The Faculty Lounge

You've Been a Good Old Wagon (Daddy, but You've Done Broke Down)

"You've Been a Good Old Wagon" is a classic Bessie Smith blues number, recorded in 1925, introduced to many in the 1960s (including me) by Dave Van Ronk. It turns out, though, that the song was first a ragtime tune, composed by Ben Harney in the 1890s. Harney misleadingly boasted that he was" the father of ragtime," but it does seem that "You've Been a Good Old Wagon" may have been the first published ragtime sheet music.

CFP for "Queer Failures and Possibilities: Trans Movements in Contemporary South Asia" (Madison South Asia Conference)

We are excited to invite proposals for papers and artistic presentations for a day-long symposium on “Queer Failures and Possibilities: Trans Movements in Contemporary South Asia,” for the 51st Annual Conference on South Asia, Madison (Wednesday, October 18, 2023). https://southasiaconference.wisc.edu/.

For over a decade now, trans activism and trans production has accelerated in legal, political, cultural, and artistic realms across South Asia. While these movements have animated possibilities for trans justice, so too have they often perpetuated narrow modes of legitimacy, reproducing hierarchies around class, caste, language, religion, kinship, labor, sexuality, nation and global capital. Violence against khwaja sira-hijra-kothi-trans persons is rampant; surveillance and policing have ensued; legislative achievements have been tremulous at best; while politicians extract votes from the backs of trans and queer bodies. Following Halberstam (2011) and Takemoto (2016), this symposium draws on queer failure to consider the dimensions of loss, elision, and disappointment in and around trans social, legal and political movements, as well as the possibilities of failure as a mode of resistance, intervention, speculation, fabulation, and world making—moving trans in South Asia toward other futures.

The symposium welcomes paper presentations, screenings, and artistic and creative responses coming from a wide variety of disciplines–history, anthropology, theater and performance studies, gender and sexuality studies, sociology, geography, and law. We welcome inquiry into the accelerations and disruptions to trans movements alongside feminist, anti-caste, labor and LGBT and other mobilizations not only in the contemporary moment but also situating these movements in broader colonial and postcolonial histories, in and across the borders of South Asia.

We anticipate the symposium will result in a special journal issue or edited volume and hope that folx accepted for the symposium would commit to developing an 8000-word paper in preparation for this eventuality.

In-person attendance at the symposium is preferred.

Please email a title and 200-300 word abstract of your proposed contribution to: Claire Pamment (William & Mary University, clpamment at the rate of wm.edu) and Jeff Redding (University of Melbourne, jeff.redding at the rate of unimelb.edu.au) by 30 April 2023.

Hiring Announcement: Samford University, Cumberland School of Law

From an email message:

Samford University, Cumberland School of Law is hiring a Director of Clinics, Externships and Public Interest.

Samford University’s Cumberland School of Law invites individuals interested in serving in a Christian university environment to apply for the position of director of clinics, externships, and public interest, a full-time twelve-month non-tenure track (administrative) faculty position. Candidates must have a J.D. degree from an ABA-accredited law school. The candidate will be required to have, or obtain, a license from the Alabama State Bar. Ideal applicants must have a minimum of two years of experience in clinics, externships, or public interest work.

Application Process

Review of applications will begin April 6, 2023, and applications will be accepted until May 6, 2023. Learn more about this position and the application process here:

https://www.samford.edu/employee/faculty-employment-opportunities/Director-of-Clinics-Externships-and-Public-Interests-12-Mo-NTT.pdf

Hiring Announcement: University of Washington School of Law

From a recent email:

The University of Washington is Hiring: (1) Associate Dean/Library Director and (2) Visitor in Business Law and Entrepreneurship

The University of Washington School of Law invites applications for two open positions: (1) Associate Dean and Director of the Law Library and (2) a visitor to teach courses in business law and entrepreneurship.  The University of Washington is a major research university in the dynamic hub of Seattle with an outstanding law librarian program and numerous connections to innovative business and entrepreneurial activity.  Please apply soon because applications are reviewed on a rolling basis.

For the Associate Dean and Law Library Director position, more information and the application upload site is here:

https://ap.washington.edu/ahr/position-details/?job_id=112474.

