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New Book Announcement: Dov Fox's "Birth Rights and Wrongs"

Dov Fox (San Diego) has published Birth Rights and Wrongs: How Medicine and Technology are Remaking Reproduction and the Law (Oxford, 2019).  Here is the publisher's description:

Millions of Americans rely on the likes of birth control, IVF, and genetic testing to make plans as intimate and far reaching as any over a lifetime. This is no less than the medicine of miracles. It fills empty cradles, frees families from terrible disease, and empowers them to fashion their lives on their own terms. But accidents happen.

Pharmacists mix up pills. Lab techs misread tests. Obstetricians tell women their healthy fetuses would be stillborn. Political and economic forces conspire against regulation. And judges throw up their hands when professionals foist parenthood on people who didn't want it, or childlessness on those who did. Failed abortions, switched donors, and lost embryos may be first-world problems. But these aren't innocent lapses or harmless errors. They're wrongs in need of rights.

This book lifts the curtain on reproductive negligence, gives voice to the lives it upends, and vindicates the interests that advances in medicine and technology bring to full expression. It charts the legal universe of errors that:

(1) deprive pregnancy or parenthood of people who set out to pursue them;
(2) impose pregnancy or parenthood on those who tried to avoid these roles; or
(3) confound efforts to have a child with or without certain genetic traits.

This novel architecture forces citizens and courts to rethink the reproductive controversies of our time, and equips us to meet the new challenges-from womb transplants to gene editing-that lie just over the horizon.

The book is available for order on the OUP website (here) and, you know, a certain other website where many people buy books.

CFP: Prison Abolition, Human Rights, and Penal Reform: From the Local to the Global

The Bernard and Audre Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice at The University of Texas at Austin, School of Law invites submissions for an interdisciplinary conference on the theme of "Prison Abolition, Human Rights, and Penal Reform: From the Local to the Global," to be held September 26-28, 2019. Here is the CFP:

 

Prison Abolition, Human Rights, and Penal Reform:

From the Local to the Global

 

 

Mass incarceration and overcriminalization in the United States are subject to critique by some on both the right and the left today. Many critics increasingly talk of prison abolition. At the same time, the international human rights movement continues to rely upon criminal punishment as its primary enforcement tool for many violations, even as it criticizes harsh prison conditions, the use of the death penalty, and lack of due process in criminal proceedings. What would it mean for the human rights movement to take seriously calls for prison abolitionism and the economic and racial inequalities that overcriminalization reproduces and exacerbates? And what might critics of the carceral regime in the United States have to learn from work done by international human rights advocates in a variety of countries?

 

September 26-28^th, 2019, the Rapoport Center will host in Austin an interdisciplinary conference to consider the relationships among the human rights, prison abolition, and penal reform movements. Do they share the same goals? Should they collaborate? If so, in what ways? The conference is co-sponsored by the Frances Tarlton “Sissy” Farenthold Endowed Lecture Series in Peace, Social Justice and Human Rights, Center for European Studies, William Wayne Justice Center for Public Interest Law, LLILAS Benson Latin American Studies and Collections, John Warfield Center for African and African American Studies, Center for the Study of Race and Democracy, Department of Sociology, Center for Population Research, and Capital Punishment Center.

 

Ruth Wilson Gilmore will offer the keynote lecture on September 26. We invite proposals for papers, panels, art, or other forms of presentation from activists, practitioners, and scholars in all disciplines. We are eager to include those who study or advocate around criminal law and human rights in different regions and contexts, those who work on various forms of incarceration (including immigration detention), and those who explore alternatives to current criminal punishment regimes. We encourage discussion of the distributive effects of various constructions of and responses to crime. Topics might include:

