Brian Leiter’s Law School Reports

News and views about law school and law

  • William Mitchell Names Longtime Faculty Member Janus as Dean

    News release here.

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  • Do Blogs Help or Hinder Professional Prospects?

     Of the various news and blog items about my accepting the Chicago offer, the most striking was this one:"Another Academic Career Destroyed by Blogging."   That blog post raises, of course, a serious issue, namely, the effect of a blog on a scholar’s professional prospects.  (Daniel Drezner–a blogger who was formerly an assistant professor of political…

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  • “Readability level” of Blogs

    Daniel Solove (George Washington) compiles an amusing list of blogs based on their supposed "readability" level.  He doesn’t note that my legal philosophy blog and my Nietzsche blog are both at the "genius" level (which shows that "genius" ain’t what it used to be).  Of course, readability level is not the same as intellectual level…

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  • Anthony Ciolli Dropped from Lawsuit Against Autoadmit Posters

    The Wall Street Journal has the story and a link to the amended complaint.  It appears the plaintiffs originally thought Mr. Ciolli had posted defamatory and tortious comments under a pseudonym but have now concluded he did not.  The complaint has, however, added several new pseudonymous defendants (including one who was using my name!). Alas,…

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  • Did you vote for the “Best Law Blog” yet?

    If not, don’t bother, since it’s a pretty silly affair.  Even though the Volokh bloggers have been begging their readers (of whom, based on their site counter, there must be 20,000+ per day) to vote almost every day for the last week, they are still trailing David Lat’s gossip blog, Above the Law, and have…

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  • Don’t Eat Breakfast at the Omni Berkshire Hotel in NYC…

    …but if you do, blog about it.

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  • The Best “Promotional Brochure” of the Year?

    Given my views about these mailings, it won’t be surprising that I thought that the State University of New York at Buffalo’s brochure about its new hires was one of the best I’ve seen this year.  (What I grew up knowing as the "SUNY" campuses have now rebranded, so that, officially, it’s "the University at…

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  • Finalists for U of Minnesota Law Deanship

    Here.

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  • Professor Bainbridge: “Hippie Libertarian”

    Who knew?

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  • Is the Rack torture?

    Courtesy of philosopher Gerald Dworkin (UC Davis), here are the answers of some eminent experts: Statements by various individuals as to whether the Rack is torture. Mukasey: I haven’t been read into the details of the Rack, and I understand that these details are classified. I am firmly opposed to torture, torture is illegal, but…

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  • Do you ever get the feeling that Jeffrey Harrison is unhappy with the University of Florida College of Law?

    One might.

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  • “Training Law Students for Real-Life Careers”…or Deja Vu All Over Again

    That’s the title of a New York Times story from a couple of days ago concerning the latest round of ill-researched and probably largely pointless curricular reform going on at some law schools; an excerpt: "When you haven’t changed your curriculum in 150 years, at some point you look around,” said Elena Kagan, the dean…

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  • Leiter from Texas to Chicago

    So it’s been a complex six months or so, but my family and I have finally decided that we are moving to Chicago next summer, where I will take up a Chair at the University of Chicago Law School and Direct Chicago’s new Center for Law, Philosophy, & Human Values, which will support “the reflective,…

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  • Why Law and Economics Failed in Germany

    This is an interesting, and prima facie plausible explanation.  What do those better-informed than me think?

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  • “Law Porn”: Demeaning to Pornography!

    As usual, Tom Smith (San Diego) has the funniest observations.

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  • Advice on Choosing Law Schools from the Wall Street Journal

    Some sensible suggestions here–especially about alternatives to US News!

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  • A Rookie Candidate’s Experience at the “Meat Market”

    An experienced lawyer, recently back from the AALS "meat market" hiring convention, writes with some useful insights, that future job-seekers may find helpful: I think my biggest surprise came in the discovery of how important the "Preferred  Courses" selections on the FAR form are. I would say that virtually ALL of my interviews came about…

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  • Advice on Job Talks

    Daniel Solove (George Washington) makes a number of sensible points.  One thing he doesn’t mention, which is crucial, is to find out in advance of the job talk what the format will be!  It’s true that the normal format is 20-30 minutes of presentation, followed by 30-40 minutes of discussion.  But confirm that with each…

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  • Gaming US News By Taking Lots of Transfer Students in the Second Year

    Bill Henderson (Indiana) analyzes the issue.

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  • Justifying Originalism

    Thoughts on Randy Barnett’s views and the general problem of justifying originalist approaches to Constitutional interpretation here.

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  • Two Tenured Hires for Washington & Lee: Spencer from Richmond, Miller from Idaho

    The Law School at Washington & Lee University has made two lateral hires with tenure:  Benjamin Spencer (civil procedure, federal courts) from the University of Richmond, and Russell Miller (international and comparative law) from the University of Idaho. 

