The Faculty Lounge

Beat Me Daddy, Eight to the Bar

"Beat Me Daddy, Eight to the Bar" was written in 1940 by Don Raye, Hughie Prince, and Ray McKinley. It was released that year by the Will Bradley Orchestra, with McKinley on drums a vocals (see audio clip at bottom of this post). The title phrase is a request for the drummer to set a boogie woogie rhythm, and the "best piano player by far" has been thought to be a reference to John "Peck" Kelly, who was the leader of "Peck's Bad Boys." It has since become a classic number for piano players to show off their chops. The Andrews Sisters also turned it into a signature trio act.

Sarah Lipton-Lubet on Court Expansion

 

 

What Justice Thomas Doesn't Understand about Respect for the Supreme Court

Here is the gist of my new column for The Hill:

Clarence Thomas is right about declining respect for the Supreme Court — but wrong about its cause

Speaking at a conference sponsored by three conservative think tanks, Thomas blamed the leak on either a clerk or fellow justice. In the old days, he said, nobody would have leaked a single line of an opinion, let alone an entire draft. There was “belief in the court” that made confidentiality sacrosanct. Now, alas, the court has experienced a sort of “infidelity.” You “begin to look over your shoulder,” he explained, which risks “destroying the institutions that are required for a free society.”

Almost nobody is in favor of disclosing confidences or disturbing the peace in residential neighborhoods, but those phenomena are at best symptoms of declining respect for the Supreme Court. The root causes are more profound, some of which can be traced to the justices’ open disregard for the ethical norms applicable to every other American judge.

Congressional attempts to remedy the crisis of confidence have lately broken down on political lines. Democrats have proposed reform legislation to address pressing institutional issues, with little or no support from Republicans.

Just last week, the House Judiciary Committee passed the Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act (SCERTA), which would enact the most comprehensive ethics reforms in many decades. The 22-16 vote was along strict party lines, with every Democrat voting in favor of the legislation and every Republican voting against it.

Perhaps congressional Republicans believe they must defend the court’s 6-3 conservative majority at every turn, but that is a mistake. Waning public confidence hurts the majority most of all, as it is their decisions that must meet the test of widespread acceptance.

[Thomas] is oblivious to the true nature of the court’s legitimacy problem, which has almost nothing to do with its internal dynamics (about which nobody else much cares, other than wannabe insiders) and far more to do with its haughty attitude toward public transparency.

You can read the entire piece here.

Law Schools Miss the Mark on Bar Passage - Will the ABA Act?

I promised to provide a bar passage update when this year’s bar passage reports came out, and they are available.  You can access the individual school reports here. You can access the all-school compilations here at the ABA Statistics Page.

As a reminder, the ABA bar passage standard, Standard 316, requires that law schools attain an “Ultimate Bar Passage” (UBP) rate of 75% within two years of graduation.  The most recent reported results are for the class of 2019, the graduates of which had until the July 2021 bar exam to pass the bar.   So far, the ABA has found only three schools to be out of compliance with Standard 316, so let’s start by reviewing the results at those schools.

Hutchins Named Dean of Maryland Law

The University of Maryland has announced that Dean Renée McDonald Hutchins of UDC Law will be the new dean of its law school.  She joined UDC as dean in 2019 after fourteen years on the Maryland Law faculty.   Hutchins, who holds a JD from Yale, will head back to Baltimore on August 1. 

Call for Papers – The Legal Treatise: Past, Present, and Future

An FYI on an important symposium:

The Lillian Goldman Law Library and Law Library Journal invite proposals​ for a symposium on the Legal Treatise to be held at Yale Law School on Friday, March 24, 2023. 

The purpose of this symposium is to examine the many aspects of the history, present circumstances, and future of the legal treatise as a source and genre. Possible topics include but are not limited to: the origins of the treatise, the role of the treatise in English and American law practice and legal culture during particular periods in history, the commodification of the treatise, international and comparative perspectives on the treatise, microhistories of specific treatise titles, biographical accounts of treatise writers, rivalries between treatise writers, treatise authorship successions, reflections on contemporary treatise writing and publishing, the rise of the scholarly monograph, the (in)accessibility of the treatise, the transition of the treatise from a print resource to an electronic resource, the decline of the multi-volume treatise in law practice and legal scholarship, and theories about and proposals for the future of the treatise. 

Jennifer Mnookin Named Chancellor of of UW-Madison

Jennifer Mnookin  has been named Chancellor of  the University of Wisconsin-Madison.   Mnookin has served as dean of the UCLA School of Law since 2015.  A Bruin no longer, Mnookin will become a Badger on August 4.  

