My article on Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum is up on SSRN. It is forthcoming in the Notre Dame Law Review‘s Federal Courts Issue. Here is the abstract; comments on the article are welcome: The unanimous ruling in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum blind-sided the legal academy. The case involved one of the most contentious […]
Archive | Legal Scholarship
A Market for State Borders
By Eugene Kontorovich on October 17, 2013 7:39 am in Constitutional Law, Constitutional Theory, Federalism, Legal Scholarship, Secession
Following up on my earlier post on parts of a state seceding to join another state, I’d like to call attention to a neat article by Joseph Blocher, coming out in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, entitled “Selling State Borders.” It suggests such political redrawing can be accomplished through sales between states, and shows […]
Do Law Review Word Limits Matter?
Professor Bainbridge investigates, and finds that neither the Yale Law Journal nor the Harvard Law Review appears to observe their stated preference for shorter articles.
What Should You Do When Someone Incorrectly Cites Your Academic Work?
At CoOp, Lawrence Cunningham ponders how academics should respond when someone else incorrectly cites their work. Wonderful as it is to be cited, being cited incorrectly poses a dilemma. If your article is referenced for a proposition it does not support, what should you do? Should you alert the author of the piece or the […]
The Audiences for Legal Scholarship
Shapiro and Pearse’s latest study of the most-cited law review articles has inspired a lot of blogging and commenting about the proper audience for legal scholarship. This topic arises from time to time, so I wanted to offer some thought on it. In my view, what makes legal scholarship so interesting is that there are […]
Estimating the Costs of Legal Scholarship
Over at Inside the Law School Scam, Paul Campos reveals that he worked extensively with David Segal in helping Segal with his article on law professors and legal scholarship, and in particular with Segal’s estimate of the price students pay for legal scholarship. According to Campos, the basic methodology is to assume that 40% of […]
What Should Law Schools Teach? (What Should the NYT Learn?)
By Jonathan H. Adler on November 20, 2011 1:42 pm in Academia, Law Schools, Legal Profession, Legal Scholarship
Today’s NYT has a lengthy front-page article on legal education suggesting that a major problem with legal education is the failure to teach law students how to practice law. There is something to this complaint — some schools and some legal academics do relatively little to prepare their students for practice and there is much […]
The Ethics of Law Professor Amicus Briefs
Co-blogger Orin Kerr links to Richard Fallon’s interesting article on the ethics of law professor amicus briefs. Fallon argues that lawprofs are far too quick to sign amicus briefs that fit their ideological proclivities even if they aren’t really expert in the underlying legal issues and sometimes even if they don’t agree with the particular […]
One Out of Three Law Professors at the “Top 13” Law Schools Has A Ph.D.
Joni Hersch and Kip Viscusi have posted an interesting paper counting the number of law professors at the “top” schools that have Ph.D. degrees. Of course, “top” is in the eye of the beholder: Hersch and Viscusi divide schools into the “Top 13” and then the “Top 26.” A few of the findings: At the […]
Chief Justice Roberts and Current Legal Scholarship
CQ‘s Kenneth Jost assesses “Chief Justice Roberts’ Ill-Informed Attack on Legal Scholarship” on his blog. As had been widely reported and discussed, Chief Justice Roberts was dismissive of the value of much legal scholarship at the Fourth Circuit judicial conference in June. “Pick up a copy of any law review that you see,” Roberts said, […]
Anis Shivani on University Presses
My Washington College of Law colleague Robert Tsai points me to an interesting Huffington Post article by Anis Shivani on new directions for university presses. I have a somewhat more critical take on this, in the sense of an interest in the economic and business models driving the presses as they move in different directions. […]
Leviathan
By Kenneth Anderson on July 16, 2010 12:16 am in Academia, Legal Scholarship, Literature, Uncategorized
One of these days I will take the plunge and compose a “greatest influences” books list, as some of the other Conspirators have done. I have hesitated in part because my list would not tend to contain works of monumental ideas, but instead plays, works of fiction, poetry, and fragments that are not always blockbusters […]
Financial Regulation Reform – AALS Call for Papers
By Kenneth Anderson on July 9, 2010 1:03 pm in Finance, Law Schools, Legal Professor, Legal Scholarship, Regulation
The American Association of Law Schools section on financial regulation is seeking paper proposals for the January meeting on all topics of financial regulation and regulatory reform. The deadline for proposal submissions is August 1, fast approaching; I have posted details below the fold, and you can also contact my colleague Anna Gelpern with any […]
Podcast extravaganza
Five new podcasts from the Independence Institute’s iVoices.org: 1. The University of Montana’s Rob Natelson on the Executive Vesting Clause. Natelson argues that the first clause of Article II grants the President no additional powers–contrary to the theory that the clause gives the President almost all the powers formerly possessed by English Kings. 36 minutes. 2. The […]
Write to Explain, Not to Impress
Yesterday, I was editing the Introduction to my “Rehabilitating Lochner” book, and I needed a word to fill in the following sentence: “Lochner itself is now considered the ___ of the liberty of contract cases, though the opinion has not always attracted such disproportionate attention.” After some thought, I came up with the word “apotheosis.” […]