The Faculty Lounge

Mighty Quinn (The Eskimo)

Written by Bob Dylan in 1967, but not released by him until 1970, "Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)" might or might not be a reference to Anthony Quinn's role in The Savage Innocents; other theories abound. Manfred Mann's version was the first released, and it charted at number one in the U.K. and number ten in the U.S.

SEALS Conference: Prospective Law Teachers Workshop and Aspiring Law Teachers Workshop

From an email message that I received earlier this week:

Each year, SEALS hosts a Prospective Law Teachers Workshop (PLTW), which provides intensive opportunities for VAPs, fellows, and practitioners to network and participate in mock interviews and mock job talks—prior to the actual teaching market. The Workshop also includes a luncheon and 1-on-1 sessions for candidates to receive faculty feedback on their CVs. This year’s Prospective Law Teachers Workshop will be held at Boca Raton Resort & Club in Boca Raton, Florida on Tuesday, July 30, and Wednesday, July 31, 2019. If you are interested in participating specifically in the Prospective Law Teachers Workshop, please send your CV, and a brief statement explaining your interest, to Professor brad.areheart@tennessee.edu. Please also indicate when you are hoping to go on the teaching market. Applications are due by June 1, 2019. Past PLTW participants have secured tenure-track appointments at an impressive array of law schools.

Separate and apart from the Prospective Law Teachers Workshop, SEALS is offering a new workshop that is broader programming for anyone considering academia—even if one is earlier in the process. The Aspiring Law Teachers Workshop (ALTW) includes sessions on designing your teaching package, navigating the market as a nontraditional candidate, mapping academic opportunities, what’s in a job talk, crafting scholarship goals, the art of self-promotion, as well as a luncheon. You can peruse the programming, which will take place between Sunday, July 29-Tuesday, July 31, by searching “aspiring law teachers workshop” at the following link:

http://sealslawschools.org/submissions/program/programwp.asp.

The goal of these two workshops is, in tandem, to provide robust opportunities for those who hope to one day enter legal academia.

Frequently Asked Questions:

They both sound great. What exactly is the difference?

The Prospective Workshop is designed for those who are going on the market this fall, in 2019, and desiring a chance to moot job talks and interviews in advance of that time. The Aspiring Workshop is designed for anyone considering academia, including those who may not yet be ready to moot a job talk in the summer. The Prospective Workshop is acceptance-only while the Aspiring Workshop is open to everyone.

Can I attend both workshops?

Possibly. Some of the times conflict, but the Aspiring Law Teachers Workshop will be generally open to anyone wishing to attend. Attendance in the Prospective Workshop is in contrast only by acceptance through our competitive selection process.

Is this the new faculty recruitment initiative that I heard SEALS has put together?

No, this is not the new hiring initiative that SEALS is conducting. That process is entirely separate. Information about SEALS’ new faculty recruitment initiative can be found at the following link: https://www.sealslawschools.org/recruitment/applicants/.

Another Random SCOTUS Fact

John Q. Barrett corrected my earlier post by pointing out that Justice Robert Jackson received a belated diploma, or perhaps a certificate of completion, following his one year at Albany Law School. A little research discloses that James Byrnes was the last justice who never attended law school at all. Byrnes, who had served as a senator from South Carolina, was appointed by FDR in 1941, but he resigned after only 452 days to take a position as head of the Office of Economic Stabilization. Byrnes's tenure was the second shortest of any justice, and the shortest of anyone who was actually confirmed, rather than a recess appointment. He later served as Truman's secretary of state.

Byrnes was a segregationist. As a senator, he played a key role in blocking anti-lynching legislation. But he was also a New Dealer who supported FDR's court packing plan, which probably explains the appointments in the FDR and Truman administrations. He was later elected governor of South Carolina, and he ended his career supporting Republican candidates for president.

Elizabeth McClanahan Named Dean of Appalachian Law

Virginia Supreme Court Justice Elizabeth A. McClanahan, who will be retiring from the court September 1, will become the new dean of the Appalachian School of Law the next day.   She replaces Dean Sandra McGlothlin who is stepping down.  Justice McClanahan holds a JD from the University of Dayton and has served previously at ASL as a visiting faculty member.

