Legal Profession Blog

Welcome Back to Admin Law Prof Blog, and (Unrelated) Try to Die Before 2011

Posted by Alan Childress

Two notes of interest around the blogosphere (posted so early in the U.S. that only Patrick O'D will see them now):

-- I was the 10th visitor to the new Administrative Law Prof Blog, resurrected July 5, 2008 and part of the LPB network. I was reading their post entitled test.  Its text is:  "test."  (Ah, yes, I remember Jeff's first post, of equal import and intent, albeit not as succinct.) Good luck guys, though differentiate titles from text, and learn Jeff's Law:  never reply to an angry anonymous commenter.  Welcome!

-- Another LPB blog, Wills, Trusts & Estates Prof Blog, has 3 to 4 doses of fiscal reality for the few of us left who let nature run its course.  Find them in Gerry Beyer's posts called Planning to Die in 2010, More on Dying in 2010, and my favorite:  Should you let a beneficiary prepare your food?  The latter is a follow up to his astute post, Don't go scuba diving with a beneficiary -- especially if he just asked you to increase your life insurance.  A bit morbid, but I guess the blog's subject matter defintionally tilts that way.  Taxes do alter human behavior; I imagine lots of decisions about life support, if not super size meals or surgery options, to be affected trying to fine-time the end -- after 2009, before 2011 -- in line with current law on the estate tax.  Hold on, grandma, we love you dearly! But don't overstay.

Gas Not So Much The Problem

Transportation system on the car-free isle of Hydra.  Even cuter than the Smart car.  Or Jeff's Prius.  Admittedly also a hybrid. 

[Alan Childress]

Elefant Announces New Clearinghouse Website for Lawyers' Events On- and Off-line

The new site will be called Lawagora.  Long-time blogger Carolyn Elefant (she is at myshingle and at law.com) announced it here and welcomes reader content, easily input on the platform she chose.  Here is her intro:

I've just completed a new project that I'm rolling out tonight...Lawagora.ning.com - a marketplace of events for and by lawyers.  In the past few months, I've realized how many quality events, on and offline are available for lawyers - yet we often never hear about them because the publicity is either ad hoc, or directed at a speaker's mailing list, which others may not know about.  So I saw  a need for a centralized location for all types of events of interest to lawyers, identified ning.com as a decent platform and set it up in beta.

Those with events should "visit the site and add your events - webinars, bar events or events for lawyers by non-lawyer providers."
[Alan Childress]

Bill Henderson Joins Legal Profession Blog

Posted by Jeff Lipshaw

Mike, Alan and I are thrilled to announce that Bill Henderson is joining us as a co-editor.  Not only is Bill one of legal academia's pre-eminent empiricists (in which capacity he is better known to the blogosphere as one of the editors of Empirical Law Studies Blog), but he is, at least in my mind, the leading empirical scholar on legal profession issues.  Combined with Mike's powerhouse reporting on disciplinary and professional responsibility issues (as recognized by the ABA Journal and the Wall Street Journal blogs) and Alan's expertise in comparative legal systems and ethics, this really becomes the clearinghouse for issues in the legal profession. 

Study of legal education and the profession is fraught with the possibility (and the reality) of social, political, and cultural predispositions.  Whether social science can ever be objective in the manner of the physical sciences is a fascinating issue (but for another time and place), but Bill brings to the party a wonderful combination of empirical technique and open-mindedness.  Bill looks rigorously at market trends, including patterns of lawyer mobility, the relationship between profitability and associate satisfaction, the economic geography of large law firms, and attrition rates of female and minority attorneys. He has explored the relationship between labor markets and the annual U.S. News & World Report law school rankings.

I've had a chance to work with Bill just a little in connection with his Law Firms Working Group, a joint initiative of the Indiana Law and the American Bar Foundation.  In conjunction with other Indiana law faculty, Bill is developing The Legal Profession, a new course which explores how different practice settings (e.g., corporate practice versus criminal defense versus government lawyers) influence the moral and ethical duties of lawyers.  Bill is also a research associate with the Law School Survey of Student Engagement (LSSSE).

Bill has been a member of the IU-Bloomington Law faculty since 2003.  He received his B.A. from Case Western Reserve in 1997, and his J.D. from the University of Chicago (where he was the Comment Editor of the Law Review) in 2001.  More importantly, anybody who has met Bill knows he is one of the genuinely good people in this business.

Please join us in welcoming Bill and in awaiting some great stuff!

Keep Up With Congress In Real-Time Via Twitter, and Track Bills

Posted by Alan Childress

Policy wonks and law watchers will appreciate the fact that all sorts of action on the floors of the House and the Senate will be blogged and tallied real-time via Twitter.  (So is Downing Street, for that matter.)  "Twitter is a free service that lets you keep in touch with people using the web, your phone, or IM."   You join to be fed updates, yet are not pre-screened with a personality inventory like eHarmony does.

