The Faculty Lounge

Weidemaier Blogging With Us

It's my great pleasure to welcome my colleague Mark Weidemaier into the faculty lounge.  Mark's going to be sitting with us for a spell.  Mark writes on a bunch of things, including sovereign debt and arbitration.  He usually uses numbers and impressive statistical programs.  Cribbing now from the UNC website, Mark

teaches courses in commercial arbitration, contracts, and complex civil litigation. His research focuses on how litigants, lawyers, and other private actors create (and fill gaps in) disputing systems. For example, current projects explore the impact of standardization on the dispute resolution provisions in sovereign bonds and the process by which arbitrators generate and apply legal norms. Representative publications are available for download on the Social Science Research Network and the Berkeley Electronic Press.

After receiving his J.D. from the University of Minnesota, Weidemaier clerked for the Honorable Dolores K. Sloviter on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. He then practiced law in the complex commercial litigation group at Dechert LLP in Philadelphia and worked at the School of Government at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is a graduate of Carleton College in Northfield, MN.

Just yesterday, Mark pointed out to me that there's a lot known about the images on Confederate currency, so I hope he'll talk some about that--or at least about the iconography of sovereign bonds.  I know he'll have a lot of other cool things to talk about, too.

Signing off as a guest blogger (and reprise of U of Edinburgh's conference)

I've really enjoyed posting this past month (thanks again, Dan et al.!), and as I sign off, I wanted to spend just a bit of time talking about my impressions of the Beyond Text conference (to which I've already referred here and here). 

When I went to the first half of the conference back in December 2008 (the experiential half, where we actually looked at art, made some art ourselves, did some movement/dance work, and generally reminded ourselves that there are more ways of looking at the world than just reading text), I remember feeling a reconnection to "play"--to a part of myself that I hadn't experienced in years.  Our group seemed to get over the embarrassment, early on, of differing abilities and talents in these non-textual areas, and we put aside the traditional "what will people think of me" reticence in order to try new ways of viewing the world. 

The paper presentations that I heard two weeks ago moved me, albeit differently.  There were concrete ideas about ways to enrich the law school experience, not just in the US but in the UK as well.  I found myself being captivated by the ways in which our pedagogy, tweaked only a little bit, might bring home to students the "peopleness" of the law.  That's a frustration I've had recently--that the cases are so far removed from the people in them that students forget that cases are about particular people and their problems.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to seeing how this process evolves.  And, although I can honestly say that haggis is an acquired taste that I have not yet acquired, the ability to brainstorm with colleagues from across the Atlantic has inspired me to do more international conferences.  On to Marmite!

(Posted by Nancy Rapoport)

Illinois Law Deans, Past And Present, Speak Out On Admissions Corruption

The University of Illinois admissions scandal, documented everwhere from Leiter's Law School Reports, to TaxProf, from ATL  to WSJ Law Blog continues to reverberate.  Now the past and present dean are speaking out, each with their own goal.  Former Dean Heid Hurd wrote a letter to the editor to the News-Gazette attempting to clarify what seemed (to me, at least) obviously sarcastic comments. 

Contrary to recent headlines, the College of Law did not seek or receive any jobs from anyone in exchange for the admission of students. It did not enter into a “jobs-for-entry scheme” or engage in quid-pro-quo exchanges of admissions favors for employment favors. Indeed, it takes very little to make clear that the employment challenges of students who are not academically successful could never be overcome by anyone’s promises to furnish the College with job opportunities, as the recently published exchanges should have made clear. While my sarcasm was clearly lost on the tin ears of some reporters, my email exchanges in response to queries about this were on their face facetious.

