Brian Leiter's Law School Reports

Congratulations to the Chicago alumni and Fellows on the law teaching market...

...who accepted tenure-track jobs.  They are:

 

Charles F. Capps ’20, who will join the faculty at Arizona State University.  He graduated with Honors from the Law School, where he was Articles Editor of the Law Review.  He also earned a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Chicago.    He clerked in his native Saint Louis for Judge Gruender on the 8^th Circuit from 2020-22, and served as Deputy Solicitor General of the State of Missouri.  His primary areas of teaching and research interest include criminal law, criminal procedure, jurisprudence, torts, and evidence.

 

Jonathan Green, who will join the faculty at Arizona State University.  He is currently a Bigelow Fellow at the Law School.  He earned his J.D. from Yale in 2020, where he was an editor of the Yale Law Journal, and a Ph.D. in History from Cambridge University in 2018.  He was an associate at DLA Piper in Philadelphia in 2021, until taking up a clerkship with Judge Neomi Rao on the D.C. Circuit.  His primary areas of teaching and research interest include legislation/statutory interpretation, civil procedure, federal courts, legal history, and administrative law. 

 

Filippo Lancieri JSD ‘21, who will join the faculty at Georgetown University.  He is currently a post-doctoral fellow at the ETH Zurich Center for Law & Economics.   He received his JSD at Chicago with a thesis on “Essays in the Regulation of Digital Markets”; he received his LL.M. from Chicago in 2016.  He also holds an MA in economics and an undergraduate law degree, both from São Paulo.  He practiced antitrust and corporate law in his native Brazil for four years, and has also practiced antitrust as an International Lawyer with Latham &Watkins in Brussels.   His primary areas of teaching and research interest are antitrust, privacy, law and technology, contracts, and copyright.

 

Tyler B. Lindley '21, who will join the faculty at Brigham Young University.  He graduated with Highest Honors and  Order of the Coif from the Law School, where he was Business & Communication Editor of the Law Review.   He clerked for Chief Judge Pryor on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, and for Judge Katsas on the D.C. Circuit, and served as Of Counsel at Lee Nielsen.  His primary areas of teaching and research interest are constitutional law, civil procedure, federal courts, and legislation and regulation.

 

Meighan C. Parker, who will join the faculty at the University of Georgia.  She is currently a Bigelow Fellow at the Law School.  She received her J.D. cum laude from the University of Alabama in 2018, where she also received the John England Award for the Black law student with the highest academic standing; she also holds an M.T.S. from Harvard Divinity School awarded in 2015.   She spent two-and-a-half years as an associate in the Life Sciences & Regulatory Compliance Group at Ropes & Gray in Washington D.C., before joining Sidley Austin in Washington, D.C. as a Managing Associate in their Food, Drug, and Medical Device Compliance and Enforcement Group.  Her primary areas of teaching and research interest are health law, food & drug law, torts, business organizations, and law & technology. 

 

Mark Pickering '05 who will join the faculty at the University of St. Thomas (Miami).  He earned a Ph.D. in philosophy from Boston University in 2013, and taught philosophy at various schools, most recently at the University of Alabama.  His primary areas of teaching and research interest are criminal law & procedure, torts, and jurisprudence.

 

Eve Rips '12 who will join the faculty at the University of Illinois, Chicago John Marshall Law School.  She worked as an attorney at the Chicago Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights and for Young Invincibles in Washington, D.C., where she was Acting National Deputy Director.  She has taught at Loyola University, Chicago, the University of Maryland (Baltimore), and Chicago-Kent College of Law, where she is presently a VAP.   Her primary areas of teaching and research interest are education law, criminal law, family law, and legal research and writing.

 

Zalman Rothschild, who will join the faculty at Cardozo Law School/Yeshiva University.  He is presently a Bigelow Fellow at the Law School.  He is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School in 2018, and also received a Ph.D. in Religion & Jewish Studies from New York University in 2016.   He was a litigation associate at Paul, Weiss in New York City for three years, and also clerked for Judge Jane Roth on the Third Circuit.  His primary areas of teaching and research interest are constitutional law (especially the First Amendment, both the religion and speech clauses), civil procedure, family law, employment discrimination, and professional responsibility. 

