The Faculty Lounge

Are Law Schools Exploiting Part-Time Students?

Of the 201 American law schools that filed ABA Standard 509 reports last year (I did not consider the three Puerto Rican ABA law schools), 82 reported matriculating 10 or more part-time students in their 2016 entering class. A substantial majority of these schools report that the entrance credentials for their part-time students were at least marginally lower than those of their full-time counterparts. But at many law schools, the difference was more than marginal. Thirty-one law schools had significantly lower admission standards for part-time students, with the LSAT at the 25% level at least two points lower than it was for the full-time students. At some schools, the disparity in the entrance credentials of the full-time and part-time students was so substantial that it placed the bottom quarter to half of the part-time student class in a completely different risk category.   The 21 schools with the most significant disparities in 2016 are listed below the break (alphabetically).  To ensure that this was not a one-time anomaly, I reviewed the Standard 509 admissions data from 2015 as well.  All of these law schools also admitted at least slightly weaker part-time classes in 2015 -- in most cases, substantially weaker.

Some Thoughts on the July 2017 New York Bar Results

 

The New York Bar Examiners released the results of the July 2017 bar results by law school earlier this week.  Overall the first-time bar pass rate for ABA schools was up (86% compared to 83% last year), and most New York law schools saw a modest increase in their results.  But, as might be expected in a state with 15 ABA accredited law schools, there were some outliers. These high and low performing schools were featured in an article by Staci Zaretsky at Above the Law.  Staci noted that a couple of schools saw dramatic increases while a couple of others saw significant decreases in their first-time pass rate. She sought comments from the schools to explain why these results.  In this post, I examine possible explanations for the schools with the strongest and weakest performances.

The ATL article reports that Albany Law School's first-time bar passage rate in New York dropped from 82.7% in July 2016 to 71.3% in July 2017.  Whenever I see a law school's bar exam results go down, the first thing I do is go back and look at the admissions statistics from three years earlier, then compare them with the prior year.  More often than not, a significant drop in bar passage rate can be explained by a corresponding decline in admissions standards. Not surprisingly, when we look at the incoming credentials of students Albany admitted in 2014 compared to 2013, we see a sharp decline.  In 2013, the 75/50/25 LSAT scores at Albany were 156/153/150, meaning that, at most, 24% were at 149 or below, the point at which law students start to be at high risk of failing the bar. (See LSAT risk bands chart below)    In 2014, the numbers declined across the board to 154/151/148, suggesting that somewhere between 30-40% were at 149 or lower, and therefore in a high risk of failure category. Undergraduate GPAs also declined across the board from 3.59/3.38/3.13 in 2013 to 3.51/3.22/2.90 in 2014.  This significant drop in the capability of the admitted students easily explains the drop in bar passage rates three years later.

Losing an Academic Career to ME/CFS

After she received her doctorate in Biology at the University of California – Davis, Caroline Christian spent the next fifteen years struggling with ME/CFS.  She did field work in South Africa, began raising a family, and secured a faculty position in Environmental Studies at Sonoma State University.  Finally, however, the illness has compelled her to give up her career, as she explains in this post on the Health Rising blog, which is part of the Lives Interrupted Project.

Here is how Professor Christian describes her situation:

I remain hopeful that being a professor is not my last professional act, but the varied and complex nature of my illness means I am no longer able to work, in any capacity, and likely for the foreseeable future (or until effective treatments are developed). I am still the same me, my brain, when working, is still full of curiosity, and I have a strong desire to serve and connect with people. This is especially hard for me because in a better moment, I can almost imagine tackling a project. I pick up an idea, make progress, then crash. It could be two months before I return to it again, if at all. There is a virtual graveyard where many fun and creative ideas and dreams of mine have gone to die. With my brain fog, ideas float around me in slow and random motion, as on a space ship with no gravity. Occasionally I reach for an idea and occasionally I catch one. I am surprisingly OK with this process. But the truth is that even these ideas may never take flight.

Her encounters with the medical establishment will be familiar to anyone who has read my earlier posts on ME/CFS:

ME/CFS is the only disease for which exercise (or any form of exertion) worsens the condition. This runs counter to most medical and popular advice on how to stay healthy. When ME/CFS patients are delayed in getting a proper diagnosis, they run the risk of overdoing it, and in doing so, making their condition far worse.

Much of this happens at the hands of physicians, who insist that exercise is the answer to our fatigue. It is well documented that most exercise harms people with ME/CFS. Sadly, progress in ME/CFS research was largely thwarted for five years by an influential group of British psychiatrists who published a study in the Lancetasserting that exercise and cognitive behavioral therapy were effective treatments for this disease. Subsequent reanalysis of the data revealed serious flaws in the paper, and the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has removed all mention of this study from its website. Too much evidence has mounted for anyone now to refute the fact that ME/CFS is a very serious neuro-immune disease, yet the legacy of this study continues, especially in the United Kingdom.

