A Cincinnati couple has gone through 17 years of contentious litigation. “Their divorce case file had more than 1,400 entries in it. Many had to do with a back-and-forth custody dispute over their children, now ages 17 and 20.” Both husband and wife are law professors. [Cincinnati Enquirer via Daily Mail]
Posts Tagged ‘law schools’
Law schools roundup
- “How To Fix Law School” symposium at New Republic with David Lat, Paul Campos, Mike Kinsley etc. follows up on Noam Scheiber article on erosion of BigLaw business model, which in turn drew semi-rebuttal from Mark Obbie at Slate;
- “So the poor defendants have to spend thousands on legal fees, while law students get their ‘practice.'” [John Stossel]
- Brian Tamanaha vs. Simkovic and McIntyre “law degree worth a million bucks” study [Balkinization, response here, Adler, Caron]
- Amid crisis, tone-deaf ABA “actually in the process of trying to make it harder for accredited law schools to fire professors and control their costs” [Elie Mystal]
- Foundation case studies include Carnegie 1921 report on legal education, Olin support for law and economics, and some others related to law schools [J. Scott Kohler and Steven Schindler, Philanthropy Central]
- “Shifts in law professors’ views” [Kyle Graham]
- Bring on the strong verbs, and not just in legal writing [Ross Guberman] In recent Nike shoe case, Chief Justice Roberts wrote rings round Justice Kennedy [same]
Law schools roundup
- “Law school plotted to sabotage its own students?” [Steele, Cassandra Burke Robertson, Caron on Phoenix allegations]
- Bryan Garner’s take on law reviews [Green Bag]
- Washington & Lee’s innovative practice-oriented third year has drawn much attention, but job placement results lag [Deborah Merritt via Alice Woolley]
- “Law school sues for liability insurance coverage” [VLW on Liberty U., Miller-Jenkins kidnapping case]
- The business of one high-flying law school: documents shed light on NYU [Joe Patrice, Above the Law]
- Concussions: NFL players’ union to fund $100 million Harvard project, including HLS, on football and health [Cohen, Prawfs, with further thoughts from a notorious gadfly on lobbying by lawprofs]
- John O. McGinnis and Russell Mangas, “An Undergraduate Option for Legal Education” [IRLE/SSRN]
- Toward more sensible law school rankings? ABA makes it harder to count higher expenditures themselves as a plus [Above the Law]
Schools for Misrule excerpt: how the Ford Foundation reshaped law schools
As much as any other institution, the Ford Foundation has shaped the modern American law school, having provided key backing for developments such as clinical legal education, public interest law, identity-based legal studies, and transnational law. Whether you agree or disagree with Ford’s ideological thrust — and as a libertarian, I regularly disagree — it’s a pretty remarkable set of accomplishments. I give an overview and brief history in this new article for the Capital Research Center’s Foundation Watch, adapted from my book Schools for Misrule. (cross-posted from Cato at Liberty; welcome readers from George Leef, NRO)
More: some essays on Ford’s crucial support during the formative period of public interest litigation [Steven Schindler, more, Scott Kohler]
Law schools roundup
- Law-school leftism is no longer a progressive force, argues Brian Tamanaha [Stanford Law and Policy Review, more] Paul Campos responds to critics of Tamanaha [UCLA Law Review via Caron]
- Related: “Cleaning (one’s inbox) is its own reward: nice podcast re: law school reform that I took to gym (via @WalterOlson)” [@DavidLat]
- Good news for law students? “Student Loans May Now Be Discharged More Easily In Bankruptcy in the 9th Circuit” [Karen Oakes, Bankruptcy Law Network] “Only if the law students don’t want to become lawyers.” [@moiracathleen]
- No love lost: Mark Tushnet vs. Richard Epstein on Epstein’s new book Design for Liberty (PDFs)
