The Faculty Lounge

Charlie Rose Named Dean of Ohio Northern Law

Ohio Northern University has announced that Professor Charles Rose III will be the new dean of its law school, effective this summer.  Rose, who directs the well-regarded trial advocacy program at Stetson Law, holds a JD from Notre Dame Law.  

Mixing a Civ Pro Textbook on H2O

Having taught Civil Procedure for ten years now, I’ve decided to take advantage of the H2O open casebook platform and “mix” my own textbook for use at the Peking University School of Transnational Law. This is, I hope, much less work than actually writing one from scratch. For starters, Glenn Cohen’s text is available as a source and a model.

Notwithstanding that I’m no one’s idea of a Civ Pro maven, I have my own thoughts about how it ought to be taught and thus about how the book ought to be structured. Although I was a litigation partner at a couple of fancy schmancy litigation firms back in the day, I discovered when I started teaching that there was an awful lot of Civ Pro doctrine that I knew all too little about. As time has gone on, however, I’ve come to the opinion that the textbooks also include all too little about what mattered in practice. Beyond that, as I teach almost exclusively to non-US nationals who will never themselves be in a US litigation practice, there are issues of focus and emphasis that matter.

One big beef with the existing Civ Pro books – and I am still surveying what’s out there, even though cost makes actually buying 150 copies of any of them for our incoming class out of the question – is that they don’t engage deeply enough with what in practice seemed to be the two most important elements of the Civ Pro process.

The first is that litigators are, first and foremost, lawyers, and the role of being a lawyer matters centrally to the Civ Pro process. There are ethical constraints that will control choices, and without understanding how fundamental these are, the rules and the processes on specific matters from pleading to discovery don’t quite make sense. Beyond that, as one considers how litigation fits into the bigger picture, the students need to understand what kind of help lawyers can and should give their clients, which goes way beyond knowing how to spot an Erie issue. At every stage, minimal ethical duties and beyond that one’s idea of what kind of professional one wants to be matter to litigation, and it makes sense to me to embed that fundamentally into any Civ Pro course.

Then there is the overriding issue of using Civ Pro not as a collection of rules, but as tools employed in the context of achieving a strategic goal. No good lawyers of my acquaintance would start right in on litigation without at least considering what other options might achieve the desired result. Civ Pro textbooks present the Civ Pro process as an inexorable march from jurisdiction to pleading to joinder and discovery to motions to trial and to appeal, with ADR an often not quite realized aspect at the end. (To be fair, I’ve taught it just that way myself, following the book.) But, that’s not how good litigators approach it. Whether they represent plaintiffs or defendants, if they are any good they start with a goal in mind, and everything they do works toward that goal. The rules are used to achieve results, with a lot of creativity applied by better lawyers, and not just followed step by step like a recipe for brownies. In line with that, I want to put Civ Pro in a strategic context.

That actually fits pretty well with teaching non-US nationals. While few of my students will end up being US civil litigators, very few of them will be able to ignore US procedure if they have big clients. Strategically, they will need to understand how personal jurisdiction can bring even a wholly foreign company under the sway of the US courts, and how the discovery process and attachment of even temporarily US-based assets can give a real bite to that. As transnational lawyers, much of the rest represents one way a fully developed system can approach issues ranging from joinder to claim preclusion, which they can fit into a comparative context when they move on to their full course in Chinese Civil Procedure. More generally, understanding how US procedure can matter is a first step in understanding the world of legal pluralism in which they all will practice, where the substantive or procedural laws of any one jurisdiction are going to be far from all they need to think about.

As I go forward, I plan to post on issues I encounter here. Some of those issues will be about how to use the rather wonderful but apparently underutilized H2O platform; others will be somewhat more substantive thoughts about what I think belongs in a Civ Pro course and where it belongs.

My thinking on the substantive issues will be somewhat idiosyncratic. One of the virtues of mixing your own textbook is that you can vary freely from the traditional sequence of coverage, as well as adding new materials not included in the average text, both of which I think I might do. Right now I’m thinking about starting with the Preamble from the Model Rules of Professional Responsibility, so as to frame it all in the context of professional behavior and identity. Because the US is a foreign culture for my students, I then expect to address, as I have in prior years, issues related to cultural context, the history of the US, and the basic structure of US government. These are all things that might not be necessary when teaching US students, but a good Chinese student might know about as much about the US Revolution or how states function in a federal system as a good US student knows about the Yongle emperor or how residential hukou works in China. Once the table is set, the plan is to move directly to ADR, because in my experience that’s a first stage consideration in any real dispute – do we need to go to court, or can we talk this out or otherwise resolve it in a less formal way? When we get to state-sponsored litigation venues (after a brief comparison of civil law and common law approaches), I plan to start not with jurisdictional issues, but with remedies, because if you are thinking strategically what you hope to attain is the first and most important question. Related to that will be a preliminary discussion of enforcement of judgements, and a quick overview of when you get to pursue an appeal. In my opinion and experience, all of that is central to understanding one’s strategic options, and so it seems useful to frame the whole course right from the start in light of what the goals of litigation might be. These may not be the first issues addressed when resolving an appeal, but they are usually among the first issues addressed when starting into litigation.

