The Faculty Lounge

Antebellum Monument Trivia

Well, I still haven't heard an answer to my Park Trivia question on Friday, but it's Saturday evening and maybe it's time for a little monument trivia.  I usually hang onto these photos for a while, but I thought I'd use one I took today after lunch.  This is sort of difficult, because the picture isn't the best -- it was overcast today.  I think if I had a better picture this one would be pretty easy.

Who and where?  And by the way, when -- as in when was it put up.

"You Didn't Build" Your Business

Critics have jumped on President Obama's statement that entrepreneurs don't achieve their successes on their own; rather, they benefit from the support of a social structure and infrastructure that make business-building possible. But consider how the critics would respond to a somewhat different phrasing that probably has been expressed by other elected officials and perhaps Obama as well.

Suppose a candidate said that entrepreneurs don't achieve their successes on their own but benefit from the good grace of God. Would business owners be offended by the suggestion that their achievements are the result of more than their own inventiveness, resourcefulness and hard work? I've always appreciated the fact that a Sabbath day of rest reminds us that the world goes on even when we are not working, that we are not responsible for all the good that comes to us.

To be sure, there are two parts to the critique of Obama. On one hand, it is said, he doesn't give sufficient credit to creators of companies. On the other hand, he gives too much credit to government. My alternative phrasing gives credit to God rather than government, and many business owners may feel that they get more help from God than they do from government. Indeed, they may see government as more of a hindrance than a helper. But it's worth remembering that God can put us through tribulations too, as America's farmers are finding this year.

Welcome Jim Gardner To The Lounge

Professor James Gardner, from SUNY Buffalo Law School, will be joining us for a while as a guest in the Lounge.  Jim is the outgoing vice dean for academic affairs, but he stayed very busy with What Are Campaigns For? The Role of Persuasion in Electoral Law and Politics (Oxford 2009) and an edited volume, New Frontiers of State Constitutional Law: Dual Enforcement of Norms (Oxford 2010 with Jim Rossi).  He has a JD from Yale and joined SUNY Buffalo in 2001.  He'll be visiting at McGill in the fall and Florida State in the spring - but right now we're very pleased that he'll be visiting with us for a month or so! 

Clowney on Monuments and Race

I've just read Stephen Clowney's lengthy and important article, "Landscape Fairness: Removing Discrimination from the Built Environment," which is an intensive study of monuments -- statues, parks, and the like -- around Lexington, Kentucky.  Though the article uses Lexington as a test case, Steve's discussion of the ways that  American history (largely the era of slavery and Civil War) is treated and how that affects how people -- particuarly African Americans -- think about history and how they behave today.  Here is his abstract:

At its core, this Article argues that the everyday landscape is one of the most overlooked instruments of modern race-making. Drawing on evidence from geography and sociology, the paper begins by demonstrating that the built environment inscribes selective and misleading versions of the past in solid, material forms. These narratives — told through street renamings, parks, monuments, and buildings — ultimately marginalize African-American communities and transmit ideas about racial power across generations. 

After demonstrating that the landscape remains the agar upon which racial hierarchies replicate themselves, the Article then pivots and examines current efforts to rid the built environment of discriminatory spaces. I put forth that contemporary attacks on the landscape are doomed to fail. The approaches suggested by academics in law and geography either turn a blind eye to the political economy of local decision-making or fail to consider entrenched legal precedent. 

The final section of the manuscript lays out a policy proposal that could spark a new focus on issues of “landscape fairness.” I argue in favor of a set of basic procedural requirements that would force jurisdictions to reconsider the discriminatory places within their borders. Procedural mandates would force government to internalize values it might otherwise ignore, allow citizen-critics to challenge dominant historical narratives, and push communities to view the past (and future) in much more diverse terms.

Ranking Law Journals and the Limits of Journal Citation Reports

Theodore Eisenberg  and Martin T. Wells have a new paper up on ssrn, "Ranking Law Journals and the Limits of Journal Citation Reports."  Their abstract is as follows:

Rankings of schools, scholars, and journals emphasize ordinal rank. Journal rankings published by Journal Citation Reports (JCR) are widely used to assess research quality, which influences important decisions by academic departments, universities, and countries. We study refereed law journal rankings by JCR, Washington and Lee Law Library (W&L), and the Australian Research Council (ARC). Both JCR’s and W&L’s multiple measures of journals can be represented by a single latent factor. Yet JCR’s rankings are uncorrelated with W&L’s. The differences appear to be attributable to underrepresentation of law journals in JCR’s database.  We illustrate the effects of database bias on rankings through case studies of three elite journals, the Journal of Law & Economics, Supreme Court Review, and the American Law & Economics Review. Cluster analysis is a supplement to ordinal ranking and we report the results of a cluster analysis of law journals. The ARC does organize journals into four large groups and provides generally reasonable rankings of journals. But anomalies exist that could be avoided by checking the ARC groups against citation-based measures. Entities that rank should use their data to provide meaningful clusters rather than providing only ordinal ranks.

