The Faculty Lounge

CFP: Mid-Atlantic Law and Society Meeting Seeks Paper, Roundtable, and Panel Proposals

This just in, with an extended submission deadline:

Call for Participation
Mid-Atlantic Law & Society Association Conference

The Mid-Atlantic Law & Society Association (MALSA) will host a one-day conference at Ramapo College of New Jersey on Saturday, October 4th. After a hiatus during the COVID-19 pandemic, we look forward to reinitiating the conference, and we hope you will join us in building a regional network of sociolegal scholars.

We seek papers, panels, and roundtables across a range of law and society topics and disciplines. Proposals for individual papers and fully formed sessions are welcome. Proposals should include an abstract of no more than 250 words; panel proposals and roundtables should include a list of participants and a session abstract. The deadline for all proposals is July 11th, 2025.

Accepted papers will utilize a law and society framework, drawing on theoretical and empirical sociolegal scholarship. While presentations on any topic are welcome, we are especially interested in panels that focus on areas of current interest and controversy. At a time when the rule of law is being questioned and analyses centering diversity, equity, and inclusion are under attack, it is imperative that we foster space for conversations about the relationship of law to power, in/justice, and in/equity.

Accepted presenters will be notified by August 15th.

To submit a proposal, please click here.

We hope that this meeting will serve as an opportunity to build MALSA as an institution, including electing officers, and identifying a host institution and coordinating committee for the next conference.

Please direct inquiries (but not proposal submissions!) to: [email protected].

Happy Microsoft Contract Day!

To those who celebrate.

UNC's smart and hilarious John Coyle has a post over at the Transnational Litigation Blog on Microsoft Contract Day 2025, following up on posts from two and one years ago, and concluding that Microsoft's dispute resolution clause is "still a mess." 

The entire post is both informative and laugh-out-loud funny, but the Myanmar portion is particularly entertaining:

Reading the clause for Myanmar is like watching a traffic accident unfold in real time. It appears that Microsoft took an arbitration clause calling for the resolution of all disputes in Singapore [A] and then grafted on the litigation terms set forth in the 2025 version of its standard clause [B]. The graft was, moreover, poorly executed. The drafter accidentally included the header of the patched language in the clause and placed it in the middle of a sentence, as shown in the bolded text below. . . .

It goes without saying that a clause that simultaneously calls for the arbitration of all disputes in one location and the litigation of all disputes in a different location is not a model to emulate. It also goes without saying that memo headings should not appear in contract clauses.

Read the whole thing here. 

Private Equity Eyes College Sports

According to Axios, "Private equity keeps inching closer to college sports, and now has a bit more certainty around its modeling." They're referring, of course, to the multibillion-dollar legal settlement formally approved just recently. Per ESPN:

Judge Claudia Wilken approved the deal between the NCAA, its most powerful conferences and lawyers representing all Division I athletes. The House v. NCAA settlement ends three separate federal antitrust lawsuits, all of which claimed the NCAA was illegally limiting the earning power of college athletes. . . .

The NCAA will pay nearly $2.8 billion in back damages over the next 10 years to athletes who competed in college at any time from 2016 through present day. Moving forward, each school can pay its athletes up to a certain limit. The annual cap is expected to start at roughly $20.5 million per school in 2025-26 and increase every year during the decade-long deal. These new payments are in addition to scholarships and other benefits the athletes already receive.

According to Axios, while not "a game changer" (due to media rights being negotiated at the conference level), the settlement nonetheless provides economic clarity: 

Particularly in better understanding the haves and have-nots, as only a relatively small handful of colleges are likely to spend up to the $20.5 million limit.
Expect a lot of private investment to help finance new facilities and develop luxe fan experiences. Similar to an expanded investment partnership announced yesterday — albeit negotiated prior to the settlement approval — between sports and entertainment agency Elevate, Velocity Capital Management, and the Texas Permanent School Fund.

