Posts Tagged ‘Harvard’

“Harvard’s Shareholder Rights Project is Wrong”

According to the Harvard Law School online catalog, the SRP is “a newly established clinical program” that “will provide students with the opportunity to obtain hands-on experience with shareholder rights work by assisting public pension funds in improving governance arrangements at publicly traded firms.”

Marty Lipton and others at Wachtell, Lipton don’t like the idea and criticize it here. More at NYT DealBook (via Bainbridge).

Reader J.B. emails to say:

Whatever one thinks of Wachtell’s substantive critique of the attack on classified/staggered boards, it’s kind of interesting for a law school to be promoting a “clinical program” in which the kids get to work for institutional investors with bajillions of dollars in assets (and, you know, the wherewithal to retain sophisticated counsel at market rates) rather than the sort of boring old indigent individuals that are the traditional law school clinic client base.

A different view: Max Kennerly.

June 20 roundup

Politics edition:

  • Mother ship? White House staffers depart for Harvard Law School [Politico]
  • New York: “Lawmakers consider lawyer-friendly med-mal bills,” even as many key legislators moonlight at personal injury firms [Reuters]
  • David Brooks on explosive political potential of Fannie Mae scandal [NYTimes] After Kentucky bar panel’s vote to disbar Chesley, Ohio AG pulls him off Fannie Mae suit [Adler, Frank, Beth Musgrave/Lexington Herald-Leader]
  • Alabama legislature removes Jim Crow language from state constitution — but black lawmakers oppose the idea [Constitutional Daily]
  • AAJ lobbyist Andy Cochran works GOP turf, has convinced trial lawyers to sponsor Christian radio program [Mokhiber, “Seventh Amendment Advocate“]
  • Centers for Disease Control funnels grants to allies for political advocacy on favored public-health causes [Jeff Stier, Daily Caller]
  • Must have mistaken her for a jury: “John Edwards Sought Millions From Heiress” [ABC News] “One thing [worse than Edwards’s] conduct is the government’s effort to put him in jail for it.” [Steve Chapman]

Law schools roundup

  • Looks as if ROTC will return to Yale and Harvard despite some misgivings at the latter institution over the military’s treatment of transgendered persons [Atlantic Wire, Weekly Standard; also see my Daily Caller interview]
  • California state bar urges U.S. News to factor racial diversity into law school rankings [Althouse]
  • Right-of-center commentators clash on Ninth Circuit nomination of Berkeley lawprof Goodwin Liu [Damon Root, Reason]
  • Odds of this resulting purely from chance distribution would seem pretty low: of 32 members of Congress who have Harvard degrees, 29 are Democrats [Stoll, Future of Capitalism]
  • Rather disrespectful review of new Ronald Dworkin book [Simon Blackburn, Times Higher Ed]
  • There’ll always be a legal academia dept.: “Multidimensional Masculinities and Law: A Colloquium” [UNLV/Suffolk via LaborProf]

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].

May 12 roundup

  • Charged $21K at purported “gentleman’s” club: “Plaintiff Has No Recollection of What Transpired in the Private Room” [Lowering the Bar]
  • Census Bureau sued for discriminating against applicants based on criminal, arrest records [Clegg, NRO] Class action against Accenture for screening job applicants based on criminal records [Jon Hyman]
  • Virtual indeed: “Virtual Freedom” author wants government to regulate Google’s search engine [ConcurOp]
  • Contingency fees for public sector lawyering could take California down dangerous path [CJAC]
  • “Harvard Law vs. free inquiry: Dean Martha Minow flunks the test” [Peter Berkowitz, Weekly Standard]
  • There’ll always be an AAJ: seminar for trial lawyers on “Injuries Without Evidence” [ShopFloor] More: The Briefcase.
  • Congress may expand law to enable more age-bias suits [BLT]
  • “FTC Closes First Blogger Endorsement Investigation” [Balasubramani, Spam Notes; Citizen Media Law]

“Disgraced ex-Gov. Eliot Spitzer to lecture at ethics center”

Life imitates The Onion: the madam in the Client Nine scandal is questioning the propriety of the invitation from Prof. Lawrence Lessig’s Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics at Harvard. [NY Daily News] Spitzer, for those who’ve already forgotten, curried political favor with anti-libertarian feminist and legal services groups by helping lead a crusade to lengthen sentences for “johns”, then deftly dodged the harsh penalties that his own law has inflicted on many offenders less well connected than himself. Lately, by way of rehabilitating his image, he’s taken to the columns of publications like Slate to lecture the rest of us about things like respect for the rule of law. More: Above the Law, Greenfield (& welcome Chequer-Board readers).

October 12 roundup

  • Speech-curbing proposals continue to get polite academic reception: NYU’s Jeremy Waldron, big advocate of laws to curb “hate speech”, delivered Holmes Lectures at Harvard this past week [HLS, schedule]
  • Lawsuit over collectible baseball hit into stands by Phillies’ Ryan Howard, his 200th career homer [Howard Wasserman, PrawfsBlawg; NJLRA]
  • Orchid-importer prosecution a poster case for the evils of overcriminalization? Maybe not [Ken at Popehat]
  • Texas State Fair and city of Dallas don’t have to allow evangelist to distribute religious tracts inside the fair, judge rules after three years [Dallas Observer blog]
  • Drug maker: FDA’s curbs on truthful promotion of off-label uses impair our First Amendment speech rights [Beck and Herrmann and more, Point of Law and more]
  • Did plaintiff Eolas Technologies go to unusual lengths to ensure Eastern District of Texas venue for its patent litigation? [Joe Mullin, IP Law and Business via Alison Frankel, AmLaw]
  • Update: “Lesbian Denied Infertility Treatment Settles Lawsuit” [San Diego 6, earlier]
  • Even in the Ninth Circuit, “psychological injury resulting from a legitimate personnel action” is not compensable [Volokh]