The Faculty Lounge

Elizabeth Van Lew Biography

I see that Elizabeth Varon's biography of Elizabeth Van Lew is on sale (I misread the OUP sales catalog this morning and though this was forthcoming).  Cribbing now from the OUP webpage:

Northern sympathizer in the Confederate capital, daring spymaster, postwar politician: Elizabeth Van Lew was one of the most remarkable figures in American history, a woman who defied the conventions of the nineteenth-century South. In Southern Lady, Yankee Spy, historian Elizabeth Varon provides a gripping, richly researched account of the woman who led what one historian called "the most productive espionage operation of the Civil War." Under the nose of the Confederate government, Van Lew ran a spy ring that gathered intelligence, hampered the Southern war effort, and helped scores of Union soldiers to escape from Richmond prisons.
Varon describes a woman who was very much a product of her time and place, yet continually took controversial stands--from her early efforts to free her family's slaves, to her daring wartime activities and beyond. Varon's powerful biography brings Van Lew to life, showing how she used the stereotypes of the day to confound Confederate authorities (who suspected her, but could not believe a proper Southern lady could be a spy), even as she brought together Union sympathizers at all levels of society, from slaves to slaveholders. After the war, a grateful President Ulysses S. Grant named her postmaster of Richmond--a remarkable break with custom for this politically influential post. But her Unionism, Republican politics, and outspoken support of racial justice earned her a lifetime of scorn in the former Confederate capital. Even today, Elizabeth Van Lew remains a controversial figure in her beloved Richmond, remembered as the "Crazy Bet" of Lost Cause propaganda. Elizabeth Varon's account rescues her from both derision and oblivion, depicting an intelligent, resourceful, highly principled woman who remained, as she saw it, true to her country to the end.

And you know what?  She has a pretty cool gravemarker in Richmond's Shockoe Hill Cemetery.  That's the illustration of this post.  There's also a school on the site of her house on Church Hill, which I ought to post about at some point.

The Passing of Robert Bork

Robert Bork, Yale law professor, Solicitor General, the man who fired Archibald Cox, Circuit Court Judge, and most notably, failed Supreme Court nominee in 1987, has died at age 85.  He tried to engage the Senate and the nation in a real discussion about constitutional law.  Once rejected, no later nominee has ever dared to offer anything but the most bland assurances and comments.  Had he been confirmed, Roe might have been junked in Casey and Lawrence  might have gone the other way.  But Obama would now have another appointment.  What one hand gives another takes away.  It's a pity that he will be remembered more for his failed nomination and the "Saturday Night Massacre" than he will for his intellect. 

Costco Prepares For Armageddon

Way back in the stone age, as a young pup, when I was blogging at Concurring Opinions, I was intrigued by Costco's entry into the casket business.  Now those crafty marketers are back, staking out that intermediate space between death and life (as we presently know it): the world that requires a 1 year emergency food kit for a family of four.  

And here's a hint for those of you considering ordering those 30,144 servings of delicious dried food ("simple to prepare without electricity") as a Christmas present: wait until December 27 and Costco is going to hack $500 dollars off the price.  

Of course, it's hard to perfectly time these things and you don't want to get it wrong.  Perhaps its best to pay full price and stock up today.  You'll probably want to order the 2000 pounds of Organic Valley dry milk to go go with it - one gets thirsty underground.

Cornell on the Second Amendment's History

Check out Saul Cornell's piece at the Daily Beast on the history of the second amendment.  Here is a short excerpt:

If the Heller court had simply said, “Look, most Americans think the Amendment is about an individual right, and no one really cares what James Madison or the average man on the street in 1791 thought”—then the case would be pretty uncontroversial. Instead, Scalia produced a pompous, error-filled opinion that has done more to discredit his beloved originalism than a generation of liberal academics ever could.

I'm sure Saul's Well Regulated Militia and the rest of his body of work of applied legal history will be getting renewed attention in the coming months.

Hofstra Names New Law School Dean

Hofstra is removing the "interim" tag from Eric Lane's title, naming him the law school's ninth dean, effective January 1, 2013.  Story here.  Lane joined the Hofstra law faculty in the 1970's.  His areas of expertise include constitutional law, statutory interpretation, and legislative process.