In reply to a question about what jobs would count to meet the employment needs of students with poor academic predictors but powerful personal connections, I wrote: “Only very high paying jobs in law firms that are absolutely indifferent to whether the five have passed their law school classes or the Bar.” There are, of course, no law firms of this sort. Only students who pass law school classes can receive law degrees; only those with law degrees can take the Bar; and only those who pass the Bar are eligible to practice law. And when asked whether such students might find employment in government positions, I was being equally sarcastic when I replied: “I’m betting the Governorship will be open. One of them can have that job. Other jobs in Government are fine, since kids who don’t pass the Bar and can’t think are close enough for government work.” Inasmuch as I was a public servant at the time that I made these comments and have long been a scholar and teacher of political theory, my dismissive response was designed to convey the view that government, no less than private practice, requires the best and brightest.

I would never have thought that anyone could take these statements as straight-faced and derive from them the claim that the University of Illinois College of Law actually exchanged admissions for “patronage jobs”.  

Meanwhile, attempting to limit the damage of these news reports, current Dean Bruce Smith wrote a letter to alumni and friends stating:

In recent weeks, certain press reports have suggested that the University of Illinois College of Law has been subjected to undue external influence with respect to the admission of students. Such reports understandably capture the public’s attention, but they fail to capture the true character and excellence of the College of Law....Let me be clear: I would not welcome — nor would any dean welcome — undue external influence in the admissions process.

Image: Heidi Hurd.

Villanova Law Dean Mark Sargent Resigns

Yesterday, Villanova Law School Dean Mark Sargent resigned his position.  According to the information we've received, he stated that he stepped down for personal and medical reasons.  Professor Doris Brogan, who has been the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at Villanova since 1992, has been named Interim Dean starting immediately. 

Lots of decanal transitions at Catholic law schools.  Duquesne.  DePaul.  Now Villanova. 

Update: More details via this link.

Beautiful . . .

 

More laughs herre.

More Live Sperm, Dead Donor

Last week, I blogged about the Ninth Circuit decision in Vernoff v. Astrue, which upheld the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) denial of child survivor benefits to Brandalynn Vernoff, a 10-year-old Los Angeles girl conceived from the frozen sperm of a dead man.   Now, it appears that another case involving the rights of posthumously-created offspring to claim SSI benefits is making its way through the court system.  According to the Des Moines Register, Patti Beeler has lost an appeals process through the SSA, which denied survivor benefits to her six-year-old daughter.  Beeler has now filed suit in federal court challenging the decision.  In contrast to the Vernoff case, in which the sperm was extracted posthumously and without any indication of consent by the father to the procedure, Bruce Beeler banked sperm prior to the start of chemotherapy treatments, which often cause sterility, so that the couple could have children after he recovered.  However, Beeler did not recover, and after his death Patti Beeler used IVF to conceive using Bruce's previously-banked sperm.

In looking through the secondary literature, it seems as if there’s been some amount of writing on the legal issues surrounding these cases, but I haven’t come across a whole lot yet on the broader policy issues surrounding them.  In other words, what are the policy consequences of allowing, or not, posthumously-created offspring to claim SSI survivor benefits?  Should it matter  (again as a matter of public policy) whether the sperm was extracted posthumously or not?  So, gentle readers, please post your thoughts, reactions, sources, and reading recommendations in the comments . . . so that I can steal your ideas and turn them into a law review article.

(HT: Egg Donor and Surrogacy Blog) 

Demotivational Messages for These Troubled Economic Times

My brother just alerted me to a series of "demotivational posters" available online from Despair, Inc.  While my technological prowess is failing me, and I'm having trouble downloading the images, I'll  set out some of my favorite taglines below and hyperlink to the posters:

LEADERS:  Leaders are like eagles.  We don't have either of them here.

MEETINGS:  None of us is as dumb as all of us.

and who could ignore....

BLOGGING:  Never before have so many people with so little to say said so much to so few.

I hope the links don't infringe any copyrights because Despair Inc's FAQ on copyright ownership certainly gives me pause:

"I want to put your images on my homepage without crediting you or acknowledging you in any way, so that I can do my small part to violate the copyrights of your photographers and whoever else might have a commercial interest in your intellectual property. How cool is that?
It is okay with us provided you promise to throw an online tantrum when we ask you politely to stop. "

They also have an interesting attitude to online trademarks here.

