« March 26, 2006 - April 01, 2006 | Main | April 09, 2006 - April 15, 2006 »

If we can't trust Page Six, who can we trust?

The New York Daily News -- never one to miss an opportunity to poke a competitor in the eye -- breaks the story: "A New York Post Page Six staffer solicited $220,000 from a high-profile billionaire in return for a year's "protection" against inaccurate and unflattering items about him in the gossip page." The federal investigation is ongoing.

I'm more interested in the human side, though. I am shocked, shocked, to hear that there would be anything other than the highest ethical and journalistic standards among the staff of a department that specializes in pestering and running sensationalistic stories about Michael Jackson, Paris Hilton, and Angelina Jolie. Really, I don't know that I will ever read Page Six the same. How can I trust the latest tidbits? Has Sarah Michelle Gellar really been seen eating sushi at Nobu, or is that merely a paid placement? I just can't live with that kind of uncertainty.

I'm sure going to miss those halcyon days, back when I could believe everything I read on Page Six. But those days are gone forever. And now, I suppose I can only try to crowd out my sorrows, by reading the latest from Rush & Molloy.

Posted by Kaimipono at 09:16 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Adieu and Thanks

Its been a pleasure guest-blogging for the past month, and an honor to get to write on a site whose posts I've been reading since the beginning. All good things must come to an end, though. Or at least, sort an end: this guest-blogging is apparently addictive! In a week or two, you will find me at the international law blog Opinio Juris, which is the kind of thing you might like, if, as they say, you like that kind of thing. And after that, having hit for the guest-blogger cycle, I will look forward to returning to a consumption-based, rather than provision-based, approach to digital content.

Posted by David_Zaring at 01:31 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

NSA Surveillance: No Limit

When it comes to surveillance for the Bush information, it appears that only the sky's the limit. From the Washington Post:

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales left open the possibility yesterday that President Bush could order warrantless wiretaps on telephone calls occurring solely within the United States -- a move that would dramatically expand the reach of a controversial National Security Agency surveillance program.

In response to a question from Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) during an appearance before the House Judiciary Committee, Gonzales suggested that the administration could decide it was legal to listen in on a domestic call without supervision if it were related to al-Qaeda.

"I'm not going to rule it out," Gonzales said.

In the past, Gonzales and other officials refused to say whether they had the legal authority to conduct warrantless eavesdropping on domestic calls, and have stressed that the NSA eavesdropping program is focused only on international communications.

Are there any limits to its power that the Administration will acknowledge and respect? Thus far, none have been articulated. As I argued in an earlier post on the issue:

The problem with Bush's argument is that he has articulated virtually no conceivable limits to his power. The stakes of the debate aren't just about what the President has already done. They are about what the President has defiantly declared he has the power to do in the future.

The arrogance of power is astounding.

Posted by Daniel Solove at 10:19 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

But Certainly Everyone Has $200 to Donate?

Michelle Cottle has a delicious critique of the NYT Thursday Styles Section, aptly titled The Gray Lady Wears Prada. Cottle juxtaposes the “high-minded liberal sensibility” that the Times’s bobo readers aspire to cultivate with the breathless high-end consumerism of Thursday Styles’ Hermès scarves and Jimmy Choo mules. The most revealing quote comes from Times editor Bertram “Trip” Field III, who insists that "we're [not] trying to serve only those readers who can afford a $10,000 watch.” When Cottle examines the egalitarian timepieces Trip’s claimed to have covered, it turns out the cheapest one is an $890 Prada.

I’m not going to tsk-tsk consumerism here—been there, done that. But I do think Cottle’s insightful piece discloses another aspect of elite journalism—a class bias so pervasive that it’s not even noticed. I think such biases also work their way into scholarship. For example, the bien-pensant consensus on campaign finance reform has long held that we want races funded by a large number of “small donors”—presumably those who donate less than $500. But really, with median family income around $65,000 and average household savings near zero, how many of these small donations are going to come from those at the bottom half of the income scale?

Thankfully, Bruce Ackerman and Ian Ayres’s "Patriot Dollars" proposal addresses this issue by proposing donation vouchers of equal size for all voters. But I’m wondering where else implicit class biases inform a scholarly consensus…any ideas?