Track congressional bills (even physically track them and their stages, showing pushpins on a sky view of the Capitol) using the site Where A Bill.

Also, as mentioned last week, state legislative bills and proposals (for any or all states) can be tracked on this BillFinder site, with searching by subject matter, key words, or bill number.  A useful tools for law professors and researchers.  (HatTip to Richard at EE.)

New Blog on Career Development In Law Features Bar Exam Tips + Ideas For Summer Job Prep

Posted by Alan Childress

The one-month anniversary has arrived for the LPB blog devoted to hiring and law jobs:  the Career & Professional Development Blog. Its main editors are CDO professionals Susan Gainen at Minnesota and Mina Jones Jefferson at Cincinnati, aided by a wealth of contributing editors from schools all over, including my colleague at Tulane, Carlos Davila-Caballero.  The anniversary present for a month is a copy of that colorful parachute book, which should come out in a pop-up version.

Recent essential posts at C&PD Blog include 12 very good (and not necessarily obvious) tips for taking bar exams, such as rent a nearby hotel room, don't fret but don't discuss, and don't get banned (true!) for a ringing cellphone.  The most non-obvious one, buried in #12, is to Drink Wine.  Other useful posts:

(1) eight things one can do over the summer to prep for job hunts [including creating that 'elevator speech' of which Jeff wrote here, plus 'scrubbing' one's e-persona and odd vocabulary like right now],

(2) six myths of job hunting, and

(3) functional and aggressive ideas for using email to network.

Don't be literal.  The speech should be about you, not the elevator.  (Unless you're President of the Harvard Law Review, in which case BigLaw partner will enthusiastically follow your cue about the fascinating subject of elevators ... or "lifts" as they call them in other common law countries, ha ha ha.)

Trading for Maple Bats

Quizlaw and others are right to proclaim this the best headline of the weekend:  Minor Leaguer Traded For 10 Bats.   I am hoping that any new addition we may soon make at Legal Profession Blog is not just a subtle sign that I am about to be traded for a gallon of that mimeograph fluid we used in middle school, that smells so highly even when the whiff-buzz is just indirectly off the printed blue-word page.  [Alan Childress]

Meet the Blogger!

Most of the time I write these posts beneath the rock out from under which I crawl to go about my daily duties.   I'm in Ann Arbor for personal reasons, and every University of Michigan public space is locked down for Memorial Day, so I'm renting a table at the Espresso Royale on State Street for the eminently reasonable cost of a large skim latte.

If you happen to be in the neighborhood, stop by.  I'm the guy with the red shirt, two-day beard, MacBook, and a copy of Ribstein on Unincorporated Business Entities lying on the table.  The coffee is on me.

[Jeff Lipshaw]

Gillers on How Next Year Is Not The End of The Bush Presidency

In a classic satire piece two years ago in The Nation, NYU ethics prof Stephen Gillers explained how January 20, 2009 is not necessarily the end of the current term.  "It depends on what the meaning of 'four years' is. The Constitution says the President 'shall hold his office during the term of four years.' It does not say 'only four years' or 'four years and not a day more.' "  He might add that the literalist Justice Scalia could uphold that flexibility given the sloppy drafting.  [Alan Childress]

Welcome to the Lawyering Blogosphere: International Law Prof Blog

Posted by Alan Childress

The Law Professor Blogs Network, of which our LPB is a member, just added a new blog yesterday which may be of interest to followers of the legal profession:  the International Law Prof Blog.  It is "for professors who teach international law (and for those who are interested in teaching international law, or just keeping current with new issues in international legal education)." You know it is a new blog when early on the morning of its second day it already has eight items posted. One of the them, I noticed (and thanks), mentioned Tulane's summer abroad program. Here's a post on careers in international law.

The blog is coedited by Mark Wajcik (John Marshall), Cindy Buys (S. Ill.), and Michael Piel (Wash U.), with contributions by Case Western adjunct Cyndee Cherniak.  The four have a wealth of international law experience -- practice, teaching, and administrative -- and see the coverage as broadly ranging from  private and public international law and human rights to IBT, comparative law, and summer study programs.  Given their experiences (and the kind of prof who would read it, often wearing many hats at their law schools), I hope they will include teaching foreign students in the U.S. and news or ideas about such LL.M. programs, including chat about the difficult legal writing compenent of it and orientation programs.  And of course if they post on items about other legal professions, practice and licensing across borders, or other matters showing that lawyers and ethical rules vary around the world, I hope they let us know and let us link them.

For joining the uncrowded blawgworld, and for being so internationally, the blog deserves the immortal words of Lili Von Schtupp: "Velcomen, bienvenue, velcome, come on in."

Update:  While I am on the subject of international law, I noticed that Brian Leiter has reported that Tulane has hired EU- and comparative- law expert Dr. Jorg Fedtke away from University College London; Leiter describes it as "a very good appointment for Tulane."  This follows a year after renowned comparativist and award-winning teacher James Gordley joined the Tulane faculty from his chair at Berkeley.  Another velcomen is due, Jorg.