They have done a lot of very serious work to look at how to rank journals.  They use citations data from Thomson Reuters' Journal Citations Report (JCR), John Doyle of Washington and Lee, who uses Westlaw's law journal's database, and also the Australian Research Council.   There's a lot to talk about here and I hope to return to this important article again soon, but right now I want to focus on this paragraph:

 

Call For Papers: Ethics 20/20 Symposium

Due to a sudden and unavoidable change of topic,  the Northern Kentucky Law Review now plans to  host a symposium on the proposed Ethics 20/20 changes, especially as they relate to transactional lawyers.

The symposium will be on October 20th, and the students would like to have submissions of abstracts or works-in-progress by August 15th to settle the speaker lineup.  Since NKU is located in the Cincinnati area, most of you will have easy airline access to the symposium.

Those interested in participating and publishing should send submissions to: Ian D. Mitchell Editor in Chief Northern Kentucky Law Review 2012-13 [email protected].

House Saves Grandpa From the Death Panels—And Makes Him a Guinea Pig Instead

    In all the attention given in the past couple of years (to say nothing of the past couple of months) to the individual mandate and its effect on health care access, other key features of PPACA, which address other aspects of the health care system, have received less attention than they deserve. Two remarkable things happened yesterday that highlight the importance of addressing health care quality.

    First, newly published research suggests that each year in the U.S., more than 100,000 men undergo expensive, invasive surgeries that leave many of them impotent and/or incontinent, all without increasing their chances of survival or providing other clinical benefits.

    The New England Journal of Medicine published the results of what one oncologist not involved with the study called a potentially “game-changing” experiment involving men with early-stage prostate cancer. Most new diagnoses of prostate cancer are early-stage, and about 90% of those who receive this diagnosis choose immediate treatment with surgery (or radiation). But despite the considerable financial and human costs of the surgery, it’s not clear that the surgery actually improves patients’ odds or duration of survival.

    To examine that question, investigators randomly assigned 731 men either to surgical removal of the prostate or to an observation group, where the cancer was monitored but not treated unless it showed signs of progressing. After 15 years, there was no statistical difference between the two groups in terms of either overall mortality or mortality due to prostate cancer. A secondary analysis, however, suggested that surgery may benefit men with high Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) levels.

    The results are complex, and an accompanying editorial argues that the sample size of 731 rendered the study insufficiently powered to draw conclusions about the comparative efficacy of surgery and watchful waiting. Notably, the investigators sought 2,000 subjects, but could only recruit 731, presumably because, in the face of a cancer diagnosis, being randomized to “watchful waiting” seems risky. But it’s precisely the point of health services research — and analogous research in other areas, including legal services, see, e.g., Greiner and Pattanayak’s RCT of Harvard legal aid offers — that what seems, based often on not much more than mere intuition (and perhaps a cognitive bias that favors action over inaction), to be the most effective option is not always so in fact.

    The second remarkable thing that happened yesterday is that the House proposed to gut federal involvement in health services research, a diverse category of research of which the prostate cancer study is but one example. And this, despite the fact that, historically, health services research has received only about 1% of the budget of NIH, the largest funder of basic biomedical research. Health services research evaluates, and often compares, actual health services delivery systems and interventions (e.g., treatments, diagnostics, or screening and other preventative measures), as they are implemented in actual practice settings.

    The House Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies passed the spending bill for fiscal year (FY) 2013; it goes to full committee next week. Among other cuts, section 227 of the bill (see pp. 90-93) eliminates, effective October 1, 2012, the uber-wonky, but critically important, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). Located within HHS, the mission of AHRQ (which had a $405 million budget in FY 2012) is to improve health care quality, safety, efficiency, and effectiveness. AHRQ is the major funder of health services research. Among many, many other studies, for instance, it helped fund the prostate cancer study discussed above. It also studies, and tries to prevent, the medical errors that kill more than 100,000 people a year. The House bill, moreover, prohibits other agencies within the subcommittee’s jurisdiction from assuming AHRQ’s duties unless they already have statutory authority to do so.

    The vote to pass the bill fell along party lines, with the exception of Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), who sided with the Democrats in voting against the bill because he wanted even deeper cuts. And indeed, one possible explanation for the House’s decision is that cutting AHRQ is a somewhat lamentable, but ultimately wise, choice in tight economic times. After all, why spend scarce time and money studying an intervention after it has been marketed, often after having endured rigorous approval processes like those imposed by the FDA?

