- Under DoJ gun, LSAT agrees to end flagging of test scores taken with disabled accommodation, cough up more than $7 million [Justice press release, Caron/TaxProf roundup coverage]
- “Things law school trustees probably should not do: subpoena their own school’s students for criticizing them” [@petersterne; Danielle Tcholakian, DNAInfo]
- Should law students graduate without studying the First Amendment? And other thoughts from Justice Scalia’s William & Mary commencement speech [text via Will Baude]
- “Rank ordering the likelihood of law school reforms” [Prof. Bainbridge] ABA moves forward with law school accreditation changes; tenure, among other institutions, likely to remain sacrosanct [Caron/TaxProf, Fortune]
- Paul Horwitz reviews James R. Hackney Jr. book on contemporary legal academy [Journal of Legal Education via Prawfs]
- Alex Acosta dean case: should conservative legal academics steer clear of Florida? [Bainbridge]
- Orin Kerr vs. Erwin Chemerinsky and Carrie Menkel-Meadow on curricular reform [Volokh Conspiracy]
Posts Tagged ‘law schools’
Law schools roundup
- No shock there: “Law Profs Oppose ABA Proposal to Eliminate Tenure as Accreditation Requirement” [NLJ via Paul Caron/TaxProf, related]
- Teresa Wagner hiring suit against U. of Iowa law school on appeal to Eighth Circuit [Daily Iowan, quotes me; Caron; earlier]
- Scalia: “truly appalling” most students at elite law schools not asked to read Federalist Papers [Chicago Sun-Times] Do “wacky” offerings at such schools necessarily sound so wacky? [Elie Mystal, Above the Law]
- Canada’s first evangelical law school wins approval, backed by civil libertarians, over objections centering on its no-nonmarital-sex pledge [Vancouver Sun, MacLean’s, related, earlier]
- “Self-Interest and Sinecure: Why Law School Can’t be ‘Fixed’ From Within” [David Barnhizer (Cleveland State), via Caron]
- “Intellectual Diversity and the Legal Academy,” conference by Harvard Federalist Society now online [Harvard JLPP]
- Tonight (Wed.) at 7:30 I’m scheduled to join Al-Jazeera America’s “The Stream,” hosted by Lisa Fletcher with Wajahat Ali, to discuss the state of law schools, with Profs. Paul Campos (Colorado) and Gillian Hadfield (USC). Tune in!
Who decides which distressing speech ought to be made illegal?
Once again, a law professor has stepped up to inform us that we need to join much of Europe in attaching legal penalties to hurtful speech. This time one patient refutation comes from Michael Moynihan [Daily Beast] The idea is about as fresh and new as sleeve garters, notes Jonathan Rauch [Volokh/WaPo] Further rebuttal from Ken at Popehat and Scott Greenfield.
How could lawprofs have gotten the ACA case so wrong?
Again and again, as legal challenges to ObamaCare made their way forward, leading law professors dismissed as frivolous or inconsequential arguments that wound up convincing many or most Justices on the Supreme Court. David Hyman via Stephen Bainbridge:
Almost without exception, law professors dismissed the possibility that PPACA might be unconstitutional — but something went wrong on the way to the courthouse. What explains the epic failure of law professors to accurately predict how Article III judges would handle the case? After considering three possible defenses/justifications, this essay identifies five factors that help explain the erroneous predictions of our nation’s elite law professors, who were badly wrong,
but never in doubt.
Related: NYU Prof. Jonathan Haidt, who has written powerfully about the lack of ideological diversity in academia, has this page of resources on the subject. And don’t forget my book Schools for Misrule.
More: Nick Rosenkranz at Volokh back in April.
