The Faculty Lounge

Registration Open for Central States Law Schools Association Conference

From colleagues organizing the Central States Law Schools Association Conference:

Registration is now open for the Central States Law Schools Association 2016 Scholarship Conference, which will be held on Friday, September 23 and Saturday, September 24 at the University of North Dakota School of Law in Grand Forks, ND. We invite law faculty from across the country to submit proposals to present papers or works in progress.

CSLSA is an organization of law schools dedicated to providing a forum for conversation and collaboration among law school academics. The CSLSA Annual Conference is an opportunity for legal scholars, especially more junior scholars, to present on any law-related topic in a relaxed and supportive setting where junior and senior scholars from various disciplines are available to comment. More mature scholars have an opportunity to test new ideas in a less formal setting than is generally available for their work. Scholars from member and nonmember schools are invited to attend. 

Please click here to register. The deadline for registration is September 2, 2016.  

Hotel rooms are now available for pre-booking. The conference hotel is the Hilton Garden Inn in Grand Forks. The hotel phone number is (701) 775-6000. When booking, identify yourself as part of the “UND School of Law” block to receive a daily rate of $89. Please note that conference participants are responsible for all of their own travel expenses including hotel accommodations.

For more information about CSLSA and the 2016 Annual Conference please subscribe to our blog.
           
We look forward to seeing you in Grand Forks!

Sincerely,

The 2016 CSLSA Board
For more information about CSLSA, visit our website at http://cslsa.us/ or contact a board member.​

University of South Carolina Hiring Announcement

The University of South Carolina School of Law invites applications for tenured, tenure-track, or visiting faculty positions to begin fall semester 2017. Candidates should have a juris doctorate or equivalent degree. Additionally, a successful applicant should have a record of excellence in academia or in practice, the potential to be an outstanding teacher, and demonstrable scholarly promise.  The School of Law is interested in candidates who are qualified to teach in the areas of taxation and clinical legal education, but will also be considering candidates in a variety of other areas of need. The School of Law is also interested in candidates who can contribute to the diversity of our law school community.  Interested persons should send a resume, references, and subject area preferences to Prof. Derek Black, Chair, Faculty Selection Committee, c/o Vanessa Byars, University of South Carolina School of Law, 701 Main St., Columbia, SC 29208 or, by email, to hire2016@law.sc.edu (electronic submissions preferred).

The University of South Carolina is committed to a diverse faculty, staff, and student body.  We encourage applications from women, minorities, persons with disabilities, and others whose background, experience, and viewpoints contribute to the diversity of our institution.

The University of South Carolina is an Equal Opportunity Employer and does not discriminate on the base of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, genetics, sexual orientation, gender, or veteran status.

Food Aid -- UPDATED

According to Malcolm Gladwell, the quality of the food in Bowdoin College's cafeteria is responsible for the school's relatively small enrollment of low income students, as explained in this article from Inside Higher Education.  Vassar, on the other hand, has only mediocre food, but many more students who are eligible for Pell grants.  Gladwell's argument (according to IHE; I haven't listened to his podcast) appears to be that money spent on food could and should be repurposed for financial aid.  

It does seem that Bowdoin is relatively low on the scale of Pell eligible students, who comprise only 14% of its student body, as opposed to 22% at Vassar, but that does not mean that the difference is attributable to the fare in the dining hall?  Other liberal arts colleges seem to be comparable to Bowdoin:  Middlebury (11%), Oberlin (11%), Swarthmore (14%).  

I have been told that Northwestern's student body is 17% Pell eligible, and that President Schapiro has committed to 20% by 2020, with financial aid in the form of grants rather than loans.  I have not eaten in one of our dining halls since my undergrad days (WCAS, 1970), however, although the food was pretty lousy back then.

UPDATE: I have received the following email from Dennis Hutchinson, of the University of Chicago:

As a former Trustee of Bowdoin, I must supply to counterpoint to Gladwell’s post, courtesy of the Bowdoin News  Office:

http://community.bowdoin.edu/news/2016/07/bowdoin-responds-to-malcolm-gladwells-food-fight-podcast/  I was very happy to cast  a vote for the College’s no-loan policy. Gladwell has become the master of the non-sequitur.

