ContractsProf Blog

AALS Program and Print Symposium on Teaching Contracts

The AALS Section on Contracts invites you to attend our Annual Meeting program on New Approaches to Teaching Contracts: A Teach-In and solicits additional proposals for a companion symposium issue to appear in the Washington Law Review.

The Topic: Responding to profound changes in the practice of law and in our larger culture, many Contracts professors strive to update their methods and materials.  In the spirit of the Annual Meeting’s transformative law theme, our program will explore a variety of new approaches that contracts professors have begun to introduce in the classroom and in teaching materials to address both changes in the structure of practice that require new lawyers to hit the ground running and ways that wired students synthesize material and acquire skills.  We hope that the program, as a whole, will motivate experienced contracts professors to de-laminate their notes and inspire newer professors to move beyond their own professors in developing new ways to convey the beauty, complexity, and occasional imperfections of contract law.

The Program: Our annual meeting program, scheduled for Friday, January 8, 10:30 AM to 12:15 PM, Melrose Room, Third Floor, Hilton New Orleans Riverside, will feature Douglas Baird (Chicago) on the Langdellian, classic-case-centered method; Scott Burnham (Montana) on using drafting exercises to develop both skills and doctrinal understanding; Carol Chomsky (Minnesota) or Christina Kunz (William Mitchell) on their contribution to Thomson/West’s new Interactive Casebook Series, Contracts: A Contemporary Approach (West forthcoming 2010); Jonathan Hyman (Rutgers-Newark) on "Teaching Contracts with Student Role-Play Arbitrations"; Emily Kadens (Texas) on adapting the problem-based method more commonly used in upper-level commercial law courses to the first-year Contracts course; Shruti Rana (Maryland) on "Integrating Cross-border Perspectives on Contract Law: Comparing US and International Perspectives on Acceptances;" and Deborah Schmedemann (William Mitchell) on "Actual Reality: Peopling the Contracts Course."

The Print Symposium: The Washington Law Review will publish a print symposium in its November 2010 issue, which will include papers from most of our presenters, papers selected from among those who responded to our initial call for proposals, as well as others from whom we solicited contributions, and some shorter responses and replies.

How to Submit a Paper or Proposal: We may be able to accommodate on a space-available basis a limited number of additional short (15-20 pages) papers, responses, and replies in the symposium issue.  If you would like to contribute please e-mail an abstract, précis, or draft by Monday, December 14, 2009 to the Planning Subcommittee: Martha Ertman (Maryland), Lisa Bernstein (Chicago), and Keith Rowley(UNLV).  Please direct your submission to all three of our email addresses: mertman@law.umaryland.edu, lbernst621@aol.com, and keith.rowley@unlv.edu, respectively.  The Planning Committee and members of the law review's editorial board will review all timely submissions and offer publication to any we can accommodate.

[Keith A. Rowley]

Plaudits for (Living) Contracts Professors

Brian Leiter's Law School Reports, a reliable source of information about moving and shaking in legal academia, reported yesterday that Contracts professor and current dean of the Seattle University School of Law Kellye Testy will become the new dean at the University of Washington School of Law.  I met Kellye at the 1999 AALS Conference on Contracts in Washington, DC and have had several opportunities to talk and correspond with her since then.  She's terrific.  Congratulations, Kellye!

This also affords me the opportunity for long overdue acclaim for our friend Tadas Klimas, who has made the trip from Lithuania to the International Contracts Conference and the AALS Contracts Mid-Year in Montreal.  Some of you may recall that Tadas was the dean for several years of the Vyatus Magnus University School of Law in Vilnius and actively sought to Westernize legal education in his country.  He has also taught as a visiting professor at Stetson, as well as at universities in Spain and Brazil.  Earlier this year, Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus decreed Tadas a Cavalier of the Lithuanian Order of Merit.  Sveikiname, Tadas!

[Keith A. Rowley]

US News First: No law school sees ranking decline

The recent U.S. News rankings are out, and apparently every law school either rose in rankings or stayed the same, according to a survey of news releases by the schools.  Announcing their highers rankings were, among others, William & Mary, Utah, Seattle, Denver, Florida State, UNLV, Georgia State, Duke, Emory, and North Carolina,  The big news, though, is that a review of school news releases shows that not a single school has announced a ratings decline from last year.  Kudos to everyone!

[Frank Snyder]

How are faculty members like AIG executives?

