At the risk of sounding like a coffee table book about coffee tables in the shape of a coffee table... I have just completed Scott Rosenberg's new book, Say Everything. If you have the time, it's a really interesting history of the development of blogging, and of the criticisms launched at blogging over the years. As someone who teaches cyberlaw and is trying to update a casebook for the Web 2.0 generation, it has some really useful thoughts that build upon commentaries and criticisms about the early Internet. Will the ability to communicate online polarize us all in our views rather than broadening our horizons? Does the Internet spell the death of traditional media and, if so, why? Can the Internet in general, and blogging in particular, ever be successfully commercialized? Should it be?
The book also contains an impressive amount of information gleaned from interviews with bloggers and from blog archives over the years that range from early blogging, to military blogging, to mommy-blogging, and to being "dooced" (ie losing your job because of something you said on a blog).
I particularly liked the last few chapters where Rosenberg makes analogies between blogging and other forms of corporate and social media over the years - the telephone, the television, Twitter (miniblogging), and online social networks. Really good food for thought - and there might be a few potential cyberlaw essay questions lurking in there.
In what one hopes is an unusual combination, a musician, the
Zodiac Killer, and the Tennessee bar association cross paths on the message
board of Goner
Records, a record store in Memphis, Tennessee.
Last week brought a wonderful volume that I've been eagerly awaiting all summer: Greil Marcus and Werner Sollors' A New Literary History of America. The book has about 250 essays on American literary history -- organized around dates (like 1692, the year of the Salem Witchraft Trials, March 6, 1865, the date of Lincoln's Second Inaugural, Memorial Day, 1897, the date of the monument to the Massachusetts' 54th Regiment is dedicated at the Boston Garden, October 1965, the autobiography of Malcom X appears). The New Literary History has entries on a lot of what we commonly think of as American literature, like entries on John Withinthrop, Anne Bradstreet, Mary Rowlandson (though her captivity narrative is spoken of in connection with the Alien and Sedition Acts), Ralph Waldo Emerson's American Scholar (which I recently learned was delivered in the First Unitarian Church in Cambrdige, not on the Harvard campus) and his Divinity School Address, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and the usual suspects in the twentieth century, like Tennessee Williams, Sinclair Lewis, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ralph Ellison.... Well, the list goes on and on. You can see the full table of contents here, at the book's website, newliteraryhistory.com. (And there's an entry on one of my favorite figures in American literature, Francis Daniel Pastorius; more of my thoughts on Pastorius here.)
But what's most interesting to me is the new things that are in here -- one of my favorite essays (no surprise here) is Alan Wallach's on landscape painter Thomas Cole. Wallach talks about one of Cole's paintings, Lake with Dead Trees, which I haven't studied. I'm not quite sure how it fits with my theme of property and progress. Some of the other creative ideas in here are entries on the Cherokee cases, the Missouri Compromise, and the meeting between Albert C. Barnes -- the famous art collector (we talk about him in trusts and estates a bunch) and John Dewey. Never know what things you'll learn about in these thousand pages.
And speaking of progress, this book is a quintessentially American and optimsitic. The dates selected here are generally forward-looking ones--not much of proslavery thought, for instance, in here. This book, like other companions to American thought -- like the fabulous Fox and Kloppenberg Companion to American Thought--is necessarily selective. But it's going to repay many, many readings. And its structure and its sparks of creativity will set the research agenda for many years. American literary history looks very different today than it did even last month. If you're looking for a great and creative gift this is it -- or if you're interested in some great reads, get a copy for yourself. It's the best fifty bucks you'll spend this year.
It inspires me to think about a New Legal History of America, which would be organized around dates, too.
One of the new realities of law faculty hiring is that appointments committees increasingly tilt toward candidates with advanced degrees, a fellowship/VAP experience, or both. But where do you get that fellowship or VAP experience? The answer from Paul Caron is here. I would add, however, that many schools hire Visiting Assistant Professors on an as-needed basis. In the aftermath of the AALS scrum, some schools realize they have unmet needs for particular courses. It can be difficult to determine which schools have these needs but, as is always the case with job searches, a little extra effort can yield unexpected opportunities.
Following Al's musings on pre-Civil War curricula in honor of the new school year, I thought I'd share my own musings as my little 4 year old trudged off to pre-school for the first time this morning.