• Racial capitalism and prison abolition
• Prison abolition: short- versus long-term goals
• Abolition and efforts to reform/transform conditions of confinement: are they in opposition?
• Capital punishment, human rights, and the goals of death penalty abolition
• Mass incarceration and surveillance
• Gender, sexuality, reproductive rights and the prison system
• Human rights and decriminalization
• The human rights movement and national and international criminal law
• Lessons from transitional and restorative justice
• Incarceration and the intersections of criminal and immigration law
• Immigration detention and the (private) prison industrial complex
• Potential responses to violent crime
• The UN and crime
• Exportation of criminal justice models: good and bad
• The role of victims in carceral regimes and anti-carceral responses
•  Reflections on the role human rights courts do and should play in the carceral state
• Black Lives Matter, human rights, and abolition
• Queer politics and abolition

 

Please send an abstract of your paper, panel, or project in under 500 words to Sarah Eliason by July 15, 2019. A limited number of need-based travel grants are available to support travel costs for selected participants. If you wish to apply for a travel grant, please complete this application form by July 15, 2019.

 

 

Detroit-Mercy Law Seeks IP Clinic Director

This just in:

University of Detroit Mercy School of Law seeks applicants for a tenured or tenure-track position to teach in and direct the International Intellectual Property Law Clinic starting with the 2020-21 academic year.

The International Intellectual Property Law Clinic is certified by the USPTO for both patent and trademark law and serves the burgeoning creative and entrepreneurial community in Detroit. In 2012, the USPTO chose Detroit as the location for its first satellite office because Detroit and its surrounding communities are home to one of the largest concentrations of intellectual property attorneys in the United States. Part of a growing Intellectual Property program at Detroit Mercy Law, the International Intellectual Property Law Clinic hosts the annual International Patent Drafting Competition, which is held at the Elijah J. McCoy Midwest Regional USPTO each February. The Competition attracts teams from law schools across the United States and Canada. Detroit Mercy Law also offers an on-line Certificate in Law - Intellectual Property. This non-JD program meets the needs of professionals and organizations for knowledge of intellectual property and cybersecurity laws.

Biden's Wasting Asset

In my recent post calling for Joe Biden to withdraw from the Democratic primary, I posited that his early polling lead was due mostly to name recognition, which I called a “wasting asset.” In a comment, Paul Horwitz asked for clarification “in a way that helps us apply it to other candidates.” Said Paul, “Your post is not at all clear on what constitutes an asset: I would have thought that experience in the executive and legislative branches might be an asset.”

To be clear, then, I was referring only to Biden’s main asset as a candidate, as opposed to his qualifications for office. As I said in the original post, I think he would make a fine president, and I would vote for him – or any Democrat, or probably any Republican – over the incumbent. But the fact is that the most well-qualified candidate does not always win, and experience is often either a non-factor or an actual impediment to electoral success. We have seen this repeatedly in the post-WWII era, as the most experienced candidates lost in 1960, 1976, 1992, 2000, 2008, and 2016.

Paul also says he “would be perfectly happy with a categorical suggestion that any candidate over 55 or 60 should drop out.” This is a tempting suggestion. Four  of the last five Democrats to win the White House all ran as “change” candidates – Kennedy, Carter, Clinton, Obama – and three of those four were in their youthful 40s (Carter being the exception, though he was only 54). Democrats have not been successful running as “continuity” or “restoration” candidates, witness what happened to Walter Mondale and Al Gore. The last Democrat to win a first term on a non-change platform was LBJ, and that was obviously a very special situation.

As vulnerable as Trump may seem, 2020 promises to be a very difficult election for Democrats, as both the odds and history favor the incumbent.

I have not yet chosen a candidate, and I hope the field quickly narrows (though that does not currently seem likely). I am certain that I disfavor the re-treads, Biden and Sanders. I like the idea of a generational change, although that would rule out Warren, whom I greatly admire.

Paul wonders whether I would call on any “damaged” candidate to drop out. I think that depends on the nature of the damage and my assessment of the candidate’s ability to overcome it. That is, what are the candidate's other assets, campaign-wise, and how would they fare in the general election? That is admittedly speculative, which is why we have an extended primary season. Remember, Jeb Bush was the GOP frontrunner at this point in 2015.

In sum, I do not think that a single misstep will, or should, doom a candidacy. But I do think that Biden's claim on the nomination rested largely on name recognition, generic party preference, and, let's face it, nostalgia. However much that might help him in the primary, it would not be enough to beat Trump, which is why I think he ought to quit now.

