Brian Leiter's Law School Reports

10 Notable Philosophy Blogs

Blogs.com, run by Typepad, runs "top ten blog" lists, and they asked me to do one for philosophy (and to include my own philosophy blog).  Here it is.  Obviously there are more than ten philosophy blogs worth recommending, but ten was my limit.  (Dave Chalmers maintains a huge list of philosophy-related blogs.)  Some readers here may enjoy some of these blogs.

Visiting Professors at the Top Law Schools, 2009-10 (2nd Draft)

As I've done before, I'm posting a list of the visiting professors (who hold university appointments elsewhere) at the top six law schools, the schools that are "top six" by almost all measures of faculty quality--which are also the schools that also typically have the most visiting professors on a regular basis.  While many visiting stints are made with an eye to possible permanent appointment, not all are; some are so-called "podium" visits, which aim to fill an immediate teaching need at the school.   By my calculation, for example, less than 20% of the visits last year resulted in (or are in process of resulting in) offers of permanent employment--but a somewhat higher percentage of the non-podium visits resulted in such offers.  Often visitors from local schools in the area are invited for podium visit purposes--though some "locals" may also be "look-see" visitors, i.e., under consideration for appointment.  NYU also has a fair number of "enrichment" and "global" visitors, well-known senior folks who are keen to spend some time in, but who aren't necessarily interested in, or being considered for, lateral moves.  (Columbia gets some of these folks too.)  From the outside, of course, it's very hard to tell all these apart, so here, without further comment, are the visiting professors for 2008-09; please e-mail me about omissions or corrections, and I will update the list at various intervals over the next couple of months and move it to the front.

Please note that not every visit, below, is for the entire academic year; indeed, my guess is at least half are not, meaning students can expect many of these faculty to *also* be teaching at their home institution.  In the case of HLS, many of the visitors come in the Winter Term, i.e., just the month of January.

Yale Law School

Jeffrey Fagan (Columbia University)

Cristina Rodriguez (New York University)

Kim Lane Scheppele (Princeton University)

Alexander Stremitzer (University of Bonn)

Patrick Weil (University of Paris, Pantheon-Sorbonne)

David Weisbach (University of Chicago)

Harvard Law School

Robert T. Anderson (University of Washington)

Hanina Ben-Menahem (Hebrew University, Jerusalem)

Albert Choi (University of Virginia)

Alma Cohen (Tel-Aviv University)

Julie Cohen (Georgetown University)

Daniel Coquillette (Boston College)

Lori Fisler Damrosch (Columbia University)

Bada Dharon (Rice University)

Horst Eidenmuller (Ludwig-Maxmillians University)

Marie-Claire Foblets (Catholic University of Leuven)

Annette Gordon-Reed (New York Law School)

Gillian Hadfield (University of Southern California)

Ian Haney Lopez (University of California, Berkeley)

Mattias Kumm (New York University)

Maximo Langer (University of California, Los Angeles)

Richard Lazarus (Georgetown University)

Sanford Levinson (University of Texas, Austin)

Lynn LoPucki (University of California, Los Angeles)

Catharine MacKinnon (University of Michigan)

Michael McConnell (Stanford University)

Geoffrey Miller (New York University)

Erin Murphy (University of California, Berkeley)

Jide Nzelibe (Northwestern University)

Anne Joseph O'Connell (University of California, Berkeley)

James Pfander (Northwestern University)

Jedediah Purdy (Duke University)

Cristina Rodriguez (New York University)

Theodore Ruger (University of Pennsylvania)

Katherine Silbaugh (Boston University)

Dan Simon (University of Southern California)

Lawrence Suskind (Massachussetts Institute of Technology)

Michael Vandenbergh (Vanderbilt University)

Alain Verbeke (University of Leuven; University of Tilburg)

G. Edward White (University of Virginia)

Jonathan Wiener (Duke University)

Tobias Wolff (University of Pennsylvania)

University of Chicago Law School

Donald Braman (George Washington University)

Ruoying Chen (Peking University)

Alicia Davis Evans (University of Michigan)

Leslie J. Green (Oxford University)

Youngjae Lee (Fordham University)

Ariel Porat (Tel-Aviv University)

Christopher Serkin (Brooklyn Law School)

James Spindler (University of Southern California)

Julie Suk (Cardozo Law School)

