The Faculty Lounge

LSAC and Predicting Law School Applicants for 2016-17, Part 23

The LSAC is now reporting that "As of 05/13/16, there are 333,855 applications submitted by 51,894 applicants for the 2016–2017 academic year. Applicants are up 1.1% and applications are up 1.6% from 2015–2016. Last year at this time, we had 92% of the preliminary final applicant count."  The last post in this series is here.  The next post in this series is here.

Legal History Student Research Colloqium

I want to pass along the following announcement about a Student Research Colloquium run by the American Society for Legal History.  It looks terrific!

The American Society for Legal History will host a Student Research Colloquium (SRC) on Wednesday, October 26, and Thursday, October 27, 2016, immediately preceding the ASLH’s annual meeting in Toronto, Canada.  The SRC offers a small group of graduate and law students an opportunity to work on their in-progress dissertations and law review articles with distinguished ASLH-affiliated scholars. 

The SRC’s target audience includes early post-coursework graduate students and law students interested in legal history.  The SRC seeks to introduce such students to the ASLH and to legal history communities more generally.  Students working in all chronological and geographical fields are encouraged to apply, as are students whose projects engage legal-historical themes but who have not received any formal training in legal history.  Applicants who have not had an opportunity to present their work at ASLH annual meetings or who have otherwise not had an opportunity to discuss their work with legal historians are particularly encouraged to apply. A student may be on the program for the annual meeting and participate in the SRC in the same year.

Each participating student will pre-circulate a twenty-page, double-spaced paper to the entire group.  These papers will provide the foundation for discussion at the colloquium.  The ASLH will provide at least partial and, in most cases, complete reimbursement for travel, hotel, and conference registration costs. 

To apply to the ASLH’s Student Research Colloquium, please submit:

• a cover letter;
• a CV;
• a letter of recommendation from a faculty mentor/advisor;
• a two-page, single-spaced “research statement,” describing an in-progress dissertation or law review article.

The application deadline is July 15, 2016.  Organizers will notify all applicants of their decisions by August 15, 2016.  Please direct questions and applications to John Wertheimer at the following e-mail address:  srcproposals@aslh.net.

What Would Hamilton Do (and Tyler, Too)? [UPDATED]

Historical analogies to contemporary political problems are always inexact, but they can perform two useful purposes:  the first is exemplary and the second is explanatory.  In an exemplary analogy, we look to a much-admired figure of the past, and ask how he or she would have addressed a current issue or responded to a current situation.  An explanatory analogy, on the other hand, helps us understand why people -- then and now -- behave the way they do.

A good illustration of the exemplary analogy is Sandy Levinson’s recent post on Balkinization (and oped in the Dallas Morning News), in which he praises Alexander Hamilton’s support for Thomas Jefferson over Aaron Burr, following the electoral college tie in the election of 1800.  Hamilton, Levinson explains, ultimately backed “his bitter enemy, Thomas Jefferson, for the presidency against his long-time acquaintance and sometime friend Burr” because he “clearly believed that patriots committed to the national interest should rally around Jefferson, whatever their doubts, as against the totally unprincipled and opportunistic and vainglorious Aaron Burr.”

The obvious lesson, according to Levinson, is that current Republicans should follow Hamilton’s example by abandoning Donald Trump and supporting, or at least not opposing, the eventual Democratic candidate. “Surely Hamilton’s words would resonate in today’s political spectrum,” he says.

For whatever reason, however, Republicans are not about to follow Levinson’s advice.  With only a few notable exceptions – Sen. Ben Sasse and the two former presidents Bush – Republicans are lining up behind their presumptive nominee.  Why?

This brings us to the explanatory use of historical analogies.  No matter what the principle, divided political parties have almost always come to ruin, and the recovery has generally taken more than one election cycle.  Consider the election of 1840, in which the Whigs swept into office on the slogan “Tippecanoe and Tyler too.”  Not only did William Henry Harrison win the presidency, but his party also took control of both houses of Congress.  John Tyler, a former Democrat, was an afterthought (“too”), until President Harrison died only a month following his inauguration.

To their chagrin and consternation, the Whig leaders suddenly discovered that the new president did not support the party platform which, as Abraham Lincoln said early in his career, was “short and sweet,” meaning support for a national bank, internal improvements, and a high protective tariff. 

True to his roots rather than his party, Tyler twice vetoed bills establishing a Bank of the United States.  In response, most of his cabinet resigned, and he was formally expelled from the Whig Party.