Why Joe Biden Should Quit the Race

Let me just say this about Joe Biden, for whom I have a great deal of respect. He would have made a fine president if he had been able to secure the Democratic nomination in 1988 or 2008, although both of his campaigns failed to generate any enthusiasm, much less actual support.

In the current electoral cycle, however, the only argument for Biden as nominee or president was his commanding lead over Donald Trump in the polls. That lead was, in turn, almost entirely the result of name recognition. As the best known of the Democratic hopefuls, Biden was picking up the support of voters who, first and foremost, simply want to get Trump out of the White House. Biden has now been damaged, and other candidates are raising their profiles among Democratic voters. With Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris gaining name recognition, can Cory Booker and Julian Castro, or maybe Kirsten Gillibrand and Jay Inslee, be far behind?

In other words, Biden's sole advantage -- name recognition -- is a wasting asset that is sure to decline in value. It would be worthless in the general election, given that no one on the planet has greater name recognition than Donald Trump. 

As Biden himself said in the June 27 debate, "My time's up. I'm sorry." He needs to withdraw from the race, with everyone thanking him for his lifetime of public service, and the sooner the better.

Gulati on Horton and Weisbord

Mitu Gulati has a new post over Credit Slips on David Horton and Reid Weisbord "Boilerplates No Contracts Clauses."

Stonewall and the Myth of Self-Deliverance

In the Sunday, June 23, New York Times, Kwame Anthony Appiah had an oped titled “Stonewall and the Myth of Self-Deliverance," in which he observed that “England basically decriminalized homosexuality in 1967, fully 36 years before it was decriminalized in the United States in Lawrence v. Kansas.”

He was correct, of course, that the U.S. Supreme Court decided Lawrence v. Texas (not Kansas) in 2003, overturning sodomy laws in the 14 states where they the still existed. It is worth noting, however, that Illinois had become the first state to decriminalize homosexuality on January I, 1962, fully five years before England changed its law. Another 35 states decriminalized gay sex before the decision in Lawrence, although none did so before 1967. Illinois was not usually considered a progressive jurisdiction in the 1960s (see Daley, Mayor Richard J.), but we were years ahead of the rest of the country on at least one issue of gay rights.

NOTE: I am posting this a week late because I was waiting to see if the Times would publish my letter (which included only the reference to the Illinois legislation and did not mention the mistaken SCOTUS citation).  The print version of Appiah's essay included the wrong defendant in the Lawrence case, as did the original web edition. It was later changed on the web without any reference to the original error. As far as I can tell, using the Times's search function, there has been no published correction.

Political Musicians, but Not Musical Politics [UPDATED with William Barr on Bagpipes]

Many political figures in U.S. history have played musical instruments, including Thomas Jefferson (cello), John Quincy Adams (flute), Chester Alan Arthur (banjo), and Warren Harding (cornet).  Some have been amateurs at best -- Bill Clinton on saxophone; Tim Kaine on harmonica -- but others have been pretty accomplished. Here are a few clips, in no particular order (except at the end):

Robert Byrd at the White House

Charles Reich (1928-2019)

Charles Reich died in San Francisco.  He was the author of The Greening of America, among many pieces.

h/t Karen Tani

CFP: 400 Years: Slavery and the Criminal Justice System

This just in:

In recognition of the 400 years which have passed since enslaved people were first brought to the U.S., University of Baltimore Law Review’s Fall Symposium will use the history of American enslavement as a lens to discuss slavery’s evolution and its effects on our criminal justice system.

We invite paper proposals that fit within the overreaching topic of the symposium and explore topics related to the following questions:

• How has slavery affected the foundations of our current day legal system, specifically focusing on the U.S. Constitution?
• What impact did the transatlantic slave trade have on today’s African-American community?
• What effects did the Reconstruction Period (i.e. convict-leasing, Jim Crow laws, etc.) have on today’s Criminal Justice System?
• What criminal justice policies have been adopted that have adversely affected African-Americans (i.e. 1994 Crime Bill, etc.)?
• What relationship, if any, does the present-day issue of mass incarceration have to the past institution of slavery?
• What effect has mass incarceration had on the civil liberties of the African-American community today (i.e. voter suppression, employment/educational opportunities, etc.)?