 And here is her very poignant closing paragraph, which tells you much of what you need to know about living with ME/CFS:

My dream one day is to walk into a doctor’s office or the emergency room and have them understand right away what kind of care is needed, as occurs with other major illnesses affecting millions of people worldwide. In the meantime, I will apply what energy I have to recovering and helping make this dream become a reality.

On a more encouraging note, Jane Brody had a column this week in the New York Times in which she dispelled many of the misconceptions about ME/CFS. You can read it here.

Hensel Named Dean Of Georgia State Law

Georgia State University has announced that its interim dean, Wendy Fritzen Hensel, has been appointed permanent dean of the law school.  Hensel holds a JD from Harvard Law School and joined the Georgia State faculty as an assistant professor in 2003.  

Music Posts, Explained

As is apparent from the comments on Stagger Lee, most readers enjoy the music posts although some do not. That is why I post them on weekends (including holiday weekends), when there are few other posts and traffic is light.  Some of the music posts have vague connections to law. Stagolee, for example, is the story of "Stag" Lee Sheldon, who was tried and convicted of murder in 1897. Most, however, fall into the "Culture" category, which is one of the listed subjects on The Faculty Lounge banner.

Speaking of the banner, it was created before I joined the blog, so I don't know why it has the particular order of "Law, Culture, and Academia."  I do not think there is any particular meaning to the sequence, although one comment suggested that it put "Academia" in last place.  Perhaps it is just reverse alphabetical order, or perhaps it reflects the increasing number of syllables.  

In any case, I plan to continue posting music on weekends. The scroll bar provides a simple way of avoiding the videos for those who do not care for them.

And because today is Thanksgiving (and because it is about a misdemeanor prosecution):

 

Stagger Lee

 The song is based on the murder of Billy Lyons by "Stag" Lee Shelton in a St. Louis bar on Christmas Day 1895, in a dispute over a Stetson hat. 

Wilbert Harrison

Hugh Laurie

Ma Rainey

More after the jump:

The ABA and the LSAT: How Low is Too Low?

UPDATED November 18, 2017

Although the ABA has been careful not to direct a minimum cutoff LSAT score for law schools to admit individual applicants, if one looks at the law schools that have been found out of compliance with Standard 501 over the last two years, a clear pattern emerges of what the ABA considers acceptable LSAT numbers for the class as a whole.

Below is a list of schools that the ABA has taken action against for violating Standard 501 and the LSAT profiles of their students at their lowest point:

Ave Maria (remedial action)  2014: 148-143-139

Arizona Summit  (probation) 2015 and 2016: 148-143-140

Appalachian (out of compliance letter) 2014:  148-144-141

Charlotte (probation) 2014: 146-142-138

Florida Coastal (out of compliance letter) 2014: 147-143-140

Texas Southern (censured) 2015: 146-143-141

Thomas Cooley  (out of compliance letter) 2015 and 2016: 147-141-138

Thomas Jefferson (probation) 2016 147-143-141

Valparaiso (censured) 2013 148-143-141

One other data point worth considering:  the ABA for a brief time refused to give provisional accreditation status to UNT in part because of concerns over compliance with Standard 501.  The LSAT profile of their 2014 entering class was 151/147/143. In 2015, when the site team visited, it dropped to 150/146/143.  So these LSATs seem right on the margin of what the ABA considers acceptable.     

There is one other school that received a letter of noncompliance with Standard 501 recently and that was John Marshall Law School (Atlanta).  Frankly, this is a bit of a head-scratcher for me.  John Marshall's LSAT numbers aren't anything special, but they are nowhere as bad as the schools noted above.  In 2015 their LSAT profile was 150-147-145 and in 2016 149-148-145. This is four points higher at the 25th percentile than any of the other schools that have been found out of compliance, a significant difference.  So perhaps the ABA is trying to ratchet up its standards, which I would fully support.  But I predict that after John Marshall gets an opportunity to respond to the ABA letter, they will ultimately not be found out of compliance with Standard 501.