He had informed us last week that for the new school year he wanted a purple back-pack with googly eyes and straps. So mommy and daddy dutifully stood in line at the Office Max back-to-school sale for half an hour to purchase said purple back-pack (luckily they had one in stock), then off to Michaels to purchase googly eyes (on sale for 49 cents!). After having lovingly glued the eyes to the backpack, we realized that we had just created the lovable back-pack character from Dora the Explorer. I don't know how we didn't notice given that our 2 year old has been watching a Dora DVD on a repetitive loop for the last month. So did we just commit subconscious copyright infringement sending our little tyke off to school with an unauthorized facsimile of Dora's backpack?? I can suddenly understand the "unconscious copying" defense often argued by musicians in copyright infringement cases. (And, yes, I know we're not actually making a commercial use of the thing, but I just thought it was cute that we didn't notice as we painstakingly created a direct copy of Dora's backpack.)
The crisis may be turning out very well
for many of the behemoths that dominate U.S. finance. A series of federally
arranged mergers safely landed troubled banks on the decks of more stable
firms. And it allowed the survivors to emerge from the turmoil with
strengthened market positions, giving them even greater control over consumer
lending and more potential to profit.
. . .
Officials waived long-standing
regulations to make the deals work. J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America and
Wells Fargo were each allowed to hold more than 10 percent of the nation's
deposits despite a rule barring such a practice. In several metropolitan
regions, these banks were permitted to take market share beyond what the
Department of Justice's antitrust guidelines typically allow, Federal Reserve
documents show.
. . .
Large banks with more than $100 billion
in assets are borrowing at interest rates 0.34 percentage points lower than the
rest of the industry. Back in 2007, that advantage was only 0.08 percentage
points, according to the FDIC.
The article discusses
in some detail two concerns stemming from banking industry concentration: lack
of consumer choice and moral hazard.
At one extreme of Corporate America is
a cadre of companies and banks, mostly big, united by an enviable access to
credit. At the other end are firms, chiefly small, with slumping sales that
can't borrow or are facing stiff terms to do so.
Meanwhile,
on Friday, three more banks demonstrated that they are not too big to fail. Bradford Bank,
Baltimore, Maryland; Mainstreet Bank,
Forest Lake, Minnesota; and Affinity Bank,
Ventura, California were all closed by the FDIC, bringing the total for the
year to 84. See here
for the FDIC's full list of failed banks since October 1, 2000.
With classes starting today and curriculum on my mind, I thought I'd talk a little bit about the curriculum of the antebellum southern college. In algebra class, they sometimes studied how terrible Yankees were. Take several examples from the math textbook of Professor D. H. Hill of Davidson College:
A Yankee mixes a certain number of wooden nutmegs, which cost him 1/4 cent apiece, with a quantity of real nutmegs, worth 4 cents apiece, and sells the whole assortment for $44; and gains $3.75 by the fraud. How many wooden nutmegs were there?
Fun in math class, eh? (Am I right in thinking that 4x-1/4x=375?)
And they studied the hiring of a slave:
A planter hired a negro-man at the rate of $100 per annum, and his clothing. At the end of 8 months the master of the slave took him home, and received $75 in cash, and no clothing. What was the clothing valued at?
Also, on the issue of emancipation and the generosity of North and South, try this problem:
A gentleman in Richmond expressed a willingness to liberate his slave, valued at $1000, upon the receipt of that sum from charitable persons. He received contributions from 24 persons; and of these there were 14/19ths fewer from the North than from the South, and the average donation of the former was 4/5ths smaller than that of the latter. What was the entire amount given by the latter?
Mighty interesting stuff to see what’s on the minds of antebellum textbook authors, isn’t it?
I've been following now for some years the periodic stories about politicians' writings when they were in college or law school. Hillary Clinton's Wellesley College thesis on Saul Alinsky got some attention a few years back. We've heard about Barack Obama's "lost law review article" (a case note, actually, in the Harvard Law Review) and about the work he did on one of Laurence Tribe's articles.
Some time ago, I actually began to keep a running list of the early publications of the now famous. There's all sort of great stuff there--like Michelle Robinson's senior thesis at Princeton.
Why do we care about this stuff? Well, I suppose we think that student writing contains something of a key to the thinking of adults. At least that's what I hope is the case, because I study academics' writings with the hope that they will illuminate something about the mind of the times. What? You missed my article on literary addresses at the antebellum University of Alabama?! Well, that's understandable. But I'm working on a companion piece using literary addresses at UNC--more to come on that in the spring. One of my favorite books on antebellum southern history, Michael Carmichael's The Last Generation, relies heavily upon student writings at places like the University of Virginia to create a picture of the ideas of the last generation of Virginians to come to adulthood before the Civil War. (Here's a link to my review of it for Reviews in American History. The review is called "God and Man at the University of Virginia." Don't you just love the title?)
