The Faculty Lounge

Bob Barr For President? Dems Cross Fingers

For months he's been tinkering with the idea, and now he may be ready to take the plunge.  Bob Barr, a former Congressman from Georgia, could end up as this year's Libertarian presidential candidate.  Wouldn't it be interesting if he brought back the 1988  Libertarian presidential nominee - Ron Paul, of course - as his running mate?

Barr has been a curious enough figure in politics over the years - beyond his cameo role in Borat.  He led the charge in the impeachment of Bill Clinton.  For years he was an ultra-conservative.  More recently he has become more clearly libertarian, going so far as to join both the Libertarian Party and the ACLU.  He has been particularly exercised about the extension of government power through the Patriot Act.

Obviously, Barr isn't going to win anything.  What makes Barr's candidacy interesting is the possibility that, if McCain will tacks too far to the center, some conservatives might abandon the Republicans.  It won't necessarily take a lot of votes to make a difference.

My view of the 2008 race is that one simply cannot reach conclusions about anything this early in the game.  But from the point of view of Democrats, a Barr candidacy only seems destined to help.

In Defense of Law School Publicity

It's common practice around the legal blogosphere to make fun of literature that law schools send around to promote their students, faculty, and alumni.   I actually enjoy reading the literature--it gives me a sense of what other people are doing; every once in a while I get some ideas from it.  And I think these publications can be helpful for getting the law schools' communities excited about what's happening as well.

But it's the University of Akron's most recent, impressive list of faculty publications that's warming my heart right now.  It cites my study in the University of Colorado Law Review last year on law review citations' emerging importance for law school rankings.  How's that for combining two things that legal academics care about?!  I highlighted the schools whose law reviews have been improving a bunch of late--including the University of Akron Law Review.  My hypothesis in the piece was that law reviews are an indicator of what's happening at a school and so good reviews are reflective of an intellectual ferment.   And law reviews that are improving maybe give us a particular idea of the schools on the move.

As long as I'm talking about Akron, I want to mention their fabulous conference on the new women's legal history.  Might even help us address the gender imbalance in legal history.

Now, this is the kind of promotional material I really like!   And I'm not just saying this because they cited me (though I'm certainly highlighting Akron because they cited me!)--I've been defending the promotional literature for a long time.

Alfred Brophy

In re Phyllis Schafly

Amidst all the discussion about Washington University in St. Louis awarding an honorary degree to Phyllis Schlafly, I think it's time to dust off a post from back in 2005 at co-op.  I wrote about a visit of Ms. Schlafly to the University of Alabama back in the spring of 2005:

It was the most entertaining evening I’ve spent in years, much better even than the O’Reilly Factor .  And I left with an "I Love Capitali$m" poster, which is one of my prized possessions.

Ms. Schlafly did what I take to be her usual stump speech-–opposing judicial activism and, of course, feminism. She was plugging her new book, The Supremacists (about left-wing judges). She had some amusing lines. Something along the lines of, “Feminists are pushing their way into the military. Forty-five percent of women can't throw a hand grenade far enough to keep from killing themselves. So I guess you can say that feminism leads to death. Ha, ha, ha.” I took the laughter to be a realization that her arguments in this case were laughable–a wonderful self-insight. I have a warm spot in my heart for people who don’t take themselves too seriously. It’s an appealing character trait, to be able to be not too serious. Wish I had more of it.

The highlight of the evening was the question and answer period. It was the usual free-for-all: questions from a women’s studies graduate student on one side and from someone who thought Ms. Schlafly was too soft on liberals (yes, that’s right!). Her face looked like she sort of couldn't believe what he was saying. Most of the rest of us couldn't, either. And then towards the end, there was a most illuminating interchange. A young woman in the audience said something along the lines of:

Ms. Schlafly, I think you’re an antique. You’re turning off a significant part of your conservative base. I am a young conservative woman. And I am in law school to be a good role model for my child and to provide for my family. Telling women not to work is alienating people who agree with a lot of conservative values.

Reminds me how successful the feminist agenda of the 1950s and 1960s has been. Now virtually all young women (or at least many young conservative women) aspire to professional careers.