The Sound of Silence

Paul Simon wrote "The Sounds of Silence" in 1963 and released an acoustic version with Art Garfunkel on their first album in 1964. The record flopped, leading Paul and Art to break up -- Simon going to London and Garfunkel to Columbia University. Unbeknownst to them, their producer released it as a single in 1965, with overdubbed drums and electric guitars. The song reached number one on the Hot 100 and became a standard for S&G and many others, under the name "The Sound of Silence," which I guess makes more sense philosophically and religiously (as we will see after the jump).

Call for Proposals for the Fourth Annual Equality Law Scholars’ Forum

November 4-5, 2022 – Loyola Law School, Los Angeles

Building on the success of the Equality Law Scholars’ Forum held at UC Berkeley Law in 2017, at UC Davis Law in 2018, and at Boston University Law in 2021, and in the spirit of academic engagement and mentoring in the area of Equality Law, we (Tristin Green, University of San Francisco, visiting Loyola Los Angeles AY 2022-23; Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Boston University; and Leticia Saucedo, UC Davis) announce the Fourth Annual Equality Law Scholars’ Forum to be held in Fall 2022. 

This Scholars’ Forum seeks to provide junior scholars with commentary and critique and to provide scholars at all career stages the opportunity to engage with new scholarly currents and ideas.  We hope to bring together scholars with varied perspectives (e.g., critical race theory, class critical theory, queer theory, feminist legal theory, law and economics, law and society) across fields (e.g., criminal system, education, employment, family, health, immigration, property, tax) and with work relevant to many diverse identities (e.g., age, class, disability, national origin, race, sex, sexuality) to build bridges and to generate new ideas in the area of Equality Law.  

We will select five or six relatively junior scholars (untenured, newly tenured, or prospective professors) in the U.S. to present papers from proposals submitted in response to this Call for Proposals. In so doing, we will select papers that cover a broad range of topics within the area of Equality Law.  Leading senior scholars will provide commentary on each of the featured papers in an intimate and collegial setting.  The Forum will take place all day Friday through lunch on Saturday.  Participants are expected to attend the full Forum.  The Equality Law Scholars’ Forum will pay transportation and accommodation expenses for participants and will host a dinner on Friday evening.  

This year’s Forum will be held on November 4-5, 2022, at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.

David Yellen Named Dean of Miami Law

The University of Miami School of Law has announced that its new dean will be David Yellen.  Yellen, who is currently the CEO of Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System, previously served as the president of Marist College, the dean of Loyola-Chicago Law and the dean of Hofstra Law. He holds a JD from Cornell.

Theresa Radwan Named Interim Dean of Stetson Law

Professor Theresa Radwan has been named interim dean of Stetson Law beginning on June 24th, stepping in for Michèle Alexandre who is decamping for Chicago.  Radwan joined Stetson in 2001 and holds a JD from William & Mary Law School.

 

"A Scholar's View of Supreme Court Leaks—and Why Chief Justice Roberts Presides Over an 'Accountability-Free Zone' (Feat. Steven Lubet)"

That is the episode title of my recent interview on the "Objections" podcast, part of the Law & Crime network. Here is the description:

Despite the aftershocks of Politico obtaining and publishing a draft majority opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade, monumental Supreme Court leaks have a history dating back centuries.

 

Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law Professor Steven Lubet unpacks that tradition on the latest episode of Law&Crime's podcast "Objections: with Adam Klasfeld" and explains why he believes the chief shares some responsibility for what he calls the Supreme Court's "accountability-free zone."

 

The Supreme Court is the only one in the United States never to have adopted a code of conduct, and it has remained silent in the face of controversies involving justices, on the left and right.

 

In the episode, Lubet traces the development of the first U.S. judicial code of ethics to former President and ex-Chief Justice William Howard Taft, and he explains efforts after Watergate to make those guidelines mandatory, rather than aspirational. He also unpacks ongoing efforts in Congress that would require the Supreme Court to develop an ethics code, create new mechanisms for recusal, and expand access to court proceedings through live-streams.

 

You can listen to it here.

Robert Chesney Named Dean of Texas Law

The University of Texas has announced that Bobby Chesney, a member of its law faculty since 2008 and long-time associate dean of academic affairs, will become the new dean of UT Law.  Chesney, who holds a JD from Harvard, steps in for Dean Ward Farnsworth who has been leading the law school for the past decade. 

Rodney Smolla named President of Vermont Law

Vermont Law School has announced that its new president will be Rod Smolla. Smolla is currently dean at Widener's t Delaware Law School and has previously served as president of Furman University, and dean at Washington and Lee University and University of Richmond law schools. He holds a JD from Duke and will take over on July 1.