The Faculty Lounge

An Ever More Polarized Nation

The Senate Judiciary Committee hearing riveted the nation last week. Over 20 million people watched it on television, and more than 30 million people viewed it online. What makes those numbers even more remarkable is the fact that the Judiciary Committee held the hearing on a weekday when most Americans were at work. Yet 50 million people still found time to follow it. By way of comparison, NBC’s Sunday Night Football—which year in and year out is the most watched weekly television program—averages 18.5 million viewers. When a midweek Senate hearing attracts more viewers than the NFL, you know you are witnessing history unfold before your eyes.

Rovers, Irish and Wild

The Wild Rover, by the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem (with Pete Seeger)

Lateral Tenured Positions at University of Florida

The University of Florida Levin College of Law seeks applications for the following positions from experienced scholars possessing outstanding academic credentials, demonstrated teaching ability, and distinguished scholarship to begin in the 2019-20 academic year.

• We seek distinguished applicants for a tenured appointment in conjunction with the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering at the University of Florida, pursuant to the University of Florida’s “Preeminence Plan” to continue its rise among top public universities. We are particularly interested in candidates whose scholarship is at the forefront of areas relating to law and engineering, technology, intellectual property, regulation of industry, and entrepreneurship.
• We seek applications from nationally recognized scholars in taxation to fill one or two endowed chairs in taxation. We are particularly interested in candidates whose scholarship focuses on tax procedure (civil, criminal or both), employee benefits and executive compensation, state and local taxation, or tax-exempt institutions.

Former Judge Using Title in Court (as a Witness)

Richard Underwood (University of Kentucky) has asked me to post the following question about the use of titles by former judges:

A former student (now a defense lawyer) asked me what to do when the plaintiff’s lawyer uses a fact witness who is a former judge who wants to be called “Judge.” . I told the lawyer to address the problem to the trial judge. My lawyer asked the trial court to have the witness and the plaintiff’s  lawyer not use the title “Judge” during Q and A. The trial judge referred the issue to the former judge/witness! I guess it’s a “Judge Club” thing.  Naturally the witness wanted to be called “Judge”, and the plaintiff’s lawyer referred to the witness as “Judge”  all through the trial. (Why am I not surprised?)

The aftermath of Len Kachinsky’s defense representation

Across several prior posts, I have outlined how the 2007 conviction of Brendan Dassey for the murder of Teresa Halbach—part of the largest criminal investigation in Wisconsin’s history—can enhance the investigative criminal procedure classroom for law students and law professors alike. I have argued there is much for law students (and even lawyers) to learn from law enforcement’s numerous interrogations of Dassey alongside the pretrial defense representation he received. On that latter topic, I have focused on Len Kachinsky’s representation of Dassey during a five month period from March through August of 2006.

During that period, Kachinsky hired a defense investigator who would end up also interrogating Dassey in an effort to elicit a further confession from him in order to aid law enforcement. Kachinksy would also waive Dassey’s (extremely viable) Miranda arguments during a hearing on Kachinksy’s motion to suppress. And, to top the representation off, Kachinsky invited law enforcement to interrogate Dassey without representation prior to trial.

That remarkable behavior is constitutional pursuant to the Supreme Court’s 1984 decision in Strickland v. Washington, which sets an extremely low bar for attorney performance under the Sixth Amendment. Strickland poses two distinct problems: (1) the low standard itself, and (2) lower courts’ interpretation of that standard to further lower the bar sets. In my last post, I explored that first problem—the standard—and today I’ll explore how the lower courts interpreted Strickland to reject his claim that Kachinksy provided unconstitutional representation. Both problems point in the same direction, which is for law schools to demand more from students. At the end of this post, I’ll offer one concrete suggestion for how schools might do exactly that.