Posted by Frank_Pasquale at 08:53 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The Federal Bias In Criminal Law Scholarship

John Pfaff has an interesting post up at Empirical Legal Studies Blog entitled Federalism and Empirical Legal Research. In it he asks why there appears to a skew towards analysis of federal law among empirical researchers of criminal law. He ultimately boils his questions down to these:

1. Do we focus "too much" on federal outcomes?

2. If we do, does this mean that we are not developing results that explain either the impact of or the forces behind the legal changes that actually play a bigger role in people's lives?

3. If so, how can we rectify this? In particular, if it's a problem of data availability, how can we get the numbers we actually need?

In my view, we do focus too much on federal courts. Most cases - and prisoners - are in state systems. And states really are different. The employees are different because state criminal jobs often involve less training and lower salaries than comparable federal positions. State facilities are often in much poorer condition. State sentencing schemes vary widely from state to state, and often look little like federal provisions. And because most state prosecutors and judges stand for election, they operate under a different set of professional pressures. I would expect these differences have substantial effects on case processing and outcome.

Why do academics focus so much on the feds? A number of compelling reasons are mentioned at ELS Blog: a federal bias that starts in law school, better data collection in the federal system, and a worry that law reviews won't publish state-focused articles. To these I'd add the fact that federal jobs are considered higher status, and thus most law profs practice criminal law in the federal system before entering teaching.

For empirical researchers, the data problem is surely a biggie. I've run up against data shortages in both my quantitative and qualitative work. The quantitative ones are obvious: if states aren't collecting sentencing data, for example, how can you study deterrence? But there are problems even for qualitative work. In Making the Case for Megan's Law: A Study in Legislative Rhetoric, I compared Megan's Law debates at the state versus federal level. As I sought out a state dataset - that is, a well transcribed legislative debate - I discovered that few jurisdictions record their proceedings as fully, usefully, or permanently as Congress. And the absence of these legislative materials creates more than a gap in scholarship; it makes the job of courts more difficult, and renders democratic process less transparent.

This is not an impossible quandry, however. Quantitative researchers have collected some important data about state systems. Ron Wright and Marc Miller obtained a treasure trove of material from New Orleans, for example. And qualitative researchers can collect data about state systems at least as easily as they can study the feds. For example, a researcher using surveys, interviews and focus groups can work with county DA's as easily as Assistant US Attorneys. In fact, I imagine the local prosecutors will be far more excited about participating in a research project. When you're struggling in the trenches - and that is how state prosecutors and public defenders see themselves - it's kind of nice to have someone notice your work.

In my view, criminal law scholars ought to make a concerted effort to address state criminal justice systems. I don't edit a journal, but I'd like to use this bully pulpit to issue a Call For Papers on state criminal law.

Place them wherever you like, but drafts are due August 15.

Posted by Dan_Filler at 07:54 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Modeling to the Ignorant

The very brilliant Matthew Stephenson has recently published a positive political theory paper on the choice for Congress between delegation to agencies and delegation to courts. He thinks that a rational Congress will delegate decisions to agencies if it wants to create a regime that will be ideologically consistent across issues but variable over time (he studiously avoids examples, but perhaps agricultural subsidies – which could be changed in the future but in the present Congress wants done in a particular way – are the idea). And that Congress will delegate decisions to courts if it wants temporal consistency but ideological variability (perhaps a regulation requiring the alternating, as opposed to direct, current, or maybe rules that affect long-term government contracts, are cases where Congress would roll the dice on the content of the choice – delegate it to the courts – but hope that whatever choice is made becomes a predictable precedent that future courts follow).

The second part of Stephenson’s paper, though, is, quite literally, Greek to me:

Modeling is upon us. You see it in the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies – though empiricism is conventionally thought to be a form of social science that might be practiced without sophisticated modeling – and now you see it in the Harvard Law Review. Stephenson develops eight such formulas in the formal proof portion of his piece on legislative delegations.

What is the upside of this sort of modeling for lawyers and political scientists? God knows the latter do plenty of it, but there’s an audience cost – I expect that most of the legal scholars sympathetic to positive political theory apply its insights without even being close to being able to model like McNollgasts can. And I’ve been at conferences where law professors assessed models more with fear and trembling than with confidence in the clarity of the modeled insights. I am, after all, semi-like Stephenson, an eager and promising administrative law scholar [ed. – hoo boy. Might be a good time to disable comments.]. But I doubt that Stephenson was writing part II of his paper for my benefit, or if he was, he certainly won’t enjoy my incisive critique of it – I simply skipped it.