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  • Hofstra’s Scholarly Impact

    Hofstra Law School kindly sent me the results of its self-study using the methodology of the scholarly impact study I released in September.   Hofstra had impressive results (though it would not have made the top 35), results that also confirmed the wisdom of limiting the ordinal ranking to the top 35 schools.  Hofstra reported a…

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  • Against “Law Porn”

    Larry Ribstein (Illinois) comments.  Frankly, I’d rather read about faculty hires.

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  • David Kennedy from Harvard to Brown

    David Kennedy, a specialist in international law at Harvard Law School, will move to Brown University in January, to take up the position of Vice President for International Affairs.  (The Chronicle of Higher Ed has the story here.) 

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  • Why Call it Law “Porn”?

    Bridget Crawford (Pace) has a rather sophisticated answer here.  Pamela Karlan (Stanford), who seems to have coined the term (though I, alas, get the blame for popularizing it), offered this explanation of its meaning awhile back: When I started using the term "law porn" to refer to the glossy promotional materials from various law schools…

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  • “Why Evolutionary Biology is (so far) Irrelevant to Law”

    A revised, penultimate version of this paper I wrote with the philosopher of biology Michael Weisberg is now on-line for those who might be interested.  It will appear some time in 2008.

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  • Good Luck to All Those Affected by the Southern California Fires

    The law schools at the University of San Diego, California Western, and Pepperdine University are all closed today.  (Others may also be affected, but these are the ones I know about.)   Professor Tom Smith, on the USD law faculty, is writing about the fires here; he and his family have had to evacuate their home. …

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  • Professor Bainbridge Comes to the Defense of Grunge!

    About time!

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  • We Need a “Law Porn Blog”!

    Daniel Solove (George Washington) is right!

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  • David Bernstein on Massad, Finkelstein, Marx, and Freud

    I promise not to make a habit of this, but I could not help noticing that after I pointed out the obvious a couple of weeks ago–that Professor David Bernstein (George Mason) has a blind spot for recent attacks on academic freedom by forces outside the universities because so many of the victims, like Norman…

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  • Three Former Professors Sue Ave Maria Law School, the School’s Founder (Tom Monaghan) and Dean (Bernard Dobranski)

    Here is a statement about the case from their attorney, Deborah Gordon: Three professors from Tom Monaghan’s Ave Maria School of Law filed a multi-part complaint against Thomas Monaghan, Bernard Dobranski and associated entities in Washtenaw County Circuit Court on Oct. 17. Monaghan serves as Chair of the Board of Governors and Dobranski is the…

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  • Minneapolis-St. Paul: Dean Search Capital of the United States!

    Story here.

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  • Academic Freedom Violation at U Conn Law School?

    The story is here.  On the facts reported, removing the professor from the classroom for the remainder of the term seems unwarranted.  But perhaps there is more to the story, as the article hints there may be.

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  • In Memoriam: David Currie (1936-2007)

    The distinguished scholar of constitutional law and history, environmental law, federal courts, and conflicts had not long ago retired after more than four decades on the faculty at the University of Chicago Law School.  The Chicago Faculty Blog has a short memorial notice; a longer memorial notice is at the Law School’s homepage.

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  • Posner and Raz…

    …separated at birth?

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  • Will Northwestern Still be a Top Law School Ten Years from Now? Yes

    Back in the fall of 2003, when I was first playing around with blogging, I wrote an item about Northwestern’s faculty exodus, wondering whether the Law School would survive as a top law school given the dramatic faculty losses (departures and retirements) in the preceding few years (Thomas Merrill, Michael Perry, Daniel Polsby, Keith Hylton,…

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  • Chemerinsky Weighs in on Tenure

    Erwin Chemerinsky, the incoming Dean of the new law school at the University of California at Irvine, invited me to post his own thoughts on the tenure issue that we have been discussing recently. He wrote: There is absolutely no way we would consider eliminating tenure.   I understand the costs of the tenure system, but…

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  • When Will Paul Caron Give Up Tenure?

    Of all the mostly bad and silly advice Blog Emperor Caron posted for Erwin Chemerinsky as incoming Dean of the new law school at Irvine, the worst and silliest was his suggestion to abolish tenure at Irvine–a move which would guarantee the immediate failure of the new law school.  Since I pointed that out, Paul…

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  • Revisiting the Canadian Law School Rankings

    So the new Macleans ranking of Canadian law schools–which I designed in consultation with Tony Keller, the sensible and conscientious editor of the rankings issue, and various Canadian legal academics and practitioners–has been out for several weeks now.  The ranking was based on four components:  placement at elite law firms throughout Canada (and in New…

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  • No More “Boalt”?

    Boalt–i.e., the law school at Berkeley–considers changing its name.  Perhaps "The Telegraph Avenue School of Law?"  "The Farber-Frickey School of Advanced Legal Studies?"  "The Nominally Public University of California School of Law at Berkeley?"  Or maybe the school is about to adopt the name of an as-yet-unknown donor about to give the school one hundred…

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