2008
I haven’t come up with any “Old Polls” in a while so I thought I’d make things a little easier on myself and add “Old Advertisements” to this feature. These ads tell us something about yesteryear and give context to our understanding of the events we experienced (or weren’t old enough to have experienced); plus, [...

Battlestar Galactica - the show up to now

Posted on August 03, 2008
Get ready for the Battlestar Galactica finale by watching show video clips below! You can skip the “Caprica” ad video and go straight to the final season recap if you prefer.If you’ve never seen the show, then you might start out with the earlier recap here...

?The trial of a case, in its simplest form, is telling a story jurors can understand.?

Posted on August 02, 2008
Famous trial attorney Gerry Spence has started a blog and has something to say about the state of American legal education - here’s an excerpt: The trial of a case, in its simplest form, is telling a story jurors can understand.  Yet most lawyers are taught little, if anything, about communicating with others...

How does the top 1% do?

Posted on August 01, 2008
Very well, actually, and a lot better than in previous years, relatively speaking. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has posted some interesting analysis on its site regarding how the very well to do have faired vis-a-vis the rest of the crowd over time...

Legal education and real world lawyering

Posted on June 11, 2008
Bill Henderson has an excellent post over at the Legal Profession Blog on legal education and how it prepares (or fails to prepare) students for what most of them will do - work in solo, small, or medium law offices. Here are some points he makes regarding real world skills or practices that lead to [...

Peer assist review, American Idol, and the future of academic writing

Posted on June 10, 2008
In past posts, both here and during my guest stint at ELS, I discussed comparisons between law review and peer review publishing. A set of similar movements have posited somewhat different forms of determining what gets published in academic journals...

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