Source: https://www.thefacultylounge.org/2009/11/page/2/
Timestamp: 2019-04-26 12:19:41+00:00

Document:
The Daily Tar Heel has the details. Anthropologists are looking for unmarked graves in the African American section.
[Chapel Hill Preservation Society president Ernest] Dollar said the society became directly involved with the cemetery after the 1985 UNC-Clemson University football game.
Fans used the black section of the cemetery as a parking lot.
I passed the cemetery just recently on my way over to Lenoir for lunch and was thinking about how the nineteenth century gravestones in the white section would make a nice illustration to a post on cemetery law.
Why the difference in monuments and fences? Let me speculate that the Philanthropic Society (which drew its members from the eastern part of the state had more money--hence the better monuments).
And I can't help but notice that the Philanthropic Society's fence has the same kind of arch that appeared in Thomas Cobb's bookcase (and in the Episcopal Church in Hillsborough, where Thomas Ruffin worshiped, and in Southern University's building in Greensboro, Alabama, too.) Check out the Philanthropic Society's fence at the right (or it may be below, depending on your browser).
1. Make the support staff mark your exams and papers. Why should an international superstar waste time on menial activities like grading?
2. Even very busy professors should take the time to demonstrate their importance. Email your faculty list serve with regular updates about your standings in SSRN’s Top Authors ranking.
3. Truly busy people have little time to spare for even relatively efficient communications like list serves. Save time: blog about how much more productive you are than your colleagues!
4. If you burp, sneeze, or say something important to the local media (like “fraud is bad”), make sure that your school’s website reports on each instance, thwarting attempts to highlight colleagues’ scholarly accomplishments.
5. Don’t use your own office for media tapings. Instead, demand the use of scarce classroom, library, or other common spaces. In fact, insist on the dean’s suite.
6. Busy people must multitask to get everything done. When on a symposium or conference panel, text in full view of audience members and fellow panelists. If you receive an amusing communication, laugh out loud while others are presenting.
7. Another panel tip: demand to present first and then leave as soon as you speak without waiting to hear your co-panelists. Alternatively, demand to go last, then show up late, just before your start time. One instance may not be enough to demonstrate your busyness. Make it a hard and fast rule.
8. Time, page, and other limits are for less important people. When giving a faculty workshop, send a paper that is at least 100 single-spaced pages, and spend the entire hour presenting it. Why leave time for questions? Your paper’s already perfect.
9. Treat attempts to schedule committee meetings as an opportunity to demonstrate your many contributions to the institution. When prompted by the chair for a list of available meeting times, do the opposite: list every event on your calendar.
10. Don’t try to remember the names of students, staff, or untenured faculty. You’re too busy.
Plaintiff, a current student at New York Law School, ("NYLS") is suing NYLS as a result of a "C" that Plaintiff received in his Legal Writing II course. Plaintiff now moves for an injunction requiring the law school to change its grading system from letter grades to pass/fail. Defendant/New York Law School moves to dismiss. For the reasons stated below, the motion is granted.
Writers block? In the WSJ (subscription), from writing in the bathroom (Junot Díaz) to dressing in character (Nicholson Baker), 11 top authors share their methods for getting the story on the page.
Of the nation’s 8,100 banks, about 2,200 — ranging from community lenders in the Rust Belt to midsize regional players — far exceed the risk thresholds that would ordinarily call for greater scrutiny from management and regulators, according to Foresight Analytics, a banking research firm.
About 600 small banks are in danger of collapsing because of troubled real estate loans if they do not shore up their finances soon, according to the firm. About 150 lenders have failed since the crisis erupted in mid-2007.
Conservative [Egyptian] lawmakers have called for a ban on imports of a Chinese-made kit meant to help women fake their virginity. The Artificial Virginity Hymen kit, which is distributed by the Chinese company Gigimo and costs about $30, is intended to help newly married women fool their husbands into believing they are virgins, an essential marriage requirement for women in much of the Middle East, by leaking a blood-like substance when inserted and broken. Sheik Sayed Askar, a member of the parliamentary committee on religious affairs, demanded the government take responsibility for fighting the product, which he said would make it easier for women to give in to temptation.
I learned recently of the BBC radio series, The Cases That Changed Our World. The latest episode is "The legal case of the snail found in the ginger beer ," Donoghue v Stevenson (1932).
This year's 32 Rhodes Scholars have been announced and the folks at Auburn, Louisville, and North Carolina are already crowing. Although the Rhodes site does not yet have the official list of names and bios - that's sure to be up shortly - regional press is all over this story. The Birmingham News is talking about Auburn All-American swimmer Jordan Anderson here. The Louisville Courier-Journal is talking about Monica Marks who brings the University of Louisville its very first Rhodes award. But the Romantic Rhodes surely goes to UNC where sweethearts Libby Longino and Henry Spelman both snagged the prestigious prize. Good news for UNC, great news for the lucky couple which now need not navigate the fallout of having one winner and one...almost winner.
