The Faculty Lounge

I Fall to Pieces

"I Fall to Pieces" was written by the team Hank Cochran and Harlan Howard and first offered to Brenda Lee, who turned it down. It was then offered to Patsy Cline in 1961. She initially had misgivings about it as insufficiently country, but her producer prevailed (with the incentive of backup vocals by the Jordanaires), and it became the beginning of her crossover success. There isn't much variation in the covers, which I guess is understandable.

 

Iowa Law Seeks Faculty Fellow

This just in:

The University of Iowa College of Law seeks applicants for the Iowa Law Faculty Fellowship. This program provides research and teaching opportunities, faculty mentoring, and career development for promising legal scholars and teachers aiming to launch new careers in legal academia. The program also aims to further the College of Law’s and the University of Iowa’s longstanding commitment to access, opportunity, and diversity in the legal profession and recruiting and retaining a more intellectually diverse campus community of faculty, staff, and students. (For information on the College’s diversity commitments and activities, see Diversity| College of Law - The University of Iowa (uiowa.edu). For information on the University’s access, opportunity, and diversity commitments and activities, see Division of Access, Opportunity, and Diversity | The University of Iowa (uiowa.edu).

Iowa Law is well known for its strong focus on law teaching, exceptionally comprehensive law library, and collaborative atmosphere. The University of Iowa itself is a major public research university located in Iowa City, a quintessential college town brimming with writers, students, and scholars.   

 

Leonard Peltier

Two things: Leonard Peltier is going to indefinite house arrest (rather than just outright freeing). And I'm surprised that getting "house arrest" on February 18, 2025, rather than January 20. 

Update: Peltier was released on January 23.

George Washington Law School Seeks Defense Industry Initiative Fellow

The George Washington University Law School

Defense Industry Initiative (DII) Fellow Position

2025-2026

Academic Title: Visiting Associate Professor of Law and Defense Industry Initiative (DII) Fellow
Rank: Visiting Associate Professor
Discipline: Law
Contract Type: Visiting, Renewable Appointment
Proposed Start Date: Spring or Summer 2025
Full-Time/Part-Time: Full-Time

Position Description Summary 

The George Washington University Law School is pleased to announce the availability of a graduate fellowship beginning in Spring/Summer 2025 for a twelve-month appointment, with the possibility of renewal for a second year. The Fellow will have the title of Visiting Associate Professor of Law and Defense Industry Initiative (DII) Fellow. The “DII Fellow” will specialize in government procurement ethics and compliance issues at GW Law.

This Fellowship offers many advantages, with opportunities and professional connections available across the university and the nation's capital, including: 

• Joining the faculty of one of the leading government procurement law programs in the world.
• Prime location in the heart of Washington, D.C., within walking or Metro distance of leading governmental agencies, defense contractors, national and international organizations, and embassies.
• Significant networking opportunities with the GW Law’s large and engaged government procurement alumni and DII members.
• Opportunities to attend, participate in, and organize numerous programs and events of interest in the ethics, compliance, and government procurement field, both in the law school and with external partners.
• Opportunities to collaborate on writing projects with GW Law’s world-renowned government procurement faculty and publish scholarship in the leading publications in the field.
• Collaboration opportunities with the leading government, industry, nongovernmental organizations in our field.
• International connections with visiting dignitaries, graduate students, and visiting scholars.

Fellows receive an annual salary of $75,000 and health insurance, and other benefits associated with a full-time position at GW. These benefits include GW’s Tuition Remission Benefit, which may provide an opportunity to complete coursework as a candidate in a GW graduate degree program.

Specific Duties and Responsibilities

The DII Fellow will conduct innovative research in government procurement integrity and compliance issues, develop ethics and compliance programming, and help support DII’s mission of promoting integrity in the defense industry.

The DII Fellow will help deepen the partnership between GW Law and DII by helping to update DII’s compliance toolkits, assisting with organizing webinars and other events, producing white papers and other written materials, and creating new opportunities for students to engage with DII and its members.

The DI Fellow also is encouraged to publish research and deliver presentations to professional conferences or programs, with funding provided through the Law School, as determined by the Associate Dean for Government Procurement Law.

The Fellow is expected to provide academic advising to students and supervise student independent research projects.

