The Faculty Lounge

Crowdfunding for ME/CFS Advocacy

David Tuller -- whose investigative reporting has been essential in the world of ME/CFS advocacy -- is again crowdfunding to continue his position at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Public Health. I encourage everyone who cares about ME/CFS to contribute to David's project, which can be done at the University of California's own crowdfunding site.

Here is how David describes it:

So it’s been a year since the last crowdfunding campaign for Trial By Error--my investigative reporting and public health project. While Trial By Error began 3+ years ago as an in-depth look at the PACE trial, it has expanded to include other research from the GET/CBT ideological brigades and some of the controversies around the illness or cluster of illnesses known variously as ME, CFS, ME/CFS, and CFS/ME.

In the last three years, I have seen patients’ suffering and their courage. I am in awe of their analytical skills and scientific smarts. This project has been and continues to be such a moving and rewarding experience for me. I had no idea it would last this long, but my work seems to be helping to push events forward. That’s why I am seeking another round of support through Berkeley’s crowdfunding platform. The funds I raise through April 30th will go toward covering my position for the fiscal year from July 1, 2019 to June 30, 2020.

As many know, I initially worked on this project for more than two years on my own, without funding from anyone. But after a grant supporting my half-time position at Berkeley ended two years ago, I decided to crowdfund so I could continue working on Trial By Error. The money goes directly to the university, not to me. Pursuing this project is now my primary responsibility as a senior fellow in public health and journalism at Berkeley’s Center for Global Public Health.

David Tuller's campaign closes on April 30. Again, here is the site. (Note: David is my friend and occasional coauthor.)

Elvis on Guitar

Elvis Presley often used his guitar as a prop, before abandoning it completely in the Las Vegas stage of his career, but it turns out that he could really play the instrument. Nobody would call him a virtuoso, but he could do more than just bang on it and break strings.

From his "Comeback Special" in 1968:

CFP: Arab Law Quarterly Symposium Issue on Islamic Finance Industry

Islamic finance has emerged in the post-colonial period as part of the ethos for comprehensive reformation of the Muslim world. While the aspiration and need for broader transformation remain, the field of Islamic finance so far has been able to capture the interest of a sizable segment of the Muslim world and beyond.

The Arab Law Quarterly, the leading English language journal on law and legal studies of the Arab world, will devote its upcoming Symposium Issue to the subject of Islamic finance and the contemporary challenges it faces.  This Symposium Issue solicits conceptual, theoretical, and empirical papers to address the issues related to the challenges and new frontiers facing the Islamic finance industry. Preference will be given to papers with an explicit focus on the Arab/MENA region.  Papers need not be exclusively legal—the journal has long been interdisciplinary in its focus, and welcomes contributions from sociological, political science, economics, and anthropological perspectives as well. 

Further information can be found at the link here.

 

 

CFP: Thirteenth Amendment and Racial Justice Conference

Chicago-Kent College of Law at Illinois Institute of Technology is hosting the Thirteenth Amendment and Racial Justice Conference on November 9–10, 2019. The conference focuses on the ways that the Thirteenth Amendment can be used in legislation and litigation, or in the context of social movements, to promote racial justice in the United States. 

The conference organizing committee invites Thirteenth Amendment scholars from all disciplines—including law, politics, and history, as well as practitioners and activists in the field of racial justice—to submit papers that interrogate the relationship of race and other markers of identity such as class, gender, sexual orientation, disability, religion, and immigration status; to forms of subordination both past and present; and strategies for challenging them. The committee is interested in international perspectives and invite scholars from beyond the United States to participate.

This conference will be the third event of the Thirteenth Amendment Project, an interdisciplinary association of scholars of labor, class, race, caste, and poverty at law schools and universities throughout the United States and the wider world. For more information about the Thirteenth Amendment Project, please visit its website at scholars.law.unlv.edu/amend13/.

The committee is seeking publication opportunities in a variety of outlets for papers presented at the conference. It extends a special invitation to scholars new to the field (including junior faculty and senior scholars) to submit proposals for works in progress. Senior scholars who have written extensively in this field will provide feedback and detailed commentary for planned publication.

To submit a paper for consideration, please email an abstract of no more than 300 words by May 15, 2019, to 13thamendproj@gmail.com. The conference organizing committee will notify applicants of its decisions by June 30, 2019. A preliminary program will be posted by September 15, 2019. 