But here’s the punch line that really cinches this story. I later learned that the law student was, a few years ago, Miss Mississippi. What a great debate, between two conservative women, one an icon of the 1950s and the other an icon of the 2000s. Fifty years from now, some American Studies scholar will be wishing that she had a tape recording of that evening–and particularly that exchange.

Alfred Brophy

Is Starbucks Seattle's Best Coffee?

I may be the last person to the party on this one, but until this very morning, I thought that Seattle's Best Coffee was a competitor of Starbucks.  It kinda made sense.  Starbucks has the Barnes and Noble Cafe account.  Borders has the Seattle's Best account.  Some airports have Starbucks.  Others have Seattle's Best.  And a few - like Hartsfield Jackson Airport in Atlanta - have both.  And at the supermarket, both brands appear to battle for shelf space - just as Duncan Hines and Betty Crocker go misto-a-misto with each other in the cake aisle.  It all looked like pretty normal competition to me, though Starbucks seemed to clearly have the lead.  Then this morning, as I was surfing the web in search of...well, I don't know what...I discovered this remarkable piece of news: Starbucks owns Seattle's Best Coffee.   

It's hardly the only company that owns major competitors: laundry titans Tide and Cheer are both produced by that Satan-lovin' brand, Proctor and Gamble, for example.  And I suppose that the two coffee titans do occupy different market spaces; the two bookstore chains may have similar cultural cache, but I'm guessing Starbucks was happy that Seattle's Best scored the Steak n Shake account.  Still, this not-so-news only heightens my affection for two wonderful small-time roasters that I've come to love over the years: California's amazing Graffeo and Philly's own La Colombe.

Truly Useful Law School Courses

As a faculty advisor, one of my jobs is to approve the courses my first-years plan to take next fall. Law students are fairly conservative and risk-averse in their choices, so usually I see the standard set of courses:  Evidence, Bus. Org., Crim Pro, Admin, and the like.  But the fabulous E. Noakes of McSweeney's has provided a list of *truly* useful courses that law schools should offer:

Classes My Top-Tier Law School Should Have Offered As Warnings About The Profession

Cutting and Pasting Legal Lingo

Explaining Business Associations to the People Who Are Running Them

4 A.M. Word Processing and the Law

Ethics of Conspicuous Consumption

Forwarding E-mails: Theory and Practice: Seminar

Arbitrary-Deadline Negotiation Strategies

Crying Quietly: Clinic

Jeans-Friday Advocacy Workshop

Cutting and Pasting II: Plural to Singular

************

I'd like to add a few of my own:

Document Production:  Theory and Practice

Windowless Document Warehouses--Practicum

and for the public-interest minded:

Finance and the Law:  When Salary Doesn't Even Cover Loan Repayment

Cross-posted at Prawfsblawg.

Coerced Symbolic Speech: Students Suspended for Failure to Stand During the Pledge of Allegiance

  A Minnesota public school has suspended several junior high school students for their failure to stand during a voluntary recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance.  Here is a news account.  Note that the students were not suspended for failing to recite the Pledge.  Forced speech is, of course, presumptively invalid and Barnette v. West Virginia Board of Education struck down a forced flag salute by public school students.  Here, the students were disciplined for their failure to stand while other students voluntarily recited the Pledge.  An ACLU spokesman, quoted in the linked article, asserts flatly that the suspension is unconstitutional.  But is it?  Is it a form of coerced symbolic expression?  Does standing silently while others recite the Pledge carry an intention of endorsing the Pledge, and would onlookers perceive it as such?  Alternatively, does the requirement that the student stand mutely prevent the student from whatever symbolic expression is inherent in sitting during the Pledge?  Again, what was intended and what would be perceived?  The mother of a suspended student quoted in the article says he did not mean to convey any message of unpatriotism.  So, does this raise any heightened level of scrutiny under free speech doctrine?  The issue is reminiscent of Lee v. Weisman, but Lee involved the establishment clause, not free speech, and psychological coercion was at the heart of the Court's Lee rationale.  Should the same principle apply here, in a purely free speech context?  So far, the Court has limited its forced speech rulings to cases of explicitly coerced speech.  Rumsfeld v. FAIR rejected the contention that equal treatment for military recruiters on law school campuses was a form of coerced expression.  There, the Court stated that if words are necessary to explain the symbolic expression, the conduct in question is not symbolic speech.  This case appears to be on the line.  Finally, given the fact that this occurs in a school context, are there legitimate pedagogical reasons to require everyone to stand for the Pledge, even if one doesn't say the words?  Perhaps toleration of sitters contributes to a climate of sullen disrespect that hinders school business.  It's impossible to know these important facts from the news account.  Thus, I don't agree with the ACLU spokesman that the suspension is so clearly unconstitutional, but I do think that it raises some serious issues of possible symbolic expression.

