Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

Iraq

Apologies for this brief foray into "pure politics":

According to this report, Iraq faces a "severe health crisis," while 22,000 to 55,000 Iraqis were "liberated" as a direct result of the war.

No doubt all the blogosphere lapdogs of the Bush Administration will leap forth with principled rationalizations.

And since it is Veteran's Day, perhaps it is a good time to actually listen to military families, including some right here in Texas. I appreciate, of course, these folks aren't as clever as the OxBlog folks, but what they lack in cleverness, they make up for with knowledge of real life.

Shocking Revelations About Academic Job Markets

Thanks to sociologist Kieran Healy for calling our attention to these startling results about how academic job markets actually work:

"The paper confirms the intuition that there are self-reproducing departmental status systems within disciplines. Job candidates in all disciplines are exchanged in a well-defined manner between three classes of departments. Class I departments, at the top, exchange students amongst themselves and supply lower-tier departments with students but do not hire from them. Class II departments are on the “semi-periphery,” generally exchanging candidates with each other (though there is a hierarchical element to this) and also sending students to Class III departments, which never place students outside of their class and usually do not hire students from within their class."

Imagine that! Perhaps part of what explains the strong reaction in some parts of the philosophy academy to the PGR is that it has upset some of the traditional self-reproducing status systems.

UCLA and Scrooge

If you want tangible evidence that the University of California System is strapped for cash, read this.

Jonathan Wolff's Visit and Blogging Scholarly Talks

Several times folks have asked for me to give accounts on the blog of visitors to the Law & Philosophy Program, much as Larry Solum often does, most recently for the "Rawls and the Law" conference, which he chronicles here (and scroll down).

It is very hard, in my view, to give an accurate report of philosophical or other analytically dense presentations (especially in "real time" as Solum does it). Jonathan Wolff is doing very high level work in political philosophy, and beyond summarizing a few of his main themes--his rejection of "resources" as an adequate egalitarian measure; his arguments for the very fact of risk as a kind of "disadvantage" that needs to be remedied (apart from its psychological effects); his criticism of monetary compensation schemes for disadvantage--I couldn't do adequate justice to his rich and intelligent presentations, or his generous engagement with questions and criticisms.

I very much admire Larry Solum's Legal Theory Blog, especially for its useful links, and the lexicon entries, which are a great resource for students. (I have more reservations, I admit, about his Legal Theory Bookworm and "download" of the week, since the items he singles out run the gamut, in my view, from the terrific to the incompetent. But such disagreements are inevitable, I suppose.) But I have worried for awhile that Solum does a disservice to those whose conference papers and discussions he blogs. The "Rawls and the Law" conference is a case study of the problems.

For example, Arthur Ripstein, a very talented philosopher on the philosophy and law faculties at the University of Toronto, had this to say to me about Solum's account of his paper at the Rawls conference:

"Well, there are various things he says that suggest he actually was at my talk. But he completely missed the point. This may have been my fault, but at least on this occasion, I doubt it. Each of [names omitted of other conference participants] (among others) discussed my paper with me afterwards and they came away having understood my central claim. So did Stephen [Perry] in his comments, which are also somewhat misreported."

Similarly, my colleague Larry Sager found Solum's rendering of his paper and the discussion puzzling:

"Solum seems to have misunderstood considerably more of my remarks than he understood. The panel was on Rawls' 'constitutional essentials' and the lessons they hold for constitutional law and structure. The point that both Frank Michelman and I meant to be wrestling with was the conceptual justification for there being two domains -- political justice on the one hand and a substantially truncated subset of political justice, the constitutional essentials. Rights to material well-being are a good ground for thinking about this question, both with regard to Rawls and with regard to constitutional law. My concern with both is what led me to talk about constitutional text and precedent. My point was very brief, and entirely negative: Neither text nor precedent gives reason for the truncation, even in American constitutional law. And of course, it gives no justification for the truncation in Rawls (which I pointed out in just this many words, but for which Solum taxes me.). Despite Solum's kind remarks at the end of his summary, it is hard not to take issue with, and some offense at, his comments about my beard harkening back to the 1960's, the issue of social rights be an artifact of the past, and myself being 'a living musuem'. Material rights have never been the holy grail of my constitutional thought, and I have never invoked Rawls in my thinking about such rights. It's hard to know what about my thoughts in this area have been 'thoroughly discredited' by theorists of a younger generation. Underenforcement, which is one of the mainstays of my thought and argument is, I believe, alive and well in contemporary discourse, generations aside. David Barron, for example just gave a paper at Tushnet's get together, arguing that my version of underenforcement is different and more useful that Post's and Segal's recent version. The broader question of the thinness and truncation of constitutional essentials is just beginning to be thought about, and hasn't been around long enough to have been credited or discredited. And as for material rights as a question of constitutional design, at least, they represent a topic that has just begun to emerge in constitutional theory."

