The Faculty Lounge

At AALS This Week? Stop By the Philly Law School Reception.

As is our tradition, the law schools of Penn, Villanova, Temple, and Drexel are co-hosting a reception for those attending the AALS annual conference this week.  Before heading out to enjoy the moderate Northern California climate Thursday evening, feel free to stop by and say hello.  The festivities run from 6:30 to 8. Eagles jerseys not required.

Gone with the Wind

On occasion, I talk about Gone with the Wind. Two points -- I didn't realize Scarlet O'Hara was going to Fayetteville Female Academy. (Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, 4.  The Gone with the Wind movie doesn't have Scarlet's schooling.) The Fayetteville Academy is Mitchell's fictional academy of Scarlet's schooling. The actual Fayetteville Academy is both boys and girls. I realized that female and male academies were allowed in the pre-Civil War South, but rare.

Second, William Faulker was surprised that the United Daughters of the Confederacy was going to be upset that the Gone with the Wind was too Northern!

[E]pilogue and epitaph, because apparently neither the U.D.C. ladies who instigated and bought the monument, nor the architect who designed it nor the masons who erected it had noticed that the marble eyes under the shading marble palm stared not toward the north and the enemy, but toward the south, toward (if anything) his own rear -- looking perhaps, the wits said (could say now, with the old war thirty-five years past and you could even joke about it -- except the women, the ladies, the unsurrendered, the irreconcilable, who even after another thirty-five years would still get up and stalk out of picture houses showing Gone with the Wind), for reinforcements; or perhaps not a combat soldier at all, but a provost marshal's man looking for deserters, or perhaps himself for a safe place to run to: because that old war was dead; the sons of those tottering old men in gray had already died in blue coats in Cuba, the macabre mementos and testimonials and shrines of the new war already usurping the earth ....

Henry Monaghan (1934-2025)

I learned that Henry Monaghan passed away on January 1. Monaghan taught generations (and my, as well) federal courts. 

Monaghan discussed in Columbia Law Review "Brown's departure from the original understanding is not only defensible, but was probably the Supreme Court's only legitimate response to the nation's escalating moral and social turmoil." (1988, Columbia Law Review.)

He was responible for Chervon v.  v. Natural Resources Defense Council. (I am unsure about this one; CLR members were certain.)

Trivia: Southern Store

Dorthea Lange photographed this in July 1939.

 

Where is this?

 

Hot Sardines

The Hot Sardines were "founded in 2011 by Elizabeth Bougerol and Evan Palazzo over a mutual love of Fats Waller." They got their start at underground parties in Brooklyn, and have since toured worldwide with their brand of "reinvigorated classic jazz." Fats Waller covers are at the bottom of the post.

CFP: “The Age of Trump: Projecting policy and Legal Impacts of a Second Term”

This just in:

The University of St. Thomas School of Law Journal of Law and Public Policy invites submissions for its Spring 2025 Symposium on The Age of Trump: Projecting policy and Legal Impacts of a Second Term to be held on April 11, 2025, via a hybrid model over Zoom and at the University of St. Thomas School of Law in Minneapolis, Minnesota. This interdisciplinary event aims to bring together scholars, practitioners, and policymakers to explore and analyze what a second presidential term for Donald Trump might mean for various areas of law and policy.

 

Presidential Citizens Medal

I do not care about Liz Cheney receiving the Presidential Citizens Medal award. I can talk about Louis Lorenzo Redding. He was also getting the Presidential Citizen Medal. He was a Civil Rights leader in Wilmington, Delaware.  Redding was part of the NAACP that challenged the Brown v. Board of Education. After graduating from Brown University for college and graduated from Harvard Law School. He died in 1998. But the important thing for me, Mrs. Redding was my trig teacher in the 10th grade! 

William Treanor Stepping Down as Georgetown Law Dean

Georgetown Law has announced that Bill Treanor will step down as dean of the law school on June 30, 2025.  Treanor became dean in 2010.  He will rejoin the faculty.

The Slave Arsonist and a Defender

John Bell was killed in a duel in May 1856 in Dallas County, Alabama, and his son as well, John, Jr.  (Selma is Dallas County.) He was killed in a duel over a slave; he was defending an enslaved man. I have a probate file on the Bell, the Alabama Supreme Court opinion on the case, and a grave marker.  The grave marker reads "No Murderer hath eternal life abiding in him." Unsurprisingly, Bell was incredibly wealthy, and so was the accuser. Honor culture (which I'm not a fan of usually) will be a big part of the case

More later ....

Girl from the North Country

[I originally had this queued up for mid-June, but we just saw A Complete Unknown, which I recommend, so I decided to rearrange the schedule.]

"Girl from the North Country" is on Bob Dylan's second album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, released in 1963. Unlike his eponymous debut album, Freewheelin' featured mostly original tracks, including "Blowin' in the Wind" and "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright." It was the album that really brought him to national attention -- Bob Dylan had sold relatively poorly -- charting at number 22.