So other than noting, gentle reader, that perhaps you ought to try to learn the basics of modeling if you expect to be reading a lot of legal scholarship in the future, I wonder if I might trouble those of you who do enjoy reading modeling pieces to recommend legal scholarship (I guess I’ll leave economists and mathematicians out for now – I’ll assume without deciding that their modeling presents different concerns than does modeling in public law subjects) in which the thesis was inexpressible without the model. I’d also like advice on meta-scholarship – that is, good resources on how to read models. In short, I'd like to hear advice for a inexperienced consumer of formally modeled scholarship. I suspect you'd be doing more of the Co-Op's readers a service than you might think.

Posted by David_Zaring at 03:39 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack

Nothing Ordinary About Sexual Orientation Discrimination

On Monday, the Securities and Exchange Commission ruled that Ford Motor Company must allow a shareholder vote on a resolution altering the company's anti-discrimination policy. The resolution eliminates sexual orientation from the policy, implicitly suggesting that discrimination against gay people is OK. This is yet another volley in the ongoing culture wars playing out at Ford. A few months back, social conservatives pressed the company to withdraw ads from magazines targeted at gay people. The company decided to pull ads from gay-oriented publicatioins, explaining that the decision was purely financial. The American Family Association withdrew its threat to boycott the company. Then, after meeting with members of the gay community, the company backed off and re-committed to advertise in these publications. Now, a shareholder named Robert Hurley of Alton, Illinois, is taking a new approach: turning Ford "gay-unfriendly" from the inside.

Ford sought to have the resolution excluded from a vote under SEC Rule 14a-8(i)(7), which provides that a company need not submit an issue to shareholders if it involves "ordinary business operations." The question, then, is whether anti-discrimination policies are part of ordinary business operations. Let me say, first, that I have not dealt with SEC matters since I was a young associate in New York. But I would have guessed that an anti-discrimination employment provision would be part of ordinary business operations. Some might contend that mundane employment policies cease to be "ordinary" when they touch on hot-button social issues - and sexual orientation anti-discrimination policies, arguably, fit this category. But from my cursory research of SEC no-action letters, it appears that the SEC often allows companies to kill shareholder votes on employment polciies and does so even when the issues involve socially controversial matters.

On one hand, I tend to agree with those who believe in shareholder democracy. I am suspicious when a company seeks to shelter its policies from shareholder scrutiny and input. But I would be troubled if the SEC's new decision reflects a changed attitude about sexual orientation discrimination, rather than corporate governance. That is, is the SEC now forcing companies to put all manner of employment policy resolutions to a vote? Or did it only choose to do so when sexual orientation was at issue? I simply don't have the expertise to know.

Whatever the motives of the SEC, I'm not sure that the result is bad. Many progressives have come to believe that civil rights won through debate and democratic choice are more stable than those obtained through the decisions of small groups of elites. When change happens by majority choice, the remaining objectors can't play the "anti-majoritarian" card. There is no denying that, sometimes, elites - Presidents, judges, or corporate boards - spur positive change through anti-democratic actions. But on the issue of gay rights, I think that the public has already become pretty well engaged.

As for Ford, I say let Mr. Hurley have his vote. There are good business and social reasons for Ford to take a stand against discrimination. I agree with KipEsquire: those who seek to discriminate and diminish will be forced to the margins. And if they lose by acclamation, rather than declaration, perhaps they will find other things to be grumpy about.

UPDATE: I have not been able to find a free copy of this SEC letter, which was released on March 6, 2006. It is available on Westlaw at 2006 WL 739897.

FURTHER UPDATE: Thanks to Marty Lederman, a PDF copy of the letter is now available gratis.

Posted by Dan_Filler at 01:04 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

As the Law Blog Prospers, Whither the Law School?

Prawfsblawg is 1 year old today, Concurring Opinions just turned six months old. I've guested on both, and I thought that a post honoring my two generous hosts might usefully be combined with what I hope will be the least essential analysis of the US News law school rankings yet.

In the past year, what has happened to the rankings of the schools who have provided the Co-Op and Prawfs with their full-time staff?
Concurring Opinions (GW, TJ, Temple, AL) net +6
Prawfsblawg (FSU, Hastings, MI, SW, ND, Hofstra, Miami) net +4

Let's not think too hard about the methodology, shall we? Instead correlative congratulations are due to both staffs!