Redemption Songs: Courtroom Stories of Slavery

Browsing the spring/summer Oxford University Press catalog I see that Lea VanderVelde's Redemption Songs: Courtroom Stories of Slavery will be out next year.  Cribbing now from the catalog description:

There is no more legendary case in American legal history than Dred Scott v. Sanford. An extraordinary example of a slave suing his master for freedom, it led to a devastating pro-slavery ruling by Chief Justice Roger Taney in the Supreme Court and helped precipitate the Civil War. But was it so remarkable? Did others fight for liberty in court?

In Redemption Songs, legal scholar Lea VanderVelde unearths the astonishing history of how slaves challenged the "peculiar institution" with that most American of weapons, litigation. The author, together with Missouri's state archivist and other researchers, found roughly 300 "freedom suits" filed in St. Louis between 1814 and 1860. More than 100 ended with the words, "Plaintiff be liberated and entirely set free from the defendant." Slaves based their claims on four grounds: they were Native Americans, previously had been free, had lived in free territory, or had a free mother. VanderVelde selects a dozen lawsuits from across this period for close examination; each opens a window on a closed world of oppression-and defiance. Here, for example, is the saga of Moses Shipman; freed by Revolutionary War veteran David Shipman, he fled from Kentucky to Illinois in the 1820s, was kidnapped with his family, and dragged back to St. Louis. Here, too, is the story of Leah Charleville, a wily survivor living in a shadowy world of illegality, playing off two free black men as her lovers and hosting a ring of thieves at her boarding house. Savvy in the ways of the law, she went to court four times, securing freedom for herself and her children.

With deep appreciation for the courage required for a slave to challenge a master in court, VanderVelde reshapes our understanding of border-state slavery and the impact of the seemingly powerless on American law. 

 Update: I have an essay review of this important book forthcoming in the April 2017 issue of the Michigan Law Review.

Oops. Wrong Hook For His Lede.

That's got to be how Glenn Reynolds is feeling.  He opens his pro-gun USA Today editorial with this:

After a shooting spree," author William Burroughs once said, "they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it." Burroughs continued: "I sure as hell wouldn't want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police and the military.

Burroughs shot and killed his 28 year old wife, Joan.  He was convicted of manslaughter and there are good reaons to think that when he shot his wife, he was  drunk and/or playing a William Tell game, attempting to shoot a glass of gin off the top of her head.  

For a different law professor's view on guns,  my colleague Lisa McElroy offers this.  

H/T to a far less delicate Brian Leiter.   

The 150th Anniversary of General Orders 11

One hundred fifty years ago today, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant issued the following order:

1. The Jews, as a class violating every regulation of trade established by the Treasury Department and also department orders, are hereby expelled from the Department [of the Tennessee] within twenty-four hours from the receipt of this order.
2. Post commanders will see to it that all of this class of people be furnished passes and required to leave, and any one returning after such notification will be arrested and held in confinement until an opportunity occurs of sending them out as prisoners, unless furnished with permit from headquarters.
3. No passes will be given these people to visit headquarters for the purpose of making personal application of trade permits.

President Lincoln soon overturned the order, but General Orders 11, as it is known, dogged Grant through the rest of his career, and long thereafter.  As a kid growing up in New Jersey in the 60s and 70s, I heard many people (including my dad)  mutter nasty things about Ulysses S. Grant -- that he was a drunkard, a fool, and an anti-semite.  I never heard about the basis of the antisemitism charge, though.  Turns out it was General Orders 11.

Just this morning (appropriately!), I finished Jonathan Sarna's new little book When General Grant Expelled the Jews.  It places the order expelling the Jews in the context not only of the war but of Grant's larger career, which turned out to be a trajectory towards commitment to human rights.  Grant's sorrow over General Orders 11 was part of the engine of that, and it led him to champion Jewish causes both at home and abroad in ways I never knew about.

It's a good, quick read.  Check it out.

Dean Parham Williams Makes It Four

Lincoln Memorial University has named Parham Williams its new Interim Dean of the law school.   LMU is making another run at ABA accreditation after the ABA rejected  its application last year.  It is bringing in Williams to serve as interim dean for the next year, guiding them through the accreditation application process.  Sydney Beckman recently stepped down as LMU's law dean.  