Best Old Cigarette Ads and Zoo Warnings

Posted by Alan Childress

The legal profession is big on warnings and disclaimers, of course, as witnessed by our prior posts 07 and 06 about whacky product warnings brought to you by lawyers.  Updating that notion, the 2spare site shows, among other things, the best old print ads for cigarettes (many featuring physician testimonials, or Santa pushing Camels) and the top ten zoo warning signs.

The site also has "Elementary, my dear Watson" and other Famous Misquotations, as well as nine clever business cards (worthy, I add, of the comparions made at the beginning of American Psycho).

Finally, consider its ten clever protest signs and the 15 worst book covers.

'Wii Fit' Makers Apologize For Game That Called a Girl Fat

I would have demanded an apology sooner if I had known Nintendo would be so compliant.  Long before Wii Fit, I swear that Mario and Luigi have been gratuitously stage-whispering that I am "morbidly obese" for years. Maybe I should quit getting my parenting and validation from a video game maker.  Or have BMI measured by a doctor instead of a nunchuck controller.  Nah.  [Alan Childress]

Useful Sites To Avoid Grading

Posted by Alan Childress
(Cross-posted in an email from me to my gmail account and back again)

I once saw an ad, for real, in the Berkeley student newspaper, touting "Procrastination Workshop.  Pre-registration required."  The great site electronic ephemera has some website rewards for the procrastinator in you, handy during this should-be-grading season.  Instead of pondering the fine line between mediocre and unimpressive (since the extremes grade themselves), you can:

--Aggregate your web accounts in one place, PageOnce.  Or use FuzzFind to combine social tagging with bookmarking to search better, whatever the hell that means.
--Create a logo at logoease.  Self-logoing is so emo.
--Follow 400 European newspapers online, constantly updated, at eufeeds.
--Learn to speak "12 year old" with a translator algorithm of kids' text messaging.  GROWNG OLD SUX BTW.
--Search the criminal trials of the Old Bailey, 1647-1913, "containing 197,745 criminal trials held at London's central criminal court."  The world of ordinary people, organized online.
--Play Pictionary-esque games online with complete strangers.  Yes, that really is a tree.
--Watch an online, live astral observatory from your sofa.  Also see Google Sky.  I named that one after you, baby.
--Read all of Hammurabi's Code of Laws.  Little is said there about torturing while painstakingly not calling it that.
--Start a fire without matches, nine ways.  Preferably not at Jeff's vacation house by the lake.
--Track the details of the startling truth that Captain Kirk did not actually have sex very often, despite legend (only four to possibly seven times in 80 episodes).  That is like over four and a half years, and a bazillion light-years of travel.  Should have gone to Key West!  As Columbus was really trying to do.
--Search and track all 50 states simultaneously for pending and introduced bills, including key word and number searches.  Could be a valuable resource for dedicated policy wonks and law professors, or just tell your law review editor to use it to fill out footnote 8.  Also, search the Library of Congress.
--Use this dress code engine not to arrive dressed inappropriately, this time by accident.
Or just grade the damn exams already.

Boston Herald Apologizes For Wrong Spygate Story on Rams' Taping

So the headlines say. Am I the only one who is reminded of Deep Throat in the parking garage?

You let [Belichick] slip away... You've done worse than let [Belichick] slip away, you've got people feeling sorry for him, I didn't think that was possible. In a conspiracy like this, you build from the outer edges and you go step by step, if you shoot too high and miss, everyone feels more secure. You've set the investigation back months.

But I am infuriated that with all the ethics investigations by Congress that could be done, Arlen Specter intends to pursue this one, after the NFL has already issued its punishment.  At least he is known for his unimpeachable work on the Warren Commission; given the NFL's new stance against long hair down the back obscuring players' numbers [to hide defensive signal receivers???], I can already imagine Belichick coming up with the "magic mullet" theory to explain everything to Specter's satisfaction. [Alan Childress]

Miracle Whip Makes A Great Proxy Demographic

I grew up on Miracle Whip.  Miracle Whip on sandwiches.  Miracle Whip on bananas, called "a salad."  On peanut butter.  On peanut butter and banana sandwiches.  It tastes (I eventually realized) actually vile, despite being a combination of two normally-fantastic paired food groups--not-fully-liquefied fat, and sugar.  I propose, though, that MSNBC start using its consumers as a demographic less in-your-face than the ones they use now to chart the die-hard Hillary supporters.  Or CNN could break out pie charts of how Hillary just killed with the Michael Bolton/Kenny G subpopulation, though this hardly separates them from MSNBC if in fact those performers are the musical equivalent of Miracle Whip. Maybe we should just junk all racial and gender groupings and just admit that those who clap along on the on-rhythm vote for Hillary and those who clap on the off-rhythm vote for Barack.