Cheers,

Dennis

 

 

 

Mike Pence On Cigarettes: "Smoking Doesn't Kill"

Or as he adds, "2 out of three smokers does not die from a smoking related illness."  

One fun aspect of Trump's decision to pick a VP candidate who hasn't been much noticed previously is that everyone can have fun digging in to his past.  Everyone can be a reporter!

My contribution today.  It's nothing extraordinary, but still. The Great American Smoke Out,  from the Mike Pence - Congress website, March 2, 2001. 

In the coming weeks, Americans are going to be treated with the worst kind of Washington-speak regarding the tobacco legislation currently being considered by the Congress and Attorney Generals from forty different states. We will hear about the scourge of tobacco and the resultant premature deaths. We will hear about how this phalanx of government elates has suddenly grown a conscience after decades of subsidizing the product which, we are now told, "kills millions of Americans each year".   Time for a quick reality check. Despite the hysteria from the political class and the media, smoking doesn't kill. In fact, 2 out of every three smokers does not die from a smoking related illness and 9 out of ten smokers do not contract lung cancer.

Update: Argh.  I didn't realize that this had been dug out a day ago.  On to my next search!

Justice Ginsburg Recognizes Her Mistake

Justice Ginsburg has withdrawn her statements criticizing Donald Trump.  As reported in the New York Times, 

On reflection, my recent remarks in response to press inquiries were ill-advised and I regret making them,” Justice Ginsburg said in a statement. “Judges should avoid commenting on a candidate for public office. In the future I will be more circumspect.

Justice Ginsburg deserves our respect for acknowledging her mistake, which is something that more public figures ought to do more often.

The only remaining question is whether Ginsburg's academic defenders will reconsider their own rationalizations and join her in recognizing that Supreme Court justices should "avoid commenting on a candidate for public office."

 

Syracuse Law Rev CFP: "Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt and the Constitutionality of Laws Surrounding Reproductive Health"

From the students at the Syracuse Law Review:

Call for Papers: Analysis and Comment on Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt and the Constitutionality of Laws Surrounding Reproductive Health
 
The Syracuse Law Review seeks manuscripts that address the constitutionality of laws surrounding reproductive health and how the Supreme Court’s decision of Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt has and will continue to affect the landscape. A book of Volume 67 of the Law Review will be dedicated to addressing constitutional themes that emerged from last year’s Supreme Court term, and we would like to include an article on reproductive health in the conversation. The article’s subject was left intentionally broad so as to leave room for authors to choose individual, specific topics within the field. Article submissions should be approximately 10,000 words (flexible) and must be submitted to the Law Review no later than October 1, 2016 (deadline open to negotiation). If you are interested in submitting or if you have any questions, please contact Lead Articles Editors Hillary Anderson at haanders@syr.edu and Matthew Petrone at mlpetron@syr.edu.

The Ginsburg Precedent

On June 7-10, 1916, the Republican Party held its national convention in Chicago,  nominating Justice Charles Evans Hughes on the third ballot, to run for the presidency against incumbent President Woodrow Wilson.  Hughes resigned from the Supreme Court on June 10, after his nomination had been secured.  For several days, therefore, Hughes was both a nominee for the presidency (at the convention) and a sitting justice.

Tushnet -- and Feldman -- on Ginsburg [UPDATED]

At Balkinization, Mark Tushnet writes,

To the extent that the current flap tells us something interesting about contemporary norms regarding the Court, it is that many people think there's something important about maintaining the facade that the Justices are above politics, at least when they are considering actual cases.

Implicit in this argument is the assumption that all sophisticated people recognize the political intentions of judges, so we might as well pull back the curtain by encouraging them. to simply come out and campaign (or accepting that they will).  Erwin Chemerinsky says that he is looking forward to that.