Henry Butler Stepping Down as George Mason Law Dean

George Mason University has announced that Henry Butler will step down as dean of the law school at the end of the 2019-20 school year.  Butler has done some prodigious fundraising since joining the law school in 2015 and he has continued the school's emphasis on law and economics.  

Chris Bracey Named Interim Dean of GW Law

George Washington University School of Law has announced that law school professor Christopher Bracey, who is currently vice-provost affairs at the university, will serve as interim dean beginning this summer.  Dean Blake Morant previously announced he would step down after five years in the position.  Bracey will not be a candidate for the deanship on a permanent basis.  GW Law professor Ralph Steinhardt  is chairing the search for a new dean with the assistance of Isaacson Miller. 

SCOTUS Justices -- Some Random Facts

In the course of working on a project on judicial biographies I came across the random fact that of 114 SCOTUS justices, only 18 have been from west of the Mississippi (with the potential addition of one or more of the three Minnesotans, depending on precisely where they lived). The first trans-Mississippian justice was Iowa's Samuel Miller, appointed by Lincoln in 1862, followed closely by California's Stephen Field in 1863. At the beginning of the 20th century there had only been four justices from west of the Mississippi, and they did not reach double digits until Earl Warren was appointed in 1953. The pace has since picked up a bit, with four of the last fifteen justices coming from California, Arizona, or Colorado (and seven of the last twenty eight from the trans-Mississippi West).

While we are on the subject, the first justice from west of the Appalachians was Kentucky's Thomas Todd in 1807, and the first from the former Northwest Territories was Ohio's John McLean in 1830. It was not until the Lincoln administration that there was more than a single sitting justice from the "West" (by any definition), and he appointed five: Miller (Iowa), Field (California), Noah Swayne (Ohio), David Davis (Illinois), and Salmon Chase (Ohio).

After the Civil War, the first justice from the former Confederacy was William Burnham Wood, appointed from Georgia by President Hayes in 1881. But Wood was a transplant from Ohio, and he had been a Union general during the war. The first true southerner was L.Q.C. Lamar of Mississippi -- a former Confederate officer and a drafter of Mississippi's ordinance of secession --  appointed by Grover Cleveland in 1888.

Shake, Rattle and Roll

"Shake, Rattle and Roll" was originally released in 1954 by Big Joe Turner on Atlantic Records. On the recording, the shouted chorus was provided by producers Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry Wexler. Here is a television clip from 1954, without Ahmet and Jerry:

Tulane Law Seeks P/T Criminal Law Coverage

This just in:

Tulane Law School invites applications for a one-semester part-time visiting position in Fall 2019 to teach one three-credit section of the first-year Criminal Law course.

The successful candidate must possess a J.D. from an ABA-accredited law school, outstanding academic credentials, and at least three years of relevant law-related experience. Prior teaching experience, especially in the first-year law curriculum, is strongly preferred.

Candidates may apply through Interfolio via the following link: https://apply.interfolio.com/62675

Tulane University is an Equal Employment Opportunity/Affirmative Action institution committed to excellence through diversity. Tulane University will not discriminate based upon race, ethnicity, color, sex, religion, national origin, age, disability, genetic information, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, pregnancy, marital status, military or veteran status, or any other status or classification protected by federal, state, or local law. All eligible candidates are encouraged to apply.

Questions may be directed to Onnig Dombalagian, Vice Dean for Academic Affairs, at odombala@tulane.edu or his direct dial (504) 865-5968.

2019 ABA Bar Pass Spreadsheet Analysis, Part 1 - 2018 Bar Pass Rate

There have been several articles published recently regarding the 2019 ABA Bar Data Consumer Info Spreadsheet (the “Spreadsheet”), including one here on The Faculty Lounge by the estimable Gary Rosin.  The Spreadsheet provides bar data through the July 2018 bar exam regarding all ABA accredited schools.  The data includes the 2018 first time pass rate, both overall and by jurisdiction, for each school.  The data also includes the “ultimate” bar pass rate (UBP) for calendar year 2016 graduates within two years of graduation. This is the second year the ABA has published this consumer data in this form.  Last year I published a four-part series of articles here on the Faculty Lounge about the inaugural spreadsheet.  (See here, here, here and here.) Most of the articles about the new spreadsheet, (other than Gary’s, of course) have simply recited some overall figures and identified a few of the best and worst performers without any real analysis of what the figures mean.   In this series of posts, I will try to extract some meaningful lessons from the raw data in the Spreadsheet.  I will start by analyzing the 2018 first time bar passage rates, then, in a subsequent post or two, delve into the UBP rates for 2016.

