The Faculty Lounge

Hiring Announcement: University of North Dakota School of Law (Dean Search)

The University of North Dakota is seeking candidates for the position of Dean of the School of Law. Located on an active 516-acre campus in Grand Forks, ND, a vibrant college town of 60,000 residents, UND has a student enrollment of over 15,000 and offers more than 225 fields of study across nine colleges. UND is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission (HLC) and has achieved the Carnegie classification of Very High Research Activity (R1) with over $182 million in research expenditures.

Reporting directly to the Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs, the Dean is the leader of the state’s only law school. The Dean will provide leadership and facilitate an environment for accomplishing strategic goals, as well as aligning the functioning of the School of Law with UND’s broader academic integrity and strategic planning: UND LEADS. The dean is responsible, in cooperation with the Provost, for the academic and administrative planning; budgeting; administration and implementation of school and university policies; and fundraising and external relations. The Dean, in partnership with the faculty, is responsible for academic program development and review; faculty and staff recruitment; development and evaluation of faculty; and student relations.

UND seeks an exceptional, focused, and creative leader who will build upon the School of Law’s strengths to continue its growth and expansion, provide world-class educational experiences, recruit and develop outstanding faculty, and promote faculty-driven scholarly and creative endeavors within the School. The next Dean will be a committed team player who is devoted to excellence and shared governance. The selected individual will be a consultative decision-maker and will work collaboratively with faculty, staff, students, administrators, and community and industry partners. The Dean will have unquestioned integrity and exemplary interpersonal and communication skills.

The next Dean of the UND School of Law will be joining the University during a dynamic period. Under the leadership of President Andrew Armacost (who joined UND in 2020) and Provost Eric Carl Link (who joined UND in 2021), the campus is experiencing enrollment growth and major campus improvements with several buildings currently under construction and/or renovation. Significant investments in terms of research development in critical areas are propelling the University forward as the flagship research institution in the state of North Dakota. Meanwhile, the University’s ongoing commitment to student success at both the undergraduate and graduate levels continues to elevate the tradition of educational excellence at the institution.

The incoming Dean of the School of Law will have the opportunity to build on the long-standing tradition of excellence within the School; to work alongside both internal and external partners and stakeholders to increase and enhance the mission of the School; and to lead the School through a period of enrollment growth, program expansion, and increasing visibility across the state of North Dakota. Enhancing access and opportunity for students and faculty through alumni and donor relations will be essential in the coming years as the University engages in robust capital campaigning and relationship building, as will bringing key programmatic opportunities to the students of the School that will position them — and the School — for ongoing service to the state and the region.

The successful candidate must possess a Juris Doctor (J.D.) or other terminal degree in law and at least ten years of accomplishments in progressive and increasingly complex leadership roles in higher education, the practice of law, or a related field. They must also be licensed to practice law in any jurisdiction in the United States.

Click here for additional information.

Hiring Announcement: University of San Francisco School of Law

From a recent email message:

The University of San Francisco School of Law is in the heart of one of the world’s most dynamic and progressive cities, which gives our community a global perspective and access to a vibrant legal community, premier arts and culture, as well as centers of innovation in tech, finance, environmental justice, and more. The campus is located in a beautiful neighborhood just north of Golden Gate Park and halfway between Ocean Beach and the Financial District.

The University of San Francisco School of Law is steeped in the hallmarks of a Jesuit education with an unwavering commitment to social justice and a focus on training skilled, ethical, and community-engaged lawyers. The Law School has a proud 110-year history of preparing its diverse graduates to be excellent and ethical attorneys who serve their clients and communities with integrity.

The Law School is seeking entry-level tenure track and lateral tenured applicants for three positions on our full-time faculty to begin in the fall of 2026. USF Law welcomes outstanding candidates in all areas but is especially interested in the fields of criminal, property, and civil procedure law, with secondary interests in environmental, employment, and international law. Practice experience is especially valued for candidates seeking to teach civil procedure, criminal, and employment law. Applicants should demonstrate a record of professional excellence, including: scholarly achievement or the potential for scholarly excellence; strong classroom teaching skills; and a commitment to serving the Law School and the community. Experience teaching diverse student populations is a plus.

Applicants should include a cover letter, C/V, research agenda, statement of teaching philosophy, and, if applicable, their most recent teaching evaluations (up to three years). Contact: USF School of Law, Office of Faculty Services [email protected].

Doctors Were Preparing To Remove Their Organs. Then They Woke Up.