 

Bill Watson ’14, who will join the faculty at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.  He is currently a Climenko Fellow at Harvard Law School.  He graduated with High Honors and Order of the Coif from the Law School, where he was a Kirkland & Ellis Scholar and the Book Review & Essays Editor of the Law Review.  He clerked for Judge Jay Bybee on the 9^th Circuit, and was a litigation associate at Kirkland & Ellis in Chicago for three years before starting the graduate program in philosophy at Cornell University, where he received the Ph.D. in 2023.  His primary areas of teaching and research interest include legislation/statutory interpretation, jurisprudence, administrative law, civil procedure, evidence, and constitutional law.

You can see a complete list of Chicago law alumni in teaching here.

Not an April Fool's joke: Yale Law School hires an experienced and talented lawyer to the regular faculty

After being demoted to the 6th best law school in the country last year by USNEWS.COM, things seem to be changing!  Jokes aside, Mr. West is very talented, but what's remarkable is that YLS hired him:  a smart, articulate lawyer who knows a ton of law, and (I am told) is "conservative" (whatever that means).  Historically, YLS rookie hires of their own have not always worked out that well (Akhil Amar is one famous exception), but I imagine this will be another exception.  What explains it?  Dean Heather Gerken wants to be President of Yale?   Or leave behind some of the embarrassments of recent years?  In any case congratulations to Mr. West and to Yale!

Lawsky's entry-level hiring report for 2024

If you've recently accepted a tenure-track job in law teaching, submit your information to Professor Lawsky here.

University of New Hampshire Law School fires tenured professor in violation of her First Amendment and academic freedom rights

MOVING TO FRONT FROM MARCH 1--UPDATED

Professor Ann Bartow, an intellectual property scholar and tenured professor, has been fired by the law school at the University of New Hampshire.   As the faculty union puts it:

The record is clear. The University of New Hampshire fired Professor Ann Bartow, a long-time tenured professor of law, after years of conflict driven by Professor Bartow’s speech critical of the UNH Law administration. As the University conceded, this speech was unambiguously protected by the First Amendment, New Hampshire law, and bedrock principles of academic freedom. The University’s decision to disregard these protections and fire Professor Bartow represents a grave threat to professors in New Hampshire and elsewhere.

UNH lawprof Roger Ford, who is the union representative, has made all documents available on this website.  I am quite familiar with this case:   the conduct of UNH, and especially its Dean, is beyond outrageous. (Professor Bartow made only one small mistake [contacting a prospective faculty member, as a courtesy to a friend, who was slated to teach a course she might have taught, to explain that she had filed a grievance against the university about teaching assignment], but it could not possibly justify termination.)  The only person, I can see on the record, who should be fired is the Dean.  Professor Mark Lemley calls my attention to a petition to boycott UNH if they do not reverse this decision.  It has been circulated initially among IP professors, but I would encourage every law professor to sign, as I have.   The behavior of the UNH administration is so beyond the pale, that if it stands, many others will be at risk.

UPDATE:   Talking to colleagues here and elsewhere, I now realize that if one reads only the arbitrator's decision, one will have a very incomplete picture of what transpired.  One needs to read the union's brief to get a real sense for what was going on at UNH.  The arbitrator left out quite a lot, to put it mildly.  (Link fixed.)

Harvard Law Dean John Manning to become Interim Provost at Harvard...

...while torts scholar John Goldberg at HLS will become Interim Dean.

Penn faculty hearing board recommended sanctions for Amy Wax last summer; she is appealing

MOVING TO FRONT FROM FEBRUARY 24--SEE UPDATE

The recommended sanctions consist in "a one-year suspension at half pay, the removal of her named chair and summer pay, and a requirement for Wax to note in public appearances that she is not speaking on behalf or as a member of Penn Carey Law."  Only the last requirement (that she make clear she does not speak for the law school) is unproblematic.  It is unclear at this stage what precise "behavior" prompted the other sanctions, but it seems almost certain that Penn is punishing her for her offensive extramural speech, which is protected by her academic freedom rights.  (As I have noted before, only two incidents could, in principle, be sanctioned consistent with her academic freedom rights:  her denigration of the competence of an identifiable segment of the Penn student body [which was already sanctioned by then Dean Ruger]; and her invitation of a racist know-nothing to a law school class.  I strongly suspect the sanctions were not confined to these incidents.)

If Professor Wax loses her appeal, I would expect her to sue for breach of contract.

