Brian Leiter's Law School Reports

Memoir by USC Law Professor Saks Makes Time Magazine's "Top Ten" List for 2007

Here.

In Memoriam: Stanton Wheeler (1930-2007)

The Yale Law School memorial notice is here.

Ham for Hanukkah?

This isn't specifically legal humor, but it is still pretty funny.  You would think a store in Manhattan, of all places, might have been a bit more attuned to, shall we say, "local" customs!

Worse than Autoadmit?

Daniel Solove (George Washington) suggests a new site devoted to college gossip may well be worse than Autoadmit, that notorious cesspool of infantile morons, racists, and misogynistic freaks masquerading as a law school discussion board.  One must agree with Professor Solove:  until the disastrous Section 230 of the misnamed Communications Decency Act is repealed or revised, and regular libel law comes to Cyberspace, we are going to see more of these worthless sites.

UPDATE:  A timely indicator of the illusion of anonymity on the Internet, involving this very college gossip site.  (Recall that a similar indicent occurred with Autoadmit.)

Fun (and short) Interview with Martha Nussbaum in The Guardian

Here.

Changes on the Horizon at the University of Houston?

An interview with Acting Dean Raymond Nimmer.

Oxford Handbook of Continental Philosophy

This may only be of interest to a limited number of readers, but...I'm delighted to announce that The Oxford Handbook of Continental Philosophy (edited by myself and Michael Rosen) has now been published.  It's an outstanding group of contributors from the U.S., Britain, Australia, Canada, and Continental Europe, including many of the leading senior and junior scholars in the field. Here is a pertinent bit from the "Introduction":

Since the 1970s, we have entered a “Golden Age” for English-speaking scholarship on the so-called “Continental” traditions of philosophy, meaning (primarily) philosophy after Kant in Germany and France in the 19th and 20^th centuries. Much of this work has been concerned to introduce and interpret the writings of major individual thinkers and to locate them within a conceptual framework that is familiar to those with a background in the mainstream of philosophy as conventionally taught in Anglophone departments. At the same time, a hallmark of recent scholarly developments is the renewed appreciation for the sometimes distinctive historical and philosophical contexts in which Continental philosophy has been produced, allowing us to appreciate both where the Continental traditions depart from those familiar in the Anglophone world and to assess the philosophical merits of the distinctive philosophical positions developed.

This volume aims to give a representative sample of these important developments in philosophical scholarship, and, more importantly, to give a broad and inclusive thematic treatment of Continental philosophy, treating its subject-matter philosophically and not simply as a series of museum pieces from the history of ideas. Each of the essays takes up a topic from within the field in such a way as to bring key ideas into focus and capture their distinctiveness as well as providing a critical assessment of their value.

Ian Ayres Has a Plan to Help You Lose Weight...

...and Eric Posner explains (amusingly) why it won't work.  ("Perhaps if you know that breaking your diet makes you complicit in genocide, you will resist that slice of chocolate covered cheesecake."  Indeed!)

Fellowships for Aspiring Law Teachers

Blog Emperor Caron has updated the helpful list (with links) that he maintains of Fellowship/VAP opportunities for aspiring law teachers.

Three Senior Hires for Cornell: Colb, Dorf, and One More to Be Announced

Cornell Law School has made three senior appointments:  Sherry Colb (criminal law and procedure) from Rutgers University, Newark and her husband Michael Dorf (constitutional law and theory) from Columbia University (both of whom will start in fall 2008).  A third senior hire from a peer school has also been made, which I hope to be able to announce soon. 

That's a big and important set of senior hires for the small Cornell faculty!

UPDATE:  Cornell has now announced the third senior hire:  Laura Underkuffler (property, constitutional law) from Duke University.  In addition, I had missed that Cornell also hired (starting this fall) Chantal Thomas (international law and trade) from the University of Minnesota, whom we had the pleasure of having as a visitor here several years ago.