The Faculty Lounge

More Online Teaching Resources

To add to the current compilation of materials on how to move to remote teaching, I wanted to share the following SSRN links.

The first was posted this week by Prof Agnieszka McPeak (Duquesne) and is a straightforward, simple best practices guide to moving things online. Six pages, easy to read and great advice:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3553094

The second is a piece I wrote last year which is longer and focuses more on the costs and benefits of law schools moving to online teaching, but it also includes some practical observations on larger and smaller group teaching online:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3491427

Hopefully some of those struggling to get online quickly may make use of these pieces. I highly recommend Prof McPeak's thoughts.

 

Civ Pro Themed Hand Washing Guide

As we all know by now, handwashing is important. Just for kicks I created this Civ Pro themed handwashing guide for my students.

s

The Great Mass Online Teaching Experiment

For many years, I've been fascinated by the possibilities of online teaching. Things like MOOCs and flipped classrooms seem to offer real opportunities to teach in new and better ways. All the same, I've been busy with other things, and actually making the leap to offering online instruction never quite made the list.

Then came Covid-19. My students are sequestered in apartments all across China, and the Peking University School of Transnational Law campus in Shenzhen is empty. I've chosen not to return to China after the spring festival, but have been hunkered down in Chiang Mai, Thailand, waiting for the situation to gain some clarity. The clarity that has gradually emerged is that we aren't going to be teaching face-to-face for at least a while, and we're taking all our classes online.

In going online, we're joining all kinds of schools all over China. I've got a cousin who has retired from K12 teaching in Canada and is running the international section of a large school on the east coast. They've taken all high school classes online, along with most similar schools. Teachers report that students locked down in house arrest tend to be highly prepared. At an expat event in Chiang Mai, I met two kindergarten teachers from an international school in another part of China. Although the ministry of education doesn't support online teaching for kids that young, in response to parental demands they have been teaching children as young as three years old online. While hugs are hard to deliver, they can record sing-a-long songs or record readings of English books and lessons, and comment on the responses the children's parents sent back to them. Possibly hundreds of millions of students have been shifted to online instruction in China, something that has not happened at that scale in the traditional educational environment anywhere before.

My students, fortunately, are a lot more self-sufficient and able than three-year-olds. It's been a challenge to move everything online, but it seems to be working. Here are some quick thoughts. As my experience deepens, I might be back with more thoughts.

Platforms. There seem to be a lot of good platforms out there. We are using Zoom, in both its webinar (better for classes over 100 in size) and meeting (better for smaller classes) sizes. I find Zoom pretty easy to use, although with each class I find some features and shortcuts I hadn't noticed before that make it still easier. I am able to call on students by name, put them on camera, share their video with everyone, and in general carry on pretty much as we do in a regular classroom. Our budgets tend to be pretty limited, and we aren't using some of the complementary software that enables things like seamlessly moving to pre-recorded snippets. So far, that seems to be ok.

Bandwidth. As you would expect, bandwidth is an issue, both for the students and the teachers. This week in order to renew my Thai visa I took a side trip to Luang Prabang in Laos, where the internet just isn't robust enough for online teaching. To deal with that, I went asynchronous for one class, recording a lecture before I came over. Students are also differently positioned, and some students experience issues with audio quality or dropped connections. To ameliorate, we are recording all classes, and students can download and listen to any difficult portions at their leisure. I find 20 megabits per second connections more than adequate and five megabits per second too low for full functionality. (Type internet speed test into Google to get a test that will tell you your connection speed).

Disadvantages. Some of the issues involved in moving online are obvious, but others less so. For example, in our situation, library reserve - which I use heavily - is not available. In some courses, we have copies of the basic text or core readings for everyone available in the library. That doesn't work when students are scattered. For example, in my Law and Innovation class we have enough copies of the Susskind's The Future of the Professions to go around when we are all in Shenzhen, as well as enough copies of Thomas Morgan's PR book to go around when we cover specific ethical issues in the legal profession. We have no way of getting to those to students all over China. That requires adjustments in the course materials as a small subset of my students can buy whatever book I mention and others are financially constrained, so simply telling them to go to Amazon or JD is not a good solution. In some cases, the only solution has been for me to write substitute materials, which has been a huge time commitment.

