Keith on Richard Cockburn Maclaurin: 1870-1920 @WellingtonUni

Kenneth J. Keith, Victoria University of Wellington, Te Herenga Waka Faculty of Law, has published Richard Cockburn Maclaurin: 1870–1920 in Vincent O'Sullivan (ed) Eminent Victorians (Stout Research Centre, Wellington, 2000) at 49. Here is the abstract.

A lecture delivered as part of the Stout Research Centre's Eminent Victorians series. The series celebrates the contribution of a number of Victoria University of Wellington's distinguished scholars and gifted teachers of the past hundred years. In this lecture, Sir Ken Keith provides an insight into the work and legacy of Richard Cockburn Maclaurin, Victoria's first Dean of Law, first chairman of the Professorial Board, first Professor of Mathematics, and first and only Professor of Astronomy.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

Risinger on Female Law Librarians as Pioneer Women Law Professors @SetonHallLaw

D. Michael Risinger, Seton Hall University School of Law, has published Female Law Librarians as Pioneer Women Law Professors: A (Belated) Response to Dean Kay, with Some Suggested Additions to Her Canonical List. Here is the abstract.

The late Herma Hill Kay was the preeminent cataloguer of the pioneer women law professors of the modern era, that is, those who taught after the advent of formalized quality recognition of law schools, either through membership in the Association of American Law Schools (which began in 1900) or through American Bar Association accreditation (which began in 1923). Dean Kay excluded from her list female law librarians who held titles of ordinary faculty professorial rank, apparently because, form her point of view, they were not recognized as “full-fledged” faculty members. In my view this was a questionable omission. The very fact that they were granted professorial rank, at a time when such status was rare for law librarians and even rarer for female law librarians, cuts strongly in favor of adding them to any list of pioneer women law faculty, and to that end the article identifies those librarians who carried professorial rank at ABA/AALS law schools from 1923 through 1959 for inclusion on the list of pioneer woman law professors. But first, the article address a broader methodological point concerning Dean Kay’s list. Dean Kay sought to include in her list of female pioneer law professors only those who would have been fully recognized as members of the legal academy, even by the dominant males of the academy. Under this stringent standard, she counted only female faculty members at schools that were both ABA-accredited and admitted to membership in the Association of American Law Schools (AALS). I have no quibble with a restrictive approach, directed as it is to an important question of the status of women in the legal academy. However, accepting Dean Kay’s time frame, which is anchored to the beginning of ABA accreditation in 1923, I believe it was a mistake to exclude female full-time faculty with professorial rank at ABA-accredited law schools which were not members of the AALS. There were not many of these—the article only identifies three. But these three should be on any list of pioneer woman law professors.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Lindgren on The Religious Beliefs, Practices, and Experiences of Law Professors @NorthwesternLaw

James Lindgren, Northwestern University School of Law, has published The Religious Beliefs, Practices, and Experiences of Law Professors at 15 University of St. Thomas Law Journal 342 (2019). Here is the abstract.

In the 1990s I surveyed law faculties at the top one hundred law schools, collecting data on professors’ religious affiliations. [Measuring Diversity: Law Faculties in 1997 and 2013, 39 Harv. J.L. & Pub. Pol’y 89 (2016), https://ssrn.com/abstract=2581675] I found that Christians were represented at only about half their percentages in the larger population, while Jewish and nonreligious law professors were substantially overrepresented. Yet knowing whether a professor is, for example, Christian or Jewish only scratches the surface. For the general public, the General Social Survey and the American National Election Studies have long asked about belief in God and church attendance, but these questions had never before been asked of law professors. This article reports the results of a 2017 survey of about 500 law professors. The study first updates the 1997 study on religious preference and then moves on to explore the issues of belief in God, church attendance, and religiously motivated discrimination. Law faculties are substantially less devout than mere reports of religious preferences would indicate. Though religious belief in the general population tends to fall with increased education, that phenomenon does not explain or account for the observed magnitude of the differences. For example, while 24 percent of law professors say that they “don’t believe in God” and another 18 percent “don’t know whether God exists,” among those in the general population who have graduate and professional degrees, only 5.4 percent do not believe in God and 10.4 percent do not know whether God exists. While in this study higher percentages of Christians report religious discrimination than the non-religious, so do higher percentages of Jews and those who embrace “other religions.” As for their schools preferring non-Christians over Christians, Christians are much more likely to report this behavior than Jews or the non-religious, but the percentages reporting having witnessed this discriminatory preference are still relatively small.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Wasserman on Academic Feeder Judges @fiulaw

Howard Wasserman, Florida International University College of Law, has published Academic Feeder Judges as Florida International University Legal Studies Research Paper No. 20-02. Here is the abstract.