Memphis School of Law Seeks Chair of Excellence in Law

This just in:

The University of Memphis Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law is excited to invite nominations and applications for the Herbert Herff Chair of Excellence in Law. Memphis Law seeks academic leaders with a record of distinguished scholarship, demonstrated excellence in teaching, the ambition to lead the scholarly and intellectual life at the law school, and the capacity and drive to enhance the law school’s regional and national reputation. The appointment will be made at the rank of full professor with tenure. As a member of the faculty, the Chair of Excellence is expected to engage in high-level scholarly research and publication, excel in the classroom, and actively participate in faculty governance and service. The Chair of Excellence is expected to actively engage with faculty, both within the Law School and the University and throughout the country; to provide leadership for integrative research activities and significant engagement with academic and professional organizations; to support the scholarly activities of the law faculty; and to provide programmatic leadership, including developing and administering symposia. The chair is expected to engage with students, lawyers, judges, and other academic professionals. Memphis Law offers a competitive salary commensurate with experience and a generous annual stipend to support research and programmatic activities of the Chair of Excellence.

Memphis Law offers an outstanding educational program to prepare students for the practice of law within a Carnegie R1 research university. Our affordable tuition attracts a dedicated, hard- working, and diverse student body. Our downtown home, in a beautifully restored 19^th century

U.S. Customs House overlooking the Mississippi River perennially ranks as the best law school facility in the nation and positions students and faculty to have unparalleled access to the largest legal and business community in the Mid-South region. One of the most affordable cities in America, Memphis is a welcoming, thriving community shaped by its civil rights legacy. Memphis Law has a strong institutional commitment to diversity of its faculty and is interested in receiving expressions of interests form all persons, including those who will add to its diversity. The University of Memphis is an EEO/AA employer.

Interested candidates should apply through the University of Memphis WorkForum link at https://workforum.memphis.edu/postings/42720. To be considered, a candidate must possess a Juris Doctor, have broad recognition for scholarly distinction, and an established teaching and service record. Please be prepared to submit your C.V., cover letter, writing sample, teaching evaluations, and a transcript as part of your application. The cover letter should discuss how the candidate may use the chair to bolster the intellectual life and reputation of the law school. Please direct all inquiries about the positions to: [email protected], David S. Romantz, Cecil C. Humphreys Professor of Law, University of Memphis Law School. Review of applications will begin in the spring and continue until the position is filled.

Union College in Pre-Civil War Phi Beta Kappa Addresses

Phi Beta Kappa Addresses during the pre-Civil War in Union College.

Union College is in Schenectady, New York. A number of them were religious figures and those were conservative.  Yet, Union College was in politicians' addresses -- and  The ex-Governor DeWitt Clinton of New York was addressing at Union College in 1823. Clinton was a key figure in the Erie Canal. And he talked about technology and morality, and said “unlimited in space, and infinite in duration." Optimistic, very optimistic.

Gulian C. Verplanck, a former United States Congresses for New York, wrote about The Advantages and Dangers of the American Scholar before Union College in 1836. Verplanck wrote about the advantages—and dangers–of the American Scholar. William Kent (James Kent was his father), told Union College students in 1841, that there would be “no essential change in the institutions, whose operations come home to the business and bosoms of men, from the ultraism of Democracy on the one hand, or from a reaction on the other of a spirit adverse to republican equality."

Charles Sumner, a lawyer and abolitionist from Boston (and future United States Senator from Massachusetts), spoke at Union College in 1848 on The Law of Human Progress. William H. Seward spoke about The Elements of Empire in America. Seward was a United States Senator, for New York. And, he was a Lincoln's cabinet.

The Jurisprudence of Antebellum Phi Beta Kappa Addresses is available at ssrn.com.

 

Mt. McKinley Mountain

Monuments, monuments, and monuments...

Conference Announcement: Why Now? Women, Equality, and the Legal Academy

Why Now?  Women, Equality, and the Legal Academy

In 2012, the prior chairs of WLE – 22 in number, including Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Herma Hill Kay – wrote individually to generate collaboratively a history of the Section of Women in Legal Education. Reflections of Women in Legal Education: Stories from Four Decades of Section Chairs, 80 UMKC L. Rev. 659 (2012), https://irlaw.umkc.edu/lawreview/vol80/iss3/. Now, more than a decade later, we see a world made by their innovations as well as efforts to limit the deployment of categories of identity in higher education.   The UMKC Law Review has agreed to host another symposium on these issues. 