Two Stats From The Most Recent Season of Manuscript Submissions

I submitted two articles to numerous journals earlier this year in March/April using the Expresso service.

Two statistics:

Percentage of journals that took action triggering the “confirmation of receipt” response at my Expresso account:  39%.

Percentage of journals that have informed me of a publication decision:  24%.

The first stat is probably meaningless (perhaps because the information itself is rather meaningless).  But if Expresso is receptive to a suggestion, I’ll suggest that it modify its software in a manner that generates an automated “confirmation of receipt” response at the moment when the journal opens its mailbox to which the manuscript was sent (rather than relying on an affirmative declaration from a student editor that the manuscript has indeed been received).  Hey, if Expresso can't confirm receipt, why should I (or my law school) pay for the service?

The second stat is disappointing.   Not disappointing because I didn’t receive offers from the other 76% of journals, but because I never received any response from 76% of journals.   Should I conclude that:

student editors are simply overwhelmed with a flood of manuscripts and don’t have the time to contact all authors?

student editors have adopted the mantra, “no news is bad news”?

student editors are insensitive to our fragile egos, or perhaps enjoy a bit of payback for our Socratic grillings?

law schools should require students to take a course in “document organization, time management, communication skills, and manners”?

                                           

Thoughts?

Legal Skills In Doctrinal Classrooms

They're talking about the value of practice skills to the law school curriculum over at the Conglomerate.  Here's my take on it:

Though I'm a doctrinal prof fond of critical theory, I side with those who think that US law schools must do more to develop and reward those who teach effective writing, process and skills programs.  Let's face it, most of our students won't become Law Profs, or legal philosophers, or theorists of any kind.  They'll become lawyers, and they want to be good ones.

So besides substantive knowledge, what can a doctrinal prof bring to the table? 

Plenty.  My colleague Rocky Rhodes and I just completed a final manuscript for the First Amendment volume of the new Skills & Values series by Lexis (shameless plug acknowledged).  The book includes 14 problems and associated tasks that make students think like actual lawyers.  They're asked to draft pleadings, interrogatories, requests for production, and other litigation documents.  They also navigate tactical dilemmas.  As a prosecutor, when should they bring charges in the course of an on-going factual investigation?  As a defense attorney, is it best to address the charges on the merits or move to dismiss?  Other problems place students in the role of a judicial law clerk, a lawyer in private practice, or an advocate who submits written testimony to a legislative committee.    

We strived to make each problem as realistic as possible given the format.  Lawyers aren't handed a narrative hypothetical in practice, so we don't give them to students.  We give just enough background information to make the problems workable, but otherwise rely on client correspondence, charging documents, subpoenas, and the like - the kinds of things attorneys in the real world build a case out of.

I've experimented with some of these problems in class last semester, and the result was overwhelmingly positive.  Most notable was the collective glaze that swept over the class on the weeks we went back to the socratic method.  It was painful all around. 

I'm hoping projects like these will lead to more integration between doctrine and skills without discounting the need to support existing practice-oriented courses.

-Kathleen Bergin

Like New Confederate Cash Found in Alabama Courthouse

Now who says that no one cares about nineteenth-century southern legal history? According to the AP, $493 in confederate currency

was found in a Morgan County [Alabama] court file containing documents about the estate of slave owner Riley S. Davis, who died without a will in 1860, the year before the Civil War began. The bills, in near mint condition, turned up earlier this year after being discovered a decade ago and then forgotten. ....

A document filed in chancery court almost a month after the Civil War ended in 1865 gave an itemized list of people hiring slaves who had belonged to Davis, along with the amount of money that was due to his estate.

The tally showed the file was $493 short, [Morgan County archivist John] Allison said. He speculated that the clerk made up the difference with Confederate cash that was worthless because the war was either over or near its end.

Now there's a reason to get back into the archives this summer! 

