The truth shall set you free

Leonard Fein’s column in The Forward today caught my attention, not because of its substantive focus (the Clinton campaign’s ridiculous attempts to excuse Hillary Clinton’s fictional account of her Bosnia excursion as “misspeaking” or “mistaken remembrance”) but because of its opening paragraph:
Harvard’s motto is “Veritas” — truth. The motto of Brandeis is “Truth Unto Its [...]

Cheese, Flies, & Business Organizations

BYU law professor Gordon Smith has embarked on a fascinating study of business organization and relations among cheesemakers in Wisconsin. What a great idea — he’ll undoubtedly have loads of fun collecting his data, and the study promises to shed light on the interesting, and underexamined, world of business cooperatives. And it gives me a [...]

Acceptance

I am very pleased to report that my article, Liars & Terrorists & Judges, Oh My: Moral Panic and the Symbolic Politics of Appellate Review in Asylum Cases, will be published in the upcoming issue of the Notre Dame Law Review.

Taking stock, and finding a bull market

As the year winds to a close, it is customary to reflect on the past and look toward the future. For me, the most significant development of this past year was my move to a new city and my start at a new career. Nearly 6 months in, I remain unreservedly happy about both. Being [...]

What’s in a name? Perhaps your GPA.

According to a recent study, students whose first names begin with “A” or “B” get better grades than those whose names begin with “C” or “D”. Just one more reason I’m glad I named my son Alexander.
(Thanks to Concurring Opinions and PrawfsBlog for the tip.)

Quote of the day

Once again, from Jeffrey Harrison at MoneyLaw (who attributes it to “a friend”):
[Y]ou can talk about race and you can talk about gender but when you talk about class it is way too serious.
He’s talking about law faculty hiring, but the same is true in countless other contexts.

The true story of my life, or, how I became a law professor without really trying

I was recently startled to realize that it has been 20 years since I first entered the hallowed halls of the University of Chicago sociology department in pursuit of a PhD and an academic career. When people ask why I didn’t complete my doctorate, I usually explain that the job market in sociology was not [...]

Analogy of the day

Jeff Harrison, lamenting elite-school bias in law faculty hiring, suggests (in response to a commenter who contended that the elite schools are where the “brain power” is) that looking for “brain power” when hiring law professors is “like looking for height when picking up your bowling team.”
For the record, I’m tall, and I’m terrible at [...]

Click!

As I imagine is true at most institutions, higher-educational or otherwise, we commonly get broadcast emails on matters of potential interest to some segment of the university community, but of no interest to others. Most of the time, the sender is thoughtful enough to include a notice at the top, indicating that those not interested [...]

Drake eats crow, Chemerinsky back as UCI Dean

It appears that UC-Irvine Chancellor Michael Drake has decided he can successfully partner with Erwin Chemerinsky after all.