Once we are through all that, my goal is to start in on personal jurisdiction and notice, which fit in the time I have available in the fall semester, and which are important issues for foreign nationals. I’m still sorting out how to do that. Personal jurisdiction is difficult for everyone these days – not least the justices of the US Supreme Court – which makes it a hard place to start. I’ve wondered about starting with the narrow issue of service of process under Rule 4, which provides a segue to whether the person being served is someone the court has power over. I’m still sorting that out.

My goal in these blog posts is, first, to write out some of the issues and hence understand them better myself. My second and bigger goal is to get feedback from some of my betters who might frequent this site. I’m hoping you can weigh in with suggestions and resources and corrections as the process goes along.

As is true with all texts created on the H2O site, whatever I create will be available for others, no charge, on an open source basis, so there is the hope that any help you give me will benefit not just me but others.

(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay

Co-written with guitarist Steve Cropper, "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay" was released a few months after Otis Redding died in a plane accident in December 1967. It was Redding's ony number one hit, and the only posthumous release ever to reach number one on the Billboard Hot 100.

Mary Davis Named Interim Dean of Kentucky Law

No, no, no.  Dean David Brennen hasn't suddenly decided to leave his post at the University of Kentucky College of Law.  Actually, he will be an ACE Fellow next year.  In order for him to devote his full attention to the task, the University has appointed Professor Mary Smith as the interim dean for the coming school year.  She holds a JD from Wake Forest.

A Dangerous Volksgeist: Indian Law Journal Rejects Solicited Article on Indus Waters Treaty

The following guest post is by Nadia Ahmad, Associate Professor at Barry University School of Law:

The National Law School of India Review solicited me to write a 2,000-word article on January 2, 2019. I responded that I would write about the Indus Waters Treaty. Yet because of my existing deadlines, teaching schedule, and other responsibilities, I said I could deliver at the end of February.

Between the time that I accepted the offer and submitted the piece, India and Pakistan verged on the brink of war. I felt it would be responsible to include an analysis of how those current events factored into the interpretation and enforcement of the Indus Waters Treaty.  The journal said it would not publish my piece, because I addressed “international relations” and not legal issues. I am at my desk still shaking my head as to how an international water treaty that has been litigated in international courts does not provide “legal, jurisprudential perspectives with an inter-disciplinary focus.” I was given no opportunity to update the piece, but merely a “thanks, but no thanks.”  

Here is the three-part blog post, published in Vermont Environmental Law Review’s EcoPerspectives Blog:

• Considering Climate Risks and the Indus Waters Treaty in the 2019 India-Pakistan Showdown (Part 1)
• Reassessing Climate Justice and Energy Security Between India and Pakistan: The Curious Case of the Kalabagh Dam (Part 2)
• Dam-Racing in South Asia: The Environmental Disasters Waiting to Happen (Part 3)

I chose to write about this slight now, because of the broader impact to dissent in India, which has been on the radar of Human Rights Watch:

Sadly, the fact is that there is little room for dissent in India under [Bharatiya Janata Party] BJP. Activists, journalists, lawyers, writers, teachers, actors or artists – anyone who criticizes the government or its divisive ideology – is at risk of being targeted. Either the state deploys its power by arbitrarily cutting off access to funding, ordering audits, issuing warrants for search or arrest; or the BJP’s supporters threaten violence or launch physical attacks. From deeming that to be secular is to be anti-national, or from deciding that to be anti-fascist is to be a terrorist, the heap of wild allegations is unending.

Maybe with the elections, the bigotry and hatred would pass, I reasoned. I was wrong. The rancor will only intensify.

Meanwhile, neighboring Pakistan is no stranger to silencing minorities as it removed a top Princeton economics professor from its national economic advisory board, because he was from a religious minority group.  And then Saudi Arabia is executing intellectuals.