There is evidently some ongoing debate about the identity of the north country girl. Some say it was one of his Minnesota sweethearts, others that it was Suze Rotolo, who is holding his arm on the album cover. (I wouldn't call New York the north country, but she is wearing a "coat so warm.") I'm guessing it was no one in particular, given that the introductory line -- "Remember me to one who lives there/for she was once a true love of mine" -- was lifted from the traditional English ballad "Scarborough Fair" (no, Paul Simon didn't write it).

Either way, it became one of Dylan's memorable collaborations with Johnny Cash. 

I've always been drawn to this song about the north country because of my ancestral ties to Winnipeg, which is about 325 miles northwest of Hibbing (and 450 miles from the Twin Cities).

This is the earliest live clip I could find:

Discovery of Alien Imminent?

I don't think so.

Swarthmore Conference, 1933

W.E.B. DuBois and Professor Ulrich B. Phillips once met? That is astonishing to me. You will recall Ulrich Phillips wrote several volumes on slavery, which were favorable to slave-owning individuals, to say the least.

Here is The Crisis, September 1933: Swarthmore Conference An Institute on Race Relations held at Swarthmore College under the auspices of the Committee of Race Relations of the Society of Friends, brought together during July, leaders and the foremost thinkers of both races in America. The conference which met to consider the social factors involved in the Negro-white relations in the United States, was attended by Dr. Will W. Alexander of Atlanta, president of Dillard University; Dr. W. E. B. DuBois, editor of the Crisis; Professor Ulrich B. Phillips of Yale University; Professor Melville Herskovits of Northwestern University; Donald Young of the Social Science Research Council, James Weldon Johnson, Broadus Mitchel, and Mabel Carney.

Call for Papers: UCLA School of Law (Lowell Milken Institute for Business Law and Policy)

From a recent email message:

The Lowell Milken Institute for Business Law and Policy at UCLA School of Law is pleased to announce its first annual Business and Tax Roundtable for Upcoming Professors (“BATRUP”). This in-person Roundtable will take place at UCLA from Friday evening June 13th through Sunday June 15th. The program will feature commentary by invited senior scholars as well as an opportunity to meet fellow aspiring scholars while enjoying Los Angeles. We warmly invite scholars preparing for the academic job market to participate.

Roundtable Purpose and Eligibility

The Roundtable is designed to offer mentorship and feedback to aspiring legal scholars who plan to pursue tenure-track positions at law schools. It is open to scholars who hold a JD, master’s degree, or PhD, who have not yet secured a tenure-track law faculty appointment, and who are not yet listed in this academic year’s Faculty Appointments Register. Selected authors must be able to attend the Roundtable in person at UCLA.

We welcome submissions on any topic within business law or tax law. Co-authored papers are eligible provided all authors meet the submission criteria. To ensure the Roundtable's focus on evolving scholarship, we ask that submitted papers not be published or scheduled for publication by the Roundtable date, though papers accepted for publication that remain open to substantive revisions are eligible.

Selection Process and Roundtable Details

We anticipate selecting 7–9 papers from the submissions received. For each selected paper, the Lowell Milken Institute will cover reasonable travel, accommodation, and meal expenses for one author to attend the Roundtable. Participants will have the chance to engage in dynamic exchanges with UCLA faculty and invited guest scholars, as well as with their peers. Our aim is to foster a supportive community of early-career business and tax law scholars as they prepare for their careers in legal academia.

Submission Guidelines

Interested participants should submit either a complete draft or an extended summary of at least 5,000 words by email to [email protected] by February 14, 2025. We expect to notify authors of their selection by March 31, 2025. For any questions, please reach out to the same email address or to one of our faculty co-directors, Professors Jason Oh or Andrew Verstein.

Please feel free to share this call for papers with anyone who may be interested in participating.

George L. Priest (1947-2024)

I am particularly sorry to hear about the passing of Professor George L. Priest. He was an emeritus professor at Yale Law School, and he was a professor at the University of Puget Sound, Buffalo, UCLA, and the University of Chicago. He was a graduate of Yale University and University of Chicago Law School. He shaped generations of law schools regarding antitrust and tort law, among many other fields. The festschrift was in September 2024. He will be missed. 

Folk music building trivia (Philadelphia area)

Today I am branching out on the subject of trivia questions.  It’s still related to a building, but this time the building is not a courthouse (or the house of a famous judge or lawyer). It’s a building where a coffee house hosted important concerts by folk (and rock) musicians back in the 1970s.  This is in what is to my mind a very posh suburb, though I do recall one of my friends from college mentioning that part of this town, where she went to college, was seedy. If someone said that to me now, I’d either start laughing or say something like, are you joking? But back then I just took it in and didn’t say anything. To get to the question, what coffee shop was in this building and why was it important?  I came across this when I was researching a folk artist I’m particularly interested in because he lived (and following his premature death was buried) near where I grew up.  I remember my seventh-grade English teacher who knew the man in passing, as I guess a lot of the “hippie element” around my hometown did, talking about his tragic death at a young age.  But while that man played in this coffee house, so did a great many others and some even better known. (It is in the Philadephia area.)

What Do These Songs (Still) Have in Common?