This paper identifies “academic feeder judges”—the federal judges (especially from courts of appeals) for whom law professors clerked at the beginning of their careers and the judges who “produce” law professors from the ranks of their former clerks. The study is based on a summer 2019 review of publicly available biographies and c.v.’s of full-time faculty at ABA-accredited law schools, identifying more than 3000 “academic former clerks” and the judges for whom each clerked. From this, the paper identifies: 1) 101 lower federal judges with the most academic former clerks, 2) 52 federal trial judges, 3) 53 federal judges appointed since 1995, 4) top state-court judges, and 5) SCOTUS justices, current and past. For each judge within each grouping, the study examines appointing presidents, biographical information such as former career, numbers of academic former clerks, rankings of the schools at which former clerks teach, and a projection of how many academics newer judges might produce over a 35-year judicial career. The study closes with some comments and conclusions from the data. (Spoiler alert: The leading academic feeder judge is Guido Calabresi (Second Circuit), followed closely by Stephen Reinhardt (Ninth Circuit, died in 2018), Stephen Williams (D.C. Circuit), and Dorothy Nelson (Ninth Circuit)).

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Podgor on A Small Slice of the Chicago Eight Trial @whitecollarprof @stetsonlaw

Ellen S. Podgor, Stetson University College of Law, is publishing A Small Slice of the Chicago Eight Trial in volume 50 of the Loyola University Chicago Law Journal (2019). Here is the abstract.

The Chicago Eight trial was not the typical criminal trial, in part because it occurred at a time of society’s polarization, student demonstrations, and the rise of the House Un-American Activities Committee. Charges were levied against eight defendants, who were individuals that represented leaders in a variety of movements and groups during this time. This Essay examines the opening stages of this trial from the lens of a then relatively new criminal defense attorney, Gerald Lefcourt. It looks at his experiences before Judge Julius Hoffman and highlights how strong, steadfast criminal defense attorneys can make a difference in protecting key constitutional rights and values. Although judicial independence is crucial to a system premised on due process, it is also important that lawyers and law professors stand up to misconduct and improprieties.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

Ruhl, Vandenbergh, and Dunaway on Total Scholarly Impact: Law Professor Citations in Non-Law Journals @jbruhl @michaelvanden6 @vanderbiltlaw

J. B. Ruhl, Michael P. Vandenbergh, and Sarah Dunaway, all of Vanderbilt Law School, have published Total Scholarly Impact: Law Professor Citations in Non-Law Journals. Here is the abstract.