To provide some context, here are some LSAT scores with the corresponding percentiles*:

151   48%

150  44%

149  40%

148  37%

147  33%

146  30%

145  27%

144  24%

143  21%

142  18%

141  16% 

140  14%

139  12%

138  10%

137  8.5%

Here is another way of thinking about LSAT scores, based on the risk of LSAT takers failing out of school or flunking the bar exam:

David Frakt’s LSAT Score Risk Bands 

156-180           Minimal Risk

153-155           Low Risk

150-152           Modest Risk

147-149           High Risk

145-146           Very High Risk

120-144           Extreme Risk

I believe that even "opportunity schools" should admit very few students from the very high risk category, and only if they have better than average college grades, and even fewer from the extreme risk category, and only with much better than average grades.  Although students with LSATs in this range occasionally succeed, when a law school enrolls a significant percentage of such students, it is almost certain to have very high attrition rates, and very low bar passage rates.  Admitting too many very high and extreme risk students is also likely to overwhelm the academic support staff, and forces the faculty to dumb down their classes, which hurts the stronger students.  A reasonable 75/50/25 for an opportunity school would be 151/149/147 (and preferably higher in California).  Keep in mind that this still means that up to 24% of the students will be below 147 and therefore in the very high or extreme risk bands.  150/148/146 would be pushing the envelope.  Anything below that is a recipe for disaster.

Right now, any school with a current or recent LSAT profile at or below 149-145-142, especially if coupled with poor recent bar results, should expect a letter from the ABA, and start taking voluntary steps to raise their admission standards.  Based on this, my pick for the school most likely to hear from the ABA soon:

Southern - 2016 LSATs 146-143-141  GPA 3.16/2.86/2.52. Southern has had bar pass rates in the 50s for the past few years. 

Other potential candidates for ABA concern:

NC Central - 2016 LSATs 149-144-141 

Charleston - 2016 LSATs 149-145-141

Both of these schools have also struggled on recent bar exams.  When the 2017 Standard 509 Reports come out in a few weeks, I will update this list.

 

 

* LSAT conversion percentiles may vary a bit, usually less than one percentage point, from test to test.

 

 

 

Desperation Time at Thomas Cooley

It has been obvious for some time that Western Michigan University’s Thomas M. Cooley Law School has been grossly violating ABA Standards.  I have previously noted this and urged the ABA to take action. For example, in a post on January 26, 2016 about Cooley’s abominable admissions policies (e.g. over 100 part time students enrolled with LSATs at 137 or below, the bottom 8% of LSAT takers),  I noted: “Cooley is clearly gambling that they can weather the downturn in applications by lowering their standards without jeopardizing their accreditation.   The ABA Council on Legal Education, if it is to maintain any credibility at all, should not allow Cooley to get away with it.”   

A few months later,  in a July 28, 2016  column describing Cooley’s Dean and President’s opposition to the ABA’s proposed tougher bar standards – standards which Cooley was virtually guaranteed to fail – I described Cooley this way: “the least selective ABA-Accredited law school in the country -- a school with unconscionable admission practices which has generated tens of millions of dollars in revenue from federal student loans taken out by hundreds of unqualified students, leaving many of them saddled with six figure debts and worthless degrees.”

Last December 16, 2016, in a post describing the most appalling revelations in the 2016 ABA Standard 509 Reports, I noted: “Thomas Cooley has continued its exploitative admission practices, admitting 86% of its applicants and enrolling a huge class of 415 students, slightly down from last year’s class of 448, but with identical LSATs, a horrifying 147/141/138.  Cooley’s bar pass rate has hovered in the low 50s for the last three years (it is actually lower, because Cooley reports only 70-71% of their students and omits results from states where they did even worse, like California, as the current ABA standard permits).  Cooley has been 20 points or more below the state average since 2013 and was 16 points below the state average in 2012, so they are also out of compliance with ABA Standard 316.  Expect the ABA to place Cooley on probation in the very near future.

Earlier this year, in a March 28, 2017 post about the decision to place Arizona Summit on probation,  I made a prediction: “I expect the ABA to take action against other predatory schools in the near future.  Thomas Cooley and Thomas Jefferson would be my candidates for the next schools most likely to be sanctioned.”

It appears that I was right on the money.  Yesterday, the ABA placed Thomas Jefferson on probation.  Today, courtesy of Above the Law, we learned that Thomas Cooley has also been found non-compliant with ABA Standards.  I wrote recently about Thomas Jefferson’s unethical decision to keep silent regarding the ABA’s May 19, 2017,  letter informing the school about the ABA’s findings of non-compliance with several standards.   By failing to inform its continuing and admitted students of their non-compliance, which was of a sufficiently severe nature that it was obvious that probation in the near future was a distinct possibility, Thomas Jefferson deprived those students of an opportunity to transfer to another school, or to matriculate elsewhere or not at all.  Now Thomas Cooley has done Thomas Jefferson one better.  Not only is Thomas Cooley trying to keep its current and prospective students in the dark, but Thomas Cooley actually filed suit against the ABA seeking an injunction against the ABA from posting the letter on its website, as required by federal regulations.   Cooley’s rationale?  The letter will do immediate and irreparable harm to Cooley’s reputation.  More to the point, if prospective students become aware of the contents of the letter, they might choose not to attend Cooley. 

