The Faculty Lounge

I Can't Turn You Loose

"I Can't Turn You Loose" was written and recorded by Otis Redding in 1965. It was originally released as the B-side of "Just One More Day," a song that I cannot remember and may never have even heard. Just goes to show that nobody can really predict hits.

Don't miss Steve Cropper's interview at the bottom of the post.

More Bad Behavior at St. Thomas University College of Law

Alexander Lugo at ALM/Law.com recently wrote about some of the allegations of bad behavior at St. Thomas University College of Law in Miami Gardens, Florida, including allegations extracted from complaints to the ABA filed by STUCL faculty and from a lawsuit I filed on behalf of former STUCL Professor Lauren Gilbert, which recently settled.   The Law.Com story noted that I was representing another STUCL professor who was threatening to file suit, but I declined to provide any details to Mr. Lugo at that time.  At the time, I was still holding out some hope that STUCL might be willing to engage in good faith negotiations to resolve my client's concerns.  Unfortunately, they were not.

This week, I have filed a new lawsuit against STUCL on behalf of that previously unnamed client, Assistant Professor Claire Osborne-Thomas.  As the lawsuit is now a matter of public record, and likely to be of interest to the law professoriate, I thought I would share with TFL readers some of the details.  Many TFL readers may know Claire from her teaching or scholarship.  Claire was previously a tenured professor at Thomas Jefferson Law School in San Diego (back when they were ABA-Accredited), but was not given tenure when she made the lateral move to St. Thomas to be closer to her family.  After compiling a stellar record of teaching, scholarship and service at STUCL, including teacher of the year in 2022-2023, Claire applied for tenure in 2023-2024.   She received the strong backing of the tenure and promotion committee and had several strong external reviews.  The Dean, an STUCL graduate and former state court judge appointed by the University President without any input from the faculty (one of the school's many violations of ABA Standards), recommended that tenure be denied.   For months, she refused to provide a copy of her recommendation to Claire, falsely claiming that Claire was not entitled to see it.  After threatening to sue, I was finally able to obtain a copy of the recommendation, and it immediately became clear why the Dean didn't want to share it.  The recommendation completely ignored the tenure standards that the Dean was supposed to apply.  Her recommendation to deny tenure was instead based on demonstrably false, unsupported and defamatory claims about Claire's behavior.  In the lawsuit I filed, we allege that the Dean wrote this recommendation at the direction of the President, who had decided he would not support Claire for tenure in retaliation for her appeal of an unjust reprimand that he had forced the previous Dean to give her.  The reprimand, later reduced to a warning, was for a non-incident where Claire had chosen not to report to campus security a bizarre, non-specific, vaguely threatening message of unknown origin shown to her by a student.   Although the school determined the message to be misinformation and not a threat within hours of Claire's decision that it was not worth reporting, the President nonetheless directed that the Acting Dean reprimand her for her failure to report.   The lawsuit further alleges that the President's underlying motivation for reprimanding Claire was because he was trying to build a case to terminate her colleague Lauren Gilbert, who also was aware of the hoax message and likewise chose not to report it. The President also ordered that Lauren be reprimanded for this incident, and later cited this non-event as a basis for seeking to terminate her.  Both Lauren and Claire appealed the reprimands they received.  The complaint further alleges that the President urged Claire to drop her appeal, and promised that her future career at STUCL would be brilliant if she did so, but threatened that if she continued to try to have the letter removed from her file (using normal channels for appeal set forth in the employee handbook) that her future at the law school would not be so brilliant.  The President also made it clear that the reprimand/warning was "not about her" but rather was about Lauren and urged Claire to consider what she could do for the University.  Claire refused to back down and refused to involve herself in what she considered to be a dastardly plot against Lauren.  True to his word, the complaint alleges that the President personally ensured that Claire's tenure application was disapproved, completely disregarding her record of teaching, service and scholarship, in retaliation for refusing his entreaties.  Claire did appeal the denial of tenure, but after a month without any response to her appeal, she authorized me to file suit. 

For those interested in further details about the case, a copy of the complaint, with numerous exhibits attached, is linked below.

Download Osborn-Wright Complaint with exhibits

Ediberto Roman on Lawyer2Lawyer

With former President Trump slated to take office on January 20th, 2025, he has not wasted any time in his quest to deport millions of undocumented immigrants. Trump recently appointed Former Acting U.S. ICE Director Tom Homan, as “border czar,” and confirmed his plan to declare a national emergency once in office, using the military for mass deportations.

In this episode, Craig is joined by Professor Ediberto Román, Director of Immigration and Citizenship Initiatives at the Florida International University College of Law. Craig & Ediberto discuss mass deportations under a second Trump presidency, the legal issues, and the potential impact on immigrants, industries, and our nation.

Podcast is here: Mass Deportations under a Second Trump Presidency

 

AI and the Future of Research Surveys

As law professors, most of us don't have much (if any) training in traditional social science research methodology like surveys. On the few occasions that I've dipped a toe into those waters (e.g., here), I've teamed with other researchers who have experience with those methods. Apart from lack of familiarity and training, another wrinkle for many law profs is that survey work typically requires approval of the applicable institutional review board. Law faculties are far less accustomed to dealing with IRB approval than, say, medical school faculties.

I was interested to read (here) in today's Inside Higher Education about two researchers at the London School of Economics, Friedrich Geiecke (Computational Social Science) and Xavier Jaravel (Economics), who have created an open access tool with promising survey capabilities: Conversations at Scale: Robust AI-led Interviews with a Simple Open-Source Platform.

