Law Professors

Law Students Report Positive Reaction to No-Laptop Policy

A law professor who banned laptops in his first-year criminal law class surveyed his students about their reaction—and found it was generally positive. UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh had the results in a memo to his collegues (PDF) and on his blog, The Volokh Conspiracy. Seventy-one percent of the students…

Mar 5, 2009 1:43 PM CST

Partner: Committee Now Vets Memos Knowing They Could Be Blogged

Big law firms are being more careful with staff-wide memos these days. They ought to. Anything that might prove juicy if stuck with a fork is likely to be leaked—as a matter of fact, Above The Law has fast become the venue of choice for lawyers whose loyalties don’t run…

Mar 4, 2009 10:08 PM CST

BigLaw Future: Lateral Model’s Out and Commodity Work’s In?

The elephant in the room got its full conversational due Tuesday at a symposium concerning the practical use of empirical research on the legal profession. That would be the economy. It lumbered into just about every angle of many discussions, knocking down predictability with its trunk and whipping expectations with…

Mar 4, 2009 9:53 PM CST

Law Profs Shocked By DOJ Memos About Bush Presidential Powers

Law professors with differing political perspectives agree on one thing after seeing the recently released U.S. Department of Justice legal memos outlining the scope of presidential power during the Bush administration: They went too far. Written over a several-year period after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the since-countermanded memos…

Mar 4, 2009 9:52 PM CST

John Yoo Says His Memos ‘Were Not for Public Consumption’

The author of several controversial Justice Department memos that endorsed expansive presidential powers and harsh interrogation techniques after the Sept. 11 attacks says he is worried about the impact of their release. John Yoo, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, is on leave to work as a…

Mar 4, 2009 1:29 PM CST

Law School Construction Site Is Field of Dreams for Paleontologists

Earlier this month, it was a rare ancient mammoth’s fossilized bones. But it was soon followed by another whale of a find at a construction site for a California law school that was, literally, a whale some 600,000 years ago. The latest discovery Wednesday—at what has become a field of…

Feb 28, 2009 1:10 AM CST

Former Kansas AG Faces Ethics Probe; Are Abortion Cases the Reason?

Former Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline and two of his deputies have been notified they are facing a state ethics probe. The letter to Kline and deputies Stephen Maxwell and Eric Rucker did not state the reason for the probe, according to the Associated Press and the Wichita Eagle. But…

Feb 27, 2009 1:32 PM CST

Albany Law School Freezes Tuition

Albany Law School is freezing its tuition next year, keeping the amount at this year’s level of $38,900. Dean Thomas Guernsey told the National Law Journal that the decision was made in recognition of the financial stress that many students are facing. In “these particularly uncertain times, we want to…

Feb 26, 2009 4:50 PM CST

Tinkering With DWI Evidence Costs NY Judge and Law Prof Their Jobs

Asked by a friend who is a lawyer to write a statement saying that she wasn’t drunk when she left a bar, New York Supreme Court Justice Joseph Makowski reportedly did so. Now the 55-year-old jurist is recanting the statement and resigning from his $136,700-a-year job. And the lawyer he…

Feb 23, 2009 6:33 PM CST

Petition Protests Choice of Mukasey as Speaker at UNC Law Graduation

Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey is one again facing protests over his selection as a commencement speaker at a law school. The latest flap is taking place at the University of North Carolina’s law school, where the UNC Student Bar Association chose Mukasey as a speaker, the Daily Tar Heel…

Feb 23, 2009 1:30 PM CST

New UC Law School at Irvine is Ranked in Top 10, Based on Faculty

A new law school at the Irvine campus of the University of California doesn’t even have any students in attendance yet. But it has tied with the University of Pennsylvania for the final spot in a top-10 list published today by Brian Leiter’s Law School Rankings, based on the faculty’s…

Feb 19, 2009 9:27 PM CST

Chemerinsky Invites Editorial Writer to Constitutional Debate

Don’t rile the dean of the new law school at the University of California-Irvine; he may challenge you to a debate. Erwin Chemerinsky extended his latest debate invitation in a letter to the Wall Street Journal responding to a critical editorial, the Wall Street Journal Law Blog reports. The editorial…

Feb 19, 2009 3:54 PM CST

SEC Looked Into Stanford CDs in 2005; Why Didn’t Feds Act Sooner in $8B Case?

In 2005, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sent letters to holders of certificates of deposit at Stanford International Bank of Antigua, seeking information about how the instruments had been marketed. And, as two former brokers for R. Allen Stanford contend in a lawsuit they filed in January 2008, they…

Feb 19, 2009 12:38 AM CST

New Facebook Fine Print: We Own Your Content, Period

The blogosphere has been abuzz this week over revised terms of use for the popular Facebook social networking site, after the Consumerist blog pointed out hitherto little-noticed changes announced earlier this month. As before, Facebook users give the website a license to use content “on or in connection with the…

Feb 18, 2009 12:57 AM CST

Mukasey Delayed Report Criticizing Authors of Torture Memos

Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey delayed a report last fall by the Justice Department’s ethics unit that criticizes three lawyers who wrote the so-called torture memos approving harsh interrogation tactics for terrorism suspects. The report by the Office of Professional Responsibility “sharply criticizes” three former Justice Department officials, according to…

Feb 17, 2009 12:14 PM CST