No one likes facades (well, perhaps with the exception of symbolic interactionists), but let me suggest another way of looking at it.  We may not expect judges to be free from political opinions, but we do expect them to try to put them aside when judging.    Is that always possible?  Of course not.  Is it ever possible? Resoundingly, yes.  

If you don't believe that judges can put politics aside, at least now and then, how do you explain Justice Roberts's vote in the ACA cases?  Or, for that matter, Justice Breyer's vote on the full-state recount issue in Bush v. Gore?

Political neutrality is not a facade, it's an aspiration.  When a justice begins campaigning for or against a candidate, however, it means that she has stopped trying. And that is what is wrong with Justice Ginsburg's recent remarks.

UPDATE: Noah Feldman is another enabler.  Writing on Bloomberg, he observes that "nothing in the Constitution . . . demands that the justice be nonpartisan."  That is true but irrelevant, given the that Constitution did not contemplate the existence of political parties at all.  One of "injuries and usurpations" listed in the Declaration of Independence, however, was King George's control of the judiciary, which led to excessive identification of judges with the then-existing executive branch.

The Constitution thus created life tenure for Supreme Court justices in order to remove them from political domination.  Feldman states that "life tenure guarantees independence, not neutrality," but in this instance that is a non-sequitur.  Why do we care about independence, if not to promote neutrality?

Feldman says, 

The arguments against Ginsburg’s candor almost all come down to the idea that she should have respected propriety and upheld the myth of judicial neutrality. But who, exactly, believes in that myth in the year 2016? It’s been 16 years since Bush v. Gore killed off any vestiges that might have existed.

I would prefer to think of Bush v. Gore as a warning, rather than a model to be followed.  Should presidents after Nixon have authorized burglaries, on the ground that law-abiding presidencies are a myth?  Should future Congresses impeach presidents for political reasons, on the ground that nobody trusts Congress anyhow?  "In for a dime, in for a dollar" is not the right metric for judicial ethics, or any other sort of ethics.

LSAC and Predicting Applicants for 2016-17, Part 30

The LSAC is now reporting that "As of 07/08/16, there are 345,483 applications submitted by 55,015 applicants for the 2016–2017 academic year. Applicants are up 0.9% and applications are up 1.8% from 2015–2016. Last year at this time, we had 98% of the preliminary final applicant count."  The last post in this series is here.

Chemerinsky on Ginsburg [UPDATED]

This morning's New York Times has a "Room for Debate" column titled "Can a Supreme Court Justice Denounce a Candidate," with short essays by Paul Butler, Steve Gillers, and Erwin Chemerinsky.  Butler and Chemerinsky defend Justice Ginsburg, and Gillers criticizes her.

I agree with Gillers, of course, and Butler's argument is plausible.  Chemerinsky, I think, gets it completely wrong when it comes to Ginsburg's denunciation of Trump:

Nor do I believe that such restrictions are constitutional or desirable. The First Amendment is based on the strong presumption that more speech is beneficial because it means we are all better informed. I think it is valuable for people to hear what the justices have to say on important issues. As a lawyer and as a citizen, I’d always rather know what justices and judges think rather than have enforced silence and pretend they have no views. We are in a relatively new era of public statements by justices, and I applaud it.

It is well understood in cognition science that the articulation of an opinion solidifies it.  Thus, judges who announce their views will tend to stick to them.  Chemerinsky seems to think that a judge's opinions are innate and unchangeable, and thus might as well be announced, but that is an incorrect understanding of cognition. The statement of a position is a new fact that has a continuing impact on the judge's decision making. This is called "anchoring," and it is a widely recognized phenomenon in psychology.

In the case of Donald Trump, of course, Ginsburg's disapproval probably could not be intensified, so "anchoring" is not an issue.  But there are two other problems.

First, Ginsburg speaks with the authority of a Supreme Court justice, and she might therefore influence voters (perhaps Bernie people who would otherwise vote for Jill Stein).  This compromises the neutrality of the Court, and threatens to reduce it to another political branch of government.  The Constitution provides life tenure for justices in order to insulate them from politics, not to provide them with a political platform.  Cherminsky brushes this off by saying that "The judicial code of ethics says that judges are not to endorse or oppose candidates for elected office. But these provisions do not apply to Supreme Court justices."  This argument is circular.  The Code of Conduct is non-binding on justices only because they have chosen not to adopt it.  It nonetheless represents the standards followed by ever other judge in the United States.

