"Maybe I’ve been spoiled, but I feel like if this happened at Harvard Law School, a guy like Charles Nesson would be all over the opportunity..."

"... to just hop in, teach from the hip, and turn this upheaval into a Con Law experience like no other. Doesn’t Columbia Law have one professor like that? Doesn’t Columbia have any professors who want to teach just because interacting with young people and shaping minds about constitutional theory is kind of fun?"

Doesn’t Columbia even have any professors who at least want to send the message that lawprofs teach because interacting with young people and shaping minds about constitutional theory is kind of fun?

It's also interesting that at Columbia, a law professor is missing classes because she's going through a divorce. Back in the 1980s, when my first marriage broke up, it happened to coincide with a research grant that gave me a full semester off to write. I've always believed it would have been much better to have had classes to give some structure to those days.

Meanwhile, Instapundit links to Steven Bainbridge who talks about Columbia's solution of lumping 200 students together in one big class. What's the big deal if the teacher is lecturing, which, per Bainbridge, is a good idea anyway.

I suspect the students would have a few questions like: Why am I paying so much tuition if all I'm getting is something I could be watching on the Internet? And why are you paid so much money to lecture in person in front of people who could just as well be watching video of whoever is the very best lawprof lecturer on this subject?

Why not eliminate faculty meetings — or most of them — and conduct business via email?

Lawprof  Jacqueline Lipton asks. The first comment nails the reason:

Isn't there some concern about having a paper trail?... I assume live faculty meetings can help maintain confidentiality better than sending emails on a controversial topic....

Even on noncontroversial topics, most lawprofs don't want the risk and pressure of putting it in writing. A few reckless graphomaniacs would dominate the discussion. Squelched passive aggressives may take revenge. 

At my law school [Orin Kerr comments] an "all faculty" e-mail exchange was recently forwarded to and published by Above the Law. That was suboptimal.

Of course, he just put that in writing, and whatever was up at Above the Law is still there to be searched for. Was it this? ("You mistake me for someone who is actually intimidated by you Dick...")

"You can’t have it all. When you finally come to accept that, it’s liberating.

"You don’t have to feel like a bad employee or a bad parent for not being able to do it all. As Al Pacino says in the Devil’s Advocate: 'Guilt is like a bag of bricks, all you gotta do is set it down.'"

"So you want to be the next top legal scholar?"

"Step 1: find some better friends."

"If you don't think becoming a lawyer is the correct life choice for anyone ever, you have probably snorted, laughed..."

"... and said the following things to a lawyer-in-training: that I will become a professional liar, that I will have to sleep my way into a partnership or a good job or a higher salary because I am a woman, that I will have to wear suits 24/7, that my life won't really be like the show Suits even though I pray to the Jew god for that daily (but who doesn't want to work with Harvey Specter?!!), that I will hate my life and become an alcoholic and/or kill myself one day, and that I will make six-figures or be forced to work as volunteer in public interest law."

Some scribbling I read at XOJane because Above the Law said: "A tipster writes: 'PLEASE address this trash pile of an article… I’m begging you.' Well, here you go."

"Oops — could Penguin be S.O.L., thanks to the S.O.L.?"

"This is why you shouldn’t sue a Yale-trained litigatrix who used to work at Boies Schiller."

"Well, at least one person is getting annoyed by the endless back and forth between Posner and Scalia."

"But that’s just one person. We’ll continue to beat that horse until it’s extra dead."

I'm shocked, shocked to learn that the Harvard Law School Human Rights Journal doesn't want right-wing articles.

If you're going to expose liberal bias on law student-edited publications, you'll have to show me something other than a journal that displays lefty pride in its name.

What's wrong with a student publication with a political bias? If conservative lawprofs want to publish more articles, let them found their own publication or hoodwink tantalize law students to work their right-wing will. Or cut out the middleman and blog.

Live freely in writing... or die.

Lawprofs, whining about not getting enough of what they deserve — is there anything less likely to inspire sympathy?

Madonna and Yoko Ono appeal to Vladimir Putin to free Pussy Riot.

