Brian Leiter's Law School Reports

In Memoriam: Harold Berman (1918-2007)

Harold Berman, who taught for nearly 40 years at Harvard Law School and then more than twenty at Emory Law School, was a leading authority on Russian law, legal history, and law and religion.  The Emory memorial notice is here.

Humans, but not lawyers, are physiologically predisposed towards optimism

Details here.

Interviews with Legal Philosophers

I have been posting some excerpts from the new book Legal Philosophy:  5 Questions over at my Legal Philosophy Blog, most recently, from the interviews with Jules Coleman and John Gardner.  Some readers may find these of interest.

So what did happen at Irvine with Chemerinsky and the Deanship?

The LA Times continues to dig.

William Mitchell Names Longtime Faculty Member Janus as Dean

News release here.

Do Blogs Help or Hinder Professional Prospects?

 Of the various news and blog items about my accepting the Chicago offer, the most striking was this one:
"Another Academic Career Destroyed by Blogging."   That blog post raises, of course, a serious issue, namely, the effect of a blog on a scholar's professional prospects.  (Daniel Drezner--a blogger who was formerly an assistant professor of political science at Chicago, and whose tenure denial there generated much comment on this issue--wrote a sensible piece on the risks.)  Putting aside the extreme and rather sad cases (e.g., those who reveal genuine psychological disturbances through their on-line activities), it is an interesting question how blogs are affecting the academic prospects of their proprietors.   

Because blogs are easily accessible and thus easier to read in a spare moment than, say, a scholarly article or scholarly book, blogs that purport to treat scholarly topics are far more likely to solidify an impression of a professor's mind and overwhelm the merits of his or her actual publications (assuming the two have different merits).  This is why, it seems to me, it is particularly risky for either students or junior faculty to blog much:  the first, and perhaps dominant, impression of this person's work is likely to be defined by the blog, whether fairly or not.  If you're going to blog on scholarly topics, it had better be good!

But even blogs that avoid scholarly topics can bias the reception of one's academic work.  If you blog about political topics, especially outside the spectrum of "ordinary" opinion (which is fairly narrow in the United States, of course), you run the risk of offending someone (or many), and thus prejudicing the reception of your scholarship.    I don't know that this constitutes a particularly good reason not to blog; someone who wants to live in fear of what others think about fundamental moral and political commitments probably shouldn't go into an academic career.  (Of course, there can be other kinds of reasons for not doing political blogging.)

And even if you avoid scholarly topics and politics, a blog can still reveal (or be taken to reveal) more about one's personality and quirks than may be helpful.  I know of one case where a law school considering a blogger for appointment decided against going forward simply because the blog made the candidate seem "really weird."

"Readability level" of Blogs

Daniel Solove (George Washington) compiles an amusing list of blogs based on their supposed "readability" level.  He doesn't note that my legal philosophy blog and my Nietzsche blog are both at the "genius" level (which shows that "genius" ain't what it used to be).  Of course, readability level is not the same as intellectual level or content, though when one looks at the list of those blogs (and news outlets) purported to be at the "junior high" level, the conflation is tempting!  And when the disgraceful Drudge Report turns out to be at the "elementary school" level, one begins to think this measure is on to something!

Anthony Ciolli Dropped from Lawsuit Against Autoadmit Posters

The Wall Street Journal has the story and a link to the amended complaint.  It appears the plaintiffs originally thought Mr. Ciolli had posted defamatory and tortious comments under a pseudonym but have now concluded he did not.  The complaint has, however, added several new pseudonymous defendants (including one who was using my name!).

Alas, as the WSJ reports, Mr. Ciolli continues to whitewash his involvement in Autoadmit, for obvious reasons.  I had the misfortune to be the first grown-up to comment publicly (more than two years ago) on that cesspool of infantile morons, racists, and misogynistic freaks known as Autoadmit, and as a result I heard repeatedly over the years from numerous law students, mostly women, who were viciously vicitmized on that site.  Many shared with me their correspondence with Mr. Ciolli, or told me about their futile efforts to get help from the alleged "administrators" of the site, Mr. Ciolli and Jarret Cohen, who often responded with contempt and derision to these requests.  What I learned from them is certainly of a piece with what a poster here said in response to the Wall Street Journal article about the law firm rescinding Mr. Ciolli's job offer:

Did you vote for the "Best Law Blog" yet?

If not, don't bother, since it's a pretty silly affair.  Even though the Volokh bloggers have been begging their readers (of whom, based on their site counter, there must be 20,000+ per day) to vote almost every day for the last week, they are still trailing David Lat's gossip blog, Above the Law, and have mustered only about 4,000 votes (and bear in mind you can vote once every day!).  But, really, who cares?  For intellectual content, Balkinization is pretty obviously the best of the law blogs listed, and remarkably, some equally substantial blogs with law-related content aren't even in contention as a choice (Becker-Posner most obviously).

UPDATE:  Mr. Lat seems to have the matter in perspective!

Don't Eat Breakfast at the Omni Berkshire Hotel in NYC...

...but if you do, blog about it.