I suffer from a misapprehension that the environment matters to public health, safety, and welfare of the people and their surrounding lands. I also have a misapprehension that war is not the answer to limited natural resource scarcity, and that wars should not be fought over oil, pipelines, land, and water rights. History rarely is on my side. History is on the side of power, war, and racism, and ignores voices of resistance for peace, justice, and equality. 

As the prototype academic, I write enough to raise questions, but not enough to ruffle feathers, so that I can benefit from the fruits of my research and writing toils and not face the backlash of it. It is a fine line to stay out of sight, out of trouble, and still seem like an intellectual. In 1927, French essay Julien Benda published this once famous attack on the intellectual corruption of the age in La Trahison des clercs (The Treason of the Intellectuals).  Roger Kimball noted the depth of the intellectual treason that Benda described:

The “treason” or betrayal [Benda] sought to publish concerned the way that intellectuals had lately allowed political commitment to insinuate itself into their understanding of the intellectual vocation as such. Increasingly, Benda claimed, politics was “mingled with their work as artists, as men of learning, as philosophers.” The ideal of disinterestedness, the universality of truth: such guiding principles were contemptuously deployed as masks when they were not jettisoned altogether. It was in this sense that he castigated the “desire to abase the values of knowledge before the values of action.”

In its crassest but perhaps also most powerful form, this desire led to that familiar phenomenon Benda dubbed “the cult of success.” It is summed up, he writes, in “the teaching that says that when a will is successful that fact alone gives it a moral value, whereas the will which fails is for that reason alone deserving of contempt.” 

The election results in India are done trickling in – a landslide for the ruling party.

When I received the rejection email from the National Law School of India Review journal editor, the 2016-2017 protests at New Dehli’s Jawaharlal Nehru University were fresh in my mind. Students who criticized the government were called “fascists” and “terrorists.” The protests started as all students protests do with grievances that the administration would refuse to acknowledge and attend to, and then snowballed from there. Under normal academic discourse, there are responses and rebuttals, but with the heavy hand of the state, the free exchange of ideas is limited. The views of this diasporic Indian/Pakistani were unwelcome. I do not know what the full dynamics were that led to the rejection, but as a grandchild of the Indian Partition, I know when things are amiss. I know how stealthily narratives and information are reined in to put forward state propaganda.

Students and academics in India under BJP rule have been met with tear gas and pellets, faced contempt charges, been arrested under colonial era sedition laws, and are even killing themselves in despair.

The land of Mahatama Gandhi deserves better.

-Nadia Ahmad

Summer 2019 Exclusive Submission Track at Florida State Law Review

This just in from FSU:

The Florida State University Law Review is delighted to open an exclusive submission track for Summer 2019. Authors who submit to the exclusive submission track agree to accept a binding publication offer, should one be extended. Authors agree to withhold submitting their manuscripts to any other journal until a decision has been made. The exclusive submission track will open from May 27^th to June 16^th and decisions will be rendered by June 23. Accepted manuscripts will be published in Volume 47 of the Law Review. Final manuscripts will be due November 15^th for Issues 3 and 4. Articles selected for Issues 3 and 4 are expected to be published in August 2020.

The Florida State University Law Review accepts manuscripts from all areas of legal scholarship. Manuscripts should closely conform to The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation (20th ed.). Authors interested in submitting to the exclusive submission track for Summer 2019 should email their CV and manuscript as a Word Document or PDF to Executive Article Selection Editor, Jemma Takx, at jat13h@my.fsu.edu.

Mary Anne Bobinski Named Emory Law Dean

Emory University School of Law has announced that Professor Mary Anne Bobinski of the University of British Columbia law school will be its next dean.  Bobinski served as dean of UBC law from 2003 to 2015.  She holds a JD and Ph.D from SUNY Buffalo and an LLM from Harvard.

Nicola Booth Perry Named Interim Dean at FAMU Law

Florida A&M University has named Professor Nicola Booth Perry its interim dean of the law school.  She takes over from interim dean LeRoy Purnell.  Booth Perry holds a JD from Florida State Law.

