Forwarded from a current Columbia Law Student, from one of Student Services' fantastic new staff members:

We have put in place a new system, the Student Organization News and Information (SONI) System, which allows student organizations and journals to email students directly and allows you to select to which student organization and journal email lists you wish to subscribe or unsubscribe.
We hope that you find this system a helpful way to receive information from student organizations, and a good way to cut down on your email traffic.

The SONI system works as follows. All students in the Law School are initially subscribed to each student organization's email list. You may choose to unsubscribe from any list, at which point you will no longer receive email from that particular organization or journal. If you wish, you can later choose to resubscribe.

Posted by Anthony at 10:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Wormwood: [1]

I apologize for the short missive, but I felt this might save you some time in your first few weeks at law school. Check out Google's new home page tool. Instead of the austere and simple Google search page, the homepage allows you to clutter up your desktop with lots of little applets.

Most of these are not worth the screen space. But even if you're an austere minimalist and the thought of burdening Google's simple homepage offends you, it might still be worthwhile to add one tool: the USD Law School Utilities. (You may need to log into Google homepage for that link to work.) The toolkit includes links for looking up cases, bits of the US code, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and the UCC. For some of the features, you may have to wait until you're given a Westlaw password, but most of the searches use free online sources.

Hope this saves you some time, dear nephew!

[1]: As longtime readers know, my Letters to Wormwood contain advice for those considering law school. I think it only appropriate now that I've graduated to treat Wormwood as if he has now been accepted to a major school and will start in the fall.

Posted by Anthony at 09:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Tomorrow (or actually later this morning) begins the first of two days of graduation. One is commencement, one is graduation, and I'll admit to being somewhat unclear as to what the significance is. The alchemy of law school is strange, and all that I know is that sometime after Wednesday morning and before Thursday afternoon the letters "J.D."--for better or worse--attach permanently to my name.

After the typical tribulation that comes with modern air travel, my family converged on New York today. Luggage was lost, gypsy cabs stumbled into, available relatives helped with packing my room, and yet we all managed to meet in a fantastic hotel bar just before it closed shop. (Through the normal combination of luck and prudence that blesses my family, we had just enough points from the right hotel chain to get good rooms.)

Leave it to my brother to make clear to me the wonder of it. As readers of my blog know, I meander across the globe with the air of someone never too certain of where he should be. Today he's in London! Tomorrow Osaka! The day after tomorrow . . . who knows? Living far from kith and kin is just my way of life. And yet every so often my closest family make a point to trek out to wherever I am. Long ago they joined me for winter in Kyoto, where in an out-of-the-way hotel in Arashiyama we were blessed with a blanket of crisp white snow on Christmas morning. I can't imagine what strings they had to pull to all come to England for my undergraduate graduation, but there they were. And today, despite lost luggage, missed flights, changed plans and the worst that air travel could accost them with, we managed to gather in the hotel bar and toast the coming few days of celebration.

I'll keep blogging through the bar exam, of course, because until then it isn't really over. But in the next two days, the current phase draws to an end. As it does so, I'd like to leave you with the signposts that mark my four corners of heaven:

• A dirty Grey Goose vodka martini decorated with olives
  
• A crisp Ketel One martini with a lemon twist
  
• A Jack Daniels and water (old habits die hard)
  
• A gimlet as Raymond Chandler liked it

Also, thank you to those of you who've stuck with me throughout these three years, and for readers who joined along the way. I've loved listening to your comments, and I've enjoyed knowing you were there more than I can possibly say.

Posted by Anthony at 03:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

I just realized that Thursday and Friday passed without me updating to say I'm finished. Suffice it to say, I've been recuperating.

Just a few more days until graduation, and then it's the bar exam. I promise to give you some updates between now and then. I've spent the last two days mostly sitting in the sun and reading fiction, and with my notebook on the blink outdoor updates are a bit tough.

Posted by Anthony at 04:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

So right after my Securities exam is finished, I come home and, as a matter of habit, check my mail and glance on Amazon. The little Gold Box with daily special offers is blinking, so I click it to find that three of my ten offers are for... securities hornbooks.

Posted by Anthony at 08:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I really need to settle down and get to work (less than 20 days to Securities!), so despite the fact that it's a beautiful sunny day, I'm sitting in one of Columbia's larger lecture rooms trying to do four days work of studying in an afternoon. I've spent hours--when you total it up, probably months--in this room, but only now that it's empty can I really appreciate some of the strange background noises.

For instance, I just realized that the ghostly murmur coming from behind me was the sound of air escaping through one of the cracked doors. It seems that there is some difference in air pressure or temperature between the large lecture theater and the hallway outside that causes a significant and noisy breeze.

I'm surprised it took me three years to notice that.

Posted by Anthony at 02:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

No one even bothers to point out anymore that when a classmate sends "LOL" in an instant message, they aren't really laughing out loud. On the other hand, I nearly had an embarassing outburst in securities this morning when Amazon sent me this email:

[placeholder for winning team] Wins the NCAA Tournament!

Congratulations, [placeholder for winning team]! As someone who has purchased sports products from Amazon.com, we thought you should be the first to see our selection of NCAA championship products.

I can't recall every having bought sports products from Amazon anyway.

Posted by Anthony at 12:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Surprisingly, there's still some posting going on regarding an New York Sun editorial attacking Columbia's hiring of Olati Johnson. (My post on the subject is here .) For those keeping track, here's the back and forth:

• The original New York Sun editorial.
  
• An American Thinker post supporting the Sun's view.
  
