January 2010
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New Study of Scholarly Productivity by Schools Outside the U.S. News “Top 50”
Here. Since there are utterly meaningless fluctuations in and out of the U.S. News top 50–for familiar reasons–it would make more sense to expand the pool of schools studied a bit to reflect that. Still, this study nicely confirms what one would suspect–e.g., San Diego and Florida State are tops–and provides some very useful perspective…
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UC San Diego Thinking About “Acquiring” Cal Western
Story here. Now that tuition at the UC law schools is so high, even without any state support, Cal Western tuition would still be competitive. But would renaming California Western School of Law the University of California, San Diego Law School really change the school's competitive position?
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ACLS to Philosophy: “Drop Dead”
Several philosophers have called to my attention the ACLS "New Faculty Fellows" program, well-described by one correspondent as follows: ACLS has a program designed to provide short-term jobs (at little or no cost to the hiring institutions) for deserving young scholars during this period of very bad academic employment prospects. They are putting forward 53…
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APA Pacific Division Meeting Will *Not* Move from San Francisco
See the January 25 statement here.
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“In Praise of Realism (and Against ‘Nonsense’ Jurisprudence)”
I have posted a significantly revised and expanded version of this paper that first went on-line two years ago. The abstract of the new version: Ronald Dworkin describes an approach to how courts should decide cases that he associates with Judge Richard Posner as a "Chicago School of anti-theoretical, no-nonsense jurisprudence." Since Professor Dworkin takes…
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Chicago’s Weisbach Turns Down Yale, To Remain at Chicago
I am particularly pleased to report that my colleague David Weisbach, a leading tax scholar and Director of the Law & Economics Program here at the University of Chicago Law School, has turned downed the senior offer from Yale Law School. Over the last decade, we are now 3 for 4 in warding off raids…
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In Memoriam: Howard Zinn (1922-2010)
Not a philosopher, of course, but Professor Zinn was a trenchant social, political, and cultural critic and historian whose work will be known to, and no doubt have been appreciated by, many readers.
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A new journal devoted to “academic freedom”
There are a number of interesting-looking pieces in the first issue.
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Multi-Million Dollar Grant for Work on Free Will at Florida State University
The FSU press release is here. That's fabulous news for FSU and for philosophers interested in free will generally. I must though take issue with one bit of puffery in the press release: "Mele is considered the most eminent authority on the subject and is the primary reason why the Philosophical Gourmet Report has ranked…
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Improving the AALS Annual Meetings: Some Observations, and a Poll
So last week, I think we pretty clearly established that there is widespread disapproval of, even anger about, the outrageously high registration fee for the AALS Annual Meeting. But what about the substance of the meeting itself? What could be done to improve its quality? As mentioned previously, I had not attended the AALS Annual…
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Minnesota Makes Bid for Irvine’s Barrett (UPDATED)
MOVING TO FRONT FROM NOVEMBER 18–SEE UPDATE Jeffrey Barrett (philosophy of physics), Professor of Logic and Philosophy of Science at the University of California at Irvine and the current editor-in-chief of the journal Philosophy of Science, has a senior offer from the Department of Philosophy at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis-St. Paul, which has long…
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More on Possible Changes in Law School Accreditation Rules
Roger Dennis, the Dean at Drexel, comments. I think his hypotheses about some of the competing interests at play here are plausible ones.
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Another Memorial for G.A. Cohen–This Time at UCL on February 3
Mike Otsuka writes: On Wednesday, 3 February, the UCL Faculty of Laws will hold a colloquium in the memory of G. A. Cohen, who was the visiting Quain Professor of Jurisprudence at the time of his death. The speakers will be Ronald Dworkin, Saladin Meckled-Garcia, Michael Otsuka, and Jonathan Wolff. The session will take place…
Georgy Maksimovich pointed me to this article in Russian: https://novayagazeta.ru/articles/2026/05/25/antisovetskie-filosofskie-kontratseptsii