You can't see the classroom as you talk in the same way you see them in a live classroom, so the skills you've developed in reading those cues aren't on point. 

There are lead time and set up issues. I use PowerPoint slides, and I've found it helpful to the students to circulate those before class so they can refer to them in a separate window. That requires having them locked down a day or so ahead of time. Online meeting links also need to be generated and circulated. I've also been designating a list of on-call students, something I don't always do in person, so that the students can be sure their cameras and microphones are ready to go. 

One thing I've not sorted out is assessment in my Civ Pro class. I typically give an exam with multiple choice and essay components. I'm not sure how I am going to do that if we are not back on campus by exam time. There are software solutions that will lock student's computers down, but we don't have them. For self-assessment, I'm using the same online quizzes on TWEN that I've used for years.

Advantages. Some of the advantages have been surprising as well. Zoom allows students to ask questions anonymously in the Q&A. This allows students to put things out there without losing face or seeming stupid, and it actually generates way more student commentary and questions than I get in a live class. I get so many comments in my Civ Pro class that keeping the flow of class moving ahead has become a bit of an issue.

Another advantage that I hadn't thought about in advance is that making the classroom non-physical opens up the world of guest panelists and speakers. I'm busy trying to pull in thought leaders and people with on-point experience to take a few minutes in both my Civ Pro and Law and Innovation classes. For example, in Law and Innovation, which has a large PR component, I'm bringing in a lawyer from Kentucky to talk about the devastation that was visited on the local community around Butcher's Hollow (yes, that Butcher's Hollow) when a corrupt local lawyer entered into a bribery deal with a social security judge to have his clients all approved as disabled. The upshot was that the Social Security Administration cut off benefits for all the clients of the corrupt lawyer, most of whom were in fact disabled, and who were neither aware of nor involved in the fraud, leaving many of them in perilous straits. I'm hoping that having live in the classroom someone who was involved in cleaning up a tragic situation caused by lawyer dishonesty will make the real-life consequences of lawyer misconduct more palpable. (By the way - feel free to volunteer to be a guest speaker).

My students, I think, are enjoying having all classes recorded and available for download. Setting aside technical problems, if they drift or lose focus for a moment, they can replay the section that did not quite make sense. If it does not make sense because I did not make sense, they can bring it up in online office hours. (Having every word recorded and distributed might be an issue for those of you with aspirations to sit on the Supreme Court or even just good reputations to protect, and if that's the case you can choose not to enable the recording feature.)

One obvious benefit of teaching online is that you can become a digital nomad and be someplace new and different. The attached photo is from my temporary office at a riverside cafe a few days ago.

As this goes forward, and I am only four classes in, I may post more. Comments on online teaching techniques are welcome. Comments reflecting your personal conspiracy theories on the origins and dispersion of the virus that causes Covid-19 will be deleted.

University of Iowa Reinstates Faculty Fellows Program

From our friends at the University of Iowa College of Law:

The University of Iowa College of Law is delighted to announce that it is reinstituting its Faculty Fellow program. Our program alums include Devon Carbado, Laura Beny, Cyndi Nance, Creola Johnson, Angela Gilmore, Sumi Cho, and Harold Rocha, among others.  We are specifically seeking candidates from diverse backgrounds. Please pass the word to your networks.  See the details at:

https://law.uiowa.edu/iowa-law-faculty-fellowship.

 

 

The 2019 Law School Bar Pass Hall of Shame

As I wrote in a recent column about America's least selective law schools, the days of widespread predatory admissions practices by ABA-accredited law schools seems to have come largely to a close.  The schools that engaged in these practices have either gone out of business (Whittier, Valparaiso, Charlotte School of Law, Arizona Summit) converted to State-Accredited Schools (Thomas Jefferson, University of LaVerne) or have been sufficiently chastened by ABA sanctions that they have largely reformed their ways (Florida Coastal, Ave Maria, Atlanta’s John Marshall, Texas Southern, Appalachian, North Carolina Central, Western Michigan (formerly Thomas Cooley). 