• A De Novo post by Columbia-blogger PG arguing that allegations of Lee Bollinger's influence are untenable.
  
• Dean Schizer responds to the New York Sun (via The Right Coast).
  
• Professor Bainbridge updates his post with new information from Columbia professor Avery Katz. Katz specifically argues that CFIF could not prove that the memo taken from the Senate Judiciary Committee's server was reflective of "what actually happened in Kennedy's office." That's an intriguing assertion, and one I hadn't heard before. It makes sense as a possibility: a draft taken off a hard drive may never have been printed. [1] (A similar letter from Prof. Katz appears at the Right Coast, along w/ Dean Schizer's letter.)
  
• Finally, the author of the original editorial, Curt Levey, responds to critics at the blog of the Committee for Justice. (This blog even got a humble mention, which explains one uptick in my server logs.)

Indeed, if there's any concern over the appointment, I'd think Levey's looking in entirely the wrong place. The one at least somewhat undisputed allegation [2] to come out of Memogate involved Ms. Johnson forwarding an email misdirected from a Republican staffer to Democratic colleagues. As I mentioned at the time, I'd not think such a thing was illegal under the CFAA (though that statute is notoriously broad-reaching), and quite probably it doesn't constitute an ethical breach. Yet let's face it: capitalizing on an opponent's error in a highly partisan environment may be legal, ethical and even expected, but it doesn't pass the "do unto others" test. Were I a 1L again and assigned to Prof. Johnson's class--and a grade very important to law review, jobs and my future thus sat in her hands--would I feel comfortable, particularly were I a more outspoken conservative? I don't know. [3]

That, however, is a relatively minor concern. Indeed, if you want to mark such worries down as grade paranoia in a law student, you must realize that it's not half so off the ranch as Levey's original contention: that any offer from Columbia is inevitably tainted by Lee Bollinger, and that the faculty is inherently conflicted by his presence. [4] There's is no evidence the university president was involved in the decisionmaking, and reason to suspect he wasn't. Such shenanigans would require the silent and complicit consent of any conservative in the faculty, the staff and even in the student body. I find it close to incredible that if Johnson were appointed for any reason other than her scholarship--by all accounts excellent--Columbia students would hear no gossip, but learn it first in the unbridled speculations of a New York Sun editorialist who provides not a shred of documentation to back up his words. Heck, the Sun can't even drag the reporter's favorite playmate, the 'unnamed source,' out of the shadows!

This kind of "hit piece" in which a reporter rambles about appearances of impropriety and murmurs darkly about possible payoffs does nothing but wound the credibility of the reporter. Maybe Levey's co-blogger John Lott could explain how this is just as true when attacking professors as it is when one targets Justice Scalia?

[1]: Prof. Katz's argument with regards to the state ethics committee seems a bit strained: "In particular, the complaint that CFIF filed in New York state, the jurisdiction where Olati Johnson is licensed to practice law, was summarily dismissed on the merits -- a fact not mentioned in the Sun editorial." For the record, the ethics complaint against Republican Manuel Miranda, the other New York lawyer in Memogate, seems to have been dropped as well. I'm reminded about the humorous/apocryphal advice regarding how to guess on the MPRE: if asked what a lawyer is forbidden to do, never guess the option that seems least or most ethical. Is that really a guideline for what we want in professorial conduct?

[2]: One should take "undisputed" with a grain of salt here. I don't think I remember anything in that confrontation that wasn't disputed to some degree. I'm certain that I don't have all the facts.

[3]: For my liberal readers who find such a thought unthinkably implausible, I invite them to imagine that their 1L Con Law professor was the aforementioned Manuel Miranda. Then again, Prof. John Yoo seems to get along well enough at Berkeley. Well, okay, maybe not, but I can't find any Boalt students blogging about grading concerns.

[4]: Levey writes:

"Moreover, as my op-ed notes, the faculty should have thought about the message it was sending to Columbia's law students concerning ethics and conflicts of interest."

It's touching that Levey is worried about my education, so let me put him at ease: I do know that we don't get to make up conflicts rules for our convenience as we go along. There endeth the lesson.

Posted by Anthony at 11:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Whatever the story with Columbia's new faculty member and misdirected email, it's certainly been overshadowed by recent events at Yale. As various and sundry have been reporting, Yale decided to admit Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi, a former sort-of-ambassador of the Taliban, as a "special student." The predictable outrage shows no signs of quieting. Considering the situation this evening, two thoughts struck me. The first was a memory of Amy Lamboley's reaction to a comparison of Bush and the Taliban:

What bothers me most about the suggestion here that the Bush administration is equivalent to the Taliban is not that the comparison is unfair to Bush et. al., it is that it is unfair to the Taliban.

What made the Taliban a vile, despicable regime whose death went entirely unlamented was not the fact that they wished to enforce certain religious norms upon the population, but rather the brutally extreme measures to which they were willing to go in order to achieve that goal.

And then the second thought: what was Yale thinking? When millions of Afghanistani citizens could use a first-rate education, they're giving tuition subsidies to a former mouthpiece of the mullahs, ecstatic that they clutched to their busom a pre-renaissance man. (Apparently they were worried he might get scooped by Harvard.) What could this guy possibly have to offer? What could possibly be worth the inevitable--and justifiable--PR hit?

