I’m interviewed by Cato’s Caleb Brown (appx. 11 minutes). I discuss the roots in legal academia of developments ranging from modern tort law (thank you, William Prosser) to sexual harassment law (thank you, Catharine MacKinnon) and quite a few others besides.
Posts Tagged ‘Schools for Misrule’
“If you’ve ever doubted the wisdom of letting lawyers run our country, read this book”
Conservative Book Club has this write-up of my forthcoming book Schools for Misrule. David Frum’s FrumForum is featuring it as well. Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit) just got his in the mail. From what I hear, copies of the book ordered online began arriving in readers’ mailboxes around Tuesday.
More: Legal Skills Prof Blog, Young Americans for Liberty (on my Cato speech this upcoming Thursday). And a great preview post from Carter Wood at NAM’s ShopFloor.
MindingTheCampus.com excerpts Schools for Misrule
The Manhattan Institute publication Minding the Campus, which monitors higher education and its reform, is out with an excerpt from my forthcoming book Schools for Misrule. You can check it out here.
Schools for Misrule spring speaking tour
[cross-posted from Cato at Liberty]
The first copies of my new book Schools for Misrule: Legal Academia and an Overlawyered America are here from the printer, and I’ll be touring the country to promote it in coming weeks. Some highlights:
- February 21. Bloomington, Ind. Indiana University Law School, sponsored by Federalist Society chapter.
- February 22. Urbana-Champaign, Ill. University of Illinois School of Law, sponsored by Federalist Society chapter. Commenting will be Prof. Larry Ribstein.
- March 3. Washington, D.C. Cato Institute Policy Forum. Commenting on the book will be the Hon. Douglas Ginsburg, U.S. Court of Appeals, and moderating will be Cato legal director Roger Pilon.
- March 10. University of Minnesota, sponsored by Federalist Society chapter. Commenting will be Profs. Brad Clary and Oren Gross, and moderating will be Prof. Dale Carpenter.
- March 16. New York, N.Y. Manhattan Institute luncheon (invitation). Commenting will be James Copland, Manhattan Institute.
- March 22. Washington, D.C. Heritage Foundation forum. Commenting/moderating: Todd Gaziano, Heritage Foundation.
- March 28. Boulder, Colo. University of Colorado School of Law, sponsored by Federalist Society chapter.
- March 29. Laramie, Wyo. University of Wyoming School of Law, sponsored by Federalist Society chapter.
- March 30. Sacramento, Calif. McGeorge School of Law, sponsored by Federalist Society chapter.
- April 6. New York, N.Y. Manhattan Institute Young Leaders evening event (private).
- April 7. Washington, D.C. American University Law School, sponsored by Federalist Society chapter.
- April 13. Washington, D.C. Book club appearance (private).
- April 27-29. Dallas, Tex. Heritage Foundation Resource Bank meeting (private).
Always check in advance with the hosting group for venues and exact times; some events open to the public require advance registration. The book’s official publication date is March 1, and copies should be arriving in the bookstores soon.
Law schools roundup
- The first hard copies of Schools for Misrule have arrived from the printer and they look fantastic. You can order here (and benefit me Amazon-commission-wise as well as through royalties) at very favorable pre-publication prices;
- “Can NY Support Any More Law Schools? Doubts Stall Plans for Three New Campuses” [ABA Journal]
- Professional rigor without Tiers: how Canada’s law school scene differs from ours [Above the Law]
- Villanova “knowingly” fiddled scores to improve law school rating [Paul Caron roundup] By creative use of such measures as library seatage, Michigan’s Cooley contrived to name itself nation’s number 2 law school [AtL] Malcolm Gladwell notes that US News rankings “reward Yale-ness” [New Yorker, Ribstein/TotM] A “good way to distinguish yourself from other law schools is to tell the truth to prospective students” and Washington & Lee has shocked competitors with a significant gesture in that direction [AtL] “Applying SOX (or something like it) to law schools” [Tung Yin, PrawfsBlawg] Morriss/Henderson: “law schools have a special moral obligation to tell the truth about themselves.” [Pope Center]
- Mark Tushnet on academic fads and “mere” doctrinal scholarship [via Boyden, PrawfsBlawg]
- Some law reviews admit their circulation has plunged, others don’t admit it [Ross Davies, Green Bag via Caron] “Girls under trees” deprecated as element in law school web design [Lowering the Bar]
- On lawprof interest disclosures [Gerding/Conglomerate, Salmon, Weiser/SALT]
- Legal academy during World War II mostly silent on government overreach [Sarah Ludington, SSRN via Orin Kerr]
Law schools roundup
Just four weeks to official publication date (now March 1) for my book, and it seems as if everyone’s talking about the state of the law schools:
- Bruce Antkowiak (Duquesne): “Why Law Schools Must Reform” [Dan Hull, WSJ Law Blog] “Law Schools: Tournaments or Lotteries?” [Kevin Carey, Chronicle of Higher Ed] Law schools still reluctant to grapple with oversupply problem [George Leef, Pope Center] Oregon joins trend toward restoring mentorship/apprenticeship as part of legal training [AtL] “…because there was no compelling need for additional law graduates” [1985 Missouri decision via AtL]
- Study: free representation from Harvard legal clinic actually worsened outcomes for jobless claimants [Greiner/Pattanayak via Ayres/Freakonomics (“Iatrogenic legal assistance?”), Hoffman/ConcurOp, more, yet more]
- Critical Race Theory makes good? Noted CRT-er Angela Onwuachi-Willig in line for possible appointment to Iowa high court [Wenger, ConcurOp]
- “The rise and fall of law faculty blogs” [Kerr]
- Too much heed paid to “consent,” “autonomy”? Noted feminist Prof. Robin West praises Ohio State’s Marc Spindelman for proposal to have more lawsuits over HIV transmission [Jotwell] Some high-profile lawprofs call for less online freedom in pages of new book [“The Offensive Internet”; Citron, Greenfield, Ron Coleman]
- All publicity is good dept.: along with the glowing advance notices, my forthcoming Schools for Misrule has also drawn brickbats [Brian Leiter; some ABA Journal commenters].