But Chemerinsky's position has a bigger problem than that.  Ginsburg said that she might have to "move to New Zealand" if Trump were elected.  Now, she might nonetheless be capable of fairness toward Trump, should his electoral fate come before the Court -- but half of the electorate would not believe it.  This is not a matter of disclosing bias, but rather of creating an almost irrefutable appearance of bias even in its absence.  This damages the Court as an institution by weakening public support, even in situations where the decisions have been impartial (to the extent that can ever be known).

Chemerinsky believes that it is better to know about a judge's biases than to leave them hidden, but he ignores the problems of (1) strengthening biases unnecessarily, and (2) damaging the Court's reputation for impartiality, even in situations where decisions may be fairly rendered.

UPDATE:  Justice Ginsburg has given an interview to Joan Biscupic of CNN, in which she called Trump a "faker" and criticized him for not releasing his tax returns.]

The Hunger Games - Valpo Edition

Back in January, I wrote a post which was critical of the feeble attempts by the Chair (Justice Rebecca Berch) and Managing Director (Barry Currier) of the ABA Council of the Section of Legal Education to explain the Council’s abject failure to curb the obviously exploitative admission practices at several ABA law schools. 

In the post, I used the example of Valparaiso Law School:

Consider the example of Valparaiso Law School.  In 2013, their median LSAT was 143, the median GPA was 3.0 and their 25% percentile was 141 and 2.75%. With an entering class of 208, that meant they matriculated over one hundred students with LSATs in the bottom 20% of test takers, and over 50 from the bottom 15%. Anyone scoring at this level is statistically likely to fail the bar (and keep in mind that schools report the high LSAT score of an applicant, not the average, which is a more accurate predictor). Are we to seriously believe that Valpo’s admissions process was able to find over 100 students whose applications suggested that they were likely to outperform their predictors?  Incidentally, Valpo admitted over 81% of the applicants that year, so it was hardly applying intense scrutiny.  The reason I single out Valparaiso is that Valpo had an accreditation visit from the ABA April 6-9, 2014, which it apparently passed with flying colors despite these horrifying admissions numbers.  This does not inspire confidence in the accreditation process.  And this was not a one-time aberration for Valparaiso.  In 2014, Valpo’s entering class shrank to 174, but their bottom 25% was still 141 and 2.77, and for their part-time division, the LSAT 25% was even lower.  For 2015, the LSAT 25% went up a point to 142, but the 25% GPA dropped to 2.64.  So, for at least 3 years, Valparaiso’s admission practices have been clearly exploitative.  Yet according to Justice Berch, it is not reasonable to expect any law schools to be sanctioned anytime soon because the Council “cannot act precipitously."

A recent article in the New York Times highlights why the ABA should have taken action years ago, offering a dismaying portrait of what a disaster Valpo has become in recent years, with hordes of students failing the bar, and large numbers of graduates unable to find a decent job to pay off their enormous debt burdens.  The article includes some very revealing quotes from former Associate Dean Bruce Berner, who retired in 2014: 

For Valparaiso, the bottom fell out in two stages. Applications dropped from over 3,000 in 2007 to under 1,600 in 2009, although this was partly because of a change in recruitment strategy, then below 1,200 a few years later.

After this second drop, faculty members and administrators became anxious. “I was chair of the admissions committee and we’re sitting there watching this,” Mr. Berner said. “It’s a mess.”

The committee agonized over whether it should accept fewer students or keep its class size roughly constant and admit weaker candidates. In the end, it opted for the latter, a decision Mr. Berner admits wasn’t entirely on the merits, since fewer students would have meant less revenue.

“There was a lot of pressure, of course, from the central administration to keep the numbers up,” he said.

. . .  Mr. Berner, for his part, feels a tinge of regret when he looks back on the years after the 2009 recession. “Everyone had good intentions,” he said. “If we could go back, I think we should have erred a little more on the side of turning people down.”