UPDATE:   Here is the letter from the "Hearing Board" to former President Magill regarding Professor Wax.  The only portion that isn't obviously outrageous is the section on violations of student privacy (although Professor Wax's attorney also disputes that in the appeal.)  The rest of the letter was written by someone with no knowledge of the law of academic freedom.   Almost all the evidence of "unprofessional" conduct involves extramural speech, which is not covered by the standards applicable in professional scholarship or pedagogy:   this is just a breathtaking confusion about core AAUP academic freedom principles, which vitiates almost the entire letter.   (Much of the evidence in Appendices 2 and 3, by the way, was not confirmed by the independent investigator retained by former Penn Law Dean Ruger [see item #3 here], yet is repeatedly invoked in the letter.)  (Thanks to Ed Rock for the pointer.)

(Here are the members of the Hearing Board.  Professor Wax's appeal, above, reports that Penn law professor Anita Allen addressed the Hearing Board; unfortunately, her views on academic freedom under the AAUP standards are also completely mistaken.  If they influenced the Board, this will be another disaster for Penn when this lands in court.)

Paul Campos, University of Colorado settle lawsuit

The lawsuit noted last summer has settled, it appears on the basis of the retaliation claim.  Professor Campos received $60,000, and his law firm received $100,000.

On the retaliation allegation, Professor Kerr had surmised last summer that the University would argue that removing Campos from a committee assignment wasn't retaliation for his complaining of discrimination because "Campos had said he anticipated suing the university because the evaluations committee had discriminated against him. That's the same committee he was set to join...."  That surmise turned out to be incorrect.  As a Colorado law professor (who sent the settlement to me) pointed out, "The evaluation committee he'd been assigned to wasn't the same committee (meaning with the same members) as had evaluated him."  Even when the underlying discrimination claim is without merit, retaliation claims are often winners (and have become easier to win since this SCOTUS decision).   (Campos, in his self-serving blog post about this, noted that the settlement agreement was not confidential, but did not disclose the amount he actually got, and I suppose we now know why.)

Continue reading

Law professors take on the Supreme Court

A lively account of the scholarly debate in the Washington Monthly.

Most "influential" people in American legal education?

It's not for me to say; a lot of Deans and administrators, plus some guys with blogs.  The "top twenty":

1.  Erwin Chemerinsky (Dean, Berkeley)

2.  Kellye Testy (President & CEO, LSAC)

3.  Mark Alexander (Dean, Villanova; 2023 AALS President)

4.  Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine, and "Blog Emperor"!)

5.  Bobby Ahdieh (Dean, Texas A&M)

6.  Aaron Taylor (Executive Director, AccessLex)

7.  Brian Leiter (Professor, UChicago; guy with a blog)

8.  Meera Deo (Professor, Southwestern Law; Director, Law School Survey of Student Engagement)

9.  Michael Hunter Schwartz (Dean, McGeorge)

10.  Darby Dickerson (President & Dean, Southwestern Law)

11.  Jenny Martinez (Provost, Stanford; former Law Dean there as well)

12.  Eugene Volokh (Professor, UCLA; guy with a blog)

13.  Andrew Perlman (Dean, Suffolk)

14.  Melanie Wilson (Dean, Washington & Lee; 2024 AALS President)

15.  William Treanor (Dean, Georgetown)

16.  Megan Carpenter (Dean, New Hampshire)

17.  Peter "Bo" Rutledge (Dean, Georgia)

18.  Anthony Varona (Dean, Seattle)

19.  William Henderson (Professor, Indiana/Bloomington)

20.  Jerry Organ (Professor, St. Thomas; guy who blogs at TaxProf)

I think I've been on this list every time since 2014.  If this isn't "fake news," then I have only you, dear readers, to thank for reading all these years!

There is no "caste" system in American law schools

I am in favor of increasing job security for all workers, including those in law schools, but it is beyond absurd to describe job security as a response to a "caste" system problem, for reasons I've explained before:

[T]o refer to the existence of different jobs and positions, with different qualifications and expectations, as a "caste" system is just a rhetorical trick, harnessing the pejorative connotation of "caste" to raise doubts about a system of differing qualifications, expectations and authority. Is it a "caste" system that in a hospital the doctors have different professional status, differential educational and professional attainments, and different responsibilities and authority than nurse's aides? Is it a "caste" system that PhDs in chemistry with tenure have different responsibilities and authority than the post-docs or research technicians in their labs? Unlike real caste systems, a change in status is possible with a change in education, experience, and accomplishments. The only real question is whether the differing qualifications, responsibilities and authority are justified, not whether they are a "caste.