The Faculty Lounge

Someone to Watch over Me

"Someone to Watch over Me" was written by George and Ira Gershwin in 1926 for the now forgotten musical Oh, Kay! starring Gertrude Lawrence. It has been covered over 1800 times -- almost always as a slow ballad, although George Gershwin's original music was more up-tempo (which you can hear at the bottom of this post).

ALI Elects 32 New Members

Congratulations to these faculty members at U.S. law schools who were recently elected to membership in the American Law Institute:

• Olufunmilayo B. Arewa, Temple University Beasley School of Law
• Katharine K. Baker, IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law
• Robert Bauer, New York University School of Law
• Pamela Bookman, Fordham Law School
• Jacquelyn L. Bridgeman, University of Wyoming College of Law
• Stephen B. Bright, Yale Law School
• Ruben J. Garcia, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, William S. Boyd School of Law
• Stephen E. Henderson, University of Oklahoma College of Law
• Peter Lee, University of California, Davis School of Law
• Jennifer Lynn Levi, Western New England School of Law
• Randal S. Milch, New York University School of Law
• Douglas NeJaime, Yale Law School
• Bertrall L. Ross, University of Virginia School of Law
• Amy J. Schmitz, Ohio State University Moritz College of Law
• Micah J. Schwartzman, University of Virginia School of Law
• Nicholas O, Stephanopoulos, Harvard Law School
• Lauren D. Sudeall, Georgia State University College of Law

The ALI's announcement is here.

Vermont Law Seeks Dean

This just in:

Vermont Law School seeks its next innovative Dean of the Law School who shares our commitment to academic excellence and community.

In the summer of 2022, the school announced a new organizational and administrative structure as part of its bold strategic plan. The centerpiece of the new organizational structure and plan was the creation of a separate Law School and Graduate School, each with its own Dean, reporting to the President who oversees the Vermont Law and Graduate School.

We are pleased to launch the national search and invite applications for the Dean of the Law School.  Interested candidates should visit https://www.vermontlaw.edu/careers/dean-of-the-law-school for more information and application instructions.

Margaret Burnham on 16th Street Baptist Church

Northeastern University Professor Margaret Burnham's By Hands Now Known: Jim Crow’s Legal Executioners will discuss her book Sunday at 2 p.m., October 16, 2022, Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, Birmingham, Alabama. Much of the research was done at the Birmingham Public Library archives.

Pennsylvania

Jake Tapper on Doug Mastriano's views of a "privileged, elite school" and "disdain for people like us."

Josh Shapiro in his own words:

 

Jake Tapper in The Atlantic, on his family's history in Philadelphia and his father's attempt to free a wrongly convicted prisoner, here.

EXTREME PUNISHMENT: The Chilling True Story of Acclaimed Law Professor Dan Markel’s Murder

Steven B. Epstein, author of EXTREME PUNISHMENT:  The Chilling True Story of Acclaimed Law Professor Dan Markel’s Murder will be guest posting for a while. Here is the first installment:

 

As he neared his neighbor’s garage a second time, Jim found the garage door still up and the black car still running inside.  This time, he decided to enter the garage and walk up to the driver’s side to make sure everything was okay.  He expected to find nothing more ominous than Dan talking on his cellphone.  But that isn’t even close to what Jim Geiger found.

As he came within a foot or two of the driver’s-side door, Jim felt and heard crunching beneath his shoes, which was startling enough.  He then noticed that the door’s window was shattered, a large portion missing entirely.  The only glass that remained intact was fractured in a spiderweb pattern, surrounding two-thirds of a quarter-sized hole in the upper-right-hand-corner of the frame.  Small, jagged shards were scattered on the garage’s concrete floor—what Jim had sensed crunching beneath his feet.  In that brief instant, he realized a gunshot had blown through the glass window.

“Oh my God!” he thought to himself, his relaxing day off with his grandkids suddenly thrown into a tailspin.  Standing beside the car door, he cocked his head to peer through the shattered window. 

What he observed was utterly horrifying.  His neighbor Dan Markel was slumped over—behind the steering wheel—the left side of his head covered with a thick layer of blood.  More glass shards surrounded him inside the car.  It was obvious he’d been shot, though unclear whether his head wound had been self-inflicted or the result of an assault.  Jim wondered whether Dan had become so despondent over his divorce with Wendi that he’d opted for suicide.

“Danny, what happened?” he shouted through the broken window.  No response.  He could see Dan’s head rocking ever so slightly from his left shoulder to his right, suggesting he was still alive, but perhaps unconscious.