Pussy Riot is on trial for a performance in the Christ the Saviour Cathedral in which they "danced and sang a song which parodies a Christian prayer, imploring the Virgin Mary to rid Russia of Mr Putin." They are charged with "hooliganism" (or whatever word or words in Article 213 of the Russian penal code have been translated into "hooliganism") and "are accused of inciting religious hatred." The chose the site for their performance, "in front of the altar of Moscow's main cathedral" because "the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, publicly back[ed] Mr Putin in elections."

IN THE COMMENTS: Irene points out that the English word "hooligan" began around 1898 and quickly made its way into Russian, where it is "khuligan."

By 1900-01 khuligan was widely used to describe the gangs of young toughs who were frightening respectable citizens all over Russia, and it has never fallen out of favor since.

"Did you hear the one about prosecutors going on strike? No? Me either, until now."

"A county DA’s office in the San Francisco suburbs announced this week they are considering striking to protest new, unpopular labor contract."

"A few jurisdictions have laws against 'attractiveness discrimination.'"

"Try to guess which ones, then click on the link to see if you’re right."

"Sometimes attorneys are desperate to find a way out of the legal profession."

"Sometimes that desperation will lead them down a strange road to an entirely new career — and not just a new career, but a new way of life."

ADDED: From the comments at the link: "That Boy George, come-hither look seals the deal."

Did this "Human Sexuality" class amount to sexual harassment of the "hostile environment" kind?

A new lawsuit by a 60-year-old student, who dropped the class that required the students to write weekly journal entries about their sexual thoughts and practices.

According to the complaint, during the fourth week of class, the journal entry of student sitting next to Royce was discussed in detail....

The complaint contains plenty of other instances of such classroom occurrences (including Kubistant requiring students to masturbate “twice as often” and to journal about it).

The teacher had students sign a waiver at the beginning of the course, and Royce signed, but we're not seeing the text of the waiver. How far would you go in allowing teachers to use waivers to avoid liability in situations like this? Aside from the waiver, do you think what this teacher did should be dealt with through a lawsuit? Would you like to see this teacher stopped from teaching the class as he does (through some means other than a lawsuit)? Do you accept this approach to teaching the class as within the teacher's academic freedom? Do you want to know more about the facts, such as the tone of voice and the inflection that the teacher used when reading the students' journal entries out loud?

I got to that link via Above The Law, which makes much of the waiver and takes a flippant attitude toward the not-young woman:  "It’s kind of sad that she’s evidently made it all the way to 60 without reading the stuff she signs." If that's sad, you must be really, really sad. I'll bet you clicked yes without reading to at least 10 things in the last year, trusting the source — e.g., your school — and figuring that other people are making sure that there's nothing bizarre in it and that if there were anything bizarre, it would never be enforced.

Jonathan Turley's civility bullshit about my calling "bullshit" on his Court-packing plan.

ABT's Elie Mystal writes:

Jonathan Turley seems hurt that Ann Althouse and other conservative academics acted in a way that shows “we have lost the tradition of civil discourse in this country.” Yeah, umm, Professor Turley, perhaps you didn’t read the footnotes, but here on the internet we don’t have a tradition of civil discourse. We do have a tradition of ad hominem attacks, hyperbole, and pictures of cats.

My posts are "Don't like the Supreme Court's decision? Propose a Court-packing plan!" and "How did Jonathan Turley come up with 19 as the best number of Supreme Court Justices?"

Obviously, Professor Turley doesn't enjoy my fun-loving, bloggy approach to his professorly musings and proposals. It's not what he's used to, and it's not what the Washington Post is hoping for when it publishes all those op-eds from law professors to launder its partisan politics into something with that looks scholarly and thoughtful. These lawprofs who experience the inflation of elite media publication — and I've been there — do not want other lawprofs tweaking and puncturing them. It might seem that I'm just crossing a line and being unprofessional or insufficiently submissive when I call bullshit — and in this case I literally called bullshit. ("Oh, spare me the bullshit.")

What I'm doing might seem careless and lightweight. But I am passionate and serious about what I am doing, which is about speaking clearly and showing you things you might not be able to see. Most law professors write for other law professors (as well as elite media and powerful politicians). In this enterprise of career building, they cultivate and trade on respect. Most law professors accept this discipline, because they imagine it's in their self-interest, and it actually is. In this game, I'm a big outlier. I call out the lawprofs, and I've been doing it a lot lately, because —in advance of the health-care decision — the big newspapers have been publishing a lot lawprof op-eds. (By the way, did you know that "19 of 21 constitutional law professors who ventured an opinion" — and who were elite enough to be polled by Bloomberg  — said the law is constitutional?)