Hopefully, this outrageous gambit to keep consumers in the dark will fail.  As I wrote in my last column, I believe law schools have an ethical and legal obligation to disclose any letter from the ABA finding the school in non-compliance with an important Standard.  In the meantime, for those wondering what is in this letter that Thomas Cooley is so afraid will get out, there is no need to wait for the outcome of the lawsuit to find out.  It just so happens that Law School Transparency managed to obtain a copy of the letter from the ABA website before it was pulled, apparently in reaction to the lawsuit, so you can read it for yourself.  (Full disclosure, I am the Chair of LST’s National Advisory Council.)

For those who don’t want to wade through four single-spaced pages of accreditation-speak, here is the gist of it:  Cooley was previously found in September by the Accreditation Committee of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar to be in non-compliance with ABA Standard 501b, and Interpretation 501-1.  Cooley appealed this decision to the ABA Council of the Section of Legal Education and several members of Cooley’s senior leadership team made presentations at the last ABA Council meeting on November 3-4, 2017.  The ABA Council rejected the appeal and affirmed its earlier finding.  To state it most simply, the ABA found that Cooley is admitting applicants who do not “appear capable of satisfactorily completing its program of legal education and being admitted to the bar.”  Among the factors the ABA considered in reaching this conclusion were the academic test credentials of the law school’s entering students, the academic attrition rate of the law school’s students, the bar passage rate of its graduates, and the effectiveness of the law school’s academic support program. Cooley was ordered to provide a highly detailed report about its admissions practices, attrition rates and recent bar passage rates, and advised that if the report does not demonstrate compliance with Standard 501b, the school will be subject to sanctions when the Committee meets next June.  Based on the information already publicly available regarding Cooley’s admission practices, attrition and bar passage rates, it is hard for me to see who Cooley will be able to avoid sanctions.  Whatever sanctions the ABA chooses to impose will be richly deserved, but I hope that the Committee will seriously consider the authorized sanction under Rule 16(b)(2) of “requiring that the law school refund all or part of tuition or fees paid by students” for those students that the ABA determines never should have been admitted.  The forcible disgorgement of these ill-gotten gains would not only benefit those students receiving a refund, but would serve as a powerful deterrent to other law schools from engaging in exploitative admissions practices in the future.   

These latest actions by the ABA continue the ABA’s recent crackdown on predatory law schools.  I commend the ABA for its strong stand on this issue and urge the Council to stay the course.   

An Academic Publishing Mystery: The Case of the Vanishing Peer Reviewer

As I explained in a recent post, BMJ published a "Best Practice" guide last July that pretty much repudiated the psychosocial model ME/CFS that has been dominant in the U.K. Although I did not mention it here, one of the most intriguing aspects of the guide was that Dr. Peter White, an emeritus professor of psychological medicine Queen Mary University London, was one of the peer reviewers.  White was one of the principal investigators in the PACE trial -- which has been discredited in the U.S. but still respected in the U.K. -- and a leading proponent of "reversing" ME/CFS through psychotherapy and graded exercise.  The BMJ Best Practice guide, however, rejected that approach, so it was quite a surprise to see White's name among the peer reviewers.  Of course, approving a monograph for publication does not necessarily imply agreement with its conclusions, and it is possible that White's review had been negative, but, as David Tuller and I said on the Virology Blog, White still deserved credit for reviewing a guide so contrary to his own life's work.

Now the mystery:  At some point between the initial publication in July and last week, White's name was removed from the list of peer reviewers on the on-line version of the Best Practice guide.  No correction, no explanation, no update, no retraction.  His name is just gone.

Well, White either peer reviewed the monograph or he didn't.  If he did, then his name should remain on the list, even if he is unhappy with the ultimate publication.  If he didn't, and the original listing was in error, then there should be a correction rather than an erasure.  If White believes that his inclusion somehow validates the guide -- with which he no doubt disagrees -- then perhaps a "dissent" could be noted. But simply removing his name seems Orwellian.

Readers of this blog probably have little interest in the names behind the ME/CFS developments, but there is an underlying issue here of standards in academic publishing.  While it may be fine to edit or correct on-line publications, it strikes me as deeply wrong to make such a major revision -- really, changing the history of the publication -- without any acknowledgement whatsoever.

David Tuller is pursuing the question with BMJ Publishing and other sources, and I will post updates as his investigation progresses.