I've often wondered about norms within academia about appropriate uses for tenure letters, particularly in appointments processes involving other schools. I'm thinking particularly about two situations.
1. If Professor X writes a tenure letter in support of Candidate Y's application for tenure, and in the process of reviewing Candidate Y's work and writing the letter, realizes that Candidate Y might be a good fit for an open position at Professor X's school, is there anything unethical about Professor X encouraging her school to pursue Candidate Y as a possible lateral hire? Is there any potential conflict here?
2. What if Professor X writes a tenure letter for Candidate Y for ABC Law School, and then the appointments chair at DEF Law School contacts Professor X and says that she understands that Professor X has written the letter for the ABC tenure process, and would they mind forwarding a copy to DEF for their appointments process. Is there any conflict there? Should Professor X ask ABC School if they mind the letter being forwarded elsewhere? That would potentially give away the fact that Candidate Y is on the lateral hiring market (which ABC law school may not know).
Can anyone identify clear norms that apply in either of these situations?
What is a good way of sharing information with your class that is effective and not annoying? I often see news articles, video clips, or blog posts that my be of use to students, but I don't want to email the class list every single time I have something to share. Multiple emails clogging inboxes from professors cannot imaginably be on a list of student wants. Blackboard and TWEN are incredibly useful for providing students with syllabi and reading materials, but are not the best designed sites for quick posts.
Many posts on this blog have addressed the merits and drawbacks of social networking sites, such as Facebook. Many comments on those posts express suspicion at the thought of joining, for professional and privacy reasons. Some of this sentiment may stem from a desire to separate from youth culture, as these sites initially appear to be a dating forum. (In reality, one gets status updates from junior high friends about their kids' soccer games or how much they love Fridays.) There also may be misgivings about facebook-friending students, as the boundaries for what is an appropriate student/faculty interaction becomes murky.
So in pops Twitter. Or even Tumblr. Both of these are micro blogging sites that allow users to share information easily and quickly. I set up a page for my Family Law class, and whenever I see something to share, I cut and paste it to our class page. Very easy to cut and paste, and the format is a much better design than Westlaw, and best of all, I don't have to email the entire class. I told them the twitter site, which I gave a memorable name. The page is public, so the students don't have to have their own account. The most wonderful aspect is that I can name the page whatever I want. So if anyone is skeptical about having more web exposure, you can disassociate yourself from your twitter page.
Just a 20 word explanation of the post, and a link. It's wonderful. Barack Obama and Deeprak Chopra Twitter, so I figure it's legitimate.
This almost feels like a reality show! Should we create an information market around predictions of finalists?
Overall, the Spearman rank-order correlation between enrollment and Super Lawyers rank for all law schools included in the Super Lawyers survey is -.51 (N=180, p<.0001).
But, the relationship differs within the four quarters of the Super Lawyers rank. The correlation in the top quarter is like that in the total group. But there is essentially no relationship in the 2nd and 3rd quarters, where enrollment is less variable, and there is a non-significant trend toward the opposite direction in the bottom quarter.
Here's a pdf version of a couple of tables, which help illustrate what I've just described.
If you're interested in my more considered thoughts on rankings (and in particular how law review citations can be used to bring some more precision to rankings), check out this paper.
Update: Brian Leiter's prepared a list of the top 15 schools, correcting for current class size.
Harvard , Michigan, Yale, Chicago, Virginia, Stanford, Berkeley, Northwestern, Columbia, Cornell, Penn, Duke, NYU, Georgetown.
I have some questions. The first two are methodological. Why would you choose the Class of 1999 as the denominator for a per capita calculation? Surely most Super Lawyers came from a much earlier class - probably something like the Class of 1980. The Class of 1999 is such an odd choice that it makes me wonder if the folks at NU ran the data with earlier - and probably more appropriate classes - and didn't like the result. And while we're at it, what's with limiting the ranking to US News Top 14 schools? Did inclusion of USC, UCLA, Vandy, or Texas undermine the project?
My second question is this: does it really bolster Northwestern's reputation to get enmeshed in the Super Lawyer rankings? Doesn't it convey a sense of institutional insecurity? Perhaps Van Zandt correctly believes that Northwestern is in a tight battle with a few competitor schools and that this new ranking might tip the balance in a bunch of close cases.
But the Van Zandt Law School Ranking is so dubious, in its own right, that he exposes the law school to snarky posts like the one over at ATL. And in today's market, I'd think that Northwestern would be better off avoiding bad press at Above the Law than re-polishing the Super Lawyer law school rankings.