The Whigs who exiled President Tyler believed that they would be able to elect Henry Clay in 1844, but he was defeated by the Democrat James Polk, who ran with Tyler’s implicit support.  The Whigs would win the presidency only once more (in 1848) before their party imploded over the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854.

This pattern has been repeated consistently over U.S. history.  A divided party has almost always lost at least two elections in a row:  the divided Democrats of 1860 lost the next six elections; the divided Republicans of 1912 lost again in 1916; the divided Republicans of 1964 won in 1968, but only because the Democrats were even more divided that year, subsequently losing two in a row themselves. lost two in a row, and so did the divided Democrats of 1968.  The divided Democrats squeaked through in 1948, but lost badly in 1952 and 1956.  Even anti-Trump Republicans -- with their sights set on 2020 -- probably recognize that widespread abandonment of a president or candidate has almost always led to at least one subsequent loss, even after reunifying.

As a Democrat, my sincere hope is that Republicans will put party loyalty aside and recognize the looming disastrousness of a Trump presidency.  As a historian, however, I understand why they might not.

Teaching a New Class

This summer, I'll be teaching Energy Law for the first time as part of Berkeley's Professional LLM program.  I've never taught the class before, nor did I ever take it or any related courses (environmental law, natural resources law, oil and gas law, or public utilities law) while in law school. It's also new in terms of structure -- the class is scheduled for three hours a day, for eight consecutive days -- which poses challenges of its own (in terms pacing, reading assignments, etc.).

Fortunately, I'm not a total novice -- energy was my primary practice group back during my law firm days (if you're wondering how someone who had no background or coursework in energy came to work primarily in the field as a lawyer, the answer is an old-fashioned one: I was randomly assigned to the practice group my first day at the firm). And I was lucky enough to have some stellar mentors at the firm who were committed to giving me a thorough foundational grounding in the field. Practice experience is great, but can be somewhat catch-as-can -- had I created a syllabus based solely on what I had done billable work in, my students would have learned everything there is to know about state energy brokering regulations, a fair amount about vegetation management standards ... and nothing at all about the Federal Power Act.*

In any event, teaching in a new area is an experience all new professors go through, and most of us will go through repeatedly as our careers progress. So I figured I'd open this thread up for people to speak their minds on the subject -- anything from advice, to cautionary tales, to amusing anecdotes.

* A side note: My experience starting off as a practicing attorney in a completely new and unfamiliar field made me incredibly grateful for the oft-maligned "traditional" law school education of "learning to think like a lawyer." Even had I taken a class in energy law, there's no way I would have learned the intricacies of Illinois' regulations on energy brokers and how they compared to the standards in New Jersey. But the generalist grounding I got in legal research and writing, plus the broader understanding I had from taking an administrative law class, gave me the intellectual agility necessary to tackle something that was entirely new to me without losing too many steps in the process. "Experiential learning" and clinics are great, and I'm all for them, but there is a lot to be said as well for a generalist legal education that produces lawyers capable of handling a wide and diverse range of topics that might be quite far afield from they originally envisioned they'd be doing when they entered law school.

Garry Jenkins Named Dean Of Minnesota Law

Professor Garry Jenkins, the associate dean of academic affairs at Ohio State Law has been named the new dean at the University of Minnesota Law School.  Jenkins, who joined the Ohio State faculty in 2004, and holds a JD from Harvard, will take over in July.

Important Empirical Findings in Criminal Adjudication

I like to create real-time online polls and use them in class either to review things or to sound out what the students know and don't know.  Stunning insights can emerge from these queries.  Here I share with you the results of a poll of 47 students at the conclusion of our study of the grand jury.  In making use of this empirical study, please cite to this blog post.  

 

ME/CFS Awareness Day

Today is ME/CFS Awareness Day.  Readers of the blog may know that Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is a crippling illness that has devastated the lives of about 1 million Americans, including many lawyers and law students, and some professors.  Although ME/CFS was first identified in the 1980s, it was brushed off for years as "yuppie flu."  The thousands of victims who were housebound and bedridden were often marginalized as malingerers or worse.  

Fortunately, understanding of the nature of ME/CFS has finally turned a corner, at least in the United States.  Reports from the National Institutes of Health and the Institute of Medicine (the latter chaired by law and medicine professor Ellen Clayton of Vanderbilt) have recognized that ME/CFS is a bio-medical illness that requires far greater research funding.  At Columbia, Drs. Ian Lipkin and Mady Hornig have launched a "Chronic Fatigue Initiative" that has already produced results that indicate a biomarker, which is the first step toward developing a medical treatment.