 

Law Dean Search: Ohio Northern University

Ohio Northern University in Ada, Ohio, seeks applications and nominations for the position of Dean of the Claude W. Pettit College of Law. A successful candidate will build on the College’s strengths, while navigating the challenges currently facing law schools, so that the College is well-positioned for the future. Applicants must have a Juris Doctor, or equivalent degree, and a history of scholarly productivity and/or relevant professional experience that would allow for tenure within the Pettit College of Law at the rank of Professor. Desired qualifications include: demonstrated administrative ability, experience in budgeting, fiscal management, assessment, and management of law admissions with a strong connection to legal practice and bar organizations. Personal scholarly activity with demonstrated support for faculty scholarship and engagement as well as experience in higher education development, alumni relations, and legal education are equally important. For a more detailed profile of the position, please go to https://www.onu.edu/academic_affairs/dean_law.  Nominations and expressions of interest may be sent electronically to Ted Ford Webb at  [email protected]  or 978-371-4900.

Best Books of the Year, WAPO Edition

It's hard for me to believe that 2017 is so far along that we're getting ready for the end-of-year celebrations -- like lists of the best books of the year.  I want to call attention the Washington Post's recent list of "best books of the year."  I'm delighted that David Garrow's Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama is on the list.  I had the pleasure of reading much (I can't confess to have read all 1500 pages) of it last summer when I was in Philly.  Of course I 'm deeply interested in Obama's intellectual origins.

Global Perspectives: Regimes of Redress and Reparations, Transitional Justice, and the Rule of Law, CFP

Somehow I failed to post about this earlier.  Tulane Law School has posted a call for papers for "A Conference of Global Perspectives: Regimes of Redress and Reparations, Transitional Justice, and the Rule of Law," which will be held in March 2018.

The organizers invite scholars and activists working on issues related to racial reconciliation, transitional justice, historical memory, regimes of redress, and the rule of law to participate in a two-day conference focused on these themes. The conference will be both transnational and interdisciplinary in scope. Interdisciplinary synergies will be created through the inclusion of experts from regions that have experienced racial and ethnic oppression and are in the process of achieving (or have successfully achieved) reconciliation through the establishment of the rule of law, norms of redress, and cultures of remembrance.

The two-day conference will consist of four to six panels based on submitted proposals, as well as at least one keynote address and one plenary session composed by the organizers. We encourage those who are interested in presenting a paper or organizing a panel to submit paper abstracts to the organizers no later than January 19, 2018.

Submitted proposals should contain “Redress Conference” in the subject line and should be sent via email to [email protected]. Please send all inquiries about the conference to Robert Westley’s assistant, Andrea Brigalia, at [email protected].

ORGANIZERS
Professor Robert Westley, Tulane Law School
Associate Professor Saru Matambanadzo, Tulane Law School
Associate Professor Laura R. Adderley, Director of Africana Studies
Associate Professor Marline S. Otte, Tulane Department of History

Does Contract Law Need Morality? The Slave, The Digital Pedophile, and The Indebted Gambler

Wenhao Liu and I have just posted to SSRN a draft of our paper discussing Nate Oman’s book, The Dignity of Commerce.  For those of you who have not yet read the Dignity of Commerce, I highly recommend it. I adopted it for my Advanced Contracts seminar last year and have done the same for this year. The book might also be a useful addition to a first-year contracts course, depending on your coverage, but it definitely works well for me in the more advanced setting.

In brief, The Dignity of Commerce sets out an ambitious market theory of contract, which Nate argues is a superior normative foundation for contract law than either the moralist or economic justifications that currently dominate contract theory. One of the book’s most important contributions is its emphasis on the positive role played by markets and thus, by extension, of contracts. In an era rife with warnings about the market’s dangers to society, Nate’s cogent reminder of the market’s benefits is both refreshing and welcome. I was particularly drawn to the discussion of the market’s (and, therefore, contract’s) often forgotten role in organizing productive social interactions. These social benefits, Nate argues, are so important that it is these benefits—rather than a commitment to markets in and of themselves—that justify the use of state resources to support markets, and thus contracts.

Nate’s theory is also descriptively appealing: by recognizing that conceptions of morality and blameworthiness impact contract law, The Dignity of Commerce surely provides a descriptively more realistic account of contract law than theories that contend that contract law is explained solely by economic considerations or solely by moral ones. We find Nate’s market theory of contract less successful as a normative or prescriptive theory, however. To our mind, Nate makes moral judgments about the validity of certain markets (and, therefore, certain contracts) without providing a theoretical framework to replace either the moralist or economic theories he rejects. As a result, we don’t think the market theory can provide meaningful guidance to courts, policymakers, or scholars confronted with the more difficult questions facing contract law.

We illustrate all of these points using the examples of forced slavery, “The Digital Pedophile,” “The Indebted Gambler,” and taboo (or pernicious) markets, such as commercial surrogacy and sex work. And, hey, what could be more fun than that?!

