I'm delighted to welcome Dale Carpenter, who teaches law at the University of Minnesota, as a new member of the Volokh Conspiracy. (Many of you may remember him from his guest-blogging early last November.)

Dale graduated from the University of Chicago School of Law, where he was one of the founders of the law school's conservative debating group, the Edmund Burke Society. He clerked for Judge Edith Jones on the Fifth Circuit, practiced for several years, and in 2000 started at Minnesota, where he teaches and writes on Constitutional Law, the First Amendment, and Sexual Orientation and the Law. He also writes a regular column called OutRight for several gay newspapers around the country; many of these columns can be accessed here.