In a later post, I'll respond to more of Turley's long, professorly post which denies that his Court-packing plan arises out of a distaste for the Supreme Court's opinions. In the bloggerly tradition, I'm keeping this post short and clear. My point is: I'm about clear speech, telling the truth, starting conversations, and having some fun. I'm not about being nice to powerful speakers.

And I'm really not about getting pushed back with calls for "civility." As you know if you're a regular reader of this blog, my tag for this subject has long been "civility bullshit." So this is another post with the "civility bullshit" tag — and it's one where someone used civility bullshit against me for saying "bullshit."

***

Here's a cool book on bullshit called "On Bullshit." It's by a professor! ("One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted.")

UPDATE: The promised additional post is here. 

""[I]t’s no surprise that a visiting professor is teaching Admin; professors at Yale love to dump..."

"... the black-letter teaching duties on visitors, so the YLS tenured professors can teach 'Law and Literary Theory' or 'Law and Robots' or 'Law and __' (yes, blank in the original; this meta-course was all about the interdisciplinary study of law)."

David Lat, discussing a current student problem at Yale Law School, in the larger context of the differences among law schools. He continues:

In the grand scheme of things — global poverty, domestic unemployment, the war in Afghanistan, climate change (presumably you believe in it) — the inability of third-year students at Yale Law School to take Administrative Law is not a huge problem. But it is an interesting illustration of the very real differences between law schools. At how many other law schools would students take to the streets — Occupy 127 Wall Street, if you will — over being denied the right to wallow in the nuances of Chevron deference?

Only one-third of new partners at big law firms are female.

Does that make you think it's harder or easier to make partner if you enter a big law firm and you are female?

Most people who end up in Biglaw have no desire to make partner. They want to do it for a few years, pay off their debts, and build up some credentials so they can do what they really want to do. But some people show up at the firm so hungry for the brass ring that they can taste it. You know what they say: “Making partner is like winning a pie-eating contest where the prize is more pie.” Yet there isn’t a lot of analysis and study about what one actually has to do to win this career race.

See the point of my question?

"I'm guilty under U.S. law, but not under the Quran."

Underwear bomber pleads guilty.

"Come on, can’t you hear the keystrokes clicking by somebody over at Fox or Althouse just so eager to defend this next 'brave young person' who dared to 'tell the truth' at Harvard Law School?"

Somebody over at Althouse? I'm the only one here. I've been solo-blogging with nary a guest blogger for nigh on 8 years. If you're talking about somebody over at Althouse, you're talking about me. Or are you dragging my name through the "raaaaccciissssttt!!!!" mud over what you imagine a commenter might say?

Dammit. Now I know Elie Mystal at Above the Law has an old issue with me about calling things racist. Back in 2008, there was a contest — which he won — to determine who would be the new blogger at Above the Law. I was one of a panel of judges — a la "American Idol" — and we were looking a the writing of several competitors without seeing the details of who was writing. Judging one of Mystal's entries, I said: "Racism alert." I didn't know that Mystal is, in fact, African American.

Anyway, in the present case, Mystal is writing about a blog called “Harvard Law Caveman,” which is some kind of satirical blog opposed to affirmative action. I have never linked to it, though the author pitched it to me via email a couple times about 10 days ago. I'm not amused by the crude use of racism even when I think the writer meant to lampoon racism. Mystal's belief that I am "just so eager to defend this next 'brave young person' who dared to 'tell the truth'" is nothing but mudslinging.

As for the Harvard Law Caveman, why give him attention just to trash him? Is it so you can trash somebody who has profile, like me? But I didn't link to him. Maybe back when he pitched his blog to me, the Caveman also pitched it to Above the Law. Maybe Mystal has been waiting to see whether someone like me would link so he could attack. Time passed. Did anyone link? But he nevertheless portrays me as "eager" to link! I call bullshit, Elie.

This guy launched a racist blog using as much HLS branding as he could, but the school is not going to actually do anything about it. 