But although law schools are no longer admitting large numbers of unqualified students, the legacy of the years of these irresponsible and unethical admission practices carries on in the form of atrocious bar pass rates at the schools that engaged in these reprehensible practices.  The worst admissions abuses occurred between 2013 and 2016, so law school are still feeling the effects today.  Most students who matriculated in 2016 graduated in 2019, but many part-time students admitted in 2016 will be graduating this year.  

The ABA has recently released comprehensive bar pass statistics, including first year bar pass statistics for 2019 and ultimate bar pass rate statistics for 2017.  UBP measures the percentage of graduates who pass the bar within two years of graduation.  You can find the ABA’s spreadsheets here.   Overall, these statistics are up, and that is good news.  Nationwide, 89.5% of 2017 law graduates who sat for a bar exam passed it within two years of graduation.  This is up from the 2016 UBP rate of 88.64%. And the 2019 first time pass rate was up substantially, at 79.64%, a nearly five percent increase from 2018, when it was 74.83%.   But these aggregate statistics mask, to some extent, how dire the situation still is at the bottom.    

Eight of the nearly 200 ABA-Accredited Law Schools failed to meet the current ABA Standard 316, which has just gone into effect. (Incredibly, no law school ever was found out of compliance with the old Standard 316)

The current ABA Standard 316 is very simple:  “At least 75 percent of a law school’s graduates who sat for a bar examination must have passed a bar examination administered within two years of their date of graduation.”

The 2019 HALL OF SHAME

2019-20 Bottom Ten List

I am pleased to report that the exploitation of unqualified students by law schools is no longer the widespread practice that I have been bemoaning since 2014.  Is the era of exploitative admissions in law schools over?  Perhaps not quite, but the recent Standard 509 admissions data released by the ABA (abarequireddisclosures.org) reveals that the problem of admitting woefully underqualified students at ABA accredited law schools has dramatically decreased. 

By now, readers of The Faculty Lounge are very familiar with the LSAT risk bands that I developed in 2014.   I have reproduced it here for your convenience.

David Frakt’s LSAT Score Risk Bands 

156-180           Minimal Risk

153-155           Low Risk

150-152           Modest Risk

147-149           High Risk

145-146           Very High Risk

120-144           Extreme Risk

These risk bands have become widely accepted as guideposts for law school admissions at less selective law schools.  The “risk” reflects the risk of failing to successfully complete law school and/or failing to pass the bar within two years of graduation.  

I have argued that “opportunity” law schools seeking to comply with ABA Standards 501 and 306 should shoot for an LSAT 75%/50%/25% of 151/149/147 and certainly no school should go lower than 150/148/146.   I recommend that students at or below 144 on the LSAT only be admitted in very rare cases where they have demonstrated through strong academic performance (i.e. college grades) that their LSAT score does not reflect their true aptitude.

A Brief History of the Admissions Crisis

In 2010, only 8 accredited law schools (out of nearly 200) accepted a class with 25% or more students at 146 or below.  But as law school applications dropped by double digit percentages in 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014, almost every law school in American lowered their admission standards, including many that were already accepting students with marginal aptitude for the study of law.  By 2014, 45 law schools accepted classes with 25% or more students at 146 or below, and 18 law schools accepted classes with a median LSAT of 146 or below.  In other words, at least half the student body at these schools was at very high or extreme risk of failure.  I believed that all of those schools were engaged in unethical admissions practices.  I also predicted that the massive drop in admission standards would result in a crisis in drop in bar passage rates.   This prediction proved to be accurate as bar passage rates plummeted nationwide in 2015-17, prompting several states to lower their bar passage standards.

Miranda basics & the interrogation of James Holmes

Last week’s post dove into the controversial story of the West Memphis Three, focusing on how the interrogation of Jesse Misskelley offers a strong tool in the criminal procedure classroom for teaching the Fourteenth Amendment’s voluntariness doctrine. This week, in the final post of our series, we return to July 20, 2012, to the interrogation of James Holmes—just hours after he opened fire on a movie theater audience in Aurora, Colorado.