Find out in this excerpt over at TaxProf Blog.

There's another similarity.  One of the problems with organizations is that they tend to be run for the benefit of those who run them.  Witness AIG, where execs ran the place for their own financial benefit with relatively little regard for shareholders (who paid the bills) and customers (whose investments were imperiled.)

American law schools are by and large run for the benefit of those who control them -- namely faculty and administrators.  This helps explain why teaching loads have dropped while costs for our students have skyrocketed.  Fortunately, we've got the ABA cartel to keep us protected

For a while, anyway.

[Frank Snyder]

Perils of becoming a "national law school"

The University of Wisconsin School of Law has over the years earned a justified resputation as a major national law school.  Its in-state rival, Marquette, also has a national focus.  But it's the national focus that might give the school sproblems in keeping one of their prized benefits: the in-state diploma privilege.  Three legal academics now on the federal bench are expressing doubt that the schools really are focused on Wisconsin law.

Wisconsin gives automatic bar admissions to graduates of the state's two law schools, UWM and Marquette -- the last state in the Union to grant a diploma privilege now that West Virginia and Mississippi have stopped the practice.  That policy is under attack in a class action by students who didn't attend those schools, and at oral argument last week three judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit expressed doubt that the state's justification for the privilege -- that students at the two law schools got a grounding in Wisconsin law that others do not -- was anything more than a "fiction."

Interstingly, all three judges on the panel are themselves legal academics.  Judges Richard Posner (J.D. Harvard) and Diane Wood (Texas) both served on the faculty at the University of Chicago.  Senior Judge Kenneth Ripple (UVA) is a long-time faculty member at Notre Dame.

Since the action was dismissed below without developing a record to support the state's claim that its law schools are uniquely focused on Wisconsin law, the two schools will have the opportunity to demonstrate their point of difference..  Over at Conglomerate Blog, former UWM professor Gordon Smith points out that in Contracts classes the "Wisconsin Materials" used in all sections (the Macaulay-Kidwell-Whitford Contract Law in Action) do put a heavy emphasis on the law of the Badger State.

[Frank Snyder]

Dick Speidel Tribute at AALS Annual Meeting

From our friend Mike Kelly at the University of San Diego:

Northwestern University School of Law and the University of San Diego School of Law are hosting a reception honoring the career of Richard Speidel, who passed away this past semester. Dick was a major figure in contracts, commercial law, and international arbitration.

The reception will be held at the AALS Annual Meeting in San Diego on Friday, January 9, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. in the Warner Center Room, 4th floor, south tower of the San Diego Marriott Hotel & Marina, with a short program beginning at 7:00 p.m.  We will also videotape remarks from those who knew Dick or his work and will provide a copy to Dick's family.

Update: Professors Jim White (Michigan) and Bob Summers (Cornell), Dick's long-time collaborators, and Deans Kevin Cole (San Diego) and David Van Zandt (Northwestern) are confirmed speakers.

[Keith A. Rowley]

Help Wanted

Penn State’s Dickinson School of Law is looking for "distinguished scholars" or "entry-level candidates of exceptional promise" in various areas, including contracts and commercial law.

The school is on a $120 million kick to build up it’s law school facilities. Sounds pretty good, especially if you’re a football fan. The contact is Professor Gary Gildin.

[Frank Snyder]

WNE Law Expands

Congrats to Western New England College's School of Law, which last week unveiled a new $5.5 million addition to the school's S. Prestley Blake Law Center.  It marks a major expansion to the Springfield, Mass. campus.  From the release:

The expanded Law Center includes a new 10,500-square-foot wing and entrance that provides a gateway to the rest of the campus. The entrance, with its soaring marble pillars, leads to a two-story lobby that serves as a primary gathering space for students and the hosting of Law Center events. "This Law School is a dynamic place; new ideas march through its halls with breathtaking pace," said Dean Arthur R. Gaudio. "We needed an equally dynamic venue where professors and visiting scholars could present those ideas to collected groups of students and faculty."

Besides the new addition, the biggest change students and visitors will notice is the restructured law library, which now extends to all three floors of the Law Center. Along with the new space comes a new user-friendly way of accessing library materials, with patrons able to take most books out of the library area and into any part of the Law Center. "You can go in and out of the library and into the Law School at any level," said Gaudio. "The Law Library is now as large as the entire Law School building." Western New England College School of Law is one of only a few schools in the country to try this cutting edge approach to access. Materials must still be checked out to leave the building, with sensors at the exits to the building monitoring the library's collection.