My co-blogger Tim Zinnecker noted, a couple of years back, that Williams was one of only a small cohort of academics who have served as dean at three or more law schools.  (He was law dean at Chapman, Mississippi and Samford.)  Now Williams joins the four-or-more club, along with Nell Newton at Notre Dame and Tom Read (who leads with five different deaning gigs.)  

Signposts: New Directions in Southern Legal History ... coming soon

I'm delighted to report that Sally Hadden and Patricia Minter's co-edited volume, Signposts: New Directions in Southern Legal History will be coming out from University of Georgia Press soon.  Cribbing now from the UGA Press website for the book:

In Signposts, Sally E. Hadden and Patricia Hagler Minter have assembled seventeen essays, by both established and rising scholars, that showcase new directions in southern legal history across a wide range of topics, time periods, and locales. The essays will inspire today's scholars to dig even more deeply into the southern legal heritage, in much the same way that David Bodenhamer and James Ely's pathbreaking 1984 work, Ambivalent Legacy, inspired an earlier generation to take up the study of southern legal history.

Contributors to Signposts explore a wide range of subjects related to southern constitutional and legal thought, including real and personal property, civil rights, higher education, gender, secession, reapportionment, prohibition, lynching, legal institutions such as the grand jury, and conflicts between bench and bar. A number of the essayists are concerned with transatlantic connections to southern law and with marginalized groups such as women and native peoples. Taken together, the essays in Signposts show us that understanding how law changes over time is essential to understanding the history of the South.

The contributors are Lisa Lindquist Dorr, Laura F. Edwards, James W. Ely Jr., Tim Alan Garrison, Sally E. Hadden, Roman J. Hoyos, Thomas N. Ingersoll, Jessica K. Lowe, Patricia Hagler Minter, Cynthia Nicoletti, Susan Richbourg Parker, Christopher W. Schmidt, Jennifer M. Spear, Christopher R. Waldrep, Peter Wallenstein, Charles L. Zelden, and me.

It will not surprise faculty lounge readers that I'm very much looking forward to this volume.  My essay asks that intellectual historians of the pre-Civil War South more fully integrate lawyers and judges into their story.  In particular I argue that because the law (in this case treatises and appellate decisions) was closely linked to economic and demographic reality that legal thinkers show how people who truck in ideas were closely related to their society, rather than distinct from it.  This is a point of substantial contention among historians of southern intellectual history.  Though my dataset in this chapter is largely drawn from appellate cases, I develop some of these themes about how lawyers and judges reflected the ideas of their era in a recent article on addresses by judges and lawyers here at UNC before the Civil War.  (And in an earlier essay on addresses at the University of Alabama before the war.)

I must add that I suggested they use a picture of Blackhead Signpost Road in Southampton as the cover art.  I thought it fit so perfectly with the legal history of the South -- the road, after all, gets its name from the slave who was executed there and whose head was left on a post as a warning to others.  Wow. About this I will have a lot -- lot -- more to say in the spring when I start talking about the Nat Turner rebellion trials.  Obviously wiser (or maybe it's calmer) heads prevailed in this case.

The Risk of Revictimization and the Ethics of Covering School Shootings: What Journalists Can Learn from IRBs

Updated below

Like most parents, after learning about the latest mass school shooting this morning, my thoughts immediately went to my own kindergartener. And of course, like most reading this blog, I thought about how poorly we handle guns and mental illness. Before too long, though, I couldn’t help but make a less direct connection between today’s events and my scholarly interests. I’m thinking of the way journalists cover school shootings as compared to how we regulate human subjects research.

As I write in The Heterogeneity Problem, 65 Admin. L. Rev. __ at 14-16 (forth. June 2013):

Studies on sexual abuse and assault, grief, war, terrorism, natural disasters and various other traumatic experiences are critical to better understanding and addressing these phenomena. But exposure to trauma — whether as a survivor or as a first rescuer or other third party — often causes substantial psychological morbidity. . . . Given their potentially fragile state, IRBs understandably worry that “questioning [or otherwise studying] individuals who have experienced distressing events or who have been victimized in any number of ways . . . . might rekindle disturbing memories, producing a form of re-victimization.”