So, all in all, The Dignity of Commerce is definitely a worthwhile read and can easily be incorporated into contract law courses and seminars, especially if you try to spend some time asking students to think about the normative foundations of contract law and how courts should resolve some of the thornier questions that emerge.

And, of course, you should make sure to read our critique of the book, as well!

The Benefits and Downsides of Live Tweeting at Conferences

At legal academic conferences, as well as academic conferences in other fields, it has become increasingly common for attendees to live tweet from sessions they attend, using hashtags that they create or that have been promulgated by conference organizers, or a mix of both.  See, e.g., #AALS2016, #AALS2015, #LSMEX17.  Today's Chronicle of Higher Education has an article by Noah Berlatsky on The Dangers of Tweeting at Conferences.  Here is an excerpt:

Conference planners should also keep in mind the dangers and downsides of live-tweeting. They should alert attendees to potentially dangerous hashtags and encourage live-tweeters to use only official conference hashtags. Presenters should have the right to ask people not to live-tweet during their talk, and shouldn’t have to explain their reasons.

In short, default permission for live-tweeting should be expected at a scholarly meeting. But tweeters should be aware of the dangers, and presenters should be able to opt out easily if they wish.

Social media isn’t negative or positive in itself; it’s just a tool. As with any tool, you want to know how it works, when to use it, and where the sharp edges are. If organizers, tweeters, and presenters are careful and knowledgeable, Twitter can amplify and deepen the conference experience.

The full article is here.  The author cautions against the inadvertent use of hashtags that may attract trolls, the concern that academic work might be quoted out of context, and the possibility that a blind peer-review process could be compromised (less of a problem for law profs who publish mostly in student-edited journals).

Given how many law profs there are on Twitter (see, e.g., here for data on law prof Twitter users from 2015; anecdotally, the number seems to have increased since then), I found the Chron article to be thought-provoking. 

Journalist and historian David Perry gives this succinct advice: "If you think the paper sucks, don’t tweet it. Don’t say it’s bad; you don’t need to lie and say it’s good. Just stop tweeting. And I have done that. There have been papers about which I had nothing nice to say. So I said nothing at all, as our mothers taught us."

 

Dean Search: Gonzaga University School of Law

Dean of the School of Law

Gonzaga University

Gonzaga University invites nominations and applications for the Dean of the School of Law. The Dean reports to the Provost/Senior Vice President and is the academic leader, external face, and chief executive of Gonzaga Law. 

Founded in 1912, Gonzaga University School of Law provides a legal education informed by its Jesuit, Catholic and humanistic traditions and values to educate the whole person and serve the public good. Gonzaga Law offers students a core curriculum taught by a devoted and talented faculty, encouraging students to engage in critical thinking and apply it to real world situations. Gonzaga Law’s specialty programs include its recently launched Center for Civil and Human Rights, its Center for Commercial Law, its Center for Law in Public Service, its Institute for Law Teaching and Learning, and its Gonzaga-in-Florence study abroad program. Gonzaga’s faculty are active scholars engaged in research and academic debate on a national and international scale. The faculty are creative, energetic, and committed to furthering Gonzaga’s social justice mission through innovation, interdisciplinary connections, and programmatic development. Building on a legacy of leadership, Gonzaga Law has a profound impact on clients, community, and the academy, preparing lawyers and pursuing discussions that draw on its century-long mission to further the larger good. More information about the School of Law may be found at www.law.gonzaga.edu.

The Dean of the School of Law will be a visionary, an accomplished leader, and a legal professional with a commitment to enhancing the excellence of Gonzaga Law. Candidates should have a distinguished record of academic achievements in a core discipline and/or interdisciplinary field and the credentials to warrant appointment as a professor within the School of Law. A J.D. degree is required. The Dean will cultivate high-quality scholarship, teaching, and diversity as important components of academic excellence. Additionally, it is preferred that the candidate has fundraising experience, and/or a willingness to engage in and learn the business of fundraising. Candidates should possess the financial and administrative experience and acumen to manage a large, complex budget as well as an effective administrative team. In addition to these requirements, the Dean will provide leadership and strategic vision, work well in a collaborative decision-making environment, and have demonstrated organizational and management skills to develop current programs and pursue new and innovative ones. The Dean will embrace the mission and values of Gonzaga as a Jesuit, Catholic institution.

Gonzaga University is a private Jesuit, Catholic, and humanistic university providing education to more than 7,800 students. Situated along the Spokane River near downtown Spokane, Washington, Gonzaga offers 75 fields of study, 26 master's degrees, doctoral degrees in leadership studies and nursing, and a juris doctor degree through the School of Law. 