How the Legal Academy Has Changed Since the Great Recession (Hint-It's Probably a Lot More Than You Think)

I’ve had the privilege over the last year of working with two exceptionally skilled and thoughtful empirical investigators—Jerry Organ of the University of St. Thomas School of Law; and Emma Rasiel, Associate Chair of the Duke University Department of Economics.  The question that brought us together, which began with a conversation Jerry Organ and I struck up when we found ourselves stranded in New York by the blizzard at the end of the 2014 AALS conference, is whether we could develop reasonably rigorous but accessible ways of describing quantitatively how the American legal academy had changed in recent years in reaction to the circumstances changing around it.

As our work unfolded, the task became twofold:  First to depict how the academy had changed; and then to see if we could find any patterns in the changes (whether or not consciously strategic) among law schools with shared characteristics.  The result is our new paper Competitive Coping Strategies in the American Legal Academy: An Empirical Study.  It will be published by the good folks at the Nevada Law Journal early next year, and a draft is now posted on SSRN here.  We think that many interested spectators will find some of the paper’s observations surprising. 

We start with a description of how—and importantly, how much—the legal academy has changed.  Most readers of this space and other legal education enthusiasts are aware of the contraction in the new-graduate job market that began after 2007, and the substantial decline in both the number and the conventional qualifications of applicants to law school that began after 2010.  But you may not appreciate how widespread and serious its effects have been.  For the vast majority of American law schools, those effects have been somewhere between significant and devastating.

From 2010-11 through 2016-17, the number of unique applicants to accredited law schools fell 36%, and the number of applications fell a little less than 44%.  The conventional metrics by which most admissions decisions are made—Law School Admissions Test (“LSAT”) scores and undergraduate grade-point average (“UGPA”)—declined even more, as more highly credentialed applicants disproportionately stayed away.  For example, while the number of applicants overall fell 36%, the number of applicants with LSAT scores greater than 160 (roughly the 80^th percentile of all test-takers) fell 46%, while those with scores under 150 (roughly the 44^th percentile) fell only 27%.  All this has been widely discussed.

But the effects on the academy have been profound, and far more widespread than many realize.  By 2016-17, the average accredited American law school had an entering class that was nearly one-third smaller and had a median LSAT score seven percentiles lower than in 2010-11.  And while Base Tuition (a school’s published “sticker price”) had risen 15% on average over that period, the average tuition discount per student had doubled, causing the average net tuition paid per student to fall over 6% in constant dollars. 

Unsurprisingly, these effects were not distributed evenly across the academy.  Instead, sectors of the academy distinguished by their relative overall reputation for quality were affected quite differently.  Yes, a small handful of super-elite law schools were essentially unaffected, but that handful is smaller than you may think.  A number of top-20 law schools had to substantially increase their tuition discounting in order to maintain their entering-class LSAT scores.  More generally, the entering classes of the top-third strongest schools reputationally shrank on average only 13% and dropped 3 LSAT percentiles, while the reputationally weaker two-thirds on average shrank by over a third and nearly a half respectively, while dropping 14-15 LSAT percentiles.  Effects on tuition revenue were also pronounced.  Even top-third schools reputationally lost an average of $5.9 million per school in annual tuition revenue comparing 2016-17 with 2010-11, while reputationally weaker schools lost on average $11 million to $12 million annually each (in constant 2018 dollars).  We estimate that aggregate annual tuition revenue for all accredited American law schools fell over $1.5 billion in current dollars between its inflation-adjusted peak in 2011-12 and 2016-17. 

We offer a chart with details on the changes by reputational group and further discussion of what's happened in the last ten years after the jump.

How the Israel Boycott Can Compromise Faculty and Harm Students -- University of Michigan Edition [UPDATED]

As some readers may know, an American Studies professor at the University of Michigan recently rescinded his agreement to provide a study-abroad reference letter for a student, once he realized that she was planning to go to Tel Aviv University.  There was no question about the student's academic qualifications -- he specifically offered to write her a letter for any other destination -- but he explained that his commitment to the BDS movement precluded any support for study in Israel. This action was wrong in many ways, but it does expose the hypocrisy of the American Studies Association and others who claim that the Israel boycott is aimed at institutions and not individuals.