So it should come as no surprise that the Washington Post is talking about the master's thesis of Robert F. McDonnell, who is running for Virginia's governor. McDonnell submitted the thesis, "The Republican Party's Vision for the Family: The Compelling Issue of The Decade," in 1989 to Regent University (it was then called "CBN University"), where he was studying for a masters in public policy and a JD. From the Post article:
The Washington Post learned of the thesis in a recent interview with McDonnell, who mentioned it in answering a question about his political roots. McDonnell brought up the paper in reference to a pair of Republican congressmen whom he interviewed as part of his research. McDonnell then offered: "I wrote my thesis on welfare policy.
Of particular interest to me today as I sit here preparing for trusts and estates tomorrow, is this paragraph:
McDonnell's thesis also spends a good deal of time on the importance of tax policy to the health of families. He called for the repeal of the estate tax and for the adoption of a modified flat tax to replace the graduated income tax. Awarding deductions and distributions based on need "is socialist," McDonnell wrote.
The Post summarizes the thesis this way: it "wasn't so much a case against government as a blueprint to change what he saw as a liberal model into one that actively promoted conservative, faith-based principles through tax policy, the public schools, welfare reform and other avenues." The thesis is on-line at the Wa-Po's website.
I'm inclined to believe McDonnell's overall assessment of the thesis' importance (or lack of importance) and its relationship to his current ideas: "Virginians will judge me on my 18-year record as a legislator and Attorney General and the specific plans I have laid out for our future -- not on a decades-old academic paper I wrote as a student during the Reagan era and haven't thought about in years."
Following up on last week’s post, Let Atheists (or Jews or Muslims) Care For Your Pets After the Rapture, this news video clip discusses the rapture industry, including an interview with the head of Eternal Earth-Bound Pets, one of the services featured in our post on the topic last week.According to Eternal Earth-Bound, the majority of their inquiries are from atheists who want to volunteer as pet rescuers, another 25% are from Christians angry over the ads, because they believe that their pets will be saved, and the remainder are from evangelical Christians interested in purchasing the service. (HT: Crooked Timber)
In Tijuana, they cut holes in the
border fence to sell pieces as scrap, not to cross through to the U.S. (Boston
Globe, via Paul
Kedrosky)
Lawyer jokes are no longer funny (Andrew
Sullivan), law students fight back against on-campus recruiters who are too
happy with their newly-discovered market power (Above
The Law), William A. Chamberlain (assistant dean for law career strategy
and advancement at Northwestern) advise law students to accept
their offers quickly, and Elie Mysal (Above
The Law) advises them to accept all of their offers quickly, NALP
police be damned.
Former adjuncts are arrested in the law
school library with multiple guns and 53 rounds of ammunition (ABA
Journal, via Paul
Caron)
This afternoon, passing through the law school lobby on my way to teach Civil Procedure, I was distracted by the roar of motorcycles. A biker caravan passing down Greene Street might not have attracted much notice, but for the fact the every bike was festooned with a Confederate flag (or two or three) and many of the riders sported Confederate and neo-Nazi emblems on their leather jackets. These racist fascist bikers are in town for the Southeast regional gathering of the National Socialist Movement, which claims to be the largest neo-Nazi organization in the U.S.
Their presence is particularly offensive in a city that is still picking over the wounds of the notorious 1979 Greensboro Massacre, where five anti-racist marchers were gunned down by white supremacists. The killers were acquitted by all-white juries; in a later civil trial, the City of Greensboro, the Ku Klux Klan, and the American Nazi Party were found liable for violating the marchers' civil rights.
Suffice it to say that most people in Greensboro do not welcome this hateful group. Greensboro would prefer to be known for its more positive and photogenic role in civil rights history. It was here, in 1960, that 4 African-American students from North Carolina A&T University sat down at a Woolworth's lunch counter and refused to leave, a crucial moment in the non-violent protest movement that would help bring about the Civil Rights Act of 1964. After some delay, the International Civil Rights Center & Museum is now under construction in the former Woolworth's building.