Posted by David_Zaring at 03:48 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Necessary Investment Incentives?

Pretty soon the alternative minimum tax is going to hit millions more taxpayers—even people making less than $50,000 annually. This extended reach will primarily harm those who work hard, pay property taxes, and have other deductions for things like dependent care, education, and health care. This AMT bite was never intended by Congress—it’s just reaching down the tax bracket because the figures it’s based on were drawn up decades ago.

You’d think this problem would be at the top of the tax reform agenda. Sadly, no. Rather, the big debate is over whether to extend tax cuts on investment income. As brilliant NYT tax reporter David Cay Johnston observes,

Among taxpayers with incomes greater than $10 million, the amount by which their investment tax bill was reduced averaged about $500,000 in 2003, and total tax savings, which included the two Bush tax cuts on compensation, nearly doubled, to slightly more than $1 million.

So this debate is basically about whether to make such windfalls permanent, or to try to stop our current fiscal irresponsibility and actually do something about our massive national debt.

But perhaps I misunderstand the issue. Is there a good policy reason for tax cuts for the superrich? Would they simply refuse to invest if better tax treatment weren’t given—choosing instead, perhaps, to roll around in vaults of money ala Scrooge McDuck? Would they renounce U.S. citizenship and move to the Isle of Man? I’m just trying to understand this policy on a higher level than positive political theory (which would, of course, predict that those best able to invest in money-intensive politics would get the highest returns). I guess I need to start reading the Tax Prof Blog!

Posted by Frank_Pasquale at 10:23 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

If Not Scholarship, What?

Bill Henderson has a tremendous post up on the Conglomerate which follows up on Dan's post of earlier this week on the relationship between time and US News reputation ranking scores. As Bill and Dan have now shown, a law school's academic reputation score is pretty sticky: even with increased, but varied, emphasis on scholarship in the last decade, few schools have moved much up or down. I guess this isn't totally surprising, given the difficulty in transforming a faculty, the relative weakness of academic institutions at marketing, etc. But it is sobering.

As Bill asks: "Why does every law school strategic plan, formed in the crucible of USNWR rankings angst, emphasize a plan of more and better scholarship when, empirically, such a strategy is unlikely to produce substantial improvements relative to peer schools?"

This all raises, at least for me, two possibly interrelated questions.

1. Is this just an artifact of known US News data collection problems? That is, assume that Leiter's rankings went back before 1999: would the resulting string evidence non-random movement of multiple schools over time? Will using less sophisticated, but very objective, systems like the SSRN top school ranking produce data that rewards and reflects pro-scholarship expenditures like an SSRN series, workshops, chaired lateral hiring, etc?

2. As I explored here, it is interesting to think about the application of Moneyball to law school hiring. Bill and Dan's posts suggest that the comparative advantage of selecting for productive scholars as a rankings boost is waning. [Believe me, I don't mean to suggest that this is nearly the only reason to select for scholarship, just a reason that rational schools might care about.] Billy Beane himself has remarked that the irrationalities he exploited in his early career (overvaluing the five tools, undervaluing walks and HRs) have largely been washed away, and he is finding it harder to exploit new advantages against well-managed peer teams. As I understand it, the new smart money in baseball is paying for defense and speed. I know this because the Phillies are paying for power and David Bell.

Are law schools in the same situation? And, if so, what should the smart money be spending cash on? Employment? Marketing? Facilities? Remember: the goal of this spending is to get as much relative peer-to-peer growth for your buck as possible. So, pretend you are a law school dean. What is in your next budget?

Posted by hoffman at 12:01 AM | Comments (9) | TrackBack

A Triumph for Divided Government?

Apparently Massachusetts politicians have hammered out a plan providing universal health coverage in that state. The bill is an interesting mix of mandates, incentives, and taxes. There's still some chance a squabble over taxes on businesses that don't provide insurance coverage may scuttle the deal. But overall, it's a very encouraging sign.

As the deal is finalized, I'll be watching my indefatigable friend Nathan Newman's blog (and that of PLAN, a group advocating social justice on a variety of fronts in state legislatures, and the Center for American Progress). Newman appears pretty pleased with the direction of reform now. If it works, it might stand as a great argument for divided government. Everyone knows health care reform is necessary, but few interests appear willing to give anything if "the other side's" party is the only one responsible for legislation (remember the scorched earth tacticians Harry & Louise?). A Republican governor in Massachusetts, balanced by a strongly Democratic legislature, appears to have broken the gridlock.