Taboo Trades Podcast: Breach By Violence with Brittany Farr, Part II

In this episode, UVA Law 3L Marley Peters and I continue our discussion with Brittany Farr, Assistant Professor of Law at NYU School of Law. We’re discussing her article, Breach By Violence, which is forthcoming in the UCLA Law Review. It analyzes the use of private law by sharecroppers and tenant farmers in the Jim Crow South to address violent breaches of contract by landlords. To hear the full interview, make sure to also listen to the prior episode, Episode 3.

 

Farr is a scholar of private law and race. With more than a decade of interdisciplinary training, her research draws on history, legal theory, and cultural studies to theorize how marginalized populations have availed themselves of otherwise inhospitable legal regimes. In particular, her research focuses on enslaved and free African Americans’ use of contract law during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and interrogates the ways in which contract law mediated African Americans’ relationship to bodily autonomy, economic freedom, and legal agency both during and after slavery. 

 

 

Brittany Farr NYU Homepage: https://its.law.nyu.edu/facultyprofiles/index.cfm?fuseaction=profile.overview&personid=57053

 

Interview with Samuel James (S. J.) and Leonia Farrar, May 28, 2003. 
Interview K-0652. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007). https://docsouth.unc.edu/sohp/playback.html?base_file=K-0652&duration=01:29:20

 

Oral history with 84 year old black female, Joiner, Arkansas https://www.loc.gov/item/afccal000030

Refuting Ron DeSantis

My new essay at The Hill is about Ron DeSantis’s appalling ignorance of American slavery – even as he promotes so-called “objective” history under his Stop WOKE Act – and how best to respond.

Here is the gist:

What Ron DeSantis doesn’t understand about slavery

Consider Gov. Ron DeSantis’s (R-Fla.) campaign against critical race theory (CRT).

There was hardly a ripple from DeSantis’s supporters when he bragged that the Stop WOKE Act would empower students with “more historically accurate knowledge,” including the claim that “It was the American Revolution that caused people to question slavery. No one had questioned it before we decided as Americans that we are endowed by our creator with unalienable rights.” 

There are two possible ways to rebut DeSantis’s false account. The first approach, although less effective, would be simply to provide contradictory facts, pointing out the many prominent American and British figures who questioned slavery before 1776.

A second and much more compelling approach was taken by the liberal political commentator Van Jones in an interview on CNN. After watching a clip of DeSantis’s statement that “no one had questioned slavery” before the American Revolution,

“You reveal a lot when you’re speaking about something you don’t know anything about,” Jones said.

“You know who questioned it? The enslaved people questioned it the whole time. And that’s the thing,” he continued. “It’s like you have a world view that so centers and so privileges a particular ideological agenda [and] a particular set of people that you say things that are just patently ridiculous. He’s the governor of a state, and there are kids in that state of all colors, all faiths, all hues, and he’s got to do a better job of representing all of them.”

Without a single reference to history books, Jones’s story effectively characterized DeSantis as someone unable to recognize enslaved people as human beings capable of questioning, much less resisting, their enslavement. DeSantis was not simply mistaken on the facts. Jones showed that he was blind to or dismissive of the true history of racial subjugation.

You can read the entire essay at The Hill.

Results of Law Professor Twitter Census 2022-2023 Edition

The results of the 2022-2023 Law Professor Twitter Census are available for download here. The list includes areas of academic interest, for faculty who self-identified with that information. The list is arranged by school, instead of individual users' last names.

Here are responses to some anticipated questions from inquiring minds who want to know:

1. How was the census developed?

The list is based on previous censuses, conducted in 2012, 2015, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021. It was amended and updated by contributions from blog readers in response to this post. I added additional or deleted very few names myself, based on law prof accounts that I have happened to encounter (typically because they follow me on Twitter or I follow them) or if I knew someone had changed schools, left the academy, etc. I made no concerted effort to update the list myself.

2. How accurate is the census?

Not at all. If there are corrections, additions, etc., please feel free to email me directly at bcrawford at law dot pace dot edu.  I'll republish from time to time based on new data I receive, but likely not until next year.

3. Why isn't my information listed in the census? Why isn't my colleague's information listed?

The census relies almost exclusively on self-identification. To be included in the list, you had to actively add yourself to it (as indicated here).