Then the answer hit me. Staring up at me from my desk was a copy of Thank You for Smoking, Christopher Buckley's tale of a lovably devious spinmeister for the tobacco industry. When the protagonist Nick Naylor gets a bit down, one of his best friends and fellow sin-lobbyists tries to pick him up:

"Heyy," Polly said, taking him by the shoulder, "Where's the old Neo-Puritan dragon slayer? Where's the guy I used to know who could stand up in a crowded theater and shout, 'There's no link between smoking and disease'?" . . . [S]he was right. You want an easy job? Go flack for the Red Cross.

[1]: Note to Yale: weren't some of you willing to go to the Supreme Court over don't ask, don't tell? Are the Taliban somehow more acceptable because they did ask?

Posted by Anthony at 03:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

As my fellow Columbia blogger notes, our university faculty is soon to be graced with ex-Kennedy staffer Olati Johnson. PG notes that the new prof was involved in Memogate, one of the first topics on this blog that ever received wider attention. (Indeed, it's one of the two entries for which this blog has been cited in law reviews, albeit in an article by another one of the principals in the scandal. (PDF)

As you might recall, Memogate involved some confidential memoranda that were taken by a Republican staffer off unsecured drives on the Senate Judiciary computers. (For more information see here.) My interest in the case involved the meaning of "unauthorized access" under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, but a memo supposedly by Prof. Johnson generated more heat among conservatives. (Source: CFIF. The memo itself is redacted.) After discussing the nomination of Julia Scott Gibbons for a seat on the 6th circuit with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Ms. Johnson wrote:

Elaine [Jones of the Legal Defense Fund] would like the Committee to hold off on any 6th Circuit nominees until the University of Michigan case regarding the constitutionality of affirmative action in higher education is decided by the en banc 6th Circuit. This case is considered the most likely to go to the Supreme Court. [ed.--good call.] The thinking is that the current 6th Circuit will sustain the affirmative action program, but if a new judge with conservative views is confirmed before the case is decided, that new judge will be able, under 6th Circuit rules, to review the case and vote on it.

[Redacted] and I are a little concerned about the propriety of scheduling hearings based on the resolution of a particular case. . . . Nevertheless we recommend that Gibbons be scheduled for a later hearing: the Michigan case is important, and there is little damage that we can foresee in moving Clifton first.

Late last year, [Ms. Johnson] opened her mailbox to find an email from a staffer in Senator Hatch's office. Attached to this email was a memo that was clearly misdirected. Nonetheless, she sent it on to several colleagues. Senator Kennedy's talking points on this matter include the line: "There was no impropriety, as the information sent to [Olati Johnson] was not confidential or privileged information." Kennedy had no problem with an aide handing on a document that clearly didn't belong to her when it had been misappropriated through the fault of a user. But when it was misdirected through the fault of an administrator, a standard which should be higher, he's talking of the next Watergate.

For the record, I think the "Johnson/Bollinger" collusion claptrap being muttered elsewhere is utter nonsense, and no credit at all to the conservatives spouting it. In other news, it seems Prof. Johnson has done at least some blogging, always a good thing.

Posted by Anthony at 07:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Taking a few minutes away from his regular demands for the impeachment, defenestration or perhaps just plain old tar-and-feathering of President Bush, Ambivalent Imbroglio writes down a few suggestions for those 3Ls who feel they're "up to their eyeballs in debt."

I've never met Mr. AI, but all I can say is that he must be a very tall man. When I was measured for my cap and gown yesterday they claimed I was 6'3", and my debt load would seem to wholly block my vision.

At the end of three years, these are not sobering numbers. These numbers prompt the need for a very stiff drink.

Posted by Anthony at 10:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Astute readers will note that the last examwatch ever has now started....

Posted by Anthony at 04:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

...was spent in Austin, Texas at the South by Southwest Festival. I've wanted to see the festival ever since I worked for Sen. Gramm, but I'd never quite had the chance. Better yet, I was able to drive around a lot of east Texas in a Honda hybrid. I really need a car for next year, and that high gas mileage coupled with the really quiet and smooth ride seems very attractive right now.

Of course, nothing says "You're in the South, boy" like humorous church road signs:

I did my best, I suppose...

Posted by Anthony at 03:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Enough pixels have already fluttered regarding the constitutional repercussions of Rumsfeld v. FAIR, and I really have nothing to add to the kind of commentary that engages Con Law professors. My thoughts are slightly broader and less focused.

1) Broadly speaking I think the opinion comes out correctly. Law schools can't be forced to hire pro-Solomon professors, one supposes, but they must allow military recruiters on campus. The schools will continue to grant them access whilst posting signs in GREAT BIG CAPITAL LETTERS telling us what horrible people the military are, maybe in the future making applicants run a gaunlet of screaming protestors, but they can't close the door altogether. There's a justice in this: as I've said before, if you're going to take the king's shilling, you can't be upset when you get dragooned.

That's not to say that "don't ask, don't tell" is good policy: it isn't. (On the other hand, it's not disastrous policy: keeping homosexuals out of the military will result in, at the very worst, a slightly less-than-optimal allocation of resources to the armed forces.) We should change that policy, but to do so we'll need to change hearts and minds both within the military and without. To do that, at least insofar as JAG recruiting is relevant, the ivory tower of law would have to reconnect with the serfs living outside the keep, at least now that the legal equivalent of the Sacred Council of Cardinals has declined to intervene in more temporal affairs. Maybe this will provide the incentive.

2) Thankfully, Chief Justice Roberts and the rest of the Court soundly rejected the amicus brief of Columbia's law faculty. As a quick recap, the professors argued that when Congress passed Solomon, they meant to ban discrimination against military recruiters, and that an even-handed anti-discrimination policy on sexual orientation applied to both law firms and the military does not do that.

