The Faculty Lounge

Paint It Black

In 1966, "Paint It Black" was the Rolling Stones' first song featuring the sitar, and only the second by a rock group with sitar (after the Beatles' "Norwegian Wood," which was not released as a single). It charted at number one in both the U.S. and UK. With lyrics and melody by Keith Richards and Mick Jagger, it also marked the increasing marginalization of Brian Jones as the Stones' leader (although it was Jones who devised and played the sitar part). "Paint It Black" It was the opening track on the U.S. version of the Aftermath album, the Stones' first with all original songs. Oddly, it was not on the UK Aftermath.

 

Hiring Announcement: University of San Francisco School of Law

From a recent email message:

University of San Francisco seeks renewable term and visiting legal writing faculty

The University of San Francisco School of Law is hiring for a full-time faculty member to join our Legal Research, Writing, and Analysis team beginning in Academic Year 2025-26. USF is accepting applications for both one-year visitors and renewable term faculty on the legal writing promotion track. The new professor will teach two LRWA sections of about 15-18 students each. The salary range is $85,000 to $100,000 depending on experience in addition to generous benefits. For a one-year visitor, it is also likely that USF can provide a free apartment. 

USF is a welcoming, supportive, and diverse community--a joy to be a part of. The students, faculty, and staff are absolutely wonderful. The school is located right next to Golden Gate Park in the northern part of the city. Please feel free to reach out to Adam Abelkop ([email protected]), who directs the legal writing program, if you have questions. 

Applicants can specify if they are interested in a visiting or renewable term position in their cover letter. The full job posting and application are here: https://usfca.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/USF_Staff/job/USF-Hilltop-Campus/Visiting-Professor-of-Legal-Writing--Assistant-Professor-of-Legal-Writing--Associate-Professor-of-Legal-Writing--or-Professor-of-Legal-Writing_R0010757

Bernstein on semen as a potentially toxic substance

This abstract, with an interesting title, from an always-interesting author, came across my desk recently. Anita Bernstein, Are You There Law? It's Me Semen. Here's the abstract from SSRN:

Abstract
Joining a conversation about menstruation and the law, this Essay interprets “law” to mean regulation––a source of burden, constraint, and interference justified by reason. The object of my regulatory agenda is a substance perceived by Western thinkers at least since Aristotle as the superior counterpart to menstrual fluid. Traditions that celebrate semen as vital or affirmative, while recoiling from and controlling the other gendered emission that hurts no one, get reality backward. Law as burden, constraint, and interference ought to regulate semen and leave menstrual fluid alone. Contrast the two substances. One of them started out with the potentially useful function of building a uterine lining. That possibility concluded, menstrual fluid is benign. The other effluvium started out with the potentially useful function of launching a pregnancy. Pregnancy is a good thing when it is desired by the person who has to live with the bulk of pregnancy’s detriments. Along with its capacity to do an important job, semen causes quite the array of harms. A statute on point for this purpose, the Federal Hazardous Substances Act, regulates material that “may cause substantial personal injury or substantial illness during or as a proximate result of any customary or reasonably foreseeable handling or use.” Because semen “has the capacity to produce personal injury or illness to man through ingestion, inhalation, or absorption through any body surface,” it also aligns with the definition of “toxic” in the statute. Judges, policymakers, litigants, and ordinary people can all learn from well-established legal labels to understand semen as a stark example of an externality. Nothing in this statute impedes the characterization I propose: The FHSA lists substances that lie outside its purview, and semen is not among them. Labeling, containment, and emergency protocols—splash protection, if you like—are the hazardous-substance safety impositions I would apply to semen.

 

Kessler and Roth on organ donor registration

This long-awaited paper from Kessler and Roth was just published last week. As Roth notes, they began work on the project in 2010, when Kessler was "just a kid." In fact, I saw Kessler present this paper around that time and can confirm that he (and I!) were much younger then. 

Here's the abstract:

Abstract: The United States has a severe shortage of organs for transplant. Recently—inspired by research based on hypothetical choices—jurisdictions have tried to increase organ donor registrations by changing how the registration question is asked. We evaluate these changes with a novel "field-in-the-lab" experiment, in which subjects change their real organ donor status, and with new donor registration data collected from US states. A "yes/no" frame is not more effective than an "opt-in" frame, contradicting conclusions based on hypothetical choices, but other question wording can matter, and asking individuals to reconsider their donor status increases registrations.

As a bit of background, some early work using hypothetical donor registrations provided evidence that choice frame-- specifically, requiring subjects to say either "yes" or no"no" to organ donation, as opposed to an opt-in framework --  could dramatically increase organ donor registration rates. For example,  

Johnson and Goldstein (2003; 2004) found that 42% of their experimental subjects reported a willingness to register as an organ donor when asked to opt-in to a donor registry but that the rate was a dramatically higher 79% when subjects were required to say either “yes” or “no” to organ donation, a staggering 37 percentage point treatment effect.

Roth and Kessler use a controlled experiment (giving Massachusetts residents the opportunity to change their organ donor registration status) that tests whether the choice frame affects organ donor registration. They then present results from newly collected data on registration decisions from state DMVs, leveraging state-level changes in question wording as natural experiments. "Both sets of empirical work find consistent, near zero impacts of choice frame on organ donor registration, suggesting that prior estimates using hypothetical data do not accurately describe behavior under actual incentives."

