Lessons for liberals can be found in story of Federalist Society influence, says book review

Libertarians and conservatives with varying philosophies managed to put aside their differences to advance a broad agenda based on originalism, according to the authors of a new book. They were united by the Federalist Society, which began in 1982 with a symposium and spread to law school campuses throughout the…

May 15, 2013 11:25 AM CDT

Law schools should mostly ditch C grades, law prof argues

University of Arkansas at Little Rock law professor Joshua Silverstein doesn’t like C grades. In fact, he thinks they should be substantially eliminated at law schools, the Wall Street Journal Law Blog (sub. req.) reports. In a paper set for publication in the University of San Francisco Law Review, Silverstein…

May 15, 2013 11:00 AM CDT

Law-prof-turned-TV-judge dies at the age of 92; his on-air career began in 1958

Edgar Allan Jones Jr., a UCLA law professor who moonlighted as a television judge, has died at the age of 92. Jones presided over mock television court cases for six years beginning in 1958, the Los Angeles Times reports. His on-air career was launched with a call from a producer…

May 14, 2013 2:05 PM CDT

Would-be law prof, a former state AG, loses age bias suit against Georgetown

A federal judge has dismissed an age bias suit filed against Georgetown University Law Center by former North Dakota Attorney General Nicholas Spaeth. U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle dismissed the case last week, according to The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times. Spaeth had sued six schools after he…

May 14, 2013 11:35 AM CDT

Could this law school ranking unseat US News? (video)

Elie Mystal, editor at Above the Law, tells Bloomberg Law’s Lee Pacchia that his blog’s new law school rankings sought to list the top 50 American law schools by relying on an “outcome-based” methodology. Mystal says that focusing on the costs and rewards of a legal education allows this ranking…

May 9, 2013 4:00 PM CDT

Which law schools pay tenured profs the most and least? Survey has 68 median salaries

If you are a tenured law professor, the University of California at Hastings may be a good place to teach. UC Hastings paid its tenured law profs the highest reported median salary among 68 schools responding to a survey by the Society of American Law Teachers. UC Hastings paid a…

May 9, 2013 10:39 AM CDT

‘Leftist law professors’ stayed silent on high tuition while enjoying ‘sweet ride’, says law prof

Where is the outrage? It now costs more than $50,000 a year in tuition at many highly regarded law schools. So why aren’t liberal law professors who are concerned about class barriers rising up to oppose the oppressive cost? That is the question being posed by a well-known critic of…

May 2, 2013 2:00 PM CDT

Law prof Chemerinsky offers a syllabus on how the high court can polish its publicity

May 1, 2013 8:30 AM CDT

How to force change at law schools? Little agreement emerges at ABA conference

Should the ABA tighten law-school accreditation standards to force change? Or loosen them to allow for more experimentation? No consensus emerged on that question and several others debated on Wednesday during a conference sponsored by the ABA Task Force on the Future of Legal Education. The National Law Journal covered…

Apr 25, 2013 12:30 PM CDT

U of Texas put ‘golden handcuffs’ on law faculty with help of $213M private foundation

As the state attorney general continues to look into the operations of a private nonprofit foundation that helped raise money for the University of Texas Law School, details are emerging about the “golden handcuffs” that discouraged faculty from going to other institutions. Although there is nothing to indicate that any…

Apr 23, 2013 9:02 PM CDT

John Sutton, lawyer who drafted ABA’s Model Code, has died

John F. Sutton, a one-time dean at the University of Texas Austin School of Law, FBI special agent and drafter of the ABA’s Model Code of Professional Conduct, has died at age 95. Sutton died Friday of complications due to old age, his family told the Austin American-Statesman. Born in…

Apr 22, 2013 1:25 PM CDT

Law prof is under fire for creating fake identity

An Emory law professor who was named one of America’s top 50 rabbis by Newsweek magazine is under fire after a news report said he used a fake identity to join a rival rabbinic group. The Jewish Channel reported that Rabbi Michael Broyde had used the name Hershel Goldwasser to…

Apr 17, 2013 11:10 AM CDT

Law prof opposes ‘ag gag’ laws, suggests slaughterhouse webcams to inform debate

Duke University law professor Jedediah Purdy opposes so-called ag gag laws that make it a crime to record undercover videos of conditions on industrial farms and slaughterhouses. Such laws, proposed or enacted in about a dozen states, are supported by the agricultural industry, Purdy writes in an op-ed for the…

Apr 10, 2013 11:00 AM CDT

Nearly half of 2011 law grads can’t afford a house, law prof concludes

Bleak employment numbers are one way to measure the misery of law graduates. Another way: Determine the percentage of grads who make so little money in relation to their law school debt that home ownership is out of the question. University of St. Thomas law professor Jerry Organ has crunched…

Apr 8, 2013 11:25 AM CDT

It’s not an April Fool’s joke: Illinois bar exam gets harder; which states have hardest tests?

Illinois has decided to make its bar exam more difficult beginning this summer by raising the minimum passing grade by four points. The minimum score will go up by another four points in July 2015. Above the Law first heard of the development when it received a professor’s email to…

Apr 8, 2013 10:39 AM CDT