For the visitor position in business law and entrepreneurship, more information and the application upload site is here:

https://apply.interfolio.com/122716

Sophia Lee Named Dean of Penn Law

Penn Law has announced that Sophia Lee will be its next dean.  Lee joined the Penn Law faculty in 2009 and served as deputy dean from 2015-2017.  Lee, who holds a JD and Ph.D from Yale (and an MSW from Berkeley for good measure)  will take over on July 1.

SCOTUS Gift Disclosures

If you are looking for a break from indictment and election news, you may be interested in my essay on the new gift disclosure rules for the Supreme Court, and why the justices may not comply with them.

Here is the gist:

The Hill

Will the Supreme Court justices comply with new rules on gift disclosure?

By Steven Lubet, Opinion Contributor – 4/05/23

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) recently claimed a small victory, when, as he put it, the Judicial Conference of the United States “adopted new, stricter rules requiring far more disclosure of free trips, meals, and other ‘hospitality’ accepted by federal judges and Supreme Court justices.”

Under the old Judicial Conference rule, “judicial officers” were required to report the receipt of gifts worth over $415, with a broad exception for “personal hospitality.” The term “personal” had apparently been interpreted to mean something like “extended by an individual” rather than by a business or corporation, thus allowing the undisclosed acceptance of resort vacations and private jet travel, so long as the invitations were made by acquaintances, even if some other entity was underwriting the expense.

Whitehouse may have spoken too soon.

Chief Justice John Roberts has made it clear that the justices are jealous of their individual prerogatives and do not feel bound by outside constraints.

In his 2011 Year-End Report on the Federal Judiciary, Roberts denied the authority of the Judicial Conference, stating that its “committees have no mandate to prescribe rules or standards” for the Supreme Court.

There is no record, of course, of privately funded travel or vacations that the justices have withheld under a loose interpretation of the “personal hospitality” exemption.

Whitehouse deserves congratulations for prompting the new gift rule, but he has much work ahead of him. The Supreme Court needs its own ethical code, with no hedging or reservations, and the sooner the better.

You  can read the full essay at The Hill.

Missouri Law Seeks Visiting Associate Professor

This just in:

The University of Missouri School of Law is seeking a Visiting Associate Professor to teach in the 1L legal research and writing program (LRW) for the 2023-2024 academic year that begins in August 2023 and ends in May 2024. The 1L LRW program is a six-credit, two-semester, graded course sequence (three credits each semester), including Legal Research & Writing in the fall and Advocacy & Research in the spring. We seek a candidate who is passionate and reflective about teaching, is dedicated to student learning, and will work collaboratively with other LRW faculty.

The University of Missouri School of Law is a full-time J.D. and LL.M.-granting institution located in Columbia, Missouri. For more information, please see http://law.missouri.edu/. The School of Law strives to foster a diverse faculty committed to effective teaching and to attract a student body with diverse experiences and views. Columbia, Missouri is regularly ranked as one of the most livable cities in the United States.

 

Nevada Law Journal CFP: Avoiding Disaster: Understanding, Mitigating, and Adapting to the Global Climate Crisis

Call For Papers: Avoiding Disaster: Understanding, Mitigating, and Adapting to the Global Climate Crisis

Volume 24, Issue 3 of the Nevada Law Journal

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

William S. Boyd School of Law

The Nevada Law Journal is pleased to announce a call for papers for its symposium issue, Avoiding Disaster: Understanding, Mitigating, and Adapting to the Global Climate Crisis. This symposium will explore climate change: its causes and effects, current and potential legal solutions, and the implications of these solutions for our society, nation, and world.

Climate change has become one of the biggest threats to human life.  Across the world, the effects of climate change are manifest. Rising temperatures are fueling increasingly intense disasters, devastating large parts of the earth. Droughts are becoming longer and more extreme, causing food shortages. Floods are spreading disease and damaging ecosystems and infrastructure. Wildfires are intensifying, becoming more and more difficult to stop. Increasing ocean temperatures are causing more severe tropical storms. Animal habitats are being destroyed.