First, this argument borders upon an arid textualism. The military isn't disadvantaged if the rule is stated "we don't allow any employers to interview if they discriminate." Yet they are disadvantaged if we state a more robust rule: "we don't allow any employers to interview if they discriminate other than as required by law." Is it the honest opinion of the law faculty that in any other situation, they'd apply their anti-discrimination policy against employers who were complying with a statutory mandate? (If a law were passed stating that no declared homosexual would be allowed to pass the bar--presuming its constitutionality--would the law schools really shut out everyone?) Can an organization that accredits students who are presumably expected to comply with the law really say that their antidiscrimination policies should trump a valid act of Congress?

While I respect most of its signatories, the logic within the brief borders upon farce. How could many of the same professors who have spoken so favorably of legislative history in my classes be so parsimonious with it in front of the Court? From the legal realist perspective--and one of the signatories is one of my favorite of Columbia's realists--what possibly can the law schools have hoped to gain if the Court ruled in their favor? Unless the professors truly believed that Congress really intended such a stingy reading of Solomon--go ahead, take a moment to laugh--didn't they expect that a ruling in their favor would result in yet another revision to the statute, this time erasing the scintilla of doubt that might somehow be scraped from its text? At best, such a result punts the issue six months to a year down the road. Woohoo! We can bar the doors to the military for one year at the risk of draconian wrath from a Congress that--it's hard to realize this from New York--still sits in Red State hands.

3) It's worth placing this debate in its larger context. Rumsfeld v. FAIR follows Romer and Lawrence as part of a larger debate this country is having: is it acceptable for our society, or even subsections of it, to disapprove of certain sexual behavior? And here I find myself having--uncomfortably--to side with the social conservatives.

There is a difference between saying that one should stigmatize certain sexual behavior and that the country can do so through legislation. To say that anti-sodomy laws should be overturned merely requires the expression of a political opinion, and one I share. To agree with Lawrence is to fantasize that this country at some point collectively decided that anti-sodomy laws were so vile that our descendants should require a supermajority if such policies were to be instituted. To believe that discrimination against homosexuals in employment should be prohibited, one must merely think that Congress or the states have the power to do so if they wish. To believe in Romer, one must think that at some point a majority of us agreed that any other law was beyond the pale.

Me, I'm sure I do a lot of things of which other people wouldn't approve, simply because they're legal, fun and I don't feel they harm anyone else. (Some of my best friends are Mormon, and almost certainly disapprove of my Chestertonian fondness for wine.) But those others should still be able--electorally, if need be--to disapprove of my choice. To do otherwise not only trivialize their opinion: it trivializes my choice to disagree with them.

Such dismissive attitudes come with political cost. After Lawrence and Goodridge, after all, came a multitude of state constitutional provisions making obvious clarification. To paraphrase the intent of each such resolution: "Whatever we've said before about equality, it didn't change the common sense idea that when we say 'wife' we mean a woman, when we say 'husband' we mean a man, and when we say 'marriage' it means between a husband and a wife. If we were ever convinced otherwise, we would have mentioned it sooner. Judges, take note."

It's great that my law school doesn't think homosexuality--or even much in the way of consensual sex--should be verboten. But law schools accredit lawyers, and however much I disagree with folks who think sex should be limited by tradition, religion or what have you, they should have the right to have their lawyers too.

4) Finally, my favorite part of Chief Justice Robert's opinion occurs on page fifteen of the slip opinion:

The schools respond that if they treat military and nonmilitary recruiters alike in order to comply with
the Solomon Amendment, they could be viewed as sending the message that they see nothing wrong with the military's policies, when they do. We rejected a similar argument in PruneYard Shopping Center v. Robins, 447 U. S. 74 (1980). In that case, we upheld a state law requiring a shopping center owner to allow certain expressive activities by others on its property. We explained that there was little likelihood that the views of those engaging in the expressive activities would be identified with the owner, who remained free to disassociate himself from those views and who was "not ... being compelled to affirm [a] belief in any governmentally prescribed position or view." Id., at 88.

The same is true here. Nothing about recruiting suggests that law schools agree with any speech by recruiters, and nothing in the Solomon Amendment restricts what the law schools may say about the military's policies. We have held that high school students can appreciate the difference between speech a school sponsors and speech the school permits because legally required to do so, pursuant to an equal access policy. Board of Ed. of Westside Community Schools (Dist. 66) v. Mergens, 496 U. S. 226, 250 (1990) (plurality opinion); accord, id., at 268 (Marshall, J., concurring in judgment); see also Rosenberger v. Rector and Visitors of Univ. of Va., 515 U. S. 819, 841 (1995) (attribution concern "not a plausible fear"). Surely students have not lost that ability by the time they get to law school.

(Update: a few text errors, including the embarrassing mistake of confusing Romer with Roper, corrected.)

Posted by Anthony at 01:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (1)

Dear Wormwood,

I've slightly overshot Columbia's 40 hour pro bono requirement for graduation, or at least I suspect I will when I finally fill in the forms. On the other hand, quite a few 3Ls of my acquaintance have complained to me recently of their frantic efforts to fulfill their responsibilities under this dubious virtue tax.

At the same time, I've overheard a number of 1Ls murmuring that, despite a fresh influx of funds from Columbia, there are still not enough positions in the Human Rights Internship Program. Thus many fledgling do-gooders find themselves seeking summer jobs that may not be spiritually satisfying. It seems that while their elders are looking for work, they're looking for money.