4. How does this year's data compare to the numbers from prior years?

For an historical comparison, here's the data from prior years:

	2022-2023 Version (10/9/22)	2021-2022 Version (10/17/21)	2020-2021 Version (9/17/20)	2019-2020 Version (9/13/19)	2018-2019 Version (8/15/2018)	2015 Version (1/23/2015)	2012 Version (7/26/2012)
Total  Number Users	1641	1477	1368	1310	1105	553	204

 

5. Who is included in the census?

The list is meant to cover only individual tweeters who are full-time faculty members at law schools.  The list is not meant to be a comprehensive account of everyone (adjuncts, librarians, practitioners, programs, institutes, students, group blogs) publishing law-related tweets. Consistent with past practice, emeritus faculty are included in the census.

6. What good is this information?

Either not at all or not much.  It might be a handy reference for quickly finding someone's Twitter handle, but I don't put any stock in the completeness or "meaning" of the info.

The results of the 2022-2023 Law Professor Twitter Census are available for download here. The list includes areas of academic interest, for faculty who self-identified with that information. The list is arranged by school, instead of individual users' last names.

Here are responses to some anticipated questions from inquiring minds who want to know:

1. How was the census developed?

The list is based on previous censuses, conducted in 2012, 2015, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021. It was amended and updated by contributions from blog readers in response to this post. I added additional or deleted very few names myself, based on law prof accounts that I have happened to encounter (typically because they follow me on Twitter or I follow them) or if I knew someone had changed schools, left the academy, etc. I made no concerted effort to update the list myself.

2. How accurate is the census?

Not at all. If there are corrections, additions, etc., please feel free to email me directly at bcrawford at law dot pace dot edu.  I'll republish from time to time based on new data I receive, but likely not until next year.

3. Why isn't my information listed in the census? Why isn't my colleague's information listed?

The census relies almost exclusively on self-identification. To be included in the list, you had to actively add yourself to it (as indicated here).

4. How does this year's data compare to the numbers from prior years?

For an historical comparison, here's the data from prior years:

	2022-2023 Version (10/9/22)	2021-2022 Version (10/17/21)	2020-2021 Version (9/17/20)	2019-2020 Version (9/13/19)	2018-2019 Version (8/15/2018)	2015 Version (1/23/2015)	2012 Version (7/26/2012)
Total  Number Users	1641	1477	1368	1310	1105	553	204

 

5. Who is included in the census?

The list is meant to cover only individual tweeters who are full-time faculty members at law schools.  The list is not meant to be a comprehensive account of everyone (adjuncts, librarians, practitioners, programs, institutes, students, group blogs) publishing law-related tweets. Consistent with past practice, emeritus faculty are included in the census.

6. What good is this information?

Either not at all or not much.  It might be a handy reference for quickly finding someone's Twitter handle, but I don't put any stock in the completeness or "meaning" of the info.

Here are responses to some anticipated questions from inquiring minds who want to know:

1. How was the census developed?

The list is based on previous censuses, conducted in 2012, 2015, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021. It was amended and updated by contributions from blog readers in response to this post. I added additional or deleted very few names myself, based on law prof accounts that I have happened to encounter (typically because they follow me on Twitter or I follow them) or if I knew someone had changed schools, left the academy, etc. I made no concerted effort to update the list myself.

2. How accurate is the census?

Not at all. If there are corrections, additions, etc., please feel free to email me directly at bcrawford at law dot pace dot edu.  I'll republish from time to time based on new data I receive, but likely not until next year.

3. Why isn't my information listed in the census? Why isn't my colleague's information listed?

The census relies almost exclusively on self-identification. To be included in the list, you had to actively add yourself to it (as indicated here).

4. How does this year's data compare to the numbers from prior years?

For an historical comparison, here's the data from prior years:

	2022-2023 Version (10/9/22)	2021-2022 Version (10/17/21)	2020-2021 Version (9/17/20)	2019-2020 Version (9/13/19)	2018-2019 Version (8/15/2018)	2015 Version (1/23/2015)	2012 Version (7/26/2012)
Total  Number Users	1641	1477	1368	1310	1105	553	204

 

5. Who is included in the census?

The list is meant to cover only individual tweeters who are full-time faculty members at law schools.  The list is not meant to be a comprehensive account of everyone (adjuncts, librarians, practitioners, programs, institutes, students, group blogs) publishing law-related tweets. Consistent with past practice, emeritus faculty are included in the census.

6. What good is this information?

Either not at all or not much.  It might be a handy reference for quickly finding someone's Twitter handle, but I don't put any stock in the completeness or "meaning" of the info.