The Faculty Lounge

Nuestras Voces Calls For Arizona Boycott

The blawgers over at Nuestras Voces Latinas (for those unfamiliar, Nuestras Voces is a law blog dedicated to perspectives on Latin-American communities and their issues) are calling for a boycott of Arizona.  See, for example, this post:

Today, I call on everyone to BOYCOTT Arizona. I will not spend a dime in Arizona until their new anti-Latino law is repealed.

Let me explain why. It is very simple. I read the new anti-Latino law that GOP Governor Jan Brewer just signed. As an attorney and law professor who graduated law school in 1986, I would never feel free from the possibility of extended incarceration in Arizona without keeping my passport on my person 24/7. I also have a family. I would never permit anyone of my family members to go to Arizona because without their passport they cannot be assured they will not be detained.

They can keep you incarcerated until they hear back from the U.S. government. Under the Act, whenever a law enforcement officer has "reasonable suspicion" that the person "is an alien who is unlawfully present in the United States, a reasonable attempt shall be made, when practicable, to determine the immigration status of the person. The person's immigration status shall be verified with the federal government pursuant to 8 United States code section 1373(c)." No state official may interfere with this procedure. So, as I read the Act you either file a writ of Habeas Corpus in federal court or wait for the federal government to verify your status.

I would just as soon go visit Europe, where I can forget my passport in the hotel without facing extended detention.

 I suspect that there will be yet more news coming up over at Nuestras Voces. 

Heathrow Flight Status Visual

So far, unchanged from yesterday.  And the day before.  And the day before.

I literally got the last flight out at the end of last week. By the time my plane landed, the television was full of images of the eruption and closed European airports.  Much as I love London, especially this time of year, I’m lucky to have escaped.   Otherwise I’d have missed a full day conference at UNC on Friday, and a Saturday morning Duke reunion panel on Sex & Sport: Drawing The Line? (with me, Paul Haagen, Doriane Coleman; alumnus David Feher '84 of Dewey & LeBoeuf; and Ann Brown, MD, MHS, Associate Vice Dean for Faculty Development and Director, Duke Academic Program in Women's Health), plus the last week of classes.   

Southampton, Virginia

Some more pictures from my trip last summer to Southampton.  A house along the road that Nat Turner followed.

 

   

Virginia Monuments on the Road from Williamsburg to Chapel Hill

Well, I'm back in lovely Chapel Hill after a few days in Williamsburg.  I went up there to attend a conference on the Lemon Project, which is William and Mary's examination of its connections to slavery.  The papers were fabulous. Lorena Walsh spoke about her work on seventeenth-century probate records (available in her new book Motives of Honor, Pleasure, and Profit: Plantation Management in the Colonial Chesapeake, 1607-1763), which pinpoints when the transition to slavery occurred.  Really great stuff, inspiring for those of us interested in quantitative legal history, especially of the trusts and estates kind.   Jennifer Oast spoke about her work on institutional owners of people, including the Episcopal Church and W&M itself.   Michael Blakey of W&M's anthropology department framed the whole discussion and Robert Engs and Terry Meyers anchored it with talk about their intensive work on W&M.

 Close readers of the faculty lounge know what's next ...  pictures!  I have some of Williamsburg.  I can never quite figure out how much of the Williamsburg landscape is original (to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries) and how much was re-created in the twentieth century.  I think the Bruton Parish Church is original.  Think, but am not 100% certain; something I read recently talks about the rebuilding of the church, so while I understand that the inside was redone, I'm not certain that the outside's original. 

It's a mighty impressive structure today; you can imagine it in the eighteenth century.  And since it's a church, of course there's a graveyard there.  I had to start heading home before the church yard opened on Saturday morning, so what I have is a picture (at the top on the right) I took while looking over the brick fence.  But get this -- it's a monument to one of the people I study:  Beverly Tucker.  In fact, Professor Tucker sets in motion University, Court, and Slave.

 I came home via Richmond, because I wanted to see some family friends there. That gave me a chance to stop by New Kent County Courthouse (sort of on the way).   Guess what's on the lawn out from the courthouse?  There's a picture of it at the right.  Not the largest of the ones I've seen.  And no soldier, just a granite obelisk.  Hmmm, all of this makes me think that it would be a fun project in "quantitative monument history"--if this hasn't been done already--to correlate the size/grandness of Confederate monuments with the African American population, the white population, and the per capita wealth of the counties where the monuments were put up, around the time they were put up, 1900-1920.  Size of the monument would be the dependent variable, obviously.

I don't know much about New Kent County, though now that I'm home I realize that it's the location of an early eighteenth century church that's often photographed, St. Peter's Episcopal Church.  Really beautiful and looking back at a map I realize I was only a few miles from it.  Ah, well, next trip -- or one of the next trips, I'll stop by there.