The West Memphis Three & Fourteenth Amendment Voluntariness

Last week’s post told the story of two New York rappers whose separate traffic stops demonstrate how officers rely on the automobile exception to the Fourth Amendment’s search warrant requirement. Today we shift gears—and Amendments—to enter the interrogation room in order to discuss how the internationally-known story of the West Memphis Three makes for an incredibly powerful tool for teaching students the Fourteenth Amendment’s voluntariness doctrine.

TF Mafia & the Automobile Exception

Last week’s post considered how just a slice of the investigation into Steven Avery—widely known from the true-crime documentary series, Making a Murderer—makes a compelling tool for teaching students the basics of search warrants. This week, we shift gears to explore the tale of two New York rappers whose stories both setup and explain how the automobile exception works in modern practice.

Steven Avery & Search Warrants

Last week’s post discussed how the initial investigation into Aaron Hernandez presents a compelling opportunity for students to learn the Fourth Amendment’s plain view doctrine. This week, we explore just a slice of the investigation that led to the arrest of Steven Avery—widely known from the true-crime documentary series, Making a Murderer.

In summer 1985, Steven Avery was twenty-two years old and a resident of Manitowoc, Wisconsin. Avery worked at his family’s salvage yard, Avery Salvage, which his family had operated since 1965. On July 29, 1985, a fellow Manitowoc resident named Penny Ann Beernsten was jogging along Lake Michigan when she was brutally attacked and raped. During the investigation that followed, Beernsten described her attacker as a white male, approximately 5′6′′, stocky, with brown eyes and long sandy hair, and dressed in a black leather jacket. Manitowoc County Deputy Sheriff Judy Dvorak overhead Beernsten’s description and commented, “[that] sounds like Steven Avery.”

Avery was ultimately arrested, charged, and convicted for the forcible rape of Penny Beernsten. He was sentenced to serve thirty-two years in prison. After eighteen years of that sentence, DNA testing revealed evidence that both exonerated Avery from the rape charge and implicated a man named Gregory Allen, a suspect in similar rape investigations at the time of Avery’s arrest. Avery was released from prison on September 11, 2003. Thirteen months later, he filed a lawsuit for 36 million dollars in damages as compensation for his wrongful imprisonment.

Alex Levin & the Fourth Amendment’s Exclusionary Rule

Last week’s post discussed how bringing the investigation of John Wayne Gacy into the investigative criminal procedure classroom benefits teaching the material on probable cause. We shift gears this week to discuss how the federal government’s investigation into Alex Levin makes for a fantastic discussion (and illustration) of the Fourth Amendment’s exclusionary rule. Compared to the defendants featured in prior posts, Alex Levin is no Adnan Syed or OJ Simpson in terms of pop culture fame, but that’s largely because the government’s methods to investigate Levin stole the show.

In Operation Pacifier, the government embodied the phrase “it takes a thief to catch a thief” by operating a child pornography server as part of a wide-ranging child pornography investigation that caught hundreds of users—including, Alex Levin. Investigative methods aside, Levin’s case grew in prominence because his victory at the motion to suppress stage gave other defendants hope—if just for a while.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

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.

O.J. Simpson & Exigent Circumstances

In last week’s post,  we explored how the case of Adnan Syed serves as a powerful vehicle to teach Strickland v. Washington in the investigative criminal procedure classroom.  This week, in my third post of this series, we explore how investigative decisions made on June 13, 1994—the night of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman’s murders—offer students an unparalleled opportunity to apply the Fourth Amendment’s exigent circumstances doctrine.

Teaching Strickland v. Washington through the case of Adnan Syed

In my post last week titled “Bringing famous defendants into the Criminal Procedure classroom,” I suggested that case filings from (in)famous defendants present the legal academy with a special opportunity to bring the classroom alive—particularly and especially the investigative criminal procedure classroom—in a manner superior to more traditional teaching methods.  At the end, I promised a series of follow-up topic-specific posts that would include my thoughts about teaching the investigative criminal procedure course through the lens of famous defendants. Today we dive into how the performance of Adnan Syed’s attorney, Cristina Gutierrez, at his murder trial makes for a compelling way to teach Strickland v. Washington.