But all is not well.  In the United States, ME/CFS research still receives less funding than hayfever or male pattern baldness.  In the United Kingdom, the situation is even worse, as a coterie of psychiatrists continue to insist that ME/CFS victims are merely "deconditioned" as a result of irrational fear of exercise.

Nonetheless, progress is being made after decades of neglect.  Most importantly, at least in the short run, the stigma attached to ME/CFS is slowly being lifted.  Since I began blogging about the illness, I have heard from many lawyers, law students, and a few law professors who confided in me their continuing fear exposure, lest they be derided or discounted, but several have also told me that they plan to "go public."

There is no cure for ME/CFS, and none on the immediate horizon.  What victims need now, most of all, is simply respect -- which is why today is dedicated to ME/CFS awareness.

 

 

Playing with Cards: Malia Bouattia and the Double Down

Perhaps the single most ubiquitous response to a claim of discrimination or other biased treatment is to allege that the claimant is proceeding in bad faith. "You're just playing the race card!" "Stop hiding behind your gender!" "Yet another case of Jews crying anti-Semitism to stifle criticism!" This retort is notable because it does not listen to the claim and then provide a substantive, on-the-merits response -- "I actually don't think you were discriminated against for X, Y, and Z reasons". Rather, the response is a statement that one will not even entertain the claim in question. It is so transparently ludicrous, or so obviously made with illicit, instrumental motives, that it is not even worth considering.

Earlier this spring I published my first peer-reviewed article, Playing with Cards: Discrimination Claims and the Charge of Bad Faith, on this topic. I argued that the "bad faith" response is problematic for a host of reasons: For one, it disrespects the discrimination claimant by presenting them as presumptively untrustworthy and not worth engaging with, often implicitly or explicitly because of their group membership (those people are always crying discrimination). For two, it evinces far too much faith in our prediscursive intuitions regarding what does and does not constitute "discrimination" (or "bias", or "oppression"), particularly when dealing with marginalized outgroups. And for three, it is far too tempting of a well to draw upon for persons with strong psychological or ideological motives to think of discrimination as rare, aberrant, or uncommon. If we want to believe that racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia (or what have you) is not a major problem in our community or does not implicate our own commitments, one way of protecting that belief is to preemptively write off such claims as bad faith hogwash. The "bad faith" response, after all, is typically the retort of first resort -- it does not come after we have fully and charitably explored the allegation and ultimately found it lacking, it comes as an initial gambit designed to delegitimize the claim as one worth thinking about at all. And so I conclude that we should not dismiss discrimination claims by arguing that they're leveled in bad faith. We should instead give them full and fair investigation. The conclusion of that investigation, of course, might still be that the argument was wrong, even bogus. But there is a marked difference between reaching that conclusion at the end of an inquiry versus at its beginning.

Last month brought an interesting permutation and difficult test case for my theory, when the UK's National Union of Students elected Malia Bouattia as its new president.

LSAC and Predicting Law School Applicants for 2016-17, Part 22

The LSAC is now reporting that "As of 05/06/16, there are 332,469 applications submitted by 51,561 applicants for the 2016–2017 academic year. Applicants are up 1.2% and applications are up 1.6% from 2015–2016.  Last year at this time, we had 92% of the preliminary final applicant count."  The previous post in this series is here.  The next post in this series is here.

UGA Hiring Announcement

The University of Georgia School of Law seeks to hire a full-time legal writing instructor beginning in the Fall 2016 term. Initial course package will include first-year legal writing and two additional legal writing courses based on the needs of the Law School, one of which likely will include teaching legal writing to LLM students. A Juris Doctor from an accredited university is required. Interested applicants should submit a letter, resume and list of three references at http://facultyjobs.uga.edu/postings/920 no later than May 23, 2016.

The University of Georgia is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity or protected veteran status.

New Review of "Colored Hero"

There is a new review of The "Colored Hero" of Harpers Ferry on Civil War Book Review.

Here is an excerpt:

Describing John Brown’s unit’s departure from the Kennedy farm, its occupation of the armory, the seizure of Hall’s Rifle Works, hostage-taking at Colonel Lewis Washington’s residence, and the casualty-ridden force’s defeat by Colonel Robert E. Lee’s troops, Lubet focuses on the actions of Copeland, Leary, and Brown’s other men, highlighting their roles and revealing their agency. He provides a more balanced assessment of the raid than traditional interpretations that have tended to focus mostly on Brown and have not dealt adequately with the contributions of other participants, particularly the five blacks. In light of Lubet’s recognized expertise in legal history, it is no surprise that his analysis of the subsequent trials serves as the capstone of his work. He meticulously documents moves by prosecutors and defense attorneys as well as Judge Richard Parker’s statements from the bench.