    This thinking is short-sighted — and dangerous. Much medical practice — like surgeries — was never subjected to rigorous study before it became the standard of care. Much of medicine, in short, isn’t evidence-based. Hence the need for an active movement towards “Evidence Based Medicine.”

Publishers Weekly Reviews "Colors of Confinement"

And it's a rave!

In this provocative and noteworthy collection, published in association with the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, legal scholar Muller (American Inquisition: The Hunt for Japanese American Disloyalty in World War II) presents 65 photographs made from slides he discovered that were taken by photographer Manbo, a Japanese-American interned at the Heart Mountain Relocation Center in Wyoming during WWII. Manbo was active in the camp’s photo club and operated in the vernacular style, shooting color slide film, a recently developed technology and one that was rarely used to document the internment camps. Manbo shot not just the traditional camp views of bleakly uniform buildings, but parades, pastimes, cultural rituals, and family portraits (many of his adorable young son, Billy). The vivid color enhances the pageantry of the events, and the family photos seem almost strangely normal, while another photo shows a toddler gripping the camp’s barbed wire. The book’s three accompanying essays and one memoir of the camp, each by a different author, provide context, and while the photos could mostly be classified as snapshots, their subject matter and the use of Kodachrome film solidifies their unquestionable cultural and historical significance.

My box of books just arrived, so I am guessing it will soon be shipping.

Park Trivia Question

I've been sitting on this image for a while; I'm going to use it to illustrate a post on Barack Obama's syllabus for his race and law class at the University of Chicago in 1994, when Stacey Gahegan and I finally get that paper up on ssrn.  But I think I want to use it now as a trivia question.  

This follows up on my monument trivia question yesterday, which was inspired by Stephen Clowney's paper on race the public landscape, "Landscape Fairness: Removing Discrimination from the Built Environment."  Steve talks about parks in Lexington, Kentucky.

This one is very easy.  It's obvious what the sign is marking.  And I think if you look at the picture closely you can probably make a very educated guess on where this is.  But let me ask, where is this park?  And once we get this squared away, I'll have some thoughts on Steve's article.  One of my questions about Steve's paper, I guess, will be what meaning do we think this park name has now for the neighborhood residents.

We Didn't Build This Blog

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Chronicle on Internal Search v. Succession Planning in Higher Ed

The Chronicle of Higher Education has two interesting posts in its On Hiring blog (here and here) on internal v. external searches in higher ed.  The posts do a good job of surfacing many of the pros and cons of each side -- the national search versus internal succession planning.  I agree with the author and the comments that an institution should avoid a national search that is, practically speaking, just a formal exercise that precedes appointment of the anointed internal candidate.  Indeed, I have heard some potential dean candidates say that they will not enter a search where there is an internal candidate for that very reason.  Also, having served as an associate dean, I also agree with the observation that internal candidates can come with accumulated baggage that may hurt their effectiveness.  That said, as the article notes, there is support in corporate circles and some research for internal succession planning.  What do most law schools do when selecting senior leadership?  Do you discourage internal candidates when doing a national search?

Faculty Hiring: Suffolk

From an email that I received earlier today:

SUFFOLK UNIVERSITY LAW SCHOOL in Boston invites applications for several tenure-track positions starting in the 2013-2014 academic year.  We seek entry-level and lateral candidates with strong academic records and a demonstrated commitment to excellence in teaching and scholarship.  We have particular curricular teaching needs in first-year contracts and first-year property, together with upper-level courses with a focus on health law, business or financial services. We also have foreseeable needs in criminal law and international law. Consideration may also be given to relevant practice experience and community involvement.  Suffolk University is an equal opportunity employer. We encourage applications from women, persons of color, sexual orientation minorities, and others who will contribute to the diversity of the faculty.  Interested candidates should contact Professors Jessica Silbey and Robert Smith, Co-Chairs, Faculty Appointments Committee, at [email protected] and [email protected], with a copy to [email protected], or mail their materials to the Co-Chairs of the Appointments Committee, c/o Janine LaFauci, at Suffolk University Law School, 120 Tremont St., Boston, Massachusetts 02108-4977. 