To hear about predicted changes in the NCAA from sports law and industry expert, Marc Edelman, listen to this wonderful episode recorded last year:

 

 

Revisiting My Body, My Choice

Yesterday's post on the latest episode of The Taboo Trades Podcast, Exploitation Creep: Feminism, Sex, and Reproduction in International Law, reminded me of a prior episode with George Mason's Ilya Somin. In fact, I give a shout out to him at the end of the episode, noting that he has advocated for exactly the type of "my body, my choice" cross-ideological political coalition that the panelists are urging. Listen to Exploitation Creep here, and My Body, My Choice below. 

 

 

Taboo Trades Podcast: Exploitation Creep

Welcome to a very special bonus episode of the Taboo Trades podcast! Today I have a record number of guests – five in total—continuing a discussion that we began at Yale’s Newman Colloquium earlier this summer. We discuss exploitation and trafficking in international human rights law, especially in the context of reproductive and sexual labor. You’ll hear more about that colloquium and that conversation during the podcast. Each guest introduces themselves at the start of the podcast, but you can also read their full bios and a reading list in the show notes.

 

Host: Kim Krawiec, Charles O. Gregory Professor of Law, University of Virginia

Guests:

Janie Chuang, Professor of Law, American University, Washington College of Law

Dina Francesca Haynes, Executive Director, Orville H. Schell, Jr. Center for International Human Rights; Lecturer in Law (spring term), and Research Scholar in Law, Yale University

Joanne Meyerowitz, Arthur Unobskey Professor of History and Professor of American Studies, Yale University

Alice M. Miller, Associate Professor (Adjunct) of Law and Co-Director, Global Health Justice Partnership, Yale University

Mindy Jane Roseman, Director of International Law Programs and Director of the Gruber Program for Global Justice and Women’s Rights, Yale University

Reading List:

Janie A. Chuang

• "Preventing trafficking through new global governance over labor migration."  St. UL Rev.36 (2019): 1027.
• “Exploitation Creep And The Unmaking Of Human Trafficking Law.” The American Journal of International Law, vol. 108, no. 4, 2014, pp. 609–49. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.5305/amerjintelaw.108.4.0609 . Accessed 13 June 2025.

Dina Haynes

• "Used, abused, arrested and deported: Extending immigration benefits to protect the victims of trafficking and to secure the prosecution of traffickers." Human Rights Quarterly2 (2004): 221-272. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/168121
• "Client-centered human rights advocacy." Clinical L. Rev.13 (2006): 379.
• "Sacrificing women and immigrants on the altar of regressive politics." Human Rights Quarterly4 (2019): 777-822. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/735796

Kimberly D. Krawiec

• Repugnant Work (April 21, 2025). Forthcoming, Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Work (Julian Jonker and Grant Rozeboom, eds.), Available at SSRN:https://ssrn.com/abstract=5225038 
• “Markets, Repugnance, and Externalities.” Journal of Institutional Economics19, no. 6 (2023): 944–55. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744137422000157 .

Joanne Meyerowitz

• How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States (Harvard University Press, 2002) https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674013797
• “Transnational Sex and U.S. History,”American Historical Review 114:5 (December 2009), 1273-1286
• “A History of ‘Gender,’” American Historical Review113:5 (December, 2008), 1346-1356

Alice Miller

• Miller, Alice M., and Tara Zivkovic. "Orwellian rights and the UN Trafficking" Routledge Handbook of Human Trafficking. Routledge, 2017. 328-341.
• Miller, Alice M., and Mindy J. Roseman. "Sexual and reproductive rights at the United Nations: frustration or fulfilment?." Reproductive health matters38 (2011): 102-118.

 

Mindy Jane Roseman

• Miller, Alice M., and Mindy Jane Roseman, eds.Beyond virtue and vice: rethinking human rights and criminal law. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019.
• Reichenbach, Laura, and Mindy Jane Roseman, eds. Reproductive health and human rights: the way forward. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011.

