June 2004
-
It “pays” to be a Supreme Court clerk
So reports this article: “The intense annual competition to lure elite Supreme Court law clerks to top law firms is reaching record heights this year, with some firms offering jaw-dropping hiring bonuses of $150,000 or more. “These bonuses, added to base salaries in the third-year associate range, make it likely that some of the Court’s…
-
The Texas Republican Party Platform…
…is a frightening document, but Jonathan Ichikawa has found even more perversity buried in the bowels of the document.
-
Still More on Justice Thomas and the “Lunatic Fringe”
From the LA Times (registration required), still more on Justice Thomas’s opinion in the Pledge case: “The Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, called Thomas’ view ‘breathtakingly radical.’ ‘Mississippi could be officially Baptist, and Utah could be officially Mormon. If his viewpoint ever became the majority on…
-
And Another new Law Dean: Michael Schill from NYU to UCLA
Moments after the last posting, I learn that NYU’s Michael Schill, an expert in legal issues related to real estate and urban planning, will be the new Dean of the law school at UCLA. The press release is here. This caps a brutal year for NYU, in which the law school lost two of its…
-
Tax Scholar Schizer to be new Columbia Law Dean
The Columbia press release is here. Columbia’s last Dean, David Leebron, is now President of Rice University and, like Schizer, was a member of the Columbia faculty, though not as young as Professor Schizer at the time of his ascension. Professor Schizer, who only recently got tenure, is also regarded as one of the top…
-
Philosopher of Mind Rowlands from Exeter to Hertfordshire
Mark Rowlands (philosophy of mind/cognitive science/ethics), currently at the University of Exeter, has accepted a senior appointment as Professor of Mental and Moral Philosophy at the University of Hertfordshire, UK, to start in August 2004. Another setback for Exeter, which only recently recruited Rowlands, and which also now faces the prospect of losing Paul Griffiths…
-
Rawls Remembered
The May 2004 issue of the Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association has a warm and informative memorial notice for John Rawls by his Harvard colleague T.M. Scanlon. A few highlights about matters less well-known: Rawls served in WWII and “his Division…would probably have taken part in the invasion of Japan, had an…
-
Monty Python Meets Donald Rumsfeld (or has that already happened?)
Details here: “For some time now, I’ve been trying to find out where my son goes after choir practice. He simply refuses to tell me. He says it’s no business of mine where he goes after choir practice and it’s a free country. “Now it may be a free country, but if people start going…
-
War Crimes at Abu Ghraib
An analysis by my colleague Steve Ratner here.
-
In honor of Father’s Day…
why not visit this site, Military Families Speak Out, and click on “Letters” to hear about the fathers (and the mothers) missed and lost, the fathers (and mothers) deprived of their beloved children, the children without fathers (and mothers), all because of a sick man in the White House and his criminal and immoral war.…
-
Georgetown’s Tushnet to Visit at Harvard Law
Mark Tushnet (constitutional law, legal history), long Georgetown’s most eminent faculty member, will be visiting at Harvard Law School next year and, by all accounts, Harvard is “serious” about hiring him permanently. Harvard Law School is trying to expand its faculty currently, to improve the student/teacher ratio, and also has several of the top young…
-
The less they know, the less they know it posting of the month…
…is here, wherein a blogger who apparently recognizes that intelligent design creationism is nonsense, nonetheless reads this posting of mine in which I wrote that, “[W]hen there are legal arguments on both sides of a question–say, whether the Establishment Clause applies to the states–to adopt the side that has repulsive moral and political consequences is…
-
More on Justice Thomas, the “Lunatic Fringe,” and the Pathology of Originalism
Rick Garnett (Notre Dame, Law) takes issue with my reference to Justice Thomas’s dissent in the pledge case (in particular, his view that the Establishment Clause should not apply to the states) as solidifying his status on “the lunatic fringe.” Professor Garnett writes: “It strikes me, though, that Thomas’s observations are not particularly astonishing, and…
-
Post Turtle…or Mentally Ill?
This article is alarming: “Two weeks ago, Capitol Hill Blue revealed that a growing number of White House aides are concerned about the President’s mental stability. They told harrowing tales of violent mood swings, bouts with paranoia and obscene outbursts from a President who wears his religion on his sleeve…. “[A] new book by Dr.…
-
Bush is a Post Turtle
Via my colleague Calvin Johnson: While suturing a laceration on the hand of a 70-year-old Texas rancher (whose hand had caught in a gate while working cattle), a doctor and the old man were talking about George W. Bush being in the White House. The old Texan said, “Well, ya know, Bush is a ‘post…
If knowledge is sociologically conditioned, then what, exactly, happens to the truth-status of the sociology of knowledge itself? This is…