You know, it is quite possible for Democrats who happen to be white males to support Obama, just as it is a fact, lost on the pundits, that many many supporters of Hillary Clinton are from all over the sweety fat spectrum.  I have not seen this much segregated media profiling since those market-targeted McDonald's commercials.  [Alan Childress]

Tulane and Its Boom Renaissance in the News...In Boston

Posted by Alan Childress

Two weeks ago, Jeff linked his hometown paper The Boston Globe for an article on Brian Leiter and his kingmaking skills.  Now I am a fan of the Globe for another reason:  last week's article on the boom in applications and quality students at Tulane just a couple years after the numbers and enthusiasm were tamped.  In the undergraduate college, this is led by New Englanders who care:

Drawing strong interest from students across the country who joined recovery efforts in high school, Tulane has seen its applications double this year from 17,000 to 34,000, a remarkable increase for an established institution that Tulane officials believe may be the largest jump in the country this year. Overwhelmed by the volume, the university stopped accepting applications in January, or thousands more probably would have applied.

Tulane's newfound level of popularity sprang from an aggressive post-Katrina marketing campaign that sought to let families know that New Orleans was safe, and let students know the city needed their help. The overwhelming response from civic-minded students has elevated Tulane's national stature and selectivity, and marked a major milestone in the school's, and the city's, recovery. . . .

New England, and Massachusetts in particular, are leading the resurgence. In the six New England states, applications soared from 809 to 1,963 over the past year. The number of Massachusetts students applying rose from 372 to 983, after plummeting the two years after Katrina.

And on a distinctly Southern campus where students wear shorts and flip-flops in January, where people smile and say hi to passersby, it's also easy to hear the Boston adjective "wicked" and spot Red Sox and Celtics garb.

Three Websites You Can Use

Posted by Alan Childress

Via the site-collecting resource of Electronic Ephemera, among its recent posts, I note these three useful sites out there to be tapped (beyond "every Simpsons' couch site gag" nicely spooled, in under five minutes): 

(1) SocialScan allows you to measure, simply by entering URL, a website's popularity as measured by its being linked on 12 known social sites, like Digg and Bloglines. Our own site earns 5,763 total points, which compares favorably with some of their recent examples, such as Above the Law (5,046), PrawfsBlawg (1,439), redcross.org (12,598 [I know, but they save lives]) and domaintools.com (6,308).  Pay no attention to Paul Caron [left] behind the iron TaxProf Blog curtain (10,898).  Slate earns 271,753 points.  Mr. Skin earns 1,090 points.  Poor priorities?  Or maybe a methodology issue with the measuring site?

(2) Delaycast allows you to estimate flight delays in advance. "Use our on-time prediction engine to help you book your flights.  We’ve built mathematical models of the U.S. air transportation system to predict delays and cancellations.  If you need to make that meeting on time or are afraid of missing a connection, don’t book until you check out the predictions here!"   Alternative method:  just find out what flight I have booked, or which teller line I picked.  [Caron, above left, is shown delayed in an airport. ]

(3) This site, BeFunky, allows you to turn photos into cartoons and uvatars.  (Not quite the psychodelicious quality of our post in 2006 on a way to turn photos into Andy Warhol classics, but still nice.)  They can be crude B&W sketches or modern art. 

Jeff, right, is a cartoon (ironic, since he is also a cartoonist).  I am shown left.  I have no photo of Mike, sorry. But Sam (top) is a nice gelding (as is Jeff).

The site even always you to re-dress your image with thousands of outfits and accessories.  I resisted the temptation to dress up Jeff.  But it is killing me.

Inexplicable TV Commercials

The TV year 2008 has already sported months of watching losers on-cam at various Burger King 'restaurants' showing their violent withdrawal symptoms when informed, in effect, "No Whopper For You."  It comes across like Ewan McGregor in Trainspotting trying to quit heroin.  What ad wizard thought I'd want to be more like the BK patrons?  (Same ones, I guess, who thought I'd want to have a creepy plastic King surprise me with breakfast in bed.)  What kind of shopping mall focus group voted thumbs up on those ads?  Probably bitter people clinging to their traditions of beef and sesame seeds.

Now we find that we are supposed to be taking serious and crucial investment advice from...Dennis Hopper. 

I admit that I find the competitor's spokesperson Sam Waterston to be preachy and elitist, just like his lawyer character on Law and Order -- but at least I wouldn't be deathly afraid that if I gave Sam my retirement dollars, he would be using them at the next intersection to try to score three tabs of acid.

[Alan Childress]

For the second anniversary, isn't it liquid paper?

