Brian Leiter's Law School Reports

"What is a realist theory of law?"

This article of mine is now out in the Journal of Institutional Studies, edited by faculty at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, for those who might be interested.  (Most articles in Portuguese, but mine appears in English.  A Spanish translation will also appear this year in Revista Iuris Dictio in Ecuador.)

Congratulations to the Chicago alumni and Fellows who accepted tenure-track teaching positions this year

They are:

Atinuke (Tinu) Adediran, who will join the faculty at Boston College.  She is currently a Dickerson Fellow at the Law School.  She received her J.D. from Columbia University in 2011, where she was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar and Notes Editor of the Columbia Journal of Gender and Law.  She was a litigation associate for three years with Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft in New York City, before enrolling at Northwestern University, where she expects to receive her Ph.D. in Sociology in 2020 with a dissertation on “Theories of Organizations and Institutions in the Delivery of Legal Services.”  Her teaching and research interests include civil procedure, legal profession/professional responsibility, evidence, employment discrimination, and race and the law. 

 

Travis Crum, who will join the faculty at Washington University, St. Louis.  He is currently a Bigelow Fellow at the Law School.   He received an MSc. in Comparative Politics from the London School of Economics in 2007 and his J.D. from Yale in 2011, where he was Book Reviews & Features Editor of the Yale Law Journal.  He clerked for Judge Myron Thompson of the U.S. District Court in Alabama during 2011-12, then Judge Tatel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in 2012-13, and then for Justice Kennedy and Retired Justice Stevens of the Supreme Court during 2014-15.  He was a litigation associate at Mayer Brown in Washington, D.C. for two years before coming to the Law School.  His teaching and research interests include election law and voting rights, civil procedure, constitutional law, administrative law, and legislation.  

 

Meirav Furth-Matzkin, who will join the faculty at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is currently the Olin Fellow in Law & Economics at the Law School.  She received her LL.B. with Highest Honors from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and an LL.M. (2015) and S.J.D. in 2019 from Harvard Law School, before coming to the Law School.  She clerked for Justice J. Uzi Vogelman of the Israeli Supreme Court during 2013-14.  Her teaching and research interests include contracts, consumer law, property, law & economics, and empirical legal studies.  

Cree Jones, who will join the faculty at Brigham Young University.  He is currently a Bigelow Fellow at the Law School.  He received his J.D. cum laude from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 2013, and also received a Master’s of Public Policy at Michigan the same year.  He received a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Chicago in 2018.  He has served for five years as a legal consultant to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.  His teaching and research interests include international business transactions, trade regulation, international law, contracts, and law & economics. 

 

Ndjuoh MehChu '17, who will join the faculty at Seton Hall University.  He is currently clerking for Judge Jack Weinstein on the Eastern District of New York.  After graduating from the Law School, he was a Legal Fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center in Mississippi, and then a VAP at Howard University.    His teaching and research interests include civil rights, social justice lawyering, critical race theory, torts, and civil procedure.

 

Vijay Raghavan ’07, who will join the faculty at Brooklyn Law School.  He practiced for two years as a tax associate with Skadden, Arps after graduating from the Law School, then spent two years at Prairie State Legal Services, Inc. before serving as Assistant Attorney General of Illinois in the Consumer Fraud Bureau from 2011 until 2019. He is currently Deputy Director of the Division of Financial Institutions for Illinois.  His teaching and research interests include consumer law and finance, contracts, business associations, bankruptcy, and commercial law. 

 

Weijia Rao SJD ’19, who will join the faculty at George Mason University.  She graduated first in her class with an LL.B. in 2014 from Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, where she was also editor-in-chief of volume 6 of the Tsinghua China Law Review, the first student-edited law review in China; that same year, she also earned a B.A. in Economics from the same university.  She received her LL.M. in 2015 and her S.J.D. in 2019 from the Law School, with a dissertation on “Empirical Essays on the Institutional Design of Investor-State Dispute Settlement."  She is currently an International Lawyer with Sidley Austin in Washington, D.C., practicing as a member of the firm’s Global Arbitration, Trade and Advocacy group.  Her teaching and research interests include international business transactions, international investment and trade law, contracts, alternative dispute resolution, and Chinese law.  

 

Roseanna  Sommers, who will join the faculty at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.  She is currently a Bigelow Fellow at the Law School.  She received  both her J.D. and Ph.D. in Psychology from Yale in 2018.  She was an editor of the Yale Law Journal and wrote a dissertation on “Deformed Consent,”   Her areas of teaching and research interest include contracts, torts, law & psychology, experimental jurisprudence, evidence, and bioethics.  

 

James F. Tierney '11, who will join the faculty at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln.   At the Law School, he was Executive Articles & Book Reviews Editor of the Law Review and graduated with honors.  He clerked for Judge Mary Schroeder on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, and practiced in Mayer Brown's Supreme Court and appellate litigation group for several years, before joing the SEC's Office of the General Counsel, where he was most recently Senior Counsel.  His teaching and research interests include securities regulation, corporate law, contracts, and behavioral law & economics.

 

You can see last year's placements here, and a complete list of the several hundred Chicago Law alumni in teaching here.

Legal issues raised by COVID-19

This looks to be a useful resource, prepared by faculty (mostly) at Columbia Law School.