Google Delivers The Law. Are West and Lexis Sweating?
Google is at it again. Google Scholar has just been expanded to include (some number of) federal judicial opinions. I'm not certain the extent of this collection and, because of that, I'm not sure whether this collection is tons more extensive than the web more generally. For example, one can find Korematsu in a number of different free databases already. It appears that Google is not yet looking to displace traditional legal research databases, but rather to assist researchers - and members of the general public - trying to find relatively famous cases. But it also appears that they've included the beginnings of cross-referencing between cases and journal articles. I can't help but wonder whether a full-scale war on West and Lexis, at least with respect to cases (and to some degree journals), is on the horizon.
Starting today, we're enabling people everywhere to find and read full text legal opinions from U.S. federal and state district, appellate and supreme courts using Google Scholar. You can find these opinions by searching for cases (like Planned Parenthood v. Casey), or by topics (like desegregation) or other queries that you are interested in. For example, go to Google Scholar, click on the "Legal opinions and journals" radio button, and try the query separate but equal. Your search results will include links to cases familiar to many of us in the U.S. such as Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Education, which explore the acceptablity of "separate but equal" facilities for citizens at two different points in the history of the U.S. But your results will also include opinions from cases that you might be less familiar with, but which have played an important role. We think this addition to Google Scholar will empower the average citizen by helping everyone learn more about the laws that govern us all. To understand how an opinion has influenced other decisions, you can explore citing and related cases using the Cited by and Related articles links on search result pages. As you read an opinion, you can follow citations to the opinions to which it refers. You can also see how individual cases have been quoted or discussed in other opinions and in articles from law journals. Browse these by clicking on the "How Cited" link next to the case title. See, for example, the frequent citations for Roe v. Wade, for Miranda v. Arizona (the source of the famous Miranda warning) or for Terry v. Ohio (a case which helped to establish acceptable grounds for an investigative stop by a police officer).
You have to dig really deep into the 80s vault to find this one.
Via Tyler Cowen: Chindogu, literally translated as "weird tool:"
Chindogu is the Japanese art of creating deliberately complex devices that solve simple everyday problems. . . .
People cite "lack of time" as the number one reason they don't work out more. With the dumbbell phone, that's no longer an excuse. Great for bulking up at your otherwise worthless telemarketing job, this phone will have you shaped and sculpted in no time.
Banks around the world face increases in funding costs that could cut profits and hit their customers as they look to re finance $7,000bn-plus in short-term debt expiring in the next three years with longer-dated bonds, according to research released on Tuesday.
The flood of expiring debt will hit the US and the UK hard – with $2,000bn of debt coming due by 2012 – and could curb banks’ profits or force them to charge individuals and companies more for their services.
Via CalculatedRisk, Cash for Caulkers?
White House officials are now looking at creating a new version of cash for clunkers — this time for home weatherization.
Bangladeshis seeking to learn English and better their job prospects abroad need not look further than their mobile phone, which will feature brief lessons conducted by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) . . .
"This is the first service of this kind anywhere in the world," Alan Freedman, the country director of BBC World Service Trust, told a news conference.
I should note that nuts-and-bolts law is good, but when I was a law clerk (on the Sixth Circuit for Judge Merritt) there were three times when the judge asked me about an obscure legal point and I was able to give a correct black-letter answer off the top of my head, and those answers came from courses in International Human Rights Law, Law Science and Technology, and . . . Law And Sexuality.
The Drexel Law Review is pleased to announce a symposium issue focusing on law and policy in South Asia to be published during Spring/Summer 2010. We invite the submission of articles, essays, and book reviews on any topic related to law or public policy in one or more countries in South Asia, including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Burma/Myanmar, India, Iran, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, Sikkim, or Sri Lanka.
There are no minimum or maximum length requirements for submission, but we encourage submissions ranging between 10- 65 journal pages (between 3,000 and 20,000 words, including text and footnotes). Submissions will be accepted and reviewed on a rolling basis through December 31, 2009.
Versatile actor Edward Woodward died earlier this week. You can find The New York Times obituary here.
Many readers may remember Woodward from his television work in "The Equalizer" (1985-89). But I'll always remember him from his role in "Breaker Morant," a 1980 film that I place on my "top ten" list of "movies and the law" and highly recommend. (The film comes in at #7 on a list of "The 25 Greatest Legal Movies" compiled by the ABA Journal.) In fact, I'll be adding it to my Netflix queue as soon as I wrap up this post.
Car & Driver magazine to rank law schools on the basis of how many faculty members subscribe to Car & Driver magazine.
In my usual attempt to avoid serious issues, I've noticed that we're about to step into the Hollywood awards season in the next few months and the NY Times has started using phrases like "Oscar Buzz" in its entertainment section. But that's nothing compared to the release today of the news that People magazine has voted Johnny Depp the Sexiest Man Alive for the second time. I wonder who would win if US News did the same thing for law professors?