More (Specialty) Law Review Submission Guides

Raizel Liebler, Head of Faculty Scholarship Initiatives at the Louis L. Biro Library at The John Marshall Law School (Chicago), has posted to SSRN two new guides for specialty law review submissions:

• Information for Submitting to Intellectual Property and Science & Technology Law Journals; and
• Information for Submitting to the Top Specialty Law Journals

Each guide contains:

• Name of the journal (either the top 40 specialty journals in intellectual property and technology, based on the most recent Washington & Lee journal rankings, or the top 50 U.S. based student edited specialty law journals, based on the most recent Washington & Lee journal rankings). 
• Washington & Lee specialty ranking (for IP guide) or specialty ranking (for top 50 specialty student-edited U.S. law journals)
• Submission via Expresso, Scholastica, or email
• Whether articles from online journal are included in HeinOnline’s Law Journal Library
• Specific information about submission, such as word count limitation, if any.

Helpful!

 

Villanova Law Seeks VAPs/Fellows in Several Areas

Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law seeks qualified individuals to serve as Visiting Assistant Professors of Law during the 2019-20 academic year. We encourage persons with strong academic records and the potential for outstanding teaching and scholarship to apply to any of the following positions:

• General Doctrinal.  The successful candidate will teach two courses, one per semester.  Both courses are subject to negotiation, based on the curricular needs of the Law School and the interests of the candidate.  Areas of likely curricular need include Property, Land Use, Real Estate, Criminal Procedure, and International Law.  The position is a 10-month, visiting position beginning in the summer of 2019, with the possibility of an additional one-year term.

 

• Director of Civil Justice Clinic.  The Clinic represents low-income clients in a range of civil disputes, in areas such as family law, housing, employment, government benefits, and consumer claims. The position is a 12-month, visiting position beginning on July 1, 2019, with the possibility of an additional one-year or a continuing appointment thereafter. 

 

• Legal Writing.  The successful candidate will teach either two sections of required first-year Legal Research, Analysis, Writing, & Oral Communication I and II courses or one section of the first-year course and other courses as needed to fit curricular needs.  The position is a 10-month, visiting position beginning on August 1, 2019, with the possibility of an additional one-year term. Strong preference for candidates with an interest in a career teaching legal writing and/or other legal practice skills.

 

• Clinical Fellow (Immigration Law).  The successful candidate will teach in the Clinic for Asylum, Refugee & Emigrant Services (CARES) as a Clinical Fellow during academic year 2019-2020.  The CARES Clinic represents refugees seeking religious or political asylum in the United States.  The Clinical Fellow position is a 12-month, temporary position beginning on July 1, 2019, with the possibility of an additional one-year term.

The successful candidates will enjoy many benefits of a top-notch law faculty. Our visiting assistant professors (VAPs) typically teach one course per semester, allowing ample time for scholarship. VAPs also are invited to attend faculty meetings, participate in faculty workshops, and are given opportunities to engage in mock job talks, mock job interviews, and scholarship reviews. Alumni of our VAP program have gone on to hold tenure-track appointments at other esteemed law schools, including the University of Florida, Washington and Lee University, University of Alabama, and Temple University.

APPLICATION PROCEDURE: Villanova is a Catholic university sponsored by the Augustinian order. Diversity and inclusion have been and will continue to be an integral component of Villanova University's mission. The University is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer and seeks candidates who understand, respect and can contribute to the University's mission and values. All interested persons should visit Villanova University's Human Resources website and search for "Law" under the "Faculty Positions" section.

Applicants should feel free to apply to multiple positions but, of course, should satisfy the minimum qualifications for each position they seek. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis until the positions are filled. Questions may be directed to Professor Teri Ravenell.

Ipse Dixit Interview on Interrogating Ethnography

I was interviewed today on Ipse Dixit, Bryan Frye's podcast on legal scholarship. We discussed Interrogating Ethnography: why and how I wrote it, my suggestions for ethnographic research, and the responses from ethnographers. You can here it at this link.

A Law School in Shreveport?

A  Louisiana legislature committee has voted to request the Louisiana Board of Regents to study the possibility of expanding Southern University Law into Shreveport.  This isn't the first effort to open a law school in that city.  Earlier in the decade, Louisiana College spent over $5 million on an ill-fated plan to open a law school there.

@SSRN and the (Arbitrary) Determination of "Scholarly" Merit

Yesterday Brian Frye (@brianlfrye) (Kentucky) tweeted:

I am sad. @SSRN has decided that my article about Gremlins (1984), "In re Patentability of the Peltzer Inventions," does not qualify for "public" status because it is "opinion, advocacy, or satire." Why judge? Oh well.  You can still download it here: http://www.ssrn.com/abstrac_id=3371989.

I followed Brian's direct link to the piece. The abstract refers refers to the many inventions of the movie's Randall Peltzer character, and explains, "This essay takes the form of an opinion letter valuating the patentability of Peltizer's inventions." I don't teach IP, but I like Brian's work and so I downloaded the essay. It struck me as funny and as an excellent teaching tool.  But if you go to Brian's author page on SSRN, you wouldn't be able to access the paper.  You wouldn't even see it.