And, as long as I'm talking about Confederate money, I suppose I ought to comment on the icons on the money.  I think it was John Majewski's important new book, Modernizing a Slave Economy, that led me to realize that there are some revealing images on the Confederate currency--like a railroad.  But there also seem to be black people--laboring, of course--and white men, sometimes on horses.  Wow--how revealing of the ideas behind the founding of the Confederacy.   That two dollar bill has John C. Calhoun over on the lower right; the Virginia state house was on another bill; the $100 bill that is above right has a railroad and a woman carrying a basket on her head (I suppose she's a slave, but I'm not sure).

Much like John Hope's Vermont Marble Quarry, I wish I'd included something about Confederate currency in "Property and Progress: Antebellum Landscape Art and Property Law."   Well, I'm sure there will be another opportunity to work on that topic and include some more images.

Update: My colleague Mark Weidemaier (who'll be guesting with us shortly) mentioned that some of the sovereign bonds he's worked with have similar images.  Then he pointed me to this terrific website.  Check out the images on the Alabama notes in particular.

Justices Rule for Firefighters in New Haven Bias Case

The NYT reports that the Supreme Court has decided in favor (5-4) of the white firefighters in the New Haven bias case, where the city threw out the results of a promotion exam to avoid a lawsuit. The exam resulted in no promotions for African-Americans and only two Latinos.

This is the controversial case for nominee Sonia Sotomayor, where she sided with the city of New Haven. It will be interesting to see what will come of this in the confirmation hearings.

"Fear of litigation alone cannot justify an employer's reliance on race to the detriment of individuals who passed the examinations and qualified for promotions," Justice Anthony Kennedy said in his opinion for the court. He was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

In dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said the white firefighters "understandably attract this court's sympathy. But they had no vested right to promotion. Nor have other persons received promotions in preference to them."

Justices Stephen Breyer, David Souter and John Paul Stevens signed onto Ginsburg's dissent, which she read aloud in court Monday.

Sunny Samaritans or Entrepreneurs? New York Allows Egg Donor Payments For Stem Cell Research

In a sharp divergence from the guidelines of some scientific organizations and the laws of other states, such as California, which forbid such payments, New York last week became the first state to allow taxpayer-funded researchers to pay women for eggs usable in stem cell research.   The decision is controversial, both because of the underlying debate surrounding stem cell research, and because of a lingering conviction in some quarters that women should not receive payment in exchange for reproductive material. 

Payment has long been provided for eggs to be used in fertility treatments -- data suggest that in 2006 alone nearly 55,000 children in the United States were born through assisted reproduction, more than 7500 of whom were created through the use of “donated” eggs.  (See here for the source of this and all other facts and figures in this post).  Nonetheless, controversy continues to surround the issue of payments to egg donors, as exemplified by the caps on payment adopted in New York: the Empire State Stem Cell Board ruling requires researchers to follow the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) compensation guidelines, which state that “sums of $5000 or more require justification and sums above $10,000 go beyond what is appropriate.”

The New York payment limits are sufficiently high that they are unlikely to have any practical affect on the ability to pay and recruit egg donors for stem cell research.  Egg donor compensation in the United States varies widely, with prices as low as $1,500 and as high as $150,000 reported, but surveys of fertility clinics and donor agencies listed with the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology report average compensation rates per donation cycle of $4217 and $5200, respectively, although there are reasons to believe that these figures may understate the true national average. 

Nonetheless, I was disappointed to see New York follow the trend of attempting to limit compensation to women for the provision of a valuable, time-consuming, and uncomfortable service that poses some health risks.   As I argue here, the ASRM oocyte-donor compensation guidelines amount to horizontal price-fixing of the type long considered per se illegal in other industries.  Moreover, the continued insistence (in the face of substantial evidence to the contrary) that egg donors are—and should be—motivated primarily by altruism and the desire to help others, rather than by the desire for monetary compensation, is problematic on a variety of levels.   