It's a pity that Foundations of the Regulatory State is no longer a required class, because in my day almost every 1L covered the obvious solution to this problem. To ensure the maximum amount of happiness among Columbia students while making sure we contribute our fair share--whatever we collectively decide that is--we should institute a trading system similar to that used for pollution emissions. [1]

As you might expect, Wormwood, those who are inclined towards public interest (and not coincidentally, most often the political left) collect far more than the 40 hours they're required to contribute. On the other hand, those for whom the requirement is a mostly unnecessary hassle are swiftly heading towards more or less lucrative careers. The obvious solution is to allow 3Ls to bid for and purchase pro bono hours from overproducers. The funds could then be used to sponsor 1Ls summering in exotic and underserved locales such as South Africa, eastern Europe or the Bronx.

Collectively, there is no doubt this is a winning formula. It's not too much of an assumption to think that those who want to do pro bono work will do it more productively, so our "good causes" however defined will receive better resources. We would be able to guarantee a certain amount of public interest work: after all, there's a floor beneath which hours cannot fall, and we can raise that to much higher than 40 hours per student. At the same time, HRIP receives more funding without having to increase tuition across the student body, producing even more socially enlightened output.

Wormwood, this seems a most sensible course by any tangible measurement. Yet my tongue is firmly in my cheek and I would never expect such a system to take hold. At the end of the day, the pro bono requirement isn't really about making sure that good causes receive useful (or enthusiastic) resources. Nothing so grubbily consequentialist should enter the publicly-spirited mind! To talk to a true believer, it's all about opening our minds, enlightening our souls and making us think that an industry supporting starting salaries of nearly $150,000 at the elite level is being done in a spirit of "professionalism," that is to say in the service of the public rather than the practitioners.

I put it to you that at the end of three years of law school, it is very difficult to avoid the level of cynicism required to say that with a straight face. And if three years of law school doesn't isn't enough, a brief glance at your debt burden should do it.

Ah well. For me it's almost over. As I mentioned to one complaining 3L, don't think of it as enforced charity. Think of it as a virtue tax, in which you take from whatever you consider virtuous and pay to what the Center for Public Interest Law considers such.

[1]: Often called "cap and trade" systems, emissions trading works to reduce a negative externality through a pricing system. What I'm proposing wouldn't be a cap and trade system, as it has no caps. Rather, trading would be used to maximize a positive externality. On the other hand, "floor and trade" seems a particularly clumsy phrase, and so I haven't used it.

Posted by Anthony at 07:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

More on this decision tonight, but for now, two thoughts.

1) Boy, was I wrong.

2) Today we received an open letter from the Outlaws (Columbia's LGBT society) expressing their disappointment with an 8-0 decision. Fair enough, but why is this being forwarded through the Student Events listserv? There's no event attached to the letter. Whatever differences I have with the Federalist Society, at least I'll say this for them: when they want to express an opinion, they put it in the right place. If Outlaws wants to spend five hundred words pointing out the bloody obvious more power to them, but could they make sure the message didn't stink of spam?

Posted by Anthony at 02:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

1. I doubt I could blog an actual international conflict and make it sound as interesting as PG has whilst blogging the first day's session for Ex Post. Ex Post is certainly the place if you want to know what the fuss is about.

   (She was quite appropriate in linking Prof. Waldron's speech today to the Waldron/Yoo debate held here last year. Waldron's references were torturously unsubtle. It's interesting that Waldron mentioned a passage from C.S. Lewis's The Problem of Pain in his speech. Lewis was also a too-the-core academic writing about why a real society in which practical choices must be made could not live up to an ideal of heaven on earth. I have always rather loved the author of Screwtape, but the quotation brought to mind Waldron's answer to the cursed and "corrupt" ticking-time bomb question, in which the Professor was quite willing to say that even were the loss of millions of lives unnecessary save for the sake of torturing a captive, he would still let the bomb go off. (See here at 29:00.)

   Lewis was a great scholar, a talented writer, and a great moralist, but he'd be one of my dead last choices for congressmen. Philosophers are the only people ever likely to elect philosopher kings.)
   

2. I can neither confirm nor deny Will Baude's take on the first panel, but will be certain to post a link as soon as a webcast is available for you to set your own opinion.
   
3. There are lots of people here, and lots of things to be moved. I'll blog more later, but it's an early start tomorrow, so I'm off to bed.

Posted by Anthony at 01:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

As mentioned in an other place, today the Student Senate held a town hall meeting on revisions to our guidelines for student groups. Apparently it's another recurrence of the now perpetual controversy: should groups like the Christian Legal Society be allowed to restrict their leadership to those who hold certain beliefs? The flashpoint, of course, is sexuality. [1] It's part and parcel with the kind of disputes that the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education spends a lot of time litigating. The whole business seems . . . well, a matter of much heat and little light.

(I acquired a copy of the Columbia Law School's Christian Legal Society constitution and in party-game fashion counted the reasons I couldn't be an officer of theirs. Wholly without violating Romans 1:27, I count around fourteen reasons I wouldn't be allowed to run. Well, maybe thirteen if they define idolatry more stringently than I would, but in fairness it would be fifteen if I got invited to better orgies.)

I am, of course, considering this from my rather pragmatic perspective. Pragmatically, I'm going to put the rest of this long entry below the fold.

Continue reading "One, Two, Three, Four . . . Erm... What Exactly Are We Fighting For?" »

Posted by Anthony at 11:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

In the comments to my entry about how useful the Sony Reader electronic book would be for law students, Anon made a good point:

There's certainly a lot to be said for the new technology. Digitized texts save paper (read--fewer trees we have to chop down in the rain forests), spare our backs (read--fewer visits to the chiropractor), and bless us with shorter lines (read--fewer dirty looks from underpaid law school book store register clerks with watch timers set to ring at 5 p.m., the start of favorite bar's happy hour).