Other Authors

EU Directive (2024 Amendment) on Combating Trafficking in Human Beings

 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2024/1712/oj/eng

Elena Shih, Manufacturing Freedom: Trafficking Rescue, Rehabilitation, and the Slave-Free Good (University of California Press, 2023)

David Simon Named 2025 Health Law Scholar

Professor David Simon has been selected as a 2025 Health Law Scholar by the Center for Health Law Studies at Saint Louis University School of Law and the American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics (ASLME). He is one of only four scholars nationwide chosen to present their work at the prestigious Health Law Scholars Workshop, to be held in September. Read the full announcement here. Congrats to David!

 

nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com?url=https%3A...

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— David A. Simon (@davidasimon.bsky.social) June 10, 2025 at 10:25 AM

Love and Marriage

Songs idealizing marriage -- if sometimes only fleetingly or implicitly -- used to be pretty common in popular music, even in '60s rock. I am insufficiently up-to-date to know whether that's still the case, but here are some old examples, with a bonus or two at the bottom of the post. (Happy anniversary, Linda, a few days early.)

"Wedding bells are going to chime":

Another Paper on AI and Law School Performance

I previously blogged about AI and law school performance in AI Gets Its First Law School A+. Here is another paper recently posted on LLMs and law school exam performance, this one from a team at ETH Zürich: LEXam: Benchmarking Legal Reasoning on 340 Law Exams https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5265144.

From the abstract:

Long-form legal reasoning remains a key challenge for large language models (LLMs) in spite of recent advances in test-time scaling. We introduce LEXam, a novel benchmark derived from 340 law exams spanning 116 law school courses across a range of subjects and degree levels. The dataset comprises 4,886 law exam questions in English and German, including 2,841 long-form, open-ended questions and 2,045 multiple-choice questions. Besides reference answers, the open questions are also accompanied by explicit guidance outlining the expected legal reasoning approach such as issue spotting, rule recall, or rule application. Our evaluation on both open-ended and multiple-choice questions present significant challenges for current LLMs; in particular, they notably struggle with open questions that require structured, multi-step legal reasoning. Moreover, our results underscore the effectiveness of the dataset in differentiating between models with varying capabilities. Adopting an LLM-as-a-Judge paradigm with rigorous human expert validation, we demonstrate how model-generated reasoning steps can be evaluated consistently and accurately. Our evaluation setup provides a scalable method to assess legal reasoning quality beyond simple accuracy metrics. Project page: https://lexam-benchmark.github.io/

Read the whole thing here.

Hiring Announcement: University of Oklahoma College of Law

From a recent email message:

The College of Law at the University of Oklahoma (OU Law) welcomes applications and nominations for an outstanding faculty member in the area of constitutional law for the Puterbaugh Foundation Chair, to begin in the Fall Semester of 2026.

OU Law has a renowned reputation for scholarly excellence in constitutional law, which it aims to strengthen through the holder of this endowed position. OU Law is committed to attracting and retaining exceptional faculty with summer research grants, publication placement bonuses, and course reductions based on scholarly productivity. The Puterbaugh Foundation Chair comes with a competitive salary along with significant support for research and travel.

OU Law is a high-quality, affordable, and forward-looking institution. It boasts world-class facilities, a commitment to technological innovation, and a varied student body. OU Law sits on the university’s main campus in Norman, a college town alive with entertainment, arts, food, and sports. A perennial “best place to live,” Norman has excellent public schools and low cost-of-living. Neighboring Oklahoma City features a dynamic economy, outstanding cultural venues, and a major airport. For additional information regarding the university, Norman, and Oklahoma City, visit: https://www.ou.edu/facultyrecruitment https://www.visitnorman.com/ https://www.visitokc.com/

 

Normalize Answering “For Money”

And do it for the repugnant jobs too.

 

Normalize answering "Why do you want this job?" with "Because I don’t currently have a job."

