November 2013
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Darby from Kansas to Michigan
Derrick Darby (social & political philosophy, African-American philosophy), Professor of Philosophy at the University of Kansas, has accepted a senior offer from the Department of Philosophy at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where he will start in fall 2014. With Darby and Elizabeth Anderson, Michigan will now be one of the very top choices…
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Benjamin Winterhalter, opportunistic liar of the day…or why law school is obviously not a “scam”
Salon must really be desperate to post this content-free piece, which takes as its question, "How…can we explain the fact that young people are still going to law school in droves?" when, in fact, applications to law school are down nearly 40%, and most law schools in the United States are experiencing varying degrees of financial…
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Wash U’s John Heil to be inaugural editor of JAPA…
…which will be published by Cambridge University Press. That's a very good choice, though the inaugural editorial board is yet to be announced, and that will tell us more about interest group "capture" and about whether JAPA will be like the Eastern Division program or a consistently high quality professional journal. (Thanks to Joe Hatfield…
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Putting drafts of work on-line?
A graduate student writes: What do people think of grad students making their work available online early in their careers? It seems pretty common for students still doing coursework to post paper drafts on Academia.edu, even when the drafts are far from publishable, and I'm not sure if the potential advantages outweigh the potential costs.…
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The criminal underclass is scary…
…almost as scary as the criminal over-class.
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Functional explanations in positive (descriptive) legal theory
In the most recent installment of his very useful Legal Theory Lexicon, this one on functional explanations, Larry Solum (Georgetown) concludes by noting: Let me conclude with a very short diatribe. Legal theorists need a basic understanding of positive legal theory. (I hope this is obvious to everyone!) That means that legal academics should, at…
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Plutocracy watch: one-party state edition
This is apt: In the past, the U.S. has sometimes been described sardonically — but not inaccurately — as a one-party state: the business party, with two factions called Democrats and Republicans. That is no longer true. The U.S. is still a one-party state, the business party. But it only has one faction: moderate Republicans,…
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“Salt of the Earth,” a blacklisted 1954 movie…
…though apparently well-known in other parts of the world. Based on an actual strike by Mexican-American workers against a zinc mining company, it is set in New Mexico, and uses actual mineworkers and their families in most of the main roles (including the male lead, Juan Chacon–his wife was played by a professional actress, however). The…
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JFK: Worse than Obama
Longtime reader Ruchira Paul calls my attention to these reasonable observations by Professor Chomsky.
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Evans from Michigan to Texas
Matt Evans (ancient philosophy, ethics), currently Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, has accepted a senior offer from the Department of Philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin, to begin next fall. That's a significant boost for ancient philosophy at Texas, which should help re-establish it as among…
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The fetishism of procedures: on filibusters and voting
Mark Lance (Georgetown) comments.
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In Memoriam: Myrna Raeder
Professor Myrna Raeder of Southwestern University Law School passed away this week. She joined the Southwestern faculty in 1979. Raeder was 66.
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We are on track for there to be more new jobs for lawyers than there are new law school graduates…
…by 2016 or 2017. Hopefully this will help some of those currently unemployed, but it is also probably quite good news for those starting law school now or next year. (I commend Professor Young for taking the time to run the numbers, which in the current toxic cyber-environment where facts are never welcome [recall the irrational reception in…
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The American right and the shadow of slavery
Interesting piece by Michigan's Elizabeth Anderson.
Georgy Maksimovich pointed me to this article in Russian: https://novayagazeta.ru/articles/2026/05/25/antisovetskie-filosofskie-kontratseptsii