@JoePaStatue

Steve Clowney has more on the controversy over the JoePa Statue in State College over at propertyprof.  My thoughts are here.  I think (fear) that Steve's going to get his wish.  Public sentiment on the ground in Pennsylvania is really running against the statue.  (See, e.g., the facebook page, "Remove Statue of Joe Paterno on Penn State"; CNN's completely unscientific poll is running wildly against JoePa).  Though I might note that some twitter uses  (or at least one twitter user) are (is) coming to the defense of JoePa. @fightercowboy tweeted on July 13: "@JoePaStatue you will never be taken down. Over my dead body and with 1000s of rounds of spent shells."  I'm sure that was a hyperbole on his part.

I might add that another model than removal would be to add another monument or plaque, which might put the statue and controversy into context.  Assuming the statue is removed, I'll be curious how -- if at all -- this affects the calculations regarding building names on college campuses.

Update: Jeff Pearlman at CNN has an opinion piece saying that the JoePa statue should remain, and be used to start discussion about the place of football on the PSU campus (and I guess in American life in general).  University of Denver Law Professor Tom Russell was quoted extensively in an insidehighereducation story about the statue.  As Tom said, “The university, having failed in its responsibilities, now has a responsibility to repair the harm by having a big and unpleasant conversation,” he continued. “Penn State engaged in the cover-up. So in that way this statue is a piece of evidence -- it’s dirty linen that should remain at least for as long as it takes for Penn State to discuss the harm and try to provide a remedy for the harm.”  (You may recall that Tom led the campaign to get Simkins Hall on UT-Austin's campus renamed.  Simkins was an early 20th century UT Law Professor who had supported the Klan.) 

I agree with Jeff and Tom completely -- and with Ta-Nehisi Coates' op-ed in the Times that Kent Schenkel pointed us to yesterday -- but I think that's precisely the reason that PSU will likely take down the statute.  They want to forget this shameful epsiode in the school's history and forgetting is facilitated by the absence of monuments.  And just to be clear, Steve Clowney's arguing not just for removal of JoePa, but for a replacement that'll get people talking.  So Steve and I are on the same page in general.

Also -- I love the options on ESPN's poll:

What should Penn State do with the Joe Paterno statue?

•  Remove it immediately in wake of Freeh report
•  Leave it in place as reminder of good things Paterno did
•  Remove it sometime before the 2012 season kicks off
•  Make a decision after trials of other Penn State officials   (Total votes: 13,747)

They don't even have the option of leave it up as a reminder of human failings and/or the problems that an obsessive focus on football causes.  The only option in terms of leaving up the statue is as a reminder of the good JoePa did.  I love this.  Further to this, see the discussion at ESPN's website.

Aspiring Law Professors Conference 2012

Arizona State University School of Law is hosting its fourth annual conference for aspiring law prawfs on September 15.  Paul Horwitz, from the University of Alabama, will be giving the keynote address.  You can find more information here.

Faculty Hiring: UNLV

From our friends in Las Vegas:

UNIVERSITY OF NEVADA, LAS VEGAS—WILLIAM S. BOYD SCHOOL OF LAW invites applications for one or more tenure-track or tenured faculty positions beginning in the 2013-2014 academic year.  We seek candidates with excellent academic records and experience and who have a strong commitment to scholarship and teaching. 

We have a particular need for a clinical faculty member to join our outstanding clinical program.  The Thomas & Mack Legal Clinic is collaborative and aims to provide an integrated academic and practice-based educational experience to students, provide service to communities in need of legal assistance, and promote research and policy related to the intersection of law and society.  The Thomas & Mack Clinic has programs in six different areas: Appellate, Education Advocacy, Family Justice, Immigration, Innocence, and Juvenile Justice. 

We invite applications from dynamic scholar-clinicians who would complement our current clinical programs, or who would be able to develop new clinical offerings. We have a particular interest in expanding our clinical offerings to include a transactional, consumer law or community development clinic.

The William S. Boyd School of Law has an integrated tenure track in which faculty who teach in the clinic share equal status with other faculty.  Clinical faculty also teach non-clinical courses; receive generous support for summer research and student research assistants; and are eligible to apply for semester-long research leaves every third year.  The clinical program and law school are the beneficiaries of an active and engaged legal community, who look to the law school for leadership and partnership in addressing the community’s legal and policy needs.   

Candidates must have earned a JD from an ABA-accredited law school or an equivalent degree.  Applicants for Full Professor must have records of substantial accomplishment and qualifications sufficient to be awarded tenure.  Salary will be competitive, based on experience.  The Appointments Committee will begin reviewing applications immediately.

The Boyd School of Law is now building on its record of success during its first decade as the public law school of Nevada.  We have a diverse faculty of new and experienced legal educators drawn from top institutions, and we seek colleagues who share our enthusiasm for legal scholarship and education.  The Boyd School of Law has 477 students enrolled (347 full-time, 130 part-time) and 44 full-time faculty, and enjoys state-of-the-art facilities at the center of the UNLV campus.  For more information on the Boyd School of Law, please refer to our website at http://www.law.unlv.edu/.