Posted by Frank_Pasquale at 09:56 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Leaving Tulane (Updated April Edition)

Newest updates in blue below, based on an email from a Tulane student. There have been a number of recent blog entries about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina for educational institutions in New Orleans: law blogs have focused particular attention on Tulane Law. One aspect of the story that seems to be missing is the extent of Tulane’s loss of faculty from this year to next. Based on lots of sources, here is a list of the ten eleven current Tulane law faculty who will not be at the school for all, or part of, next year. (I also hear that one of their incoming hires has decided not to join the faculty, but can not confirm a name.) If there are errors, additions or subtractions, please let me know.

1. Lloyd Bonfield: Visiting at NY Law School

2. Felice Batlan: Moving to Chicago-Kent [Untenured]

3. S. Alan Childress: Visiting at GW

4. Christopher A. Cotropia: Moving to Richmond [Untenured]

5. Marjorie E. Kornhauser: Moving to Arizona State

6. Jonathan Nash: Visiting at Hofstra [Untenured]

7. Rafael Pardo: Moving to Seattle [Untenured]

8. Wendy Scott: Moving to North Carolina Central University

9. David Snyder: Visiting at American

10. Mark Wessman: Visiting at South Carolina

11. Robert Westley: Visiting at DePaul

On first glace, this seems like a long, and (unfortunately) impressive, list to me. What is especially noteworthy is the number of junior folks who are leaving: I assume that Tulane will be doing lots of hiring next year. Anecdotally, this also seems like a large number of visits - although I'm sure most of them are not intended to be the prelude to moves.

Incidentally, I don't have any data on Loyola (NO)'s faculty, and welcome reader contributions on that front.

Update, 3/27: Based on correspondence, I've updated the above list to add one additional visit. I have also received private correspondence that confirms the list as accurate, notwithstanding some comments to the contrary. I also want to add that that I am not celebrating an exodus from Tulane - if that is indeed what this limited data set suggests - but rather trying to provide useful information to the overlapping communities (student, faculty, practitioners, etc.) who read this blog.

Update 4/4: I just received an email forwarded to me by a Tulane student, confirming two additional moves, that purports to be from Dean Ponoroff, who writes:

I’m writing because several of you have contacted me directly or indirectly to express concern about faculty who are leaving Tulane. I have seen the blog that many of you are reading and it is largely, though not entirely accurate. More troubling, it implies a level of “panic” that is neither factual nor warranted.

I respectfully disagree with Dean Ponoroff that my post does imply panic at Tulane Law: in any event, that was not my intent in publishing this information. As I have previously stated, I agree with Brian Leiter:

Faculty recruitment and retention, together with student recruitment and retention, will surely be crucial issues for Tulane over the next year or two. Assuming there are no more flooding fiascos, I would expect Tulane to largely succeed on both fronts in the long run . . . .

That said, early comments to this thread demonstrated some confusion about who was leaving: I hope this post has helped to shed some light on the situation on the ground. I am pleased that the comment thread has begun to turn to a discussion of the situation at Loyola as well. In my view, the more attention paid to the aftereffects of Katrina, the more likely it will be that the legal community will continue to help affected institutions and persons in the coming year(s).

Posted by hoffman at 05:00 PM | Comments (26) | TrackBack

Publishing Student Work

I run a seminar each Spring and I often get terrific student papers. I encourage my students to publish their work, frequently referring them to Eugene Volokh’s extraordinarily helpful guide (and, yes, encouraging them to buy it!). I’m now trying to boil down some advice for them into a draft memo.

I’m inserting a rough draft of it after the jump. I’d love to hear any advice from readers about ways I could improve this memo…particularly if you know particular journals that welcome the work of students from outside their home institution. And, of course, if this humble effort can be of any aid to your students, please feel free to distribute it (with the caveat that it's just a draft!).

To: Students
From: Prof.
Date:
Re: Publishing Your Paper

Congratulations on completing an excellent paper! I have written up this memo to give you some advice on the next steps you might take toward publishing it. While publication is never guaranteed, there is usually a venue that will agree to make your insights on timely issues available to the world. This memo focuses on

A) Why you should publish your piece.
B) How you can get it ready for publication.
C) Where you can send it to be published.
D) When you should have the piece prepared and submitted to journals.

