Academic

Money Laundering and the ?Shadow Economy?

Posted on March 03, 2008
The Australian government estimates that from A$10B to A$100B is laundered through the shadow economy. They’re “guesstimates”, of course, but you gotta love the graph:

More on Judicial Elections

Posted on March 03, 2008
From Sandy Gordon and Greg Huber in a recent QJPS: What is the marginal effect of competitiveness on the power of electoral incentives? Addressing this question empirically is difficult because challenges to incumbents are endogenous to their behavior in office...

Jack Nicholson?s endorsement for Hillary

Posted on March 03, 2008
Honestly, I don’t know what to think about this one…. Maybe Barack will counter with a strange montage message from Matthew McConaughey … and maybe John McCain will counter with, um … Peter O’Toole - I don’t know.

?Deadwood? - the report, not the HBO series

Posted on February 28, 2008
Apparently, the “Deadwood Report” is coming and it’s all the rage in the legal blog world. Basically, Green Bag is going to law schools’ websites and collecting information on faculty activities, such as research, teaching and service...

To access this complete feed in the blog feed reader login or register for free.

The topic: government subsidies for college tuition - talk amongst yourselves

Posted on February 27, 2008
The Volokh Conspiracy Blog has a provocative post outlining the case against government subsidization of college tuition. You don’t have to agree with everything it says to find it interesting. The comments are also pretty read-worthy.

The law of ?Battlestar Galactica?

Posted on February 25, 2008
Over on Concurring Opinions Blog, Daniel Solove and crew are featuring a three part interview with the creators, writers, and producers of the sci-fi tv show ‘Battlestar Galactica‘. The focus of the interviews is the role of law in the show; topics include trials and tribunals, necessity vs...

Criminal procedure and ?new rules? of the Constitution

Posted on February 21, 2008
I teach criminal procedure about once every other year or so and it can be quite challenging because this is one area of law that is especially dynamic in that the Supreme Court typically issues a good number of rulings every year that change the landscape of crim pro doctrine in important ways...

Labor relations explained through sock puppets

Posted on February 18, 2008
I think that the title pretty much says it all. Congrats to the television writers on their successful strike! What did they actually win and what did we learn? (Hat tip to Balkinization)

The Irony of Judicial Elections

Posted on February 15, 2008
David Pozen’s “The Irony of Judicial Elections” is forthcoming at the Columbia Law Review and is available on SSRN here. The abstract is available below the fold. Abstract: Judicial elections in the United States have undergone a dramatic transformation...

Update on Reich?s ?Totally Spent?

Posted on February 15, 2008
 Some interesting comments on Robert Reich’s NY Times article, “Totally Spent,” can be found here. His blog is here. Below are some remarks by Reich at the Goldman School.

It?s the economy stupid - Robert Reich on being ?Totally Spent?

Posted on February 13, 2008
As the presidential candidate field narrows and the parties begin to square off against each other we will be hearing many familiar “competing yet somehow similar” solutions to how to handle the economy. Will any of the usual strategies offered by the candidates work? Robert Reich doesn’t seem to think they will...

Obama the professor?

Posted on February 09, 2008
You can check out Barack Obama’s professor profile (at University of Chicago Law School) here, although I can’t guarantee that he will answer emails sent to his listed address. There’s a call for former students to chime in on his performance as a professor on the Above the Law Blog - check out the comments...

Marriage as a mundane and boring non-profit business - but in a good way!

Posted on February 09, 2008
In The Atlantic, Lori Gottlieb’s article, “Marry Him!The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough” advises women to heed just what the title indicates. While it’s certain to be an argument-starter, it’s also a very interesting read, regardless of how you feel about her views...

The revise and resubmit process captured on video

Posted on February 06, 2008
Well, sort of… it’s not the academic revise and resubmit process per se, but I think that this video captures the spirit of how it feels for the authors sometimes….

Try, Try Again

Posted on February 06, 2008
Here’s a lesson in perseverance.  Hat tip to 43 Folders.

We should do this at the Midwest or APSA conferences

Posted on February 04, 2008
If you aren’t already familiar with Improv Everywhere they are a very loosely associated group of improvisation artists who stage some pretty freaky gags in everyday settings. Here is one of their latest endeavors: Freezing in place in Grand Central Station...

