The Faculty Lounge

Stand by Me [UPDATED]

I did a post on "Stand by Me" on May 22, 2018, commenting on its performance at the royal wedding of Prince Harry and Megan Markle. It included a link to an essay (coauthored with my brother Alex) on the history of the song, as well as a clip of the wedding performance by southeast London's Kingdom Choir.

It's a great song, and it's been over a year, so here a few more clips.

Margaret Raymond Stepping Down as Dean of Wisconsin Law

Dean Margaret Raymond, who has led the University of Wisconsin School of Law since 2011, has announced that she will step down at the end of the academic year.  

Richmond Law Seeks New Faculty to Direct Programs

This just in:

Richmond Law is seeking to hire three new faculty directors to run a new program in professional identity formation, a new program in legal innovation & entrepreneurship, and our externship program. Descriptions about these positions are below, and inquiries regarding any of these positions should be directed to Professor Jessica Erickson at lawdirectorapps@richmond.edu.

Director of New Program in Professional Identity Formation: We are seeking to hire a faculty member to direct a new signature program in Professional Identity Formation, which will prepare students to develop the habits of mind and character that are associated with professional excellence in the legal system. This program will also to help students engage a process of self-directed learning and develop critical interpersonal lawyering skills, including collaboration, cross-cultural communication, active listening, empathy, and leadership. The faculty member will teach in the program, lead co-curricular opportunities, and work with other full-time and adjunct faculty members to ensure that all Richmond Law students graduate with a strong sense of their own professional identity. More information can be found here.

Director of New Program in Legal Innovation & Entrepreneurship: We are seeking to hire a faculty member to direct a new signature program in Legal Innovation & Entrepreneurship. This program will prepare students to navigate changes in the legal profession, craft new solutions to enhance access to justice, and approach increasingly complex legal problems in a creative way. This program will also introduce students to the broader toolbox of skills that modern lawyers need, including project management, process improvement, data analytics, legal technology, business and finance, and design thinking. The faculty director will oversee the design and implementation of this program, as well as teach courses and lead co-curricular opportunities related to innovation and entrepreneurship.

Director of Externships: We are seeking to hire a faculty member to direct our externship program. This program allows students to apply the legal knowledge and skills they learn in the classroom through hands-on externships with supervising lawyers and judges. The faculty director evaluates and selects externship opportunities, works with students in the selection of placements, oversees externship supervisors to ensure students have meaningful learning experiences, and teaches or oversees the classroom components of the externships. In addition to their primary responsibilities overseeing the externship program, this faculty member will also provide leadership and serve as an advisor to student competitions, such as the Moot Court Board and the Trial Advocacy Board. More information can be found here.

CFP: Southern Illinois Law Journal Symposium on Cannabis Law

From colleagues at Southern Illinois:

The Southern Illinois University Law Journal invites paper submissions for their symposium that will take place on March 19, 2020, in Carbondale, Illinois. This year Illinois passed HB 1438 legalizing recreational marijuana.  Thus, the symposium will focus on the rapidly changing regulation of marijuana. 

Please submit an abstract of up to 500 words, along with your contact information, to the Editor in Chief, Skylar Petitt at skylar.petitt@siu.edu.  Abstracts must be submitted by December 1, 2019, and selection of articles and symposium speakers will be made on a rolling basis, with all decisions being made by January 15, 2020. 

 The usual length of our symposium pieces is somewhere between an essay (5,000 words) and a full-length article (15,000 words); however, there is no set length for our symposium writers, and shorter or longer articles are acceptable. The journal anticipates a deadline for the completed article of July 1, 2020, and publication in the Fall of 2020. 

Have You No Sense of Decency?

Friends keep asking me whether there is ever going to be a "no sense of decency" moment for President Trump. I don't think so, and the reasons are after the jump.

UConn Dean Search

The University of Connecticut has announced the opening of the search for the next Dean of the School of Law.  The official announcement -- together with information about applications and nominations as well as links to the position description -- can be found here.

ALI Elects 50 New Members

The American Law Institute recently elected 50 new members. Among the new members are these law professors:

 

California

Dalié Jiménez, Irvine – Professor, University of Califonia, Irvine School of Law

 

District of Columbia

Joshua Alexander Geltzer – Executive Director & Visiting Professor, Georgetown Law Center, Institute for Constitutional Advocacy & Protection

 

Indiana

Austen L. Parrish, Bloomington – Dean, Indiana University, Maurer School of Law

 

Minnesota

Thomas F. Cotter, Minneapolis – Professor, University of Minnesota School of Law

 

New York

Emily Gold Waldman, White Plains – Professor, Pace University School of Law

 

Pennsylvania

Cary Coglianese, Philadelphia – Professor, University of Pennsylvania Law School

Michael R. Dimino, Harrisburg – Professor, Widener University Commonwealth Law School

 

Texas

Huyen Pham, Fort Worth – Professor, Texas A&M University School of Law

 

Congratulations to all!