[Frank Snyder]

Law School for Sale

A potential buyer is in the wings for the American Justice School of Law in Paducah, Kentucky.  The private school -- now almost always described as "troubled" -- saw five of its faculty resign two weeks ago, calling for the ouster of the dean.  This followed a lawsuit last November on behalf of students seeking $120 million in damages from the school.  The students claim that the school, among other things, withheld their student loan money from them to earn extra interest.  Making things curiouser is that the lawsuit was filed by Paducah litigator Thomas L. Osborne -- a shareholder in the school -- who filed it immediately after he resigned (or was forced out, depending on who you talk to) as chair of AJSL's Board of Trustees.  Osborne has been reportedly been putting together his own group to take over the school.

Dr. Robert Meriwether, a successful Paducah neurosurgeon, has apparently put up money to keep the school going while he mulls over a two-month option to acquire the school.  He estimates that it would take $4 million to bring the school up to snuff.

Paducah, which has a metro area of about 100,000, is roughly equidistant from Louisville, Memphis, Nashville, and St. Louis.

[Frank Snyder]

UConn Prof on "Leave of Absence" After Showing Offensive Film

Sometime contracts professor Robert Birmingham (left) and the University of Connecticut School of Law have mutually agreed that he’ll take a leave of absence for the rest of the semester, after he showed a "provocative" documentary in class. Birmingham used a clip from a film on prostitution, Really Really Pimpin’ in Da South, in his Remedies class. The clip featured an interview with "Sir Charles" Pipkins, the defendant in a RICO case that Birmingham’s class was studying.  But the film also apparently included footage of scantily-clad exotic dancers, and when Birmingham paused the tape, the picture froze on a close-up of a dancer's thong.  Some offended students apparently walked out of the class.

UConn dean Jeremy Paul -- who is apparently trying to find someone to take over the four classes Birmingham teaches this semester -- says that the issues involve balancing academic freedom with the need to foster "a welcoming, diverse and tolerant environment for students."  The Hartford Courant came out in an editorial against Birmingham's actions, but the best take came from an anonymous commentator, who wrote, apropos the thong, "He was just showing his law students a picture [of] where to screw people; they are going to be lawyers, right?"

[Frank Snyder]

Weekly Law School Rankings

In the world of law school rankings, somebody's lemon is always somebody else's lemonade.  USC's Gould School of Law took a tumble, which means that for the first time in just about forever Cal-Berkeley has a higher-rated law school than does Southern Cal.  Gould's drop was good news for the Paul M. Hebert Law Center at Louisiana State, which is now number one and is making Chancellor Jack Weiss (left) look pretty happy.

Three schools join the Top 20, while the folks at Missouri-Columbia have their highest ranking (10) since the invention of the Gregorian calendar.  All rankings based on ContractsProf's proprietary secret but very exact ratings methodology.  Last week's rank in parentheses.

1 (2) LSU (Hebert)
2 (3) Cal-Berkeley (Boalt)
3 (4) Ohio State (Moritz)
4 (6) Boston College
5 (9) Oklahoma
6 (1) Southern California (Gould)
7 (11) West Virginia
8 (12) Oregon
9 (13) South Carolina
10 (15) Missouri-Columbia
11 (17) Arizona State (O’Connor)
12 (8) Florida (Levin)
13 (14) Hawai'i (Richardson)
14 (18) Cincinnati
15 (5) Wisconsin
16 (7) Kentucky
17 (-) Illinois
18 (-) Kansas
19 (-) Florida State
20 (16) Texas

Dropped out of Top 20:  Georgia, Nebraska, Miami

[Frank Snyder]

Weekly Law School Rankings

The race is getting closer, but Southern Cal's Gould School of Law continues to keep a slim lead over the Paul M. Hebert Law Center of Louisiana State in this week's rankings of the top law schools in the U.S.  It was a week of upheaval marked by some big jumps and some dizzying drops.  Penn State (Dickinson) and Alabama drop out of this week's Top 20.  Schools are, as always, ranked by ContractsProf's proprietary computer ranking software; last week's rank in parentheses.  (Right: Cal-Berkeley Dean Christopher Edley, Jr., whose school moved all the way to third this week.) 