IRBs — local licensing committees who operate according to federal statute and regulation and must approve most studies involving humans before researchers can even approach anyone about possibly participating — sometimes impose burdensome requirements on the way trauma research is conducted in order to protect adult subjects from the risk of revictimization. And they do so in addition to applying regulations that require that researchers disclose that risk (and others) to subjects.

Contrast this with the way journalists cover trauma.

Curtis Bridgeman named Dean of Willamette University College of Law

Professor Curtis Bridgeman, who is the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and James and Margaret Hennessy Corry Professor of Law at Florida State University, has been named the new dean of Willamette University College of Law.  He succeeds Peter Letsou and will take his position on July 1, 2013.   Bridgeman, who holds his JD and Phd (Philosophy) from Vanderbilt and clerked for Gilbert Merritt of the Sixth Circuit, is a leading scholar in commercial and contract law.  He joined the FSU faculty in 2004. 

The Smithsonian and Slavery

Mark Auslander's recent article in Southern Spaces, "Enslaved Labor and Building the Smithsonian: Reading the Stones," shows that the stones used to build the original Smithsonian (now known as "The Castle") were quarried by slaves.  The Washington Post has a story about this here.  I guess at this point none of this should surprise me; slavery was so ubiquitous.  When I have some more time I want to talk about Mark's work and about his reliance on probate records to trace the lineage of the slaves who worked at the quarry in Maryland.  And maybe I'll join that with a little talk about the controversy over Jefferson as a slave owner.

Update: Check out the comments to the Post article; there are over 700 as of 5 pm and a bunch are raising the issue of reparations.

The image is of the Smithsonian Building from the Library of Congress' Making of American website.

Rachel Van Cleave Named Permanent Dean At Golden Gate Law

Rachel Van Cleave, who was appointed interim dean of Golden Gate University School of Law last August, has now been named the law school's permanent dean. She is a graduate of UC Hastings College of Law and joined Golden Gate in 2004.

Harold Koh To Leave Washington For Better Pizza

Sick of Washington DC pizza and working as a federal employee, Harold Koh is apparently returning to New Haven next month.  He will rejoin the Yale Law faculty.  

Utah Law Dean Hiram Chodosh Becoming Claremont McKenna President

Hiram Chodosh, the dean of the University of Utah College of Law, has been tapped as the new president of Claremont McKenna College.  He will leave Utah and move to the LA area this summer.  This is a very notable move both because Claremont is an elite school and because it is a liberal arts institution with no law school.  Chodosh does not have a Ph.D.

Chodosh arrives in the aftermath of a sadly familiar law school problem: the former dean of admissions at Claremont resigned earlier this year after fabricating undergraduate admissions data.  

AALS Sanctions Villanova Law

The AALS has placed Villanova on two years of probation for reporting false admissions data to the ABA.  This is just further fallout from the story that surfaced almost two years ago.  More details are at Leiter.  

Texas Tech Seeks Visitors

From an email that I received earlier today:

Texas Tech University School of Law invites applications from exceptional individuals to fill several visiting faculty positions for the 2013-2014 academic year.   Our curricular needs are flexible, and we encourage applications without regard to any specific field of expertise.  However, it is anticipated that we will have particular needs for Torts, Professional Responsibility and Intellectual Property.  

Texas Tech University, located in Lubbock, Texas, is a state-supported National Research University with an enrollment that exceeds 32,000 students.  The law school has approximately 700 students and 40 full-time faculty members.  The law school is an integral part of the University and offers 12 dual-degree programs with other Texas Tech schools and colleges.  The Lubbock metropolitan area is home to 250,000 people, enjoys affordable housing, abundant sunshine, friendly people, and offers easy access to other parts of the country.  For more information, visit our website at http://www.law.ttu.edu/.

Texas Tech is an affirmative action/Equal Opportunity Employer.  We strongly encourage applications from women, minorities, persons with disabilities, and veterans, and we consider the needs of dual-career couples.  Please send your cover letter, resume, and contact information for three professional references to Professor John L. Watts, Chair, Personnel Committee, Texas Tech University School of Law, 1802 Hartford Avenue, Lubbock, TX 79409-0004, or john.watts@ttu.edu. 

