Academic

WOOT!

Posted on June 09, 2008
Sandra Day O’Connor helps produce a video game. Hat tip to Zorn.

Knoxpatch

Posted on June 08, 2008
I’ve never heard Knoxville referred to as “the couch”, but the NYT hits all the hight points in today’s 36 Hours review. Yee-Haw does some good stuff. The Blue Plate Special at WDVX is not to be missed (listen online every day)...

How did they vote? Clinton or Obama? Here?s how it breaks down?

Posted on June 05, 2008
The NY Times online has a pretty cool flash presentation of the demographics of how the vote split between Clinton and Obama. It doesn’t answer all the questions that one might have on how the votes went in the primary, but it’s fun. There is another graph here on the candidates’ support bases [...

Entry level law school teaching placement rankings

Posted on June 04, 2008
Leiter has it ranked and here’s who had the top 10 placement rates: 1) Yale 2) University of Chicago 3) Stanford 4) Harvard 5) University of Virginia 6) Northwestern 7) Columbia & NYU 9) University of Michigan 10) University of Texas Somehow I think Judge Smails would be proud...

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A ?deluge? of new law schools ?

Posted on June 02, 2008
… are in the works. At least that’s what a recent article in the National Law Journal suggests. While the article doesn’t go into much detail on each of the plans, it appears that we are looking at possibly 10 new law schools in the next few years...

Scalia urges appellate advocates to learn as much as they can about the judge deciding the case

Posted on May 31, 2008
Justice Antonin Scalia gives an interview with the WSJ Blog (see here, here, and here) to discuss his book, Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading Judges. Here’s the Q&A that prompts the post title: In the section entitled ?Know your audience,? you urge advocates to learn as much as they can about the judge who [...

Interview with one of the fired US Attorneys

Posted on May 30, 2008
Last Sunday, the NYT’s Deborah Solomon interviewed former US Attorney David Iglesias. Below are some selections: Q: In 2001, you were tapped by President Bush for your dream job ? U.S. attorney for New Mexico ? only to end up as one of the eight federal prosecutors whose firing five years later set off [...

Jim Chen on ?Elite Trappings? and presidential candidates

Posted on May 28, 2008
Moneylaw’s founder and Dean of University of Louisville School of Law, Jim Chen, has an excellent post on ML discussing a very interesting article in last Sunday’s NYTimes “Week in Review” by Elizabeth Bumiller. As the post and article discuss, all of the the fuss created by the Clinton, Obama, and McCain camps over [...

?College sports pays your salary?

Posted on May 17, 2008
How many times have university professors heard this? If you are at a big sports school, then it is likely that you hear it a lot. When I was in law school at the University of Tennessee I took a sports law class taught by the Dean at the time, Marilyn Yarbrough...

I don?t think I?m gonna go anymore ?

Posted on May 13, 2008
This is what Peter (played by Ron Livingston) says to his date Joanna (played by Jennifer Aniston) in the classic workplace comedy “Office Space” after announcing that he really hates his job. Here is some dialogue that follows: Joanna: You’re just not gonna go? Peter Gibbons: Yeah...

Judicial decision-making in two books

Posted on May 12, 2008
Paul Horwitz (University of Alabama School of Law) has recently posted his review essay “Review - Constitutional Conscience: The Moral Dimension of Judicial Decision, by H. Jefferson Powell, and How Judges Think, by Richard A. Posner” on SSRN...

Are You so Blind that You Cannot See?

Posted on May 09, 2008
Thirteen years ago, Nelson Mandela became South Africa’s first elected black president. But on July 8, 1986 Reagan claimed it wasn’t clear whether Mandela should be freed: Mr. Drake. One last question on South Africa. When we were talking about black leaders in the country and the necessity of dealing with them, what do you think the [...

The Buck Stops Here

Posted on May 08, 2008
Happy Birthday, Harry. Truman is known for popularizing the saying “the buck stops here”, but I can find only two mentions in his official papers. At a 1951 DNC dinner he talked about the sign on his desk that says “the buck stops here” when describing his four main jobs: president and chief executive, head [...

Don?t stand so close to me

Posted on May 08, 2008
No, really, please do not stand next to me … if you are not considered socially desirable. As opposed to the Police song in which the narrator has mixed feelings about the attractive subject standing so close to him (for fear of scandal or worse), recent research suggests that it can also be detrimental to [...