Wataru Tanaka (University of Tokyo)

Stanford Law School

Michael Asimow (University of California, Los Angeles)

Daphne Barak-Erez (Tel-Aviv University)

Siegfried Fina (University of Vienna)

Jim Gibson (Washington University, St. Louis)

Robert Gordon (Yale University)

Adriaan Lanni (Harvard University)

Donald Lewis (University of Hong Kong)

Leo Romero (University of New Mexico)

William Simon (Columbia University; also emeritus, Stanford)

George Triantis (Harvard University)

Jonathan Zitrain (Harvard University)

Columbia Law School

Akhil Amar (Yale University)

John Armour (Oxford University)

Neil Cohen (Brooklyn Law School)

Klaus Hopt (Max Planck Institute)

Michael Knoll (University of Pennsylvania)

Shahar Lifshitz (Bar-Ilan University)

Susan Marks (King's College, London)

Thomas J. Miles (University of Chicago)

Anne Joseph O'Connell (University of California, Berkeley)

Deborah Rhode (Stanford University)

Yuval Shany (Hebrew University)

Paul Stephan (University of Virginia)

New York University School of Law

Jonathan B. Baker (American University)

Samuel Buell (Washington University, St. Louis)

Charles Cameron (Princeton University)

Richard Epstein (University of Chicago)

Annette Gordon-Reed (New York Law School)

Ian Haney-Lopez (University of California, Berkeley)

John Langbein (Yale University)

Erin Murphy (University of California, Berkeley)

Richard Nagareda (Vanderbilt University)

Jide Nzelibe (Northwestern University)

Katharina Pistor (Columbia University)

Robert Rabin (Stanford University)

Roberta Romano (Yale University)

Jacqueline E. Ross (University of Illinois)

Daniel Rubinfeld (University of California, Berkeley)

Geoffrey Stone (University of Chicago)

David Walker (Boston University)

Tobias Wolff (University of Pennsylvania)

And the first law prof blogger to write about his experience with swine flu is...

...Ian Ayres of Yale Law School, who appears to be on the road to recovery already, happily.  Others are invited to weigh in with their experiences in the comments, below.   Submit comment only once, it may take awhile to appear (they are moderated).

DePaul Deanship Scandal Gets Worse

The Chicago Daily Law Bulletin has reported (no link available) and the Provost has confirmed that Judge Wolfson, who was appointed to a two-year term as Interim Dean by Provost Helmut Epp without any faculty consultation, has also been appointed to a three-year term on the faculty after the Deanship--again, without any consultation.   This is yet a further violation of ABA rules (specifically 205[b]) which requires that:

The dean and faculty shall formulate and administer the educational program of the law school, including curriculum; methods of instruction; admissions; and academic standards for retention, advancement, and graduation of students; and shall recommend the selection, retention, promotion, and tenure (or granting of security of position) of the faculty.

I am told this also violates the internal rules of the law school and all historical practice at the school.

UPDATE: Via Blog Emperor Caron, I learn that the ABA has found no problem with the university's funding of the law school, in response to former Dean Weissenberger's complaint.   Will the ABA be as passive in the face of DePaul's violation of ABA rules on decanal and faculty appointments?

"Naturalizing Jurisprudence"

Now everyone will surely want their own copy!

New Blog: Law and Neurscience

Here.

The Arrest of Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Everyone has an opinion about this, so I guess I should too.  The short version:   Police do not like to be berated or challenged, period, and an incident like this should call more attention to police abuse of the charge of "disorderly conduct" as a way of trampling on the First Amendment rights of citizens to challenge police conduct.  The longer version here.

The Public's Understanding of the Tax System is Limited

Marjorie Kornhauser (Arizona State) wants to do something about it.

DePaul College of Law: Heading to Loss of ABA Accreditation?

Sixteen senior law faculty at DePaul have reported the scandalous way in which an Interim Dean was chosen to the ABA, claiming (it seems almost certainly correctly) that it violates ABA rules requiring faculty consultation in the selection of a Dean.  (Earlier postings on the DePaul deanship scandal here and here.)  Will the ABA step up to the plate here and reign in the out-of-control Provost at DePaul?  At a minimum, the ABA ought to re-open the site evaluation of DePaul.  At the extreme, intransigence by the DePaul Administration could result in loss of ABA accreditation.