We welcome proposals that consider these and related questions from a variety of substantive disciplines and perspectives. The symposium is intended to serve as a forum for scholars, practitioners, and activists to share ideas about the governing topic, focusing on connections between theory and practice to effectuate social change. The symposium will be open to the public and will feature a keynote speaker.

2019 Central States Law Schools Association Scholarship Conference

The 2019 Central States Law Schools Association Scholarship Conference will be held September 20-21, 2019 at The University of Toledo College of Law.

CSLSA is an organization of law schools dedicated to providing a forum for conversation and collaboration among law school academics. The annual conference is an opportunity for legal scholars to present working papers or finished articles on any law-related topic in a relaxed and supportive setting. Scholars from member and nonmember schools are invited to attend. 

Registration will formally open in July. More information about the CSLSA conference can be found on the organization's website here.

CFP: Mass Incarceration and Racial Justice

This just in:

Res Philosophica, and special editors, Scott Berman and Chad Flanders, invite papers on the topic of mass incarceration and racial justice for the 2019 Res Philosophica Essay Prize and a special issue of the journal. Submissions addressing any of the many philosophical questions related to mass incarceration and racial justice are welcome.

The author of the winning paper will receive a prize of $3,000, and the paper will be published in the associated special issue of the journal on the same topic. Submissions for the prize will be automatically considered for publication in the journal's special issue.

The journal sponsored a conference on mass incarceration and racial justice in March of 2019. Papers accepted for publication in the special issue will appear in the volume with papers that were invited for the conference. The invited papers will not be eligible for the prize. The above CFP is for the special issue of the journal, and not the conference.

In addition to the conference at SLU, there was a panel discussion with our speakers and some incarcerated students that are participating in Saint Louis University’s Prison Education Program. Reflections on those incarcerated voices may be included in the volume.

Submission Guidelines
Submissions will be triple anonymously reviewed: authors do not know the identity of the referees; referees do not know the identity of the authors; and editors do not know the identity of the authors. Please format your submission so that it is suitable for anonymous review. (Instructions are available here.)

We do not normally publish papers longer than 12,000 words long (including footnotes). We prefer initial submissions in PDF format, but will also accept LaTeX and Microsoft Word documents. For accepted papers, we prefer Word, but will accept LaTeX documents as well.

Please use the online submission form for submitting your essay, available here.

Alan Brinkley

Alan Brinkley has passed away.  Columbia University has lost a very distinguished professor of history. The HNN has a memorial notice.

David Yellen Resigns as Marist President

Former Loyola-Chicago and Hofstra law dean, David Yellen, resigned unexpectedly from his position as president of Marist College last year.  He had been in the role since 2016.  The interim president, Dennis Murray,  served as Marist's president  for 37 years before Yellen took the helm.  No doubt Murray was a very tough person to succeed - and presumably there are some people who are very happy to see things return to "normal."

University of Detroit Mercy

University of Detroit Mercy School of Law seeks a proven or aspiring scholar and teacher with an interest in teaching first-year Property Law for a tenured or tenure-track position beginning 2020-2021.  Applicants must have a law degree and strong academic background and must demonstrate either a record of or potential for both teaching excellence and high scholarly achievement in any area of law.  The balance of the teaching package will be determined in conversation with the successful candidate.

Announcement: Property Law Position

University of Detroit Mercy School of Law seeks a proven or aspiring scholar and teacher with an interest in teaching first-year Property Law for a tenured or tenure-track position beginning 2020-2021.  Applicants must have a law degree and strong academic background and must demonstrate either a record of or potential for both teaching excellence and high scholarly achievement in any area of law.  The balance of the teaching package will be determined in conversation with the successful candidate.