I must say I share some of Sager's irritation. Next year, Yale University Press will publish Sager's Justice in Plainclothes: A Theory of American Constitutional Law , and after that Harvard University Press will publish a book by Sager and Chris Eisgruber on religious liberty. In my experience with constitutional law scholars around the country, I'd say there are perhaps only 2 or 3 who are as dialectically and analytically acute as Sager; certainly there are others as or more influential, but he really deserves better than he got from Solum. (Ripstein concurred; without my asking, he commented: "I just glanced at [Solum's] comments about Larry Sager's (excellent) paper. Misrepresentation is bad enough, but why does he have to be so insulting?" Good question. I'm all for not pulling punches, but one has got to be right.)

Most Cited Law Journals

Washington & Lee University has updated their entertaining site which reports which legal periodicals are cited most in other law journals and which are cited most by the courts.

The ten most cited in other journals for the period 1996 through 2003 are:

1. Harvard Law Review
2. Yale Law Journal
3. Columbia Law Review
4. Stanford Law Review
5. Michigan Law Review
6. Fordham Law Review
7. Georgetown Law Journal
8. California Law Review (Berkeley)
9. Texas Law Review
10. NYU Law Review

The ten most cited by the courts in the same time period were:

1. Harvard Law Review
2. Columbia Law Review
3. University of Chicago Law Review
4. Georgetown Law Journal
5. St. Mary's Law Journal (San Antonio, Texas)
6. Houston Law Review
7. Yale Law Journal
8. NYU Law Review
9. Texas Law Review
10. Fordham Law Review

Finally, the 10 most cited in "legal theory and jurisprudence" (obviously broadly construed) were (with cites in parentheses):

1. Journal of Legal Studies (1425)
2. Law & Social Inquiry (704)
3. Law & Society Review (494)
4. Legal Theory (158)
5. American Journal of Jurisprudence (116)
6. Theoretical Inquiries in Law (96)
7. Legal studies Forum (93)
8. Canadian Journal of Law & Jurisprudence (85)
Law & Philosophy (85)
10. Law and Critique (21)

Needless to say, I was pleased to see that the journal I edit with Larry Alexander and Jules Coleman, Legal Theory, was far-and-away the most frequently cited of the journals that really publishes in jurisprudence and legal philosophy. (JLS mostly publishes law & economics, while #2 and 3 mostly publish work at the intersection of law and the other social sciences, as well as some legal history.)

A great day for Texas!

The Texas State Board of Education stood up for science and the future of Texas, voting overwhelmingly to approve all the biology textbooks up for adoption, none of which suggest, falsely, that there are any scientific doubts about Darwin's theory of evolution. In the first vote on Thursday, the Board voted 11-4 to adopt all the textbooks--the 4 "no" votes being the Texas Taliban faction on the Board, all Republicans. Kudos to the 5 Republican Board members who voted for good science and education, including, I'm pleased to say, my representative Cynthia Thornton.

On Friday, the Board then voted unanimously to approve all the books; the 4 dissenters apparently gave up.

Credit for this great victory goes to the terrific team at the Texas Freedom Network, and the many scientists who helped educate the Board, including UT biologist David Hillis, who spent countless hours talking with Board members, and helping them sort through the reams of sleazy propaganda turned out by the Discovery [sic] Institute.

Indeed, conversations with Board Members and with those who've been involved in the process reveal that the pathological liars at the Discovery [sic] Institute succeeded in alienating several of the Republican Board members, who sized them up for the conmen they actually are.

What is "Analytic" Philosophy? No one knows...