Editorial note: This conference is time to fit with the annual Constitutional Law Colloquium at Loyola Chicago Law School. The colloquium at Loyola Chicago ends on Saturday at lunchtime; this conference begins at Chicago-Kent on Saturday afternoon.

One If By Land

Listen, my children, and you shall hear

Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,

On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;

Hardly a man is now alive

Who remembers that famous day and year.

For full text, see here. For details, both poetic and historical, see here.

Memphis Law Seeks Legal Writing, Conflicts and Remedies Visitors

The University of Memphis law school seeks visiting faculty to teach Legal Writing as well and Conflicts and Remedies next year.  

The two postings follow:

Visiting Professor – Legal Methods
The University of Memphis Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law seeks applications for a visiting professor to teach in the Legal Methods program for the 2019-2020 academic year. Legal Methods is a rigorous, required first-year legal research, writing, and analysis course. The visiting professor will teach Legal Methods I (fall, three credits) and Legal Methods II (spring, two credits) with approximately thirty-six students each semester. The visiting professor will work closely with our Legal Methods Faculty, including the Director of Legal Methods.

In Defense of Striking Musicians

My friend (and occasional TFL commenter) Jeff Rice has written an excellent piece on the Chicago Symphony Orchestra musicians strike, now in its sixth week.  Here is the gist:

On one level this strike is over economic issues: wages, retirement, etc. On a second level, it is about being competitive with other U.S. orchestras in at the pinnacle of greatness. These are real issues, not trivial. The CSO has been able to hire away from great orchestras because it is both great and offers a competitive wage and benefit package. Ask yourself what would happen if Sidley Austin or Baker McKenzie stopped making competitive offers to star lawyers. 

But something else is at issue: the very value of the 100 or so musicians who sit on the stage and do something very few people in the world can actually do at their level. The story is oft told: lessons and practicing from age 5 or so, forgoing sports (especially if a string player) for fear of breaking bones, youth orchestras that require hours of practicing on top of weekend and weeknight rehearsals. To be clear, senior executives of our banks and industry and law firms did not put in this kind of time in high school practicing their skills of management, arbitrage, investment or advocacy. By age 18 many of our musicians were already well on their way to their current skill levels.

You can read the entire essay in Crain's Chicago Business.

 

Anita Krug Named Dean of Chicago-Kent Law

The Illinois Institute of Technology Chicago-Kent School of Law has announced that Professor Anita Krug will be its new dean.  Krug, the D. Wayne and Anne Gittinger Professor of Law at the University of Washington School of Law, has previously served as interim dean at Washington.   She joined the Washington faculty in 2010, having previously been a partner at Howard, Rice in San Francisco.  She holds a JD and a Ph.D (Political Science) from Harvard.

Idaho Law-Boise Seeks Visitor to Teach Civil Procedure

The University of Idaho College of Law’s Boise campus is seeking a visitor for the 2019-20 academic year to teach two semesters of Civil Procedure and other courses in consultation with the visitor. The application link is here.

Some Observations on the Extradition of Julian Assange

On April 11, the Ecuadorian government withdrew its grant of asylum to Julian Assange, who had spent almost seven years living in Ecuador's London embassy. Assange is now in British custody on the relatively minor charge of bail jumping, awaiting potential extradition to the U.S., or possibly Sweden. Extradition, however, is far from a foregone conclusion. The Swedish charges were dropped some years ago, and it is not obvious that they will be reinstated. And extradition to the U.S. will be complicated and questionable under the relevant treaty. Here are some of the considerations, in ascending order of difficulty.

THE RULE OF SPECIALTY: As do most extradition treaties, Article 18 of the U.S./U.K. treaty provides that an individual may only be tried in the requesting country for the "offense for which extradition was granted, or a differently denominated offense based on the same facts." As far as is known, the only pending U.S. charge  against Assange is for conspiracy to hack into government computers, which led to the disclosure of documents stolen by Chelsea Manning. If Assange is successfully extradited under this indictment, he could not afterward be tried for other crimes such as the theft of emails from the Democratic National Committee, or the far more serious crime of espionage -- which would require proof of more than simply helping Manning break an encrypted passcode. This creates a dilemma for the Department of Justice, apparently in the face of a June deadline.  If the Department is not ready to unveil the extent of its evidence against Assange (if any), will it be willing to try him only for the relatively lesser offense of unlawful computer intrusion?