The volume will focus on a subset of the many substantive issues in 2025 women face, as does higher education that has for decades deepened its understanding of its own roles in affecting equal treatment inside education and in the body politic.  The aim is to reflect on and engage with contemporary challenges to the integrity and legitimacy of institutions of higher education and to their efforts to welcome a rich scholarly and educational involvement with the complex concept and practices of equality, intersectionality, and of mitigation of inequalities.  We hope that commentary can center around themes of bodily integrity and reproductive freedom, economic inequalities, institutional mechanisms to open new avenues of research and opportunities that respond to individual and community needs, gender as a theory and a practice, and the role of higher education in generating and altering understandings of gender.  

The coordinators of the symposium are Laura Rothstein, Professor and Distinguished University Scholar Emerita and former Dean, Louis D. Brandeis School of Law at the University of Louisville; Judith Resnik, Arthur Liman Professor of Law at Yale Law School; and Nancy Levit, Curators’ Distinguished Professor and Edward D. Ellison Professor of Law, University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law.   We are seeking essays of approximately 4,000-5,000 words each.  Please submit a short (about 200 words) prospectus of what you would like to write to Laura, Judith, and Nancy ([email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected] )  by February 17, 2025.  Selected essays will ultimately be due at the end of July, 2025.

 

Laura Rothstein,

Professor and Distinguished University Scholar Emerita and former Dean

Louis D. Brandeis School of Law at the University of Louisville

[email protected]

 

Judith Resnik

Arthur Liman Professor of Law

Yale Law School

[email protected];

 

Nancy Levit

Curators’ Distinguished Professor and Edward D. Ellison Professor of Law
UMKC School of Law

[email protected]

Timothy Todd Named Dean of Liberty University Law

Liberty University School of Law has announced that Timothy Todd is its new dean.  He joined the faculty in 2012 and has been serving as interim dean.  Todd, who holds a JD from Liberty, took over on January 1.

Origin of Manifest Destiny

John O'Sullivan, editor of Democratic Review, coined manifest destiny: "in a spirit of hostile interference against us, for the avowed object of thwarting our policy and hampering our power, limiting our greatness and checking the fulfillment of our  manifest destiny  to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions." (Volume 17, 1845).

I'm thinking about President Trump's inauguration. And I didn't think he was arguing about "manifest destiny." But that's going to be another post. 

Martin Luther King, Jr., Monument

South Carolina International African American Museum

I did not realize that President Biden was touring Charleston, South Carolina during his last day in office.

Biden Addresses Crowd at International African American Museum in Charleston, Post and Courier (January 19, 2025):

An audience of about 300 people patiently waited for Biden to take the stage set up below the IAAM.  The Voices of Liberation, a community choir with members throughout the country, lined the steps up to the museum. Dressed in Gullah Geechee wear, they stood on risers behind a podium, singing songs of praise as people found their seats.  A few notable attendees sat among the crowd, including Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. The White House also invited Jacques Fabre-Jeune, the Bishop of Charleston, to watch Biden’s remarks. The president is Catholic but his support of abortion protections put him at odds with some faith leaders.

Before Elvis

Before he became a movie idol and Las Vegas headliner, Elvis Presley was heavily influenced by African American blues artists, who are the subjects of a great new book: Before Elvis: The African American Musicians Who Made the King, by Preston Lauterbach. Big Mama Thornton is the most well-known, having recorded "Hound Dog" in 1953, three years before Elvis. It was written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, who were teenagers at the time, at the request of Johnny Otis. Here are some tracks (mostly audio) by a few of those classic performers.

 

 

Glamour and United Daughters of Confederacy

Here's that is unusual: the Glamour magazine and an article on the United Daughters Confederacy.  It is here.  I think that UDC is an innocuous institution; the biggest hat-making becomes the leader of the institution or something like that. Former students and clients were sometimes eligible for UDC. Based on these people, I think that is innocuous. (Sons of Confederate Veterans was a different UDC in 1900-1925. SCV even recognized slavery as the subject in the 21st century.)

David Lynch

David Lynch has died. Blue Velvet is a weird movie.

Ave Maria Law Seeks Director of the Law Library

This just in:

Overview:

Ave Maria School of Law is an institution dedicated to training the next generation of lawyers in the Catholic intellectual tradition. The Law School is a small but vibrant community and seeks to hire a Director of the Law Library interested in being a participant in, and contributor to, its mission and community.