 

Judges and the Duty to Listen

One of the things progressive legal academics love to angst about is the relationship between minority rights and the courts. Sometimes, it seems like our analysis reflects little more than the changing political alignment of the judiciary. The Warren Court appears to make great strides in protecting marginalized communities from democratic predations, and so we produce deep tracts explaining why courts are important countermajoritarian bulwarks. Then we experience a significant conservative retrenchment during the Burger/Rehnquist/Roberts years, and the tenor of the scholarship changes -- it turns out that courts are poor vehicles for progressive social change. And now, with Democrats potentially gaining control over the judicial branch for the first time in a generation, the pendulum swings again: progressives are urged to abandon our "defensive crouch" and reassert a muscular left constitutionalism.

None of this seems to do much in the ways of explaining why courts are supposed to be systematically more sympathetic to outgroups compared to the political branches. One could argue that we got idiosyncratically lucky with the Warren Court, and have been misled ever since. The Warren Court, after all, did what it did in part because it turned out that the overseer of Japanese internment and a former Alabama klansman were willing to promote historically progressive racial policies. This does not seem like the sort of historical fortune likely to be replicated. There is something odd, it must be said, about starting with the problem of political marginalization and ending with the idea that we should delegate those issues to a institution that is whiter, maler, richer, and older than the American population writ large.

CFP: The Unruly Nature of the Laws of Trusts and Estates

Call for Papers

Trusts & Estates Section

2017 AALS Annual Meeting

January 4-7, 2017 – San Francisco, CA

Sex, Death, and Taxes: The Unruly Nature of the Laws of Trusts and Estates

Trusts & Estates is a far-reaching and broad-based discipline of law that impacts private citizens’ decisions about sex, death, and taxes.  This legal discipline is based on speculation about donors and their intentions that, by their very nature, create unintended consequences because the laws exist largely unseen until they come into play.  Moreover, ascertaining these preferences prove difficult because individuals are entrenched with idiosyncratic preconceptions about death, family, property rights, personal legacies, paternalism, altruism, investment strategies, taxes, and many other effective interests.  In addition, the field sits at the crossroads of other legal disciplines such as family law, property law, elder law, and tax law.  For students, T&E makes an appearance in law schools and the bar exam, but is not like a constitutional law class that is unabashedly theoretical in its presentation and in meeting students’ non-expectations of a skills-centric classroom experience.  In practice, some of the most thriving areas require expertise in T&E.  In ordinary people’s everyday lives, the legal discipline is like an operating system that quietly runs in the background, but in reality organizes and informs the end user’s experience, often without the end user’s full awareness.  In the academy, it is caught between the practical and theoretical—a microcosm of the questions at the heart of debates about the value and normative objectives of a legal education.  Yet, during a time when T&E is becoming more relevant than ever, the discipline may be under–theorized and marginalized in the academy.  Therefore, this panel will interrogate T&E’s unruly nature, entertaining inquiries about the intersectionality of gender, race, sexual orientation, and class; the pervasiveness of succession law in aligned fields; its history of adaptation to changing social norms; and the development and evolution of law reform in this area.  The panel will explore new visions for the field and frameworks that disrupt and reimagine the field, while looking forward to practical and theoretical responses to such things as the pending elder care issues, concentration of wealth, taxation, large wealth transfers, social fixity, and the ongoing privatization of family caregiving and support. 

Submissions, due dates and method:

Submissions should be of abstracts between 250 and 1000 words, inclusive of any footnotes. Scholarship may be at any stage of the publication process from work-in-progress to completed article, but if already published, scholarship may not be published any earlier than 2015. Each potential speaker may submit only one abstract for consideration.

There are two submission due dates.  The Section seeks detailed abstracts in late summer, with final papers due in late fall.

• The due date for detailed abstracts is August 15, 2016.
• The due date for final papers is November 15, 2016.

 

UC Davis Law Seeks Legal Writing Professor

This just in:

The UC Davis School of Law seeks a Legal Writing instructor for its Wydick Fellowship Program. Position is non-tenure track, one year appointment with possibility of renewal. Salary will be commensurate with experience. Applicants must have a J.D. from an A.B.A. accredited school, bar admission, and law practice experience.