The overall first-time bar pass rate in 2018 was 74.82%, down from 77.34% in 2017.  This is not particularly surprising given the overall weakness of the entering class of 2015.  2015 was the low point for law school admissions with many law schools admitting high numbers of weak students to partially offset five straight years of declining applications.

As usual, by and large, bar outcomes tended to very closely track the entrance credentials of students three years earlier.  However, there were a few notable bright spots, schools which substantially outperformed the predictors.  Four schools in particular stood out for their first-time bar pass performance in 2018:   Liberty U. (44/46, 95.65%); Belmont (73/78, 93.59%); Cleveland State, (76/83, 91.57%) and Florida International (129/147, 87.75%).  Kudos to these schools!

Unfortunately, many other schools did not fare nearly as well.  (To find out who really stunk it up in 2018, continue reading below the fold.)

LaVerne College of Law Aviation Law Symposium

Call for Papers

Aviation Law Symposium

University of La Verne College of Law

January 24, 2020

Topic:  Developing and Managing City/County Operated Airports

The University of La Verne College of Law will hold an Aviation Law Symposium on Friday, January 24, 2020, in La Verne, California in partnership with the University of La Verne Law Review.  The aim of the symposium is to bring city attorneys and county counsel (in California who represent local governments that manage and operate public use airports); private counsel; and federal stakeholders together for the purpose of sharing knowledge in the field of aviation law on best practices in developing and managing public use airports.

Michael Hunter Schwartz Named Univ. of Pacific Interim Provost

Dean Michael Hunter Schwartz, of Pacific-McGeorge Law has been named interim provost of University of the Pacific effective this summer.  In his stead, Associate Dean Michael Colatrella will serve as interim dean of the law school.  

My Continuing Encounter with Ethnography

Here is the latest in my continuing exchange with ethnographers (originally posted on Scatterplot):

ethnographers are not lawyers, and nobody ever said they should be

There is a story often told in the Cook County Criminal Courts Building about a young defense lawyer who was determined to do everything possible for a burglary defendant. After meticulous research, exhaustive investigation, and conscientious preparation, the attorney presented an airtight alibi, showing virtually minute-by-minute, and through multiple witnesses, that the client could not possibly have been at the scene of the crime. There was only one thing standing in the way of an acquittal. The elaborate alibi had been established for the wrong day, and counsel’s painstaking effort was all for naught. As with most such mythic accounts, this tale is probably apocryphal, or at least broadly exaggerated, but it still serves a valid teaching purpose. Even the most carefully developed argument will fail if it is based on a faulty premise.

So it is with Prof. Mikaila Mariel Lemonik Arthur’s recent response to my own essay on ethnography in Contexts. It would be a powerful riposte if only it had addressed my actual views. My essay is about comparative means assessing reliability – using multiple real life examples from law, history, and journalism – but you would never know that from reading Arthur’s piece. Her rejoinder of over 1500 words quotes only a single four-word passage from my work. Everything else is ill-premised spin. As I will explain below, there is nothing easier than presenting an alibi for the wrong day, nor simpler than refuting the imagined arguments of a straw person.

But first, let me say that Arthur’s essay is admirably constructed. It combines just the right amount of discrediting snark – “Legal scholars do have a habit of weighing in on fields not their own” – with solid research and scholarly observations. The piece is cogently written, tightly reasoned, well supported, and altogether a pleasure to read, even though, as one commenter pointed out, it happens to be built upon a “superficial caricature” of my argument.

CFP: Health/IP/Tech Law Symposium

This just in:

FIRST DO NO HARM: A PATIENT-DRIVEN APPROACH TO NAVIGATING THE HEALTH LAW, INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY, AND TECHNOLOGY MAZE

Nova Southeastern University Shepard Broad College of Law and the Nova Law Review seek submissions for its annual Symposium on October 11, 2019. Two of the fastest growing areas in the modern economy are health care and technology. In the race to provide innovations in health care and technology, however, the patient and caregiver are often left out of the conversation. Consequently, some technologies, intellectual property rules, health care options, and health policy decisions are replete with unintended consequences.