This disheartening story comes from The New York Times, via Al Roth’s Market Design Blog. As Roth notes on BlueSky: “Organ donation from deceased donors relies on the assurance that the donor's death was in no way hastened by the subsequent donation. Today's NYT has a report suggesting that careful guidelines were sometimes almost breached.”

From the article:

Four years ago, an unconscious Kentucky man began to awaken as he was about to be removed from life support so his organs could be donated. Even though the man cried, pulled his legs to his chest and shook his head, officials still tried to move forward.

Now, a federal investigation has found that officials at the nonprofit in charge of coordinating organ donations in Kentucky ignored signs of growing alertness not only in that patient but also in dozens of other potential donors. . . .

Although the surgeries didn’t happen, the investigation said multiple patients showed signs of pain or distress while being readied for the procedure. (emphasis mine)

And also:

But the investigation found that the organization’s employees repeatedly pressured families to authorize donation, improperly took over cases from doctors and tried to push hospital staff to remove life support and allow for surgery even if there were indications of growing awareness in patients.

To emphasize (again), none of these organ retrievals went forward. The report is obviously disturbing, nevertheless.

 

Organ donation from deceased donors relies on the assurance that the donor's death was in no way hastened by the subsequent donation. Today's NYT has a report suggesting that careful guidelines were sometimes almost breached. #medicine #transplants #death

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— Al Roth (@alroth.bsky.social) June 6, 2025 at 10:45 AM

Is It Okay For AI To Write Science Papers?

Nature recently polled 5000 researchers on when “it’s acceptable to involve AI and what needs to be disclosed.” From the article:

With generative AI tools such as ChatGPT improving so rapidly, attitudes about using them to write research papers are also evolving. The number of papers with signs of AI use is rising rapidly (D. Kobak et al. Preprint at arXiv https://doi.org/pkhp; 2024), raising questions around plagiarism and other ethical concerns. 

To capture a sense of researchers’ thinking on this topic, Nature posed a variety of scenarios to some 5,000 academics around the world, to understand which uses of AI are considered ethically acceptable.

The survey results suggest that researchers are sharply divided on what they feel are appropriate practices. Whereas academics generally feel it’s acceptable to use AI chatbots to help to prepare manuscripts, relatively few report actually using AI for this purpose — and those who did often say they didn’t disclose it.

Despite the statement that “researchers are sharply divided,” I actually thought the results showed quite a bit of agreement on the acceptability, or not, of certain uses. But you should read it and decide for yourself.

Related Posts:

"Where Others Flinch, I Footnote"

Using AI to Write Letters of Recommendation

AI Gets Its First Law School A+s

Pat Oglesby Appointed to Marijuana Legalization Commission

The governor of NC, Josh Stein, has come out in favor of marijuana legalization and formed a commission, on which my co-teacher, Pat Oglesby, has been tapped to serve, to study the issue and make recommendations.

This is an outstanding choice! Pat knows more about marijuana legalization, taxation, licensing, and related issues than anyone I know. We co-taught a course, Cannabis Legalization, at UVA Law that was a huge success, due to Pat’s knowledge and connections to industry experts, regulators, and researchers (and to our excellent students, of course).

The official press release is here, which includes the full list of commission appointees.

How Sweet It Is (to Be Loved by You)

"How Sweet It Is (to Be Loved by You)" was written by Motown's Holland-Dozier-Holland in 1964 and recorded at the Hitsville studio by Marvin Gaye in early 1965. The release was on Tamla Records, a Motown subsidiary, for reasons I have not discovered. Backed by the Funk Brothers, it was a huge hit for Gaye. James Taylor later had a hit with "How Sweet It Is" in 1975. The title was taken from Jackie Gleason's tag line, "how sweet it is," and I am pretty sure it is the only Motown or R&B title ever inspired by an Irish comedian (see clip at the bottom of the post).

Congratulations, Natan and Ismene. (And happy anniversary, Sarah and Willard.)

Nora Demleitner Steps Down as St. John's College President

St John's College has announced that Nora Demleitner stepped down as president at the end of the academic year.  She became president in 2022 and previously served as the dean of Hofstra Law and Washington & Lee Law.  J. Walter Sterling, president of the Santa Fe campus, has assumed the role of collegewide president.

AI Gets Its First Law School A+

A group of authors from University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law has posted AI Gets Its First Law School A+s to SSRN.

From the abstract:

We had o3, OpenAI's new reasoning model, take our Spring 2025 law school final exams with the "reasoning effort" parameter set to high. We graded o3's answers on the same curve as our students. Three semesters ago, we found the older model GPT-4-turbo's outputs would have received grades ranging between B+ and D. This semester, we find o3 got three A+s, one A, one A-, two B+s, and a B. We find clear, fixable explanations for two of o3's lowest grades.