Posted by Alan Childress

Two years ago, actually on April 8, I finally met Jeff face-to-face for the first time (and for that matter, Alene as well).  A month before that, I met Mike at Georgetown while I was attending a conference on critical theory.  Both had an infectious enthusiasm apparent from those first meetings (Alene too).  I just wanted to say I am glad to be blogeagues of theirs.  Thanks.  Also glad they have not approached Cal professor John Yoo to be an ethics editor here as part of some coup to replace me.  As far as I know.  (On the larger matter of the trouble with Yoo, btw, I think Brad Wendel has it right.)

Google's Custom Time Gets New Rival

Posted by Alan Childress

Yesterday, for obvious reasons, the law blog discourse.net posted on Gmail's new feature Custom Time that allows the user to set the time an email  was apparently sent.  Backdating is apparently good for late cancellations of dates, March Madness pool selections (a la 'Wreaking Crew to win'), and tricking the boss into thinking the memo was sent on time but was swept into the spam filter.  (At my school, I am amazed that most emails from the university president under the title "Tulane Talk: subject matter" are only found in my junk mail.  That might make sense if he had a habit of trying to sell us CiAli$ for less as Subject Matter, but it is odd since these are internal emails.)  Anyway, Custom Time has some great uses and was rolled out by Google yesterday.  In the illustration at right, you can even mark it as 'read' and berate Grandma for forgetting she already read it.

Today I hear rumors that (a day late) Microsoft will announce that Hotmail will offer a similar feature, which in development was called Gates Now Can Stop Time Too, or GNCSTT for simplicity, and will be marketed as Cricket.  Originally it was just called Unixx, but they decided Cricket would appeal to children better, sort of like Joe Camel.  The new function only takes seven or eight steps and use of the middle mouse button.  The only hitch is that it sometimes imbeds into any blog program certain codes that will wipe out user functions.  When using Cricket, keep in mind that Windows XP will freeze and you will restart your computer after five or six End Now conversations with your computer where you get the feeling that your computer is repeating End Now like Rainman.  They need to add a 'Definitely, definitely end now end now' grey box, one with stick to it.

Cricket is free for users of Explorer.  They mean Internet Explorer, not the Windows table of contents thing.

Feeding Employees Not Taxable

Not a Legal Profession case, but perhaps of interest to Paul Caron (if he has not already seen it) is a decision of the Nevada Supreme Court holding that giving complimentary meals to casino employees is not a taxable event:

"We conclude that, under the facts of this case, no taxable event occurred when the Nugget provided complimentary meals to its patrons and employees.  Thus, the Nugget is owed a refund for use tax paid on the complimentary meals in question, and we reverse the district court’s summary judgment denying the Nugget’s refund claim.  We remand this matter to the district court for further proceedings with respect to the requested refund."

(Mike Frisch)

Is "thinking like a lawyer" similar to the "security mindset"?

Michael Froomkin (Miami) in this post makes the point -- yes, we think like paranoid security engineers -- in a humorous way.  Asking "whether this sort of demented worldview, one in which you shake things to see how they break, can be taught, I think, 'Hell, yes: I’ve been doing it for years.' ”  I particularly like the subversive idea he quotes of how to use SmartWater ownership markers.  [Alan Childress]

I Cry in My Room When Mommy and Daddy Fight

In the never-ending (and never-interesting, to the rest of us) football rivalry between Ohio State and Michigan, today's Pyhrric victory belongs to the Buckeyes:  top-rated high school QB Terrelle Pryor chose OSU over Michigan.  This will no doubt please Nancy Rapoport and disappoint Jeff Lipshaw, both fanatics, respectively.  [Alan Childress]

Follow-up to post on law firm of Kimmel & Silverman

Posted by Alan Childress
        Even though I don't teach or even like Contracts, I do read the Contracts Prof Blog because its snippets and examples are often funny and telling.  I recently expressed to its founding editor, Frank Snyder (a great blogger like the other prolific Frank:  Pasquale) my sorrow that Prof. Snyder had been targeted for a blog beat-down by someone whom, I must assume, never met Frank.  Somehow in our own email exchange, Frank mentioned that they get a lot of hits because of a story -- an actual contracts story -- they once posted on Kate Beckinsale's breasts.  (Actually they posted it on the blog about them; misplaced modifier.) 

Such is the way of internet searching and blog page visits:  the actual popularity of a blog sometimes relates to its sitemetercount in the same way that U.S. News & World Report rankings relate to the real quality of a law school.  It's probably in the neighborhood of about right in many cases, but mostly by methodological accident.  I don't know if concurring opinions would concur with that opinion, but I do note that it celebrated its bizzillionth hit by thanking Jennifer Aniston and noting (per Dan Solove):

One of my more popular posts is one entitled Jennifer Aniston Nude Photos and the Anti-Paparazzi Act. It seems to be getting a lot of readers interested in learning about the workings of the Anti-Paparazzi Act and the law of information privacy. It sure is surprising that so many readers are eager to understand this rather technical statute.

So I should not have been shocked to notice through our sitemeter that we are getting some hits based on Mike's November 2007 post discussing bar discipline issues related to the law firm of Kimmel & Silverman, in its Maryland office. 