This Article provides the first ranking of legal scholars and law faculties based on citations in non-law journals. Applying the methods, as much as possible, of the widely used Leiter-Sisk “Scholarly Impact Score,” which includes only citations in law publications, we calculate a “Interdisciplinary Scholarly Impact Score” from the non-law citations over a five-year period (2012-2018) to the work of tenured law faculty published in that period in non-law journals. We also provide the weighted scores for law faculty at the top 25 law schools as ranked by the US News rankings, a school-by-school ranking, and lists of the top five faculty by non-law citations at each school and of the top fifty scholars overall. The work of legal scholars outside of law journals is not trivial. Over 600 faculty members from the 25 schools in our cohort published almost 3,000 articles in non-law journals from 2012-2018, and those articles received close to 21,000 citations in non-law journals. The faculties that rank in the top ten based on weighted scores for Interdisciplinary Scholarly Impact using the Leiter-Sisk weighting method (2x the mean + the median) for all faculty with at least one publication in the study period are: Minnesota, Stanford, Yale, Duke, Cal-Irvine, Georgetown, Boston University, USC, Vanderbilt, and George Washington. The rankings, although subject to limitations similar to those faced by the law journal citation studies, demonstrate that it is possible with reasonable effort to include citations in both law and non-law journals in rankings of legal scholars and law school faculties. Legal scholars are cited in non-law journals for the work they publish in legal journals and, in many cases, for work they publish in non-law journals. Counting only their citations in law journals thus underestimates both the impact of their legal scholarship and their interdisciplinary impact. Non-law journals are widely read by law and policy scholars, scientists who influence legal scholarship, and policymakers, and publications and citations of legal scholars in non-law journals can be an indication of work that has transcended the conceptual frameworks, assumptions, or methods of legal research. Publications and citations in non-law journals thus provide an additional indication of the influence of legal scholars. Citations in non-law journals also provide an indication of the influence of legal scholars on the overall scholarly enterprise outside of law, and accounting for non-law citations in legal rankings can also encourage interdisciplinary scholarship. Scholars from non-law fields have made important contributions to legal scholarship, but the reverse should also be the case. Acceptance by other fields of legal scholars’ proposed legal reforms can play an important role in determining their success, which is made more likely when legal scholars are included in the work of other disciplines. For these reasons, we suggest in the Article that future evaluations of legal scholars’ work include both the Law Scholarly Impact Score and the new Interdisciplinary Scholarly Impact Score, or combine the two into a Total Scholarly Impact Score. Although there is some mismatch in the citation engine capacities and the time frames for our non-law journal citation study and the most recent Sisk et al. law journal citation study, a combination of the two can provide a rough approximation of the Total Scholarly Impact Score. The top ten law faculties based on this combined measure are: Yale, Harvard, Chicago, NYU, Stanford, Columbia, Duke, Cal-Berkeley, Pennsylvania, and Vanderbilt. The databases used in the law and non-law studies and their search capacities differ, making it difficult to develop a citation study method that captures all of a faculty members’ law and non-law publications and all citations to them in defined time frames. We are working to improve the non-law citation study database and search capacity. Following an introduction to the project, in Part I we discuss why accounting for legal scholars’ non-law publications and citations is important when assessing scholarly impact. Part II describes our methodology. Part III presents our results, and Part IV discusses the results.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

A Forthcoming Book on Michael Olivas's Scholarship

Forthcoming from Carolina Academic Press: Ediberto Roman, Law Professor and Accidental Historian: The Scholarship of Michael Olivas (October 2016).

Brown on the "The Breakfast Club" and the Emotionally Intelligent Law Professor

Heidi K. Brown, Brooklyn Law School, is publishing The Emotionally Intelligent Law Professor: A Lesson from the Breakfast Club in volume 36 of the University of Arkansas (Little Rock) Law Review. Here is the abstract.

While some law review articles emphasize the importance of teaching Emotional Intelligence (EI) as part of the students' law school curriculum as a component of “professionalism,” fewer articles thus far have illuminated how professors can cultivate their own EI to become better educators. The present article aspires to provide law professors with a workable explanation of EI, and practical guidance to make EI accessible and useful in the classroom. Part I of this article explains the basic concept and components of Emotional Intelligence, and how understanding and cultivating one's own EI in a classroom dynamic can enhance teaching. This section also urges law professors to embrace a “growth mindset,” a term advanced by Dr. Carol Dweck, to describe our fundamental ability to change qualities about ourselves that we once might have thought were “fixed.” Part II describes some of the distinctive characteristics of the Millennial generation of law students; in fact, we also need to start studying the characteristics of the post-Millennial “Generation Z.” Understanding the underlying societal drivers behind the current and next generation's classroom demeanor and approach to learning will help professors overcome kneejerk “Breakfast Club”-style behavioral stereotypes based on past assumptions which may no longer be valid. Part III draws from Dr. Ken Bain's study of exemplary college-level teachers, as well as the 2013 book, What the Best Law Teachers Do, to identify specific qualities for improving effectiveness as an El-savvy law teacher. Finally, Part IV suggests practical techniques for applying EI in the law school classroom so that professors can adjust more readily to a constantly evolving classroom dynamic and the needs of the inimitable mosaic of individual learners within each student group.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Bandes on Ferguson and Changes in Legal Education

Susan A. Bandes, DePaul University College of Law, has published Moral Shock and Legal Education at 65 Journal of Legal Education 298 (2015). Here is the abstract.