According to the New York Times article, the school has now dramatically shrunk its entering class, and drastically cut its faculty and staff.  One might assume from these facts that Valpo has significantly tightened its admission standards.  Indeed, current Dean Andrea Lyon is quoted in the story as saying,  “I don’t think it’s moral to take someone’s money who can’t make it,”. . .  “It’s just wrong.”  While I agree wholeheartedly with this sentiment, there is little evidence that Valpo is now operating on the moral high ground. As the article notes, Valpo is still "taking risks on a lot of students."  Summing up Valpo's situation succinctly, the article states::  "Schools like Valparaiso essentially face the following choice: Admit a large number of marginal students, or shut down."

A review of Valpo's ABA Standard 509 reports reveals that Valpo has chosen to continue to pursue the marginal student option, and that their admission standards have barely improved at all.  In 2013, they were at 148/143/141 LSAT and 3.33/3.00/2.75 GPA with an entering class of 208.  In 2014, they shrank to 174 entering students and there was a very slight uptick in entrance credentials with a 149/145/141 LSAT and 3.33/3.10/2.77 GPA.  But for 2015, despite shrinking to 130 entering students, admission standards were essentially flat with LSATs of 148/145/142 and GPAs down across the board at 3.27/2.93/2.64.  Of course, it is possible that Valpo is tightening the standards for the unreported bottom 24% of the class, and there is some evidence that they are being somewhat more selective in their admissions process.  In 2013, Valpo accepted 81% of applicants.  In 2014, the school accepted 77% of applicants, and in 2015, they accepted only 66% of the 928 applicants.  But despite this increase in selectivity, over half the matriculating class is still at very high or extremely high risk of failure, based on their entrance credentials.

According to Dean Lyon “I don’t think we should stop taking chances; I just think we need to take chances intelligently and thoughtfully.”  What is Dean Lyon's magic formula?  How does she know which 142/2.64 student has what it takes and deserves a chance?  According to the NY Times, Dean Lyon can just tell: “If you’ve taught for any length of time, you know pretty quickly if someone has that hunger to do a good job. That makes up for a lot.”  Even if we were to accept this "Hunger Games" theory, this would suggest that Valpo should be attriting large numbers of non-hungry students after the first semester.   But the 2015 509 Report indicates that only 3 first year students were academically attrited in the previous year.  It would appear that Valpo's Hunger Games aren't eliminating contestants nearly as efficiently as Dean Lyon's quote would suggest.  

Given that a senior Valparaiso administrator has essentially admitted to past financially driven non-compliance with ABA Standard 501(b) (the rule that requires that law schools not admit students who do not appear capable of earning a J.D. and passing the bar), and the lack of evidence of significant self-correction, the ABA should not continue to give Valpo a free pass.  But if past experience is any guide, the ABA will do nothing.  In the ABA's Hunger Games, it's okay for law graduates to go hungry, as long as law professors and administrators continue to be well-fed.

JoAnne Epps To Become Temple Provost

Dean JoAnne Epps, who has led Temple Law since 2008, has been nominated to become the new provost of Temple University.  The appointment awaits approval of the Temple's board of trustees.  Gregory Mandel will serve as interim dean of the law school. 

Justice Ginsburg in the New York Times

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has recently given extensive, and therefore controversial, interviews to both the Associated Press and the New York Times.  In the Times, Justice Ginsburg commented on the current presidential election, expressing her dislike for Donald Trump and suggesting that it might be time "to move to New Zealand" if he were to win.  She explained that she did not "even want to contemplate" what a Trump victory would mean for the Court.  She also commented on recent, and potentially future, SCOTUS decisions, stating her views on standing, immigration, gun control, and campaign finance -- all issues that are almost certain to be considered in future cases.

Although Supreme Court several justices have been more and more outspoken in recent years, the RBG interviews break new ground -- and not in a good way.  Her warning about potential Trump-nominated justices certainly looks like an attempt to influence the election, and her speculation about legal issues crosses a line that most other justices have respected in the past.