The contrast is particularly stark in comparison with the presumed motivations of sperm donors, who are recruited through materials that ask, “Why not get paid for it?” and advertise, “your sperm can earn!” In fact, the insistence that sperm donors are motivated primarily by a desire for monetary compensation is so strong that potential donors expressing altruistic motivations are frequently viewed with suspicion and presumed to harbor an egomaniacal desire to propagate.

Finally, maximum wage restrictions are an odd – one might argue, backwards -- response to concerns over the financial coercion of poor women.  The ability of any sum to coerce action is a direct function of that person’s financial need.  Egg donor compensation caps, without reference to the potential donor’s financial status, do nothing to address financial coercion objections.  Ironically, the most likely effect of the ASRM price cap is to drive from the market for eggs used in fertility treatments the most highly desired egg donors, who tend to be better-educated and of a higher socioeconomic status.  These donors should be in a better position to evaluate the risks of egg donation against the monetary benefits and should be less susceptible to the “coercive” effects of monetary compensation, because they are more likely to have other income opportunities to choose from.

Absent a significant shift in the societal conception of motherhood, it may be the case that appeals to altruistic impulses will always play a vital role in the manner by which our society understands egg donation and even in the way that egg donors understand themselves.  But the fertility and stem cell industries are big business in this and other countries, and the persistent dialogue of gift-giving and altruistic donation that surrounds egg “donation” may help to obscure its highly commercial nature and the potential industry benefits of controlling egg prices.

Related Post: A New Meaning To "Nest Egg"

Brown on Racial Aspects of Subprime Lending

My colleauge Carol Brown has a new paper, Intent and Empirics: Race to the Subprime, up on ssrn, which turns to Home Mortgage Disclosure Act filings to dissect the racial disparities in subprime lending.  She links that empirical evidence with qualitative evidence of what accounts for at least some of those disparities.  Her abstract is as follows:

The United States’ history of racially discriminatory banking, housing, and property policies created a community of black Americans accustomed to exploitative financial services and vulnerable to victimization by subprime lenders. My thesis is that black borrowers are experiencing a new iteration of intentional housing discrimination in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries; lenders identified a vulnerable “emerging market” of black homeowners and borrowers and knowingly targeted them to receive subprime or predatory loan products when equally situated white borrowers were given superior, prime mortgage products.

This Article explores how disparate lending practices coupled with banking deregulation undermined the Congressional push for increased minority homeownership and widened the already burgeoning wealth divide. Millions of borrowers who accepted subprime loans between 1998 and 2006 already have or will lose their homes to foreclosure, resulting in a net loss in homeownership for nearly one million families. Blacks are disproportionately represented among the subprime victims, especially black women. The lending and financial services structure that caused this crisis is complicated by evidence of redlining and of steering blacks into subprime loans, all of which contributed to the present foreclosure crisis. This subprime dilemma merely adds new terminology to a long history of racial discrimination in housing in America. In the end, this Article argues that the search for an understanding of the cumulative events that facilitated the exploitation of blacks by subprime lenders illuminates the institutional and national impediments to reversing the present and future harm of the subprime crisis and to ensuring blacks equal access to one of the benefits of full citizenship – property.

First, in Part II, I contend that the disparities in subprime lending experienced by black borrowers and especially by black women result from intentional reverse-redlining and steering by lending institutions, their loan officers, and brokers. Next, in Part III, I consider why blacks and black women are disproportionately victims of subprime mortgages and of predatory lending. Finally, Part IV concludes by discussing the after-effects of subprime and predatory lending and offers possible solutions for rethinking how blacks are to overcome this deeply profound experience with housing discrimination which I suggest made blacks prime subprime victims. It focuses on the property dilemma or rather the dilemma of the landless.

I think a lot of people are going to be talking about this article.

How to Make Americans Save More? Get Rid of the Women.