Potential candidates should submit their application and supporting materials via our online recruitment system only at https://recruit.ucdavis.edu/apply/JPF00993. Please submit a cover letter and C.V. Previous teaching experience and demonstrated effectiveness in teaching is preferred, but not required. If possible, please provide two different sets of teaching evaluations and contact information for three to five references. To ensure review of your application, please submit all materials by April 29, 2016. Applications will be accepted through May 31, 2016 and will only be considered until position is filled. 

What Would Nino Do?

Charlie Geyh (Indiana-Bloomington) and I have an oped today in The National Law Journal about the Merrick Garland nomination.  There is an un-paywalled version here.

Here is the gist of the piece:

But if the Senate Republicans won’t listen to Democrats — or even to the majority of Americans who want Garland to get a hearing — perhaps they will pay attention to the words of several Supreme Court justices, past and present, who have warned about the problems created by an eight-member court.

We then provide the past comments of Justices Roberts, Rehnquist, and Scalia on the undesirability of proceeding at less than full strength, even in a single case.  

Did Pepper Hamilton Really Just Say That?

The last decade or two has seen unprecedented consolidation in BigLaw.  Moderate-sized regional firms have joined forces (think Syracuse’s Bond Schoeneck & King and Buffalo’s Jaekle Fleischmann & Mugle); larger firms have devoured smaller and medium-sized practices (think Arnold & Porter and my own dear departed Howard Rice); and we’ve even had a bit of an international orgy among the giants (while you’re trying to get that image out of your head, think DLA Piper; Hogan Lovells; Dacheng Dentons).

I don’t intend to write today about whether these combinations are a good idea.  (As an aside, I would say that some are, and many are not; and among the some that are, many have been executed in ways that throttle much of the value the combination might have created.  Along with a number of others, Steve Harper (for example, here) and Bill Henderson (for example, here and here) have written about this problem thoughtfully.  I’ve addressed the issue obliquely (for example, here at pages 14-18, 70, and here) and I intend to get back to it someday if I ever conclude I have anything useful to add.)  What I do intend to comment on today are the organizational mating rituals with which BigLaw firms are so familiar from playing wingman to their clients, and more recently have begun to indulge in themselves.

In an atmosphere from which record numbers of lateral hires and law-firm mergers have emerged most years since the turn of the century, some big-on-big courtships inevitably fail (think Pillsbury Winthrop and Chadbourne & Park; Dickstein Shapiro and Bryan Cave; Orrick Herrington and pretty much everybody).  There are, of course, all kinds of reasons that partnerships don’t partner:  The conflicts of interest that arise from combining two large firms’ client lists can prove unmanageable; differences that emerge during discussions about firm economics or culture may sour the mood; even status issues about who will be considered primus inter pares in the often talked-about but rarely seen Merger of Equals can kill the deal.

The customs of the aftermath are fairly well understood.  Occasionally both firms say nothing, leaving the trade press to speculate from murmured rumors until a manager reluctantly confirms.  Sometimes the firm with fading ardor (or that has altered in its appetites to cherry-picking from devouring the entire tree, deadwood and all) matter-of-factly reveals that discussions are over, or in some odd cases suggests they never began.  More often, the two firms issue joint or coordinated statements declaring the end of the affair, expressing—whatever frustrations they may actually harbor—mutual respect and regret at what they were unable to achieve.  Whether unilateral or cooperative, the announcement almost always has the clubby feel of having been delivered in a paneled conference room.  Strictly business, old chap; pity.

So imagine my surprise when I read about Pepper Hamilton & Sheetz’s press release announcing that Reed Smith (in the Eagles’ timeless formulation) was going to have to eat its lunch all by itself:

Today, Pepper Hamilton decided to end our discussions with Reed Smith. While we were intrigued when Reed Smith approached us, we determined that moving forward is not in the best interest of Pepper. Pepper prides itself on talented people providing premier legal services to our clients. These core Pepper values are what we do best, and it is why our firm is held in such high regard by our clients and the entire legal community.

In contrast, Reed Smith’s contemporaneous (and apparently slightly earlier) press release adhered closely to the conventionally polite: “[I]n order to better serve our global clients,” the firm stated, it “periodically has discussions with other firms regarding joining forces.” Reed Smith said it had had “preliminary” discussions with Pepper Hamilton, a firm it said it knows well and respects. 