Here's a descriptive excerpt from the IHE article by Juliette Rowsell:

Rather than having a standard set of multiple-choice and open text questions, as has typically been the case with online surveys, the chat bot takes a conversational approach, collecting interviewees’ responses and using them to generate new questions within a broad set of parameters. ***

In trials, it demonstrated some impressive results. A team of sociology Ph.D. students from Harvard University and the London School of Economics that was asked to assess the quality of the interviews based on transcripts rated them as being broadly comparable to interviews conducted by human experts.

And when the almost 1,000 study participants were asked to evaluate their interaction with the chat bot, the majority said they had enjoyed it and preferred this mode of interview over open text fields. Only 15 percent of respondents said they would have preferred the interview to have been conducted by a person.

I will be following this technology with interest.

CFP: ComplianceNet2025 "Evolving Compliance"

This just in:

ComplianceNet 2025, with the theme "Evolving Compliance," will be hosted by Fordham University School of Law in New York City and will take place May 28, 29, and 30, 2025. We are currently accepting panel or paper submissions, with a deadline of December 20, 2024.

At each conference, we have awarded prizes for the best junior and senior scholar papers, as well as a Lifetime Achievement award. Previous winners are featured on our website here. New this year we will have a panel and poster session dedicated to graduate students. There will also be awards this year for the best graduate student contributions.

We warmly invite junior scholars, senior scholars, and graduate students to apply for the conference generally and for appropriate best paper awards. Scholars must be present to receive their awards.

 

Penn State Dickinson Law and Penn State Law Merger Approved

The ABA has granted  approval for the reunification of Penn State Dickinson Law and Penn State Law.  The single school will operate at both the Carlisle and University Park locations, but will have its primary location in Carlisle and will be known as Penn State Dickinson Law.  It will be helmed by Dean Danielle Conway.  The school will admit a unified 1L class this coming fall.

The Law Prof Exodus from X/Twitter to Bluesky

It looks like there are increasing numbers of law professors among those leaving X (formerly Twitter) to join Bluesky, the open social network. Mashable has a good write-up (here) exploring why people are leaving X and why they are doing so now in particularly large numbers.

A few years ago, the Law Prof Twitter census (here) listed more than 1,600 full-time law profs on X/Twitter. While there's not (yet) an accurate list of all law profs of Bluesky, there are several "starter packs" and lists to help new users get started following several law profs and law-related users. Here are some that I've stumbled across. This list is far from complete:

Law Professor Starter Pack by @lawprofblawg.bsky.social

Jedshug's Law Prof Starter Pack #3 by Jed Shugerman, @jedshug.bksky.social

Jedshug's Law Prof Starter Pack Part 2 by Jed Shugerman, @jedshug.bksky.social

Jedshug's Law Prof Starter Pack Part 1 by Jed Shugerman, @jedshug.bksky.social

LawProfs Starter Pack by Matthew Bruckner, @mbruckner.bsky.social

Lawprofs starter pack #2 by Matthew Bruckner, @mbruckner.bsky.social

Lawprofs starter pack #3 Matthew Bruckner, @mbruckner.bsky.social

Antitrust and Consumer Protection List by @lawprofblawg.bsky.social

Law Prof and Academic Refugees List by @lawprofblawg.bsky.social

US Administrative Law Starter Pack by Pat Sobkowski, @patsobkowski.com

Law Professors List by Colin Miller, @evidenceprof.bsky.social

Evidence law academics Starter Pack by Colin Miller, @evidenceprof.bsky.social

Ethics and Professional Responsibility Law Profs Starter Pack by Maybell Romero, @maybell.bsky.social

CrimProfs at American Law Schools Starter Pack by Maybell Romero, @maybell.bsky.social

Gender Law Profs Starter Pack by Tracy Thomas, @proftracythomas.bsky.social

Tax Law Profs Starter Pack by me, Bridget Crawford, @profbcrawford.bsky.social

Trusts and Estates Law Profs Starter Pack by me, Bridget Crawford, @profbcrawford.bsky.social

Michigan Law Professors Starter Pack by @umichlaw.bsky.social

U.S. Law Schools Starter Pack by Sarah Fackrell Burnstein, @design-law.bsky.social

Added to initial post:

IP Profs Starter Pack by Jeanne Fromer, @jeannefromer.bsky.social

Repro Law Profs Starter Pack by David S. Cohen, @dsc250.bsky.social

There's some duplication among these lists, for sure.

I'd be happy to add more starter packs/lists to this post, if folks send the info my way, either in the comments or via DM.

Hannah Brenner Johnson Named Dean of Southern Illinois Law

Southern Illinois University Law has announced that Hannah Brenner Johnson will be its next dean.  She is currently professor of law and vice dean at California Western School of Law.  Johnson, who holds a JD from Iowa, will take over on July 1.

Southern Illinois University Law has announced that Hannah Brenner Johnson will be its next dean.  She is currently professor of law and vice dean at California Western School of Law.  Johnson, who holds a JD from Iowa, will take over on July 1.

Oregon Law Seeks Dean

This just in:

The University of Oregon School of Law is undertaking a search for its next dean. A brief description of the University and Law School are provided below. A link to the comprehensive position description, and instructions on how to apply, can be found here: https://www.parkersearch.com/opportunities/dean-school-of-law.

More information about the search, including an online nomination form, can be found here: https://provost.uoregon.edu/law-school-dean-search

Inquiries about the search can be directed to our search firm, Parker Executive Search, whose contact information can be found in both links. My excellent colleague, Stuart Chinn, is serving as co-chair of our search committee and is happy to answer any inquiries as well. You may contact him at [email protected].