The Search Committee invites letters of nomination, expressions of interest, or applications and they may be sent to Werner Boel and Suzanne Teer, the Witt/Kieffer consultants assisting the School of Law with this search, at [email protected]. Electronic submissions are strongly encouraged. A complete application will include a letter of interest, a curriculum vitae, and contact information for five professional references. This search will be conducted with respect to the confidentiality of candidates; references will not be contacted without prior knowledge and approval of the candidate. Review of materials will begin immediately and continue until an appointment is made. To ensure full consideration, please submit your application before January 12, 2018. Applications received after this date may be considered at the discretion of the Search Committee. The anticipated starting date for the new dean is July 1, 2018. 

Gonzaga University does not discriminate against any person on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, disability, veteran status, or any other non-merit factor in employment, educational program, or activities that it operates.

Policy Shock Has Arrived!

And you can get it at a discount. 

My new book, Policy Shock: Recalibrating Risk and Regulation After Oil Spills, Nuclear Accidents, and Financial Crises  (Cambridge University Press, November 2017) is finally here. It is edited by Duke University Rethinking Regulation program members Edward Balleisen, Professor of History and Duke's Vice Provost for Interdisciplinary Studies; Lori Bennear, the Juli Plant Grainger Associate Professor of Energy Economics and Policy at the Nicholas School of the Environment; Kimberly Krawiec, the Kathrine Robinson Everett Professor of Law (AKA me!); and Jonathan Wiener, the William R. & Thomas L. Perkins Professor of Law, Professor of Environmental Policy, and Professor of Public Policy. 

The book looks at responses to events over the last century in the U.S., Europe, and Japan, and assesses how they affected laws, regulations, and institutions. (A special discount of 30% off the list price is available from Cambridge University Press until June 1, 2018, by entering the code:  Policy17.)

I’ve included screen shots of the Table of Contents below. As you can see, some great authors are included here, representing contributions from law, economics, history, political science, psychology, engineering, and more.

I’ve also uploaded a pdf of the Introduction.  Download 9781107140219_excerpt-2

You can also read this Q&A with my colleague and co-author, Jonathan Wiener, discussing the book.

Equality Law Scholars’ Forum

Friday, November 17 – Saturday, November 18, 2017

The Forum is designed to provide junior scholars with commentary and critique by their more senior colleagues in the legal academy and, more broadly, to foster development and understanding of new scholarly currents across equality law. 

The Forum will feature five presenters (chosen from over 50 submissions):

Age, Law, and Egalitarianism

Alexander Boni-Saenz,Assistant Professor of Law, Chicago-Kent Law

Color-Blind But Not Color-Deaf: Accent Discrimination in Jury Selection

Jasmine Gonzales Rose, Assistant Professor of Law, University of Pittsburgh Law

Colorable Claims of Discrimination

Vinay Harpalani, Associate Professor of Law, Savannah Law School

Scapegoating Abortion Rights: The Conservative Revolution and the Economic

Decline of the Working Class
Yvonne Lindgren, Visiting Professor of Law, University of San Francisco

Public Labor Unions as Democracy Facilitators for the Working Class

Courtlyn Roser-Jones, Hastie Fellow, University of Wisconsin Law School

Turning the Corner on ME/CFS in the United Kingdom

For the past several years, it has seemed as though physicians in the U.S. and the U.K. have been speaking different languages about Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (also known as Myalgic Encephalomyelitis or ME/CFS).  The British medical establishment has remained firmly in the grip of the PACE school, which insists that ME/CFS symptoms are primarily the psychosocial manifestations of "unhelpful cognitions" and “dysfunctional illness beliefs,” which can be “reversed” by means of Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) and graded exercise therapy (GET).  American researchers, however, have increasingly rejected the CBT/GET theory – and the discredited PACE trial on which it is based – in favor a biomedical model. 

Significant advances in identifying biomarkers – as the first step toward an effective medical therapy – have been made in major laboratories at Columbia, Stanford, Cornell, and other leading universities.  In 2015, the National Academy of Medicine (then called the Institute of Medicine) issued an important report concluding that ME/CFS is a biological illness, but it seemed to have almost no impact on the other side of the Atlantic, where psychiatrists continued to dominate ME/CFS treatment and research.

It now appears, however, that the situation may finally be about to change, with the issuance of a new “Best Practice Guide” from the influential BMJ Publishing Group. (BMJ originally stood for British Medical Journal, one of the two leading medical journals in the U.K.)  The new report, authored by Dr. James Baraniuk of Georgetown University, rejects the CBT/GET theory and comes down firmly in favor of the biomedical model:

[T]he prospect that CBT can change the illness beliefs of a patient, and that graded activity can reverse or cure CFS, is not supported by post-intervention outcome data.

