Brian Leiter's Law School Reports

A rare triumph for decency in Cyberspace

We had noted aspects of this case previously, but judging from the statement now on the far right "Overlawyered" site, it looks like the victim has prevailed against the ideological zealots he claimed defamed him:

Arthur Alan Wolk, Esquire, Walter K. Olson, David M. Nieporent, Esquire and Overlawyered.com agreed to settle Wolk's longstanding libel claims against Overlawyered.com, et al.

The parties agreed to dismiss with prejudice all litigation pending between them and also agreed to release each other from all claims. Overlawyered.com removed from its web site certain posts about Wolk that led to the case as well as other posts that commented on the case's dismissal by the Court last August. Wolk removed from his web site a post he wrote about Overlawyered.com.

Upon submission of materials to Overlawyered.com in the litigation, Overlawyered learned that Wolk took protections for his clients in the Taylor v. Teledyne case [contrary to earlier allegations posted on Overlawyered.com].

Three Cheers for On-Line Publication!

Richard Danner (Duke) and colleagues have undertaken to gauge the attitudes of law professors towards exclusively on-line or electronic publication; Professor Danner kindly offered the following useful summary of their findings (I responded to the survey--my publication decisions would have been unaffected by print publication):

Increasingly, U.S. law journals post current articles in freely accessible PDF format on their web sites. Yet,  they also continue to publish print issues despite evidence that new legal scholarship is read not in print, but online in SSRN or the journals’ own postings.  Subscriptions to print are declining, and law libraries  are no longer preserving journals in print.  Yet, law review editors, who themselves rarely use print in their research, fear the impacts of ending print publishing on their journal’s reputation and ability to attract the best authors.  Does it matter to law journal authors whether their work is published in print?  We surveyed 464 authors of articles published in the last two completed volumes of the lead journal at the law schools ranked in the top fifteen by US News in March 2010.  Over 51 percent replied. 

Sixty eight percent of the respondents indicated that continuing publication of print issues would not have affected their decision to publish the particular article in the journal where it appeared.  Yet, when asked more generally what they would do if they had had offers from more than one of the journals on the list, other than those they considered  to be the most prestigious, 51 percent of the authors  said that a journal’s continuing publication of print issues would be the deciding factor in choosing which offer to accept.    When broken down by years teaching, however, only 38  percent of authors who had been teaching for six or fewer years said that print would be the deciding factor in their decision.  Although the survey results suggest that print remains important to law journal authors, it will become less important over time.

The paper also provides demographic information about authors who publish in the lead journals of top ranked law school.

Thomas Cooley Law School Sues Lawyers and Bloggers for Defamation

Who exactly has standing to complain of defamation here?  What am I missing?  (I haven't read the complaints, I should add, I am just going off the news story.)

More Moral Insight from Professor Reynolds

After reading our example from earlier in the week, a reader in New York kindly sent another example of acute moral insight from Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds (who is apparently already renowned for his enthusiasm for murder, genocide and war!); in this case, Professor Reynolds is responding to a reader's query:  "Why should we be all fired up about women's health and not men's health? Is there a special role of government in taking care of women? Why?".  Reynolds' answer:

Because women want an Uncle Sugar to take the place of a husband?

Certainly that must be the reason.

On-Line Book Reviews from the Texas Law Review

A welcome development!

Would you trust an anonymous lawprof called "shortporch"?

A student forwarded me this amazing item from a pre-law discussioon board posted last week by someone claiming to be a young law professor, using the moniker "shortporch," purporting to give advice about careers in law teaching:

Chicago places around 6 people in the academy each year. Yale places around 30. That's fact.

Now, Chicago is very good about elite placement (as in, the handful they get each year tend to be first-tier schools, not a scattering across all four tiers). But it is a grind-you-up, spit-you-out kind of academic training ground. You can enroll in a course at Chicago to "train" you as a potential academic--but after the first term, the professors in charge bar the "bottom" half of that class from re-enrolling in it the second term. It's that kind of brutal place for training. They're interested in crafting a small group of elite scholars. In contrast, Yale is going to be far more cooperative in academic opportunities and placement, with the reality that many get teaching positions and many are expected.

Chicago places 5-8 each year, that is a fact (and there's a more important fact, namely, that number represents almost all who seek such positions).  I know of no source of information to support the purported Yale "fact," but my guess would be it's more like 15-24 in recent years.  "Shortporch's" second paragraph, however, is complete fiction.  Professor Bernstein offers a "Legal Scholarship" workshop, but she doesn't throw people out of it, and no one has to take it in order to get into law teaching (I'd say maybe half of the candidates I've worked with on the teaching market since coming here had actually taken that workshop).   She does ask that if students want to enroll for the second part of the course that they submit a paper proposal; everyone who has submitted one has continued in the course.  We are certainly happy to have produced many "elite scholars" (or at least scholars employed by other elite schools), but we support our alumni at all levels of the market, as the list of alumni in teaching (above) will reveal.

Cyberspace remains "the nonsense and misinformation" superhighway!

Does your school have SSRN "norms"?

A discussion some may find useful here.

Weiler vs. Calvo-Goller Redux

The French court did the right thing.

Autoadmit Redux

This time it's a cyber-cesspool about college.   Its owners might want to chat with Anthony Ciolli about consequences for trafficking in such garbage, even when one tries to whitewash one's involvement.  How much longer before Section 230 of the CDA--which makes these cesspools possible--gets repealed? 

The criminal (!) libel trial of Joseph Weiler in France

An update from Professor Weiler.  Some background on this bizarre case here.