The Nova Law Review invites academics, practitioners and stakeholders to submit proposals for panel presentations on topics involving the intersection of health law, intellectual property, and the public good. These may include such topics as FDA and HIPAA regulation, DNA-based consumer products, artificial intelligence and machine learning, robotic procedures, patent policy, pricing, biomedical modification, human testing, disease modeling and tracking, research, the Bayh-Dole Act, entrepreneurship and business models, sustainability, gene editing, and other topics exploring these important concerns for the fields of health law, intellectual property law, and technology law.

The Symposium presents an opportunity for academics, practitioners, health care providers, and students in a variety of legal, business, and technology fields to exchange ideas and explore emerging issues. Interdisciplinary presentations are encouraged.

Submissions & Important Dates:

CFP: Chicagoland (and Beyond) Junior Scholars Conference

This just in.  And yes, dear readers.  As a Chicago native I can confirm that "Chicagoland" is a thing.

The Northern Illinois University College of Law will host the Second Annual Chicagoland Junior Scholars Conference at Loyola University Chicago School of Law on Friday, September 27, 2019.

This conference will offer junior scholars (those who have spent 7 years or fewer as full-time professors) the opportunity to present their works-in-progress, to receive feedback from their colleagues, including senior faculty, and to network with other legal scholars from the Chicago area and beyond.  Articles may be presented at various stages of development.

Junior scholars interested in presenting a paper at the conference should submit a working title and abstract of 200-300 words to LeAnn Baie no later than June 28, 2019.  Selected authors will be notified by July 15, 2019.  Final papers will be due no later than September 6, 2019.

There is no registration fee for this conference. Meals will be provided. Contact Professor Sarah Fox with questions.

Why the Cartoon in the New York Times Is Anti-Semitic [UPDATED] [UPDATED]

[UPDATE: The New York Times has announced that it has ended its relationship with the syndication service, Cartoon Arts, that provided the anti-Semitic cartoon discussed below.]

[UPDATE: Scroll to the end of this post to see an image from the 1940 Nazi magazine Lustige Blatter (Funny Pages) showing a Jew leading Winston Churchill.]

Let's talk about the anti-Semitic cartoon that recently appeared in the international edition of the New York Times -- which you can see after the jump. In brief, it depicts a dog with the face of Benjamin Netanyahu, with a Star of David hanging from its collar, leading a blind Donald Trump who is wearing a yarmulke.  The Times has apologized for carrying the cartoon, which appeared adjacent to an unrelated column by Thomas Friedman, explaining that it had been taken from a wire service by a single, unsupervised editor. On Twitter, a Times spokesperson unequivocally condemned the drawing:

We are deeply sorry for the publication of an anti-Semitic political cartoon last Thursday. . . . and we are committed to making sure nothing like this happens again. Such imagery is always dangerous, and at a time when anti-Semitism is on the rise worldwide, it’s all the more unacceptable.

On this morning's oped page, Times columnist Bret Stephens pointed out exactly why the cartoon is anti-Semitic:

Here was an image that, in another age, might have been published in the pages of Der Stürmer. The Jew in the form of a dog. The small but wily Jew leading the dumb and trusting American. The hated Trump being Judaized with a skullcap. The nominal servant acting as the true master. The cartoon checked so many anti-Semitic boxes that the only thing missing was a dollar sign.

Other outlets -- including CNN, The Daily Beast, and the Huffington Post -- have called the cartoon anti-Semitic, but there are also some dissenters, including this columnist in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

This brings us to Howard Wasserman's recent post on PrawfsBlawg, in which he suggests that the cartoon of Netanyahu is no more offensive than would be a similar cartoon of Vladimir Putin leading a blind Trump. I have tremendous respect and affection for Howard, who is ordinarily one of the most astute observers on the interwebs, but here he has completely missed the point. As Bret Stephens point out, and as the Times admitted, the cartoon in question engaged an ancient anti-Jewish trope -- the tricky Jew who secretly controls the government of unwitting Gentiles -- which differentiated it from any similar cartoon about other world leaders. The Putin analogy would have meaning only if there had ever been such a thing as the Protocols of the Elders of the Kremlin. It does not take much effort to imagine images of other world leaders that would be readily acknowledged as racist or sexist, but would be okay if applied to Putin.