[UPDATE: the professor's email rescinding reference offer is now at the end of this post]

The Alliance for Academic Freedom (of which I am a member) has issued the following statement, which has also been published in the Chronicle of Higher Education:

In July 2014, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel published guidelines, including one instructing professors to refuse to write recommendations for students applying to study in Israel. The guidelines were immediately adopted by the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement. Ever since, BDS members have said that this would affect institutions, not individuals. However, the case this month of a professor refusing to write a letter of recommendation for a student wishing to study in Israel exemplifies the personal consequences of such actions.

John Cheney-Lippold, an associate professor in the department of American culture at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, emailed an undergraduate student to say he had just realized she was applying to study abroad at Tel Aviv University, and therefore, in compliance with the boycott movement, he was withdrawing his offer to write a recommendation on her behalf to that university. He added that he was happy to write other recommendations for her, thus confirming that he had no doubts about her academic record, which would be a valid justification for refusing to write a recommendation.

Faculty members are free to decline requests to write recommendation letters for many reasons. They may feel they don’t know the student well enough, or they may not consider a student strong enough to earn a letter that is both honest and favorable. A faculty member is also entitled to share with a student ethical or political objections to study in a given country. Although institutions have a responsibility to warn students traveling to foreign countries about risks and to determine which institutions they will and will not establish formal relations with, individual faculty members don’t bear such responsibility. In any case, it is students who must ultimately decide what’s in their best interest.

For a faculty member to impose a political litmus test on recommendations and refuse to write to a program because it is based in a particular country violates a student’s right to apply for admission to his or her program of choice. That is what happened here.

 

Wash U Law Seeks Appellate Clinic Director

This just in:

WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW invites applications for the faculty position of Director of its longstanding Appellate Clinic. The Appellate Clinic is one of 18 law clinics and externships offered by the law school (http://law.wustl.edu/clinicaled/pages.aspx?id=6898).

The new director will assume the position in January or July 2019. The Clinic, through its second- and third-year law students, represents pro se litigants in cases on appeal in United States Courts of Appeals and the United States Supreme Court. Under the supervision of the director, students research and write motions and briefs and argue the cases.

The director will oversee all aspects of the Clinic, including the teaching of students (through one-on-one tutorials and a weekly seminar), supervision of and responsibility for student casework, identification and selection of clients, and day-to-day administration. The director will also teach non-clinic courses and assist other law school programs.

Qualifications

Candidates must be eligible to practice law in Missouri (i.e., must be a member of the Missouri bar or eligible for admission as a law teacher without examination pursuant to Missouri Supreme Court Rule 13.06). Candidates should have appellate practice experience, outstanding legal research and writing skills, and promise as a teacher and mentor for law students.

Application Process

Applicants must complete an online application by navigating to https://jobs.wustl.edu/ and searching for job opening number 41660.
In addition to completing the online application, applicants should submit a resume, law school transcript, references, and brief description of the candidate’s interest and qualifications to:

Professor Robert Kuehn, Associate Dean for Clinical Education, Washington University School of Law, One Brookings Drive, Campus Box 1120, St. Louis, MO 63130-4899; [email protected]

Hiring Announcement: Belmont University College of Law

From an email message that I received earlier today:

Belmont University College of Law, in vibrant Nashville, Tennessee, invites applications from entry-level and experienced candidates for one or more tenure-track faculty positions to begin in 2019-2020.  Particular areas of interest include, Business Law, Trial Advocacy, Health Law, Entertainment Law, and Legal Writing. 

Applicants should demonstrate outstanding achievement or potential in teaching, service, and scholarship, and share the University’s values and support its mission.  Our goal is to recruit highly motivated individuals.  Practice experience is preferred, and teaching experience is desirable.  Belmont, an EOE/AA employer, is committed to creating an inclusive environment. The College of Law is particularly interested in receiving applications from candidates who may bring greater diversity to the school and reflect the wide diversity of our student body.  If interested, please submit a letter of interest and curriculum vitae to [email protected].