1 (1) Southern California (Gould)
2 (2) LSU (Hebert)
3 (7) Cal-Berkeley (Boalt)
4 (8) Ohio State (Moritz)
5 (9) Wisconsin
6 (11) Boston College
7 (12) Kentucky
8 (3) Florida (Levin)
9 (4) Oklahoma
10 (13) Georgia
11 (5) West Virginia
12 (10) Oregon
13 (15) South Carolina
14 (14) Hawai'i (Richardson)
15 (16) Missouri-Columbia
16 (6) Texas
17 (20) Arizona State (O’Connor)
18 (-) Cincinnati
19 (19) Nebraska
20 (-) Miami

[Frank Snyder]

Adjunct Professors

They’re in touch with the latest developments in law and practice. They’re dedicated to teaching and mentoring lawyers. They get very little money and less respect, but they routinely get high ratings from the students who sit in their classes.

Who are they?  Adjuncts, of course.  No law school can get by without them, and schools often tout their skills to students, who for some reason tend to like to take classes from those who are actually practicing what they teach.  Yet they are all-but-invisible outside their own classrooms, and many tenure-track faculty have no idea who they are when they pass in the halls.

It takes a special kind of person to do that kind of work, and part of the ever-growing Law Professor Blogs Network empire is Adjunct Law Blog.  The lead editor is veteran adjunct Mitch Rubinstein (St. John’s & New York LS), who’s also Senior Counsel to the New York State United Teachers.  His co-editors are full-timers Eric Lustig (New England) and Gail Levin Richmond (Nova Southeastern).

Rubinstein’s specialty is employment law, so the blog occasionally has some things of interest to contract law types who aren't adjuncts, like this one about the employee fired for working for someone else while out on Family Medical Leave Act status.

[Frank Snyder]

Law School Rankings

It's been a tough week for UCLA and Louisville, both of which saw their law schools fall out of the Top 20.  It was a particularly nasty fall for the Westwood school, which last week was ranked 10th in the country, and particularly galling when its cross-town rival keeps a firm hold on Number One.  (Left: USC Dean Robert K. Rasmussen).

This week's best U.S. law schools, with last week's rank in parentheses:

1 (1) Southern California (Gould)
2 (2) LSU (Hebert)
3 (3) Florida (Levin)
4 (4) Oklahoma
5 (5) West Virginia
6 (6) Texas
7 (7) Cal-Berkeley
8 (9) Ohio State (Moritz)
9 (8) Wisconsin
10 (11) Oregon
11 (11) Boston College
12 (18) Kentucky
13 (17) Georgia
14 (15) Hawai'i (Richardson)
15 (11) South Carolina
16 (20) Missouri-Columbia
17 (10) Penn State (Dickinson)
18 (14) Alabama
19 (19) Nebraska
20 (-) Arizona State (O’Connor)

[Frank Snyder]

Top 20 Law Schools

Three are out and three are in this week, in our rankings of the Top 20 law schools in the U.S.  UCLA took the biggest fall, dropping from No. 11 completely off the charts.  Tennessee and Arkansas both also drop from the 20.  Southern Cal remains the top law school in the U.S. for the third straight week, although Louisiana State is hard on its heels and Florida is moving up strongly.  This week's Top 20:

1 (1) Southern California
2 (2) LSU (Hebert)
3 (3) Florida (Levin)
4 (3) Oklahoma
5 (3) West Virginia
6 (6) Texas
7 (8) Cal-Berkeley
8 (7) Wisconsin
9 (10) Ohio State (Moritz)
10 (12) Penn State (Dickinson)
11 (15) South Carolina
     (15) Oregon
     (15) Boston College
14 (-) Alabama
15 (9) Louisville (Brandeis)
    (18) Hawai'i (Richardson)
17 (-) Georgia
18 (-) Kentucky
19 (13) Nebraska
20 (20) Missouri

[Frank Snyder]

Chemerinsky is In, Yale is Out, Ave Maria is Messed Up

Lots of law school news today.  At the top, Erwin Chemerinsky is now back in as founding dean of the new state law school at the University of California-Irvine.  UCI Chancellor Michael Blake, doing his best imitation of a reed in a gale, apparently bowed to pressure to bring Chemerinsky on board less than a week after he had bowed to contrary pressure to toss him out.  Those concerned that UCI wouldn't have been able to hire a faculty if Chemerinsky's firing had remained a blot on its escutcheon can now breathe a sigh of relief.