Must A Librarian Be...A Librarian?

Mike Madison has a very interesting post up about Harvard Law School's recent decision to hire Berkman Center for Internet and Society Executive Director John Palfrey as the director of the law library.  Palfrey, who has deep experience in information policy, lacks that one fundamental credential of (I suspect) every other law library director: a library degree. 

Perhaps this is no big deal.  There is no question that law libraries have changed over time.  They collect material, and serve patrons, differently than they did even a decade ago.  Maybe Harvard's director should be first and foremost a big picture guy.  And maybe Palfrey is fully equipped to deal with the traditional concerns of a library director - everything from understanding how professors consume information to a facility with deep technical decisions.  But I have to imagine that formal training in library science  has some signficant benefits that Palfrey might have missed as he noodled over the big information issues at the Berkman Center.  If Harvard is right that being a librarian isn't a core skill for a director, what are the broader implications?   Other law schools may soon contend that at core, running a library isn't about information - it's about managing people. By this metric, the ideal library director might be an MBA who loves computers and reads a lot.  At some point, I imagine the ABA may choose to weigh in. 

I feel darn sure of one thing: both Palfrey and that erudite MBA will be depending heavily on some folks in the library who do have a library degree.   Because while a library director may not need to be a librarian, my sense is that a librarian still needs to be...a librarian.

Wilkes University Names Prescott Dean of Planning Effort

Wilkes University has appointed Widener University Law Professor Loren D. Prescott Jr. dean for the Wilkes University Law School Planning Initiative.  Prescott will submit a final plans for the law school for the trustees to consider in April 2009.

Thanks to Ben Barros for this news. 

Alfred Brophy

Pollard on Intentional Sex Torts: Continuing the Discussion

I told you last week that we haven't heard this last of this.  Here's the latest roundup of the responses to Deana Pollard Sacks' article on "Intentional Sex Torts." 

First, the background.  The whole discussion began with Deana's post at flp last week.  (And remember what Deana's talking about is tort recovery not criminal liability--hence the name sex torts.  That distinction gets lost in a lot of the comments.)  That was picked up by Professor Marc J.  Randazza of Barry University's Law School at The Legal Satyricon, which led in turn to abovethelaw's discussion.  Lots and lots of comments at abovethelaw.

Then there's geeklawyer.  Yikes.  And two posts over at Simple Justice and here.  Bookworm takes it up here  and womensspace takes it up here.  Am I missing anything?  I want to talk a lot more about the substance of this shortly.

Update: A discussion board has now picked this up, too, and there's a brief note about it here.

Another update: Womensspace has extensive coverage and excerpts from the article  here.

Alfred Brophy

101 Classroom Uses for a Call Phone

For the lover of useful lists, Tracy McGaugh's building a great one over at Millennial Law Prof:  101 Classroom Uses for a Cell Phone.  Link to MLP above or below to join the discussion.

Here's what Tracy has to say: 

Steve Demby gets us started with ten that he thought of off the top of his head, but I'm determined that we can come up with 92 more. There are both students and professors who read this blog, so what can you think of (that's constructive and serves some educational purpose) that you can do with a cellphone in a classroom?