I wonder, though, whether these texts will quickly make the transition to paperless, digital format. Digital content is great for the user, but problems of piracy and copyright infringement loom large for the publisher and copyright holder. I suppose if the piracy protection were ironclad, we would be OK, but it seems that almost as quickly as new anti-piracy schemes are cooked up, ways to overcome the protections are crafted. At least if I were the publisher, all of this would make me think twice before digitizing all or part of casebook content.

If I recall correctly from looking at the Japanese model, there's some reasonably robust anti-copying software involved. But I think law school textbooks would have even better protection. Each law student is told when we start school that our personal ethical record will eventually form part of our bar acceptance. Given the high price of tuition and the three years of lost wages, would a student really make illegal copies of textbooks if they felt it might prevent them from passing the bar?

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Tomorrow the Columbia Chapter of the American Constitution Society will be hosting an NSA Surveillance Panel featuring Professors Michael Dorf, Lori Damrosch and Harold Edgar. I'm going to have to show up because it could be amusing. After all, there's a new accusation available about the NSA program, from a former spymaster:

"A lady had been to a school play the night before, and her son was in the school play and she thought he did a--a lousy job. Next morning, she was talking on the telephone to her friend, and she said to her friend something like this, 'Oh, Danny really bombed last night,' just like that. The computer spit that conversation out. The analyst that was looking at it was not too sure about what the conversation w--was referring to, so erring on the side of caution, he listed that lady and her phone number in the database as a possible terrorist."

You know. The Clinton administration.

Now, back then we had a non-anonymous source making concrete and specific allegations about domestic spying (supposedly accomplished through the simple back-scratching tactic of Anglosphere Spy Agency A tapping everything forbidden to Anglosphere Spy Agency B and then sharing the data). As Cathy Young has pointed out, the events described above probably occurred prior to 1990--so pre-Clinton--but there's no reason to expect that Echelon suddenly went dormant when Clinton was inaugurated. Indeed, the European Union thought very much otherwise.

But if you look at the ACS, large-scale signals intelligence seems to be a bolt from the blue. Sure, the ACS wasn't around when 60 Minutes told its tales, but its panelists were. I've Googled and.... Lexis'd? (why isn't that a verb?)... for comments from any of them on signal intelligence prior to January 2001 and come up with a goose egg. (Maybe they've published on it, but I can't find it.) The national ACS site only turns up one hit for the word "echelon," in a discussion of Harriet Miers and whether she's in the top one. The Columbia ACS webpage has two or three posts mentioning the current debate, but Google doesn't find "echelon" on any page (or reference to any possible prior spying). Instead, Columbia's ACS feels that "America gazes into the mirror, confused, haggard, faintly recalling simpler times." When were these? Where were they?

The times weren't simpler. It just behooves some people to remember them that way.

So I think it's a legitimate question: are we worried about overuse of signal intellligence and spying on domestic conversations? Or is the panel there because it's particularly horrible when the packet sniffers are Republicans?

Posted by Anthony at 01:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Too late for my academic years, Sony is finally releasing its e-ink Reader in the United States. The older generation argues that this won't replace paper (TCS) or gripes about DRM (Instapundit), but I think they're just being spoilsports. The technology is terrific: the text on a Reader looks remarkably close to paper. I an e-Libre (the Japanese version of the Reader, available in Japan two years ago): after installing a Japanese-English dictionary, it becomes a very easy way of reading books slightly beyond one's skill.

For law students, the benefits of an electronic book are even more obvious: imagine how much easier life would be if we carried all three years of our textbooks in a small, lightweight device. The lecture halls here at Columbia seem positively designed for such a device. During Securities Law, I'm forced to squeeze a Lord of the Rings-sized casebook, a larger statutory supplement and my notebook computer onto desk space smaller than a serving tray from a Bonanza steakhouse. If I were Sony, the first content providers I'd be contacting for license agreements would be Foundation Press and Aspen Publishers.

I suppose I should count my blessings. By the time I have disposable income such that I'll feel comfortable buying another $400 tech toy, Sony will have come out with the next generation of Reader.

Posted by Anthony at 03:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

Mice, it seems. The Columbia Spectator today reports that the law school's Lenfest Cafe failed its health inspection.

In its original inspection, conducted Dec. 8, 2005, the cafeteria received 35 points, all having to do with improper food temperature. When re-inspected, Jerome Green Hall was cited for two completely different violations: lack of a three-compartment sink to sanitize serving utensils and evidence of mice.

In my first year, mice joined in on Crim Law and Prof. Waldron's Perspective's course. This year they've moved into my dorm. Now they're eating in the dining hall? At this point, I half expect them to scamper across the stage at graduation, receiving little mousy diplomas.

Kudos to the New York Department of Health and Mental Hygiene for putting this information online.

(UPDATE: To provide a frequently-asked-for comparison, Hamilton's Deli scored better than Lenfest (23 compared to 43, lower is better), and their highest recorded violation available is a 38.)

Posted by Anthony at 06:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Via Ambimb, we see that there's been another infantile protest, this time of the Attorney General at Georgetown Law School. This act of staged immaturity consisted of five students in black hoods unveiling a banner with a 'quotation' from Ben Franklin: "Those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither."