This essay is part of a Journal of Legal Education symposium issue on how recent high profile revelations about racially discriminatory policing in Ferguson and elsewhere have affected the way law professors teach, think, write and talk about criminal justice, civil rights, and law in general.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

John Henry Merryman Dies

John Henry Merryman, musician, chemist, law professor, librarian, and art connoisseur, has died. An expert in property law, and knowledgeable in the civil and common law traditions, Professor Merryman was 95. Perhaps his most famous work wasThe Civil Law Tradition: An Introduction to the Legal Systems of Western Europe and Latin America, published by Stanford University Press; a second edition appeared in 1985.

More about him in this piece from the Stanford Lawyer. 


A list of his major works is here.

Explaining Free Will Using Physics

More on what profs (including law profs) seem like to students, from Dinosaur Comics.
Tip of the beret to Professor Steven Jamar, Institute for Intellectual Property and Social Justice, Howard University.

A Symposium On Richard Delgado's Legacy

Kevin R. Johnson, University of California, Davis, School of Law, is publishing Richard Delgado's Quest for Justice for All in Law and Inequality: A Journal of Theory and Practice (2015). Here is the abstract.

This is a contribution to a symposium celebrating Richard Delgado’s illustrious career in law teaching. This commentary offers some thoughts on Delgado’s contributions to pushing the boundaries of Critical Race Theory – and legal scholarship generally – in seeking to create a more just society. This ambitious program has been the overarching theme to his scholarly agenda throughout his career.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

The UK's First Female Law Professor

Fiona Caird Cownie, Keele University, has published The United Kingdom's First Woman Law Professor: An Archerian Analysis, in 42 Journal of Law and Society 127 (2015). Here is the abstract.

In 1970, at Queen's University Belfast, Claire Palley became the first woman to hold a Chair in Law at a United Kingdom university. However, little is known about the circumstances surrounding this event, or Claire Palley herself. This article (part of an extended project exploring her life history) seeks to address the question ‘Was there something about Claire Palley herself that made it more likely she would become the United Kingdom's first female law professor?’ Initially focusing on method, it seeks to answer that question by utilizing, for the first time in the context of legal education, the theoretical perspective provided by the work of the sociologist Margaret Archer. Reflecting upon Claire Palley's subjectivity, it focuses on those aspects of her personality which enabled her to pursue a successful career and become a pioneer in her chosen profession.

The full text is not available from SSRN. 

The Very Model of a Modern Law Professor?

Carlo A. Pedrioli, Barry University School of Law, has published Professor Kingsfield in Conflict: Rhetorical Constructions of the U.S. Law Professor Persona(e) at 38 Ohio N. U. L. Rev. 701 (2012). Here is the abstract.

At least since the 1960s, a “‘two cultures’ phenomenon” has become quite apparent within the legal field in the United States. On one hand, some lawyers, usually those within the university, have been more academically oriented, and, on the other hand, other lawyers, usually those in legal practice or sitting on the bench, have been more pragmatically oriented. Problems arise when these two groups begin to talk differently from each other. In a way, the field of law has developed into at least two different legal professions, and, not surprisingly, scholars and practitioners have experienced tension because of this situation. The problem comes to a head when, through rhetoric, lawyers envision their ideal role(s) for the law professor. Calling upon rhetorical theory, this article traces the contours of the conflict over the construction of the role(s), or persona(e), of the U.S. law professor from 1960 to the present. The article draws an initial line at 1960 because, by the 1960s, law schools in the United States had matured to the point at which they clearly were thinking of themselves as graduate programs within the university system. After a discussion of persona theory and persona analysis, this article addresses the two major personae that have emerged in the conflict, the law professor as scholar and the law professor as practitioner. As appropriate, each subsection of the article that considers a persona also addresses the type of rhetoric that lawyers have employed in developing their preferred persona. In this study, the term lawyers refers to both practicing lawyers and academic lawyers. A concluding section synthesizes some of the communication problems that have emerged in this ongoing conflict, usually due to a heavy reliance on traditional Aristotelian rhetoric, or persuasion, as a rhetorical strategy. Although descriptive in nature, the current article sets the stage for a subsequent article, normative in nature, that will open the door to an alternative approach to this ongoing conflict.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.