Climate change can occur through natural factors, such as volcanic eruptions, changes in the strength of the sun, and variations in Earth’s orbit. However, since the 19th century, Earth has been experiencing more rapid changes in the climate, due to human intervention. Humans’ continued reliance on fossil fuels to power their daily activities is just one cause of climate change. Other “man-made” causes of climate change include deforestation, the manufacturing industry, and massive overconsumption. Unfortunately, not only are humans causing climate change, but political polarization and deregulation are multiplying the problem.

Swift action is imperative. Climate change, however, has become a controversial topic among scholars, practitioners, politicians, and the general public. Many are skeptical about climate change and the science behind it. It is important for practitioners and scholars to continue to drive the discussion of climate change with facts and evidence. It is imperative that skeptics are presented with the truth and understand the real danger Earth and its inhabitants are in if climate change is not taken seriously.

This Nevada Law Journal issue seeks to explore the specific issues impacting climate change, proposals of how to best address these issues, and what implications these potential solutions may have moving forward. We invite interested parties to submit abstracts of at least 375 words; we welcome longer summaries and draft papers. The abstracts should be proposals for articles less than 30,000 words. Submissions should be sent to Sydnee Mongeon, Symposium Editor, at [email protected] with the subject line “NLJ Call for Papers.” Abstracts are due May 16, 2023.

Selected authors will be notified by May 30, 2023. Complete drafts will be due August 15, 2023. Accepted submissions will be published in Issue 3, 24 Nev L.J. (forthcoming May 2024).

Submissions should address some aspect of the climate crisis, broadly defined. We are soliciting work on any aspect of what climate change is, current laws and regulations concerning climate change and their effectiveness, what Congress or other law-making authorities, in this country or others, should or should not do to combat climate change, and what issues need to be considered when implementing those proposals. Potential paper topics include, but are in no way limited to, climate change and politics, the impacts of climate change on different groups, environmental law and policy analysis or proposals, contributors to climate change, water rights, the future of fossil fuels, the future of renewable energy, economic policy, climate change issues specific to the Southwest, and lithium mining in Nevada.

The Nevada Law Journal is specifically interested in articles on non-human agriculture and its effects on the climate, however, all climate related topics are also desired.

The Nevada Law Journal will review all proposals and make selections based on quality and relevance. We encourage submissions from both established and emerging scholars, as well as practitioners.

For more information, please contact Professor Bret Birdsong at [email protected], Professor Frank Fritz at [email protected], Sydnee Mongeon at [email protected], or John Bolliger at [email protected].

With gratitude,

William S. Boyd Professor of Law, Bret Birdsong

William S. Boyd Professor of Law, Frank Fritz

Nevada Law Journal Symposium Editor, Sydnee Mongeon

Nevada Law Journal Editor-in-Chief, John Bolliger

“Is there anything more to learn from The Federalist Papers?”

The following is a guest post by Christian Fritz, Professor Emeritus at the University of New Mexico School of Law:

As every student of American constitutional history and political theory knows, the literature on The Federalist Papers is enormous. Given the dozens of editions with scholarly introductions, countless collections of essays on the meaning of Publius, and the ubiquitous citations to Federalist essays by the courts and researchers, it would seem likely that the answer to the question posed in the title would be no.

Despite their exhaustive treatment, something crucial has been overlooked in the famous essays: an articulation of a constitutional tool that would emerge in practice in the hands of state legislatures after the ratification of the Constitution and one that has played an important part in thinking about the proper balance of authority between the federal government and those of the states.

In Monitoring American Federalism: The History of State Legislative Resistance (Cambridge University Press, 2023), I trace the genesis of that constitutional tool to several essays by both James Madison and Alexander Hamilton in which they described—without using the term interposition—a mechanism that state legislatures might employ in their role as monitors of the federalism created by the Constitution to ensure that the new national government would not overreach its constitutional authority and intrude upon the powers retained by the states. What began as a debate-like response to opponents of ratification, eventually took on a life of its own, producing a tradition of monitoring federalism that had a vibrant life in American constitutional history until and during the Civil War and even for a time thereafter, before suffering a demise.

