Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Macaulay on legal ethics

h/t Sub Specie AEternitatis:

We will not at present inquire whether the doctrine which is held on this subject by English lawyers be or be not agreeable to reason and morality; whether it be right that a man should, with a wig on his head, and a band round his neck, do for a guinea what, without those appendages, he would think it wicked and infamous to do for an empire; whether it be right that, not merely believing but knowing a statement to be true, he should do all that can be done by sophistry, by rhetoric, by solemn asseveration, by indignant exclamation, by gesture, by play of features, by terrifying one honest witness, by perplexing another, to cause a jury to think that statement false.

—Thomas Babington Macaulay, Essay on Francis Bacon

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Great moments in California public employee tenure

California public employees can appeal to the little-known Personnel Board to challenge terminations. Among those ordered reinstated: “A nurse’s aide accused of stealing money from an elderly patient and a hospital staffer who allegedly beat a disabled patient with a shoe.” Replete with examples, this is the sort of investigative piece that ought to make a difference, though alas it probably won’t [Los Angeles Times]

More: At The American, Lee Ohanian has a fact-packed overview of “America’s public sector union dilemma.” Fred Siegel is interviewed by Matthew Kaminski on New York City and public sector unions as the “New Tammany Hall” [WSJ] SEC chief Mary Schapiro says firing failed employees would “harm” the agency [Mark Calabria, Cato]. And Jonah Goldberg discovers that, especially in California, there really is something to this talk of a “prison-industrial complex.”

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Coming Carolina and Colorado appearances

Today I’m talking to state legislators courtesy of the American Legislative Exchange Council. Next week I head off for luncheon talks about my new book Schools for Misrule before Federalist Society lawyers’ chapters in Greenville, S.C. on Wed. Dec. 7, and Charlotte, N.C. on Thurs. Dec. 8. And then the following week I keynote the annual luncheon of the Colorado Civil Justice League Dec. 13 in Denver. If you’re in the audience, do introduce yourself!

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NYT-on-lawprofs reactions, cont’d

“You see, law professors — and I should disclose here that I am one — very nearly run the world” [Harvard Law School’s Noah Feldman, Bloomberg View] More responses to the New York Times front-pager critical of legal education, as the furor continues: Tim Baran, Daniel Solove vs. commenter. Will Congress hold hearings on law schools? [WSJ Law Blog] Related: David Lat (Federalist Society panel on law school accreditation)

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Hearings on Congressional insider trading

They’re coming up within the next few days, but Prof. Bainbridge warns that the draft legislation circulating from the office of Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) is “bizarre” and “toothless.” Earlier here, here, etc.

More: Gillibrand’s office says the weakness of the proposal was due to an inadvertent drafting error and that it will be given teeth. C-SPAN covers the hearing, the SEC and Sen. Scott Brown make their views known, Todd Henderson and Larry Ribstein take a contrarian position, and Prof. Bainbridge covers the scholarly testimony.

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