I can only hope that, if Mike ever needs to do a substantive follow-up, by then the firm will have expanded and become the law firm of Kimmel, Silverman, Damon and Affleck.

Arrogance, Self-Deception, and Civility - A Thesis on the Balance between Principle and Learning

Posted by Jeff Lipshaw

I was already reeling, in a way, from the spin now coming out of the Clinton campaign, distinguishing between primary delegates and caucus delegates, all apparently in an effort to persuade superdelegates that Senator Clinton really is winning, despite the fact that she is losing.  This was consistent with the "let's make Obama" the VP move, which reminded me of the scene at the end of Searching for Bobby Fischer when the little chess master Josh Waitzkin sticks out his hand and offers a draw to the arrogant little snot who appears to be winning.   Except there was nothing cynical about Josh.  (Somebody please explain to me the "Obama is not qualified to be commander-in-chief now, but he may be by the convention" logic.)  It occurred to me in the middle of the night:  "I'll bet she has calculated that it's a no lose proposition to trash Obama.  Either she gets the nomination or he does, and then he loses to McCain, having been given fodder from Senator Clinton herself, and she's back in 2012 at the relatively young age of 64."  Who do they think they are fooling?

Then the Spitzer thing.  I have never been a big Spitzer fan (see Matt Bodie's comment over at PrawfsBlawg for an expression of that particular sense of betrayal) so I haven't followed it closely, but obviously there is a pattern of self-righteous (and foul-mouthed) combativeness, all in the pursuit of what he is sure is right.  The New York Times reports this morning that this is a fellow not particularly attuned to listening to somebody else, or learning.  What could he have been thinking?  Who did he think he was fooling?

And finally, I had already been thinking, after perusing the blogosphere this weekend, about the issue of civility in academic debate. 

It seems to me there is a common thread here, perhaps tenuously so, but I don't think so.  It has to do with arrogance and self-deception.  I wrote an article awhile back that concluded with this paragraph:

When I am faced with a difficult choice, I fear nothing like my ability to persuade myself.  Kant understood that we can never really tell if the principle of our action is determined by our material wants and inclinations, or by recognition of the universality of the rightness in what we are choosing.  I agree.  Whether in our own minds, or in a group of like-minded executives, we are wholly capable of mistaking what makes us happy or fulfilled for what is right.  And, the only check on the power of reason, and its thirst for rationality that produces lies, is openness to the insight and reality, however uncomfortable or distasteful or opposed to our own reasoned conclusions, that come from another.

Just how do you check your intuitions about right and wrong before they reach dogmatism?  Just how do you balance principle with learning?  I think consciously recasting one's visceral reactions into civil and temperate speech may be a start. 

More below the fold.

Last Saturday afternoon, I went to a session of an academic program at a well-regarded law school in my neighborhood.  I didn't stay long. As I described it to my next door neighbor (himself a well-regarded theorist in the physical sciences also at a school in my neighborhood) as we split a bottle of moderately cheap red wine, what was supposed to be social science (presented by someone who was supposed to be a "star") struck me as normative conclusions supported by statistical correlation to arbitrary and normative assumptions.  Moreover, the normative assumptions struck me as borderline offensive (it wouldn't be a far stretch to say that, say, Jack Welch, was put into the same analytical category for sociological purposes as, say, Heinrich Himmler).

As I drifted into a pinot noir induced fog, I wondered what I might have said had this been a lunch presentation in our faculty dining room.  What do you say when you think something is absolutely wrong-headed, indeed, even hokum?  I am pretty sure, without resorting to ad hominem, I could have suggested that perhaps there were some flaws in the attribution of characteristics in the assumptions that might have an effect on the conclusions.   But I don't think I would have needed to make the point by imputing anything into the mind or actions of the speaker. 

I typed "academic civility" into Google, and came up quickly with this interesting little post by someone who is apparently a young academic dean at a community college:

Apparently, a community college in New Jersey briefly floated a policy to encourage 'civility' that was anything but. The provisions were: 

1. Honesty, integrity, and respect for all will guide my personal conduct.
2. I will embrace and celebrate differing perspectives intellectually.
3. I will build an inclusive community enriched by diversity.
4. I am willing to respect and assist those individuals who are less fortunate.
5. I promise my commitment to civic engagement and to serve the needs of the community to the best of my ability. 

Yes, they overshot. I'd say, comically so. (Number 2 is my favorite. “I celebrate your staggering wrongness! I embrace your breathtaking, fundamental category error!”) But there is some value to the idea of civility that apparently animated the original idea. If we understand civility as something like “the rules for participating in the organization,” then it seems reasonable to me to go beyond “I know it when I see it.” The mistake wasn't in trying to write it down; it was in absurdly overreaching. 

My proposed code of civil conduct for higher ed, or speech code, if you prefer: 

I will separate the speaker from the speech.