Bringing famous defendants into the Criminal Procedure classroom

Last year, I drafted a series of posts for this blog wherein I suggested the many benefits of bringing Brendan Dassey’s prosecution into the law school curriculum (the intro post from that series is here). In that series, I mentioned that I twice taught a course called (Un)Making a Murderer and assembled course materials to accompany the class. Those materials relied, in part, on filings from Dassey’s case. Doing so intimately acquainted me with his case and its many associated legal issues.

To bring the Dassey prosecution to life for students, I expose them to numerous filings from the case alongside several law enforcement investigatory materials (including, for example, search warrants and interrogation videos). Teaching that class taught me this:  in-class conversations that focus on actual case filings has significant advantages compared with the more typical classroom conversation that revolves around discussing one case at a time in a vacuum—disconnected from how that case applies to a real person.

Law Professor Twitter Census 2019-2020 Edition - Call for Entries, Corrections, Revisions

Bumping to the front in anticipation of the 9/9/19 deadline.

If you'd like to be listed in the semi-regular census of law professor Twitter users (or confirm that you are listed already), please read on.

It’s been about one year since the last Law Prof Twitter Census here at the Lounge. My anecdotal impression is that the number of Twitter users continues to increase. (Prior surveys are here (2012), here (2012), here (2015), and here.

As with prior versions, the list is meant to cover individual law professor tweeters only (not accounts of groups, programs, blogs, law schools, print publications, students, practitioners, staff).  Folks should be full-time law school faculty members (not, say, law-trained profs working in business schools).  Non-U.S. law profs very, very welcome. Anonymous and pseudonymous accounts are not eligible for inclusion.

The downloadable, sortable spreadsheet can be edited directly by accessing this link. If you’d like to add your name, or if you would like to add to or modify your existing listing in census, the census calls for:

(a) Your name

(b) Your Twitter handle

(c) Your school affiliation

(d) Up to three subject-matter areas of interest that related to your teaching, scholarship or tweeting.

You can view the current list embedded below, too:

New entries and modifications due Monday, September 9, 2019 at 12:00 p.m. eastern.  All additions and edits to the list subject to the moderator’s approval. Please do not edit anyone’s information other than your own.  If you see errors or corrections that need to be made to a colleague’s entry, feel free to contact that colleague directly and ask the colleague to make the changes.

Pitt Law Seeks Legal Writing Faculty

LEGAL WRITING FACULTY POSITION ANNOUNCEMENT

The University of Pittsburgh School of Law invites applications for two full-time faculty positions at the rank of Assistant, Associate, or Full Professor of Legal Writing. These positions are part of a system of contracts progressing to presumptively renewable long-term contracts, separate from the University’s tenure stream. The position will begin on July 1, 2020.

Pitt Law’s legal writing program seeks to develop students’ legal analytical skills and to equip students to write and speak clearly and persuasively, in a manner appropriate for diverse audiences and purposes. The first-year Legal Analysis & Writing course spans two semesters, typically including “objective” writing assignments in the fall and persuasive writing assignments and oral argument in the spring. The course typically also encompasses related skill sets, including client interviewing and negotiation, among others. While the course covers the basics of legal research and includes open-resource assignments, students are separately required to take a one-credit course on the fundamentals of legal research, taught by library faculty, in the fall semester of their second year.

Legal Writing faculty members typically teach two small sections of first-year Legal Analysis and Writing in both the fall and spring (at current projected enrollments, with 15-20 students per section), for a total of four credits for each section.  Legal Writing faculty members may also teach upper-level writing courses and may have some administrative duties relating to the Legal Writing program.  All members of the Legal Writing faculty have the opportunity to shape the future direction of the Legal Writing program as part of their participation in faculty governance of the School of Law. Therefore, candidates should be prepared to share their thinking about how that program might be adapted or reformed in light of changes in legal education, the legal profession, and society.