After a really lovely lunch in an Irish bar in Richmond (where I got a belated corned beef and cabbage dinner), I started laying down tracks for Chapel Hill.  Along the way I drove on route 1 and, because of a detour in Petersburg, ran across a most extraordinary monument.  As I was approaching it, I thought -- hmm, that looks more late nineteenth century than early twentieth.  And, my, my, that sure doesn't look like a Confederate solider (I was wrong on that -- should have stuck with my stock phrase--that must be from the early twentieth century).  Isn't that guy holding old Glory?  So what is this.  And then, after I parked and got closer and read the inscriptions "Army of the Potomac", "Pennsylvania Company...."  Not very Confederate.  Then up the steps in back, to look at a small plaque, way up on the monument -- in very small and hard to read print -- is a statement that this was put up the state of Pennsylvania.  (You may recall my pictures of the Union statue in my home town of West Chester, Pennsylvania, from last winter break.)  Apparently this was dedicated by President Taft in 1909; it's on the site of Fort Mahone, one of the last battles of the Civil War -- fought just on the outskirts of Petersburg on April 2, 1865.  This makes me realize how close the United States was to Peterburg, because the statue's not far, at all, from downtown.

 The monument is signed by F.W. Ruckstuhl -- you can see it if you blow up the picture to the right of this paragraph.  His name is beneath the cannon.  Now get this: Ruckstuhl also designed Confederate monuments -- in fact, he seems to be better known as artist behind Confederate monuments than United States monuments.  Here's a New York Times story on the Wade Hampton statue he prepared for the Columbia, South Carolina statehouse grounds.  What do you make of that?  Art knows no political boundaries, perhaps?  Or that it's more evidence of how Americans shared after the war all sorts of common bonds?  Or maybe that the memory business was, well, a business.

So, this is a monument to the United States in Petersburg.  I realized as I was driving away that it's about a block from Crater Road, so it makes some sense that the place where the Pennsylvania soldiers spent a bunch of time is the place where they'd put up a monument.  But I haven't seen a ton of Civil War monuments to the United States south of the Mason-Dixon line.  In fact, other than at National Parks, I'm not sure I've ever seen one of them.  Then again, I'm not sure I've ever seen one to the Confederacy north of the Mason-Dixon line, other than at Gettysburg.  Though there is at least one at the site of a prisoner of war camp in Chicago.

 The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful.  I passed by a bunch of old gas stations in my rush to get home.  But I did go through Boydton to check in on Randolph Macon College's old campus.  Tragically, the main building looks in even worse shape than I remember.  My final monument picture is of a granite marker for the Jefferson Davis Memorial Highway. 

Monument Law: Virginia Statehouse Version

Thinking about St. Christopher's School a couple weeks back set me to thinking that I needed to put up a post on Richmond monuments.

I wrote some about the monuments around the Tennessee statehouse and had a series of posts on the monuments around the South Carolina statehouse, so I guess it's time to post a few pictures from the Virginia statehouse.  Sometime in the past twenty years since I worked in Richmond, they've cut down the magnolia trees from in front of the Virginia capitol building, so you can now get a really nice view of it (see upper left).  

I took these on a trip home from Philadelphia last summer, just after Eric Muller's post on the White House of the Confederacy.  I stopped by to see the White House -- I toured it years ago, back before I was all that much interested in (or knew anything about) issues of memory and race.  So I wanted to see it again and then as long as I was in the area, I thought I'd stop by and see the latest on the capitol grounds. 

The image in the upper right is of the Washington Monument -- Washington's on the horse; John Marshall is there, too.  Jefferson, too, I think -- not sure about the others.  This is, as I recall, an antebellum monument - - as in, it was put up before the Civil War.  It's used as an emblem on some Confederate currency, I think -- or on the seal of the Confederacy or some such.  At some point I need to think some more and do some reading on antebellum monuments (like the Bunker Hill monument and the Washington monument -- started before the war and completed after it; the Paoli massacre monument near my hometown was put up shortly after the turn of the nineteenth century, as I recall.  So was the South Carolina monument to the Mexican-American war.)

And to the left is a picture of the church where Robert E. Lee worshiped when he was in Richmond.  It's across the street from the capitol grounds.

The trip back to Richmond was really a lot of fun; it's a place I have very, very memories for -- and wow has it changed in the twenty years since I lived there.  Lots of new sky scrapers and buildings where there used to be parking lots, as well as parking lots where there used to be buildings.  One of these days I'd love to spend a few weeks there doing some research at the state archives.

Vancouver – Highs and Lows

In my prior two Vancouver posts, I discussed some of the folks I met in Vancouver, as well as some pending board diversity legislation in Canada.  Today, in my last post on the topic, I want to talk about the highs and lows of the trip. 

No question that one of the high points of visiting Vancouver was the amazing trip out to Bowen Island to see UBC faculty members Janis Sarra and Ron Davis.  When we stepped off the ferry, my significant other commented that he felt he had walked onto a movie set.  And he practically had.  It seems they’ve filmed at least part of just about every movie ever made on Bowen Island.  But the stand out for me is that Harper’s Island was filmed here – and the only reason that I watched that horrible show is that I loved the setting (and there was nothing else on television on a Saturday morning in the middle of the summer).

You’re forgiven if you’ve never seen Harper’s Island – almost no one has. Harper's Island had only one season with 13 episodes, and in each episode one or more main characters were killed in an exceptionally weird and grisly manner. Despite falling ratings, CBS aired all 13 Harper's Island episodes, although the show was moved from its original night and time to Saturdays. (Wikipedia has all the grisly ratings details, as well as a character death chart).