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— John Holbein (@johnholbein1.bsky.social) June 6, 2025 at 9:41 AM

Hiring Announcement: University of North Dakota School of Law (Dean Search)

The University of North Dakota is seeking candidates for the position of Dean of the School of Law. Located on an active 516-acre campus in Grand Forks, ND, a vibrant college town of 60,000 residents, UND has a student enrollment of over 15,000 and offers more than 225 fields of study across nine colleges. UND is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission (HLC) and has achieved the Carnegie classification of Very High Research Activity (R1) with over $182 million in research expenditures.

Reporting directly to the Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs, the Dean is the leader of the state’s only law school. The Dean will provide leadership and facilitate an environment for accomplishing strategic goals, as well as aligning the functioning of the School of Law with UND’s broader academic integrity and strategic planning: UND LEADS. The dean is responsible, in cooperation with the Provost, for the academic and administrative planning; budgeting; administration and implementation of school and university policies; and fundraising and external relations. The Dean, in partnership with the faculty, is responsible for academic program development and review; faculty and staff recruitment; development and evaluation of faculty; and student relations.

UND seeks an exceptional, focused, and creative leader who will build upon the School of Law’s strengths to continue its growth and expansion, provide world-class educational experiences, recruit and develop outstanding faculty, and promote faculty-driven scholarly and creative endeavors within the School. The next Dean will be a committed team player who is devoted to excellence and shared governance. The selected individual will be a consultative decision-maker and will work collaboratively with faculty, staff, students, administrators, and community and industry partners. The Dean will have unquestioned integrity and exemplary interpersonal and communication skills.

The next Dean of the UND School of Law will be joining the University during a dynamic period. Under the leadership of President Andrew Armacost (who joined UND in 2020) and Provost Eric Carl Link (who joined UND in 2021), the campus is experiencing enrollment growth and major campus improvements with several buildings currently under construction and/or renovation. Significant investments in terms of research development in critical areas are propelling the University forward as the flagship research institution in the state of North Dakota. Meanwhile, the University’s ongoing commitment to student success at both the undergraduate and graduate levels continues to elevate the tradition of educational excellence at the institution.

The incoming Dean of the School of Law will have the opportunity to build on the long-standing tradition of excellence within the School; to work alongside both internal and external partners and stakeholders to increase and enhance the mission of the School; and to lead the School through a period of enrollment growth, program expansion, and increasing visibility across the state of North Dakota. Enhancing access and opportunity for students and faculty through alumni and donor relations will be essential in the coming years as the University engages in robust capital campaigning and relationship building, as will bringing key programmatic opportunities to the students of the School that will position them — and the School — for ongoing service to the state and the region.

The successful candidate must possess a Juris Doctor (J.D.) or other terminal degree in law and at least ten years of accomplishments in progressive and increasingly complex leadership roles in higher education, the practice of law, or a related field. They must also be licensed to practice law in any jurisdiction in the United States.

Click here for additional information.

Hiring Announcement: University of San Francisco School of Law

From a recent email message:

The University of San Francisco School of Law is in the heart of one of the world’s most dynamic and progressive cities, which gives our community a global perspective and access to a vibrant legal community, premier arts and culture, as well as centers of innovation in tech, finance, environmental justice, and more. The campus is located in a beautiful neighborhood just north of Golden Gate Park and halfway between Ocean Beach and the Financial District.

The University of San Francisco School of Law is steeped in the hallmarks of a Jesuit education with an unwavering commitment to social justice and a focus on training skilled, ethical, and community-engaged lawyers. The Law School has a proud 110-year history of preparing its diverse graduates to be excellent and ethical attorneys who serve their clients and communities with integrity.