A perennial (or is it evergreen?) question, originally posted in 2021:

Jurisprudence of Antebellum Phi Beta Kappa Addresses

Al Brophy put up a new paper:

Ralph Waldo Emerson spoke at Harvard University in 1837 in a Phi Beta Kappa address. That address known as American Scholar reaches for individual expression, not history and social hierarchy. There are many Phi Beta Kappa addresses, both before and after him. Many Transcendentalists orators at Harvard and a few anti-Transcendentalists orators as well. And many others who are optimists, technology, and utilitarians at many colleges. After the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, three speakers of Harvard, Brown, and Yale advocated law, rather than conscience. All three of them were lawyers.

There was a rich diversity of opinion: Transcendental oratory, anti-Transcendentalists, and optimist, technological, and utilitarian thought. They were concerned about humanity versus the law.

Harvard and Yale were different: Harvard has a lot of Transcendentalists; Yale has a lot of anti-transcendentalists. Here is the download. 

Image: The Unitarian Church at Cambridge is the place where Ralph Waldo Emerson's delivered American Scholar.  I will be putting up some others, soon -- I hope... (Perry Miller's Life of the Mind in America: From the Revolution to the Civil War, a bibliography, next up.)

 

Hiring Announcement: Texas Tech University School of Law

From a recent email message:

Texas Tech University School of Law is accepting applications for a Clinical Lecturer to develop a new Immigration Clinic to commence in the fall semester of 2025, an addition to our other nine clinics.

The full job listing can be found here:       Clinical Lecturer/Immigration Clinic Director

Application deadline is February 28, 2025.    

University of Nebraska Psychology Department Seeks Law/Psych Faculty

This just in:

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) Department of Psychology seeks to hire a tenured Associate or Full Professor in the Law-Psychology Program. Responsibilities will include leading the interdisciplinary Law-Psychology Program; maintaining a productive program of research, including pursuit of external funding; teaching undergraduate and graduate courses; and mentoring students. The content/specialty area is open with the successful candidate becoming a member of one or more of the department graduate programs (i.e., clinical; developmental; neuroscience and behavior; or social and cognitive). A courtesy appointment with the College of Law may be possible, depending on the candidate’s law qualifications.

 

About the Law-Psychology Program

Established in 1974, the UNL Law-Psychology Program is recognized nationally for its research on policy, law, and important social issues. The UNL program is the oldest ongoing integrated program in Law-Psychology and the only program of its type in the Big 10. The Department of Psychology and the College of Law jointly sponsor the program, which specializes in training scholars who apply psychology and other social and behavioral sciences to analyze empirical questions in law and policy. The Law-Psychology Program is also unique in the nation as a dual-degree program where psychology students also earn a J.D. or M.L.S. from the College of Law.

The successful candidate will contribute to multidisciplinary research efforts with other units on campus, such as the College of Law; the Center on Children, Families, and the Law (CCFL); and the Public Policy Center (PPC). We are eager to welcome candidates who are committed to building a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive environment by promoting a sense of belonging, increasing resources, and addressing systemic inequities faced by students and scholars from historically excluded groups.

The University offers an attractive compensation and benefits package, commensurate with the successful candidate’s background and experience. The University is responsive to the needs of dual-career couples.

As an EO/AA employer, the University of Nebraska considers qualified applicants for employment without regard to race, color, ethnicity, national origin, sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, disability, age, genetic information, veteran status, marital status, and/or political affiliation. See https://www.unl.edu/equity/notice-nondiscrimination.

 

More information, including minimum required qualifications, can be found here.

Taboo Trades Podcast: Risk & Resistance with Aziza Ahmed

My guest today is Aziza Ahmed, a Professor of Law and N. Neal Pike Scholar at the Boston University School of Law. She is also a Co-Director of BU Law’s Program on Reproductive Justice. She joins me and UVA Law 3L, Nia Saunders, to discuss her new book Risk and Resistance: How Feminists Transformed the Law and Science of AIDS, forthcoming from Cambridge University Press in 2025.

 

Prior to teaching, Professor Ahmed was a research associate at the Harvard School of Public Health Program on International Health and Human Rights. She came to that position after a Women’s Law and Public Policy Fellowship where she worked with the International Community of Women Living with HIV/AIDS. Professor Ahmed was a member of the Technical Advisory Group on HIV and the Law convened by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and has been an expert for many institutions, including the American Bar Association and UNDP.

 

 

Reading List

• Ahmed Bio
• Linda C. McClain & Aziza Ahmed, The Routledge Companion to Gender and Covid-19 (2024)
  SCHOLARLY COMMONS
• Nicole Huberfeld, Linda C. McClain & Aziza Ahmed,Rethinking Foundations and Analyzing New Conflicts: Teaching Law after Dobbs17 Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy (2024). SCHOLARLY COMMONS
• Aziza Ahmed, Dabney P. Evans, Jason Jackson, Benjamin Mason Meier & Cecília Tomori,Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health: Undermining Public Health, Facilitating Reproductive Coercion 51 Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics (2023)
  SCHOLARLY COMMONS
• Aziza Ahmed,Feminist Legal Theory and Praxis after Dobbs: Science, Politics, and Expertise 34 Yale Journal of Law and Feminism (2023)
  SCHOLARLY COMMONS
• Krawiec Bio