Brian Leiter's Law School Reports

How to Get Dean Search Committees to Stop Calling You to Ask If You're Interested

I thought I'd found the solution a few years ago, by having a blog, in which I speak plainly and honestly (which Deans are forbidden from doing) and in which I expressed political opinions so far out of the mainstream in the reactionary United States as to make all but the most progressive schools nervous.  This worked for awhile, though I've started getting the calls and inquiries again.   But now Brian Tamanaha (Wash U/St. Louis) has discovered the best way to guarantee one will never be sought after as a Dean:  make clear what you would do if you were Dean! 

"So you want to go to law school"

"Cynical" barely does justice to this, but it is funny.

(Thanks to Michael Sevel for the pointer.)

"Volokh Conspiracy" Blog Implodes: Kerr v. Lindgren

Lindgren is not winning.  In the great teapot that is the blogosphere, this tempest is particularly amusing:  here, here, here, here.

(Thanks to several different readers for flagging this curiuos back-and-forth.  Professor Lindgren appears never to have met a non-story or triviality about which he couldn't blog.)

SSRN: "Stop Socialism Right Now!"

Robert Hockett (Cornell) comments.

Your July 4th Poll: What are your favorite things about the United States of America?

I think I've included all the obvious candidates.  Have fun!

Yet More Thoughts on the Harvard Racist E-Mail Controversy...

...from Eric Muller (North Carolina).  And, in a related vein, yet more fun with David Bernstein (I know, I know, but it is sometimes just hard to resist).

"Gordon Liu: Wrong Man for the 9th Circuit" (real headline)

Indeed, especially since no Gordon Liu has been nominated.  I like the quote from Professor Painter of Minnesota:  "There are real left-wingers in the" academy.  That sounds scary.  Happily, Professor Painter assures us that Professor Liu is not one of them. Whew!

(Thanks to Diane Amann for the pointer.)

UPDATE:  Alas, they finally caught the mistake!

Some readers claim the new U.S. News law school rankings have been leaked...

...but I just checked Drudge, and there's no mention of them, so everyone can relax.

UPDATE:  The story gets funnier--the material circulating shows Duke as reporting 100% employment at graduation--the only school in the country (the world?) to claim 100% at graduation.  As hoaxes go, this one is not subtle.  (Of course, I guess it's possible that US News is just the messenger for this hoax...nah, surely a [former] news magazine would investigate before publishing astonishing claims like this.)

Speaking of April Fools' pranks...

...this looks like a good paper, esp. the bit about interpretivism and science.

UPDATE:  Also this one.  Solum is good at this.

Mass Faculty Exodus Strikes Yale: Amar, Ayres and Whitman to Columbia; Hansmann and Romano to NYU; Donohue, Gerken, and Jolls to Harvard; Ackerman, Ellickson and Schwartz to Retire;

In a rather stunning reversal, eleven senior and, in several cases, longtime Yale faculty have either announced their retirements or that they are moving to schools in New York City or to Harvard.  According to one of the professors, the timing of the decision was not entirely accidental:  "We were at a faculty meeting," according to the source who asked to remain anonymous, "when Bruce Ackerman said, 'you know, we are so great that we could be anywhere, isn't it odd that we're all stuck in this dump of a town?'  From there, the meme spread."