Much has been made during the recent economic crisis of the vast difference in household savings rates between the United States and China.  The difference has led to the somewhat incongruous outcome of massive lending from an emerging economy to industrialized ones, particularly the United States.  Although explanations ranging from economic uncertainty and changes in the pension system in China have been offered, a new NBER working paper by Shang-Jin Wei and Xiaobo Zhang suggests a far more blog-worthy explanation:  marriage market competition fueled by gender imbalances arising from sex selection practices in China.

From the New York Times, which quotes from the paper:

“Families with sons compete with each other to raise their savings rate in response to ever-rising pressure in the marriage market. Competitive saving by these families spills over to greater savings by other families, possibly through raising the prices of nontradable goods such as housing.”                                                                                                     

“Across Chinese provinces, there is clear evidence that local savings rates tend to be higher in regions with more unbalanced sex ratios.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

In other words, parents want their sons to marry, and they figure that girls are more likely to want to marry rich boys.                                                                                                                         

The authors note that while they looked only at China, “other economies known to have a strong sex ratio imbalance include Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and India. These countries also happen to have high savings rates.”

(HT: Tyler Cowen)

The UCC Goes To Prison

Tim's dry wit makes the UCC seem far more appealing than I remember if from law school, and now a recent federal appeals decision makes me realize that I've got to start integrating more of the code into my First Amendment course.

In Jones v. Caruso, the Sixth Circuit declined to lift an injunction against a regulation that prohibited prisoners from receiving "UCC materials" in the mail.  What sort of penologicial interest could have prompted such a draconian measure?  Well, it appears that prisoners have been using the UCC as a way to harass law enforcement officers.  A prisoner in one case obtained a copyright of his name and then filed fraudulent liens against government officials who used his name without permission or compensation.  (it's not right, I  know, but it is clever) . . . 

Anyway, Tim, even if the court had dissolved the injunction, your work would have been protected under a worthwhile exception for "legal materials which set forth the statute or provide a scholarly legal analysis of the UCC."

-Kathleen A. Bergin

Michael Jackson's Will

In case you didn't know, or are pretending not to, Michael Jackson, who was a singer of popular music, died yesterday.  Fans worldwide have mourned the death of the musical superstar, and news of the death clogged the internet yesterday.  Twitter, the social networking site, shut down yesterday, as did AIM, the instant messaging service. Sales of his songs increased 721 times on Amazon, with similar increases on ITunes, reports the NY Times.

Clearly, the world is keenly interested in the death of Michael Jackson, and so should academia. The unraveling of his complicated estate will be of acute interest to law professors.  Before his death, Jackson was saddled with $500 million in debt, and his upcoming concert tour in London, starting July 13, was intended to offset it.  He also held the rights to The Beatles and Elvis Presley's songs, buy purchasing the catalogs and owning half of Sony/ATV Music Publishing.  His attorneys say that his three children will not be responsible for his debt, but remain speculative as to who will be appointed their guardian.

Can this be only the beginning of the legend of Michael Jackson? What else can we predict as an issue in the outcome of his death?

More on the Beyond Text conference at the University of Edinburgh

Here's the conference schedule from last weekend:

Saturday 20 June – Theoretical Perspectives
Opening Panel
• Zenon Bankowski, The Space to See
• Maksymilian Del Mar, Breaking the Spell: The Education of Attention and Encounter in Law Schools and Law Firms
• Commentators: Tony Bradney and Julian Webb

1st Paper Presentation
• Randy Gordon, Truth in Context: Sketching a (New) Historicist Legal Pedagogy

2nd Paper Presentation
• Alan Lerner, When Parallel Lines Meet: Emotion and Cognition in Law and Legal Education

3rd Paper Presentation
• Paul Maharg, The Permeable Web: Community, Value and Ethics in Legal Education

4th Paper Presentation
• Nancy Rapoport, Changing the Modal Law School:  Rethinking U.S. Legal Education in (Most) Schools

5th Paper Presentation and Performance
• Jim Moser, Tor Clark and Anthony Psaila (both from STEPS), Beyond the Text - Exploring Conflict Through Interactive Drama