To fulfill the mission of the Ave Maria School of Law, the Director of the Library provides leadership and management for all aspects of the Law Library; oversees policy development; planning for research collections, space, and services; sets and monitors the Library’s budget and sets fiscal policy for the Library in coordination with other personnel at the school; and oversees training and supervision of personnel, policy setting, and staff development. The Director is also a tenure-track member of the faculty with responsibilities commensurate with that status.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities:

Administration

• Assesses and provides vision for Library collections and access points.
• Analyzes Library budgets and plans for future resource and access needs.
• Analyzes Law School technology needs, budgets, and resource needs.
• Assists in the preparation and finalization of surveys, questionnaires, and other reports.

CFP: Wharton Financial Regulation Conference

This just in:

We are pleased to announce that the annual Wharton Financial Regulation Conference will take place on Friday, April 25, 2025.

Convening as the Trump administration wraps up its first 100 days, the conference offers a timely opportunity for scholars and policymakers to assess recent developments in financial regulation and peer over the horizon.

We invite submissions from scholars across all disciplines—law, economics, political science, history, business, and beyond—on any topic related to financial regulation, broadly construed.

Submission Guidelines: Please submit a draft paper and CV to Brian Feinstein ([email protected]) by February 10. Selected presenters will be notified by February 24. Presenters will receive an honorarium to defray travel costs.

Nicholas Schroeck Named Dean of Detroit Mercy Law

Dectroit Mercy Law has announced that Nicholas Shroeck will be its next dean.  He joined the faculty in 2018 and has served as interim dean.  He was previously the associate dean for experiential education.  Shroeck, who holds a JD from Wayne State, took over this month.

They Were Her Property: Frequency of Female Ownership

I have a fan of Stephanie Jones-Rogers, They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South.  (I have blogged about three years ago.)  And I want to write some Jones-Rogers. But this concerns Benton Wishart and Trevon D Logan's Her Property Transactions: White Women and the Frequency of Female Ownership in the Antebellum Era (National Bureau Economic Research).

Wishart and Logan are crucial for understanding white women as slave owners in the South. In the antebellum New Orleans market, the women were about 16% sellers and 17% buyers. Pp. 17-18. That is an extraordinary number of white women's slavery transactions, but that is less than 40% of white women's slavery transactions. That is 16% sellers or 17% buyers. Substantial and important.

 

Hiring Announcement: Mercer University School of Law

From a recent email message:

The Mercer University School of Law invites applications for up to two faculty members (one entry-level and one tenured), with appointments beginning in Fall 2025. We welcome applicants from all subject areas, with a particular focus on legal writing, commercial law, contracts, evidence, and remedies.

Founded in 1873, Mercer University School of Law has a long tradition of producing practice-ready lawyers who are committed to service. The school has earned a reputation for providing excellent legal education with an intense focus on student and faculty interaction. With an enrollment of approximately 375 students, Mercer Law School is one of 12 schools and colleges of Mercer University, which is consistently listed among the top institutions of higher education in the nation. The School of Law is nationally recognized for its exceptional programs in legal writing, advocacy (moot court and mock trial), public service, and professionalism and ethics.

The School of Law is located in Macon, Georgia, a city of approximately 156,000 residents. Macon is known for its rich musical heritage (e.g., Otis Redding, Little Richard, the Allman Brothers), vibrant arts community, recreational offerings (e.g., the Ocmulgee Mounds National Historic Park), and affordable cost of living. Located 85 miles from Atlanta, Macon offers the livability of a smaller city with convenient access to big-city amenities.

Mercer University recognizes the power of a diverse community and encourages applications from individuals with varied experiences, perspectives, and backgrounds. Mercer University is an AA/EEO/ADA employer.

Applicants should hold a J.D. degree from an accredited institution, demonstrate a commitment to excellence in teaching, and show potential for excellence in research and scholarship. Interested applicants should complete the brief online application at http://hr.mercer.edu/jobs/ and attach a current CV with the names and contact information of three references. For more information, contact Professor Ishaq Kundawala, Chair, Appointments Committee, Mercer University School of Law, at [email protected].

Michael T. Colatrella Jr. Named Dean of McGeorge School of Law

McGeorge Law has announced that Michael Colatrella will be its next dean.  He joined the faculty in 2009 and served as interim dean in 2019.  Colatrella, who holds a JD from Seton Hall and an LL.M from NYU, will take over on July 1.