As a civil libertarian, and a law professor, I understand why these racist fascist cretins must be permitted to drive through my town displaying their hateful emblems, and to hold their hate-filled meeting (which, I can't help but be amused to note, is billed on the National Socialist Movement website [I'm not going to provide a link] as "business casual"). As a resident, I hope that they are true to their word that this will be a peaceful event at a private location, without a public rally. As a human being, I despair at the fact that here, in 2009, there are still people who think it worthwhile to gather in the name of racial superiority. It's times like this that I wish I believed in Hell.
Global Free Speech Update
Argentina: President Christina Frenandez is pushing a media reform bill that would give state broadcasters and non-profits organizations a better opportunity to compete with private companies for broadcast space. The bill would also limit the total number of licenses a company can hold, and would preserve space for programming produced in Argentina. Fernandez claims an interest in promoting broadcast diversity, but critics suspect it is her attempt to squeeze out private broadcasters who have grown increasingly critical of the government.
Iraq: Amnesty International has given its Freedom of Expression award to Palace at the End, a play about the Iraq war written by Canadian playwrite Judith Thompson. A series of monologues offer three different perspectives of the War, including one based on the experiences of American soldier Lynndie England, and another by UN weapons inspector David Kelly. The NYT Review is here.
Somalia: As if things could get any worse for those living in Somalia, the government just initiated a state of martial law that could make it even more dangerous for journalists. Under martial law imposed in 2007, journalists were prohibited from "spreading propaganda," interviewing government opponents, reporting on matters of national security, and holding 'unlawful' demonstrations. Dozens of journalists were tortured and media houses closed down. The National Union of Somali Journalists issued a press release last week, asking the government to respect a right to the free flow of information during the three month period of martial law.
Sudan: Beyond the outrage of sentencing women who wear pants (gasp!) to 40 lashes, several journalists who covered last month's court case of Lubna al-Hussein and her co-defendants were arrested, and columnist Amal Habbani was fined for writing about the case in "Lubna: A Case of Subduing Woman's Body." An added note on Lubna: she could have invoked immunity as a UN worker and avoided prosecution, but decided insisted instead on continuing the case to call attention to the government's deplorable human rights practices.
Peru: Lawmakers are considering a measure that would require a "correction" of any "inaccurate or insulting statement" published in print, broadcast or electronic form. I'm not sure how one would correct a statement that is insulting but happens also to be true, but it would have to be done within 3 days, as opposed to 10, which appears to be the case under the present system.
On Wednesday, the FDIC released new rules (available in PDF here) regarding private
equity acquisition of failed banking institutions.From the New
York Times:
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation board on Wednesday
imposed tough new restrictions on private equity firms seeking to buy failed
institutions, although they eased more onerous proposals in hopes of luring
them to the table.
Facing a dearth of traditional bank buyers, the F.D.I.C.
board tried to strike a balance between the need for fresh capital to shore up
the banking system, and worries that private equity buyers might engage in
aggressive practices that could put its deposit insurance fund at risk. . . .
The rules, which were approved by a vote of 4 to 1, would
require private equity-controlled banks to pour enough capital into a failed
bank so that it has a cushion of at least 10 percent of its assets for three
years. While the industry lobbied hard to reduce that from a 15 percent level
originally proposed by the F.D.I.C., it is still twice the minimum level that
traditional banks would be required to hold.
The F.D.I.C. also dropped a requirement that private equity
firms supply additional capital in the event of a severe downturn, a rule that
was vehemently opposed by the industry as impractical. But regulators remained
adamant in demanding that buyout firms not sell an acquired bank for at least
three years, and imposed restrictions barring the acquired bank from lending to
companies affiliated with the private equity buyer.
The agency also inserted a clause that would exempt private
equity firms from complying with the higher capital standards if they joined
forces with a traditional bank buyer, hoping to encourage such alliances.
In this video, John Kanas criticizes the rules, arguing that
they disadvantage private equity buyers relative to other owners, including
other private owners, and will result in the FDIC receiving lower prices for
purchased assets.He also predicts
a new high number for failed banks, 1000 (!) over the next two years. (HT: Paul
Kedrosky)
· Higher Loss Provisions Lead to a $3.7 Billion Net Loss
· More Than One in Four Institutions Are Unprofitable
· Charge-Offs and Noncurrent Loans Continue to Rise
· Net Interest Margins Show Modest Improvement
· Industry Assets Decline by $238 Billion
During the quarter, the number of institutions on the FDIC’s
“Problem List” increased from 305 to 416, and the combined assets of “problem”
institutions rose from $220.0 billion to $299.8 billion. This is the largest
number of “problem” institutions since June 30, 1994, and the largest amount of
assets on the list since December 31, 1993. (See chart, courtesy FDIC Q2 report.) See also this
FDIC Statistics
at a Glance.