Anyway, Bowen Island is even more beautiful in person than on either the big or small screen.  And Janis was a great host, giving me a short hike around the island, treating me to wine and a fire, and showing me the sights.  Janis was the founding Director of the National Centre for Business Law, which hosted my trip, and was also the Associate Dean of the Faculty of Law from 2003 to 2007.  She teaches corporate finance, commercial insolvency law, corporate law, securities law, contract law, and law and economics, and researches and writes in the areas of corporate law and corporate finance, securities law, and commercial insolvency law.  I first met Janis at Law & Society (Montreal), where I was immediately impressed with her quick wit, her organizational skills, and her ability to walk uphill really fast without getting winded. 

I had never met Ron Davis before, but was delighted to have a chance to do so this time. Ron’s research interests are pension law, corporate law, trust law, law and economics, law and society, and insolvency law. His doctoral dissertation concerned the role of pension funds in corporate governance, focusing on the potential exercise of control over these activities by the employee-beneficiaries and whether such control could lead to increased corporate social responsibility. His most recent book, Democratizing Pension Funds: Corporate Governance and Accountability (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2008), is available here from Google books. 

Another high point: the People’s Law School, pictured right.  I don’t know why it is a high point, since I learned little about it from the receptionist, who seemed put off by our numerous questions about what the “People’s” law school did, how many students they had, whether they had faculty, how they were funded, and whether they needed visitors from the U.S.  I guess I just liked the name.  But according to the website:

Since 1972, we have provided free and impartial public legal education to many thousands of British Columbians in all walks of life. We make special efforts to serve people who may have particular legal education needs, including seniors, workers, students, immigrants, parents and poor people.

Now for the low point, pictured below – Staples, which charged more than $.50/page for printing.  Get a grip people!  These rates are higher than the Four Seasons business center.  The poor guy behind me made the mistake of accidentally printing in color, and they charged him about $8.00 for two pages.  Maybe Staples always charges this much for printing – luckily I’ve never had to try before and will try to avoid it in the future.

That wraps up my Vancouver series of posts.  Next stop: St. Louis!

Vancouver Rocks! (Part II)

In my last post, I shared a few highlights of the people and places I encountered last week in Vancouver.  As I mentioned, the official purpose of my trip was a lecture on corporate board diversity, part of my continuing ethnographic research on the topic undertaken with Lissa Broome and John Conley.

 

Like many other countries, including the U.S., there has been an increasing public focus on corporate board diversity in Canada in recent years.  As shown in the chart below, courtesy of Catalyst, the percentage of board seats held by women in the FP 500 is only slightly less than the percentage held by women in the Fortune 500.  But – just as in the U.S. -- some Canadians believe the percentage should be higher. 

 

For example, Bill S-238, which was recently introduced in the Senate, would mandate gender parity on boards.  But I was told while visiting that it is a private senator's bill which has been tabled at first reading and has not been referred to committee since it was tabled – I take it that means it has little chance of passing.  (HT: Aaron Dhir and Ron Davis) 

 

One thing, though, that I find interesting about the bill is the preamble, featured at the bottom of this post.  Other than the brief allusion to the talent pool, it relies on social justifications for board diversity, rather than the performance-based arguments that are typical in the U.S.  This makes more sense, in my opinion, given our limited current knowledge about the impact of board diversity on firm performance, a topic that I’ve discussed at length in 
prior Lounge posts. (A list of links can be found here, and the announcement for an upcoming conference on the topic is here).

Tomorrow, I’ll conclude this series of posts about my trip with the real highlight: a Bowen Island outing with UBC Law faculty Janis Sarra and Ron Davis.

Image above: the Vancouver cherry blossoms, as seen from my iphone.

Premable:

 

Vancouver Rocks! (Part I)

As I mentioned earlier, I was in Vancouver over spring break, giving a lecture on corporate board diversity, meeting some UBC faculty, and just generally hanging about.  I spent several very happy pre-tenure years at the University of Oregon, and always jump at any chance to head back to the Pacific Northwest – Vancouver did not disappoint.

I was invited out by the wonderful Cristie Ford, Co-Director of the National Centre for Business Law, whose research interests include comparative administrative and public law, securities regulation, corporate governance, and the legal theory surrounding public decision-making.  Cristie combines an unusual and refreshing knowledge of both public decision-making and “new governance,” as it is sometimes called, and financial markets and institutions.  Much of her recent work focuses on the financial crisis, corporate governance, compliance, and corruption.  Her recent piece, "New Governance in the Teeth of Human Frailty: Lessons from Financial Regulation" Wisconsin Law Review (forthcoming 2010), which I read in draft form earlier this year, deals with very difficult issues relating to financial regulation.   It’s nice to see someone with Ford’s knowledge level and command of the literature grapple with them.

David Duff, the Director of the National Centre for Business Law and the school’s Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, was also there, with thoughtful questions and insights about corporate board diversity.  And I was lucky to meet Ben Goold – whose many accomplishments include six years as a Lecturer at the University of Oxford Faculty of Law and a Fellow in Law at Somerville College, and stints as a visiting researcher at the Max-Planck-Institute and the Centre de Recherches Sociologiques sur les Droits et Institutions Pénales in Paris – over a lovely dinner of sashimi and oysters (and lots of wine). 