CFP: 2019 Annual Meeting of the ASCL

Call for Panel and Paper Proposals

2019 Annual Meeting of the American Society of Comparative Law

Comparative Law and International Dispute Resolution Processes

October 17-19, 2019

University of Missouri School of Law

The American Society of Comparative Law and the University of Missouri School of Law invite all interested scholars, practitioners and advanced degree students to consider submitting a panel or a paper proposal for the upcoming Annual Meeting of the American Society of Comparative Law that will be held between Thursday, October 17, and Saturday, October 19, 2019, at University of Missouri School of Law in Columbia, Missouri, entitled Comparative law and International Dispute Resolution Processes.

Comparative law has long been an integral part of the international dispute resolution process, regardless of whether the matter involves litigation, arbitration, mediation, conciliation or negotiation. However, scholars have seldom focused on the comparative element, preferring instead to analyze various issues as a matter of public or private international law. While it is important to consider dispute resolution as a reflection of international law, that perspective does not answer all relevant questions. The American Society of Comparative Law’s 2019 annual program seeks to delve more deeply into how comparative law operates formally and informally, visibly and invisibly, publicly and privately, in cases involving cross-border dispute resolution

Call for Paper Proposals for Work-in-Progress Workshop

A works-in-progress workshop is being organized in conjunction with the American Society of Comparative Law 2019 Annual Meeting at the Center for the Study of Dispute Resolution at the University of Missouri School of Law. The works-in-progress workshop will be held on Thursday, October 17, 2019, in advance of the main program of the 2019 Annual Meeting, which will be held on Friday, October 18, and Saturday, October 19, 2019.

Those interested in presenting a paper at the works-in-progress workshop should submit an abstract no more than one page in length to Mary Tran at 2019ASCL@law.ucla.edu on or before May 20, 2019. Decisions regarding accepted papers will be made in June 2019. Paper proposal submissions should bear some relationship to the topic of the annual meeting, which considers the role of comparative law in the international dispute resolution process.

The authors of the accepted papers will have to submit the final draft of their papers for circulation among the workshop participants by no later than October 3, 2019.

Call for Panel Proposals for Concurrent Panels

The Annual Meeting of the ASCL will also have time slots for concurrent panels on Friday, October 18, 2019.

Proposals will be considered on a variety of subjects on comparative law and international dispute resolution, such as those involving particular procedures, including judicial procedures, arbitral procedures and consensual procedures (meaning negotiation, mediation and conciliation), as well as the way that comparative law is used by judges, legislators, policymakers and parties in those processes. It is expected that panel members will not only address various questions from a comparative perspective but will also incorporate interdisciplinary and empirical perspectives into their analyses. The concurrent panels may also be on topics different from the main topic of the 2019 Annual Meeting on international dispute resolution and, as a way to foster multilingualism at the ASCL, may also be held in languages different from English.

The Annual Meeting Program Committee of the American Society of Comparative Law will select the panels that will be held at the meeting in consultation with the University of Missouri School of Law. Panel proposals should include up to four speakers, a panel title, and a one-to-two-paragraph description of the ideas that the panel will explore. Panel proposals should be submitted via e-mail to Mary Tran at 2019ASCL@law.ucla.edu on or before May 20, 2019. Decisions regarding accepted panels will be made in June 2019.

Those submitting panel and paper proposals should be aware that there is no funding available to assist participants with travel or related costs.

The American Society of Comparative Law is the leading organization in the United States promoting the comparative study of law.

The University of Missouri’s award-winning program in dispute resolution consistently ranks as one of the best in the nation.

Any questions about the paper or panel proposals should be addressed to Mary Tran at 2019ASCL@law.ucla.edu. 

 

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.

Some Duets

 

James McGrath Named Dean of WMU Cooley Law

Western Michigan University Cooley Law School has announced that James McGrath, professor of law and associate dean for academic support and bar services at Texas A&M University School of Law, will serve as its next president and dean.  McGrath received a JD from Howard, an LLM from Temple and an MPH from Harvard.  He takes over July 1.