UNLV is a premier metropolitan research university with 27,000 students and more than 1000 full-time faculty.  With more than 120 graduate programs, including 38 doctoral and professional programs, UNLV is Nevada’s largest comprehensive doctoral degree granting institution.  It provides traditional and professional academic programs for a diverse student body and encourages innovative and interdisciplinary approaches to teaching, learning, and scholarship. For more information on the University, please refer to the UNLV website at http://www.unlv.edu.  Las Vegas is a diverse and entrepreneurial city that boasts unparalleled access to world-class restaurants and entertainment, all within a short drive to some of the nation’s premier outdoor attractions.

Applicants should submit a letter of interest, along with a detailed resume, three professional references, and off-prints of your published works.

Contact:  Professor Ruben J. Garcia, Chair, Appointments Committee, UNLV, William S. Boyd School of Law, 4505 S. Maryland Parkway, Box 451003, Las Vegas, NV  89154-1003, or [email protected]. 

UNLV is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity educator and employer committed to excellence through diversity.

Two Cheers for Law Reviews

From our friend Scott Pryor:

In the July issue of The Atlantic Cato Institute Fellow Walter Olson reiterates some long-standing complaints about the place of law reviews in the world of legal scholarship. You can read “Abolish the Law Reviews!” here. Declining circulation, untimely publication schedules, and the inability to edit post-publication are three of Olson’s criticisms of the current print-based model of law reviews. All true but nothing new.

Olson goes on to note that it is now in the blogs where we find cutting-edge legal discussions: “Much of the intellectual groundwork for the Supreme Court's ObamaCare rulings was laid at blogs like Volokh Conspiracy (for libertarians and conservatives trying to overturn the individual mandate) and Jack Balkin's Balkinization (for liberals defending it).” In other words, it was the blogs and not the law reviews that provided the intellectual fodder for the most significant constitutional law case of the young century. A nice insight but …

The most influential bloggers on ObamaCare or any other significant legal matter didn’t fall from the sky. They cut their teeth in the law reviews. The intellectual hero of those challenging the law is Randy Barnett, and he has labored for years within the constraints of academic legal publishing (articles, essays, books; you name it, he’s written it). I submit that in fact it is the practiced constraints of legal academic publishing that makes the work of those who subsequently venture into the blogosphere so valuable. Great pianists practiced their scales; great legal bloggers practiced their craft and honed their intellectual skills in the salt mines of law reviews.

None of this means that Walter Olson’s other criticisms are not well-taken; they are. The explosion of the number of law reviews and the dubious quality of much of what is written means that finding value requires diligent searching. But let’s not be too quick to discount the real value that law reviews provide. We wouldn’t have the current flourishing of good legal blogging without them.

Braucher on Law School Debt Repayment

Commercial law expert Jean Braucher has a thoughtful post on law school debt repayment over at Credit Slips, entitled "Repaying Debt for Law School:  Federal Programs Make It Doable, Not Easy."

Law School Faculty Hiring Committee Members And Chairs 2012 - 2013

It's time to compile the names of law school faculty hiring committee members!  The AALS meat market conference is happening weeks earlier than usual this year.  If you're going on the law teaching market this fall, you'll no doubt be paticipating in the faculty appointments register.  But a savvy candidate needs additional information to help her navigate what will likely be a challenging employment market.  Thankfully, Sarah Lawsky can help.  She's hanging out here with the inside scoop.  And if your school hasn't posted its committee members yet...what are you waiting for?

More Monument Trivia

With Al's encouragement (although I suspect it will be low hanging fruit in comparison with the ones he comes up with). Who & Where?

 

Law School Course on Corporate Compliance and Ethics Programs

The WSJ Law Blog had a recent posting about faculty members at the University of Houston Law Center who will be teaching a course on corporate compliance and ethics programs (i.e., the policies and procedures an organization implements to ensure that employees abide by its legal obligations and ethical principles).  The post makes the following claim for the course:

"Its professors say its the first class on corporate compliance offered by an American law school."

Hmmm.  Hate to burst your bubble, but we taught that course at South Texas College of Law (just across town from Uof H) back in 2003.  I even wrote an article for Etikos (see starting on p. 5) describing the origins of the course, and how I taught it both as an elective and a skills course.  The course was a great experience, and I am proposing it for a course here at University of Dayton.  And as the WSJ post highlights, this is definitely a job that while a JD might not be required, it is a big plus, as compliance officers are overwhelmingly JD's.