Finally, and this is my primary Vancouver travel tip, pictured at the top is The Winking Judge Pub, which is directly below the best yoga studio I’ve ever seen.  Now, our BC readers (of which there must be thousands by now) may write in to tell me that, in fact, YYoga is the worst yoga studio in all of Vancouver and that no local would ever go there.  I don’t care.  I went every day – sometimes twice – to the spinning/yoga class, with much nicer bikes than I’ve ever seen in a spinning class.  They have classes all day long from 6 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. and, in addition to the four YRide (spinning/yoga) classes each day, have classes like “yoga for stiff guys,” candlelight flow, and yoga for recovery of cancer and other illnesses.

I’m convinced that if I lived in Vancouver I’d be 20 lbs thinner, because I would live at this gym.  You might protest that the enormous quantities of dim sum I consumed while there would offset even the most vigorous exercise.  You would be right, but wasting your breath – I won’t listen. 

Which brings me to the two lower photos, of Japadog, where Jin ate when he was in Vancover.  Like most humans, whenever we see long lines of people standing in the rain for food, we’re going to stand there too and order whatever they order.   I don’t even like hotdogs, but had to have one, since everyone else in Vancouver seemed to be getting one – I have to admit that the taste of teriyaki and seaweed on a hotdog was not unpleasant, but not one I would wait in a 50-person line in the rain for again. 

More on Vancover, my adventures there, and corporate board diversity tomorrow.

Off To Vancouver

I'm off to Vancouver to give a talk next week, Narratives of Diversity in The Corporate Boardroom, sponsored by The National Centre for Business Law at the University of British Columbia.  Yes, I know I missed the Olympics.  Lounge readers in the area with an interest in board diversity stop by to say 'hello' -- the event appears to be public, though there is a small registration fee.  More information here. 

I'll be back again soon with thoughts on Vancouver, UBC, and other news from the trip.

*******************

Related Posts: 

“Meddling Women” In The Boardroom

Substantial Evidence or Substantial Uncertainty? If Gender Diversity on Boards Clearly Adds Value, Then Why Are There So Few Women on Boards?

Sotomayor, Diversity, And Group Dynamics: Why Do We Care? What Do We Know?



Do The Right Thing – So Long As It’s Free 


Money Is Diversity, Or Diversity Is Money?


What Corporate Insiders Say About Why Diversity Matters


Wrapping It Up: The Struggle To Explain Why Difference Makes a Difference

Also read our two articles on board diversity: Signaling Through Board Diversity: Is Anyone Listening and Narratives of Diversity in the Corporate Boardroom: What Corporate Insiders Say about Why Diversity Matters

Kings Mountain Battlefield

Continuing with my theme this spring of visiting Revolutionary War battlefields, I stopped by the Kings Mountain Battlefield on the way back from Atlanta a couple weeks ago.

I'm always interested in how history is interpreted for the public -- and reading between the lines at the park center, it seems that we may have committed a few atrocities at the conclusion of the battle.  The NPS handled this well, by putting that into the context of the anger and frustration of the patriots at British atrocities committed earlier in the campaign.  They also didn't go into all the details or dwell on it, which helps to keep it in perspective. One other thing about the battlefield -- the mountain part is a little bit of a misnomer.  I'd always thought that Kings Mountain was one of the real mountains that you see from I-85; it's not.  The "mountain" is a rise of about 150 feet off the plain.

Unlike the battle of the Brandywine ("escape itself was almost victory"), we won this one.  That may go a long way to explaining why this is a national park and Brandywine is a state park.  Then again, perhaps some other things are important here -- like in the 1930s when Congress added this to the National Park system, land was cheap in rural South Carolina.  Or, South Carolinians did a good job of campaigning to get recognition for the South's contribution to the Revolution.

Southerners had been complaining about the imbalance in historical memory for a long time.  One of my antebellum orators at UNC was angry about this.  In 1857 Henry W. Miller, a North Carolina politician, delivered a graduation address where he complained about how unfair Northern literature was to the South.  Obviously slavery was central to Miller's complaint.

But even beyond slavery, Miller thought that the histories written by Northerners were unfair to the South:

On the 20th of May, 1775, more than a year before the congress at Philadelphia proclaimed the American colonies free and independent States, a gallant band in North-Carolina, led by those stout-hearted patriots, the Brevards, the Polks, the Alexanders, pledged their "lives, their fortunes, and most sacred honor" in defense of the independence of their country.  ...

Yet strange to say, the "historian of Washington," [Washington Irving] whose work promised to be a faithful record of our glorious struggle for national existence -- in which the gallant deeds of each were the property of all -- does not pay those great events -- those daring blows struck for independence -- even the cold respect of a passing notice.  The history of the struggle of Greece against her Persuian invaders, without the devotion of Leonidas or the glory of Thermopylae!

Now, the reason that address is important is that it was part of a turn taken by orators at UNC in the 1850s as our nation headed towards Civil War.   Because I'm now deep in my paper on ideas in antebellum literary addresses, I thought I'd talk about one other aspect of the addresses, which relates to Kings Mountain.  Some of the addresses employ romantic images to appeal to a sense of national pride.  One of the most romantic is Aaron Brown's 1854 graduation address.   Brown was a UNC graduate (as were almost all of the antebellum graduation speakers) and a lawyer (again, almost all graduation speakers at UNC for this time were).  He was also a former governor of Tennessee.   Brown_appealed to his audience's patriotic sentiments:

If you would kindle up in your bosoms the patriotic fires of the revolution, look out to the west, where you can almost behold the battle grounds of Guildford and King's Mountain.  Nearly in the same range of vision, lies good old Mecklenburg, who threw down the first defiance to British power, and first proclaimed American Independence. Turn your eyes now to yonder eastern summit. There you can look down upon the plain, that stretches off in the distance as far as Yorktown, where the last great battle was fought, and where the American Eagle uttered her loudest notes of triumph and exultation.  Surrounded on every side by holy and consecrated memorials like these, who is not compelled to exclaim 'this is the place'--the very place beyond all others, where the alters of learning, piety and patriotism should have been erected.