Law schools roundup
- “California AG files claim against school that hired its own students to boost employment numbers” — not a story about a law school, but it might have been [John Steele]
- Hardly anyone took the constitutional challenge to ObamaCare seriously, at least it seems not at Yale [David Bernstein, Volokh; and speaking of law school ideology my book Schools for Misrule makes a great holiday gift]
- Clinical legal education: “shift from service clinics to impact clinics is partly driven by clinicians’ search for status within the academy” [Margaret Drew and Andrew Morriss, SSRN]
- Shorten law school to two years? [NYT “DealBook” on Obama comments, Jim Dedman, Abnormal Use] “UVM, Vermont Law School consider joint degree” [Burlington Free Press]
- As “Old Media” shrinks, shouldn’t the number of law reviews do so too? [Gerard Magliocca]
- Lighter regulation of UK law schools, and more pathways to practice? [John Flood]
- Cleveland State law profs say “Satanic” $666 pay hike was retaliation for union activities [TaxProf]
NYT on law reviews
Law schools roundup
- Long before the U.S. News rankings: “Enduring Hierarchies in American Legal Education” [Olufunmilayo Arewa, Andrew Morriss, William Henderson, Indiana Law Journal/SSRN]
- So law schools tilt way left. What if anything can be done about it? [George Dent (Case Western), SSRN]
- Judge tosses defamation suit filed by Thomas Cooley Law School against critics [Lansing State Journal, Caron/TaxProf]
- And playing the race card to do it: “Law Profs Oppose Elimination of Tenure as an Accreditation Requirement” [Caron]
- Law schools as pork barrel: gubernatorial candidate promises to launch a new one in defiance of economic logic [Elie Mystal at Above the Law; Bowie State U., Maryland]
- Heather Mac Donald: Academic Advisory Council installed by Judge Scheindlin in NYPD case inspires little confidence [NY Post]
- Judge Easterbrook: “The one-size-fits-all approach has been the bane of legal education” [Indiana Lawyer re: opening of new Indiana Tech law school]
- Herculean flow-chart condensation of Paul Campos book Don’t Go to Law School (Unless) [Connecticut attorney Samuel Browning, Law School Tuition Bubble]
More views on whether law school should last two years
Eugene Volokh, often quoted in this space, isn’t enthusiastic about the idea of finishing law school in two years (earlier), but wonders about shortening the undergrad component. Some other views: Paul Caron/TaxProf reaction roundup, Orin Kerr, Hans Bader, Andrew Sullivan readers, Mystal (Kaplan survey). Yale’s Bruce Ackerman defends the three-year curriculum (more) leading to responses rounded up at TaxProf. What would happen to clinics? [Althouse, Schrag]
Law school roundup
- Now we’re getting somewhere? “ABA Task Force Releases Draft of Recommendations to Reform Legal Education” [Orin Kerr] “ABA Panel Favors Dropping Law School Tenure Requirement” [Karen Sloan, NLJ]
- Now we’re getting somewhere, cont’d? “Obama: two years of law school should be enough” [Prof. Bainbridge, Stephen Gillers]
- Many law reviews continue to “struggle with forthrightness” on circulation, Virginia’s claims 1700 but actual number is 304 [Ross Davies’ annual Green Bag survey, just out; my related Atlantic take last year]
- “Washington U. Dean Syverud Tells ABA Task Force: Law Profs, Deans Are Paid Too Much; 50% Pay Cut Would Solve Problem” [TaxProf] “New Law School Gets Just A Third Of Its Expected Starting Class” [Elie Mystal, Above the Law; Indiana Tech]
- How misleading are stats Rutgers-Newark puts out for its grads’ “median private sector starting salary”? [Paul Campos] “Sixth Circuit: it was unreasonable for Cooley applicants to believe Cooley’s ‘objectively untrue’ statements” [John Steele] “Former Villanova Law Dean Suspended from Practice for Filing Knowingly False Admissions Data” [Legal Ethics Forum]
- Claim: under “principles of social justice lawyering …lawyers have a fiduciary duty to create equal justice under the law.” Would she disbar those who don’t? [Artika Tyner, SSRN, via Legal Ethics Forum]
- Has Georgetown figured out a way to offer free law school tuition, and if so how much of the “free” winds up being on the taxpayers’ dime? [Politico, Milan Markovic, Hans Bader]
- “Law School to Remove Fraudster’s Name From Atrium” [Indiana; Lowering the Bar]
Discrimination law roundup
- Litigious anti-feminist loses case alleging that Manhattan club’s expensive bottle service for old men, free drinks for young women violate bias law [NY Mag, NYDN]
- “Hospital cannot ban all service animals from psych ward, federal judge rules” [ABA Journal] “New Yorkers use bogus ‘therapy dog’ tags to take Fido everywhere” [NY Post via Althouse]
- Canada: foes seek to prevent opening of evangelical law school in B.C. [CBC, Jonathan Kay/National Post, Globe and Mail editorial, TaxProf]
- Related: broad religious exemptions in anti-bias law make good complement to same-sex marriage [Ilya Shapiro/Cato, my take] Gay couples must also live and let live, or else liberty is in for some cake wrecks [Bart Hinkle, Richmond Times-Dispatch]
- Hiring based on IQ testing: widely regarded as legally suspect, but mostly tolerated in practice? [Bryan Caplan]
- “‘Borgata Babes’ lose weight bias suit; judge says casino policy was legal” [ABA Journal, earlier]
- 2009 expansion of federal hate-crimes law headed for a court challenge? [Josh Gerstein, Politico]