In case you missed it, let’s compare:  Reed Smith said “[w]hile our conversations with Pepper Hamilton were positive and informative, both firms have concluded that for a variety of reasons those discussions should end.”  Pepper Hamilton proclaimed that it had broken off discussions because a merger was “not in the best interest of Pepper,” which after all has “talented people” who provide “premier legal services” and is held in “high regard by our clients and the entire legal community.” 

Wow.  What prompted Pepper’s little outburst?  I have no idea, and have spoken to no one at either firm about it.  Maybe Pepper considered Reed’s expectations for the combination overreaching given the disparity in their recent financial performance—Reed’s profits per partner fell 8% last year and it recently laid off 45 lawyers.  Maybe Pepper thought folks at Reed were whispering things inconsistent with the equable tone of Reed’s press release.  Or maybe Pepper is just plain arrogant or tone-deaf. 

To be clear, there is nothing tortious or unethical about the substance or tone of Pepper Hamilton’s announcement so far as I can tell.  It just wasn’t very classy.  Some of us expected more from a firm we are assured is held in such “high regard by . . . the entire legal community.”  O tempore; o mores.

--Bernie

LSAC and Predicting Law School Applicants for 2016-17, Part 21

The LSAC is reporting that "As of 04/29/16, there are 330,029 applications submitted by 50,952 applicants for the 2016–2017 academic year. Applicants are up 0.7% and applications are up 1.3% from 2015–2016.  Last year at this time, we had 91% of the preliminary final applicant count."  

The last post in this series is here.

CFP: Law as Applied to Virtual, Augmented, and Mixed-Reality Environments

This just in:

Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, the longest-established academic journal that is devoted to research into teleoperation and virtual environments (3D virtual reality worlds), has issued a call for papers on Law as Applied to Virtual, Augmented and Mixed-Reality Environments.  Guest editors are Woodrow Barfield and Jonathan Franklin of University of Washington School of Law.  Presence is filled with stimulating material about fundamental research into topics such as presence, augmented reality, haptics, user interfaces, and virtual humans, and applications that range from heritage and education to training simulators, healthcare, and entertainment. Presence appeals to a wide audience that includes computer scientists, high-tech artists and media people, psychologists involved in the study of human-machine interfaces and sensorimotor/cognitive behavior, and mechanical and electrical engineers.

The Call:

Advancements in virtual reality are not only technology driven, but  actions within virtual environments implicate numerous issues in policy and law. For example, are virtual
images copyrightable? Is the speech produced by a virtual avatar afforded rights under the U.S. and other Constitutions? How does criminal law relate to actions performed within
virtual environments, or contract law apply to the lease and sale of virtual objects? These and other questions form the theme for this special issue. Legal scholars and practitioners from the U.S. and other jurisdictions are encouraged to submit. Topics of interest for the special issue include:

Snoop on Intestacy

From Business Insider, here:

We caught up with Snoop Dogg in his trailer after his performance Tuesday night at the AOL NewFront event in Manhattan, promoting his new AOL series "Coach Snoop." We asked him if he's left a will, and if he made plans for his estate when he dies.

Snoop doesn't care. He'll be dead.

"I don’t give a f--- when I’m dead. What am I gonna give a f--- about?" Snoop told Business Insider. "This goin’ on while I’m gone, you know?"

Snoop hopes to be reincarnated, and observe the ruckus over his estate from the next life.

"Hopefully, I’m a butterfly," Snoop said. "I come back and fly around and look at all these motherf-----s fighting over my money and shit, like, 'Look at all these dumb motherf-----s.' Ha!”

H/T Francine Lipman

Call For Residency Proposals: Female Interpreters Of Religious Law: Women's Leadership As Clergy, Educators, Advisors and Judges

This just in:

Scholars working in any religious tradition whose work explores developments in women's religious leadership are invited to apply for this semester long residency. This program will be directed by Lisa Fishbayn Joffe, director of the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute (HBI)  Project on Gender, Culture, Religion and Law at Brandeis University.

Participants will meet twice monthly for luncheon seminars in which they discuss their ongoing work. Participants will: (1) present one public lecture, which may consist of a presentation to an appropriate Brandeis class; (2) present one "teach in" session for HBI staff; (3) present a lecture or participate in a round-table at a 1-day conference that will be organized during the last week of the SIR Program.

The accepted program recipient(s) will receive a monthly stipend to support her/his research. In addition, recipients will receive (shared) office space at the Women’s Studies Research Center at Brandeis University and access to all available Brandeis University resources.

SIRs may also contribute to the HBI’s Donna Sudarsky Memorial Working Paper Series, or write for the HBI blog, Fresh Ideas from HBI.