Propaganda and Metaphor

Posted on May 07, 2008
The Lusitania was torpedoed today in 1915, killing 1198 people and eventually leading to US involvement in World War I. The event was covered widely in the US and Europe, although “Remarkably, this event dominated the headlines for only about a week before being overtaken by a newer story...

RFP: Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship (DPDF)

Posted on May 06, 2008
The Social Science Research Council, with funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, is pleased to announce a call to faculty for interdisciplinary research field proposals for the 2009 Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship (DPDF) program. Established in 2006, the DPDF combines financial support and workshop experience for early-stage graduate students engaged in predissertation research and [...

The Sum of All Fears

Posted on May 06, 2008
It seems that there’s been growing concern recently about export controls and strategic national resources (for example, regarding technical information, fissile materials, and even rice). In an early example of the debate over export controls, the Hindenburg crashed and burned 71 years ago today: There are no records of the president speaking publicly about this following the [...

Voir Dire E-Interview: Jamie Carson

Posted on May 05, 2008
I’d like to introduce the premiere of a new Voir Dire endeavor: E-Interview. In this feature we basically interview a variety of people via email. Alas, I can’t promise a consistent theme to these interviews or how they will go - one simply cannot predict the creative process...

Marx-isms

Posted on May 05, 2008
Born: Karl Marx, 190 years ago today (1818 in Prussia). Harry Truman made the first recorded public mention of Marx in a 1950 speech to the Better Business Bureau: The most persuasive argument the Communists have is not anything Marx or Lenin ever wrote, or anything Stalin ever said–but the depression which began in the United States [...

Coincidence or Not?

Posted on May 02, 2008
On this day: Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy, R-Wis., died at age 48, in 1957 J. Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI for 48 years, died at age 77, in 1972 Former Vice President Spiro T. Agnew was disbarred by the Maryland Court of Appeals, in 1974 Tony Blair became, at age 44, Britain’s youngest prime minister in 185 years, [...

Imperfect selection systems: A lesson from Brett Michaels?

Posted on May 01, 2008
Selection systems can sometimes be imperfect. This may occasionally be revealed when a great candidate or performer comes to a position through unusual circumstances or a “fluke”. Witness Brett Michaels’ (lead singer of “Poison”) VH1 reality show, “Rock of Love” (or Rock of Love 2 for purists)...

Your Mind on Meth

Posted on May 01, 2008
The Economist is running a series this week on meth. Their Democracy in America blog points us to the Montana Meth Project and current anti-meth ads:

? the United States and our allies have prevailed.

Posted on May 01, 2008
May 1, 2003: Thank you all very much. Admiral Kelly, Captain Card, officers and sailors of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, my fellow Americans: Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed...

The Next Level

Posted on April 30, 2008
For those soccer fans out there (and you know who you are):

Hodgepodge

Posted on April 30, 2008
TRAC on federal immigration prosecution trends Canadians believe in privacy Survival Analysis: A Primer

The World of Tomorrow

Posted on April 30, 2008
FDR opened the New York’s World Fair today in 1939 - the 150th anniversary of George Washington’s Inauguration. From henceforth in our history the thirtieth day of April will have a dual significance: the Inauguration of the First President of the United States, which began the Executive Branch of the Federal Government, and the opening of [...

Remedy of Last Resort

Posted on April 29, 2008
April 29, 1974: Nixon released additional Watergate tapes, first saying: I have asked for this time tonight in order to announce my answer to the House Judiciary Committee’s subpoena for additional Watergate tapes, and to tell you something about the actions I shall be taking tomorrow–about what I hope they will mean to you and about [...

Presidential rhetoric and speechwriting - an interview with Ted Sorenson

Posted on April 28, 2008
The New York Times’ Deborah Solomon hits Ted Sorenson with ten questions; some on presidential speeches. Here are some choice Q & As: You served John F. Kennedy for 11 years, as his counselor, adviser and legendary speechwriter. Why did you choose to be so modest in your forthcoming memoir, ?Counselor: A Life [...

The Era of Good Feelings

Posted on April 28, 2008
Today is James Monroe’s birthday. One of Monroe’s greatest challenges was the Panic of 1819, the first major financial crisis in the U.S. Economists still debate the causes of the panic, but most agree that Monroe could do little in trying to manage the economy...

Ghostwriters in the sky?

Posted on April 25, 2008
The New York Times has an interesting article on ghost writing in medical academia - here’s the lead in: The drug maker Merck drafted dozens of research studies for a best-selling drug, then lined up prestigious doctors to put their names on the reports before publication, according to an article to be published Wednesday in a [...

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