ContractsProf Blog

Tribute to Professor Richard E. Speidel

The University of San Diego School of Law and the San Diego Law Review have published a tribute issue for Professor Richard E. Speidel.

 The authors and their topics included in the tribute issue, in alphabetical order, are as follows:

Jay M. Feinman, Distinguished Professor of Law, Rutgers University School of Law, Camden: The Insurance Relationship as Relational Contract and the “Fairly Debatable” Rule for First-Party Bad Faith.

William H. Henning, Distinguished Professor of Law, University of Alabama, and William H. Lawrence, Professor of Law, University of San Diego: A Unified Rationale for Section 2-607(3)(a) Notification.

Robert A. Hillman, Edwin H. Woodruff Professor of Law, Cornell Law School: Maybe Dick Speidel Was Right About Court Adjustment.

Charles L. Knapp, Joseph W. Cotchett Distinguished Professor of Law, University of California Hastings College of Law: Blowing the Whistle on Mandatory Arbitration: Unconscionability as a Signaling Device.

William W. Park, Professor of Law, Boston University: Arbitrator Integrity: The Transient and the Permanent.

Joseph M. Perillo, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Fordham University School of Law: The Collateral Source Rule in Contract Cases.

Robert S. Summers, William G. McRoberts Professor of Research in the Administration of Law, Cornell Law School: Good Faith Revisited: Some Brief Remarks Dedicated to the Late Richard E. Speidel—Friend, Co-Author, and U.C.C. Specialist.

James J. White, Robert A. Sullivan Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School: Warranties in the Box.

[Jeremy Telman]

Weekly Top Ten

Following are the ten most-downloaded new papers from the SSRN Journal of Contract and Commercial Law for the 60 days ending November 4, 2009.

Rank	Downloads	Paper Title
1	493	The Death of Big Law Larry E. Ribstein, University of Illinois College of Law,
2	333	Foreclosure, Subprime Mortgage Lending, and the Mortgage Electronic Registration System Christopher Lewis Peterson, University of Utah - S.J. Quinney College of Law,
3	229	Securitization: Cause or Remedy of the Financial Crisis? Adam J. Levitin, Andrey D. Pavlov, Susan M. Wachter, Georgetown University - Law Center, Simon Fraser University - Finance Area, University of Pennsylvania - The Wharton School - Real Estate Department,
4	190	Myth and Reality in Consumer Contracting Behavior Shmuel I. Becher, Esther Unger-Aviram, College of Management, Sapir Academic College,
5	164	Gods at War: Shotgun Takeovers, Government by Deal and the Private Equity Implosion Steven M. Davidoff, University of Connecticut School of Law,
6	157	Paying to Break Up: The Metamorphosis of Reverse Termination Fees Afra Afsharipour, University of California, Davis - School of Law ,
7	157	The Effect of the Consumer Financial Protection Agency Act of 2009 on Consumer Credit David S. Evans, David S. Evans, Joshua D. Wright, University of Chicago Law School, University College London, George Mason University - School of Law, Faculty,
8	153	No Big Deal: The GM and Chysler Cases in Context Stephen J. Lubben, Seton Hall University - School of Law,
9	153	The Future of Securitisation: How to Align Incentives? Ingo Fender, Janet Mitchell, Bank for International Settlements (BIS), National Bank of Belgium - Department of Financial Stability,
10	114	The 2005 Rules of the Australian Centre for International Commercial Arbitration - Revisited Simon Greenberg, Luke R. Nottage, Romesh Weeramantry, International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), University of Sydney - Faculty of Law, City University of Hong Kong (CityUHK),

[Jeremy Telman]

Tribute to the Onion: 21 Stinking Years

We often start or conclude our posts with something like "We couldn't make this up if we tried," and believe me we couldn't.  So, I think it's only fitting that we recognize an organization that has been making stuff up for 21 years and doing it with flair.  And no, I don't mean FOX News.

As real newspapers are grudgingly acknowledging, The Onion is celebrating its 21st anniversary with a new book, featuring the fake newspaper's front pages.  Perhaps all the news coverage from the Mainstream Media is just a ploy.  They are giving away The Onion's key trade secret -- write the headlines first!

[Jeremy Telman]

Michelle Triola Marvin, Mother of Palimony, Dead at 76

Michelle Triola Marvin, who lived with Lee Marvin for six years and then sued for her share of the income he had earned during the relationship, has died at the age of 76.  Ms. Marvin was the plaintiff in the landmark Marvin v. Marvin case, which we have had occasion to mention on the blog before, here and here.  The New York Times obituary can be found here.

[Jeremy Telman]

Contracts Icebreaker: Bowling

There is nothing like teaching students in the first semester of law school.  They are excited to be there and eager to learn.  They are not shy about sharing their knowledge and their opinions, and crucially, as they have not yet received any grades, for all they know, each student may think herself the smartest person in the room.  They speak with a natural confidence and self-assuredness earned through prior educational, work and life experiences.  First-year law students are often comfortable with themselves and that renders them open to new stimuli, of which law school ought to offer many.  They are even open to the idea of getting something out of class discussion other than a rule of black-letter law.

But there is a problem with first-year students.  Each Fall, I walk into a room of about 70 strangers, and it is hard for us to get comfortable with one another.  There are always a few class clowns and eager participants with whom I can quickly establish a kind of rapport, but I worry about what mental processes are at work in the other minds, which often seem so inaccessible to me.  I have tried various approaches for getting to know my first-year students.  For a few years, I went out to lunch with them in small groups.  That was a big time commitment, and it did not always pay off.  Having lunch with your professor is awkward.  Sometimes the dynamics worked, sometimes it just felt like we were running out the clock, and at the end of the semester, some of the students remained as mysterious to me as they had been on that first day.  And perhaps I was just as inscrutable to them despite my jangle-nerved loquacity.  

This year, I just didn't have time to do the lunch thing.  I invited my students to join me on a bike ride through the lovely, flat countryside surrounding Valparaiso.  The turn-out was disappointing -- last year three students came along; this year, the turn-out was a perfect 10, except that the 1 was missing.  Oh well, as my students reminded me, I would have been riding on my own anyway.  

And so . . . bowling.  Last week, I went bowling with about 35 of my students.  Bowling has a lovely leveling effect.  None of us were especially good at it, and nobody bothered too much about the scores.  We just hung out, flung some balls at pins, bopped about to whatever music happened to come on the loudspeakers and enjoyed ourselves.  At least, that's my side of the story.  Although everybody in my group bowled, you don't actually have to bowl to enjoy yourself at a bowling alley. 

In any case, I recommend this activity to law profs who are interested in breaking down the fourth wall.  It really should be a weekly activity, but that's up to the students to organize in my view.  I got to chat with some students whom I hadn't had a chance to talk with outside of Socratic exchanges and I got to speak with others in the novel context in which I was not the professor, but The Telminator, Destroyer of Pins.

[Jeremy Telman]