Professor Levy's rhetorically ingenious reply to my posting on Kolakowski--ingenious because crafted precisely and effectively to be convincing to those who don't know anything about the subject (for example)--invokes the favorite bogeyman of those who find philosophy rather too hard: namely, "analytic philosophy." But as I write in the introduction to The Future for Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 2004): . "'Analytic' philosophy, the target of many polemics by those with little knowledge of the discipline, is defunct." For more on why Levy, and all those others who invoke "analytic philosophy" as an epithet and argument-stopper, don't know what they're talking about, see the selected excerpts from the Introduction here:Download file

More on Kolakowski

University of Chicago political theorist Jacob Levy, over at the Volokh Conspiracy, takes exception to my remarks about Kolakowski (Chicago folks are impressively loyal to each other!). In reply:

(1) I pointed out that Kolakowski was a politically motivated choice for the award, pandering to the right. Levy responds with a non-sequitur: "one might have expected both someone who is better known to the conservative Republican semi-academic Washington crowd and someone whose affiliation with the right is a bit less 'loose.'" Yes, if there were no other criteria this is what one would have expected , but there were other "official" criteria for the award: "outstanding" peer reputation, impact on other fields and on the public. Levy lists more clearly conservative figures like "Jacques Barzun, Paul Johnson, Bernard Lewis, Harvey Mansfield, Jean Elshtain, Robert Conquest." Elshtain is too young for a lifetime achievement award, Johnson doesn't have any claim to the relevant academic status, and Barzun, Lewis, Mansfield, and Conquest (whose age I don't know) haven't had as much cross-disciplinary and/or public impact as Kolakowski (the citation mentions his role in the Solidarity movement). (Lewis comes closest.) But look: if they had given it, say, to Harvey Mansfield, then even Jacob Levy, I hope, would find political pandering a plausible charge.

(2) Levy points out the ways in which Kolakowski is not as right-wing as some others, but of course what I said--as Levy himself quotes--is that Kolakowski is conservative in some "loose" sense; I didn't say he was the "most right-wing academic" the Library of Congress could find. Let me be more precise: Kolakowski is a staunch anti-communist, and has been feted for that by conservatives (why are we debating this? surely Levy knows this--take a look, e.g., at Jefferson Lecturers at the NEH under Lynne Cheney, of whom Kolakowski was one [Levy notes this without realizing that it proves the point!]. Rawls had to wait for Bill Clinton to get comparable recognition.). Some relevant excerpts from Kolakowski's argument that you can be a conservative/liberal/socialist are here (for "liberal" read: "classical liberal"). Readers may decide how far to the left this moves him. I agree with Levy he's not as conservative as some of the others Levy mentions.

(3) It wasn't quite "Leiter's charge that the selection panel ignored in-discipline standing and went for the right-wing political pander," it was Leiter's charge that the Library of Congress identified criteria for the award ("preeminent scholars...whose work was recognized as outstanding by their peers, and also spoke to people in other fields and in public life"), and then chose someone whose work is NOT "recognized as outstanding" by his peers in philosophy (the field with which he is identified by the Library of Congress and in the media). They didn't ignore in-discipline standing--otherwise, they could have given the award to Lynne Cheney--but they did ignore the stated requirement of being "outstanding" in the eyes of peers.

(4) Leiter said that Kolakowski's major work, Main Currents of Marxism,
"is a useful reference work" and that "it is comprehensive" and "detailed." Levy quotes Jon Elster (ruthless, sometimes brilliant, Marx critic, now dubbed "a man of the left" by Levy) saying that Kolakowski's work "will remain a basic work of reference on Marxism for a long time to come." Gee, I thought I'd said basically that too (I'll even add I agree with "for a long time to come": the book is very comprehensive and detailed). Nothing Elster says in the passage Levy quotes contradicts my claim that Kolakowski's monumental work is "philosophically superficial," which it is. Of course, to render that judgment, it helps to actually know something about philosophy and about the philosophical literature on Marx and Marxism. Examples of philosophical works on Marx and Marxism that are not superficial and are highly critical are Elster's own work, as well as, more recently, Michael Rosen, On Voluntary Servitude: False Consciousness and the Theory of Ideology (Harvard University Press, 1996). Anyone who has read Elster, Rosen, and Kolakowski will find my comments on this subject banal, which they are.