Interdisciplinary faculty, publishing, teaching loads, and the costs of legal education

Posted on February 03, 2008
In the seemingly never ending discussion of the utility and appropriateness of hiring  interdisciplinary scholars for 3-4 tier law schools Alfred Brophy offers a fresh perspective that gets to the bottom line. First, no one has offered any systematic evidence that interdisciplinary scholars are better or worse law teachers than non-interdisciplinary scholars - when I [...

Presidential Candidate Crushes - ?Who Loves Ya Baby??

Posted on February 01, 2008
Lee Sigelman has chronicled all (or at least most) of the candidate crushes on The Monkey Cage. What can we say? People love their presidential hopefuls. Yup, Obama Girl, Hillary Boy, McCain Momma, they’re all there (and below): Hillary Boy Just when I think I?ve gotten caught up, along comes something new...

Academic Outsourcing

Posted on January 30, 2008
Andrew Gelman asks “Why do I coauthor papers?“, which has devolved into a discussion of citation standards across the disciplines (e.g., alpha ordering of authors). “Biomed Tim” pointed readers to a recent New Economist entry on academic outsourcing, in which reference is made to Roland Fryer’s American Inequality Lab...

GTD

Posted on January 29, 2008
Array

Ripped from the political science headlines - John Grisham?s ?The Appeal?

Posted on January 29, 2008
In his latest book, John Grisham takes on a topic that has been the subject of a good number of recent political science studies - judicial elections - and doesn’t paint a pretty picture. You can read an excerpt on the Today Show website. See the advertisement video below: [...

Does your TSCS data sometimes feel sluggish or time-invariant?

Posted on January 27, 2008
… If so, then maybe it’s time you tried FEVD, that’s right, FEVD - or “Panel Fixed Effects Regression with Vector Decomposition” (stata command is xtfevd). It’ll have your data up and feeling better in no time. Well, ok, maybe not all that...

New Fave: GTDA

Posted on January 25, 2008
Getting Things Done in Academia. This week’s tidbit: 5 books that will make you write better.

The death of the billable hour and speculations on the limits of legal change

Posted on January 24, 2008
Nancy Rapoport’s recent post ponders the viability of the “death of the billable hour.” There is also a recent NY Times article on changing attitudes toward the billable hour at Big Law firms. Most of the discussion focuses on the lifestyles of lawyers, but what are the long term legal policy implications of such a [...

Celebrity Death Match: Blogs vs. Peer-Review

Posted on January 22, 2008
The experiment starts today: That’s the question being posed by an unusual experiment that begins today. It involves a scholar studying video games, a popular academic blog with the playful name Grand Text Auto, a nonprofit group designing blog tools for scholars, and MIT Press...

Apparently, someone doesn?t like STATA

Posted on January 21, 2008
On the Law and Letters Blog, Belle Lettre goes into some detail on exactly how much she hates the statistics software program STATA. Below is an excerpt from her rant (slightly edited to preserve our pseudo PG rating): STATA is the worst program in the history of the world, and if I didn’t need to know [...

But wait, there?s more?.

Posted on January 20, 2008
… on interdisciplinary scholarship and the costs of law school - summarized well on Law and Letters here. An excerpt from Solov: I wonder how much costs could be cut at non-elite schools by moving away from interdisciplinary studies. Why would this be a significant way to cut costs? I’m no expert on the economics [...

The path of interdisciplinary legal scholarship

Posted on January 20, 2008
The recent brouhaha sparked by Brian Tamanaha’s questioning whether interdisciplinary hiring is a good idea for 2-4 tier law schools, documented well here and here, has prompted Larry Solum to pen a very interesting (and long) take on the history of interdisciplinary scholarship in law schools...

Changes at Justice System Journal

Posted on January 18, 2008
From Bob Howard of Georgia State, now editor of Justice System Journal: I would like to take this opportunity to announce a change in editorship of the Justice System Journal and to thank the *outgone* editor, Steve Wasby, for his service and dedication...

Something for the presidential candidates to debate?

Posted on January 17, 2008
The New York Times features a compelling story on the nation’s declining working class - at least as we used to know it. It would seem to me that the phenomena discussed in this article should dominate any presidential candidate debate - but it likely won’t...

Bloggers, promote your law blog by nominating your blog for inclusion in USLaw.com's Law Blog Directory and RSS Reader. Benefits described.