Rolfe
Winkler has a detailed discussion of the report here:
There’s good news and bad news in the
FDIC’s quarterly profile of the banking sector. The good news is that FDIC has
more resources than you think to handle the problem banks on its radar. The bad
news is that the too-big-to-fail banks aren’t on it.
At the same
time, Izabella Kaminska (at FT Alphaville) and Felix Salmon remind that the
FDIC “is not bust,” because it has the capacity to borrow from Treasury.
As I’ve said before,
the FDIC can’t run out of money. Conceptually, it has simply been faced with a
choice up until now — do you raise money from banks, in deposit insurance
premiums, before banks start going bust and need an FDIC bailout, or after?
Congress made the decision that is should be the latter, when they barred the
FDIC from charging such premiums between 1996 and 2006.
President Barack Obama . . . signed
into law two major housing bills, one of which would allow the Federal Deposit
Insurance Corp. to temporarily borrow as much as $500 billion from the Treasury
Department to protect the deposits of bank customers.
The FDIC published its quarterly
banking profile on Thursday, and it appears that while things are certainly
pretty dismal (its fund is down to $10.4bn from $13.bn over in the quarter) the
agency is not exactly about to go bust anytime soon.
In fact, the agency reckons the fund
movement is somewhat irrelevant as it still has the ability to borrow up to
another $500bn from the US Treasury.
From the FDIC’s
statement (via Kaminska, linked above):
The contingent loss reserve, which totaled $28.5 billion on
March 31, rose to $32.0 billion as of June 30, reflecting higher actual and
anticipated losses from failed institutions. Additions to the contingent loss
reserve during the second quarter caused the fund balance to decline from $13.0
billion to $10.4 billion. Combined, the total reserves of the DIF equaled $42.4
billion at the end of the quarter.Chairman Bair distinguished the DIF’s reserves from the FDIC’s cash
resources, which included $22 billion of cash and U.S. Treasury securities held
as of June 30, as well as the ability to borrow up to $500 billion from the
Treasury. “A decline in the fund balance does not diminish our ability to
protect insured depositors,” Chairman Bair concluded.
The avalanche
of commentary on the life of Senator Kennedy has mostly concentrated on his
commitments to and successes in legislating around issues of social
justice.His central role in the
advancement of the deregulation movement has received far less note.This role was something Kennedy himself
deeply embraced, commenting on it in his famous 1980 “The Dream Shall Never
Die” speech.
The connection
of Senator Kennedy to deregulation is a story of ideas, expertise and
elites.Ideas count. Those of us who were studying economics in the
late 1960s and early 1970s were profoundly affected by the work of luminaries such
as George Stigler (Chicago) and Alfred E. Kahn (Cornell).The message was “markets work.”We were persuaded by Stigler and Kahn that price
and entry regulation of structurally competitive markets was a particularly
stupid form of governmental regulation.If
we did not get the message through university economics departments then we
were infected in law schools by the teaching of Don Turner (Harvard), Don Baker
(Cornell), Stephen Breyer (Harvard) and Richard Posner (Chicago).
But if ideas
and expertise are to be translated into implemented public policy, elites and
politics become highly relevant.For
economic deregulation, Kennedy was crucial in making the links among ideas,
expertise, elites, and successful politics.This resulted in the deregulation of airlines and trucking.The best economic evidence is that these
actions have resulted in billions of dollars of benefit to the American public.
Kennedy made
deregulation of transportation, in particular the deregulation of airlines and
trucking, a central part of his political agenda in the late 1970s.He brought to government the expertise that
was crucial.Key players on the Kennedy
senatorial team working on deregulation included Breyer and David Boies. The combination of political will, ideas and
expertise was an awesome sight to behold.
Kennedy was
also able to make alliances with likeminded political appointees in the
executive branch. He worked closely with
the Justice Department Antitrust Division in pushing deregulation.He had strong allies in two assistant
attorneys general for Antitrust, first Don Baker (who had been appointed by
Gerald Ford but carried over briefly into the Carter Administration) and then
John Shenefield, for whom I worked.Kennedy
strongly cultivated these relationships.