Belmont University is a private, Christian university focusing on academic excellence and is located in the heart of Nashville, one of the fastest growing and most culturally rich cities in the country.  Belmont’s student body of over 8,000 includes students from every state, more than 25 countries, and all faiths.  The College of Law is ABA accredited with approximately 300 students.  The Belmont faculty is dedicated to teaching, service, and active engagement in scholarship with professors having published in top academic journals, written scholarly books and treatises, and addressed academic conferences around the globe. The median LSAT/GPA for the 112 students who entered the law school in August 2017 were 155 and 3.47 (75^th percentile: 158 and 3.70; 25^th percentile: 152 and 3.16), placing the school well within the top 100 U.S. law schools for quality of applicants.  Belmont’s three-year average first-time bar passage rate (all states) is 91%, one of the highest pass rates in the country, and its employment rate for the 2017 class is 90%.      

Ethnography and the Value of Documentary and Circumstantial Evidence

As I have learned in the ongoing discussion over Interrogating Ethnography, many ethnographers remain highly skeptical of circumstantial evidence, preferring instead to accept the accounts of their informants without regard to fact-checking against official records and documents.  A recent article in the U.K. publication Times Higher Education addressed this issue, quoting several well known ethnographers.

Patricia Adler, emerita professor at the University of Colorado, told THE that “she is sceptical about the idea of checking subjects’ accounts against official sources when doing so could have practical consequences for those subjects.” She therefore declined to interview a DEA agent during her research on drug dealers (conducted jointly with her husband). “If it was known that we were doing this close-up ethnography,” she explained, “living with our respondents and hanging out with them all the time, then all they had to do was follow us around and know who we were writing about. We thought that was too dangerous.”

Linda Ronstadt

 

 

The Kavanaugh Nomination Controversy

The past few days have given rise to a Supreme Court battle like nothing the country has experienced since the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas hearings in 1991.

Only a week ago Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation seemed virtually certain. But then on Sunday the Washington Post published Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s allegation that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her 36 years ago during a high school party. Kavanaugh’s adamant denial of the accusation has left us with an extraordinary public confrontation between the professor and the judge.   

The situation is so fluid no one knows how it will end. Clearly Republicans face significant risks, especially with a momentous midterm election just 45 days away. But even if the Kavanaugh nomination implodes and leads to political disaster for the GOP on November 6, Senate Republicans may still have one more card to play.

Fellowship Opportunity: The Petrie-Flom Center and Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics Fellow-in-Residence

Another announcement from our friends at Petrie-Flom

Each year the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics hosts several fellows-in-residence.  For 2019-20, they are concentrating their fellowships on the Ethics of Technological and Biomedical Innovation.  One of these will be a joint fellowship with the Petrie-Flom Center for a legal scholar interested in this topic.  We welcome applicants who are eager to work at the intersection of the law, bioethics, and biomedical innovation and pursue their independent research while taking advantage of the resources both Centers have to offer

For more information, please visit the Safra Center website.  Applications are due November 15, 2018.  Scholars interested in the joint fellowship should hold a JD (or an equivalent legal degree from their home country) and be in the early years of a tenure track position.  Scholars who do not have a legal background may apply for the other fellows-in-residence positions available through the Safra Center.  This will be a one year fellowship.

Call for Abstracts: Consuming Genetics: The Ethical and Legal Considerations of Consumer Genetic Technologies

An announcement from our friends at Harvard Law's Petrie-Flom Center

Conference date: May 17, 2019

Abstract Submissions Due: October 15, 2018

The Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School is pleased to announce plans for our 2019 annual conference: “Consuming Genetics: The Ethical and Legal Considerations of Consumer Genetic Technologies.” This year’s conference is organized in collaboration with Nita A. Farahany, Duke Law School, and Henry T. Greely, Stanford Law School.