Read the whole thing here.

 

Papers can take a long time to publish, but the problems they address can last even longer. #econsky #transplantation marketdesigner.blogspot.com/2025/04/newo...

[image or embed]

— Al Roth (@alroth.bsky.social) April 30, 2025 at 8:12 AM

Hiring Announcement: Widener Law Commonwealth

From a recent email message:

Widener Law Commonwealth seeks an entry-level or pre-tenure lateral faculty member to fill a tenure track position starting in the 2025-2026 academic year. We have primary needs in the areas Legal Methods and Commercial Law with secondary needs in Intellectual Property and First Amendment courses. 

Established in 1989, Widener Law Commonwealth is an independently accredited law school within Widener University.  Located in Harrisburg, PA, the law school’s location in the capital of Pennsylvania provides impactful experiences for both our faculty and students. 

WLC is a dynamic community of teachers and scholars.  We pride ourselves on our dedication to our students, our engagement with teaching, and our scholarly impact.  Many of our scholars are actively engaged in law reform efforts at both the state and federal level.

The law school is committed to fostering an environment in which faculty, staff, and students from a variety of backgrounds, cultures, and personal experiences are welcomed and can thrive. Faculty and staff are active participants in our work to enhance diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging.  We welcome applications from members of historically underrepresented groups.

We are looking for candidates with strong academic backgrounds, commitment to excellence in teaching, and demonstrated potential to be productive scholars.  Candidates must possess at least a JD degree or its equivalent. 

Please contact Professor Robyn Meadows, Appointments Committee Chair ([email protected]), with any questions.  

Martin Ellin Named Dean of Atlanta's John Marshall Law School

Atlanta's John Marshall Law School has announced that Marty Ellin will be its next dean.   He has held senior and development roles with several service-focused organizations and served for 20 years as Executive Director of the Atlanta Volunteer Lawyers Foundation (AVLF), one of Georgia’s largest and most impactful pro bono legal service organizations.  Ellin, who holds a JD from the University of Maryland School of Law, will take over on July 1.

Philosophy of Contract Law Now Available!

The new Research Handbook on the Philosophy of Contract Law, edited by Mindy Chen-Wishart and Prince Saprai, and published by Edward Elgar Publishing is now out. From the publisher:

With contributions from experts in the field, this comprehensive Research Handbook provides a systematic overview of debates at the cutting edge of the philosophy of contract law.

The Research Handbook engages closely with general theories of contract law, entering into detailed theoretical discussions surrounding its principles, rules and doctrines, as well as its moral foundations. Chapters explore key themes such as the limits of freedom of contract; debates about monistic and pluralistic theories of contract law; and the philosophical challenges associated with resolving hard cases. The Research Handbook on the Philosophy of Contract Law suggests paths for future studies, emphasising the need to bridge the gap between theory and practice.

Wide-ranging in scope, this Research Handbook is an essential resource for scholars and students in contract law theory, moral and political philosophy, jurisprudence and law and economics. Legal practitioners and policy experts seeking an overview of current theoretical debates will also benefit greatly from this book.

The book leaflet as well as screen shots of the table of contents are below. My contribution, The Ethical Limits of Markets: Market Inalienability, is here. Here is the abstract:

Although ethical critiques of markets are longstanding, modern academic debates about the “moral limits of markets” (MLM) tend to be fairly limited in scope. These disputes center, not on the dangers of markets per se, but on the dangers of exchanging particular items and activities through the marketplace. Proponents of MLM theories thus do not want to eliminate markets entirely, but instead seek to identify the moral and ethical boundaries of the marketplace by considering which goods and services are inappropriate for market trading. This chapter summarizes and categorizes some of the more important arguments within this debate, with a focus on recent research, controversies, and applications. The goal is to provide an overview of these debates, highlighting some of the topics that have generated robust discussion, particularly when relatively recent empirical or theoretical work may shed new light on a topic. Specifically, I focus on crowding out, corruption, leaving a space for altruism, equality, and a trio of related debates regarding paternalism (coercion, unjust inducement, and exploitation).

Smolla Stepping Down as Vermont Law President

Vermont Law and Graduate School has announced that Rodney Smolla will step down as president at the end of the academic year.  He became president in 2022.  Beth McCormack, dean of the law school, and Dan Bromberg, dean of the graduate school, will take on Smolla's responsibilities.   A search is expected to happen in the coming academic year. 

Dutch Sperm "Calamity"

The Guardian has the news in this story: ‘Medical calamity’: dozens of Dutch sperm donors fathered at least 25 children. (HT: Al Roth's Market Design Blog)

According to the article: “At least 85 sperm donors in the Netherlands have fathered 25 or more children, the national gynaecology and obstetrics organisation has said, after a new registration system showed fertility clinics have been breaking existing rules on sperm donation for decades.”

These revelations are important because countries like the Netherlands are often held up as regulatory role models, in contrast to the US, which has a fractured and largely unregulated system. But enforcement matters too, it turns out, and here there was none. 

The information became available only once donor anonymity laws were lifted: “Since 2004, when donors’ right to anonymity was lifted, the data showed there had been at least 85 “mass donors” (defined as at least 25 conceptions).”

“Most were biological father to between 26 and 40 children, Schoonenberg said, although several had between 50 and 75. Among them were at least 10 fertility doctors” (emphasis mine)