LawCulture

Oh why can't the law schools?

Jennifer Mnookin’s recent post on “exploding offers” in law school hiring provokes a reflection on the practices of law school searches and offers in general. For the last twenty years or so, Arts & Sciences faculties have been held to fairly stringent rules designed to level the playing field for job candidates, especially at the entry level, and to ensure that affirmative action means something. All positions are publicly advertised (in the Modern Language Association Job Information List and the Chronicle of Higher Education, for instance), candidates’ dossiers are requested from his or her university’s dossier service, the search committee reads (at least skims) letters of recommendation and written work, then makes up an interview list. There is no longer, in my experience, much back-channel communication on candidates. There’s an effort at least to give the appearance of openness, fairness, and a clean break with the old-boy network.

Unexpected Conversational Turns

So, my son really loves a book right now called “Little Brown Hen’s Shower” which is about a little  hen who overhears talk of a shower. She's due at the farmer’s house that afternoon, and so she carefully totes both her precious egg and her umbrella, determined to keep her baby-to-be dry in the face of the rain. But it’s a beautiful sunny day without a cloud in sight. The ‘shower’ in question turns out to be a surprise baby shower for the hen herself and the book concludes by explaining, “sometimes words sound the same but they mean different things.”

All this is to say that right now, my son is intrigued by homonyms. (No, he doesn’t know that word yet; c’mon, he’s barely three!)  We talk about lots of words that mean different things. Sun in the sky and son like him.  Ate like dinner and eight the number. But recently he gave me as an example  chicken the food, and chicken the animal.

Um, those are really the same thing, I told him.  “No,” he answered, laughing.  “That’s crazy.” And he went running off, having lost interest in the game for the moment.

When my daughter was about the same age, we had a virtually identical conversation.  I vividly remember when her mouth dropped open at the thought that chicken, the farm animal, bore any relation to the chicken that she ate at dinner (preferably nuggets, if she had her druthers).

I remember a sinking feeling in my chest, as I proceeded to explain that the food ‘chicken’ in fact came from the animal.  Was she about to go vegetarian on me? She wasn’t a big eater in the first place, and that would have made feeding her even more complicated. . . . But the conversation took a turn I never would have expected.

Theater as a Woman's World

Of course, it is not a woman's world. But Wendy Wasserstein, who died today at the age of 55, worked with the theatrical form to liberate women in this world.

Looking for a Leader of the Democratic Party?

For engaging reading, see Garry Wills' review of former President Jimmy Carter's book "Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis" -- not only for its teachable content (it provides a host of accessible statistics and anecdotes that touch on issues addressed in most first year law school curricula) but also for its implicit claim that Carter is a model of a leader for today's democratic party.  (Perhaps the claim is not so implicit.  The article ends with the following:  "Carter is a patriot. ... He defends the separation of church and state because he sees with nuanced precision the interactions of faith, morality, politics, and pragmatism.  That is a combination that once was not rare, but is becoming more so.  We need a voice from the not-so-distant past, and this quiet voice strikes just the right notes.")

At 82 years of age, Jimmy Carter is too old (and likely too wise) to attempt a second term as president.  But, to pick up on an earlier post by Rosa Brooks questioning the assumed incompatibility of fervent religious faith with "the American tradition ... [of] skepticism [and] rebellion," Carter may be the rare model of a personality who inhabits both perspectives and who is well-regarded as a moral and political leader.  Or, am I short-sighted?  Are there those from a younger generation who might fit (or improve upon) Carter's current example?  Or, perhaps the glorification of Jimmy Carter is an inevitable consequence of a regretful populace (worse yet, a populace that doesn't  learn from its past)?  Maybe the likes of Jimmy Carter are rare because the seeming incompability of religious faith and skepticism is too complex an alchemy for the electable American political leader but is otherwise acceptable in a philospher-guide whose authority springs from his peripheral posture?

Brian Leiter T-shirts

This cracked me up. Certainly in the law prof world, there are LOTs of secret, and not-so secret, readers of Brian Leiter. 

Brian himself explains:

"It's the product of a former Princeton grad student.  Apparently at Princeton, they all read the PGR, but no one wants to admit it."

I'm left wondering: is the former Princeton grad student now selling philosohpical t-shirts in addition to working as a philosopher, or instead?

Get one yourself, for just $14.49 - $24.49, depending on the style.

Naomi Wolf Gets Religion

My column in today's LAT is here.

Contesting Genre a Lawyer's Domain

In case anyone thought the James Frey imbroglio was short-lived (anyone?), the lawsuits have started. Class action suits for "lost time," fraud, misrepresentation and breach of implied contract abound.  See the link at Marty Schwimmer's trademark blog "Dear Readers: Please Don't Get Any Ideas" (eh hem) which brings you to overlawyered.com describing the various lawsuits under the heading "A Million Little Plaintiffs III." (Earlier posts on that blog, predicting the lawsuits here.)

Who said contesting genre (literary or otherwise) isn't a lawyer's (or legal scholar's) domain?

Solving the Constitutional Crisis Part II

My last post proposed amending FISA to permit a specified class of persons to challenge the legality of the recently disclosed surveilance program on grounds that it chills their speech.  I proposed limiting that class to persons who regularly communicate with certain listed nations in the course of their employment as jounralists or academics wroking on the war on terror.  Some coments suggested the statute would not do very much, in part because Congress cannot overcome Article III limits on standing.

First, the proposed statute would certainly remeove the very formidable standing bars that the current FISA now imposes.  Unless Congress does something to lift them, I worry that it's game over. But what about the article III issue? I think that is much less of a problem than people seem to think. Here's why (Warning: the answer is long and technical, but, hey, you asked for it!): 

Good spoof on NSA surveillance

Orin Kerr has a funny post at the Volokh Conspiracy. It begins:

"BUSH VISITS NSA: President Bush to give a speech to NSA employees. The Volokh Conspiracy has obtained a copy of the speech. Here is the introduction and key section:

  Thank you for that kind instruction. It's a pleasure to XXXXX here. XXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXX XXXX XXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXX XXXXXXX And that's why I think we were right to XXXXX X XXXXXX XXXXXXX X XXXXXXX XX XXXXX The National Security Agency is playing a crucial part in the war on terror. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXX XXXXXX XXX XX XXXXXXXX XXX Osama bin Laden and take him seriously...."

What's in a Name?

While putting the finishing touches on an article, due to come out this winter,  I came across this website, advertising the Nutcracker Interview Management System.  It touts a "digital video recorder for law enforcement interviews ... expressly designed to make detectives more effective during custodial interviews. The system is designed around standard police workflow to save time and result in high conviction rates."

My article compares documentary filmmaking to films of custodial interrogations and confessions.  The history and criticism of documentary filmmaking reveals a medium devoted to social and political advocacy. Insofar as "filmmaking in the precinct house" is a form of documentary filmmaking (born of the impulse to reveal something true about the accused and the crime), it too should be considered and evaluated as a form of advocacy on behalf of the state. It is a mistake, I suggest, to consider the films of interrogations and confession as transparent or unbiased portrayals of the defendant, the interrogation or the confessional statement.

Rather than make my argument in seventy-five pages (yes, way too long, I know), I could have just cited this website. See, e.g., Promotional Material for Nutcracker Product ("Allows jury members to see exactly how the suspect looked and acted, before being cleaned up for court.); see id. ("The system is designed ... to ... result in high conviction rates.)  Is there any doubt after reviewing the promotional material for the Nutcracker Interview Management System that (a) accused criminals are prejudged by the state to be sufficiently "nutty" to warrant a coercively staged interrogation; and (b) the state's primary goal is conviction and not necessarily due process?