Elsewhere in the oration, Brown appealed to the sentiments of freedom that motivated the Revolutionary generation.  He pointed out that taken from a purely utilitarian standpoint, they would have been better off paying the taxes that the British imposed on the colonies.  But, but ... 

Heaven inspired them to know and feel, that the hour had come when they should build up an independent Empire in the new world; an Empire wherein the civil and religious liberties of themselves and their posterity should be secured and established.

At a few places (ok, maybe more than a few places), Brown took some poetic license:

All else was abandoned.  The implements of husbandry were left rusting the field--the ring of the anvil was no longer heard, save in the manufacture of some rude instrument of war--churches dedicated to the Most High were deserted, with no one to minister at their alters--the school houses and the colleges were shut up, and both teacher and scholars hastened to the tended field.  Long and dubious was the conflict; when driven from the plains, they took refuge in the mountains; the rocks and the hills became their castles of defense.  Sometimes buried in snows--often wasted with disease and threatened with famine.  When compelled to retreat from province to province, the enemy would follow them, by the blood trickling from the feet of their bare-footed soldiery....

I'll be writing more about my literary address paper shortly.  Some of the things that interest me are how the orators interpreted the Constitution, how they saw the Constitution as a piece of the creation of a nation, and how they used romantic imagery as a prop to the Constitution.

The image is of Gerard Hall on the UNC campus, where many of the graduation addresses were delivered.  Better pictures on the way soon -- as soon as the weather improves to the point where the cherry blossoms come out.

Update as of February 12, 2011--I now have a couple more photographs of the battlefield, which I took on the way home from Atlanta last weekend.  The mountain looks a lot larger and steeper from the National Park's walking trail than from their interpretative center.  The images are of the north face of the mountain, the two monuments at the crest, and a monument placed in 1930 to honor the c olonel in command of the loyalist forces. y

One Lawyer's Part For Haiti

My co-author’s spouse, Adam Broome (Vice President-Legal, General Counsel & Secretary at Cree, Inc.), is a super-interesting guy for a whole lot of reasons, not the least of which is his passion for aviation.  Last week, Adam had a chance to combine his love of flying with his desire to help out with the Haitian relief effort, by flying his 1983 A36 Bonanza for four days -- January 21-24, 2010 -- to help bring medical and other supplies to Haiti on behalf of the Bahamas Methodist Habitat, a Methodist-affiliated disaster relief organization based in the Bahamas.

According to this news story:

Over the past few years, Bahamas Habitat has used small planes to deliver supplies to Bahamas Methodist Habitat, a charity. When the disaster struck Haiti, the group was in a good position to deliver early help, so it put out a call for pilots, aircraft and donations.

So far, more than 190 people with aircraft have offered their help, and Rotary International has helped with funding and the distribution of supplies in Haiti. More than twenty planes are involved, with more coming, Armstrong said. . . .

And though the small aircraft don't hold a candle to the cargo capacity of their big brothers, they can hopscotch through small airports in Ohio, Florida and Georgia to pick up supplies. In Haiti, the planes can reach tiny airstrips where larger craft might have trouble.

And according to this article (Download Nassau Guardian Article on BMH-1) in the Nassau Guardian, which contains contact, donation, and other information:

Kudos to Adam, Bahamas Methodist Habitat, and to the many others who have given so generously of their time, money, and other resources during this crisis.

Top photo: Adam's Route to Cap Haitien

Next Photo: fully loaded at Inagua

Third: Unloading

Bottom: View of Cap Haitien on the north coast of Haiti

Commuting ... and Kindling

So I'm doing a lot of flying this semester and have finally entered the age of netbooks and Kindles.  And here's what I've discovered.  While I absolutely adore both my netbook and my Kindle, I've run into a few glitches here and there.  I'm sure I'll work out solutions at some point.

1. When you have to fly airlines in which you don't hold membership to the airline lounge, you take your chances that the rest of the airport has: (a) wireless Internet access at all; or, (b) wireless Internet access for a reasonable fee.

2. When you stop off in Canada, you can't access any of your U.S. licensed Internet media (at least things like movies on Netflix) because of regional restrictions on the license.

3. Sometimes even in airline lounges, the Internet capacity isn't good enough to stream audio or vidio files effectively.

4. Gotta love Charlotte Airport with exceptionally strong free Wi-Fi throughout!

5. While Kindles are terrific and I can read all the trashy novels I want whenever and wherever I travel, they are an electronic device and must be switched off during takeoff and landing.  Not a limitation with a real book - for all those people who say reading from a Kindle is as close as you can get to reading from a book.

Anyone else want to share electronic travel glitches?