Here are Steve Demby's 10:

1) Check the spelling/definition of a word
2) Research a topic
3) Look up reference images
4) Pull up maps (even with satellite imagery)
5) Document a science lab with built in digital camera/video
6) Fact check on the fly
7) Mail questions to the teacher that they might be embarrassed to ask
8) Classroom response system
9) Take quizzes
10) Record and/or listen to podcasts

So post away! If you're reading this post, add a comment with at least one (yet unnamed) way to use cell phones in the classroom. Let's assume that the phone has standard phone capabilities as well as text-messaging, pictures, mp3 sound, video, and Internet. If your idea requires some kind of add-on beyond that (like a stand-alone keyboard) be sure to note that. If you're reading this post on a blog other than Millennial Law Prof, be sure to click over to MLP to leave your idea.

My contribution: Phone the tech department to tell them your tech isn't working. Beats running up and down 5 flights of stairs. 

-Kathleen A. Bergin

Turkey: For the Greener Good

Its no secret that I love most things Turkish.  And that I'm a pretty committed environmentalist.  So a report this week from The Eurasia Daily Monitor caught my eye.  It talks about a series of free speech setbacks that are overshadowing some much needed reforms.  But its the last couple of paragraphs tucked in at the end that got me thinking. 

Judges in Turkey apparently have a great deal of discretion when determining sentences for minor crimes, and one judge is using that authority for the greener good.  According to the report, Tamer Demirsoy, a judge in the capital city of Ankara, has sentenced over 150 convicted defendants to plant a total of 20,000 trees.   "Global warming poses a serious threat to Turkey," he told the local periodical Radikal.  "The most serious effect is drought.  I am trying to use the authority granted me by law to contribute to expanding green areas."

Maybe the discretion given to Turkish judges is akin to our system of community service sentencing.  But from the article it sounds like the judge can actually order the defendant to a particular placement, unlike the US where defendants can choose among a list of pre-approved charitable organizations.  If the Turkish system works how I described, I'd like to know whether there are any controls on the judge's discretion.  Environmentalism may be sufficiently non-partisan in Turkey, but how about a drug rehab program?  An art museum that features contemporary nudes?  Such placements might not raise as many an eyebrow here as they would there, where they'd in fact be quite controversial.  But if the choice is between prison time, a fine or community service, for some defendants its really not a choice at all.  Another concern would arise if forced placements were made in exchange for the Turkish equivalent of a nolo contendre plea where there is no finding of guilt.

What are the chances we have a loyal reader who can offer insight into the Turkish sentencing system . . .

-Kathleen A. Bergin

Collateral Consequences: Phiadelphia Judge Unseated Over 1984 Conviction

When we talk about the collateral consequences of conviction - sometimes known as civil disabilities - we rarely are able to see the costs to someone who actually does put her life together.  (Mostly, these consequences function to stop people from becoming highly successful.)  Yesterday, the Pennsylvania State Supreme Court removed Philadelphia Municipal Judge Deborah Griffin  from the bench because of her 1984 federal conviction for using a false Social Security number.  Using this number, she had successfully applied for credit.  (Interestingly, she paid her bills on these fraudulently obtained cards.)  Subsequently, she attended law school at the University of Missouri and later became a member of the Pennsylvania bar.  (Apparently, she failed to disclose this conviction on her PA bar application. ) 

The Court's decision made sense under the law (which forbids those committed of infamous crimes from serving on the bench).  And there are some very good reasons to expect the highest standards from the judiciary.  But it is also true that Griffin's story is quite complicated.  Since the mid-1980's, she seems to have readically turned her life around.  None of this may excuse her offense, but closer scrutiny of her case suggests - as is so often the case - that not all criminal acts have identical moral culpability.  Unfortunately, collateral sanctions provisions - which also include things like felon disenfranchisement, loss of the right to live in public housing, and loss of the ability to get various forms of professional licenses - rarely account for the details of an offender's offense. 

Here, at least, it's easy to see the justification for the sanctions.  But, for example, if she were stripped of the right to be a hair dresser or cab driver - sanctions she probably faces to this day in many jurisdictions - I'd have serious doubts.  This is why many collateral sanctions should only be imposed after a full hearing.  Whether or not we formally call them punishment, that's what they are.  And they should be treated as such.