Speaking tour on Schools for Misrule
I’m beginning to set up the speaking tour on my forthcoming book (background) and from the invitations already on hand it looks as if over the next few months I’ll be visiting New York, Texas, the Midwest, northern California and the Rocky Mountain states, often speaking to Federalist Society chapters. Why not invite me to your area, or check about adding your venue to an already planned swing? Diane Morris at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C. is taking the lead in handling arrangements; you can reach her at 789-5226, area code 202, or at dmorris – at – cato – dot – org.
Chief Judge Alex Kozinski of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit just contributed this great blurb for Schools for Misrule:
Every year I hire as law clerks some of the best and
brightest law students in the country, and spend a year
wringing out of them all the wrong-headed ideas their law
professors taught them. Now I know why.
To see what newsman John Stossel, author Philip K. Howard and Georgetown lawprof Randy Barnett said about the book, check out the jacket (PDF).
Schools for Misrule publicity: ABA Journal
Some great pre-publication publicity for my book from the ABA Journal and reporter Debra Cassens Weiss, based on my postings in this space, the jacket copy and the podcast I did with Arin Greenwood for the Heartland Institute. The attention-arresting headline: “Book Argues Ideas Hatched in Law Schools Are ‘Catastrophically Bad for America’.” Read it here.
I’ve also been taping some audio and video interviews related to the book that will air closer to or after its February 15 publication date. They include John J. Miller’s “Between the Covers” audio podcast series on new books at National Review, and segments on Reason TV.
Schools for Misrule is off to the printer
[cross-posted from Cato at Liberty]
I’m happy to report that my forthcoming book on bad ideas from the law schools, Schools for Misrule, just went off to the printer. Encounter Books commissioned a terrific jacket design (by Tamaye Perry) which you can preview here (PDF). Here’s the description from the book’s jacket:
Schools for Misrule: Legal Academia and an Overlawyered America
By Walter Olson
From Barack Obama (Harvard and Chicago) to Bill and Hillary Clinton (Yale), many of our national leaders today emerge from the rarefied air of the nation’s top law schools. The ideas taught there in one generation often wind up shaping national policy in the next.
The trouble is, as Walter Olson explains in this book, our elite law schools keep churning out ideas that are catastrophically bad for America. Rights to sue anyone over anything in class actions? Hatched in legal academia. Court orders mandating mass release of prison inmates? Ditto. The movement for slavery reparations? Court takeovers of school funding, at taxpayers’ expense? It’s not by coincidence, Olson argues, that these bad ideas all tend to confer more power on the law schools’ own graduates. In the overlawyered society that results, they are the ones who become the real rulers. And the worst is yet to come, the book demonstrates, as a fast-rising movement in the law schools demands that sovereignty over U.S. legal disputes be handed over to international law and transnational courts.
Some imagine that the law schools possess a finer, purer moral sensitivity than the everyday America outside their walls. (“Welcome to the Republic of Conscience!” Yale Law dean Harold Koh announced to incoming students.) But as this book shows, the pipe dream of training philosopher-monarchs not only leads to one policy disaster after another, but distracts law schools from the most useful function they can serve: training competent, ethical and suitably humble lawyers for tomorrow.
On the back of the jacket are wonderful blurbs from star law professor Randy Barnett of Georgetown (famous most recently for the ObamaCare court challenge), bestselling author and attorney Philip K. Howard (The Death of Common Sense), and perennial libertarian TV hero John Stossel.
You can pre-order the book at great prices from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or your favorite bookseller. Publication date is February 15, so copies should arrive before you know it.
New Heartland Institute podcast on Schools for Misrule
Arin Greenwood interviewed me about my forthcoming book for this week’s installment of the Heartland Institute’s weekly FIRE (finance, insurance, real estate) podcast. You can hear the results here.