An Athens Cemetery

Been meaning to post some pictures of the Athens, Georgia cemetery where Thomas Cobb is buried (Oconee Hill).  Here's a picture of the monument to Thomas Cobb in the Cobb family plot.  And below I've posted a close-up of the column, which has details on the lives of several generations of the Cobb family who are buried in this plot.  I took these when I was down in Athens last August for a conference at the Thomas Cobb house.

And I also have a picture of an antebellum mausoleum--dedicated to an officer who died in the Mexican-American war. You may recall we've spoken recently of the Mexican-American War Memorial on the South Carolina capitol grounds.  

Constitutional Places: A New Coffee Table Book

I love this!  Josh Blackman and Yaakov Roth are putting together a book of photographs of places where great constitutional law cases arose.  They write:

In keeping with the mission of the Harlan Institute, which seeks to utilize the power of Web 2.0 to make the Constitution more accessible, we are asking (blegging in the cyber lingo) bloggers across the Nation to help us out, and submit photographs. You will be credited in the ultimate production.  If you live in any of these areas, we will find the exact location, and help you track it down.

They've got some great cases picked out that are in need of photographs.  Of course they're looking for a Ten Commandments monument (Van Orden v. Perry, 545 U.S. 677 (2005)).  Other cases to think about adding ... Fletcher v. Peck, Johnson v. McIntosh, and Worcester v. Georgia -- and The Antelope.  There's a monument to the latter on Amelia Island, Florida, as I recall.   How about Euclid v. Ambler Realty, too?  And a school in Charlotte -- for Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenberg? 

Over at Volokh, Ilya Somin's talking about this project.

Not to sound too "popular constitutional" about things -- but maybe they'd want to include photographs of places important in constitutional thought even though they're not immediately connected to a case -- like Charleston, SC, ground zero for the nullification controversy, or Fort Sumter for that matter.  Or the Virginia state capitol, sight of debates over slavery in the 1830s and later the seat of the Confederate Congress.  Or Gettysburg.  Or maybe a bus in Montgomery, Alabama.

Now, this also makes me think .... what about great cases from the North Carolina Supreme Court?  Like, hmm, University of North Carolina v. Foy.  Sally Greene's already got State v. Mann fully covered.

Along the lines of "popular constitutionalism," the illustration is of a tree at the Brandywine Battlefield Park, which I took over winter break.  The tree was there at the time of the battle and so was the house in the background, which is where LaFayette had his headquarters.  I'll be talking soon some more about those heroes who barely staved off defeat of the revolutionary cause at Brandywine.  On that day (September 11, 1777), to invoke a nineteenth-centuryism, "escape itself was almost victory" for us.  John Marshall was there, as a young officer, and so were a bunch of other people who were almost captured.

Before we could proudly say of Franklin that he wrested lightning from the heavens and scepters from tyrannts, our cause had to actually wrest a scepter from a tyrannt.  Brandywine was part of putting those revolutionary ideas into practice, though as things worked out, there wasn't a whole lot of wresting scepters on that day, or in the dark freezing and starving times that followed at Valley Forge.

South Carolina Statehouse: African American Monument

In honor of Martin Luther King Day, I thought I'd post some pictures of the monument to African Americans on the South Carolina statehouse grounds.  The South Carolina capitol grounds are packed with monuments -- to the Mexican-American War, the Confederacy, the Spanish-American War, Wade Hampton, Ben Tillman, Strom Thurmond, World War II, and probably some other people and/or wars, which I didn't take pictures of.  I've not seen another statehouse with so many monuments around it.  Though I must say that in terms of monuments, nothing beats Gettysburg in my experience.

Anyway, the monument to African Americans is different from the other monuments around the statehouse -- it's more recent than all but one of the monuments.  (It was dedicated in March 2001.)  And visitors walk inside it.  There are two panoramics of African American history in South Carolina.  A picture of one is on the upper right. One of the things that interests me are the phrases on the monument, "Jim Crow Law," "Black Codes," "Lynching," "Sharecropping," then later on, a few panels down, there's Briggs v. Elliott (a 1952 Supreme Court case that became part of Brown v. Board of Education) and, of course, Brown v. Board of Education.  Quite a lot gets packed into that monument.

Then in the center of the monument is a map of Africa and the United States, which shows some of the places where South Carolina's African Americans' ancestors came from.  It's hard to get a good picture of the map.

Here're some more pictures of the monument.  They put the monument into perspective on the capitol grounds, as well as give close ups of a lot of the panels.

2nd World Conference, Day 1

Yesterday, we wrapped up Day 1 of the 2nd World Conference on the Hormonal and Genetic Basis of Sexual Differentiation Disorders and Hot Topics in Endocrinology.  There were several good panels with excellent presenters, though (as predicted) I had many “fish out of water” moments.  The high point of the day, for me, came at the end, when a panel chair posed a provocative question: what sort of recommendation, if any, would the audience make to the IOC, if given the chance, about whether intersex individuals such as Caster Semenya could compete in women's athletic competitions?

Most of those who spoke prefaced their comments with the caveat that insufficient information had been released about the Semenya case for the group to opine about her case, specifically.  But some felt that medical and scientific experts should make general recommendations, and that the recommendation should be to allow intersex individuals to compete in women's sports in cases like Semenya's, where the individual identified as female and has been raised as a female.  Some argued that many athletes possess genetic advantages that give them superior athletic skill, and that new genetic sources of such traits are being quickly discovered with new scientific advancements. Given that reality, they asked, why should intersex be singled out as a genetic competitive advantage to be prohibited?

