Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Movers & Shakers Part II: Departures

Who will be leaving Boalt next year, either temporarily or permanently? So far we know:

Rumor has it that Jan Vetter is retiring.

Ian Haney-Lopez, who apparently likes to plan ahead, will be at NYU in Fall '09 and HLS in Spring '10, per his CV.

Gillian Lester and Eric Talley will be visiting at HLS all next year.
Lester will be teaching Employment Law at Harvard in Spring '09. Talley will be teaching: Corporate Finance in Fall '08, and Corporate Law and Finance Seminar and Corporations in Spring '09.

Professor Howard Shelanski will be teaching Telecommunications Law at Georgetown in Fall '08, and teaching Antitrust in High-Tech Industries and Antitrust Law at NYU in Spring '09.

Sklansky is presumably outta here (no official word on whether he'll be at Harvard, but we suspect that's the case).

No word on what's up with Professor Linda Krieger, who visited at Harvard last year is currently listed as a member of the Univ. of Hawaii faculty.

And of course, Dean Ortiz will be leaving us for UC-Irvine.

Also of note:
Professor Aaron Edlin taught Antitrust Law at Harvard for the Winter Term '08, and Jesse Fried taught Law and Finance of Corporate Reorganizations at Harvard for the Winter Term '08 (though both are teaching at Boalt in Fall '08).

Who else do you know of who's leaving Boalt next year?

EDIT: [updates in bold]

Friday, April 11, 2008

New Blog for reviewing Boalt Profs

There's a new Blog for offering comments and feedback on Boalt profs at http://boaltprofs.blogspot.com/. Thanks to Abony from The Shark for putting this together!

If I may add my two cents, I think this is a great idea. It would be nice if we could get something password protected so that the reviews aren't made public, but this is certainly filling a much needed void at Boalt.

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Fall 2008 (Secret) Course List Up

1. Go to the Spring 2008 Course Listings.
2. Select a category.
3. In the URL, where it says "B&termYear=2008" change the "B" to "D"
4. Voila! You have the Fall 2008 Course Listings.

UPDATE: Full Course List (not by category) available here. Thanks to Matt for pointing this out.

UPDATE #2: The "Official" List is now up.

Breaking News: Dean Ortiz to leaveBoalt

Dean O. has announced that she's leaving Boalt in May to become Assistant Dean of Students Services and Director of Admissions at the new UC-Irvine School of Law.

Reactions? Will Dean O's departure impact the school at all? I say: Let's just hope the next person is as willing as Dean O to sign off on extra units for various projects (though I've heard conflicting accounts on this point.)

Sunday, April 6, 2008

Now, Back to Yoo...

Is John Yoo closer to being indicted for war crimes in the wake of the Pentagon's recent release of a torture memo he authored in 2003? Libertarian-conservative journalist Andrew Sullivan of The Atlantic thinks so. On this morning's Chris Matthew's show he said that the "latest revelations on the torture front show the memo from John Yoo...means that Don Rumsfeld, David Addington and John Yoo should not leave the United States any time soon. They will be, at some point, indicted for war crimes."

I bet an indictment would make this guy really happy. Then he could stop writing letters and forwarding op-eds to Dean Ortiz, Louise Epstein, Dean Edley, Professor Jonathan Simon, and a number of other Boalt faculty and admins as part of his to campaign to "drive John Yoo from the Faculty at Boalt Hall." He writes:
...I would embarrassed to be in the same company as Mr. Yoo, and would work to encourage him to leave Boalt Hall faculty voluntarily. I believe his continued presence on campus and as a member of the faculty is a stain on the University’s reputation, and suggests that students who take his classes will be ill-prepared to meet their duties as lawyers.


Do you think John Yoo will be indicted for war crimes? Do you think he should be kicked off the faculty if he is? Do you think he should be kicked off the faculty anyway?

Saturday, April 5, 2008

Library etiquette

What's the proper etiquette on asking someone to watch your belongings, or being asked to watch someone else's belongings in the library? I'm specifically talking about the length of time people leave you to guard over their prized laptop. I've been asked numerous times to watch someone's laptop while they step out. I have no problem with this, however, sometimes they leave for 10, 15, 20 minutes. At what point am I no longer obliged to stay and make sure their laptop isn't whisked away?

Also, how many dirty looks must you give someone talking on their phone in the library before whisking it out of their hand and hurling it into the Donor Lobby?

Monday, March 31, 2008

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.