Sunday 21 June – Policy Directions
Opening Panel
• Panellists: Zoë Fothergill, Alicja Rogalska, Keren Ben-Dor

6th Paper Presentation
• Gillian Calder, Embodied Law: Theatre of the Oppressed in the Law School Classroom

7th Paper Presentation
• Tom Mayo, Twyla Tharp Goes to Law School: Incorporating Dance (and Painting and Sculpture) in a Course on Professionalism

8th Paper Presentation
• Elaine Webster, Threshold Concepts in Legal Education: Moving Beyond Text to Perceive Law as Narrative?

 9th Paper Presentation
• Valerie Fitch, Is 'Beyond Text' Simply Beyond Them? Making the Case for Infusing the Arts into Law Firm Professional Development

10th Paper Presentation
• Anne Pirrie, And Finally, Beyond Text...

Each of these presentations moved me in some way, and I left the conference feeling enthused about ways that we could reconnect law students with other ways of thinking and learning about the law.  More soon.

(Posted by Nancy Rapoport)

Admissions At Illinois: Corrupt Pols Meet Snarky Law Dean

News is exploding out of Champaign-Urbana in the last day or so as a series of admissions-related emails were just released by the University of Illinois.  The state's rough and tumble political community appears to have targeted the U of I as a source of marketable influence.

As I noted early this month,  the University of Illinois School of Law  was pressured to admit political VIP's.  Dean Heidi Hurd pushed back on the demands, though she did not - and realistically, could not - fully eliminate the role of political influence  in the admissions process.  The story reported earlier this month involved political pressure to admit a minimally qualified - but not otherwise admittable applicant.

State Sen. Chris Lauzen believed a student deserved admission to the University of Illinois law school in 2005, and he let the university's lobbyists know. The school's dean thought otherwise. "She won't hurt us terribly, but she certainly won't help us," then-Dean Heidi Hurd wrote to Chancellor Richard Herman. "She will almost certainly be denied admission if the process unfolds as we predict. But she can probably do the work. If you tell me we need to do this one, we will. We'll remember it though!" "Please admit," the chancellor replied. "I understand no harm."

Now it appears that the school was pressured by Gov. Blagojevich to admit unqualified applicants - in exchange for jobs provided by a political pal of the Governor.  

University of Illinois Chancellor Richard Herman forced the law school to admit an unqualified applicant backed by former Gov. Rod Blagojevich while arranging for the governor's go-between to seek jobs for five law school graduates, according to new documents released Thursday by the university. The records suggest for the first time an explicit trading of favors, the most troubling evidence yet of how Illinois' entrenched system of patronage crept into the admissions process of the state's most prestigious public university. The relative of deep-pocketed Blagojevich campaign donor Kerry Peck appears to have been pushed by trustee Lawrence Eppley, who routinely carried admissions requests from the governor.

My favorite part of the story, however, was the deliciously snarky response of Dean Hurd.

When law school dean Heidi Hurd balked on accepting the applicant in April 2006, Herman replied that the request came "Straight from the G. My apologies. Larry has promised to work on jobs (5). What counts?" Hurd replied: "Only very high-paying jobs in law firms that are absolutely indifferent to whether the five have passed their law school classes or the Bar."

There isn't a law school in the nation that wouldn't like to snare those jobs!

Packing the Court

Publisher Penguin Press is releasing a new book on the United States Supreme Court this month titled Packing the Court:  The Rise of Judicial Power and the Coming Crisis of the Supreme Court.  Information on the book is available here, here, and here. The author is James MacGregor Burns, now in his 90's, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1971 for Roosevelt:  The Soldier of Freedom.  Several months ago, USA Today featured Professor Burns in an article available here.

Supreme Court Finds Strip Search Unconstitutional

This morning the United States Supreme Court issued its opinion in the so-called strip search case, Safford Unified School District #1 v. Redding, finding that the search violated the student's 4th Amendment rights.  The opinion is available here.