To Apply

Applicants should send a cover letter, which should include a brief description of their ideal teaching package and a general indication of their areas of scholarly interest.  Please direct the cover letter, a current CV, additional supporting materials (if any), and any questions you may have to:

Professor Julia Belian, Chair of Faculty Recruitment

University of Detroit Mercy School of Law

651 East Jefferson

Detroit, Michigan 48226

(belianju@udmercy.edu, 313-596-0225)

Materials will be accepted via email or regular mail.  Review of applicants will begin in July 2019 and will continue until the position is filled.

University of Vienna Symposium on Polyamory in the Media and Personal Poly Identity

I had the honor of travelling to Vienna to comment on Stefan Ossmann’s Ph.D. project on polyamory at a symposium at the University of Vienna earlier this month.  My co-presenters were Christian Klesse of Manchester Metropolitan University and Elisabeth Sheff, formerly of Georgia State University.  Stefan, a Communications Ph.D. candidate, undertook an ambitious project in which he conducted content analyses of media articles on polyamory spanning from 2007 to 2017 and interviews of thirty-three people who are part of the polyamory community in Vienna. His work is being supervised by Franz Eder, a Professor of Social and Economic History.  Stefan’s dual approach of examining media articles and undertaking interviews enabled him to compare external perceptions of the polyamory community in the German-speaking world to the self-perception of members of the poly community in Vienna.

 

Copyright: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0: Stefan Ossmann / pictures taken: Vanessa Rosenmayer

Copyright: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0: Stefan Ossmann / pictures taken: Vanessa Rosenmayer

For the media analysis, he focused on one newspaper database of German language articles called WISO online datenbank.  He found 361 relevant articles and also determined that the number of relevant articles is steadily rising every year and that most of the articles were neutral in tone.  In terms of the interviews, Steffan Ossmann tried to interview as many members as possible of each poly relationship, or polycule, he encountered.  The interviews revealed some very interesting information.  For instance, the interviewees tended to want greater societal acceptance of their multiple relationships but, somewhat paradoxically, were reluctant to share the fact of their multiple relationships with family members (especially with parents), with friends other than close friends, and with co-workers.  Additionally, legal recognition appeared to be of only minor importance, though there was some interest in recognition of plural marriage and in recognition of multiple partners’ relationships to children.  Interestingly, several interviewees independently raised the desire to have a right to visit loved ones in the hospital when they were ill.  All in all, this is a fascinating project that will provide invaluable information about Vienna’s poly community, thus adding to the work others, such as Elisabeth Sheff and Hadar Aviram, have done on poly communities in the U.S. and that which Christian Klesse has done on poly communities in England.  Stefan also examined whether polyamory was perceived as a sexual orientation in the media or by poly individuals in Vienna, which dovetails with my previous scholarship on polyamory as a sexual orientation. I very much look forward to reading Stefan Ossmann's final product in book form.

NCCU Law Seeks Dean

This just in:

North Carolina Central University (NCCU) invites applications and nominations for the position of Dean of the School of Law.

As the nation’s first public liberal arts institution founded for African-Americans, NCCU has provided premier education through comprehensive programming at the baccalaureate, masters, professional and doctoral levels for more than a century. NCCU is part of the 17-campus University of North Carolina (UNC) system, and located in Durham, North Carolina’s acclaimed Research Triangle area.

Established in 1939, North Carolina Central University’s School of Law offers two programs leading to the Juris Doctor degree: a full-time day program and a part-time evening program. The School of Law provides an opportunity for an outstanding legal education to those who continue to be underrepresented in the legal profession.

The successful candidate will have an entrepreneurial and innovative mindset, tenacious drive and service-oriented heart. It is important that the next Dean be an advocate for the Law School’s founding mission: to provide a high quality, personalized, practice-oriented and affordable legal education to
historically underrepresented students from diverse backgrounds in order to help diversify the legal profession. The Dean will work closely with the Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, and other deans and academic leaders, under the overall University leadership of Chancellor Dr. Johnson O. Akinleye.

More information about the position requirements, the leadership agenda, and the application process can be found in the position profile here.  The NCCU School of Law web site is here and the University’s web site is here. 

