Annals of bonkers scholarship: “Trahison des Professeurs”

I’ve seen a hundred wacky and extreme papers out of legal academia, and wrote about more than one in Schools for Misrule, but this one, published by the National Security Law Journal at George Mason (whose editor-in-chief has already repudiated it) stands out. You can read the whole story at The Guardian, including links to some of the controversies that have followed author William Bradford, but it might make more sense to hand the gavel over to distinguished legal scholar and Prof. Jeremy Rabkin in his four-page rebuttal:

When an article proposes to arrest law professors and bomb law schools and nearby TV studios, it’s not engaging in “controversy,” but slipping into an alternate universe. It’s not “discomforting.” It is bonkers. The journal could not reasonably have expected readers to “respond” – unless to ask, “Are you out of your minds?”

Monday update: Bradford resigns.

Filed under: law schools, military, Schools for Misrule, terrorism

The Prosser jukebox

The late Prof. William Prosser, whose enormous influence on modern tort law has made him an occasional target of my windmill-jousting, wrote a parody song “The Common Law of Texas” in the early 1960s to the tune of “The Yellow Rose of Texas.” Kyle Graham found it and nominates North Carolina, Oregon, and Hawaii as states that currently follow their own path on common-law tort doctrine.

Filed under: law schools, Texas

August 5 roundup

Makes perfect sense: to make transportation more accessible to its residents, Montgomery County, Maryland orders 20 taxi companies to close down [Washington Post]
“New ‘Gainful Employment’ Rule Spells Trouble For For-Profit Law Schools (And Would For 50 Non-Profit Law Schools)” [Caron, TaxProf]
“To comply with a twisted interpretation of TCPA, Twitter would have to stop providing certain services altogether.” [Harold Furchtgott-Roth] “New FCC Rules Could Make Polling More Expensive, Less Accurate” [HuffPost Pollster]
To draft the unpassable bill: Scott Shackford on the politics and bad policy behind the omnibus LGBT Equality Act [Reason] “So How Can Anyone Be Opposed to Non-Discrimination Laws?” [Coyote] More: Establishment liberalism reluctant to admit it’s changed its thinking on religious accommodation, but that’s what’s happened [Ramesh Ponnuru/Bloomberg View]
Update: “Court rejects claim over goat goring in Olympic National Park” [AP, earlier here and here]
“I would receive 100 other identical stories [from asylum seekers] with only the names changed.” [The Australian, 2013]
“Some protested that DNA testing amounted to a violation of canine privacy because dogs were not capable of consent.” [New York Times on Brooklyn condo dispute via @orinkerr]

Filed under: animal rights, animals, asylum law, Australia, discrimination law, Federal Communications Commission, law schools, Maryland, sexual orientation, taxis and ridesharing, Twitter

“Letter to a Young Social Justice Warrior…”

“… RE: Your Request for a Formal Apology.” Seth Barrett Tillman, who teaches law at the National University of Ireland in Maynooth, points out that the specifically lawyerly skills of “learning to see the world as others see it” and adopting “arguments and conduct that are proportionate to the facts” are also valuable when expressing disagreement with others in legal academia. “If mere hurt feelings were a recognized injury, then no one could possibly disagree with anyone else, and all intellectual inquiry, in law and in other fields, would be at an end. You do see that, right?” Whole thing here.

As I’ve noted elsewhere, I too have decided the time has come to demand a formal public apology. After I give thought to what might achieve the most virality on social media, I will settle on from whom and to whom over what.

Filed under: colleges and universities, law schools, social media

Unwanted endorsements dept.

James (Whitey) Bulger, former Boston crime kingpin: “Advice is a cheap commodity. Some seek it from me about crime. I know only one thing for sure: If you want to make crime pay go to law school.” [New York Times via Paul Caron]

Filed under: law schools, lawyers

Collegiality rating: low

“A law professor who alleges he was bullied by colleagues and injured when a professor grabbed and squeezed his shoulder may pursue claims of assault and battery, but not intentional infliction of emotional distress, a federal judge has ruled.” [ABA Journal, Ohio Northern]

Filed under: law schools

Prof. Laurence Tribe flayed for arguing business side in SCOTUS cases

And critics such as lawprof Tim Wu in the New Yorker aren’t ready to accept as an excuse the genuineness of Tribe’s belief in the argued-for positions [John Steele, Legal Ethics Forum] Perhaps the idea is that strong lawyers — like cartoonists? — have an obligation not to “punch down,” whether or not justice in a given case is on the side of the putatively less empowered party.

I’ve got an extensive discussion of law professors’ real-life litigation involvements in my book Schools for Misrule.

Filed under: ethics, Harvard, law schools, Schools for Misrule

May 6 roundup

Investigate the federal judge’s wife? Pretty much the sort of stunt you’d expect from Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio [Arizona Republic, Phoenix New Times, ABA Journal, Coyote, our coverage of Arpaio over the years]
“State ‘Competitor Veto’ Laws and the Right to Earn a Living” [Tim Sandefur, Mercatus]
Mississippi lawyer Dickie Scruggs gives first post-prison interview [Jackson Clarion-Ledger]
New book by Judge and former Senator James Buckley makes case for eliminating federal grants to states [George Leef, Jonathan Adler; podcast interview, Liberty and Law]
Neo-prohibitionists having conniptions over prospect of beer/Ben-&-Jerry’s combo [Baylen Linnekin]
Priceless comment thread on value-of-law-school debate with Orin Kerr trying to talk patient off ledge [PrawfsBlawg]
Big D.C. plaintiff’s injury firm can’t collect on insurance after not disclosing potential claim [Judy Greenwald, Business Insurance]

Filed under: beer and brewers, competition through regulation, Dickie Scruggs, federalism, law schools, Phoenix, Washington D.C.

The imperfect diversity of Harvard Law School

“98% Of Harvard Law Faculty Political Donations Go To Democrats” [Paul Caron, TaxProf]

If I say so myself, my book Schools for Misrule makes a good place to start in understanding how American legal academia came by its distinctive ideological leanings. There’s a Kindle version you can download right now.

Filed under: Harvard, law schools, Schools for Misrule

April 22 roundup

“On what planet is it remotely constitutional to *raid someone’s home* and forbid them from speaking about it?” [Julian Sanchez on new at-length National Review account of Wisconsin John Doe raids; my earlier writing on the raids at Cato and here; Scott Shackford, Reason; Walker opponents still defending John Doe proceeding, to praise from (updated) left-leaning national Alliance for Justice and Center for American Progress]
Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe vetoes bill to provide more transparency in state’s hiring of outside counsel [Legal NewsLine]
BuckyBalls gone, Zen Magnets still standing: “Two Cheers for 10th Circuit’s Temporary Stay of CPSC’s New Magnet Safety Standard” [Mark Chenoweth, WLF]
Arkansas governor vetoes “right of publicity” bill [Volokh]
NY Times profiles prolific privacy lawsuit filer Jay Edelson, whose class action firm we’ve met before;
Recusal motion gamesmanship from trial lawyers at Illinois Supreme Court [Richard Samp, WLF]
Law faculty diversity: Republican women “were — and are — almost missing from law teaching.” [James Lindgren, SSRN via TaxProf; more from Lindgren]

Filed under: CPSC, Illinois, law schools, recusals, right of publicity, Virginia, Wisconsin