I was on NPR this morning with a one sentence paragraph explanation of why the health insurance mandate is unconstitutional. Hear it here. (, it was a long sentence, taken from a much longer interview. Even that sentence did not make it into the printed version of the story at the link.) I found it […]
Archive | 2010
New Blog: First One @ One First
Georgetown law student Mike Sacks has a really cool new blog called First One @ One First, which he explains in his opening post First Post @ First One @ One First: My name is Mike Sacks. I am a third-year law student at Georgetown interested in legal journalism and the intersection of law and […]
Monday Bearblogging – Vulcan Bear Grades Final Exams
Like many academics, grading exams is my least-favorite part of the job. So I was happy when my fiancee suggested that the exams should instead be graded by the Vulcan bear I got her for her birthday, assisted by a Koala. What could be more logical?
Judgment Calls in Grading Law School Exams: One Professor’s Perspective
I’ve blogged before about how law professors grade exams, and I wanted to blog some more about some of the difficult judgment calls professors have to make when grading. Exams that get everything right or do everything wrong are easy to grade. But they are also very rare. Most exams do a mix of things […]
New York Times to Adopt Paid-Online Model
New York Magazine is reporting (good piece by Gabriel Sherman) that the NYT has decided to move to a paid-online site model – a drastic shift away from its current free website. The article explains the debate between the two sides within the Times – those urging that it has to somehow get to a […]
Sanjay Gupta for 2010 Nobel Peace Prize
Why not – for a doctor who stayed through the night?
Hypocrisy, Same-Sex Marriage, and Televising Public Interest Litigation
Over at Slate, Dahlia Lithwick suggests that gay marriage opponents who oppose broadcasting the San Francisco gay marriage trial are hypocrites. According to Lithwick, it’s inconsistent both to want the people to decide an issue and to deny them video access to a trial that might sway their opinion: Opponents of gay marriage can’t have […]
When Will the Next Mass. Senator’s Term Begin?
This Tuesday, Massachusetts voters will elect either Martha Coakley or Scott Brown to replace the late Ted Kennedy in the U.S. Senate. It could take weeks to count absentee ballots, resolve and election controversy if the vote is close, and certify the winner under Massachusetts law. But would this mean interim Senator Paul Kirk would […]
Ed Schultz Would “Cheat” to Win an Election
When Rush Limbuagh suggested that his listeners vote in the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries — so-called “Operation Chaos” — MSNBC’s Dan Abrams called it “un-American,” and others suggested it might be “criminal.” I wonder what Abrams thinks about MSNBC’s own Ed Schultz, who last week declared he would commit voter fraud to prevent Scott Brown […]
Sunday Song Lyric
Some standards are standards for a reason. “You Go to My Head” is one of those songs. Written by J. Fred Coots (music) and Haven Gillespie (lyrics) in 1938, its been recorded by everyone from Judy Garland and Marlene Dietrich to Louis Armstrong and Frank Sinatra, to Rod Stewart and Bryan Ferry. The Billie Holiday […]
Saturdays with Stendhal 3
From The Red and the Black, Volume I, Chapter 34, The Hotel de la Mole (free translation), and yes, I will manage to get it back to Saturdays!: The abbe Pirard to Julien … “The Marquis does not like scribblers bloggers, I warn you; it is his one antipathy. Know Latin, Greek if you can, […]
“No Trial By Jewry”
That’s the New York Post headline, but the New York Daily News has more details: “If they have a Zionist or Israeli background…they are all mad at me,” said Aafia Siddiqui, a U.S.-trained neuroscientist charged with attempted murder…. Siddiqui, 37, is accused of picking up an M-4 Army rifle and firing two rounds at a […]
A Question Re Legal Ethics
The Wall Street Journal’s Dorothy Rabinowitz has an op-ed today reminding readers of the inglorious role that Martha Coakley played in one of – certainly in my view – the greatest miscarriages of justice of the past twenty years in the United States, the persecution in Massachusetts of the Amirault family on prosecutor-contrived charges of […]
The Rise of the Uncorporation
Congratulations to Larry Ribstein on his new book from OUP, The Rise of the Uncorporation. I somehow got a comp copy in the mail, just finished reading it, and it is terrific. A gracefully written essay on business law!(!!) It manages to meld together law, history of business and legal forms in business, law and […]
Thought on First-Year Law School Grades
[Adapted from previous years– Ed.] Grades are being released at law schools around the country, and I thought I would offer some some comments about grades for our many law student readers (especially 1Ls). I wanted to address two questions: First, how important are first-year grades, and second, are law school grades random? I’ll start […]