Others would differentiate conditions likely to confer athletic advantage from those unlikely to do so, and condition athletic eligibility accordingly (more on this to follow later).  Finally, some commenters felt that the issue of intersex in sport was not a medical or scientific question, but a social one.  Competitive sport, according to this line of thinking, is based on sometimes-artificial distinctions about what constitutes “fair play.” Those distinctions depend on social notions of fairness and definitions of desirable competitiveness as judged by sports governing bodies – not on medical or scientific opinion.  As such, it is not the place of medical or scientific experts to make such recommendations.

Interested readers might want to read Gina Kolata’s article in Friday’s New York Times on the IOC meeting, which also discusses some of these issues.  That’s all for now.  The beach is just outside the door, and I haven’t even seen it yet – a lapse that I hope to correct later today.  But I have had some mojitos and Cuban food (in addition to learning some new things) so all is not lost.

Miami, Here We Come

I’m thankfully escaping winter for a few days (yes, I know how ridiculous that sounds to Lounge readers in, say, Minneapolis or Chicago, but indulge me: I’m southern and really, really prefer warm weather) for the 2nd World Conference on the Hormonal and Genetic Basis of Sexual Differentiation Disorders and Hot Topics in Endocrinology.  From the conference program (via AP):

The International Olympic Committee will convene a special conference of medical experts to draw up guidelines for dealing with “ambiguous” gender cases in the wake of South African runner Caster Semenya’s sex-test controversy.

IOC medical commission chairman Arne Ljungqvist told The Associated Press on Tuesday that his panel will organize a symposium in Miami Beach, Florida in January to look at gender issues and advise sports bodies how to respond. “Sometimes you come across cases that are uncertain and ambiguous, and it changes from being a sports matter to a medical matter,” Ljungqvist said. “That’s where we need to have a review.”

The move comes amid intense international scrutiny on Semenya, the 18-year-old athlete who won the women’s 800 meters at the world championships in Berlin in August. . . .

The IOC symposium - to be attended by 10 to 15 scientists and sports federation doctors - will take place in conjunction with the 2nd World Conference on Hormonal and Genetic Basis of Sexual Differentiation Disorders, from Jan. 15-17 in  Miami Beach, Fla.

This is a first for me –a pure medical conference – and I’m sure that I’ll feel a bit like a fish out of water.  The other conferences related to law and medicine that I have attended in the past, such as the American Society for Bioethics and The Humanities, had a lot of non-doctors and non-scientists in attendance, including lawyers. 

At the fall ASBH annual meeting in DC, for example, I moderated a panel on Ethics, Policy, and Human Fertility Markets with Aaron Levine (School of Public Policy, Georgia Tech), Lisa Ikemoto (School of Law, University of California-Davis), Rene Almeling (Sociology, Yale), and Jennifer Haylett (Graduate Student, Sociology, University of California-Davis).   Although the panelists hailed from different disciplines, we all pretty much spoke the same language. 

Luckily, I’ll have colleagues Doriane Coleman (law professor, two-time Swiss national 800-meters champion, and co-counsel to Mary Decker Slaney in her fight against doping charges) and Richard Clark (Clinical and Medical Supervisor of the division of Metabolic and Urogenital Diseases at Glaxo Wellcome Research and Development, and an Associate Consulting Professor in the Divisions of Endocrinology, Metabolism and Nutrition and Reproductive Gynecology at the Duke University Medical Center), with whom I’ve been kicking around ideas on the Semenya case, to keep me company (and translate, if necessary).

I, in contrast, as Lounge readers already know, have no athletic ability or relevant medical or scientific expertise, but dislike cold weather and am interested in issues of doping, “cheating,” and intersex in sports.  Stay tuned for an update when I return.

Monuments of West Chester, Pennsylvania

As I promised, I've taken a few photographs of my home town, West Chester, Pennsylvania.  I've got a couple of photographs of the Union Solider Monument -- in Marshall Square Park.  Whenever I think of a park in my mind's eye, I think of Marshall Square Park (which was established in 1848--the 1840s were a big decade for West Chester, as will become apparent in a moment) and also one of the other parks near where I grew up, as well as Maymount Park in Richmond, Virginia. (Photos of it and the Carillon to follow -- probably in March when I'm next in Richmond, for a conference at the Library of Virginia.)

The West Chester monument was put up around 1887--so somewhat earlier than most of the monuments in southern towns that I'm familiar with.  And it's also on a pretty high pedestal.  A better view of its height appears in the image below.

   And while I was in downtown West Chester, I thought that I'd take a picture of the Courthouse, which was built in 1846 -- along with the "Ten Commandments Monument," which was placed on it around 1920.  The courthouse is a really grand structure -- lots of granite there.  So it's a lot more solid looking than many of the antebellum courthouses that I'm familiar with in the South.  It's testimony to how well Chester County was doing in the years leading into Civil War, especially in comparison with the south. 

So Long, Israel (Part II)

Yesterday, I began my “So Long, Israel” post, discussing some of the highlights of my trip.  I guess it’s a good thing when your trip has so many memorable moments that you have to divide them into two separate posts.

