Call for Nominations, AALS Section on Women in Legal Education, 2020 Ruth Bader Ginsburg Lifetime Achievement Award @WomenInLegalEd

Call for Nominations for the AALS Section on Women in Legal Education 2020 Ruth Bader Ginsburg Lifetime Achievement Award

The AALS Section on Women in Legal Education is pleased to open nominations for its 2020 Ruth Bader Ginsburg Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2013, the inaugural award honored Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Subsequent winners include Catharine A. MacKinnon (2014), Herma Hill Kay (2015), Marina Angel (2016), Martha Albertson Fineman (2017), Tamar Frankel (2018), and Phoebe Haddon (2019). All of these remarkable women were recognized for their outstanding impact and contributions to the Section on Women in Legal Education, the legal academy, and the legal profession.

The purpose of the Ruth Bader Ginsburg Lifetime Achievement Award is to honor an individual who has had a distinguished career of teaching, service, and scholarship for at least 20 years. The recipient should be someone who has impacted women, the legal community, the academy, and the issues that affect women through mentoring, writing, speaking, activism, and by providing opportunities to others.

The Section is now seeking nominations for this most prestigious award. Only individuals who are eligible for Section membership may make a nomination, and only individuals—not institutions, organizations, or law schools—are eligible for the award. As established by the Section’s Bylaws, the AALS Section on Women in Legal Education Executive Committee will select the award recipient, and the award will be presented at the 2020 AALS Annual Meeting. 

Please submit your nomination by filling out this electronic form​ by August 30, 2019. Please note that only nominations submitted via the electronic form by the deadline will be accepted. If you encounter difficulties completing the survey, please contact Lisa Mazzie at: lisa.mazzie@marquette.edu.

The Notorious RBG In Song @ConstitutionCtr

The National Constitution Center hosted Notorious RBG in Song last night. Here's a link to the website, where you can hear the performance, which features Patrice Michaels, Kuang-Hao Huang, Andrew Harley, members of the Inscape Chamber Orchester, and Capital Hearings. 

Bam on Defending Judicial Speech @UMaineLaw

Dmitry Bam, University of Maine School of Law, has published Seen and Heard: A Defense of Judicial Speech at 11 Liberty U. L. Rev. 765 (2018). Here is the abstract.

Judicial ethics largely prohibits judges from engaging in political activities, including endorsing or opposing candidates for public office. These restrictions on judicial politicking, intended to preserve both the reality and the appearance of judicial integrity, independence, and impartiality, have been in place for decades. Although the Code of Conduct for United States Judges does not apply to the Supreme Court, Supreme Court Justices have long followed the norm that they do not take sides, at least publicly, in partisan political elections. And while elected state judges have some leeway to engage in limited political activities associated with their own candidacy, the Justices of the United States Supreme Court have consistently remained on the sidelines in contested partisan elections. That is why the events of July 2016 were so surprising. With the 2016 presidential election less than four months away, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg shocked everyone when she bluntly spoke out against the Republican presidential nominee, and the ultimate winner of the election, Donald Trump. On multiple occasions, she expressed her disdain for Trump in no uncertain terms, calling Trump a "faker," criticizing Trump's failure to release his tax returns, and even joking that her husband would have suggested moving to New Zealand if Trump were to be elected president. Given the ethical rules and the long-standing norms of judicial behavior, these were jarring statements from a sitting Supreme Court Justice. Immediately, there was a near-unanimous outcry against the propriety of Ginsburg's comments, ultimately leading her to apologize. The chorus of critics included both conservative and reliably leftist pundits, media commentators, legal academics, numerous politicians, and Donald Trump himself. It was not just conservatives who rebuked her statements. Despite her near-mythical status in progressive circles, among the critics were some of Justice Ginsburg's biggest supporters. In an election that saw little bipartisan agreement on almost anything, nearly everyone seemed to agree that Justice Ginsburg's statements violated ethical rules and norms. This Article examines whether Ginsburg's many critics were right. I suggest that the norms may be built on a shaky foundation and grounded in long-abandoned myths about the judicial role and judicial decision-making. The traditional restraints on Supreme Court Justices expressing their own strongly-held political views does not further, or at least does not significantly further, any of the important goals generally served by the ethics codes. While Justice Ginsburg's comments, and comments like hers, may change the way the people view the Court and its Justices, their mere utterance causes little damage to the reputation and standing of the federal judiciary generally, or the Supreme Court in particular. In addition, stifling judicial speech disserves the American people by misleading them about judges and judging and concealing potentially important heuristic information from the electorate.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Sing About It: The Notorious RBG Gets Her Own Recording @NPR

