Law Professors | Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion - Part 5
Accessibility by WAH
Image 01 Image 03
Sign In or RegisterLogout

Law Professors Tag

Posted by William A. Jacobson on September 05, 2020 59 Comments
Everyone has been focused for the past two days on the story in The Atlantic, attributed to anonymous sources, about things Trump supposedly said about troops two years ago, something so far that every person who has gone on record has denied. While you were focused on that Crisis News Cycle, Trump took a step the implications of which could be devastating over time to the peddlers of racial conflict under the academic construct of Critical Race Theory.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 04, 2019 31 Comments
Today was perhaps the biggest farce yet in the impeachment saga. Two of the law professors called by the Democrats (Pamela Karlin and Noah Feldman) were so over-the-top partisan and political, that they buried whatever legal points they were making. The third law professor called by Democrats, Michael Gerhardt, was not much better. There was little difference between their harangues and those of Adam Schiff and other Democrat politicians. They soiled themselves.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 23, 2019 27 Comments
Elizabeth Warren posted on her campaign website a list of 56 cases on which she worked while employed as a law professor. In some of the cases she acted as legal counsel in a litigation, in others she gave legal advice outside of a court litigation, and in others she was retained as an expert. Soon after that information dump, the Washington Post ran a story about it, indicating WaPo had been looking into Warren's legal caseload, While teaching, Elizabeth Warren worked on more than 50 legal matters, charging as much as $675 an hour:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 03, 2018 46 Comments
Hundreds of law professors have signed a letter calling Brett Kavanaugh disqualified for the Supreme Court because of the temperament he displayed at the Senate hearing on September 27, 2018, with regard to alleged sexual misconduct. The letter, with original signatories as of October 1, 2018, has been circulating among law faculties. It has become the liberal law professor virtue signaling event of the year.

Posted by New Neo on June 03, 2018 64 Comments
One of the things that struck me about this article excoriating Alan Dershowitz for his recent defense (not support, but defense) of Trump is that author Elie Mystal doesn't actually engage in any detail with the substance of Dershowitz's arguments. Mystal's attack on Dershowitz (and Trump, for that matter) is ad hominem. I assume we're just supposed to take what the author says at face value. Or perhaps he assumes that if we're reading him at all, we already agree with him.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 30, 2018 43 Comments
Brian Leiter's Law School Reports website, run by U. Chicago law professor Brian Leiter, isn't a high traffic site, but it does have a following among people interested in the law professor profession. So it is not surprising that some Legal Insurrection readers also read Leiter's website. Several of those readers contacted me today about a guest column by USC Professor of Law and Accounting Michael Simkovic about me and other conservative law professors. I don't know who Simkovic is and never heard of him before.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 23, 2018 36 Comments
The National Lawyers Guild is a leftist group with chapters at numerous law schools. The City University of New York (CUNY) Law School Chapter of NLG led the protests against and disruption of the lecture by Prof. Josh Blackman, as we documented in “F*ck the law” – CUNY Law students attempt shout-down of conservative law prof.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 28, 2017 26 Comments
Increasingly, campus "social justice" activism is resembling the tactics of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, particularly the public shaming of those deemed ideologically incorrect, including professors. In The new Cultural Revolution on Campuses in late April 2017, I reviewed recent examples, including Yale, Cornell, Middlebury and Claremont McKenna:

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on July 09, 2017 19 Comments
Howard University law professor Reginald Robinson has been the subject of 504-day Title IX investigation based on two student complaints about a test question involving a Brazilian wax lawsuit. Robinson is now required to undergo mandatory sensitivity training, prior administrative review of future test questions, and classroom observation. As described by Cosmo, during a Brazilian wax, "they take the hair off the top and sides of the bikini line, but also all the way under and around the back, too. [emphasis not mine]" The test question is lengthy and quite specific about the nature of the Brazilian wax.  Its basic premise is described by Inside Higher Ed:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 26, 2016 40 Comments
Lawrence Lessing, professor at Harvard Law School, wants the Electors in the Electoral College to go rogue and vote for Clinton regardless of the election results the led to the Electors ability to vote.
Conventional wisdom tells us that the electoral college requires that the person who lost the popular vote this year must nonetheless become our president. That view is an insult to our framers. It is compelled by nothing in our Constitution. It should be rejected by anyone with any understanding of our democratic traditions  — most important, the electors themselves.... In this election, the people did not go crazy. The winner, by far, of the popular vote is the most qualified candidate for president in more than a generation. Like her or not, no elector could have a good-faith reason to vote against her because of her qualifications. Choosing her is thus plainly within the bounds of a reasonable judgment by the people.

Posted by Mike LaChance on May 21, 2016 10 Comments
We recently reported that some law professors of the American Law Institute wanted to expand the concept of sexual consent in a way which would make it easier to define people as criminals. The proposals were outrageous and would have put people at risk of being legally guilty of rape even if their partners consented. Proponents of the changes were largely left wing professors who undoubtedly agree with the progressive concept of rape culture. The good news is that the institute rejected the proposal. Bradford Richardson of the Washington Times:
American Law Institute rejects affirmative consent standard in defining sexual assault In a rebuke to a feminist idea that has migrated from college campuses to mainstream culture, an influential legal group overwhelmingly rejected Tuesday a provision that would have endorsed an “affirmative consent” standard for the purpose of defining sexual assault.