I myself have posted material that apparently doesn't meet SSRN's criteria for a "scholarly paper," including this interview with the principal drafter of some important state trust legislation (and the interview itself has been cited in subsequent scholarship) and this short piece for Tax Notes reviewing estate and gift tax law review articles published in 2016 (even though SSRN published my similar pieces reviewing scholarship for the years 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010).

When I posted my Information for Submitting to Online Law Review Companions (a submission guide modeled after Nancy Levit and Allen Rostron's useful Law Review Submission Guide), SSRN reviewer "TyD" responded:

We have accepted your paper to appear in the "Other Papers" section of your Author Page, which is where opinion, advocacy and satirical papers are displayed as per SSRN policy. It will not be searchable by the SSRN eLibrary search engine but will be searchable by public search engines, and you may share the URL.

I asked SSRN for reconsideration, and got this from SSRN reviewer "Katie M":

We have recently reviewed your submission to SSRN. Our classifiers have determined that this submission is very useful information, however would still be considered non-scholarly. Because of our acceptance of your previous paper 1019029 [the Levit/Rostron paper, which isn't "my" paper -- BC], we have made the decision to allow the public viewing of this paper. In the future, similar submissions will be processed to appear in the "Other Papers" section of your Author Page, which is where submissions that are not full scholarly research papers (including submissions such as data tables, summary book reviews, opinion, advocacy and satirical papers) are displayed as per SSRN policy.

I don't even bother thinking that Information for Submitting to Specialty Law Reviews and Journals in Gender, Women & Sexuality will be a searchable public paper. 

So what exactly are SSRN's rules for what is "publicly available" and what is not? What I could find appears below the fold.

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

Building on the success of the Inaugural Equality Law Scholars’ Forum held at UC Berkeley Law in 2017 and at UC Davis Law in 2018, and in the spirit of academic engagement and mentoring in the area of Equality Law, we (Tristin Green, University of San Francisco; Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Boston University; and Leticia Saucedo, UC Davis) announce the Third Annual Equality Law Scholars’ Forum to be held in Spring 2020.  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, 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 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 March 13-14, 2020 at the University of San Francisco School of Law.

Junior scholars are invited to submit abstracts of proposed papers, 3-5 pages in length, by August 1, 2019.

Full drafts of papers must be available for circulation to participants by February 28, 2020.

Proposals should be submitted to:

Leticia Saucedo, UC Davis School of Law, lmsaucedo@ucdavis.edu.  Electronic submissions via email are preferred.

Dean Curtis Bridgeman Stepping Down at Willamette Law

Dean Curtis Bridgeman of the Willamette University School of Law has announced he will step down in the summer of 2020.  He has served as dean since 2013.  

Guide to Submitting to Specialty Law Reviews and Journals in Gender, Women & Sexuality

I've prepared a guide to submitting to 29 specialty law reviews and law journals classified by the W&L Law Journal Rankings under the subject  "Gender, Women and Sexuality," as well as  5 additional journals with the word "gender" in the title.  The guide is here on SSRN.  The chart contains details on the mechanics of submitting to these 34 journals.

For now, the document contains information about word count limitations, submission details, whether the HeinOnline Law Journal Library indexes the journal's articles, and other guidelines authors may find relevant when considering sending their work to specialty law reviews in Gender, Women & Sexuality.

Details vary widely from journal to journal. Not all journals accept unsolicited contributions (or are still in existence!).

Corrections, additions, refinements to this chart are very welcome. (SSRN will not make the chart available as a publicly-searchable paper, but it is included in my "privately available" papers accessible from my public SSRN page here. Go figure.)

I've prepared a guide to submitting to 29 specialty law reviews and law journals classified by the W&L Law Journal Rankings under the subject  "Gender, Women and Sexuality," as well as  5 additional journals with the word "gender" in the title.  The guide is here on SSRN.  The chart contains details on the mechanics of submitting to these 34 journals.

For now, the document contains information about word count limitations, submission details, whether the HeinOnline Law Journal Library indexes the journal's articles, and other guidelines authors may find relevant when considering sending their work to specialty law reviews in Gender, Women & Sexuality.

Details vary widely from journal to journal. Not all journals accept unsolicited contributions (or are still in existence!).

