September 2007
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Irvine Law School Fiasco, Part IV: Will They Undo the Damage?
Perhaps (good thing they read this blog!)–and more details emerge confirming Professor Chemerinsky’s account of what transpired: UC Irvine officials on Friday were attempting to broker a deal to once again hire liberal scholar Erwin Chemerinsky as dean of its fledging law school, just three days after its chancellor set off a national furor by…
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Friday Poem: “Poems–II”
Poems-II Poems in the roadway found in tire tracks Poems on soiled napkins rescued from trash Poems inside matchbooks like something to buy Poems on toilet paper unrolling without end Poems in cereal boxes like prizes to be tried Poems shaped in seaweed delivered by the tide Poems on pink confetti dropping from the sky…
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The Irvine Law School Fiasco, Part III
As predicted, there’s now talk about delaying the opening of the Irvine Law School (and also new details are emerging about what transpired): Officials said the turnaround on Chemerinsky could delay the opening of the law school — scheduled for 2009 — and so tarnish the institution that it would be difficult to assemble the…
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The Irvine Law School Fiasco, Part II
Confronted with a public relations fiasco of the magnitude of "L’Affaire Chemerinsky," administrators have only a few choices: they can offer a mea culpa, or they can come clean and defend themselves, or they can deny everything. The UC Irvine Chancellor, Michael Drake, has now issued a new statement adopting the last strategy: Last week,…
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Group of Leading Catholic and Christian Law Professors Speak Out about the Crisis at Ave Maria Law School
Their statement is here. UPDATE: This is ironic–but the post immediately preceding the statement to which I linked, above, attacks me rather harshly for failing to acknowledge Postmodernism in my critique of Steve Smith’s ignorant paper about the state of jurisprudence. The post is by Michael Scaperlanda, who quotes someone named Kevin Lee, who explains…
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Macleans Ranking of Canadian Law Schools
Results in the four main components of the ranking (placement at elite law firms, national placement success, Supreme Court clerkship placement, and scholarly impact of the faculty), plus a discussion of the methodology and its rationale are now on-line. The overall results are available in the printed version of the magazine, which is on newstands…
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New UC Irvine Law School Hires Chemerinsky as Dean, Then Fires Him for Political Reasons
I have all of the following from a reliable source. About a week ago, Erwin Chemerinsky, the well-known constitutional law scholar at Duke, signed a contract to be the inaugural Dean of the new law school at the University of California at Irvine. Yesterday, the Chancellor of the University of Cailfornia at Irvine flew to…
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Faculty Retention at Public Research Universities
This article contains some interesting data about the increasing pace at which state research universities are being raided for faculty: The University of Wisconsin at Madison is facing the same type of trouble [as Berkeley]. Of its 2,220 faculty members, 116 outside offers were reported in 2005-6. The prior two years also saw over 100…
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On the 6th Anniversary of 9/11…
…I call, once again, the attention of readers to the powerful statement issued by the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Aghanistan on the occasion of the second anniversary of the atrocity (issued, it bears noting, before the war crimes committed against the people of Iraq); an excerpt: Fundamentalism is the mortal enemy of civilised…
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AAUP Issues New Statement in Response to the Attacks on Academic Freedom…
…by the pathological liar David Horowitz (and others). Dean Rowan has apt comments and links. Meanwhile, the real threats to academic freedom (and honest intellectual inquiry) continue.
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“Why Tolerate Religion?”
The penultimate version of this paper is now on-line; it will appear in Constitutional Commentary early next year. This version can be cited and quoted.
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“Objectivity in Law and Morals” in Paperback
Cambridge has, happily, released a paperback version of this collection of essays I edited back in 2001. Since I periodically get inquiries about the book, I thought I’d post the information about the new paperback edition here.
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Congratulations to David Woodruff Smith…
…whose new book on Husserl (in the Routledge Philosophers series I edit) has received a justly laudatory (and philosophically rich) review here. Also recently out in the series is Samuel Freeman’s volume on Rawls.
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The Coming Ranking of Canadian Law Schools
Later this week, Maclean’s in Canada will release its first ever ranking of Canadian law schools. The magazine retained me to design a ranking system, one that avoids the numerous pitfalls of U.S. News. The result is a ranking system that can not be gamed, that does not depend on self-reported data, and is not…
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The worst jurisprudential article of the year?
The winner is….
David J. Gunkel «Person, Thing, Robot: A Moral and Legal Ontology for the 21st Century and Beyond» (MIT, 2023) Link:…