The successful applicant must have, at a minimum, a J.D. from an ABA-accredited law school, excellent writing skills, and an outstanding academic record. Experience teaching legal writing and law practice experience are also preferred. Candidates should be able to work effectively with a diverse group of students and have an interest in developing legal writing experiences for law students within a community that supports interdisciplinary collaboration and innovative teaching opportunities. 

To apply, please provide a letter of interest, resume, and list of three references addressed to Professor Mary Crossley, Chair, Appointments Committee, at law-appointments@pitt.edu. Write “Legal Writing Faculty Application” in the subject line of the email. The deadline for applications is September 3, 2019.

The University of Pittsburgh is an Affirmative Action, Equal Opportunity Employer (EEO/M/F/Vets/ Disabled). In furtherance of our strong institutional commitment to a diverse faculty, we particularly welcome applications from minorities, women, and others who would add diversity to our faculty.  Recruitment is subject to approval by the University’s Provost. 

Mixing a Civ Pro Textbook on H2O

Having taught Civil Procedure for ten years now, I’ve decided to take advantage of the H2O open casebook platform and “mix” my own textbook for use at the Peking University School of Transnational Law. This is, I hope, much less work than actually writing one from scratch. For starters, Glenn Cohen’s text is available as a source and a model.

Notwithstanding that I’m no one’s idea of a Civ Pro maven, I have my own thoughts about how it ought to be taught and thus about how the book ought to be structured. Although I was a litigation partner at a couple of fancy schmancy litigation firms back in the day, I discovered when I started teaching that there was an awful lot of Civ Pro doctrine that I knew all too little about. As time has gone on, however, I’ve come to the opinion that the textbooks also include all too little about what mattered in practice. Beyond that, as I teach almost exclusively to non-US nationals who will never themselves be in a US litigation practice, there are issues of focus and emphasis that matter.

One big beef with the existing Civ Pro books – and I am still surveying what’s out there, even though cost makes actually buying 150 copies of any of them for our incoming class out of the question – is that they don’t engage deeply enough with what in practice seemed to be the two most important elements of the Civ Pro process.

A Dangerous Volksgeist: Indian Law Journal Rejects Solicited Article on Indus Waters Treaty

The following guest post is by Nadia Ahmad, Associate Professor at Barry University School of Law:

The National Law School of India Review solicited me to write a 2,000-word article on January 2, 2019. I responded that I would write about the Indus Waters Treaty. Yet because of my existing deadlines, teaching schedule, and other responsibilities, I said I could deliver at the end of February.

Between the time that I accepted the offer and submitted the piece, India and Pakistan verged on the brink of war. I felt it would be responsible to include an analysis of how those current events factored into the interpretation and enforcement of the Indus Waters Treaty.  The journal said it would not publish my piece, because I addressed “international relations” and not legal issues. I am at my desk still shaking my head as to how an international water treaty that has been litigated in international courts does not provide “legal, jurisprudential perspectives with an inter-disciplinary focus.” I was given no opportunity to update the piece, but merely a “thanks, but no thanks.”  

Here is the three-part blog post, published in Vermont Environmental Law Review’s EcoPerspectives Blog:

• Considering Climate Risks and the Indus Waters Treaty in the 2019 India-Pakistan Showdown (Part 1)
• Reassessing Climate Justice and Energy Security Between India and Pakistan: The Curious Case of the Kalabagh Dam (Part 2)
• Dam-Racing in South Asia: The Environmental Disasters Waiting to Happen (Part 3)

I chose to write about this slight now, because of the broader impact to dissent in India, which has been on the radar of Human Rights Watch:

Sadly, the fact is that there is little room for dissent in India under [Bharatiya Janata Party] BJP. Activists, journalists, lawyers, writers, teachers, actors or artists – anyone who criticizes the government or its divisive ideology – is at risk of being targeted. Either the state deploys its power by arbitrarily cutting off access to funding, ordering audits, issuing warrants for search or arrest; or the BJP’s supporters threaten violence or launch physical attacks. From deeming that to be secular is to be anti-national, or from deciding that to be anti-fascist is to be a terrorist, the heap of wild allegations is unending.