Both Baker
and Shenefield devoted considerable staff resources to the legislative battles
and to advocating to the White House the need to support reform.Baker brought to the battle his academic
expertise as a Cornell Law professor.Shenefield was a practicing lawyer who had cut his teeth working with
Lewis Powell as a regulated industries lawyer in Virginia.Shenefield came to Justice after serving as a
key political advisor to the Carter presidential campaign.His academic training at Harvard College and
Harvard Law School, his connections to the Washington political elite, and his considerable
talent as a trial lawyer enabled him to effectively achieve collaboration between
the executive branch and Senator Kennedy.
If this story
were a movie, the what happened next is also extremely interesting.The rhetoric of deregulation was used
powerfully in a number of other areas, in ways that I am sure deeply troubled
Kennedy and almost certainly contribued to the current economic crisis.The people moved on—Breyer became a Supreme
Court Justice, Shenefield became chair of one of America’s most important law
firms (Morgan Lewis), and David Boies became one of the leading lawyers of his
generation.As a side note on the
connectedness of elites, Boies now chairs his own law firm, Boies, Schiller and
Flexner.The Flexner is Don Flexner, who
served as the key deregulation staffer to Baker and Shenefield at Justice.
Simply because it is hard to imagine a more entertaining way to find Highway 61, and because life is truly stranger than fiction, I offer for your consideration this story indicating that Bob Dylan is negotiating with a couple of car manufacturers to be their in-car GPS navigation system voice. What would 1965 Dylan have to say about this?
The complaint in US v. Turner is available here. In it, the FBI alleges that Hal Turner, the right-wing shock-jock, internet blogger, and one-time FBI informant, threatened to assault and murder three federal judges because of an anti-gun rights ruling they issued last June. Turner also faces charges for inciting violence against two state lawmakers and an ethics official in Connecticut following debate on a controversial legislative provision in that state.
The charges stem from entries posted to Turner's blog that his lawyer argues are protected under the First Amendment. Under Brandenburg v. Ohio, the First Amendment protects the "advocacy of the use of force" unless it is "directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.”
It is our intent to foment direct action against these individuals personally. These beastly government officials should be made an example of as a warning to others in government: Obey the Constitution or die. If any state attorney, police department or court thinks they're going to get uppity with us about this; I suspect we have enough bullets to put them down too.
And that's the mild stuff.
He tried to back-peddle a bit later, telling a police officer that "It's certainly my intent to motivate the public to get involved in this, and certainly we hope that nobody's going to go off the deep end and do something terrible, but ... you never can tell."
And here's what Turner's lawyer argued last week to a court in Connecticut: "Mr. Turner's blog tends to have a small following of right-wing followers. . . The language used by this segment of the population to express its views is sometimes harsh or often peppered with violence. Regardless of how many people may have viewed it, given his public status and shock jock persona, there can be no doubt that Turner's statements were nothing more than politically charged rhetoric of someone unhappy with the judge's opinion in NRA v. Chicago, and are therefore protected."
I take this to mean not only that Turner didn't intend to incite violence, but that whatever his intent, the shock-jock set is so sensitized to violent language that they're the one's least likely to take up a call to arms. But that can't be right, can it? Can preaching to the choir really make it less likely, rather than more likely, that someone will put words into action? And doesn't this theory just give shock-jocks an incentive to ratchet up the extremism - the more radical the speech, the more sensitizing its effect, the more likely the First Amendment provides a defense?
In an effort to empathize with those people on the entry level market anxiously awaiting calls from interested schools, I thought I might try and start a parallel "anxiety thread" for law profs and aspiring law profs who are currently waiting for calls from law reviews about their fall submissions. As a recently appointed associate dean for research I have a particular stake in this because I want all my colleagues to do well so I'm trying to get a feel for how the season is progressing. Are journals already making offers? Are people trading up yet? Or have you been left by the wayside? I noticed last week that on Expresso it seemed that only about 34 of the Top 50 general journals are accepting submissions at the moment - although some of those might not be filled, but rather might be accepting fall submissions later in the semester. I also know that a couple of my colleagues have offers from good journals, and it does seem that a good portion of the Top 50 are at least saying that they are now in a position to honor expedite requests. Does anyone else want to share their experiences of this submission season in terms of number of offers received or rough "rankings" of journals making offers? Has anyone tried LexOpus this go around?
the
majority of people — 55 percent — who responded to this survey thought they
were giving an example of a sarcastic remark they made, when in fact what they
gave was a non-sarcastic remark!
two
ounces of Gosling’s Black Seal rum and a fizzy hit of ginger beer.