Conference Description: Breakthroughs in genetics have often raised complex ethical and legal questions. Many regard their genetic testing and sequencing as revealing something intensely personal and private. The questions raised by these technologies loom even larger as genetic testing is becoming more commonplace, affordable, and comprehensive. At the same time, advances in CRISPR and other related technologies raise anxieties about the implications of editing our own DNA. One can imagine a future when gene editing may become as widespread as genetic testing is today. As genetic technologies become more accessible to individuals, the ethical and legal questions around the consumer use of these technologies become more pressing. This conference will examine some of these issues.

The rise of genetic testing has allowed individuals to gain new insights into their unique makeup. Already the global genetic testing and consumer/wellness genomics market was valued at $2.24 billion in 2015 and is expected to double by 2025. Amazon noted that Ancestry.com’s DNA test kit was one of their best-selling products on cyber Monday of 2018. The availability of these technologies inspires patients to act proactively to avoid medical conditions, such as when actress Angelina Jolie pursued a double mastectomy after genetic testing revealed that she was in the highest risk category for developing breast and ovarian cancers. The rise of direct-to-consumer genetic testing kits raises questions about the appropriate setting for these activities, however. For example, the Food and Drug Administration expressed concern about 23 and Me’s initial product offering, noting that delivering health-related results directly to consumers might cause these individuals to draw the wrong medical conclusions.

The increased ease of genetic testing and sequencing has also led to a sharp increase in genetic data and the rise of precision medicine. The rise of genetic databases raises significant ethical questions, especially around privacy concerns. In an age where serial killers are caught because their relatives chose to submit DNA to a consumer genealogy database, is genetic privacy for individuals possible? The economics here are significant. Consider the increased value of Myriad’s database of variances of unknown significance after the Supreme Court in Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics held that isolated genes cannot be patented. Does the aggregation of data from genetic testing turn people into products by commercializing their data? How might this data reduce or exacerbate already significant health care disparities?

While gene editing tools such as CRISPR are not yet as widely available as genetic testing technology, in some parts of the world their availability is already spreading. There have been reports that Chinese scientists have used CRISPR-Cas9 technology to genetically engineer the cells of at least 86 patients. Companies in the United States and Europe are expected to begin treating patients with CRISPR-based therapies this year. Many countries have drawn a line against germline modification, but this prohibition may be strained if gene editing technology is widely disseminated. Before we reach that point, this is the time to consider what ethical and regulatory safeguards should be implemented for when the time comes.

The full call for abstracts and registration information are available here.

Hiring Announcement: Widener University Delaware Law School

From an email message that I recently received:

LEGAL METHODS POSITION

Widener University Delaware Law School is hiring a full-time Legal Methods Professor. Legal Methods faculty typically teach 2 sections per semester of one of the three required Legal Methods courses, or their equivalents.  Legal Methods faculty work closely together and leadership and innovation is invited and appreciated; Legal Methods faculty are eligible to qualify for five-year presumptively renewable contracts. Class sections for Legal Methods generally run 20-25 students.

Qualified candidates will have strong academic credentials; at least three years of legal-practice experience; and excellent analytical, writing, and research skills. Candidates should demonstrate a strong commitment to teaching legal writing; prior experience is strongly preferred. Candidates should also be able to interact well with students, as Legal Methods involves substantial engagement with students and rigorous evaluation of student work.

Delaware Law School is the only law school in Delaware and serves students from throughout the nation and across the globe. In addition to the JD program, Delaware Law School also offers LLMs and SJDs in a variety of areas. The Law School is located in the Brandywine Valley, known for its cultural, historic, and commercial significance as well as abundant natural beauty. It is close to Wilmington, Delaware and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and easily accessible from Washington DC and New York.

Please submit a CV and letter of interest (including three references) to Professor Erin Daly, Chair of the Search Committee, at [email protected].  Include in the subject line “Legal Methods Position.” Individuals who desire accommodations in the application process should include relevant information in their email. Widener University Delaware Law School is committed to achieving diversity among faculty, staff, and students. University is an equal opportunity employer.  Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis until the position is filled.