It seems to me that there are at least several reasons in academia for temperate speech, even when facing staggering wrongness or breathtaking fundamental category error, and they are not all that different from the reasons we might suggest in other non-academic settings. 

    (1) You can make the point without the ad hominem.  Indeed, the point is stronger without the ad hominem.

    (2) The intemperateness says more about the critic than it does about the target of the criticism.

    (3) The intemperateness may shut down discussion altogether, or chill creative thinking in a way that blunt but temperate criticism does not.

    (4) "What you do speaks so much louder than what you say."  I suppose it's possible that some of us are teaching students who will go off to pursue careers in fields in which prefacing your remarks about someone else's argument with something like "you are a toad-sucking scumbag who obvious misses the point in everything you read" is SOP. Most of us don't, however.  I'd hate to think there was a spillover from academic debate to teaching style.

I am hardly suggesting that one take a measured view of the espousal of hateful things.  But as I learned from a wise mentor in the academy, there is something called the principle of charity of interpretation, and even if it weren't the right thing to do, deontologically speaking, it makes sense from a utilitarian debate standpoint because if you rebut the weak interpretation, you are open to the argument that you didn't understand the strong one!

Anyway, what's the thread behind this long ramble?  Arrogance, incivility, and self-deception all stem from "it's all about me." They are the antithesis of learning.  I suppose there is somebody in the world whose contribution to human flourishing entitles them to arrogance, incivility, and self-deception, but I have yet to identify any candidates. 

Update: George Clooney Supports Barack Obama

He gave $2600, according to the FundRace2008 search engine, on which I posted here.  But Michael Clayton of Montana gave $500 to John Edwards.  Bob Barnes (of Mississippi) gave the same to Mike Huckabee, likely trying not to be beaten as a washed up CIA spy again.  Danny Ocean gave nothing despite his Vegas millions (same with Billy Tyne, likely because he is still busy with that perfect storm).  Various Doug Ross donors, none of them former ER doctors, gave to Rudy, Hillary, Ron Paul, and McCain. 

Unrelated (particularly unrelated since Clooney's film was not awarded best picture last night), here is a site, Oscarology, that accurately describes your life and personality based on the best picture winner from the year you were born.  I am a Ben-Hur for sure.  Seems as viable and descriptively rich as less sophisticated methods of astrology.

[Alan Childress]

Brooke Shields Gave $2300 to Obama in Feb. 07: Nosey Site Lets You Track Names, $, and a Street-Level Map of Political Donors

I am not sure I am happy I stumbled on this Huffington donation list site, and feel like it is close to violating the spirit of NAACP v. Button, which said that you can join an organization without fear the government will get a membership list of your actual name.  But the obvious difference is that donating to a presidential candidate under common-cause notions of full disclosure is a public act and is disclosed. 

Well, privacy fans may not like the fact that collating that data is so easy and public.  And that it is presented via a street address map (?!) with pushpins to tell everyone where you live, how much you gave, and to whom.  You can even search by common occupations such as attorney or actor (doctors seem to like Ron Paul).  My wife, Morgan Fairchild, seems not to have contributed this year or last, joining Abe Vigoda.  Of the four Fred Thompsons who donated, sadly only one (an attorney/lobbyist from Brentwood, Tennessee) gave to Fred Thompson ($1000).  Michael Frisch, well the one who is a summer associate/student in Chicago, gave $315 to Obama early enough in the campaign (4/07) that he is not some bandwagon guy.  In that Frisch guy's 60614 zip code, $2,015,882 was given: $231,391 to Republicans, and $1,784,491 to Dems.  All duly identified, mapped and pushpinned with names and locations inside 60614. 

Cass Sunstein also gave to Obama, before moving to Harvard.  Almost all Posners gave to Dems, none of the contributors also named Richard.  Brooke Shield's L.A. zip code in Hollywood off Sunset (I assume an office, unless she has one of those dated apartments near the Armenian bakeshops) only gave a million and a half, less than by that Chicago guy's zip.  So much for Hollywood's influence.  That zip, 90046, does tilt heavily Democratic, though.  Arnold Schwarzenegger may be endorsing McCain, but Arnold is yet to be listed as having parted any Hollywood money with the man (from any zip code).  Renee Zellweger gave $4600 to Hillary, and her 90048 zip on Wilshire Blvd only gave 350K, with 295K to Dems.

The cautionary tale:  at the very least, make it geographically real when you say you gave at the office.  Smart, Brooke.  Or use a PO Box like Fred Thompson did.

The site, http://fundrace.huffingtonpost.com/, asks

Want to know if a celebrity is playing both sides of the fence? Whether that new guy you're seeing is actually a Republican or just dresses like one?

FundRace makes it easy to search by name or address to see which presidential candidates your friends, family, co-workers, and neighbors are contributing to. Or you can see if your favorite celebrity is putting money where their mouth is.