- “People’s Electric Law School”: George Conk recalls Rutgers-Newark’s salad days as a committed-Left law school at a state university [Fordham Urban Law Journal via Steele] Thoughts from Elizabeth Warren ’76 [Rutgers via @LegInsurrection]
- “Assignment: defend the opponent’s viewpoint….” A dying art in the ideologized law school? [John Steele, Legal Ethics Forum]
- John Murtagh hasn’t forgotten what Columbia prof/NYU “scholar in residence” Kathy Boudin did [NY Post]
“Law Student Sues Law School For Implying He’s Litigious”
“Watch what you say about lawyers” is an old theme around here, but in light of developments at Wake Forest it might need to be extended to law students as well. [Above the Law, more]
Law schools roundup
- “If a law school held a conference on intellectual diversity and the panels really were intellectually diverse …You can bet your last nickel it was sponsored by the Federalist Society.” [Bainbridge, Nick Rosenkranz and more, Harvard Gazette; my 2011 book Schools for Misrule]
- Washington Law Review takes one step to counter another problem addressed in Schools for Misrule, lawprofs’ conflicts of interest [Bainbridge]
- BC dean: law schools should adopt residency model from medical education [Vincent Rougeau, ABA Legal Rebels via Paul Caron/TaxProf]
- Missouri police union head, under fire for Facebook comments, is also constitutional law prof [Mike Riggs]
- Some say drive for slave reparations is defunct, but U.Va. conference confirms many legal academics still haven’t given up on it [Alfred Brophy via Bainbridge]
- “Academy’s Heavyweights Opine on Law Schools’ Problems” [WSJ via Legal Ethics Forum]
- “Board of Regents to Investigate $5.5 Million in Forgivable Loans to University of Texas Law Profs” [Caron]
Great moments in law school outreach
After 22 years in prison for political murder, Kathy Boudin is now NYU Law “scholar in residence” [NYPost; relevant section of Schools for Misrule recounting cases of Bernardine Dohrn, Angela Davis, Lynne Stewart, etc.]
From Twitter: “She is probably more conservative than the rest of the faculty.” [@MartelPlieiades] “Outrageous sexism: If a man had served 22 years in prison for political murder, he’d be NYU Law’s Dean.” [@Sam_Schulman]
Update: PowerLine has now reprinted the pertinent section of Schools for Misrule.
Great moments in litigation journalism
In the Harrisburg Patriot-News, Ivey DeJesus trumpets the views of a “leading legal expert,” specifically “one of the country’s leading church and state scholars” who says, contrary to a state lawmaker’s assertions, that there’s no constitutional problem with reopening lapsed statutes of limitations so as to enable child-abuse lawsuits by now-grown-up complainants. Prof. Marci Hamilton is indeed a well-known church-state scholar, and there is indeed precedent for the (perhaps strange) idea that courts will not necessarily strike down retroactive legislation as unconstitutional so long as its impacts are civil rather than criminal. But it’s not until paragraph 18 that DeJesus, after introducing the expert at length by way of her academic affiliations, bothers to add a perhaps equally relevant element of her biography: she has “represented scores of victims in the Philadelphia Archdiocese clergy sex abuse case.” Why bring that up?
Law schools roundup
- Harold Lasswell and Myres McDougal’s influential article on legal education figures prominently in Schools for Misrule; Henry Manne says their scheme of actual classroom pedagogy did less well [Bainbridge]
- Deanship of local plaintiff’s attorney at St. Louis U. is short, colorful [NLJ]
- GW lawprof trips, falls at Denver Law event, now in court [Above the Law]
- Law reviews requiring authors to sign indemnity clauses. Reason for alarm? [Dan Markel, Prawfs]
- Out-of-touch law academy, vol. 18: Duke prof dismisses floodgates arguments on principle [Ted Frank]
- “Should Law Reviews Consider Race When Selecting Articles?” (and do they?) [Josh Blackman]
- Insurance is an undercovered topic in the law school curriculum, so Randy Maniloff decides to do an intervention [Coverage Opinions, PDF, lead article]