By demanding that students “imaginatively and sympathetically reconstruct the best argument on the other side,” a good legal education can help inoculate you against blinkered self-righteousness, which may be one reason why relatively few of the recent campus shout-downs and brawls have taken place at law schools. [Heather Gerken (dean, YLS), Time] And don’t miss John McWhorter on the essential theatricality of campus silencing, allyship, and privilege-shaming [via Conor Friedersdorf, The Atlantic]
Posts Tagged ‘law schools’
Higher education roundup
- Claw back money spent on unhelpful college tuition after bankruptcy? Not if Connecticut has anything to say about it [The American Interest]
- Incoming civil rights/Title IX enforcement officials tell university lawyers they plan to take less adversarial stance toward colleges than did previous administration [Doug Lederman, Inside Higher Ed]
- “Maryland becomes first state to outlaw scholarship displacement by public colleges” [Tim Prudente, Baltimore Sun] Note that practice undercuts gratitude-inducing efficacy of state’s custom of “legislative scholarships” [sample explanation]
- Clinton, Obama education bureaucracy couched Title IX dictates as “guidance,” which should make them easier to revisit [Hans Bader, CEI]
- California, other states’ embargo on state-paid travel to “bad” conservative states is putting stress on academic conferences [Nick Roll/Inside Higher Ed, Teresa Watanabe and Rosanna Xia, L.A. Times]
- The ABA is stifling innovation in legal education [Allen
Mendenhall, Law and Liberty]
June 21 roundup
- “Law Professors: Three Centuries of Shaping American Law”: The Economist favorably reviews new Stephen Presser book;
- Profile of Texas Supreme Court notes that its members regularly face opposition at election time from alliance of plaintiffs’ bar with some social conservatives [Mark Pulliam]
- 10 lawyers, 6 others charged in alleged workers’ comp fraud scheme targeting Latinos in California [Associated Press]
- Employee’s ADA case against Novartis backfires, court orders her to pay nearly $2 million; her attorney quit case after discrepancies in her background were discovered [Kathleen O’Brien, NJ.com]
- To protect the children, feds ban a product one of whose functions is to keep drugs out of hands of children [Christian Britschgi, Reason]
- Budget choices and trade-offs faced by advocacy groups don’t give them constitutionally required standing to sue [Daniel E. Jones and Archis Parasharami, WLF]
May 24 roundup
- “Court: Lawyer Who Gave Himself Award Can’t Sue People Who Reported He Did That” [Lowering the Bar]
- ADA reform moves closer to governor’s desk in Texas [Texans Against Lawsuit Abuse, HB 1463, Texas Restaurant Association; recent Arizona reform]
- Of many effects of rising tide of state attorney general activism, count wider standing for states as one [Paul Nolette, Law and Liberty]
- If towns like Palmdale didn’t realize that California law now puts them under pressure to adopt districted rather than at-large council elections, entrepreneurial Malibu lawyer is there to present $4.6 million reminder [Robin Abcarian, L.A. Times]
- Choice of law school commencement speakers tracks familiar notions of which ideas are respectable and which not [John McGinnis, Law and Liberty]
- “Treating [dogs] as products for product liability purposes creates some significant problems.” [Nick Farr, Abnormal Use]
Environment roundup
- Farmers were among leading opponents of 2015 WOTUS (Waters of the United States) rule, and for good reason [Lawrence A. Kogan, WLF, earlier]
- “The Antiquities Act has become a tool for presidents to secure their legacies with special interests.” [Jonathan Wood/Reason, earlier] “State Officials Urge Local Consultation When Designating National Monuments” [Aileen Yeung, Western Wire, more]
- West Hollywood imposes onerous exactions if you build multi-unit housing. Takings alert [Ilya Shapiro, David McDonald on Cato certiorari petition in case of 616 Croft Ave., LLC v. City of West Hollywood]
- Random goofball’s letter to editor calls for violence against oil and gas workers. I wouldn’t mess with oil and gas workers, actually [Western Wire]
- Vermont Law School, known for environmentalist mission, gets $17 million loan from U.S. Department Of Agriculture [Paul Caron/TaxProf]