 

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— Kim Krawiec (@kimkrawiec.bsky.social) May 30, 2025 at 4:01 PM

CFP: Immigration Law in Kentucky and the U.S

This just in:

The Kentucky Law Journal (KLJ) is pleased to invite proposals for its annual symposium, which will be held in the Fall of 2025.  The symposium, entitled Immigration Law in Kentucky and the United States: A Discussion on Current Changes in Immigrants’ Legal Landscape, will focus on the changing aspects of immigration law.

Specifically, KLJ would like to address how the current administration’s emphasis on immigration reform affects the practice and study of immigration law nationwide. The symposium will explore topics including the continued issuing of executive orders, litigation such as J.G.G. v. Trump, and policy changes like the expansion of expedited removal. We also encourage Kentucky-specific discussion that stems from broader topics, like how recent executive orders impact Louisville, Kentucky’s status as a sanctuary city. This symposium aims to bring together practitioners, policy researchers, and scholars to discuss the changing landscape of immigration law. Potential discussion topics include crimmigration law, sanctuary jurisdictions, immigrant rights litigation, and issues related to the rapidly evolving changes from the current administration. KLJ encourages diverse viewpoints on upcoming issues that federal and state executives face.

KLJ expects to host this symposium in beautiful Lexington, Kentucky, on November 7, 2025.  In addition to presentations at the symposium, presenters will have the opportunity to publish pieces in Volume 114 of the Kentucky Law Journal, or via the Kentucky Law Journal Online.  The editors are particularly interested in publications in the range of 8,000–12,000 words, or shorter pieces for the online edition.  To apply for the symposium, please submit a current CV and an abstract of no more than 1,000 words, including your interest in being considered for publication.  Submissions are due by August 1, 2025, at [email protected]. Please see https://www.kentuckylawjournal.org/symposium for more information, and send any questions to [email protected]. Thank you, and we look forward to working with you!

Telman on Mistake in Contract

Over at ContractsProf Blog, Jeremy Telman has been running a series of posts on the contract doctrine of mistake. Worth reading if you teach or write about mistake and are looking for some new cases as examples. 

Online auction site withdrew a painting just before bidding closed. The last bidder had offered “Very Well Done Painting of Ships in Port - Signed ‘Vincent’ - Circa 1880-90 (painting). Did seller breach a duty to sell her a Van Gogh for $215? lawprofessors.typepad.com/contractspro...

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— KProfsBlog (@kprofsblog.bsky.social) May 29, 2025 at 8:08 AM

MAID In France

Via Al Roth's Market Design Blog comes news of a proposed French law that "has some familiar and some novel features." Reuters has the story: 

PARIS, May 27 (Reuters) - French lower house lawmakers approved a bill on Tuesday to legalise assisted dying, paving the way for France to become the latest European nation to allow terminally ill people to end their lives. . . the legislation is expected to pass, with polls showing more than 90% of French people in favour of laws that give people with terminal diseases or interminable suffering the right to die.

The proposed bill:

provides the right to assisted dying to any French person over the age of 18 suffering from a serious or incurable condition that is life-threatening, advanced or terminal. The person . . . must also have constant physical or psychological suffering that cannot be alleviated. Lawmakers stipulated that psychological suffering alone would not be enough to end one's life.

The patient can administer the lethal dose themselves or by an accredited medical professional if they are physically unable. Healthcare workers who object to doing so are free to opt out. Anyone found to have obstructed someone's right to die can face a two-year prison sentence and a 30,000 euro fine.

Read the full story here. 

Fair Compensation For Research Participants

I was very happy to see this guest editorial: Pursuing Fair and Just Compensation for Research Participants: An Open Letter to the Research Ethics Community. From the paper:

Concerns over undue influence often arise in discussions of payment to research participants, and many research ethics oversight bodies default to “payment conservatism,” preferring minimal compensation to participants (or none at all) out of an abundance of caution (Largent and Fernandez Lynch Citation2017). This practice, however, is unfair and does not convincingly protect against harm or undue influence. . . .