CRIMINAL LAW/CRIMINAL DEFENSE CLINIC POSITION

Widener University Delaware Law School in Wilmington, Delaware, seeks to hire a full-time, tenure-track faculty member to teach Criminal Law and Evidence and to teach in and supervise students in the Criminal Defense clinic. The faculty member would also participate in the activities of the Taishoff Advocacy, Technology and Public Service Institute. We are seeking candidates with evidence of and potential for outstanding legal practice, clinical education, and scholarly achievement.

Qualified candidates will have a J.D. degree or further academic qualifications, strong academic credentials and at least five years of experience in fields involving criminal practice and procedure. Candidates should also have excellent analytical, writing, and research skills and should demonstrate a commitment to building a national reputation in the field of Criminal Law and Clinical Legal Education.

Delaware Law School is the only law school in Delaware and serves students from throughout the nation and across the globe. In addition to the JD program, Delaware Law School also offers LLMs and SJDs in a variety of areas. The Law School is located in the Brandywine Valley, known for its cultural, historic, and commercial significance as well as abundant natural beauty. It is close to Wilmington, Delaware and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and easily accessible from Washington DC and New York.

Please submit a CV and letter of interest (including three references) to Professor Erin Daly, Chair of the Search Committee, at [email protected].  Include in the subject line “Criminal Law Position.” Individuals who desire accommodations in the application process should include relevant information in their email. Widener University Delaware Law School is committed to achieving diversity among faculty, staff, and students. University is an equal opportunity employer.  Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis until the position is filled.

Frank Zappa on the First Amendment

 

 

Before the JD: New AALS Study on Why Students Do or Don't Choose Law

The AALS has just released a study of 22,000 undergraduates and 2800 1L's in its effort to better understand what leads people to choose (or not choose) to pursue a JD.   Karen Sloan at the National Law Journal reports on the study.  Here is some of the juicy stuff:

Half of the undergraduates considering law school have at least one parent with an advanced degree, despite the fact that only 12 percent of people between 45 and 65 nationwide have such a degree. Put another way, applicants from economically privileged backgrounds comprise a disproportionate of the law school applicant pool.

Undergraduates who are interested in an advanced degree report seeing more information on campus about master’s degree, Ph.D.s and Masters in Business degree than about law school, and say their college professors talked about those programs more than a J.D.

The overall cost of a law degree and poor work-life balance were the reasons cited most often by undergraduates for potentially not going to law school, and the three-year length of J.D. programs was another common deterrent.

Location was the most important criterion for choosing a school, according to the first-year students. But the other criteria shifted according to Law School Admission Test scores. Those with scores of 165 or higher were more concerned with the status and prestige of campuses, while respondents with lower scores weight bar pass rates and overall costs more heavily.

Law school comes on the radar of many students quite early. More than half of law students begin thinking about law school before they get to college, and a third consider it even before high school.

Brooklyn Law Seeks Dean

This just in:

Brooklyn Law School seeks applications and nominations for the position of Dean and President.

Founded in 1901 as an independent law school, Brooklyn Law School is a vibrant intellectual community emphasizing teaching excellence, scholarship, and an innovative academic program designed to prepare students for public service and private practice. Brooklyn Law School’s faculty members have earned national and international acclaim in diverse fields, including criminal law, evidence, torts, civil liberties, intellectual property, products liability, international human rights, and domestic and international corporate and commercial law. The Law School’s adjunct faculty includes leaders in government, business, the judiciary, and private practice. For more information please visit www.brooklaw.edu.