As many readers of this blog know, SCOTUS is the only court in the United States that lacks a formal Code of Conduct.  Justice Ginsburg's recent comments underscore the reasons that the Court should adopt such a code.  Even if it were unenforceable, a Code would at least formalize public expectations for the justices' conduct.  It could begin with a rule against political activity, and it could include a prohibition on commentary about issues that are likely to come before the court.  It would also address issues that have been raised concerning other justices, including recusal and the acceptance of gifts.

As matters now stand, unfortunately, each justice is a law unto herself or himself, setting their own standards whatever they might be.  In my opinion, many of Justice Ginsburg's statements were inappropriate and imprudent.  Regrettably, the absence of a SCOTUS Code of Conduct makes it impossible to say whether they were improper.

Print and Prestige

Sarah Reis has a lengthy article up on ssrn, Deconstructing the Durham Statement: The Persistence of Print Prestige During the Age of Open Access, that argues for the shift from print to on-line only law reviews.  Yet, she notes that there is significant opposition to this:

This paper argues that we have not seen a shift toward electronic-only publication because of print prestige in legal academia. The reputations of students, scholars, faculty, and law schools are at risk when a law review decides to move to electronic-only publication because such a transition involves so many uncertainties. Few laws schools are willing to take risks that may affect their reputations during this time of “crisis in legal education.”

I think there is a lot of insight here -- and also this confirms what historians of the book have observed.  That today, as in colonial America (and other times), print confers status.  This conversation has been going on for a long time,  Back a decade ago when I was book reviews editor at Law and History Review I remember a lot of conversations about the future of print editions of scholarly journals. More recently, I've argued that we should use citations to a school's main law review as a measure  of the intellectual culture of the school.  Thus, like Reis, I am focused on law reviews as a component of rankings (or prestige).

I think Reis is exactly correct that the persistent of expensive print editions is due in important ways to prestige associated with print.  But I also suspect that the economics of this -- the cost of print -- and the declining use of print versions of journals -- will largely lead to their demise in the near term.  I still read the copies of the few print journals that I subscribe to (Journal of American History, Journal of Southern History, Law and History Review,  Slavery and Abolition).  And I still flip through the journals that are on the shelf in UNC's faculty lounge, but I'm guessing that I'm a rarity in that regard.  So there is some utility in print -- it reaches readers who might not otherwise see a piece.  Then again, that comes at a significant cost.

Where is all this headed? I would think that with the rise of "print on demand" that a lot of journals might migrate to a model that is essentially, those who want a print copy can get it.  These will be the student editors, a small number of law libraries, maybe a few alumni of the law review.  And everyone else can continue reading the journal on-line (or through print-outs of an on-line copy, either from westlaw, heinonline, or the journal's website).  Print on demand is the way that presses keep a lot of their title in "print."  When an order comes in, they "print" the volume and a paperback cover and then bind it.  My understanding is that such a method is only marginally more expensive than the cost-per-volume for mass-produced paperbacks.  This, I'm guessing, is the future.

The image is of Washington College (now Washington and Lee), where in March 1853 on the upper floor of the central building students in the literary society debated, "Which has conduced more to the advancement of civilization, the mariners compass or the art of printing?"

H/t Paul Caron.

The Intersection of the Civil War and Sociology

We sometimes come across coincidences in research that are simply fascinating, even if they are of no greater moment than that.  My most recent interests have been the antebellum abolitionist movement, especially the John Brown raid, and contemporary issues in ethnography.  They are entirely unrelated, and yet I have discovered a point at which they overlap.

In 1945, sociologists Horace Cayton and St. Clair Drake published Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City.  It was a path breaking book, well worth reading to this day.  Cayton was the grandson of Hiram Revels, who was the first African-American U.S. senator, elected by the Mississippi legislature during Reconstruction.  That fact is well known among sociologists.

Hiram Revel was also related to Lewis Sheridan Leary, who was killed at Harpers Ferry.  Revels's grandmother was Leary's aunt.  That fact is well known among John Brown scholars.