(5) Levy says: "Whether Kolakowski's writings on the philosophy of religion, on modernity and enlightenment, and on myth are of the highest quality I cannot judge. [Side note: this might have given Professor Levy pause before entering this fray.] But as far as I can tell none of these is a topic of interest or expertise for Leiter, and Kolakowski is obviously not an Anglo-American analytic philosopher of the sort who Leiter thinks make all important intellectual contributions-- so the fact that these works are little read by or known to Leiter doesn't itself stand as much of an indictment." Goodness! How did Levy conclude that I think "Anglo-American analytic philosopher[s]...make all important intellectual contributions." I've published on Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, and Heidegger and taught, at the graduate level, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, and Foucault. I've written and taught them all because they've made very important intellectual contributions (though I have reservations, to be sure, about Heidegger and, to a lesser extent, Hegel). But putting aside the mistaken ad hominem, my only claim was that Kolakowski's work on, e.g., Husserl and Hume, has had no impact on philosophical scholarship on Husserl and Hume. Which is also true, as someone who knew something about philosophical scholarship on these two figures would know. (But as Levy admits at the start: "I'm not a philosopher myself and I'm really not in a position to evaluate Kolakowski's work." A curious way to start...)

(6) Having finished with a display of disingenousness and ignorance, Levy now turns to smear: "If one were to try to make the argument that the Kluge Prize ought not to be handed out on the basis of political affiliations, including Noam Chomsky, Eric Hobsbawm, and Edward Said on one's top-seven list doesn't seem the most persuasive way to do it. Each meets the prize's criteria (except that Said does not meet the 'living' criterion), but I cannot help but be struck by who sprang to Leiter's mind." It wasn't my top 7 list--read Jacob!--it was who sprang to my mind, with the explicit caveat that no doubt those who thought about it systematically would come up with more and perhaps better. But do think about it for a moment: if the criteria are:

outstanding reputation among disciplinary peers

speaks to those in other fields

speaks to the public

then it's hard to come up with a long list. When I posed, as a riddle to Jonathan Wolff from UCL (himself author of a wonderful introductory, and often quite critical, book on Marx--as well as a very good book on Nozick), the question who the award went to given these criteria, his first response was: "Noam Chomsky, of course." Only if you were to treat "speaks to the public" as "speaks to the American public" would you knock Chomsky off the list. But if we don't do that, then the only mystery here is that Chomsky wasn't the first choice: he's in his early 70s, he basically invented an entire field in its modern form and dominates it as well; his work has had a huge impact on philosophers and psychologists (to a lesser extent literary scholars); and much of his work (not in linguistics) speaks to the public, so much so that he is easily the most internationally recognized academic in America today.

Speaking to the public is also what puts Said on the list--though I'm not much of a fan of Orientalism--and he has very high intra-disciplinary standing and he is read by those outside his discipline. I'm sorry Jacob Levy is bothered by the fact that 3 folks who actually meet the stated criteria are on the left, but that's the way it is, I'm afraid. (I included Said and Wollheim only because they died very recently, and I wouldn't be surprised, given that the nomination process began 2 years ago, if they were on the list at some point as candidates; that's the same reason I left out Rawls. Williams had almost no impact beyond academic philosophy, which is why I did not include him.)

(7) Levy says "the first ten or so who would spring to mind for me, restricting myself to the living and therefore excluding, e.g., Gellner, Rawls and Williams: Skinner, Geertz, Elster, Tzvetan Todorov, Michael Walzer, Bernard Bailyn, Benedict Anderson, Jurgen Habermas, Albert Hirschman, James Scott, Charles Taylor." Wonderful: I mentioned Skinner and Geertz too (Levy and Leiter agree!), and I second all the others, except perhaps Walzer (but I wouldn't protest if he got it). And I don't know James Scott well enough to have any opinion. I note that none of them, except Habermas, have had the same kind of impact on the public as Chomsky or Kolakowski. (I don't think much of Habermas as a philosopher--who does?--but he clearly has the relevant intra-disciplinary standing.)

(8) I'm glad Levy admits that he's not sure "that Kolakowski was the right choice." Kolakowski is, in fact, a "second-rate philosopher." As I said to Jo Wolff earlier today (before I even knew of this tempest in a teapot): "if only they'd called him an intellectual historian." It is depressing to philosophers, and especially to historians of philosophy like me interested in figures like Marx and Nietzsche, when second-rate philosophers are held up to the world at large as the preeminent figures in the field. They aren't.

Minor addendum: Levy calls Kolakowski "Professor of Philosophy and Social Thought" at Chicago, but his primary appointment was in the Committee on Social Thought (that's who hired him), and his secondary appointment was in Philosophy. I will venture, with some confidence, the opinion that the Philosophy Department would not have appointed him, if he were not already at the university in another unit.

"Philosopher" Kolakowski Receives New (and Meaningless) Kluge Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Humanities and Social Sciences from Library of Congress

Leszek Kolakowski, "Polish philosopher" (as he is being repeatedly described in the media), has been awarded the first Kluge Prize by the Library of Congress. The official announcement is here.