SCOTUS Takes on State Income Taxation of Trusts

Tomorrow the Supreme Court hears oral arguments in the case of North Carolina Dep't of Revenue v. Kaestner Family Trust (No. 18-457).  The question presented is whether the Due Process Clause prohibits states from taxing trusts based on trust beneficiaries' in-state residency. Michelle Simon (Pace) and I think the answer is yes, the Due Process Clause does prohibit taxation, where the state's only connection to the trust is the residence of a discretionary trust beneficiary (i.e., someone who is eligible but not entitled to receive distributions of trust income and/or principal), and where the discretionary trust beneficiary has not in fact received any distributions from the trust.

We have a short essay in the UCLA Law Review Discourse that explains the background to the Kaestner Family Trust case and argues why taxation is unconstitutional in this case.  Here is the abstract to our essay, The Supreme Court, Due Process and the State Income Taxation of Trusts:

What are the constitutional limits on a state’s power to tax a trust with no connection to the state, other than the accident that a potential beneficiary lives there? The Supreme Court of the United States will take up this question this term in the context of North Carolina Department of Revenue v. Kimberley Rice Kaestner 1992 Family Trust. The case involves North Carolina’s income taxation of a trust with a contingent beneficiary, meaning someone who is eligible, but not certain, to receive a distribution or benefit from the trust, who resides in that state. Part I of this Article explains the background of Kaestner Trust and frames the constitutional questions that will be before the Court at oral arguments on April 16, 2019. Part II examines how and why due process applies in the state income taxation context, with a particular emphasis on how familiar concepts of general and specific jurisdiction apply uneasily to donative trusts. Part III articulates the reasons that the Court should hold that a state has no constitutional authority to impose a tax on trust income where the trust’s only connection with the forum state is the residence of a contingent beneficiary. Kaestner Trust is the most important due process case involving trusts that the Court has decided in over sixty years; it bears directly on the fundamental meaning of due process.

The full essay is here.

Image : Arthur Rothstein, The Supreme Court Building, Washington, D.C., 1936, Farm Security Administration and Picture Collection, NYPL Digital Collections (here)

Preet Bharara on Interrogation

Quote of the Day:

In the real world, however, where truth matters and testosterone doesn't flow like a river in the streets, long experience teaches that patience and humanity outperform threats and brute force every time.

Bharara, Doing Justice: A Prosecutor's Thoughts on Crime, Punishment, and the Rule of Law (p. 73)

Bring It on Home to Me [UPDATED with Carla Thomas's answer to Sam Cooke]

Written by Sam Cooke, "Bring It on Home to Me" was released as the B side (to "We're Having a Party") in 1962. It has since been covered dozens of times. I cannot find a video of Sam Cooke, but his original recording is at the bottom of this post, followed by a very different arrangement performed live at the Harlem Square Club in 1963. 

Lou Rawls

 

Hiring Announcement: Southern Illinois University (Visitor)

From an email message that I received earlier today:

SIU School of Law seeks to fill one full-time Visiting Assistant/Associate/Full Professor faculty position to begin in the 2019-20 academic year. The successful candidate will teach courses in the contracts/business/commercial law field and possibly transactional skills courses, as well as other courses depending on the needs of the School of Law and on the successful candidate's area of expertise. This is a non-tenure track appointment for one 9-month term.  Full details and application procedure can be found at https://affact.siu.edu/jobs/law126.html.  

Creighton University Seeks Assistant Vice Provost of University Libraries and Information Services

CREIGHTON UNIVERSITY in Omaha, Nebraska is seeking applications from qualified candidates for the position of Assistant Vice Provost (AVP) of University Libraries and Information Services.  Learn more about the opportunity here:   http://k.rfer.us/CREIGHTON3vEe9

Kim Kardashian and the Bar Exam (with a note about SCOTUS Justice Benjamin Robbins Curtis)

According to Above the Law, Kim Kardashian West is currently an apprentice in a San Francisco law firm, with the intention of taking the California bar in 2022. California is one of the few states in which "reading law" remains an alternative to law school, although the requirements are fairly strict. Aspiring applicants have to work for four years with a law firm mentor, putting in a minimum of 18 hours per week, and must also pass the "baby bar" after the first year in order to be allowed to continue.