Hiatus on Guatemalan Adoptions

In the midst of investigating claims of fraud, Guatemala has halted all foreign adoptions.  Since January, adoptions that were once handled by private attorneys have been handed over to a government agency. The US State Department has reported evidence of coercion and payment by attorneys, in addition to lawyers paying young women to conceive children solely for the purpose of adoption. 

This reform of adoption policy in Guatemala potentially affects over 2,300 adoptions, many of them involving American parents.  This has dramatic potential for international adoption, with an increase of adoptions from Guatemala increasing from 3 percent of off American adoptions in 1990 to 20 percent of all adoptions in 2006.

Government Roadblocks: Smokers, Dealers, Drinkers and Pedophiles

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that the federal government is peddling fear.  Sitting at my desk, drinking a cup of coffee, I attempted to read a New York Times article this morning.  As sometimes happens, I encountered a roadblock ad sponsored by the Office of National Drug Control Policy.  I loathe roadblocks so I normally move quickly to shut the ad and read the article.  This time, though, the moving headline caught my eye: Smokers, Dealers, Drinkers and Pedophiles.  I was so flummoxed by this clear pandering to popular fears of pedophiles - anxieties that are one my chief scholarly interests - that I was unable to process the rest of the ad.   I tried google to find any reference to the ad, with no luck.  Finally, I thought to check the Drug Control Policy website.  There I discovered the motherload of monitor your teen ads, many of which I've previously dismissed on my way to reading the news.  And I found today's message here.

Here's the problem with today's fear-of-pedophilia ad: in its effort to trade on popular anxiety - using existing fear to cause readers to pay attention - it also further produces that fear.  Every time the government waves the bloody shirt of pedophilia, a few more readers will begin to believe that the nation is in a child sexual assault crisis.  And it's simply not clear that this is remotely true.  But by generating that anxiety, more and more voters become open to the sorts of aggressive, repressive regulations supposedly needed to suppress this crime.  Internet speech bans.   Shaming sanctions.  And I won't be surprised if, at some future point, states begin to reguate the dating habits of single moms.  (The data suggest, at least, that this would be the most productive site of intervention.)

Market research may show that you need to employ this radioactive rhetoric to grab the attention of readers.  But it is also true that fear is the tool of authoritarian governments.  I've blogged previously about increasingly aggressive governmental surveillance and policing.  Today's ad is a small component of this troubling agenda.

Score One For The Fraud Fighters: Elderly Nuns Denied Vote In Indiana

Indiana's Supreme Court certified fraud-fightin' voting ID law got a good workout today.  AP tells us that several elderly nuns were denied the right to vote in South Bend (home of St. Marys and Notre Dame.)  OK, maybe it was a press set-up, but I'm sure it was also true.  Here's the report:

About 12 Indiana nuns were turned away Tuesday from a polling place by a fellow sister because they didn't have state or federal identification bearing a photograph.

Sister Julie McGuire said she was forced to turn away her fellow members of Saint Mary's Convent in South Bend, across the street from the University of Notre Dame, because they had been told earlier that they would need such an ID to vote.  The nuns, all in their 80s or 90s, didn't get one but came to the precinct anyway. 

"One came down this morning, and she was 98, and she said, 'I don't want to go do that,'" Sister McGuire said. Some showed up with outdated passports. None of them drives.  They weren't given provisional ballots because it would be impossible to get them to a motor vehicle branch and back within the 10 days allotted by the law, Sister McGuire said. "You have to remember that some of these ladies don't walk well. They're in wheelchairs or on walkers or electric carts."

As Indiana's Secretary of State, Todd Rokita  commented a couple weeks ago:  "This says to the voter you can have confidence again in the elections." 

Randall Kennedy's Five Most Important Books

The current issue of Newsweek features Randall Kennedy.  It talks about his five most important books.  Pretty intriguing list.  Professor Kennedy writes:

1. "The American Political Tradition" by Richard Hofstadter. It ignited my interest in history.

2. "Black Boy" by Richard Wright. It indelibly imprinted on me the horrors my grandparents and parents faced as blacks in the pre-civil-rights Deep South.