Corrections, additions, refinements to this chart are very welcome. (SSRN will not make the chart available as a publicly-searchable paper, but it is included in my "privately available" papers accessible from my public SSRN page here. Go figure.)

Disagreeing with Bryan Garner, Again

Bryan Garner's daily usage tips are invaluable, although I do not always agree with him (see here, here, and here). Today's entry, for example, is "operationalize," which Garner really dislikes:

*operationalize. dating from the 1950s, smacks of pure JARGON. Some businesspeople talk about *operationalizing objectives when all they mean is working toward goals or translating objectives into operating procedures. Others use it in equally fuzzy ways, often as a fancy substitute for use—e.g.:

• “Indeed, the merit of this contribution is arguably in illustrating how the previous approach can be more fully operationalized [read used] and empirical results readily interpreted.” Ben Fine & John Simister, “Consumption Durables: Exploring the Order of Acquisition,” 27 Applied Economics 1049 (1995).
• “Though not often operationalized [read used?] in this way, FLC is basically a process theory.” Louis G. Pol & Sukgoo Pak, “Consumer Unit Types and Expenditures on Food Away from Home,” J. Consumer Affairs, 22 Dec. 1995, at 403.
• “Clinton commended Gore for educating the public about global warming, which earned Gore a Nobel Peace Prize. ‘The sale’s been made,’ he said of Gore’s work. ‘But now what we have to do is figure out how to operationalize [read implement] this.’ ” Anna-Louise Jackson, “Clinton Promotes Going Green,” Chicago Defender, 9 Nov. 2007, at 6.

Jargon, in the sense of new or specialized words, sometimes has a purpose. Thus, if all that is meant is "translating objectives into operating procedures," why not use one word instead of five? Garner is usually an advocate of economy (channeling Orwell's "Politics and the English Language"), so I do not understand why he would ever opt for an explanatory phrase instead of a single, well-understood word.

Moreover, "operationalize" has a meaning distinct from "use" or implement," in that it denotes first putting a new plan into action, whereas "use" or "implement" can be continuing or ongoing.

Disagreements aside, I greatly admire Garner's work and strongly recommend his books and usage tips.

Andy Klein Stepping Down as Dean of Indiana-Indy Law

Dean Andrew Klein has announced that he is stepping down as dean of Indiana-Indianapolis' law school.  Klein will have served for seven years when he completes his term at the end of the 2020 academic year.  

The Shirelles (Including a Doris Day Cover)

The Shirelles met as high school students in Passaic, New Jersey, where their group was formed to enter a talent contest in 1957. They were signed to a recording contract by the legendary Florence Greenberg, who was one of the few women in music management and production. The Shirelles are often credited as the first of the crossover "girl groups," predating the Motown sound. Their biggest hit was Goffin & King's "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?" (which they released before Carole King went solo).

Doris Day passed away several days ago at the age of 97. I didn't really want to do a full Doris Day post, so there is a Shirelle's cover of one of her songs at the bottom of this post -- definitely not to be missed -- followed by the the original, which makes for a very interesting comparison.

The ABA 2019 Bar Pass Spreadsheet Part II: Ultimate Bar Pass and the New Standard 316

This is the second part of my series discussing the 2019 ABA Bar Data Consumer Info Spreadsheet (the “Spreadsheet”).  My first article looked at the 2018 first-time bar passage data. This post looks at the 2016 Ultimate Bar Pass (UBP) Rate within two years of graduation for 2016 graduates, most of whom started law school in 2013.  This post is especially timely given an important change to the ABA accreditation standards that occurred today.

For almost three years, the ABA has been considering changing Standard 316 to require that all law schools have a UBP of 75% within two years of graduation.  The ABA started publishing UBP data last year in part to allow people to evaluate whether such a standard was a meaningful, fair and reasonably achievable standard.   Earlier today, the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar finally adopted this revision, effective immediately. This means that starting in 2020, schools will be required to meet the 75% standard for the graduating class of 2017.

Based on the data in the Spreadsheet, I believe the ABA made the right decision.   The data from last year and this year prove convincingly that this Standard is reasonable and is not too difficult to meet, even in California. 

The overall UBP for all ABA-accredited law schools nationwide was 88.57%, very similar to the UBP for the graduating class of 2015 which had a composite UBP of 88.28%. 

Nebraska Law Dean Tapped as Interim Executive Vice-Chancellor

The University of Nebraska has named the dean of the law school, Richard Moberly, as its interim executive vice-chancellor, the school's chief academic officer.  During his stay in university administration, Professor Anna Shavers will serve as interim dean of the law school.