- “Is everything a crime under the Endangered Species Act?” [Jonathan Wood, related on McKittrick policy] “Vigorous Dissent from Fifth Circuit’s Denial of Rehearing Should Help ESA Frog-Habitat Case Leap to Supreme Court” [Samuel Boxerman with Katharine Falahee Newman, WLF]
Defund our cause litigation? We’ll have your accreditation for that
Some on the Board of Governors that oversees the University of North Carolina are unhappy with UNC law school’s Center for Civil Rights, a source of Left activism and litigation in the Tar Heel State. Now firebrand liberal UNC law professor Gene Nichol has warned the university of “serious accreditation problems in the months ahead” from the American Bar Association (ABA) and Association of American Law Schools (AALS) should it close the center. [News & Observer via Paul Caron, TaxProf]
April 19 roundup
- Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), key vote on tort reform in upper house, plans Texas visit to raise funds from trial lawyers [Palmetto Business Daily]
- “Indeed, most major law schools have fewer conservatives or libertarians on their faculty than can be found on the U.S. Supreme Court.” [Jonathan Adler, Martin Center]
- Anti-craft-beer bill, Marilyn Mosby followup, legislature rescinds earlier Article V calls, Baltimore minimum wage in my latest Maryland roundup;
- Man given $190 ticket for having pet snake in park off-leash. Off leash? [John Hult, Sioux Falls Argus-Leader]
- As victim’s wife looks on, identity thief and 20-time illegal border crosser testifies that he fathered two of victim’s children [Brad Heath on Twitter citing Judge Bea ‘s opinion in U.S. v. Plascencia-Orozco, Ninth Circuit]
- Central California: “State and federal legislation take new aim at predatory ADA lawsuits” [Garth Stapley, Modesto Bee]
Relaxing the ABA’s rules on law school faculty structure
The American Bar Association is proposing easing its mandate that law schools use full-time faculty for at least one-half of courseload; the new minimum would be one-third. The shift would be a step toward reviving the once-common and generally less expensive model of law school oriented more toward training-for-practice and less toward scholarship and research. I recommended similar reforms in Schools for Misrule. [Paul Horwitz; Paul Caron and links]
Intellectual diversity at law schools
As I noted in my book Schools for Misrule a few years back, law faculties, especially at elite schools, tilt overwhelmingly leftward on the political spectrum. Last month the Association of American Law Schools turned down a request from conservative and libertarian legal scholars that a task force be set up to look into this issue and that data be released to help identify such patterns if indeed they exist. On Wednesday 28 dissident legal scholars went public with a letter urging a change of course. Here’s Josh Blackman’s post about the letter. Other signatories include Jonathan H. Adler, Randy Barnett, Gail Heriot, James Lindgren, John McGinnis, Nicholas Quinn Rosenkranz, Ilya Somin, Eugene Volokh, and Stephen Ware. More: Randy Barnett; Paul Caron/TaxProf with links.
More: AALS executive director Judith Areen responds.
January 11 roundup
- Group letters by law professors opposing nominees should be treated with the respect due, normally zero [John McGinnis, Michael Krauss, Paul Caron/TaxProf with links to columns by Stephen Presser, Scott Douglas Gerber, and James Huffman]
- USA, courthouse to the world for compensation claims, even 100+ years later [Guardian on suit in Manhattan federal court by descendants of atrocities committed by Germans in what is now Namibia in early 1900s]
- Marvels of NYC tenant law: “Couple renting Chelsea pad hasn’t paid rent since 2010” [New York Post]
- Election results could mean 11th-hour save for embattled cause of consumer arbitration [Liz Kramer/Stinson Leonard Street LLP]
- Baltimore policing, family leave in Montgomery County, Uber/Lyft fingerprinting, getting money out of Howard County politics, and more in my latest Maryland policy roundup at Free State Notes;
- Speaking of ridesharing and regulation: “Without Uber or Lyft, Austin Experiences Skyrocketing DUI Rates” [Brittany Hunter, FEE]