How cute. The quote's wrong--it omits the words "essential" and "little" in places that fundamentally alter the meaning--but hell, what's a little accuracy among those who seek to save us?[1]

As always, my annoyance at this kind of stage-stealing performance art doesn't spring from partisanship but a violation of comity. Attorney General Gonzales--someone I'm not averse to criticizing--was introduced by Dean Aleinikoff as a guest of the university, and the demonstration made him a very poor host. The five veiled freedom-fighters--yeah, you're a courageous bunch of fellows, aren't you?--were simply rude to those who organized the event. Freeloaders and freeriders upon the effort of others, they're no better than the bore who shouts down better-mannered guests at a dinner table.

Watch the C-SPAN coverage (if you can stand installing RealPlayer). There was no shortage of speech here. Gonzales' address was followed by a university panel organized to discuss the issue. These valiant defenders of free expression did nothing greater than hijack the footlights, content to bask in their reflected relevance.

If academia still recognized some sense of decorum, these students would be expelled. There is no sign that Dean Aleinikoff has done so.

UPDATE: Fixed a formatting error and link in the original post. Also corrected some bluebooking in the footnote below.

[1]: What are they teaching at Georgetown Law School these days? I'll admit that I'm not the best Bluebooker in the world, but shouldn't the banner read something like:

Those who would [sacrifice] liberty [for security] deserve neither. . . .

Posted by Anthony at 09:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (18) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm squeamish about mice. Not being particularly bad with insects or spiders, I didn't expect that.

In my defense, this is a limited sort of squeamishness. It involves an unwillingness to clean my dishes six inches away from the garbage bin that seems to be the locus of the mouse infestation while the mice are actually scuttling back and forth. (These little blighters aren't shy, either: they will run from kicks or old sponges being thrown at them, but the mere presence of over six foot of graduate student isn't sufficient deterence. Are all mice this friendly?)

By contrast, I don't really consider my aversion to using the kitchen when there's a dead mouse carcass stuck to the sticky/gummy mousetraps squeamishness as such. I take it as a sign of egalitarianism and enlightened environmental consciousness. I don't partiicularly enjoy cooking with other people in the kitchen, so why should I discriminate in favor of four-legged co-chefs?

Posted by Anthony at 11:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

One of my classmates, now finishing her 3L year in England, has recently made it into the top 20 of the Community Communications Network short commercial competition. (See "Stay in Step" under "Community.") It always amazes me how people can find time to make things like this while still in law school.

Posted by Anthony at 09:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Two longish blog entries making nitpicky legal arguments.

Well, you can tell exams are over.

Posted by Anthony at 09:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday, Federal Income Taxation. Today, Administrative Law. The exam season seems remarkably compressed this year, and I'm afraid that until they're over, I probably won't post much. The holidays should be a pretty productive period, though, so I'll see you then!

Posted by Anthony at 09:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The oral arguments in FAIR v. Rumsfeld (RealMedia) make entertaining listening. The case has that make-believe feel one often gets in such civil rights cases, where everyone knows that the real argument is about the legitimacy of dont ask/don't tell, and yet we're tinkering about with issues that exist only in a hypothetical imagination, belief in which is necessary to get within the case law. Todd Zywicki has already excerpted one bit from the New York Times that neatly drifts into magical thinking:

The lawyer adjusted his focus. The law schools have their own message, "that they believe it is immoral to abet discrimination," he said.

This time, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor took issue. "But they can say that to every student who enters the room," she said.

"And when they do it, your honor, the answer of the students is, we don't believe you," Mr. Rosenkranz said.

"The reason they don't believe you is because you're willing to take the money," Chief Justice Roberts interjected. "What you're saying is this is a message we believe in strongly, but we don't believe in it to the detriment of $100 million."

Nevertheless, I'm a bit annoyed at the law school coalition for ascribing such phenomenal ignorance and credulity to their students in front of the highest court in the land. Key to the Chief Justice's rejoinder is an acceptance of the dream that students don't believe law schools are opposed to the Amendment or find compliance immoral. While this blog has been running, I've received numerous and lengthy emails from the administration explaining the position on the Amendment. When I logged on to register for employer interviews each year, a special notice was attached to the military recruiters, one year in red lettering. They haven't forced students who interview with JAG to wear a scarlet B yet, but it doesn't seem out of the question.[1] If there is a law student at Columbia that believes that the school supports the Amendment, or that it is doing anything but going along because it's being strongarmed. . . . well, let's just say I'd wonder whether that was an honest belief, or mere posturing because it makes one's case before the Court seem stronger.

Justice O'Connor, if it sets your mind at rest, we got the memo.

(UPDATE: I think my use of "credulous" in the title is a bit confusing and ambiguous. I meant to wonder whether law schools thought students would actually buy that they feel we don't believe them. But as the pronoun confusion in the last sentence indicates, the thought there is a bit twisted. On reflection, the title "Do Law Schools Really Think Their Students Don't Believe Them" would be better.)

[1]: Actually, what letter would the school choose? You wouldn't want to use H (for homophobe) for obvious reasons. I figure B for bigot, but I'm sure someone will come up with something more ingenious.

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[EXT. LERNER HALL, ~18:00]

For your Three Years of Hell coverage of the Ashcroft protest and subsequent speech, we turn now to the TYOH roving reporter on the scene, Mr. iGor the iGuy. iGor?

Thank you, Tony. It's a warm and rainless night here on Broadway. We'd been worried that yesterday's downpours might continue, dampening the enthusiasm of the anti-Ashcroft lobby. Luckily, the weather's been more merciful than a reprieve from Guantanamo. Indeed, it's fine weather for a protest, and these folks seem to be making the most of it.