The search is being assisted by Academic Search, Inc. For a confidential discussion of this position prior to applying or nominating, please contact John Garland, Senior Consultant, jwg@academic-search.com or William F. Howard, Vice President and Senior Consultant, wfh@academic-search.com. The position will remain open until filled, but only applications received by August 26, 2019 can be assured full consideration. Materials should include a letter of interest, a curriculum vitae, and a list of at least five professional references. Materials may be sent to NCCULawDean@academic-search.com.

North Carolina Central University values diversity and is committed to equal opportunity for all persons regardless of age, color, disability, ethnicity, marital status, national origin, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, veteran status or any other status protected by law. Moreover, North Carolina Central University is open to people of all races.

Why History Favors Trump's Reelection

Like all Democrats, I am hopeful that Donald Trump will be a one-term president, and I will vote for anyone nominated to run against him in 2020. But I have to admit that the historical precedents favor Trump’s reelection. There have been just seven times in U.S. history when an incumbent political party (party, not individual president) failed to hold the White House for at least two terms, only one of which was in the past 120 years. Of course, that was Jimmy Carter’s loss in 1980.

All of the other one-term episodes were in the 19^th Century, and three of them were in odd situations. The Whigs failed twice to hold the presidency for consecutive terms, but that was largely because both of their elected presidents died in office – William Henry Harrison and Zachary Taylor – to be succeeded by less popular vice presidents, one of whom (John Tyler) was actually expelled from the party after becoming president.

The Democrats failed to hold the presidency twice in the late 19^th Century, both times following an administration of Grover Cleveland, who did win two non-consecutive terms. Benjamin Harrison was elected in between, resulting in the Republicans’ one and only failure to win at least two terms in a row (in 1892). The single other time a party failed to win consecutive terms was Democrat James K. Polk’s presidency, which was sandwiched between the two Whigs, Harrison and Taylor. (I am counting George Washington as a proto-Federalist, who was succeeded by fellow Federalist John Adams.)

There have been quite a few one-term presidents, from John Quincy Adams to George H.W. Bush. There were once six single terms in a row, as no president was reelected between Andrew Jackson in 1832, and Abraham Lincoln in 1864. The Republicans went on to win the next six elections – still a record – followed by the Cleveland-Harrison-Cleveland pas de deux, which ended with the election of William McKinley in 1896. Since then, with the exception of poor Jimmy Carter’s crushing defeat by Ronald Reagan, neither Democrats nor Republicans have been bounced from the White House after a single term.

If you are keeping score, the Whigs failed to hold the presidency twice, the Democrats failed four times, and the Republicans just once.

None of this bodes well for defeating the Trump-led Republicans in 2020. Mitch McConnell’s determination to make Barack Obama a one-term president failed badly, despite his shrewd control of the Senate agenda, as Americans seem very much inclined to give presidents, or at least their parties, a second chance at fulfilling their promises.

Although President Trump has experienced historically poor approval ratings, political parties – and especially the Republicans – have a long tradition of holding on to the presidency for at least two terms. Trump, of course, has trashed almost every other tradition, so there is hope that he and the Republicans will defy this one as well.

(Doo Wah) Diddy Wah Diddy

Among African Americans in the early twentieth century, Diddy Wah Diddy was known as a mythical town in the South where food was plentiful and no one had to work -- sort of like the hobo's Big Rock Candy Mountain (where the "cops have wooden legs" and "the hens lay soft-boiled eggs"). Zora Neale Hurston used "Diddy-Wah-Diddy" as the title of a collection of folk tales, published in 1938 by the WPA Writers' Project. In the title story, Hurston explained that Diddy Wah Diddy could only be "reached by a road that curves so much that a mule pulling a wagonload of fodder can eat off the back of the wagon as he goes.” Upon arrival, a traveler could find a sweet potato pie that kept growing larger as it was eaten: "Nobody can ever eat it all up. No matter how much you eat it grows just that much faster.”

The words have become song lyrics in various iterations, not always referring to the town.

Manfred Mann: