Adam Liptak has a piece in the New York Times recounting many claims that law review articles are on average very bad, and useless to the bench and bar: Law reviews are such a target-rich environment for ridicule that it is barely sporting to make fun of them. … About 43 percent of law review […]
Author Archive | Will Baude
Same-Sex Marriage in New Jersey (For Keeps)
On Friday the New Jersey Supreme Court denied a stay in the same-sex marriage litigation, allowing marriages to begin today. Today, Governor Christie announced that he’s withdrawing the state’s appeal. That seals the deal. I guess I won’t be finishing that essay I was writing about New Jersey’s civil unions. I’ve seen some criticism from […]
“Tyrone” Cowen on a Republican Victory in the Standoff
I had been considering posting something contrarian and cynical about the radical Republican strategy during the recent appropriation and debt standoff. But I now see that Tyler Cowen has published a post by “Tyrone,” his “evil twin brother,” that makes a provocative claim: I read what a strategic disaster the fracas has been for the […]
Gordon Wood on The Supreme Court’s Uses of History (“A Necessary Fiction” that “Has Its Own Integrity”)
Professors Scott Gerber and Gordon Wood recently had a discussion on “The Supreme Court’s Uses of History,” at Ohio Northern University, a transcript of which is available online. Professional historians tend to be quite skeptical of originalism, so I was intrigued to see that Gordon Wood’s remarks, while mixed, were much more accommodating than I […]
Gay Marriage in New Jersey (Pretty Much)
As Dale and I have blogged about (see here, here, here, and here), the New Jersey courts are hearing a claim that the state’s civil union regime is no longer constitutionally adequate and that the state and federal constitutions now require same-sex marriage. That litigation was recently fast-tracked to the New Jersey Supreme Court. Today […]
Two New Essays on Post-Windsor Choice-of-Law Questions
The Northwestern Law Review Colloquy is running an interesting-so-far series on United States v. Windsor. The first two parts of the series are up, and both discuss post-DOMA choice of law issues. First is DOMA’s Ghost, an essay by Brad Greenberg on copyright reversionary interests. The Copyright Act is one of the few federal statutes […]
An Amusingly Inapt Citation to Orin Kerr, A Theory of Law, 16 Green Bag 2d 111 (2012)
I learned today on Twitter that Orin’s one-page article, A Theory of Law was cited in its first judicial opinion. Given what the article says (go ahead, read it, I’ll wait), I was rather surprised to hear this, so I went and read the citing passage: Both claims also allege conspiracy to commit negligence. See […]
Colgan on Retroactive Sentencing for Juvenile Offenders
A month ago, I linked to a short post I wrote for the New York Times about retroactive sentencing for juvenile offenders under Miller v. Alabama. In the piece, I was skeptical that the Court’s decision would be retroactive under federal law, since the Supreme Court’s decision focused on the right to a hearing. My […]
Professor Stephen Sachs and Atlantic Marine v. U.S. District Court
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in Atlantic Marine v. U.S. District Court, a case about the proper procedure for enforcing a forum selection clause. As I’ve mentioned on this blog before, Professor Stephen Sachs (who is also a friend) filed an amicus brief arguing that both parties were wrong and that a […]
Should Appellate Judges Urge Government Attorneys To Confess Error?
A few weeks ago, Above the Law had a long post celebrating this Ninth Circuit oral argument, in which the en banc panel tears apart a government lawyer attempting to defend a dubious conviction won by an assistant U.S. Attorney in San Diego. During the prosecutor’s rebuttal closing argument, he went on a long tangent […]
Supreme Court Discussion of Academic Amicus Brief
An academic amicus brief got heavy attention in the Supreme Court today (and no, it wasn’t Steve Sachs’s — that case will be argued Wednesday). As Lyle Denniston explains at SCOTUSBlog, in Madigan v. Levin, an age discrimination case from the Seventh Circuit, “a brief that had been filed by law professors who specialize in […]
Justice Scalia, on “Maybe The Only Heroic Opinion I Ever Issued”
This wasn’t sufficiently germane to mention in my previous post, but one other passage from the Justice Scalia interview that I particularly liked was his response after Jennifer Senior tried several times to get him to name his most “heroic” decision: I mean the most heroic opinion—maybe the only heroic opinion I ever issued— was […]
The New York Magazine Interview: Why Does Justice Scalia Write Forceful Dissents?
Justice Scalia recently gave a long and fascinating interview to New York Magazine, which I highly recommend anybody interested in the Court read. My favorite part is the extended exchange with the interviewer about Scalia’s belief in the devil (and the interviewer’s apparent shock at this), which I won’t try to excerpt here. But I […]
The Ubiquity of Andrew Tutt
It seems like every time I turn around, I’m reading about another new article by somebody named Andrew Tutt. In the past two months, I’ve seen a lot of different articles go up on SSRN (usually via the inimitable Larry Solum). Most recently was Blightened Scrutiny, whose abstract begins with the hyperbolic claim that “There […]
Event at Stanford Next Week
If you’re in the Bay Area and have been enjoying (or at least reading) my posts on choice of law, civil unions, and other questions of recognizing same-sex marriage, you might be interested in this event: Thursday-Saturday, October 10-12, Stanford Law School will be co-hosting a conference on marriage equality. I’ll be presenting on a […]