The realist critique of "formalism" according to Solum

Larry Solum's Legal Theory Lexicon is a useful resource, although I don't always agree with all its entries.  This one on the "realist" critique of formalism is really just a description of the argument in one paper by Felix Cohen.  It's a fine description of the argument in that paper but it is not representative of legal realism.  (On formalism and realism, with reference to Brian Tamanaha's confused and misleading treatment, see also.)

In Memoriam: Barbara Allen Babcock (1938-2020)

A longtime member of the Stanford faculty, where she taught civil and criminal procedure, Professor Babcock also wrote widely about women  in the legal profession.  The Stanford memorial notice is here.

(Thanks to Paul Caron for the pointer.)

Eight law professors elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences... (CORRECTED)

...in various sections, including Law.  They are:  Tomiko Brown-Nagin (Harvard), R. Alta Charo (Wisconsin), Malcolm Feeley (Berkeley), Jenny Martinez (Dean, Stanford), Jennifer Mnookin (Dean, UCLA), Anne Joseph O'Connell (Stanford), Cristina Rodriguez (Yale) and William Michael Treanor (Dean, Georgetown).

Wash U/St. Louis eliminates summer salaries for tenured faculty

A colleague there tells me the law school has eliminated summer 2020 salaries for tenured faculty, which represents 7-10% of annual compensation for those professors (junior faculty will continue to receive summer salary).  That's rather dramatic for a law school regularly in the top 25 in the U.S., and one that is part of a very wealthy parent university (although its wealth, I gather, is tied up heavily with the [top] medical and [the middling] business schools).  Have other law schools cut summer salaries?   You may post anonymously, but you must include a valid e-mail address (your e-mail address will not appear or be disclosed).

"If liquor stores are essential, why isn't church?"

So ask Michael McConnell (Stanford) and Max Raskin (Adjunct, NYU) in a recent NYT op-ed.  I confess I hadn't expected Professor McConnell to hold the Marxist view that religion is the opium (or liquor) of the people, but that aside, I would have thought the answer was obvious:  people can practice their religion without going to a church or other religious institution; but you can't drink or eat unless you can go to stores to buy things to drink and eat.

In Memoriam: Joel Reidenberg (1961-2020)

A longtime member of the Fordham Law faculty, Professor Reidenberg was well-known for his work on data and privacy law, work that was foundational for the whole field of Internet law.  The Fordham memorial notice is here.

(Thanks to Ethan Leib for letting me know about Professor Reidenberg's passing.)

Ten best corporate/securities articles of 2019...

...from Corporate Practice Commentator (thanks to Robert Thompson for sharing this):

The Top 10 Corporate and Securities Articles of 2019

The Corporate Practice Commentator is pleased to announce the results of its twenty-sixth annual poll to select the ten best corporate and securities articles. Teachers in corporate and securities law were asked to select the best corporate and securities articles from a list of articles published in legal journals during 2019. Just short of 400 articles were on this year’s list. Because of the vagaries of publication, indexing, and mailing, some articles published in 2019 have a 2018 date, and not all articles containing a 2019 date were published in time to be included in this year’s list.

The articles, listed in alphabetical order of the initial author, are:

Ian Ayres (Yale), Edward Fox (Michigan). Alpha Duties: The Search for Excess Returns and Appropriate Fiduciary Duties. 97 Tex. L. Rev. 445-515 (2019).

Adam Badawi (Berkeley), Elisabeth de Fontenay (Duke). Is There a First-Drafter Advantage in M&A? 107 Calif. L. Rev. 1119-1172 (2019).

Lucian Bebchuk (Harvard), Scott Hirst (BU). Index Funds and the Future of Corporate Governance: Theory, Evidence, and Policy. 119 Columbia L. Rev. 2029-2146 (2019).

John C. Coffee, Jr. (Columbia), Robert J. Jackson, Jr. (NYU), Joshua R. Mitts (Columbia), & Robert E. Bishop (Goodwin Procter). Activist Directors and Agency Costs: What Happens When an Activist Director Goes on the Board? 104 Cornell L. Rev. 381- 466 (2019).

Lisa M. Fairfax (George Washington). The Securities Law Implications of Financial Illiteracy. 104 Va. L. Rev. 1065-1122 (2018).

Jill E. Fisch (Penn), Assaf Hamdani (Hebrew U) & Steven Davidoff Solomon (Berkeley). The New Titans of Wall Street: A Theoretical Framework for Passive Investors. 168 U. Pa. L. Rev. 17-72 (2019).

Zohar Goshen (Columbia), Sharon Hannes (Tel-Aviv University). The Death of Corporate Law. 94 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 263-315 (2019).

Henry T. C. Hu (Texas), John D. Morley (Yale). A Regulatory Framework for Exchange-traded Funds. 91 S. Cal. L. Rev. 839-942 (2018).

Elizabeth Pollman (Penn). Corporate Disobedience. 68 Duke L.J. 709-765 (2019).

Elizabeth Pollman (Penn). Startup Governance. 168 U. Pa. L. Rev. 155-221 (2019).

Adriana Z. Robertson (Toronto). Passive in Name Only: Delegated Management and “Index” Investing. 36 Yale J. on Reg. 795-851 (2019).