The first choice for this prize is so patently politically motivated that the Prize has already discredited itself before it gets off the ground. Kolakowski has long been a favorite of conservatives being one of the few prominent humanistic intellectuals on the "right" (in some suitably loose sense of "right"). His best-known work, the 3-volume Main Currents of Marxism, is a useful reference work, but that's all: it is comprehensive, detailed, and relentlessly superficial philosophically. His other works of philosophy--books on Hume, on Husserl, etc.--are largely irrelevant to philosophical scholarship, rarely discussed, barely known.

Shame on Amartya Sen for being part of the selection panel that produced this choice.

Here is how the prize is described by the Library of Congress:

"The Kluge Prize of one million dollars is given for lifetime achievement in the humanities and social sciences -- areas of scholarship for which there are no Nobel Prizes. These disciplines include philosophy, history, political science, anthropology, sociology, religion, linguistics and criticism in the arts and literature. Nominators for the prize were asked to recommend preeminent scholars in any of these or other closely related fields whose work was recognized as outstanding by their peers, and also spoke to people in other fields and in public life."

Given that Kolakowski's work isn't even "recognized as outstanding" by his peers in philosophy, how did he make it through this "screening" process? If we were to take all the criteria seriously, a short-list of far more credible choices comes immediately to mind:

Noam Chomsky
Eric Hobsbawm
Clifford Geertz
the recently deceased Richard Wollheim (alas...)
John Searle
the recently deceased Edward Said (alas...)
Quentin Skinner

That's off the top of my head; surely a selection panel and nominators thinking about this seriously, and without regard to political pandering, would come up with even more scholars who actually meet the official criteria.

It is a depressing spectacle to see philosophy cheapened in the public arena repeatedly for blatantly political reasons. Couldn't they have picked a second-rate conservative historian or sociologist for the first prize? Sigh...

UPDATE: A reply to the disingenous post by Jacob Levy from the Volokh Conspiracy is here.

IN MEMORIAM

Richard Wollheim (1923-2003)

Arthur Danto has penned a very nice memorial notice in The Guardian.

Lighter blogging for a few days...

...since the wonderful political philosopher Jonathan Wolff from University College London is here in Austin for a few days as a guest of the Law & Philosophy Program, with various seminars and talks on the schedule. How many people have written first-rate books on Nozick and Marx? And his Introduction to Political Philosophy (OUP, 1996) may be the best introductory text out there right now. In addition to talking about his Marx book, he'll be giving papers and workshops on "What is Disdvantage and What Should Be Done About It?" and "Disability in a Society of Equals."

Political battles over judicial nominations

The Curmudgeonly Clerk, who may have the best-written blog out there (and certainly the most carefully written and documented--further proof of the high quality of a UT Law education!), notes that in 1986 hard-line conservative Scalia was confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously by the Senate, yet now "when political liberals wish to demonize judicial nominees whom they do not wish to see confirmed, they compare them to Scalia." CC asks: "Who has changed in the interim, Scalia or liberals, or both? What accounts for the sort of alarm that his very name evokes in certain quarters?" Here are some, I assume uncontentious, answers to the questions:

(1) Because Scalia may have been the least productive and distinguished member of the University of Chicago Law faculty, he did not have the kind of paper trail that made as clear the radical nature of his views about a range of fundamental constitutional and jurisprudential questions (contrast Bork). After more than 15 years on the High Court, his views are now better-known and appreciated.

(2) In 1986, we had only had five years of the federal courts being stacked with conservative activists. As Dick Posner remarked when he was here in Austin two years ago (for all I know, the Curmugeonly Clerk may have even been in my Jurisprudence class that term, when Judge Posner spoke to us!), at his own confirmation hearings in the early 1980s, there was very little press coverage "because no one yet realized that Reagan was stacking the courts with conservatives like me." (Dick Posner is a great believer in the "no bullshit" approach too.) In the year 2003, it is impossible for anyone remotely law literate to be unaware of the stacking of the courts. While in 1986, a Scalia on the High Court didn't seem that important, it's now clearer to those on the other side how far to the right things have moved, so that each of these appointments now matters a lot.

