Jurisprudence
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“Legal Positivism as a Realist Theory of Law”
This is essentially the final version (minus some citations and formatting) that will appear in The Cambridge Companion to Legal Positivism, which will probably be out in 2020 (and is being edited by Patricia Mindus [Uppsala] and Torben Spaak [Stockholm]).
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It’s time to end life tenure on the U.S. Supreme Court
It sure is. Related.
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Seminars on my realist jurisprudence at the EHESS in Paris in June
I'll be giving a series of seminars (in English) on my realist jurisprudence at the EHESS in Paris in June; the syllabus/plan for the seminars is here: Download Leiter Seminar Syllabus EHESS June 2019 The seminars are open to interested faculty and graduate students in and around Paris; you should contact Prof. Otto Pfersmann if…
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France punishes tax evasion 100 times more harshly than the U.S. (Michael Simkovic)
A French court recently ordered Swiss Bank UBS to pay a penalty of 4.5 billion Euros (equal to about $5.1 billion U.S. Dollars) for allegedly facilitating tax evasion. The U.S. fined UBS only $780 million for similar charges in 2009 (the equivalent of $890 million in today's dollars). To put this into context, France's GDP…
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Samuel Moyn (Yale): Law schools are too focused on public law to serve the public interest (Michael Simkovic)
In a thought provoking essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Professor Samuel Moyn argues that law schools' focus on judge made law in general, and the Supreme Court in particular, is counterproductive especially when justified on ostensibly progressive grounds. Offline, Professor Moyn suggested that, to better help students understand how the legal system influences…
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“Academic Freedom and the Obligations of University Administrators” especially regarding faculty speech
MOVING TO FRONT FROM MARCH 12: UPDATED This talk (sparked by this incident) that I gave at Columbia Law School last fall is now on-line, for those who might be interested. A different wrinkle on this issue is presented by the new allegations that Prof. Amy Wax (Penn) has disparaged the academic performance of African-American…
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How Democracy Dies: A Case Study of Poland
In light of the current interest in the general topic, many readers will find Professor Sadurski's knowledgeable discussion of the situation in Poland illuminating and instructive. (Thanks to Tomasz Gizbert-Studnicki for calling it to my attention.)
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“Multi-level marketing” and “pyramid schemes”
Retired attorney Bruce Craig would welcome hearing from law professors interested in the following issue (you may reach Mr. Craig at brucecrai-at-gmail-dot-com): As a former assistant attorney general (Wis.) I litigated against a number of pyramid schemes starting in 1968 and ending, for all practical purposes, in 1979 when the FTC ruled in favor of…
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Why academic freedom?
Once again into the fray. A brief excerpt from the paper: The main threats to academic freedom in the natural sciences in the capitalist democracies come from powerful business interests that disfavor, for profit-seeking reasons, certain discoveries: for example, concerning the human contribution to climate change, to take the most important example in the present,…
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Langdell, formalism, and realism at Harvard
Here's a video of the session from a couple of weeks ago as part of the HLS bicentennial. Opening remarks about Langdell are by John Goldberg (Harvard), who is followed by Catherine Wells (Boston College), me, Anthony Sebok (Cardozo), and Henry Smith (Harvard). For those interested, my remarks on "Langdell, Wissenschaft, Realism" begin at 19:20. I found…
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How should a Dean who understands academic freedom respond to public controversy about faculty writing?
So we know from the unhappy example of Dean Ferruolo throwing a faculty member under the bus what not to do: you don't publish a statement on the homepage of the school singling out a faculty member's work, declare that not only do you, as Dean, disagree with it, but suggest that these are pariah…
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“Justifying Academic Freedom: Mill and Marcuse Revisited,” revised version now on-line…
…here. The last version benefitted from talks and workshops at Iowa, Tel-Aviv, Haifa, and Chicago. The abstract: I argue that the core of genuinely academic freedom ought to be freedom in research and teaching, subject to disciplinary standards of expertise. I discuss the law in the United States, Germany, and England, and express doubts about…
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More on Judge Gorsuch, plagiarism, and Oxford
Leslie Green, who holds one of the two statutory (i.e., university-wide) Chairs in Philosophy of Law at Oxford, has now expanded on his thoughts about the Gorsuch plagiarism case and the claims of John Finnis (who held a personal chair in legal philosophy, but is now emeritus). (Earlier posts here and here.)
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On Judge Gorsuch’s plagiarism
In fact, plagiarism is not, contrary to John Finnis, normal practice at Oxford. This also is irrelevant to his nomination, but the Judge should acknowledge the error.
I am very pleased to have stumbled upon this site. I am Andrew & Lynne’s nephew, Peter. My mother was…