One of the very best parts of the trip was the weekend I spent in the countryside heading out toward Galilee with Yehuda Adar.  Meeting Yehuda’s family and hiking through the beautiful countryside while discussing Yehuda’s new project on relational contracts made for a fabulous day.  I wish that I had some photos to post for you, as this was one of the most beautiful areas of the country, I thought, but we forgot to charge the cell phone that day.  I do have more than just memories, though – in a little while I’m going to make a salad, dressed with olive oil pressed from Yehuda’s olive trees.  Every time I use that oil, I’ll remember that weekend.

I was especially lucky to get to know Michal Gal while I was at Haifa. Michal’s research focuses on competition law and policy, including oligopoly pricing, the conditions for antitrust in developing economies, the political economy of antitrust, and the globalization of antitrust. Michal was the excellent commenter on my paper at the Behavioral Analysis of Law: Markets, Institutions, and Contracts conference that first brought me to Haifa, and was at my birthday dinner, but without me (that will teach my significant other to plan a surprise party again!)

The crowning touch of the whole trip was the final farewell dinner with Orna Rabinovich-Einy (ADR, dispute resolution and technology, civil procedure), Faina Milman (International Labor Law, Labor Law, ADR), and Mordehai Mironi (Labor & Employment, Negotiation, ADR) at Manta Ray on the beach in Tel Aviv.  The setting is amazing, with waves crashing practically at your table, and the New Year’s lights, the bottle of Cava, the fresh seafood, and the toasts to new friends made the occasion a truly festive one.  We laughed and gossiped as if we had known each other for years, rather than for a few weeks.  I’m especially looking forward to seeing Faina’s forthcoming work on prison labor.

I’ll miss learning about axiomatic theories over excellent hummus and kebabs with Alan Miller, exchanging prediction markets reading lists with Tal Zarsky, learning about organ donation under Jewish law from Yehiel Kaplan, discussing women’s rights, law and society, and other issues with Sagit Mor and Ronit Haramati-Alpern, and lamenting the deficiencies of the U.S. law review process with Ronen Perry.

That wraps up pretty much the whole trip.  Lounge readers sick of hearing about my travels will get a break for a while.  Next stop: Miami, for the 2nd World Conference on the Hormonal and Genetic Basis of Sexual Differentiation Disorders and Hot Topics in Endocrinology.  More on that later. . .

Above image: Haifa from the Bahá’í gardens, as seen through my iphone

So Long, Israel (Part I)

I just returned today from my extended visit to Israel, where I spent the month of December sightseeing, conferencing, teaching, presenting papers (here and here), and meeting new friends.  I was lucky during this trip to have a chance to meet faculty from Tel Aviv, Hebrew, and Bar-Ilan, but spent most of the time at Haifa, and am happy to say that I got to know almost the entire faculty there at least a little bit.

Aside from the beautiful location in the Carmel forest overlooking the Mediterranean, Haifa is a great place to be because the faculty is astonishingly smart, welcoming, and engaged.  I feel certain that I’ve made life-long friends there.

I can’t do justice to all the people I met and the fun things that I did and saw there, but wanted to review a few of the highlights in my goodbye post.  Avishalom Tor, whom I’ve known since he was an S.J.D. student at Harvard (yikes, I’m old!)  was kind enough to set up this visit, organized a fabulous conference at the beginning of the trip, and basically looked after me the whole time I was there. 

Avishalom’s research uses a behavioral and experimental approach to study competitive behavior generally and its legal regulation in market settings specifically.  His work has been published in legal, decision-making, psychological, and economic journals, such as the Michigan Law Review, Antitrust Law Journal, Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, Psychological Science, and the Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics. You can read the coverage of his research on The N-Effect: More Competitors, Less Competition (with Stephen M. Garcia, University of Michigan - Ross School of Business) in the Boston Globe and the Economist (subscription required).  Avishalom is also the Secretary of the European Association of Law and Economics (EALE).  

One of Avishalom’s many collaborators is fellow Haifa faculty member Oren Gazal-Ayal.  I spent several lunches (and a wonderful dinner on my last night in Haifa) talking to Oren about his various projects, all of which are fascinating.  They range from testifying before the Israeli legislature on sentencing guidelines, comparing the incentives of Israeli academics to their U.S. counterparts, analyzing the impact of defendant characteristics on criminal sentences, and researching the influence of innocence on plea bargaining, among others.  See Oren’s faculty publication page or his SSRN page to download these and other articles.

One of the highlights of the trip involved fellow Haifa visitor NYU’s Rochelle Dreyfuss and her spouse, Robert, with whom we spent a great, but rainy, day sightseeing in the ancient port city of Caesarea.  The top photo above shows Caesarea on a beautiful sunny day.  We took the lower one with our iphone during a break in the rain. 

The trip to Caesarea was followed by dinner at the home of Haifa’s amazing new dean, Niva Elkin-Koren.  U.S. readers in IP probably already know Elkin-Koren’s work, which is extensive.  Elkin-Koren is also a Global Visiting Professor of Law at NYU. It must be hard for someone so academically inclined to take on administrative duties, but Haifa faculty seem to take great pride in their institution and the collaborative way in which it is managed.  Everyone seems to pitch in, in terms of committee and other service, and Niva strikes me as a good example of that.

I’m jet-lagged and need a nap, so I’ll quit there for now.  Tomorrow, I’ll conclude this “farewell to Israel” post.

Related Post: So Long, Israel (Part II)