As I remarked previously, debates about these judicial nominations would be greatly helped by some candor and honesty about the nature of the jobs appellate judges perform. It is inevitable that appellate judges are presented with large numbers of cases in which the law is unsettled--after all, the incentives for parties to pursue such cases through the stage of appeal is greater (when the law offers a clear answer, it's just a matter of cost-benefit analysis by the disputants to bring the matter to a close)--and in which they must exercise moral and political judgment to resolve the matter. Ergo, the kind of moral and political judgment they will exercise ought to be of concern. Ergo, if nominees will make moral and political judgments diametrically opposed to the interests and values of one party or the other, those nominees ought to be opposed. The only thing I find remarkable is not that Senator Schumer holds the line on a few of the right-wing kooks like Brown and Estrada, but that he and the Democrats don't do it more often. But they're cowards, alas.

UPDATE: Eric Muller has additional information about why Scalia encountered so little opposition.

Why So Many Right-Wing Law Blogs?

So I asked a couple of days ago: given that the academy is more to the left than the law blogosphere, why is that conservative law professors start blogs more than those on the left?

A graduate of Yale Law School writes with one possible explanation:

"Seems to me the answer is pretty much the same as the explanation for the
prevalence of right-wing talk radio that has always seemed pretty obvious to
me: those using alternative media seek out an audience under-served by the
dominant media. If my time at Yale taught me nothing else, it taught me
that the legal academy caters to left-wing tastes."

And from a right-of-center law professor at a major law school:

"The media and the political system create roughly equal demand for liberal law profs and conservative law profs. Because conservative law profs are relatively rare, the media and the political system put them in greater demand on average than their liberal colleagues. As a result, conservative law profs are more likely to see involvement with politics and public debate as important to their careers, and are more likely to start blogs."

And Leiter (though I don't really disagree with either of the preceding points): Conservative law professors find both (a) a more sympathetic audience outside the academy, and (b) a less intellectually demanding one (the Limbaugh/Hannity crowd etc.). The combination makes it hard to resist blogging, I should think.

UPDATE: And yet another answer from Amy Lamboley here. Time will tell if Ms. Lamboley is right.

More Blog Stats

Two days of record high visits--670 on Monday, 760 yesterday! Most remarkable, to me at least (as I gaze at my navel), is that 75% had been here previously on both days. Jeez, what a lot of Xmas cards I'm going to have send this year...

Will Northwestern University Law School Still be a Top Law School Ten Years from Now?

In the mid-20th century, Northwestern University School of Law was one of the handful of super elite law schools in the US; it clearly dominated its Hyde Park neighbor, the University of Chicago Law School. This was the era of Leon Green and John Henry Wigmore at Northwestern; Chicago couldn't compete, and only a few law schools nationally (Yale, Harvard, Columbia, Michigan) could. By the 1970s, that had changed: the rise of law-and-economics led Chicago to overtake Northwestern, though Northwestern still hung on as a major law school.

In 1995, David van Zandt took over as Dean at Northwestern. He's, by all accounts, been an excellent fundraiser and a leader with a definite vision: he's made their admissions process more like a business school's (all candidates are interviewed, work experience is strongly preferred); he's concentrated their merit aid not on the very best students, but on those slightly above their current numerical high end (their LSAT scores have gone way up, but plainly at the expense of GPAs, which are below average for a top law school); he's emphasized interdisciplinary faculty hiring, often of faculty doing highly theoretical work; and he's raised the tenure standards, making clear that there is no presumption of tenure, as there usually is at top law schools.

Van Zandt has also presided over the most extraordinary exodus of talent from a major law school in the last thirty years, maybe in the last century. (Michigan has given Northwestern a run for the money on senior faculty losses, but has fared better, I think, in new recruitment--a subject for a different day.) Since he took over, Northwestern has bid farewell to the following tenured faculty (i.e., these are faculty who left voluntarily):

Stephen Gardbaum, a leading young comparative constitutional and political theorist went to UCLA.

Michael Perry, a major figure in constitutional law, went to Wake Forest (then on to Emory).

Keith Hylton, a highly regarded lawyer/economist, went to Boston University.

Daniel Polsby, another highly regarded law-and-economics scholar with eclectic and wide-ranging interests, went to George Mason University.

Gary Lawson, a major figure in administrative and public law, went to Boston University.

Paul Robinson, one of the two or three leading figures in criminal law of his generation, went to the University of Pennsylvania.

Henry Smith, an exceptional young scholar working in numerous areas, went to Yale University.

Annelise Riles, a leading young scholar working at the intersection of law and anthropology, went to Cornell University.