Research participation generates immense social value, and generous compensation can reflect this value and serve as an important sign of respect and appreciation for participants

Read the whole thing here. I hope that more researchers in this area begin to see the errors of attempts to maintain compensation to medical research subjects at low rates. I have long maintained, both in this setting and in the case of compensation to egg donors, that the ability of any sum to "coerce" or "induce" participation is a function of individual financial need. As I argued in Sunny Samaritans and Egomaniacs: Price Fixing In The Gamete Market:

Ironically, the most likely effect of the ASRM price cap is to drive from the market the most highly desired egg donors, who tend to be better-educated and of a higher socioeconomic status. These donors are arguably in a better position to evaluate the risks of egg donation against the monetary benefits and should be less susceptible to the "coercive" effects of monetary compensation because they are more likely to have other income opportunities to choose from.

I directly address medical research subjects in the recently-posted "Repugnant Work": 

Phase I subjects thus can, and do, register for multiple trials each year and many consider Phase I trial participation their profession. Though pharmaceutical researchers refer to Phase I research subjects as “paid volunteers,” Phase I test subjects themselves reject that term, embracing instead the label “professional guinea pig.”14 This contrasts with the articulated views of researchers, IRB boards, and ethicists, who worry that financial compensation undermines judgement or voluntariness. These parties thus urge limitations on the amounts paid to guinea pigs and frame their efforts in non-commercial terms—as subjects or volunteers, for example, rather than as workers or contractors.

Finally, one of the letter's primary authors, Holly Fernandez Lynch, Associate Professor of Medical Ethics in the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the Perelman School of Medicine (PSOM), University of Pennsylvania, was a guest on the Taboo Trades podcast, where she discussed this and other issues with seminar students. 

 

Related Posts: 

Egg Donor Antitrust Suit In Today’s WSJ

• Sunny Samaritans’ Suit Survives
• ASRM Seeks Dismissal of Egg Donor Suit
• Kamakahi v. ASRM et al. — Updates
• Politics And Profits in The Egg Business (When Sunny Samaritans Sue, IV)
• When Sunny Samaritans Sue, Part III
• When Sunny Samaritans Sue, Continued
• When Sunny Samaritans Sue
• The Value of Smart Eggs

Zachary D. Clopton Named Interim Dean of Northwestern Pritzker Law

Via Northwestern Law:

Professor Zachary D. Clopton has been appointed interim dean of Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law for two years beginning July 22, 2025. The announcement was made by Northwestern Provost Kathleen Hagerty, who praised Clopton as “a thoughtful and distinguished legal scholar” with deep institutional knowledge and national recognition in civil litigation. 

 

Leticia Diaz Stepping Down as Dean of Barry Law

Leticia Diaz has announced that she is stepping down as dean of Barry Law on December 31, 2025.  Diaz became dean in 2007.  She will return to the faculty after a sabbatical.

AI Is Bad At Bluebooking (Part 988) (Updated 6/1)

As reported by Reuters here: 

An attorney defending artificial-intelligence company Anthropic in a copyright lawsuit over music lyrics told a California federal judge on Thursday that her law firm Latham & Watkins was responsible for an incorrect footnote in an expert report caused by an AI "hallucination."

Ivana Dukanovic said in a court filing that the expert had relied on a legitimate academic journal article, but Dukanovic created a citation for it using Anthropic's chatbot Claude, which made up a fake title and authors in what the attorney called "an embarrassing and unintentional mistake."

Although not about AI hallucinations, Matthew Dahl in this recent paper, shows that LLMs are not very good even at technical conformance with bluebook rules: 

Bye-bye, Bluebook? Automating Legal Procedure with Large Language Models

Legal practice requires careful adherence to procedural rules. In the United States, few are more complex than those found in The Blue-book: A Uniform System of Citation. Compliance with this system’s 500+ pages of byzantine formatting instructions is the raison d’être of thousands of student law review editors and the bête noire of lawyers everywhere. To evaluate whether large language models (LLMs) are able to adhere to the procedures of such a complicated system, we construct an original dataset of 866 Bluebook tasks and test flagship LLMs from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, and DeepSeek. We show (1) that these models produce fully compliant Bluebook citations only 69%-74% of the time and (2) that in-context learning on the Bluebook’s underlying system of rules raises accuracy only to 77%. These results caution against using off-the-shelf LLMs to automate aspects of the law where fidelity to procedure is paramount.

Can confirm that it makes similar mistakes with less byzantine citation styles as well. 

Update 6/1: Here is a database that tracks legal decisions in cases "where generative AI produced hallucinated content – typically fake citations, but also other types of arguments." As of today it includes 129 decisions.

 

Call for Speakers and Papers: Access to Justice in Indian Country

Please see attached:  Download South Dakota Law Review - Indian Country Call for Papers 2025 rev. The symposium is co-organized by South Dakota Law Review and USD's Native American Law Students Association (NALSA) chapter. Abstracts are due 6/27, and the symposium will be September 29th in Vermillion, SD.