What exactly are the protestors up to, iGor?

Well, as you can see, most of the protestors have been cordoned off by police barriers. A little earlier a policeman came over and tried to remove us from the boundary of the protest. I'm not sure if he was convinced of our journalistic credentials, but the main attraction seems to be a guy with a megaphone, so it didn't really hurt to back up a few feet. And there's all kinds of people outside the barriers in a variety of outrageous get up. For instance, there's a woman in Guantanamo Orange, which I get, and a guy walking around on stilts. I'm not sure what the latter is supposed to be symbolic of, precisely, but he's certainly visible. There's a lot of signs.

And what they're saying?

I've just gotten here, Tony, and I'm afraid the crew will have to leave to go inside the auditorium pretty soon, so we're going to miss the heart of the protest. Nevertheless, so far it seems fairly sedate. I have to admit to feeling let down by the posters. "I WASN'T USING THOSE CIVIL RIGHTS ANYWAY" or "DETAIN ASHCROFT," all things you'd find on a CafePress t-shirt.

When we arrived, someone was leading a chant . . . . it seemed like the old chestnut "THE PEOPLE UNITED SHALL NEVER BE DIVIDED." Nevertheless, some of the people were out here cordoned off by blue sawhorses and some of the people were standing in line over in Lerner Hall waiting to get in. To his credit, the speaker on the podium was advising his crowd to remain civil and remain respectful. He finished by saying something to the effect that while Mr. Ashcroft has the right to speak here, he'll never get the respect of the guy on the soapbox with the bullhorn.

Any reaction from the Ashcroft crowd?

I didn't get a chance to question Mr. Ashcroft about it. I can only imagine he's crushed not to have the respect of folks with blowhorns addressing crowds with signs that say he's a terrorist.

Earlier today we'd been hearing stories about protestors making a human wall around Lerner and various other obstructive ideas. Any sign of that?

Well, no, not really. Actually, the line of people trying to get into Roone Auditorium is far more impressive than the number of protestors outside. The protest may get a bit bigger while we're trying to get seats, Tony, but it looks like a few hundred people at most. And while some protest sympathisers are hopefully trying to get inside, the security rules attached to the invitation are quite strict: no audio recorders, no cameras, no bag larger than a purse, and no posters.

Thank you, iGor. We look forward to your reaction to the speech.

[INSIDE AUDITORIUM, AFTER SPEECH]

So, iGor, you've heard the big speech, what was it like?

I was pretty skeptical about Ashcroft coming into this, and I have to say I came out impressed. There wasn't a huge display of intellectual force on either side of the stage,[1] but Ashcroft was charming, and chatted about crime, terrorism, faith, and public service, and cracked a lot of jokes. Here's a guy who'd obviously faced a hostile crowd once or twice before. I think the high point for me was a bit of tete-a-tete . . . . I have to go from memory since I didn't have a recorder, but it went something like this:

GEN. ASHCROFT: [telling "old governors never die" jokes] And of course, old prosecutors never die, they just lose their...

HECKLER: Bill of Rights!

ASHCROFT: [folksy] Well, I haven't lost my Bill of Rights, and from the sound of you, young lady, you don't seem to have either.

So a solid conservative victory?

I'm going to have to say no there. I've got no neck, but if my body weren't made of silicone I'd be shaking my head in shame right about now. Ashcroft came off pretty well, but there seemed to be a battle between Columbia's left and right wings to see who could make themselves look dumber, and it's impossible to tell who won. Close victory on points, is all I can say.

Too much hooting from the audience?

Too much from the audience, too much from the stage. The Columbia Conservatives opened with a fifteen minute whine about how they're picked upon. Look, I know that there's more video games in the undergraduate lounge than there are Bush-voting faculty in the undergraduate campus, but this really wasn't the time to mention the political leanings of the professorate. The moderator seemed to be doing his level best to live up to the worst liberal parody of what a campus conservative could be. And the introduction of Ashcroft...

[pause] iGor?

Sorry. I was trying to see if this rubberized body could shudder. Endless repetitions of his patriotism, the difficulty of his job, the trying times. . . . Look, the man was an attorney general, a senator, and a governor. His resume spoke for him even before he opened his mouth. The moderator didn't need to put a dress on a pig and call it Monique.

That bad?

Worse. The whole thing was subtle as a chainsaw through a screen door. The conservatives deserved credit for reading out questions from groups like the ACLU, but they didn't need to provide such emphasis. Gloating merrily didn't make their enemies any more wrong, but it did make the hosts less gracious. And it didn't stop there. Interruptions of the speaker to make comparisons to Michael Moore. Complaints--presumably humorous--by the moderator that Gen. Ashcroft was stealing his limelight. Completely unnecessary demonizations of the anti-Ashcroft lobby, which was by that point making enough of a fool of itself waving about a big yellow sign they'd smuggled in. Really unnecessary.

What was the crowd reaction?

On my way out, I heard one of the more moderate audience members mutter with what I'd consider a wry chuckle: "This kind of event really could raise the level of civil discourse here at Columbia, if the ceiling had fallen in during the middle of the Q&A."

And your summary?

Well, they say that Mr. Ashcroft used to be in a barbershop quartet. Maybe in another venue, he could have brought down the house, but in this case he was really let down by the opening act.

[1]: UPDATE As Ex Post put it, "He made a great case for his policies, though I'm sure there is plenty critical to be said of his rather 'campaign speech' platitudes."

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