Thomas Merrill, one of the major figures in administrative law in the country (who has also done seminal work in environmental law, property, and other areas), went to Columbia University.

On a small faculty, this is a remarkable set of losses: one could have quite a good law school with all these faculty! And what is striking is how many of them were lost to, at best, peer, and in several cases inferior schools. Particularly serious was this past year's loss of Tom Merrill, a scholar of the first rank by anyone's estimation, and someone who had held on through most of the exodus.

On top of all that, two of the major figures on the Northwestern faculty--Ian MacNeil and Richard Speidel, both in commercial law--have retired, while perhaps their most prominent young hotshot, Steven Calabresi, has moved to the Boston area (and has an offer from Boston University), while still teaching half the year at Northwestern. Other very good people at Northwestern are actively looking, including it appears untenured faculty worried about the new tenure regimen. (One productive, rising star at a law school usually ranked below Northwestern told me s/he was so spooked by the new tenure standards s/he withdrew from consideration the minute his/her current job was offered, despite the lesser prestige.) It doesn't look good.

Some Law School News

As widely expected, Harold Koh, distinguished international law scholar, will succeed Tony Kronman as Dean of Yale Law School, beginning next summer. For more, go here. I can think of only one negative about this appointment: Koh was one of a small handful of genuinely gifted teachers at Yale, so taking him out of the classroom is a real loss for the students!

Michael Abramowicz, best-known for his work in the intellectual property area, has accepted an offer from George Washington University, where he is currently visiting from George Mason University. Abramowicz also turned down, in the process, an offer from Washington University, St. Louis.

IN MEMORIAM

Richard Taylor (1919-2003)

A brief obituary notice appears here. I will post links to other memorial notices if, and when, they are available.

The Political Compass Blogosphere Chart...

...has been compiled by Tim Lambert here. Clearly a crucial resource for anyone reading blogs, so bookmark it now. And do visit Nathan Newman, the only blogger as intelligent as me.

Here's an interesting question: given that the law parts of the blogosphere are much more right-wing than the legal academy, why is that? Why do the right-wingers start blogs more than those on the left?

More international politics

A propos my post on the juvenile Thomas Friedman, two other relevant items:

From the EU Observer: "Europeans believe the United States contributes the most to world instability along with Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and North Korea."

From Counterpunch, Chomsky on "The Empire of the Men of Best Quality": "By early 2003, studies revealed that fear of the United States had reached remarkable heights throughout the world, along with distrust of the political leadership. Dismissal of elementary human rights and needs was matched by a display of contempt for democracy for which no parallel comes easily to mind, accompanied by professions of sincere dedication to human rights and democracy. The unfolding events should be deeply disturbing to those who have concerns about the world they are leaving to their grandchildren."

Something of interest for new law teachers

Announcing Young Scholars Law Abstracts

The Social Science Research Network is pleased to announce the establishment of a new Journal in its Legal Scholarship Network devoted to showcasing the work of Young Scholars who have been in teaching for seven years or less.

Edited by Professors Robin Fretwell Wilson and David Hyman, the Young Scholars Law Abstracts provides a forum for posting both completed works and works in progress on any subject relating to law. This Journal provides new law teachers an avenue for locating peers working in the same substantive area of scholarship.

It Can't Happen Here

Of course all right-thinking folks know that it is just silly and paranoid to equate the actions of the Bush Administration with fascism, since in fascist countries there are secret trials and citizens are spirited away to army brigs without any contact with the outside world simply on the leader's say-so. And that can't happen here. No way, no how.

Texas State Board of Education sued...

...for their last foray in to textbook censorship back in 2001. The story is here. Kudos to the great trial lawyers at Baron & Budd in Dallas for taking the case (that's Fred Baron UT Law '71 and Russell Budd UT Law '79).

Scientific Organization Excludes Academics from Countries on US "Hit List"

"One of the world's largest scientific societies has barred researchers in certain countries from publishing in its journals and receiving member benefits. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers says it has taken these steps against scientists in Iran and four other so-called rogue nations subject to U.S. trade sanctions to ensure that IEEE staff stay on the right side of U.S. law." More here:Download file

Let's Keep America Backwards

That could be the slogan of the Traditional Values Coalition, which is now busy compiling a blacklist of researchers getting federal money whose research doesn't pass muster with our homegrown Taliban. (Browse the TVC site, and you'll also notice that the group must include a lot of repressed homosexuals as well.) The Texas Taliban have nothing on these folks.

