February 2005
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Conference on Law School Rankings
Paul Caron (Law, Cincinnati) has the details here. Since a couple of folks have already remarked on the fact that I’m not on the program (as one correspondent, mistakenly, surmised, "Maybe they’re unhappy with where you rank them"), I should note that Professor Caron kindly invited me to participate, but I couldn’t make it for…
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Evidence Scholar Mnookin from UVA to UCLA
Jennifer Mnookin, a leading young evidence law scholar at the University of Virginia, has accepted a tenured offer from the University of California, Los Angeles. (Her husband, the political theorist Joshua Dienstag, is also moving from Virginia to the Political Science Department at UCLA.) This is the first lateral recruitment for UCLA Law School this…
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“Academic Freedom” for Larry Summers?
Reader Tony O’Rourke, a law student at Columbia, raises an issue noted by some other correspondents: Since you’ve used your blog to raise awareness concerning the serious threats to academic freedom that are manifested by the attacks on Churchill at Colorado and Massad at Columbia, your silence on the Summers issue surprises me. I feel…
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Philosophy Howler in the New York Times
Here, in the course of an article about Larry Summers and Harvard: "[Harvard] can tenure Harvey Mansfield, the professor of government famous for his politically incorrect pronouncements, and Hilary Putnam, the philosophy professor who was handing out Progressive Labor pamphlets 35 years ago and seems not to have changed his mind on any issue since?"…
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In Memoriam
Robert O. Dawson (1939-2005) There is no memorial notice available yet, but Dean Powers’s remarks to the law school community this morning are worth sharing on this sad occasion: Bob’s professional accomplishments were astonishing. He literally wrote much of Texas law. He has enormous respect in the legal community. He was a fabulous teacher who…
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In response to reader queries…
…I will get around, as promised, to Larry Summers and whether the criticisms of him raise any academic freedom issues on Monday. Sorry for the delay.
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Gingrich: We Need a Law: Being Anti-American is Grounds for Dismissal
Herewith Newt Gingrich (as reported by The National Review), former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, and still prominent spokesman of the American right (which now runs the country, in case you forgot): We ought to say to [state university] campuses, it’s over…We should say to state legislatures, why are you making us pay…
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Philosophy Hiring
If you haven’t looked at the comments here in a few days, you should, since there is much interesting discussion and good advice from a number of philosophers.
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Larkin v. Horowitz, Again
Graham Larkin is the Stanford Art History professor, and AAUP representative, who has been battling it out with David "let’s put an end to academic freedom once and for all" Horowitz and his push for what he bizarrely calls an "Academic Bill of Rights" (more on that here and here and here and here [note…
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U.S. Ambassador: Canada has forfeited its sovereignty
It appears that Canada, not Iran, may be the next, immediate victim of U.S. aggression (and not just because the Canadians have more oil): The formal announcement Thursday that Canada will refuse any further participation in the controversial U.S. missile-defence shield was met with an immediate warning that Canada had given up its sovereignty. Although…
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IP Scholar Merges to Return Full-Time to Boalt
Robert Merges, whom many informed folks consider the best patents scholar of his generation in the legal academy, is going to return full-time to the law faculty at the University of California at Berkeley, after having been half-time recently at Boalt and half-time at the University of California, Davis. That’s a boon for Boalt, whose…
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The End of “Popular Constitutionalism”?
There aren’t that many book reviews that finish off an intellectual movement, but Scot Powe’s review of Larry Kramer’s The People Themselves: Popular Constitutionalism and Judicial Review (Oxford University Press, 2004) in the current Texas Law Review 83 (February 2005): 855-896, does just that. The criticisms are so devastating–both as to the astonishing historical omissions,…
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Theocracy, Arkansas-Style
Details here; an excerpt: The Arkansas House of Representatives rejected Friday a resolution that asked it to reaffirm "support of the principle of separation of church and state." Forty-four of the 100 House members voted against House Resolution 1005 by Rep. Buddy Blair, D-Fort Smith, who said opponents were voting against the constitutions of both…
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New EC Antitrust Law Blog
Here. Rather specialized topic, to be sure, but the folks running it appear to know their stuff.
Andrei Rodin is circulating a letter demanding the liberation of Svetlana Mesyats: https://philomatica.org/2026/05/open-letter-in-support-of-svetlana-messiats/. The prosecution has demanded a sentence of…