3. "Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877" by Eric Foner. A magnificent scholarly edifice.          

4. "Our Undemocratic Constitution" by Sanford Levinson. A fearless examination of the Constitution by one of the most adventurous (and overlooked) U.S. intellectuals.

5. "Four Quartets" by T. S. Eliot. Because it contains the poem "East Coker," in which one finds the lines: "For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business."          

            A classic book that disappointed:W.E.B. DuBois's "The Souls of Black Folk" is one of the most lauded books in the African-American canon, but I found it disappointingly thin.

As I say, it's an intriguing list.  I need to think about what would be on my top five--perhaps we'd overlap in Foner's Reconstruction--a brilliant and sweeping book.  When I first read it I couldn't even begin to imagine how one person could have the knowledge to write such a comprehensive book. 

I'd probably include C. Vann Woodward's Strange Career of Jim Crow and Morton Horwitz' Transformation of American Law, 1780-1860 and maybe G. Edward White's Marshall Court and Cultural Change, because it gave me a sense of how to combine cultural and intellectual history with legal thought.  Wright's Black Boy is a fabulous volume, of course; but for me Ellison's Invisible Man was more influential, because it lead me to understand the response of African American intellectuals to Jim Crow.  And it's the source of the title of one of my current projects, "The Great Constitutional Dream Book."  Really small tidbits are here and here.  And there's some more in the first chapter of Reconstructing the Dreamland.

If we're talking about articles and essays that have influenced us, I would add Kennedy's "Race Relations Law and the Tradition of Celebration: The Case of Professor Schmidt," which appeared in the Columbia Law Review back in 1986. 

Close readers of the legal blogosphere may recall that some time ago I suggested that we use appearances in popular culture for ranking faculty.  Chalk another one up for Professor Kennedy!  Of course, he already has an episode of Boston Public devoted to his book.

You can also read an excerpt of Professor Kennedy's Sellout at the Newsweek website.

Update:  I'm not sure this is worthy of an update, because I'm not sure anyone cares about the books that influenced me.  However, Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie's Montaillou may be the book that has influenced my development as a legal history scholar the most.  I read it as a freshman in college lo' those many years ago in a terrific class on social history.  And I thought at the time, wow, what an extraordinary way of learning about people who lived centuries ago.  It uses court records to reconstruct the community of Montaillou--and now, decades later, that's one of the projects that still consumes my time. 

I'm working with a fantastic former student (Stephen Davis) on a study of the probate process in an antebellum Alabama county.  I'll be talking more about this shortly; it's shocking to me how much you can wring from probate records, about families, the institution of slavery, and the market in the old South.

Alfred Brophy

Cookie Dough Pucks, Melon Rinds, And The Missing Tray

We learn today, from the Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription required), that university food service operations are feeling financial pressure from the rising cost of food.  How to make ends meet?  A number of ideas surfaced in the article - everything from cutting half an ounce of cheese from a slice of pizza to leaving the skin on chunks of honeydew melon.  Some schools are even baking from scratch rather than using "expensive pucks of pre-made cookie dough."  (And they wonder why college students play with their food?)

The smartest strategy of all, though, is simply making it tougher for students to carry the food to their tables.  Schools like Western Washington and Middlebury College are banishing the cafeteria tray.  Sure, a tray may be a convenient way to tote your Italian Noodle Casserole, salad, cookie, and Mr. Pibb, but do students really need all four?  Not if food service accountants have anything to say about these matters. 

To quote Woody Allen:

"Boy, the food in this place is really terrible.'"   "Yes, and such small portions."

A List Of Current Law School Dean Searches

Moved to the top May 5 with additions and modifications.  As always, I encourage readers to provide any additional information.

A couple of months ago, a colleague from another law school suggested I start a new list: a compilation of all current law school dean searches.  This seems like a great idea, particularly since blogs have turned into excellent ways for faculty exchange information on law school hiring.  In that spirit, I am hereby soliciting any and all information on current law school searches.  I'll start with the few I am aware of (though corrections are always encouraged and invited.)   Note that some of these searches are at late stages, and others are very much in progress.  (Big thanks to Brian Leiter for finalist info which I've included here.)  Update: I will add have been adding additional information as it comes in to create the most accurate list possible.  Based on Rob Kar's good suggestion, I will also link to the job postings where I have them.

