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You can’t make this stuff up. The city of Phoenix, concerned that “too many” of its lifeguards are white and that kids in non-white neighborhood pools can’t relate, is recruiting black and Hispanic kids who are not strong swimmers. A student featured in the article tells the NPR reporter, “Honestly, I have a little bit […]

My colleague Stuart Banner is a first-rate legal historian and also an excellent writer, so it’s always a pleasure to see that he has a new book out. This one is “The Baseball Trust,” and I’m reading it and much enjoying it. Here is the summary from the Amazon blurb, though you can also read […]

As background, see my posts about Easter and Christian calendars (first, second, third, and fourth). Recall that Easter is defined as the Sunday after the full moon after the spring equinox. The spring equinox could happen on March 19, 20, or 21, but for Easter-calculation purposes, we define the spring equinox as March 21. Why […]

From a 1942 book of essays by Edward “Bull” Warren, a legendary Socratic professor at Harvard Law School who taught from 1904 to 1945: When I joined the Harvard Law Faculty, my thought, often expressed, was that any student might ask any question at any time. I was (and am) strong for the ideal of […]

The News-Press reports: Gator Country 101.9 morning deejays Val St. John and Scott Fish are back on the air today after a one-day suspension for an April Fool’s Day joke involving Lee County’s water supply. The hosts of the “Val and Scott In The Morning Show” on the Bonita Springs-based country music station were suspended […]

I was asked for advice by parents seeking a college for their daughter. I thought I’d crowd-source it. The girl has some unique needs: she is Jewish and she (a) keeps kosher, so she needs the availability of kosher food, but she is not Orthodox and Stern College would not be a good environment for […]

Megan McArdle — whose work I have long liked — argues for being open to marrying early: [P]eople should be looking to get married as early as possible. I say this as someone who married late, and since I wouldn’t want to have married anyone except my husband, I’m glad I waited. But as a […]

On Thursday, I posted about the difference between the Gregorian calendar (used by the Western churches) and the Julian calendar (used by most Eastern Orthodox churches). There’s a 13-day difference between them for the period between 1900 and 2100, so any given day shows up 13 days later on the Julian calendar than on the […]

News here. Srinivasan was previously awarded the John Roberts/Elena Kagan Award for the D.C. Circuit Hopeful Nominated in the Last Few Months of A Presidential Term With No Chance of Confirmation This Late (But A Very Promising Future Next Time). It looks like this may be the next time. If so, it will be excellent […]

Over the last few days, I’ve been blogging (here and here) about calendrical differences and how that affects the calculation of the date of Easter. The good news is that these problems are going to diminish substantially pretty soon. Recall the Orthodox calendar, which is 13 days off from the Western calendar. The Orthodox calendar […]

Today the Supreme Court announced a new policy to solve the real “standing problem” confronting those who wish to watch oral arguments.  Rick Hasen has the details here.

Paul Caron has the details at Taxprof. In addition to the obvious potential effects on law school incentives to satisfy their customers, I wonder how giving all law students free Angie’s List memberships will skew local reviews of other businesses. Nascent lawyers are known to be, shall we say, more combative than the average twenty-something. […]

Three unsuccessful applicants to the Department of Justice’s Honors Program sued the federal government alleging  they were rejected on political grounds.  The district court in D.C. rejected their claims.  Last Friday, however, in Gerlich v. U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit reversed the district court’s grant of summary judgment […]

NPR’s Planet Money recently posted this important story about how federal disability payments have largely taken the place of federal welfare payments. An excerpt: “That’s a kind of ugly secret of the American labor market,” David Autor, an economist at MIT, told me. “Part of the reason our unemployment rates have been low, until recently, […]