Harvard, Michigan, Texas, Virginia, Georgetown, NYU, Columbia, Florida, Berkeley, Yale, Hastings, GW, BU, UCLA, Penn.
Schools are ranked according to the total number of graduates named to the state and regional Super Lawyers lists in 2009. In the event of a tie between schools, the cumulative peer evaluation and research scores of graduates are used as tie-breakers. We recognize that schools with smaller graduating classes may be at a disadvantage in our ranking. We considered taking into account class size, but decided not to this year for several reasons: First, we found that class size was not as big a factor as you might think. There were very large schools that ranked low and small schools that ranked high on our list. The quality of graduates, not the size of the school, is what ultimately determines where schools land on our list. Second, this first year we wanted to keep our methodology simple so that people could easily understand what we are doing. We reward schools that produce the greatest number of outstanding attorneys, period. Our approach is similar to the way baseball crowns a homerun king based on total homeruns without employing a weighted average based on plate appearances. And finally, there is the practical problem of factoring in class size. The lawyers on our list graduated 10, 20 or 30 years ago. How do you accurately determine the graduation class sizes of nearly 200 schools through the years?
More complete data is available from Paul Caron here.
What Took Them So Long? Motive's Easy!
It's shameful that CNN took more than two years to figure out the motives for these murderous shootings by U.S. soldiers when that sort of inquiry into motive really shouldn't take more than a few hours.
Score one for Southern New England School of Law and the rah-rah squad at UMass - Dartmouth. As we've talked about previously, SNESL trying to merge with UMass Dartmouth. Put perhaps more precisely, SNESL is trying to stay afloat (and presumably save existing jobs). And the leadership of UMass - Dartmouth is trying to outfox the flagship campus and create the state's sole public law school. Meanwhile, likely competitors of such an enterprise (read: Suffolk and New England Law Schools) are making the case against the merger. Elie Mystal talks about the issue here.
"Every new program that the university has taken on has thrived, so I'm very interested and curious and excited to see what the outcome of the analysis will be, and if the analysis supports the fiscal wisdom of it, then I look forward to supporting the move."
I continue to wonder about the strategic wisdom of the move. Other than a leg-up on administrative operations, what does the state gain by taking on the existing SNESL operation? The skeptic in me believes that the UMass Dartmouth folks know that this is the only way on earth that they'll ever score a law school. But if Massachusetts really wants a state law school, it could produce a phenomenal institution from the ground up in Amherst, Boston... or Dartmouth. I'd be happy to suggest a good model for a start-up!
Crusaders against Political Correctness, Prenez Courage!
It's an article of faith among some cultural warriors that the truth about American Indians, Islam, and, well, nearly everything has fallen to the forces of political correctness. The idea is that back in the good old days, textbooks presented our nation's kids with an unvarnished account of things, but now they distort and propagandize. The concern appears especially great about the depiction of Islam, which critics call a "whitewashing" that downplays Islam's violence.
Traditionalists, take heart! The conventional narrative appears to survive ... in our kids' foreign language textbooks!
For a long time, Christians went on pilgrimage when they could to Jerusalem, the city where Christ died. The priests said that this pilgrimage could get them pardon for their sins and guarantee them a place in heaven. But once the Turks, who are Muslims, took the Holy Land (the region that today is called Israel), they attacked the pilgrims, stole from them, and even killed them.
This is when Pope Urban II came to France and preached that a huge expedition should be launched to deliver Jerusalem from the hands of the Muslims. It was in 1095. The public became very enthusiastic. With cries of "God wills it!", crowds of pilgrims left for the long journey to the Holy Land. Among them were some well-equipped members of the nobility, but especially lots of poor people. There were even some children. All of them sewed a cross of red fabric on their shoulder. These were the Crusaders and their expedition was a crusade. Many died along the way of hunger, thirst, illness, or attacks by the people whose countries they passed through. The first wave of crusaders was massacred, but others followed who lived to see the sun glisten on the domes of Jersusalem.
... The Crusaders discovered a new world and an Eastern civilization that was richer and more luxurious than that in their home country. From the Crusades, the crusaders brought back more refined tastes: silk, rich brocades, and tapestries were now among their possessions. They tasted spices like pepper, cinnamon, and cloves, which became some of the most precious commodities of the Middle Ages. Why? Because they tasted good, of course, but also because in a world without refrigeration, they helped conserve foods, especially meats. They discovered new fruits, such as the orange and the apricot, new vegetables like the artichoke. They also brought back the almond tree. They had contact with new ideas, and most of all, they learned the advantages of uniting with neighbors in a shared enterprise.
What a relief to see Holy War depicted accurately for a change!

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