Posted by Mike LaChance on May 15, 2016 27 Comments
Sexual consent laws on college campuses are already reaching absurd levels, but if the American Law Institute has its way and loosens the concepts of consent, it will easier to accuse participants of crimes. Stuart Taylor Jr. writes at Real Clear Politics:
Legal Group Weighs Radical Expansion of Sex Crimes Imagine the following case: Two recent college grads meet in a bar, talk, begin kissing, and go to her apartment. After a little more talking, they resume kissing there. He undresses her and initiates sexual intercourse. She neither objects nor resists. He leaves, and they have no further contact. A month later, she files a criminal complaint with police, complaining that this was rape because she never expressed verbal consent and was physically passive.

Posted by Miriam Elman on March 10, 2016 7 Comments
Most people around the world firmly hold to the view that Israel’s residential housing communities built in Judea and Samaria/the West Bank are “illegal”. For years, this fictitious claim has fed a wild campaign of incitement and ‘lawfare’ against Israel, based on the myth that Jews have no legal right to live or make their homes on Palestinian-claimed lands in the West Bank. But the truth is that Israel isn’t an unlawful occupying power—certainly not according to any binding international laws. Now, Northwestern University Professor of Law Eugene Kontorovich, a leading expert in the fields of constitutional law, international law, and the intersection of law and economics, is on a speaking tour of universities and colleges to explain why. Eugene Kontorovich, headshot Below I summarize the legal case for Israel’s West Bank settlements according to Kontorovich. A 50 minute video of his remarks is also embedded.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on February 17, 2016 4 Comments
I don't normally watch Stephen Colbert on the Late Show. Somehow, it turned up on my TV last night. I'm not even sure I could replicate the error. When I heard him turn to the topic of Antonin Scalia I thought, oh boy, here we go. But I was so pleasantly surprised. Colbert told of his one personal interaction with Scalia, and it was both funny and moving, as Salon.com reported:
“Whether or not you agreed with him–or made a lot of jokes about him, like I did–one thing you’ve got to admit is that he had a great sense of humor,” Colbert began. “People have actually broken down the transcripts of oral arguments, and he told more jokes and got more laughs than any of the other justices.” “I was lucky enough to have one conversation with Antonin Scalia that explained his appeal to me,” Colbert continued, describing his speech at the 2006 White House Correspondents Dinner. “Not many people laughed in the front row,” where the “important people” sit.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 18, 2015 13 Comments
Okay, now they've gone and done it. Colorado Law Week reports:
The University of Denver Sturm College of Law will continue leading legal marijuana education with an investment from Denver-based law firm Vicent Sederberg. The law school announced today that Vicent Sederberg made a $45,000 commitment to enable one faculty member to serve as the Vicente Sederberg Professor of Marijuana Law and Policy. “As the marijuana industry expands in Colorado and around the nation and the world, there is a growing need for attorneys qualified to represent business owners,” Vicente Sederberg founding partner and DU Sturm College of Law alumnus Brian Vicente said in a press release. “With the launch of this professorship, Sturm College of Law will be taking the lead in providing law students the training they need to enter this new field. We are proud to be able to support their efforts in this area.”
The Denver Business Journal elaborates:

Posted by Amy Miller on December 28, 2014 20 Comments
Should teaching the law of sexual assault and rape be banned from law school classrooms because it could be a "triggering" event for some students? Apparently, there is a movement to do just such a thing. Earlier this month, Harvard Law professor Jeannie Suk wrote a wonderful article at the New Yorker discussing the risks of sheltering law students from the study of laws governing rape and sexual assault cases. In the article, she takes academia to task over its oft-cowardly approach to professor--student classroom relationships, and points out that current "culture signals" demanding less discussion of potentially "triggering" topics are actually harmful for the future of prosecuting sexual assault. In part:
Now more than ever, it is critical that law students develop the ability to engage productively and analytically in conversations about sexual assault. Instead, though, many students and teachers appear to be absorbing a cultural signal that real and challenging discussion of sexual misconduct is too risky to undertake—and that the risk is of a traumatic injury analogous to sexual assault itself. This is, to say the least, a perverse and unintended side effect of the intense public attention given to sexual violence in recent years. If the topic of sexual assault were to leave the law-school classroom, it would be a tremendous loss—above all to victims of sexual assault.
Because we can't have nice things in academia anymore, we have, of course, a response. Margaret Drew is a law professor at the University of Massachusetts, and she thinks that Jeannie Suk's article "misses the point":

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 12, 2014 23 Comments
You thought it was bad that law students at Columbia, Harvard, Georgetown and Berkeley demanded exam delays because of the failure of grand juries to indict in the killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner? Sit down. Harvey Silverglate, civil liberties lawyer and co-founder of the FIRE, tweets a link to a Volokh Conspiracy post: https://twitter.com/HASilverglate/status/543529885248282625 The original story is from the UCLA Daily Bruin, Law school exam question on Ferguson shooting draws criticism:
Some students at the UCLA School of Law have expressed concerns after a professor asked an exam question this week relating to the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, in Ferguson, Mo. The exam, given by Professor Robert Goldstein in Constitutional Law II, asked students to write a memo related to the Ferguson shooting. Some students who took the exam said they found it difficult to write about the incident in terms of the first amendment while ignoring issues such as police brutality.... Hussain Turk, a second-year law student who took the exam, said he thinks the question was problematic because he thinks exams should not ask students to address controversial events. He added that he thinks the question was more emotionally difficult for black students to answer than for other students.