And,
by law, nothing but.
That’s
according to two trademark certificates on file with the United States Patent
and Trademark Office, which — in an exceptionally rare instance in the cocktail
world — dictate the precise ingredients and amounts required to call a Dark ‘n’
Stormy, well, a Dark ‘n’ Stormy.
“We
defend that trademark vigorously, which is a very time-consuming and expensive
thing,” said E. Malcolm Gosling Jr., whose family has owned Gosling’s since its
founding in Bermuda in 1806. “That’s a valuable asset that we need to protect.”
But this runs counter to the current bartending trend of
putting creative individual spins on traditional drinks. See this discussion at
Liquidity Preference.
[T]wo
Long Island insurance brokers have developed a way for the fantasy owner to
experience the bittersweet taste of an insurance payout when their superstar
goes down with a season-ending injury. . . . Now owners of fake teams can now
protect themselves against the injuries of real players with actual insurance
policies.
Even the academics can't do it! The
professors can't feed their blogs; it's too much work.
And those guys spend their lives
wearing tweed jackets, smoking pipes, and thinking great thoughts!
Via Paul
Caron, Arizona State is hosting the Aspiring
Law Professors Conference on October 17, 2009, designed for Visiting
Assistant Professors and Fellows who plan to go on the academic teaching
market.
Via the Washington
Post, ethical debates on tourism to areas where women are expected to wear
traditional costume, which is often uncomfortable, painful, or
disfiguring.
I want to thank Dan for inviting me to visit here at the Lounge. As I was casting about for what to write for my first post, I decided that Kim Krawiec's recent post about saltwater and freshwater economists, and Calvin Massey's post about the brewing Maine lobster war provided a sufficient segue into my pet topic: Law and Fly Fishing.
My own initiation into fly fishing was an indirect result of my first job after law school. I practiced labor law in Philadelphia, at a firm whose largest client was a union representing state, county, and local government workers throughout Pennsylvania. The work entailed a good deal of travel and extended stays in the hinterlands of the Commonwealth. During one such trip, in the vicinity of State College, I read a piece in the local paper about the opening of trout season. Though I'd never had any particular interest in the sport, it suddenly seemed very appealing. As soon as I got home, I bought a low-priced rod and reel, an assortment of flies, a pair of waders, and a copy of Fly Fishing for Dummies, and an obsession was born.
My interest in "Law & Fly Fishing" was originally tongue in cheek. When I first arrived at Stanford to teach legal
writing, I decorated my office with a picture of Justice Sandra Day
O'Connor, an avid and adept angler, from one of my fly fishing
magazines. I joked that I was going to write the definitive law review article on the influence of fly fishing on Supreme Court jurisprudence, examining how Justice O'Connor's experience at swinging a fly down and across stream helped shape her perspective as a swing Justice.
While fly fishing may not really have influenced the Court, it did, in a small way, influence my career in legal education. While interviewing at Elon, I learned that Justice O'Connor had spoken at the Law School's formal dedication, and that the University's plans for starting a law school arose, at least in part, from a conversation between Justice O'Connor and Elon President Leo Lambert during a fishing trip. I'd already been lured by the opportunity to help to build a new institution (an especially appealing prospect for someone interested in the sociology of legal education); the fishing story helped set the hook.
What began as a jest eventually emerged into a (relatively) serious research agenda. My interest in social norms and informal order led me to think about fly fishing customs and innovations in socio-legal terms, as a sort of "folk law". My interest in administrative law led me to think about the evolution of recreational fishing regulations in relation to the transition from agrarian to industrial to post-industrial society, and to the emergence of the environmentalist movement. My interest in business organizations and market regulation led me to think about business practices and competition among tackle manufacturers, fly fishing shops, and guide services.
I am fortunate that Elon is located in close proximity to some of the best fly fishing in the eastern United States. Just over an hour's drive away, we have Virginia's Smith River. A bit further, but still within day-trip range, the small streams, full of gorgeous native brook trout, along the Blue Ridge Parkway and the fine smallmouth bass fishing on the (ironically named) New River. For weekend expeditions, the great rivers of Western North Carolina and Eastern Tennessee and the wild streams of the Smokey Mountains.
Others may call it recreation; I call it fieldwork.
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