Maybe with the elections, the bigotry and hatred would pass, I reasoned. I was wrong. The rancor will only intensify.

Meanwhile, neighboring Pakistan is no stranger to silencing minorities as it removed a top Princeton economics professor from its national economic advisory board, because he was from a religious minority group.  And then Saudi Arabia is executing intellectuals.

I suffer from a misapprehension that the environment matters to public health, safety, and welfare of the people and their surrounding lands. I also have a misapprehension that war is not the answer to limited natural resource scarcity, and that wars should not be fought over oil, pipelines, land, and water rights. History rarely is on my side. History is on the side of power, war, and racism, and ignores voices of resistance for peace, justice, and equality. 

As the prototype academic, I write enough to raise questions, but not enough to ruffle feathers, so that I can benefit from the fruits of my research and writing toils and not face the backlash of it. It is a fine line to stay out of sight, out of trouble, and still seem like an intellectual. In 1927, French essay Julien Benda published this once famous attack on the intellectual corruption of the age in La Trahison des clercs (The Treason of the Intellectuals).  Roger Kimball noted the depth of the intellectual treason that Benda described:

The “treason” or betrayal [Benda] sought to publish concerned the way that intellectuals had lately allowed political commitment to insinuate itself into their understanding of the intellectual vocation as such. Increasingly, Benda claimed, politics was “mingled with their work as artists, as men of learning, as philosophers.” The ideal of disinterestedness, the universality of truth: such guiding principles were contemptuously deployed as masks when they were not jettisoned altogether. It was in this sense that he castigated the “desire to abase the values of knowledge before the values of action.”

In its crassest but perhaps also most powerful form, this desire led to that familiar phenomenon Benda dubbed “the cult of success.” It is summed up, he writes, in “the teaching that says that when a will is successful that fact alone gives it a moral value, whereas the will which fails is for that reason alone deserving of contempt.” 

The election results in India are done trickling in – a landslide for the ruling party.

When I received the rejection email from the National Law School of India Review journal editor, the 2016-2017 protests at New Dehli’s Jawaharlal Nehru University were fresh in my mind. Students who criticized the government were called “fascists” and “terrorists.” The protests started as all students protests do with grievances that the administration would refuse to acknowledge and attend to, and then snowballed from there. Under normal academic discourse, there are responses and rebuttals, but with the heavy hand of the state, the free exchange of ideas is limited. The views of this diasporic Indian/Pakistani were unwelcome. I do not know what the full dynamics were that led to the rejection, but as a grandchild of the Indian Partition, I know when things are amiss. I know how stealthily narratives and information are reined in to put forward state propaganda.

Students and academics in India under BJP rule have been met with tear gas and pellets, faced contempt charges, been arrested under colonial era sedition laws, and are even killing themselves in despair.

The land of Mahatama Gandhi deserves better.

-Nadia Ahmad

Ultimate Bar Passage: Law Schools at Risk

The Council of the Section on Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar has twice proposed that, for accreditation purposes, the Bar passage requirements of Standard 316 be amended to focus solely on what the ABA calls "Ultimate" Bar passage: the percentage of a law school's graduates who pass the Bar within two years of graduation. All ABA law schools would have to maintain Ultimate Bar passage percentages of at least 75% for every year-group of graduates. The proposed Standard 316 would abandon the current alternate measure, which compares a law school's first-time Bar passage percentage to the ABA first-time Bar passage percentages in each state where its graduates took the Bar.

The proposed new Standard 316 has twice been rejected by the ABA House of Delegates. Despite that, ABA rules permit the Section Council to "reaffirm and adopt" the proposed revision to Standard 316. It is widely expected that they will do so.

At this point, the Section on Legal has released the 2018 and 2019 Ultimate Bar Passage Outcome Reports, which include data for 2015 and 2016 graduates, respectively. The overall Ultimate Bar passage outcomes for all ABA law schools was 88.32% of all 2015 graduates, and 88.57% of all 2016 graduates.