Thus, Cayton and Leary were cousins, several times removed.  I don't think anyone else has ever made this connection.  It is possible that even Cayton did not know of it, as he did not mention Leary in his autobiography. (Leary died in 1859; Cayton was born in 1903.)

As I said, fascinating.

Thomas M. Doerflinger (1952-2015)

Somehow I missed the story that Thomas M. Doerflinger had passed away suddenly last August.  Long before writing about capitalism was cool, Doerflinger wrote an important book about the growth of the merchant community in Philadelphia.  His 1986 book A Vigorous Spirit of Enterprise delved the factors that led to the prosperous Philadelphia merchants in the early national period.  He focused on the personality and optimism and ingenuity of the merchants.  It made me think at the time -- a sense I've had many times since I first read it -- that a lot of our nation's smartest and most energetic people devoted their energy to making money.  I guess that's not a really surprising insight, but it's an important one.  His book was something I looked up to, as a study of the entrepreneurial spirit and how people confronted with lots and lots of challenges overcame them.  Stephen Girard -- who looms large in work I've done more recently -- starts the book in motion.  He entered Philadelphia under inauspicious circumstances and rose to be one of the most wealthy Americans -- and also a leading philanthropist, which is maybe not entirely coincidental.

Doerflinger had an unusual career trajectory for a historian -- after earning a bachelor's degree from Princeton and a Ph.D. for Harvard, he went to work on Wall Street.  There be became an important equity strategist at PaineWebber and UBS, and a blogger.  Cribbing now from his biography on his blog: 

His influential reports on thematic investing covered such diverse topics as income inequality, benign deflation, the virtues of dividend growth stocks and the threat to job growth posed by healthcare reform.  One of his reports was cited in the Republican presidential debates and posted on Senator Tom Coburn’s website. For over twenty years Doerflinger’s monthly forecasts of S&P 500 profits were widely followed globally.  During the three years Doerflinger chaired the committee managing the UBS U.S. Key Call List, it significantly outperformed the S&P 500.

Now many years ago, back when I was using the records of the Chester County iron works at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, I learned a lot from his “How to Run an Ironworks,” 108 Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 351-366 (1984).

Johns Hopkins University professor Philip Morgan has a memorial here.   I am away from Chapel Hill for a while, but when I return I look forward to sitting down with my copy of Vigorous Spirit of Enterprise and recalling the magic that Doerflinger put down on those pages.

Hiring Announcement: Suffolk

From an email message which I received earlier today:

Suffolk University Law School in Boston invites applications for a position as a full-time Legal Practice Skills (LPS) Visiting Professor for the upcoming academic school year (2016-2017).  The visitor will teach the first-year LPS course and collaborate with other faculty teaching in the first-year program.  The successful applicant will teach two sections of LPS I (3 cr. each) in the fall as well as two sections of LPS II (2 cr.) in the spring.   In addition to teaching, the visitor will maintain regular office hours, grade several student assignments throughout the semester, and hold individual conferences.  Interested candidates must have a J.D. and be admitted to a bar.  Previous teaching of legal writing is preferred. A complete application should be sent to Donna Moray at dmoray@suffolk.edu and must include a letter detailing desire and qualifications to teach LPS, a curriculum vitae, as well as a list of at least three professional references.  Applications will be accepted until July 28, 2016.

We welcome applications from all persons of high academic achievement with a strong commitment to legal writing and a demonstrated commitment to excellence in teaching.  We particularly encourage applications from women, people of color, and others whose backgrounds will contribute to the diversity of the faculty.

LSAC and Predicting Applicants for 2016-17, Part 29

The LSAC is now reporting that "As of 07/01/16, there are 344,194 applications submitted by 54,708 applicants for the 2016–2017 academic year. Applicants are up 1.1% and applications are up 1.9% from 2015–2016.  Last year at this time, we had 97% of the preliminary final applicant count."  The last post in this series is here.  (I missed reporting on the June 24 data.)  