Reporting to the Board of Trustees, the Dean and President will be a creative, dynamic, and ambitious leader with a track record of distinguished scholarly contributions to the field of law. This person must possess the organizational and leadership skills necessary to attract and retain human and financial resources, as well as a deep commitment to student success and faculty scholarship and development. The ideal candidate should have a sophisticated understanding of the changing landscape of legal education, demonstrable managerial proficiency, fundraising experience, and a vision for Brooklyn Law School’s role in the future of legal education. All applicants must have a J.D. or equivalent and must have the necessary qualifications for tenure as a Professor of Law at Brooklyn Law School.

The Search Committee invites letters of nomination, expressions of interest, or applications and they may be sent to Werner Boel, LL.M. and Veena Abraham, J.D., the Witt/Kieffer consultants assisting the Law School 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 for 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 October 22, 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, 2019.

It is the policy of Brooklyn Law School not to discriminate against any employee or applicant for employment because of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, marital status, genetic information, disability, veteran status, or any other legally protected status under federal, state, or local law. It is also the policy of Brooklyn Law School to take affirmative action to employ, and to advance in employment, all persons regardless of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, marital status, genetic information, disability, veteran status, sexual orientation, or any other legally protected status, and to base all employment decisions on legitimate job requirements.

North Dakota Law Seeks Dean

Learn more by downloading the North Dakota Law Dean Position Profile.

Penn State Law Seeks Interdisciplinary Energy Law & Policy Faculty

This just in, supplementing Penn State Law's  prior job posting (here):

The Pennsylvania State University seeks to hire an interdisciplinary energy law and policy scholar for a position that will be a joint hire between Penn State Law (the tenure home), and the College of Engineering, School of International Affairs, and Penn State’s Institute for CyberScience (ICS). The appointment may be at the assistant, associate, or full professor level.

Candidates must have: (1) a J.D., Ph.D., or equivalent degree; (2) a degree (B.S. or higher) in engineering or other quantitative discipline; (3) an interest in using high-performance computing to analyze energy law and policy (such as through big-data work or complex formal modeling); (4) a distinguished academic record and demonstrated potential to produce high-quality scholarship; and (5) a background appropriate for serving as a principal investigator for large-scale, grant-based research.

The candidate’s research agenda should focus on energy law and policy as informed by the analysis of large data (e.g., big data analysis, numerical simulations, and/or high-performance computing). Examples of relevant policy areas include—but are not limited to— energy sources (fossil fuels, nuclear energy, alternative energy sources); energy generation and distribution (utility infrastructure, electric grids, battery technology); energy security (physical and cyber security); and efficient uses of energy (smart grids and meters, distributed energy networks, energy-efficient buildings, pollution control techniques).

Penn State is the land-grant university of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and is composed of 24 campuses throughout the state. The position is located on Penn State’s largest campus in University Park, PA, home to over 45,000 graduate and undergraduate students. With over 160 graduate degree programs, Penn State’s graduate program is one of the largest in the nation, fostering numerous opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration.

The Institute for CyberScience (ICS), one of Penn State’s five university-wide research institutes, connects researchers from numerous disciplines to answer critical scientific questions and societal issues through cyber-enabled research and methodology. ICS has over 280 affiliated faculty, including 24 tenure-track co-hired faculty, engaged in interdisciplinary computation and data enabled research. ICS also operates the ICS Advanced Cyber Infrastructure (ICS-ACI), Penn State’s high-performance research cloud.

Candidates should submit a cover letter, curriculum vitae, and names of four references to [email protected] The search committee will begin to review applications as received and will continue to accept them until the position is filled. For additional information about Penn State Law, Penn State’s College of Engineering, the Institute for CyberScience, and the School of International Affairs, visit our web sites at http://pennstatelaw.psu.edu/, https://www.engr.psu.edu/, http://ics.psu.edu, and http://www.sia.psu.edu.

Employment will require successful completion of background check(s) in accordance with University policies. Final candidate(s) for the position will be required to complete a full background check process including education, employment, credit, motor vehicle verifications, criminal, and child abuse as appropriate.

Penn State is an equal opportunity, affirmative action employer, and is committed to providing employment opportunities to all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability or protected veteran status.