UPDATE:  A colleague elsewhere is skeptical the ABA will step up to the plate; he writes:

I suspect that the ABA will do nothing to DePaul.  I left my last law school because of a failed Dean search, where the administration did much worse in the selection of a permanent Dean.  I suspect that if a poll were taken it would find that the ABA regularly ignores most of its standards.  For example, a former colleague of mine was at [school name omitted] when the administration fired the Dean.  Even though he held faculty rank he was terminated and not allowed to remain.  When the ABA investigated the ABA was told that the law school did not really have tenure, even though that was the representation made to the ABA.  Result—nothing.

Controversy Over Anti-Gay Bigot Li-ann Thio Visiting at NYU Continues

Now there is a petition to NYU protesting her scheduled visit this fall.   As a political tactic, designed to help stamp out anti-gay bigory, it's plainly a sensible move, but in its explicit content it is wrong, and dangerously wrong.  The petition states:

To harbor Dr. Thio under the banner of "academic freedom" is disingenuous, untenable and unacceptable. The full dignity of LGBT persons is beyond debate and the criminalization of private sexual conduct between consenting same-sex adults is a tool of oppression. While Dr. Thio believes that “diversity is not a license for perversity,” we believe that academic freedom is not a license for bigotry.

Actiually, "academic freedom" is, among many other things, a "license for bigotry," and there is nothing remotely "disingenous" about Dean Revesz mentioning academic freedom in the context of objections to her visit.  Academic freedom is a 'license' for scholars to defend whatever views they think can be defended with the scholarly resources at their behest.  Even if their arguments are deemed pathetically stupid, it is part of academic freedom to permit them this stupidity:  if "pathetic stupidity" were enought to rescind a visiting offer, there would be almost no visiting professors anywhere!  (Have the petition signatories talked to any academics, one wonders?)  If NYU invited Dr. Thio based on her scholarship and teaching in the area of human rights, then it would be a shocking violation of academic freedom to rescind her appointment because she is a bigot.  Academic freedom protects John Yoo, and it protect Li-ann Thio.

The real problem, I suspect, is that the Hauser Global Law program at NYU, besides underpaying its faculty and overplaying their contribution to NYU (but this is the school of Sextonian hyperbole, after all), has extremely lax standards for inviting visitors.  This is notorious in the legal academy, and this incident simply advertises the fact to the world.  NYU manages to get many genuinely outstanding legal academics in its Global Law program, but mostly overseas faculty are invited without much intellectual oversight.  I suspect the PR fiasco involving Dr. Thio will change this.

UPDATE:  Apparently, Profesor Thio has withdrawn from the visit, in the wake of various abusive e-mails and low enrollments for her courses.  Dean Revesz has issued a quite sensible memo on the whole affair which is available here.

ONE MORE:  A colleague at NYU takes issue with my last paragraph, above, about the Hauser Global Law program:

[Your] statement does not resonate with my experience in the time I have been at NYU.  Prior to that,  I had assumed that many of the Global claims were largely the kind of puffery you routinely attribute to the school.  I was genuinely surprised when I visited here at the extent to which the international program was integrated into the core intellectual life of the faculty.  The people who have come since I have been here have been a real presence in the institution.  I have taught with Hauser visitors, appeared in many class and colloquia settings with them, and have profited from the program.  Many of my foreign lectures bring me into contact with people I first met in the program here.   In turn, I have strongly encouraged invitations to impressive scholars that I first met abroad.

 

It is incorrect to say that overseas visitors are not subject to faculty oversight, at least in the time I have been here.  It is true that there is a separate committee for the global visitors, but this is much like the process in many schools of having a separate committee for junior and lateral visits/hires.  The committee has five members including a chair, and is appointed as part of the same process of yearly faculty assignments.  The membership of the committee is drawn from active, core faculty.  In keeping with the NYU practice, committee recommendations are submitted to the faculty for an up or down vote.  The submission to the faculty is in the form of a bound packet from the committee that includes a committee report on the recommendation of a visit and some sample materials.   

 

In sum, the intimation that this program is mere window-dressing and has no intellectual engagement with the institution does not match my experience here.

Some of the reports I've had came from Hauser visitors, but they may well be dated, as the report of the current NYU faculty member, above, suggests.