Stimulating debate

The Volokh Conspiracy posted an interesting poll on how common prescription psychostimulant (e.g. Adderall, Ritalin) use is in law school. The consensus seems to be that use of these drugs is relatively uncommon, though not unheard of.

It would be interesting to see this broken down by school. I don't think there's a whole lot of psychostimulant use at Boalt, though maybe I'm just out of the loop.

BHSA Responds

BHSA has promptly responded to the anonymous fliers, via an email sent earlier today. Kudos to BHSA for taking the time to respond, and for discussing some of their initiatives with the student body. (Though as they candidly admitted, they really should have been better about communicating these developments to us throughout the semester.)

However, a few statements in their email are worth addressing:

On March 19 [sic], someone placed anonymous flyers in student lockers asking BHSA for transparency in elections. The email reproduced in the flyer was not sent by a BHSA board member. The meeting alluded to was not sanctioned by BHSA, was not attended by anyone who works on BHSA elections, and was not supported with BHSA funds.

The email was, however, sent by a former BHSA board member. And I find it curious that the BHSA president (who's house the event took place at) does not "work[] on BHSA elections."

Moreover, the BHSA email oddly blasts the anonymous flier-er for "publish[ing] the personal address of one of our board members," and alludes to his interest in privacy. A simple search of WhitePages.com reveals that the BHSA president's address is not, in fact, such a secret after all.

Finally, I would like to dispel any rumors that Berkeley Law Blog is in any way responsible for the fliers left in people's lockers. We folks here at BLB prefer to rabble-rouse from the privacy and comfort of our secret underwater command post.

Something other than a PMBR ad in your locker!

Earlier this week (or maybe today; I really don’t check my locker that often), flyers were left in student lockers containing the text of an email sent to a select group of students. The email, sent by a Boalt student, appears to be directed at helping “students of color” get positions in the Boalt Hall Students Association. The email, as found in my locker (with identifying information redacted):


On the other side of the flyer was the following diatribe:

For those of us familiar with rumors about similar secret CLR information sessions and admitted student events geared exclusively toward minority groups (and specifically, racial minority groups), this should come as no surprise. Nonetheless, at the very least it’s troubling that students are holding these meetings without publicizing them to the entire student body.

And of course, I think it’s great that someone has taken action to publicize an issue they feel strongly about, regardless of the message.

Barrister's Ball Review

What did people think of this year's Barrister's Ball? 1Ls: did it live up to your expectations? 2 & 3Ls: how did it compare with previous years' dances? Any drama like in previous years?

My thoughts: Props to BHWA for putting on Barrister's Ball this year. However, the Gaia Center was a bit dingy. It looked like the conference space from a 3rd rate budget hotel. The drink situation was poor (two glasses of wine or beer for $30?!) but expected. The dance floor was fun, though. Also, was there not a raffle or was I just too drunk to remember?

Considering the fact that we've been banned from pretty much every other venue, however, I don't think we can really complain.

Notes from Faculty Hiring Town Hall

At the Town Hall on Faculty Hiring held at lunch today, Dean Shelanski and Gillian Lester explaining the hiring process, current hiring needs, and fielded questions. A lot of the questions were directed at our perceived low retention rate, which Shelanski attributed our lack of resources. (Though he disputes the notion that we have problems attracting and keeping faculty, arguing that we do "pretty darn well" in those areas). For example, we're constrained (by UC, presumably) in what salary we can offer faculty. Also, in order to get a pay raise, the faculty member has to show that they have an open offer at a higher salary. We simply can't compete in terms of resources or salary with private universities or the top public law schools, such as UMich and UVA, which are "effectively private universities."

One curious thing (or perhaps not so curious given that we're at Boalt) is the affirmative action used in hiring. Professor Lester, who heads the Faculty Hiring Committee, said that she went through and gave every "diverse" applicant (diverse in terms of race, religion, and gender -- but not political ideology, apparently) a separate look, on top of the culling done by the Faculty Hiring Committee. She picked out 14 additional prospective minority hires, in addition to the 50 prospective hires chosen by the rest of the Faculty Members.

Per Shelanski, two current areas we desperately need faculty in: Tax and Business Law

Movers & Shakers:
- Talley & Lester will be visiting at Harvard next year
- Jesse Fried is sitting on a very attractive offer from Columbia
- Harvard has invited Goodwin Liu to visit next year
- Harvard's Hiring Committee is voting on whether to extend a permanent offer to Professor Sklansky (Shelanski: they will), and we'll have to wait and see if he accepts (Shelanski: he will)
- Boalt has offers open to Wisconsin's Alta Charo (who visited Boalt in 2005-06) and Harvard Academic Fellow Glenn Cohen, who specialize in bioethics and health law

Final Exam Schedule Posted Early; Soliciting New Complaints.

The final exam schedule has been posted. Now that we don't have that to complain about, where should we turn our attention? Barrister's Ball tickets at $30 a pop only including 2 free drinks? I'm sure we'll have plenty to talk about after next week's Faculty Hiring Town Hall and JD Student Forum with Dean Edley.

Another Curious CLR Policy

Dave Hoffman at Concurring Opinions recently blogged about the California Law Review's manuscript submission policies, expressing concern over its limitations on images and graphs. CLR's rules state:

4) CLR does not allow the use of images or graphics in our published articles.

5) CLR will publish up to five author-created charts, graphs, and/or tables. All charts, graphs, and tables must be included in the manuscript by the end of the primary editing stage.

Hoffman argues that these rules "may get the in the way of coherent presentation of data" and says "I'm not sure what motivated the law review to promulgate them."

Does CLR have an answer to this? Why the prohibition on use of images and limits on graphs? Are these rules actually enforced? Have there been complaints from authors about them? (Even if there aren't a lot of complaints, another possibility is that authors are simply not submitting articles with graphics for publication in CLR because they're aware of this rule.)

Call for Final Exam Schedules

Student Services informs us that the final exam schedule is not ready yet because professors haven't been submitting information regarding their final exams/papers. However, if you ask Mindi M. in Student Services nicely, she will tell you when a particular exam is scheduled for (assuming the professor has submitted the information). I'm curious (1) why professors don't know the format of the final exam (or paper) already, considering they had to include that information on the course description, and (2) why Student Services can't post information that they do have.

Anyway, feel free to post information you have regarding final exams.

**Please note, Student Services has emphasized that these dates are tentative. So don't go buying your ticket to the Bahamas just yet...

Current List (as of 3.7.08 at 8:15 AM)

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Antitrust (Shelanksi) - May 9 at 8:30AM
Civ Pro II (Amann) - May 8 at 1:30PM
Contracts (Talley) - May 12th at 8:30 am
Corps (Gevertz) - May 5th at 1:30 PM
Crim Pro - May 13th at 8:30AM
Evidence (Swift) - May 5th at 11:30AM
Info Privacy - May 12 at 1:30 p.m.
Legislation - May 8 at 1:30 p.m.
Property (Biber): May 5th at 8:30 am