From NPR's Nina Totenberg: Ruth Bader Ginsburg's daughter-in-law, the soprano and composer Patrice Michaels has composed a number of songs based on letters by Martin Ginsburg, the Justice's late husband, as well as other materials. These compositions as well as others by other composers (Lori Laitman, Vivian Fung, Stacy Garrop, and Derrick Wang) are now available on Notorious RBG in Song on James Ginsburg's label Cedille Records.  Professor Laitman holds an M. M. from the Yale School of Music. Professor Fung holds a doctorate from the Juillard School. Professor Garrop earned her doctoral degree from Indiana University, Bloomington. You may recognize Mr. Wang's name from his earlier composition, the opera Scalia/Ginsburg. Mr. Wang holds an M.M. from the Yale School of Music and a J.D. from the University of Maryland School of Law.

More here.

Something Legal This Way Comes: A Trial For "Macbeth"'s Weird Sisters

Tonight (June 19, 2017), the Shakespeare Theatre Company held its semi-annual mock trial. Tonight the problem was derived from Macbeth, petitioners were the Weird Sisters, and respondent was the Kingdom of Scotland. 

The government of Scotland charged the Weird Sisters with practicing witchcraft, and aiding and abetting Macbeth with the murder of Duncan. Here's a link to the scenario. 

Here's a link to petitioners' brief; here a link to respondents' brief. 

Presiding justice: Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Via @KevinDaleyDC, @ThisInHaste.

Justice Ginsburg and the Daughter of the Regiment

Ruth Bader Ginsburg has her first speaking role in opera--as the Duchess of Krakenthorp in the Washington National Opera's production of Donizetti's The Daughter of the Regiment (Nov. 12 only). It seems that she'll be putting her own stamp on the role. Some lines from her decisions have been incorporated into her part. More here from Law.com.

There's not much of an explanation of the opera available there, though (not that operas generally make much sense). Here's a synopsis from a University of Michigan press release.  This particular Donizetti work is one of my favorites, so if you don't already know it, and you get a chance to see it in person or hear a recording, I suggest that you just enjoy it without trying to make it logical. It's a lot of fun.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Legacy

Paul Schiff Berman, George Washington University Law School, has published Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the Interaction of Legal Systems in The Legacy of Ruth Bader Ginsburg in (Scott Dodson, ed.; Cambridge University Press, 2015). Here is the abstract.

The idea of legal pluralism is that law must always negotiate situations when multiple communities and legal authorities seek to regulate the same act or actor. These overlapping jurisdictional assertions may occur because of federalism, or because disputes often cross territorial borders, or because of complicated inter-jurisdictional arrangements, as with Indian tribes in the United States. In all of these situations, judges must develop strategies for determining how best to balance the competing claims of multiple communities: does the law of one community triumph, does the law of the other community triumph, or is there some hybrid solution available?

This Essay surveys some of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s key writings on the interaction of legal systems, both in law journals and in judicial opinions. This analysis reveals a consistent theme in Ginsburg’s jurisprudence. Across a variety of substantive legal areas, Ginsburg often chooses a path that provides maximum play among the legal systems at issue. Beginning with her earliest scholarly writings, she has tended to oppose doctrines allowing one legal system to block another from adjudicating a dispute, and throughout her later career Ginsburg likewise tends to reject bright-line rules that choose one legal system over another. Instead, she often seems to prefer procedural arrangements that seek accommodation and flexibility in order to ensure that multiple legal systems and a variety of norms and processes are respected. These principles also carry over to Ginsburg’s views about international and transnational law. A committed internationalist, Ginsburg advocates the importance of seeking wisdom from others. This non-dogmatic, deferential approach to plural legal systems characterizes much of her jurisprudence on inter-systemic conflicts, though interestingly such deference does not always apply with as much force in Ginsburg’s opinions concerning tribal communities.

By taking stock of Ginsburg’s navigation of legal pluralism in a set of representative writings, we can better theorize her contribution to a jurisprudential approach that seeks ongoing negotiation in an interlocking world of multiple jurisdictions and multiple legal norms. Just as important, this discussion provides an initial case study for thinking more broadly about possible judicial responses to the reality of legal pluralism.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.