The publication of this report in the U.K. may well be an inflection point in ME/CFS treatment and research, as it basically demolishes the reigning British paradigm of the illness and specifically points out the ineffectiveness, and the potential harm, of CBT and GET.

The estimable and invaluable David Tuller and I have posted an analysis of the Baraniuk Report on the Virology Blog.  Here is the gist:

Something has changed. 
 
That’s the only explanation for the recent publication of a “Best Practice” guide for “chronic fatigue syndrome” (behind a paywall, unfortunately) from the BMJ Publishing Group. This thing is good. It’s very good, in fact. One bottom line at this stage for any treatment guide is the following: Would it lead a clinician to prescribe cognitive behavior therapy or graded exercise therapy for patients with ME, as opposed to those suffering from a vague fatiguing illness? The answer here is an unequivocal no.
 
The guide doesn’t refute the PACE trial by name. It doesn’t have to. With its strong emphasis on the many physiological dysfunctions that characterize the illness, the guide represents a refutation not only of PACE itself but of the deconditioning/fear-of-exercise hypothesis—the foundational myth of the CBT/GET cult. It is hard to imagine that any organization associated with the British medical and academic establishment would have published this document just two years ago, before patients’ concerns about the PACE trial mushroomed into an international scientific scandal. Someone over at BMJ obviously understands that the field has moved beyond the simplistic and unproven claims of the biopsychosocial field.

You can read the full post here.

Why Climate Change Matters

"When it all comes down, you've got to go back to Mother Earth"

 

 

What Does It Mean to Call Your Own Position "Arguable"?

On the always-interesting Balkinization blog, Marty Lederman has an extensive and thoughtful analysis of “The SG’s Remarkable Cert. Petition in Hargan v. Garza, the “Jane Doe” Abortion Case.”  The case, as most readers are probably aware, involved the abortion rights of a 17 year old undocumented (and unaccompanied) minor, who was held in custody in an HHS shelter in Texas.  The ACLU represented “Jane Doe” in her attempt to obtain a lawful abortion in Texas, which requires advance counseling by a physician and cannot not be performed beyond 20 weeks.  After about eight weeks of litigation – described in detail in the Lederman post – the ACLU obtained an en banc ruling from the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals allowing the procedure to go forward, and then an injunctive order from District Judge Tanya Chutkan requiring the shelter to release J.D. for the abortion, which was performed early the following morning. 

The Solicitor General filed the government’s Certiorari Petition nine days after J.D. had already terminated her pregnancy.  Lederman does an excellent job of explaining all of the oddities in the petition, including the perhaps unprecedented suggestion that the Court might take “disciplinary action” against the ACLU lawyers for “what appear to be material misrepresentations and omissions to government counsel designed to thwart this Court’s review.” In brief, the Petition alleges that the ACLU attorneys lulled the government into delaying its cert petition while they surreptitiously facilitated the abortion, thus making it impossible for the government to seek a stay of District Court order. Lederman shows the weakness of the government’s position, which is based on a tendentious reading of a series of emails. Says Lederman, “It’s at best a tempest in a teapot—and perhaps something much more troubling:  a wholly unwarranted accusation of misconduct on the part of opposing counsel.”

Rather than repeat Lederman’s day-by-day (and sometimes hour-by-hour) account of the relevant events, I want to focus on one very strange line in the government’s petition: 

Given the dealings between the parties, respondent’s counsel at least arguably had an obligation to notify the government of this incredibly significant development [the scheduling of the abortion procedure].

In ordinary legal writing, the term “arguable” usually refers to a position that is somewhat better than frivolous, but still without merit.  A judicial opinion, for example, might refer to the losing side’s claims as “arguable,” right before dismissing them.  A brief might allow that the opposing side's interpretation of the law is "arguable" though flatly wrong.  In an intra-office memorandum, a lawyer might advise her partner to pursue all “arguable” claims, including the clear losers, so long as they can be made with a straight face.  In responding to a Rule 11 motion, or to other possible sanctions, a lawyer will contend that his outlandish or unorthodox pleadings nonetheless met the minimum standard of "arguability" under the circumstances. 

Thus, when the government characterizes its own position as “at least arguably” valid, that seems to be at least an admission of weakness, or perhaps an even greater concession.  

Lederman speculates that the cert petition may be "fundamentally a press release, for an audience other than the Justices of the Supreme Court," adding,  "I hope I am mistaken about that—but it's difficult to come up with any other explanation for it."  I would not go that far. The petition is at least arguably meant to be taken seriously.

Disclosure:  I am a long-standing member of the ACLU.