[Alan Childress]

Lost in Translation

If you are a fan of the 1997 movie with Morgan Freeman and Ashley Judd called Kiss The Girls (or the James Patterson novel), as I suspect Jeff is, you should know that your attempts to rent it at Blockbuster in China will fail unless you ask for it by the name it is called there, Panic Lip Robbed.  [Alan Childress]

What is the Worst Email "Reply All" Gaffe You Made or Heard Of?

Posted by Alan Childress

We ask you to Comment with the best/worst example.  On the heels of this WSJ Law Blog post on Skadden/Sheila Birnbaum's sending an email errantly to reporters that questioned the Mississippi AG's views, and the earlier Pepper Hamilton mix-up of a reporter's name with a co-counsel's (oh that pesky auto-complete function), I am reminded of a time that I meant to forward my boss's email on to someone else with the view, I duly added, that my boss was insane.  Instead, I 'Replied' it to the boss.  Fortunately he was insane, his email was insane, and he did not seem to register the insult, likely knowing he or his email was insane.  So it's all good.  What's your example?

An Academic's Blog to Keep an Eye On, With Some Posts on the Teaching of Legal Ethics in the US and UK: Welcome to the Colonies, John Flood

Posted by Alan Childress

John Flood, a professor of law and sociology in the UK and Germany, is a leading figure in the Law and Society Association and a prodigious writer on law firms and the legal profession worldwide.  His recent work on the globalization of firms is becoming part of the basic canon of reading on the profession and its institutions internationally.  Some of his writings are readily linked here (click on Publications).

This year, John is visiting at the University of Miami, lucky them (and lucky for him, the city has good cigars).  And lucky for us, he is currently blogging his experiences at a US law school, with interesting contrasts to legal education in the UK.  Here is his blog:  Random Academic Thoughts (RATS).  I was particularly interested in his post (see Feb. 2 here) on the difference between how legal ethics is taught in the US versus the UK, and we in US law schools (surprisingly) come off looking pretty good by comparison.

I also enjoyed these observations on giving a paper to a law faculty at lunch, which should be considered by those who will do a job talk in seeking employment as a law prof.
 

Arbitrary Geographic Considerations of Obama vs. Clinton

Posted by Alan Childress

I have reconsidered my view since my prior post, in which I had commented on The Onion's opinion about Barack Obama. 

I changed my mind and decided it is time to get past all the racial and gender politics.  Chris Matthews and Pat Buchannan keep asking ‘how the white male’ voted, and let me tell you that being treated as some stereotypic monolith hurts.  Like when the waitress just assumes I wanted Miracle Whip on my sandwich.  Or people in elevators start humming The Captain and Tennille and Art Garfunkel songs around me, as if I am some walking envoy of the Caucasian Cultural Coalition.   Do you have any idea what it is like when random profs at the AALS Conference ask me if I know Joe Blow who teaches at Creighton, or express surprise that I never heard of Leonardo De Vinchi, just because they are white?  Oh like we all know each other. 

I am tired of gender disempowerment as well.  With my wife, it’s all take out the garbage this, and do you have to leave your underwear on the dining room floor that, all because I am a man and am supposed to have muscles and pick up things. Hey I proved I can lift the toilet seat, isn’t that enough? 

It is better that the TV pundits are starting to pick candidates based on arbitrary geographic coincidence and not with the divisive politics The Onion proposes.  Barack Obama spent his formative years in a state or city with the word 'Kansas' in it, just like Harry Truman.  And with all due respect to David Palmer in 24 and his attracting nuclear weapons (referenced in the onion editorial), it is a fact that Kansan Harry Truman is the only one to drop them.  And Eisenhower had an affair with his military driver.  Do we want a president who cheats on his wife and uses nuclear weapons?  I think not.  Worse, consider that the most recent Kansan on the ticket, Bob Dole, now touts Viagra.  I do not want a president who drops nuclear bombs and is hopped up on Viagra to have his finger on the button. 

This all speaks for the safer choice, John McCain.

The Onion Opposes Obama Because of the Movie Deep Impact

Posted by Alan Childress

A friend sent me an email linking this opinion piece in The Onion:  Do We Really Want Another Black President After the Events of Deep Impact?  Sound logic and all, here is the beginning of the argument:  the author is

...unwilling to stand idly by while our nation allows itself to be completely annihilated by another incoming comet.  Have we learned nothing from the tragic events of 1998, when, under the watch of President Morgan Freeman, this nation was plunged into chaos, and hundreds of millions of people died at the hands of the deadly Wolf-Beiderman space rock?

Comparisons to other such presidents, including David Palmer in 24, and "the huge black guy from the The Fifth Element," fare no better.  On Palmer's watch, for example, terrorists struggled no less than four nuclear bombs into the U.S.

My reponse to the author is that the choice is not made in a vacuum.  The alternative is unth