Arizona St.  (Finalists: Paul Schiff Berman and Kevin Johnson)

Buffalo (Finalists: Leon Trakman, Bruce Smith, and Margaret Raymond)

UC Davis (Kevin Johnson named dean.)

Drake

Hamline (Donald Lewis named dean.)

Houston (Finalists: Neil Cogan, Linda Greene, Craig Nard, Raymond Nimmer) (Raymond Nimmer named dean.)

Illinois

Kentucky

LaVerne

Loyola L.A.

Miami (Finalists: Jonathan Simon, Linda Greene and Jennifer Rosato.)

Loving v. Virginia's Mildred Loving: 1940-2008

By DIONNE WALKER for the AP:

RICHMOND, Va. - Mildred Loving, a black woman whose challenge to Virginia's ban on interracial marriage led to a landmark Supreme Court ruling striking down such laws nationwide, has died, her daughter said Monday.   

Peggy Fortune said Loving, 68, died Friday at her home in rural Milford. She did not disclose the cause of death.

Loving and her white husband, Richard, changed history in 1967 when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld their right to marry. The ruling struck down laws banning racially mixed marriages in at least 17 states.

They had married in Washington in 1958, when she was 18. Returning to their Virginia hometown, they were arrested within weeks and convicted on charges of "cohabiting as man and wife, against the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth," according to their indictments.

The couple avoided a year in jail by agreeing to a sentence mandating that they immediately leave Virginia. They moved to Washington and launched a legal challenge a few years later.

After the Supreme Court ruled, the couple returned to Virginia, where they lived with their children Donald, Peggy and Sidney.

Richard Loving died in 1975 in a car accident that also injured his wife.

In a rare interview with The Associated Press last June, Loving said she wasn't trying to change history ? she was just a girl who once fell in love with a boy.

"It wasn't my doing," Loving said. "It was God's work."

A sad passing. 

One note on the report.  Loving is usually described as an "inter-racial" marriage case, but it even goes beyond that.  The statute in Virginia didn't ban "racially mixed marriages " as the article describes, but only some racially mixed marriages.  It made it a felony for "any white person [to] intermarry with a colored person, or any colored person [to] intermarry with a white person."  In other words, Blacks, Native Americans, Asians, or any other persons of color could marry with each other, but could not marry someone who was White.  The state's need to defend "racial integrity" as Virginia claimed fell flat because the statute was designed to preserve White racial purity exclusively.  Its one of the quintessential White supremacy cases of the era.          

-Kathleen A. Bergin

The First Law School in (English Speaking) America?

I'm working on a short essay on Francis Daniel Pastorius.  You've never heard of him, I'm almost certain.  He was trained in law in Germany in the middle of the seventeenth century, then came to Pennsylvania and served as a judge, teacher, and farmer.  He wrote a lot--about religion, law, horticulture, medicine, and about the settlement of Pennsylvania, too.  Most of what he wrote has never been published, although a textbook for his students was published in the 1690s and a volume of letters home to Germany was published at the beginning of the eighteenth century.

He wrote what I think is the first legal treatise in British North America--the Young Country Clerk's Collection.  It's essentially a form book, with everything from forms for sale of goods, to wills, land transactions, trusts, and partnerships, and forms for criminal prosecution, too.   At least if a legal treatise was written in British North America before the Young Country Clerk's Collection I haven't yet heard of it.

So that's gotten me to thinking about what the first law school in English speaking North America was.  The typical answer is William and Mary.  But I'm wondering if there's an earlier candidate?  Perhaps it was the Philadelphia Friends school when Pastorius was teaching there in the late 1690s.  His early twentieth century biographer says that Pastorius used the Young Country Clerk's Collection in his instruction at the school--which makes sense because it dates to just about the time he started teaching there.

The image is of the Pastorius Monument in Vernon Park.  I've linked to it from Philadelphia Art Net.