 

 

John Wayne Gacy & Probable Cause

In last week’s post, we explored how the 1994 investigation into OJ Simpson offered an excellent real-world example of how the exigent circumstances doctrine worked in the first moments of a high-profile homicide investigation.

This week, in my fourth post of this series, we explore how the issuance of two search warrants for the home of John Wayne Gacy broke open the investigation into one of our country’s most horrific and notorious serial killers. Specifically, the second of those two warrants led to the discovery of twenty-seven teenage corpses in the crawl space under Gacy’s house and two more under his garage and driveway. As you will read in this post, however, the probable cause supporting those warrants was, at best, questionable. But no appellate court in the country would, on this evidence, be interested in overturning Gacy’s convictions—despite the strong merits of what became the core of his appellate clams. Collectively, the investigation of Gacy’s home provides an extraordinary opportunity for students to learn and apply the probable standard through a real-world investigation.

Hiring Announcement: University of Miami School of Law (Dean of Admissions)

From an email message that I recently received:

The University of Miami School of Law welcomes applications for the position of Associate/Assistant Dean of Admissions and Enrollment Management. Reporting directly to the Dean of Miami Law, the Associate/Assistant Dean is responsible for the overall supervision of the Offices of Admissions and Enrollment Management and Student Recruitment, and for promoting and undertaking all necessary interactions between the Offices of Admissions and Student Recruitment and other offices within the School of Law and the University in matters of recruitment, admissions, enrollment, and retention. The Associate/Assistant Dean is involved in strategic enrollment planning activities and goals, identification of the School’s markets, and implementation of marketing plans to achieve enrollment goals. Working under guidelines set by the Dean and the Admissions Committee, the Associate/Assistant Dean uses excellent and independent judgment to determine admissions decisions for 3,000 to 5,000 applicants in order to achieve a diverse and academically talented body of first-year JD and transfer students; uses analytical and modeling skills and experience to interpret statistical data and projections; and maintains and updates the management information system regarding recruitment and admissions processing. The Associate/Assistant Dean supervises a team of 12 full-time employees (direct and indirect reports) within the Admissions and Student Recruitment Offices.     

Applications must include a letter of interest and a resume. Candidates may submit any other materials that may be helpful. Applications must be submitted via the official employment site of the University of Miami, www.miami.edu/careers. Click here for a direct link to the application. Any inquiries or referrals should be sent electronically and in confidence to: Stephen Schnably, Professor of Law, schnably@law.miami.edu, and Marcy Cox, Assistant Dean for Career Development, mcox@law.miami.edu, Co-Chairs of the Search Committee.

 

T.J. Stiles on the Difference between Narrative and Scholarship

The Chronicle of Higher Education recently posted a fascinating interview with two-time Pulitzer Prize winner T.J. Stiles, the biographer of Jesse James, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and George Armstrong Custer. The entire interview is well worth reading, but here are some excerpts especially helpful to lawyers and legal acdemics:

Why narrative history?

Stiles: Narrative begins with the intent to make the reader want to keep reading. That requires plot. In The Art of Fiction, David Lodge defines plot as raising questions in the mind of the reader and delaying the answers.

Academic writing usually lays out the questions and the answers at the outset, then proceeds to demonstrate. Again, that’s fine for its purpose. But it strands a reader alone, without the happy company of mystery and suspense, the crew who sail every plot forward.

Narrative generally centers on characters. Scholarship is concerned with the conditions of humans; literature is concerned with the human condition. Serious nonfiction narrative can be concerned with both, but it’s hard to pull off without individuals who have intentions, carry out actions, and face consequences.

There are other aspects of writing narrative, and of incorporating argument and interpretation, but we always begin with plot and character.

As to why, it’s that narrative is inherently part of the historical enterprise, thanks to the element of time. It’s one reason why many academic historians turn out to be very good writers. By centering on human beings, narrative adds a quality of understanding — a glimpse of the human condition, that central concern of literature. And history has always been considered a branch of literature. There’s no Pulitzer Prize for sociology, after all.