Call for Papers: Law and Rurality Workshop

The Rural Reconciliation Project at the University of Nebraska College of Law, along with the University of South Dakota Knudson School of Law, will host a workshop this fall for scholars whose work engages with the law and its relation to rural people and places. The workshop will be held via Zoom on Friday, November 14, 2025, from approximately 9 am until 4 pm CST, with the final schedule to be determined after participants are selected. 

This workshop provides a forum for scholars of diverse disciplines and career stages to share and receive feedback on in-progress research that addresses or investigates themes of law and rurality, including legal issues viewed through the lens of rural experience, rural geography, or rural-urban difference. We also anticipate at least one incubator session for scholars to receive feedback on more nascent ideas. 

In order to be included, participants will be expected to commit to attend the full day of Zoom sessions and read and comment on other works in the workshop.

Submission Process and Related Deadlines

If you are interested in workshopping an in-progress paper or presenting an incubator idea, please submit a title and abstract to Hannah Haksgaard at [email protected] no later than Friday, August 29, 2025. Indicate on your abstract whether you will be workshopping a draft or want to present at an earlier-stage incubator session.

Workshop drafts will be due October 31, 2025, so they may be circulated to other participants. Those presenting at an incubator session need only submit a final abstract or short outline.

We are also happy to consider participation by particularly interested scholars who do not seek to present. If you wish to attend the workshop – either as a general participant or as a commentator – please also e-mail [email protected] by August 29, 2025, with some background and context about your proposed engagement (i.e., area of expertise, whether you would like to participate as a formal discussant or general workshop member, etc.).

Kitty Wells

After so many decades of enjoying the music of women like Dolly Parton, Loretta Lynn, and Tammy Wynette, it is almost hard to realize that there were virtually no female country music stars until Kitty Wells released "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels" in 1952. Born Ellen Muriel Deason, Wells paved the way for Patsy Cline, whose first hit was "Walkin' after Midnight" in 1957.

Wells wasn't the first woman with a country hit. Patsy Montana released "I Want to Be a Cowboy's Sweetheart" in 1934 as lead vocalist with the Prairie Ramblers. But Wells as the first woman to achieve sustained stardom, and the first female country vocalist to release a solo LP, in 1956, with Kitty Wells' Country Hit Parade. 

"It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels," an answer song to Hank Thompson's "The Wild Side of Life," was considered boldly risque at the time, with its suggestion that a woman might get even with a cheating man. She went even more risque (for the '50s) with "I Don't Claim to Be an Angel," in which they lyrics asked her sweetheart to "forget about my past." Many, perhaps most, of her later songs were typecast in the jilted lover, heartbreak, three-chords-and-the-truth genre, more than occasionally toward the illicit side.

Call for Expressions of Interest: Feminist Legal Studies Roundtable, Pace University Downtown (NYC) Campus, June 16, 2025

The Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University, Albany Law School, the U.S. Feminist Judgments Project, and the Feminist Judgments International Research Collaborative of the Law and Society Association invite expressions of interest in participating in the inaugural Feminist Legal Studies Roundtable to be held on June 16, 2025, at Pace University’s downtown campus in Lower Manhattan.

This roundtable seeks to bring together a group of up to twenty self-identified feminist scholars (whatever that means to you) to workshop ideas and papers at any stage of formation. All participants will be engaged in legal scholarship that relates in some way to women, gender & sexuality studies; critical race theory; or related fields. We invite participants to present any work, at any stage of development, on a topic of their choice that is related in some way to feminist legal studies, broadly understood.

More details after the fold.

Congestion And The Deceased Donor Waiting List

From Al Roth's Market Design Blog:

The deceased donor waiting list for kidneys to transplant is congested: offers, which take time to evaluate, are often rejected, while cold ischemia time accumulates.

 Here's a paper just published in Transplantation, in which we suggest new ways to detect organs that will be hard to match, and which might therefore be expedited through the allocation process (to get more quickly to patients who will accept them).

Insights From Refusal Patterns for Deceased Donor Kidney Offers, by Guan, Grace MS1; Neelam, Sanjit MS2; Studnia, Joachim MS2; Cheng, Xingxing S. MD, MS3; Melcher, Marc L. MD, PhD4; Rees, Michael A. MD, PhD5,6; Roth, Alvin E. PhD7; Somaini, Paulo PhD8; Ashlagi, Itai PhD1
Author Information
Transplantation ():10.1097/TP.0000000000005434, May 21, 2025