Weekend Links

Alex Tabarrok, Sally Satel, and Frank Delmonico on Putting A Price On Organ Donation. (Al Roth)

Also via Al Roth:

The current issue of the American Journal of Transplantation contains a survey of the ASTS membership, which finds that a majority of the surgeons responding support various income tax credits, insurance, and reimbursement for funeral expenses and lost wages, but oppose cash payments to the donor, donor's family or estate. (Rodrigue et al., "Stimulus for Organ Donation: A Survey of the American Society of Transplant Surgeons Membership," AJT, 2009, 9, 2172-2176.

Bad times ahead?

The cupcake bubble.

The MUI (Men’s Underwear Index) Graph at right, click to enlarge.

A run on (sperm) banks.

The college education bubble.  (WSJ, NY Times, Rolfe Winkler, Felix Salmon).

French winemakers blame global warming for upsetting the flavor and balance of grape harvests

Paul Krugman: How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?  And lots of commentary on this one: Discover, Mark Thoma, Brad DeLong, Clusterstock, Curious Capitalist, Infectious Greed, Crossing Wall Street (HT: Abnormal Returns)

Now you can feel better: people who regularly drink alcohol also exercise more.

Eric Posner: don’t take international law!

Law schools have always offered public international law courses, as they should. These courses have always been poorly attended, which is also how things should be. In recent years, a number of law schools have expanded and highlighted their international law offerings, and have created elective or mandatory international law courses for the first year. These changes do not rest on any coherent theory of pedagogic priorities. They are marketing gimmicks that play off buzzwords like globalization. They do little more than reflect transitory intellectual fashions. They are patronizing efforts to turn you into citizens-of-the-world. If you have time on your hands and want to learn something that might increase your value to future employers, take statistics!

Via Paul Caron, first U.S. News edition of Best Law Schools: Whose 2007 graduates are most likely to be employed as Federal judicial clerks with Article III Federal judges?  Some surprising results here, at least to me.  For example, North Dakota is number 2, Wyoming and St. Thomas are 5 and 6, and some major top 40 (by U.S. News) schools are missing.  Moreover, some schools (e.g. North Dakota and Seton Hall) report a very high percentage of clerkship placements.  Perhaps Lounge readers with more involvement in the clerkship placement process than I will have insights into what's driving such divergent placement numbers?

 Feminist Law Professor Ann Bartow on Law School Classroom or Meeting of the Connecticut Legislature?

Larry Ribstein and Danielle Citron on The SEC’s Madoff report.

Bill Henderson at Empirical Legal Studies on Drawing the Right Lessons from the Bleak Entry-Level Legal Job Market.

Comments

[Matt]

On North Dakota, might it be that it's almost only their students that apply for district court clerkships in North Dakota (and apply disproportionately to those in South Dakota, North West Minn., and North Eastern Montana)? I don't know if that's enough clerkships to account for the rating, but I suspect that North Dakota grads make up the majority, or a large percentage, of the applicants for those spots. Still, good for them.

[Patrick S. O'Donnell]

Duncan Hollis of Opinio Juris now responds in turn, along with a few other folks: http://opiniojuris.org/2009/09/04/the-utility-of-international-law-courses-a-response-to-posner/

[Patrick S. O'Donnell]

I should have said "responds in turn to Posner...."

[Kim Krawiec]

You might be right, Matt, although one would think that the same might hold true of locations other than N.D. -- although, I'm not sure. Just guessing here, really.

Thanks for the link Patrick.