The Constitution’s shared sovereignty between nation and states created a dynamic federalism that stimulated continuous debates over the balance of power, including debates over slavery and taxation. Thus, state interposition was fundamental in shaping the American political conversation about our constitutional rights and illustrated a strength and not a weakness of the framers’ constitutional design, inviting each generation to consider what the appropriate constitutional balance should be. 

Monitoring American Federalism demonstrates how states played a crucial role from the beginning of the republic in assessing the equilibrium of federalism within the American constitutional order. Unlike judicial review, interposition did not have immediate constitutional effect, but was designed to work through political pressure in attempting to maintain an equilibrium between the national and state governments by enabling state legislatures to express and coordinate their discontent over federal laws and measures. State legislatures would sound the alarm about a perceived constitutional overreach, pass interposition resolutions, and share the resolutions with other states to exert maximum political pressure on whatever branch of the federal government was responsible for the overreach.

In its use before the Civil War, interposition by states involved the conviction that elected officials, especially state legislators, but also individual citizens, juries, and the press, could properly scrutinize any expansive assertions by the federal government, not simply the Supreme Court. Indeed, state interposition would be used to oppose many perceived threats, including the Alien and Sedition Acts, the War of 1812, federal tariffs, internal improvements, and pro-slavery laws.

Interposition emerged as a response to critics worried that the Constitution’s grant of national powers would obliterate state authority. This early interposition formed an institutional and intentional way to acknowledge divided sovereignty under the Constitution and to preserve the equilibrium of federalism. Properly understood at the time, interposition was not a claim that state sovereignty could or should displace national authority, but a claim that American federalism needed to preserve some balance between state and national authority. Moreover, interposition was not a claim for the constitutional independence of state legislatures.

Interposition as a constitutional tool became distorted with the rise of South Carolinian John C. Calhoun’s claims during the Nullification crisis of the 1830s. Historians today describe interposition as inherent in the states’ rights political tradition of defending slavery, which inexorably led to Southern secession and Civil War. This narrative ignores the practice of interposition before its appropriation by nullifiers and those invested in slavery who claimed the right of individual states to defy national laws and decisions of the Supreme Court. Nonetheless, there was a great divide between those who advocated for the rights of state legislatures to question the federal government on any constitutional issue through interposition—and those who supported nullification. The gulf between the two invocations of state interposition was underscored in the 1830s, when many of those who embraced interposition rejected nullification.

Hiring Announcement: Faulkner University, Thomas Goode Jones School of Law

From an email message I recently received:

Thomas Goode Jones School of Law is seeking qualified applicants for one or more Visiting Faculty positions for the 2023-2024 academic year. Areas of interest include: Criminal Law and Procedure, Evidence, Civil Procedure, Trial Advocacy, Sales, Administrative Law, Federal Courts and Remedies.

Faulkner University is a Christian university committed to the highest standards of academic excellence and Christian values. The Law School gives preference in hiring to qualified candidates who are members of the churches of Christ. Additionally, the law school is actively recruiting candidates who may bring greater gender, racial, and ethnic diversity to the faculty. Information regarding Faulkner Law's programs is available at law.faulkner.edu.

These are 10-month positions beginning August 1, 2023.

Qualifications:

• Juris Doctor from an ABA-approved institution required
• Strong academic background; record of legal scholarship and teaching excellence

For initial application, please submit the following at https://faulkner.applicantpro.com/jobs/:

• Curriculum Vitae
• Cover letter

Employment is conditional upon a satisfactory background check and verification of work authorization through E-Verify.

Non-discrimination statement: Faulkner University is a church-affiliated liberal arts institution committed to employing a highly qualified and diverse administration, faculty and staff, which reflects the University's religious traditions, values, affiliation, and purpose. Thus, the institution invites individuals affiliated with the churches of Christ to submit applications regardless of race, color, national or ethnic origin, age, gender, marital status, or disability. Faulkner University does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national or ethnic origin, age, gender, marital status, or disability in connection with its educational policies, admissions, financial aid, employment, educational programs, or activities. However, Faulkner University exercises a preference in employment for those qualified applicants who are members of the churches of Christ whose lifestyles are consistent with the mission of the University and with the beliefs and values of the churches of Christ. Please refer to our website for further information. www.faulkner.edu.