Kardashian evidently expects no difficulty passing the exam. In an interview with Vogue, she had this to say about the first year curriculum:

“First year of law school,” Kim says, “you have to cover three subjects: criminal law, torts, and contracts. To me, torts is the most confusing, contracts the most boring, and crim law I can do in my sleep. Took my first test, I got a 100. Super easy for me. The reading is what really gets me. It’s so time-consuming. The concepts I grasp in two seconds.”

Writing in Slate, Mark Joseph Stern provides more details about reading law, which is still allowed in Vermont, Virginia, and Washington, as well as California. There are drawbacks, of course. For starters, as Stern explains, apprentices achieve only a 28% pass rate on the bar exam, as opposed to 73% of law school graduates. (It is not clear where the graduates of unaccredited law schools are counted for these statistics, given that they must also take the baby bar in California. If they are included with the readers, then the 28% figure is too high for actual apprentices; if they are included among the graduates, then the 73% figures is really too low.)

The biggest drawback for apprentices, however, is the non-portability of their education, which will be invalid for bar exam purposes in other states. As Stern put it, "if you 'read law' in California, you’d better intend to practice in California exclusively." Seems like that won't be a problem for Kardashian.

Although there were American law faculties beginning in colonial times, it was common for early American lawyers to go the law office route, and it remained so throughout the nineteenth century. Abraham Lincoln read law, as did Daniel Webster, Stephen Douglas, Henry Clay, Salmon P. Chase, and Myra Bradwell. So did Clarence Darrow, although he did attend one year of law school at the University of Michigan. The first SCOTUS justice with a law degree was Benjamin Robbins Curtis, who was appointed by Millard Fillmore in 1851 and was the only Whig ever to serve on the Court. The last justice without a law degree was Robert Jackson, who had also been solicitor general and attorney general, and was later chief prosecutor at Nuremberg, appointed by FDR in 1941.

Stern does get one thing wrong. He disparages Justice Curtis as "not one of [the Court's] leading lights." It is true that Curtis had supported the Fugitive Slave Act as a Boston lawyer, which in part prompted Daniel Webster to urge his nomination by Fillmore, but that stain should not diminish his greatest contribution to Supreme Court history. Curtis was one of only two dissenters in the Dred Scott case, and he soon afterward resigned in protest of Chief Justice Taney's pro-slavery leadership. It is often said that Curtis was the only SCOTUS justice to resign over principle, but that is not quite right. Justice John Archibald Campbell resigned to join the Confederacy -- a treasonous principle, but a principle nonetheless.

In any case, Curtis's admirable stand on African-American citizenship is sufficient by itself to qualify him as one of the court's leading lights. Post-resignation, he was chief counsel for the defense in the impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson, in which he succeeded in persuading seven Republican senators to vote for acquittal, thus saving Johnson's presidency by a single vote. That may or may not have qualified as a "profile in courage," depending on your point of view, but it established Curtis as one of the most capable lawyers of his era.

UPDATE: I emailed Stern with a note about Curtis's dissent, and he tweeted a retraction here.

Hiring Announcement: University of Memphis (Visiting Professor)

From an email message that I received earlier today:

The University of Memphis Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law invites applications for a visiting professor to teach Conflicts of Law, Remedies, and two yet-to-be-determined courses. 

Memphis Law has a strong interest in hiring a visiting professor who will contribute to creating a broadly diverse campus community.  Applicants should have an outstanding academic record, excellent communications skills, and both a desire and an ability to work collegially in a collaborative environment.  Applicants must have a J.D. Teaching experience is desired, but is not required.

The base salary will be $84,000 for a nine-month visiting appointment. Tennessee does not have an income tax, and, in several different surveys, Memphis consistently ranks in the top ten for having one of the lowest costs of living in the United States.

Applicants should send the following materials to Professor Kevin H. Smith, at ksmith@memphis.edu:  a letter of interest, a resume or CV, and a list of three references.  (Please include “Visiting Professor Application” in the subject line of the e-mail.) In addition, applicants must submit materials through the University’s hiring portal at https://workforum.memphis.edu.  Application review will begin immediately and will continue until the position is filled. 

While the University of Memphis does not treat race, color, religion, national origin, gender, age, disability, or sexual orientation as dispositive in hiring decisions, the University of Memphis has a strong institutional commitment to hiring persons who will add to its diversity. The University of Memphis is an EEO/AA employer.