Like what?! It's free speech, and Mystal must know damned well that taking action would draw attention to this erstwhile unnoticed blog and also turn the writer into a free speech martyr. The criticism of Harvard Law School is thus also bullshit.

... But this is life at Harvard Law School. The school is so big. And there are so many people there who are still pissed that they didn’t get into Yale. The racist crap one hears from the HLS student body on just a casual level I think would blow most people away. I once had a white guy argue to my face that I didn’t “belong” there — and this was after we’d both figured out that I got a better grade in the class we took together.

Shine a light on whatever HLS "racist crap" you really see, but it only undercuts your credibility to make crap up. The way you just treated me makes me wonder what was the whole context of that "belong" quote? Let's talk about what's actually true. It works a whole lot better that way.

Why is Elie Mystal so annoyed at the Stanford lawprof who wrote a book called "Is Marriage for White People?"?

I'm reading this blog post over at Above the Law because Instapundit linked to it.  Instapundit did one of those ultra-sleek posts shorn of all opinion: "ELIE MYSTAL has a question for Stanford." That points us to a question that is the post title — "Stanford Law School: Why Are Your Professors Writing Books That Sound Like They’ve Been Written By Bloggers?" — but the post isn't mainly a challenge to Stanford to do something about lawprofs writing books that are insufficiently larded with citation and sober rumination. Mystal's post is mainly about the specific content of a book written by Ralph Richard Banks and aimed at general readers and — it's pretty obvious — TV and radio talk shows. Want to talk about black people and marriage? Bring on Professor Banks. He'll say some provocative things in language that will charge up the audience.

Maybe Mystal is a little jealous:

Now, if I were a blogger looking to make a quick buck, that’s exactly the kind of book I’d write. In fact, look for my upcoming book, “Why White People Can Afford To Piss Away Time & Money in Law School, But Blacks Can’t.”

But Ralph Banks isn’t a blogger, he’s a Stanford Law professor. Shouldn’t we expect less sensationalized bullcrap from him?

Here's Ralph Banks, who is, like Mystal, a black male writer with an elite legal education, and he's writing a book about marriage and black people, and he's also a Stanford law professor, while Mystal is writing for a blog. Moreover, Banks — if we're to believe an advance review (the book's not out until September) — is arguing that black women can "shift the power balance" by marrying white men. Mystal states more than once that he is married to a black woman, but:

For what it’s worth, I have no problem whatsoever with interracial marriage...

So whether or not Professor Banks has a worthwhile point, my objection rests with the way it was stated. I do this every day. I know a sensational headline when I’m looking at one. I’m familiar with how one writes generally reasonable arguments for 90% of a piece interspersed with ten percent of barely coherent hyperbole. We live in a culture where getting heard over the white noise sometimes requires you to shout a little bit. I get that.

I just don’t see why we need that from Stanford Law School, and I don’t see why we need it on a topic where there has been so little top-notch scholarly work.... Couldn’t the Stanford Law professor give us something a little bit more than Is Marriage for White People? Couldn’t the SLS prof tell his publisher (who, dollar-to-donuts, is the one who came up with this title): “Come now, that’s dumb. After the initial shock value, people will just say I’m being dumb, and that’s not going to be good for sales.”

Look, it's a great title, and people are going to stop and pay attention — in part because of the title and in part because of Banks's status as a high-level lawprof. Now, maybe that feels unfair to Mystal, who toils as a blogger unassisted by lawprof status. (But Mystal didn't build his own blog traffic; he stepped up onto a writing-platform built by David Lat.) Maybe it also seems unfair that lawprof-bloggers get some initial attention as bloggers because they are lawprofs. (But the information superhighway is littered with little-read blogs written by lawprofs who thought lots of people would want to know what they had to say about this and that because they are lawprofs. It's not that easy!)

I think it's fine for lawprofs to speak to the general public about a variety of public issues. We need smart and interesting people contributing to the national dialogue. And some of these people are law professors. I wouldn't want to say to law professors — especially to the lawprof named Althouse — you need to crawl back into the stereotypical lawprof box and write books and articles that look more like something conventional people can glance at and say: Scholarship!

The Annual Law Revue Contest.

Compete! It's not enough to put on a show... or to slog through law school and put on a show... you must strive to win the competition of shows.