The Law School is seeking entry-level tenure track and lateral tenured applicants for three positions on our full-time faculty to begin in the fall of 2026. USF Law welcomes outstanding candidates in all areas but is especially interested in the fields of criminal, property, and civil procedure law, with secondary interests in environmental, employment, and international law. Practice experience is especially valued for candidates seeking to teach civil procedure, criminal, and employment law. Applicants should demonstrate a record of professional excellence, including: scholarly achievement or the potential for scholarly excellence; strong classroom teaching skills; and a commitment to serving the Law School and the community. Experience teaching diverse student populations is a plus.

Applicants should include a cover letter, C/V, research agenda, statement of teaching philosophy, and, if applicable, their most recent teaching evaluations (up to three years). Contact: USF School of Law, Office of Faculty Services [email protected].

Doctors Were Preparing To Remove Their Organs. Then They Woke Up.

This disheartening story comes from The New York Times, via Al Roth’s Market Design Blog. As Roth notes on BlueSky: “Organ donation from deceased donors relies on the assurance that the donor's death was in no way hastened by the subsequent donation. Today's NYT has a report suggesting that careful guidelines were sometimes almost breached.”

From the article:

Four years ago, an unconscious Kentucky man began to awaken as he was about to be removed from life support so his organs could be donated. Even though the man cried, pulled his legs to his chest and shook his head, officials still tried to move forward.

Now, a federal investigation has found that officials at the nonprofit in charge of coordinating organ donations in Kentucky ignored signs of growing alertness not only in that patient but also in dozens of other potential donors. . . .

Although the surgeries didn’t happen, the investigation said multiple patients showed signs of pain or distress while being readied for the procedure. (emphasis mine)

And also:

But the investigation found that the organization’s employees repeatedly pressured families to authorize donation, improperly took over cases from doctors and tried to push hospital staff to remove life support and allow for surgery even if there were indications of growing awareness in patients.

To emphasize (again), none of these organ retrievals went forward. The report is obviously disturbing, nevertheless.

 

Organ donation from deceased donors relies on the assurance that the donor's death was in no way hastened by the subsequent donation. Today's NYT has a report suggesting that careful guidelines were sometimes almost breached. #medicine #transplants #death

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— Al Roth (@alroth.bsky.social) June 6, 2025 at 10:45 AM

Is It Okay For AI To Write Science Papers?

Nature recently polled 5000 researchers on when “it’s acceptable to involve AI and what needs to be disclosed.” From the article:

With generative AI tools such as ChatGPT improving so rapidly, attitudes about using them to write research papers are also evolving. The number of papers with signs of AI use is rising rapidly (D. Kobak et al. Preprint at arXiv https://doi.org/pkhp; 2024), raising questions around plagiarism and other ethical concerns. 

To capture a sense of researchers’ thinking on this topic, Nature posed a variety of scenarios to some 5,000 academics around the world, to understand which uses of AI are considered ethically acceptable.

The survey results suggest that researchers are sharply divided on what they feel are appropriate practices. Whereas academics generally feel it’s acceptable to use AI chatbots to help to prepare manuscripts, relatively few report actually using AI for this purpose — and those who did often say they didn’t disclose it.

Despite the statement that “researchers are sharply divided,” I actually thought the results showed quite a bit of agreement on the acceptability, or not, of certain uses. But you should read it and decide for yourself.

Related Posts:

"Where Others Flinch, I Footnote"

Using AI to Write Letters of Recommendation

AI Gets Its First Law School A+s

Pat Oglesby Appointed to Marijuana Legalization Commission

The governor of NC, Josh Stein, has come out in favor of marijuana legalization and formed a commission, on which my co-teacher, Pat Oglesby, has been tapped to serve, to study the issue and make recommendations.

This is an outstanding choice! Pat knows more about marijuana legalization, taxation, licensing, and related issues than anyone I know. We co-taught a course, Cannabis Legalization, at UVA Law that was a huge success, due to Pat’s knowledge and connections to industry experts, regulators, and researchers (and to our excellent students, of course).

The official press release is here, which includes the full list of commission appointees.