Meanwhile, though it's not exactly man-bites-dog news, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has thrown out Yale University's argument that it has a constitutional right to receive federal government funding even if it refuses to go along with federal government regulations that compel it to allow military recruiting on campus.  The handwriting had been on the wall after the U.S. Supreme Court decided Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights v. Rumsfeld, which had upheld the validity of the Solomon Amendment.  Not even the best arguments from Yale law professors, ably assisted by Cravath, Swaine & Moore and amicus briefs from colleagues at Harvard, Chicago, Columbia, Cornell, NYU, and Penn, and by the AAUP, could keep the Second Circuit from the swift completion of it appointed rounds.  Yale, with an endowment reported at some $15 billion dollars, could probably manage to scrape by without federal cash if it felt strongly enough about its anti-discrimination policy, but that's apparently not something that's on the table.

On a less cynical note, things seem to be going from bad to worse at Ave Maria Law School.  The folks at the always interesting Mirror of Justice blog have issued a joint statement expressing serious concern over the treatment of tenured and untenured faculty who have disagreed with the policies set forth by the dean and the Board, saying that "the Catholic nature vital to [Ave Maria's] founding and sustenance has been derailed" by a series of arbitrary actions.

[Frank Snyder]

UCI is Looking for a New Dean

Many Californians think the Golden State needs another state-supported law school about as much as it needs another fast food restaurant.  It is, after all, the only state where anybody with a spare bedroom and a table can open a law school, and where you don't even have to go to law school to become a lawyer.  But they've apparently found something they like even less:  a high profile leftist law professor to act as its founding dean.

The chancellor of the University of California-Irvine, apparently under some pressure from the Board of Regents and members of the UCI community, has canceled the contract of Duke law professor Erwin Chemerinsky to become the Orange County law school's first dean.  Getting Chemerinsky, widely regarded as one of the country's most prominent legal scholars, had been something of a coup for UCI.  But his highly public advocacy on hot-button issues like abortion, affirmative action, and displays of the Ten Commandments, his attacks on conservative supreme court justices, and his reported unwillingness to lower his profile made him a political lightning rod, especially in one of the most conservative areas of California.  The fact that the new school is being named for a prominent Republican who gave it $20 million is said not have affected the decision.  Chemerinsky, who had previously been turned down for the deanship at Duke, says he won't challenge the termination.

Many commentators are saying that UCI will now have trouble attracting candidates for the $300,000+ position.  So this is your chance to get your application in.

[Frank Snyder]

American Top 20: The Law School Rankings

Law school rankings are a dime a dozen, and most of them are entirely pointless, rating law schools on things that don't matter at all to most law students -- like how many law review citations their faculty members garner for articles that the students will never, ever unless they're assigned in class.  So we at ContractsProf, for the second year in a row, offer our annual ranking of the Top Twenty American law schools based on something that is important to law students:  the quality of the football team.

In this year's first ranking, USC (which has won more undisputed National College Football Championships than any school except Yale), claims the top spot, a notch ahead of Louisiana State.  Here, ranked by CP's Proprietary Football Power Ranking Index, are America's Top Twenty Law Schools:

1    Southern California
2    LSU (Hebert)
3    Oklahoma
      West Virginia
      Florida (Levin)
6    Texas
7    Wisconsin
8    Cal-Berkeley
9    Louisville (Brandeis)
10  Ohio State (Moritz)
11  UCLA
12  Penn State (Dickinson)
13  Nebraska
14  Arkansas-Fayetteville
15  South Carolina
      Oregon
      Boston College
18  Tennessee
      Hawai'i (Richardson)
20   Missouri-Columbia

[Frank Snyder]

New Law School in Louisiana

Louisiana College in Pineville, La., has announced plans for a new law school that will open its doors next year.  The 101-year-old Baptist college hopes to build a "conservative, Christian law school," and will name it for retired Texas appeals court judge Paul Pressler, a long-time leader in the Southern Baptist Convention.  Pineville, for those who aren't familiar with it, is a pleasant little town just across the Red River from Alexandria, La., about equidistant from Houston and New Orleans.

As folks who believe that more jobs for law professors are always a good idea, we wish them a hearty welcome to the club.

[Frank Snyder]

Center for Contract and Economic Organization at Columbia

Columbia Law School has formed the Center for Contract and Economic Organization.  A description of the Center's mission is available here.

[H/T: David Hoffman at Concurring Opinions]

[Meredith R. Miller]