Faculty Meetings: Yea or Nay?

I know this is a radical idea so just go with me for a moment.  I only intend it is a thought experiment or hypo if you will.

Over the years, I've experienced faculty meetings that have been mercifully short and faculty meetings that have been disproportionately long given the subject matter under discussion.  I've been at faculty meetings where important subjects were discussed and where important subjects were tabled due to lack of time.  But as the years have gone on, and more and more people (even those who were slower on the uptake 10-15 years ago) have started airing views about important issues via email, it seems that faculty meetings are sometimes just icing on the cake for an issue that has already been discussed in detail via email.

So I started wondering if faculty meetings are actually worth the candle anymore, at least the once-a-month obligatory scheduled meetings that are typically the case for most faculties.  While I don't necessarily like the idea of doing business over email rather than face-to-face, it does seem that a lot of issues are discussed in more detail and with more time/thought devoted to them over email than in person.  And email at least theoretically can accommodate more voices than a time-limited faculty meeting where some folks might be reticent to speak up.  While it's easy to hit 'delete' and ignore email discussions (which may be an argument in favor of face-to-face meetings), it's also easy to tune people out during a meeting or to not show up to a meeting if uninterested in the subject matter.  Also, it's often the case that a faculty member will miss a faculty meeting due to another commitment, but can still use email to express his or her views fully prior to the meeting.

There has been some sociological research suggesting that folks are less civil over email than they would be face-to-face, and we've probably all seen some examples of that in real life.  But is that so terrible?  At least people get to express their views fully.  And if people are uncivil on email, their thoughts are likely to be discounted anyway so it may end up hurting their own position.  Further, if email exchanges become worryingly uncivil (eg bordering on defamatory), the administration can always impose a code of conduct.  I'm sure more than one dean has warned faculty members about the kinds of things that shouldn't appear in emails either for legal reasons or with respect to expectations of collegiality.

I know that the idea of stopping or scaling back monthly faculty meetings might seem wrong on an intuitive level, but it's hard for me to come up with reasons why there should be scheduled monthly faculty meetings.  There are some issues faculties will need to vote on, but promotions and appointments cases are often done through special faculty meetings, rather than at standard monthly meetings.  And other issues requiring a faculty vote could be consolidated and voted on whenever the need arises - or perhaps could be voted on via email?

I don't feel entirely comfortable about raising this issue, but I don't know why given that we do so much over email these days anyway and there seems to be less need for monthly meetings other than to ensure some proportion of the faculty comes together face-to-face to exchange ideas.  Is this a good enough reason, particularly given increasing competing demands on faculty time? 

OK - so everyone let me have it now!  It really is just a thought experiment and I'm interested in what people think.

Monument to Slaves -- Coming Today to Union County, North Carolina

My colleague Bill Turnier reminded me that today there is a new monument to African Americans who served the Confederate cause coming to Monroe, North Carolina (in Union County).  WUNC, the local NPR station, ran a short story on this this morning -- apparently the monument will list the names of 10 African American youths, nine of whom were slaves, who served the Confederate army.  According to the story this is the first monument to African Americans in Union County.  I'm sorry that I couldn't attend this -- just too much work to be done here to get away for it.

Though NPR spun this as honoring African Americans, I think this has a lot more to do with neo-Confederate history about loyal slaves who fought for (or in this case worked as servants to) the Confederacy.  Thus, I'd classify this more as a modern day faithful slave monument than as a monument to the achievements of African Americans.

One other thing: the story I linked to above from the Charlotte Observer mentions that many years later those people received small state pensions as Civil War veterans.  I've been meaning to look systematically at the southern state pensions to African Americans.  The last time I started investigating this, I focused on South Carolina -- and as I recall the state started giving pensions to African American "veterans" substantially later than it gave them to white veterans.

I guess I need to add this to the list of war monuments that classify Americans based on race.

The image is of the North Carolina monument at Appomattox.

Update: Here is the Charlotte Observer story about the dedication ceremony.  As I predicted, the slaves are being used to promote Confederate heritgage.  But what I found of particular interest is that one of the people there is the daughter -- yes, daughter, not remote descendant -- of one of the slaves.  She was born in the 1920s, when her father was elderly.