Philosophy Job Market 2003-04

Here's an interesting analysis of the October Jobs for Philosophers, courtesy of Brian Weatherson. (Note to non-philosophers: unlike in law, almost every job in philosophy in a given year is advertised in the October or November issues of a publication called Jobs for Philosophers, published by the American Philosophical Association.)

"No ideas and the ability to express them," Part II

Thomas Friedman of the NY Times remains as juvenile as he was the last time I bothered to lambast him (with help from the lovely Karl Kraus: "No ideas and the ability to express them: that's a journalist.").

For some reason, however, his latest "no ideas" column is so striking I can't let it pass. Perhaps it is the first paragraph:

"Well, the numbers are in and the numbers don't lie. At the Madrid aid conference, Saudi Arabia pledged $1 billion in new loans and credits for Iraq — and Germany and France pledged 0 new dollars. Add it all up and the bottom line becomes clear: Saudi Arabia actually cares more about nurturing democracy in Iraq than Germany and France."

Did a columnist in what is supposed to be the best, most intelligent newspaper in the United States actually write that "Saudi Arabia...cares...about nurturing democracy...?" Yes, it apppears he did.

Why might Saudi Arabia have coughed up one billion dollars? It obviously can't have anything to do with this feudal kingdom, staunch supporter of Islamic fascism the world over, having any interest in democracy. Someone with, say, an 8th-grade education, and a casual familiarity with current events, might surmise that the Saudis had other motivations: insuring that the next rulers of Iraq (assuming Iraq doesn't become a US client state in perpetuity) not be likely to invade their country; or perhaps insuring that the world's leading rogue imperial power not invade them next--given their large oil reserves, their close connections to fundamentalist terrorism, and their having supplied the vast majority of the suicidal religious maniacs on 9/11, etc.

But 8th-graders don't write for the NY Times, only graduates of elite East Coast universities do, and they "know" better. ("They have something of which they are proud," says Zarathustra of the herd. "What do they call that which makes them proud? Education they call it; it distinguishes them from goatherds. That is why they do not like to hear the word 'contempt' applied to them.")

And what then of the French and Germans, "old Europe" (that's in contrast to the "new Europe" of such powerhouse US allies as Albania and Lithuania)--what was their motivation? Friedman, in his idiot savant way, actually provides the answer, without noting it as such. He remarks in passing: "Many Europeans really do believe that a dominant America is more threatening to global stability than Saddam's tyranny."

Religious belief and atheism in America

There is a new survey here. The results show much higher levels of non-belief in a deity than in other such studies I've seen.

Test your Moral Intuitions...

...here. This is a lot more fun than the Political Compass (and some of the questions will be familiar to those who have followed Nisbett's work on how intuitions vary East-to-West), but don't do it if you can't bear to read hypotheticals about incest and bestiality!

My results: I turned out to be less moralistic than average, and much less likely to "universalize" than average. Which befits an immoralist, of course.

Is an SJD (a doctorate in law) Worth It?

A faculty member at a liberal arts college, advising students thinking about law school, has written with the following question (and suggested that I might post an answer on the blog site, for the benefit of others who might be interested):

"What is your opinion of a combination/sequence of JD, LLM [Master of Law degree] then Doctor of Juridical Science (S.J.D.) from one of the top 15 law schools (at least for those that offer the SJD). I am thinking of those prominent law schools known for producing law school teachers/scholars. I am hoping you might be able to offer your perspective in comparison to a joint JD/Ph.D. or JD/D.Phil. combination."

My answer to this question has something to do with some of the changes in the legal academy over the last generation, noted in my earlier posting on why it is easier to get tenure in law schools (see esp. paragraph 4 there, on the interdisciplinary turn in legal education that began in the 1970s).

The brief answer is: I do not recommend the SJD for someone wanting to get in to law teaching; the JD/PhD is much more useful (and now much more common).

Here is the longer answer:

Are Conservatives Dumb?

In some cases, yes (or, in the alternative, they're simply liars).

Blog Stats for October

Over 14,000 visits to the site last month, a 50% increase from September. More than 500 visits on average each weekday, but that drops off on the weekend quite a bit. This confirms that the blogosphere has now joined e-mail as one of the primary drags on workplace productivity.

Query: how many of these are repeat visits in a single day? I can't tell. Reflecting on my own blog-reading habits, I note that I might visit Crooked Timber several times in a day, once to actually read, but the other times for their great list of links to other blog sites.