It looks now like we have a very good sense of how the applications will turn out this year.  We're about where we were last year.  (And the overall number of LSATs administered was up slightly, just over 4%.)  I suspect this is more or less where we'll be for the foreseeable future.  The next issues will be how many first years we will have in the fall and how the June LSAT administrations compare to previous years.

Magna Carta

The North Carolina Law Review symposium on Magna Carta is now up on the web.  We have contributions by Paul Babie, Mary Bilder,  Charles Donahue, Sally Hadden, Richard Helmholz, A.E. Dick Howard, Daniel Hulsebosch, John Orth, Wilfred Prest, Jed Rakoff, and Mary Ziegler.  Check it out!  (The table of contents is below the fold.)

Langston Hughes's Numinous Shawl

I have an article in the current issue Humanities about Langston Hughes and a shawl he inherited that had purportedly been worn by one of John Brown’s men at Harpers Ferry.  Although Hughes sincerely believed in the connection, it turns out that the story was not true.  Nonetheless, objects such as Hughes’s shawl can tell us a lot about American history, and in this case the struggle through many generations against slavery and racism.

Here is a link to the article (coauthored with Rachel Maines), which began life as a post on this blog last February.  The opening section is below:

“One of the most treasured objects” in the collection of the Ohio History Connection in Columbus is item H 6806, which, at first, seems to be a rather ordinary handwoven wool twill shawl. Measuring 142 cm x 315 cm (about 56” x 124”), it is large enough to cover a dining room table and has a plaid pattern in blue and yellow. The edges are frayed. The color is faded and the fabric bears numerous holes of different sizes. The shawl seems to date from the early nineteenth century, its age evident from both its badly worn condition and the nature of its yarn and weave.

The object is so modest it hardly seems museumworthy. But it came with a great story deeply rooted in American history and literature. 

In 1943, the shawl was donated by Langston Hughes, the great African-American poet and playwright. In a handwritten note, Hughes explained that it had belonged to his grandmother’s first husband, Lewis Sheridan Leary, who had given his life in John Brown’s raid at Harpers Ferry in 1859.

Said Hughes,

Sheridan Leary wore this shawl when he went from Oberlin, Ohio, to join John Brown in order to help him create the slave revolt which they hoped might free the Negroes. At Harper’s Ferry Leary was killed and left to lie for a long while in a muddy ditch, but some good person took this shawl and sent it back to Oberlin to his widow, Mary Sampson Patterson Leary, who later became Mrs. Langston, my grandmother.

The museum’s website says that the shawl “had been handed down in the Leary family from Sheridan’s grandfather,” and adds that “we would be safe in dating the shawl at thirty to forty years preceding John Brown’s raid, certainly in the first quarter of the 1800’s.”

The shawl belonged first to the Leary family, then to the Langstons, and finally to the Hugheses. The poet also included a brief account of it in his autobiography, noting that Leary had left Oberlin without disclosing his destination, “except that he told [Mary] he was going on a trip. A few weeks later his shawl came back to her full of bullet holes.” Hughes’s biographer, Arnold Rampersad, wrote that “a friend brought [Leary’s] bloodstained, bullet-ridden shawl” back to Oberlin, and that it remained a symbol for Mary of his martyrdom. “She still wore it fifty years after his death, or used it to cover her young grandchild, Langston Hughes, while he slept at night.”

The Harpers Ferry raid and its aftermath are among the most evocative events in the long struggle to abolish slavery that led to the Civil War. To an African-American poet who wrote about the suffering of his people from the injustices of bondage and racial discrimination, the shawl had tremendous emblematic significance, not only of the quest for freedom but of his own ancestor’s sacrifice in the deeply unequal battle at Harpers Ferry. Hughes’s memories of being wrapped in it as a child lent even greater dramatic power to the story of the shawl, making it a part of his own origin story as well as a symbol of the family’s tradition of resistance to oppression and racism.

This shawl has the power to make the heart race and the imagination open wide to an incredible series of connections between a famous twentieth-century name and a significant nineteenth-century tragedy. And yet, in all likelihood, the story that this shawl was at the battle at Harpers Ferry is not true.