A. Why Publish?

Publishing is both in your self-interest and in the public interest. First, if you start looking at the websites of successful lawyers, you will notice that many of them mention the books, articles, and practice guides they have written. A publication indicates that you have thought deeply about a subject, proposed a solution, and had both your analysis and conclusion validated by an external reviewer.
Moreover, to the extent you can believe in your conclusions, you are helping the world by publishing your piece. If your paper just sits on your hard drive, no one can access your thoughts. Publishing allows you to influence the course of events via original argument. Your ideas can matter, if you take the few extra steps mentioned below in order to disseminate them.

B. How to Publish?

Although the academic legal community does a great deal of substantive good in the world, it is also, for better or worse, obsessed with form. The most important step you can take now to assure publication of your paper is to make it look like a law review article. That includes the following steps.

1. Isolate a thesis that can be stated in a sentence.
2. In the paragraph of the introduction where you state your thesis, describe each section of the paper in a sentence.
3. Format the article like the attached sample article (you can use this document as a template—just type in your own title and name, and copy in the text of your article).
4. Write a brief letter describing your piece and requesting publication.

When you’ve got all this together, you can electronically submit your piece to most journals.
You should read the following document before you submit your work:

http://www.law.ucla.edu/volokh/writing/a25.pdf

If you think it would be helpful, check out the entire book from the library, or purchase it yourself.

If this all sounds like too much work, you might just send in the paper as it is and take your chances. But note that the law reviews don’t like looking at the same piece twice, so it’s advisable to make your first effort your best.

C. Where to Publish?

1. Here is a service that allows you to simply check boxes and send your piece (and a letter of submission) to law reviews via email:

http://www.nku.edu/~chase/libesubmission.html

2. Note that this service is both over and underinclusive. It is overinclusive because it includes the main law reviews of each school. You will probably find that the main law review of each law school only publishes pieces from professors and students on that law review. It is underinclusive because it fails to mention some journals of “Law & (some other subject).” You therefore might want to independently submit to journals of “Law &,” such as journals of law & technology. The following URL’s can give you some leads on these journals:

http://stu.findlaw.com/journals/
http://stu.findlaw.com/journals/ip_and_cyberspace.html
http://stu.findlaw.com/journals/health.html

Some of these journals require hard copy submissions, but virtually all the technology ones conduct their business via email.

D. When to Publish?

There really is no hard and fast rule here, but you should try to submit it in September/October, or March/April. If circumstances prevent you from doing so, feel free to submit it later on. Just know that some journals fill up as the year goes on.

Posted by Frank_Pasquale at 02:17 PM | Comments (15) | TrackBack

Law of Conservation of Responsibility?

Back in 2004, a Florida judge angrily sent 11 defendants—mainly traffic offenders—to a jail cell for hours because they happened to be in the wrong courtroom. He’s now trying to keep his job, and claims in his defense that he had undiagnosed attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

I think the case raises fascinating issues, less for the judge’s defense (I have no idea whether it’s accurate or exculpating), than for the cultural effect of such defenses. Are support groups for people with ADHD glad to see such defenses raised in court, since they add legal heft to diagnoses? Or are they worried that opportunistic defendants are going to discredit ADHD as one more tool to “get around” conventional notions of responsibility? I’d love to hear more on this type of debate, either in the criminal context (over the insanity defense) or in civil contexts. It’s a bit topical, given that the Supreme Court will hear arguments in Clark v. Arizona on April 19, to determine whether defendants have a constitutional right to an insanity defense.

All I’ll say for now is that this is not just a scientific question....

A recent article in the NYT suggested that

researchers have begun to resolve the contrary nature of impulsivity, identifying the elements that distinguish benign experimentation from self-destructive acts. The latest work, in brain research and psychological studies, helps explain how impulsive tendencies develop and when they can lead people astray. A potent combination of genes and emotionally disorienting early experiences puts people at high risk, as do some very familiar personal instincts.

Though I’m happy about this research, my worry is that the explanation of impulsive behavior can very quickly become a justification of it. As P.F. Strawson suggests in his classic paper Freedom and Resentment, questions of free will and determinism are best modeled in terms of our reactions to certain behavior (and not (to put my own, John Horgan-like gloss on it) as scientifically verifiable via, say, brain scans):

Let us consider, then, occasions for resentment: situations in which one person is offended or injured by the action of another and in which—in the absence of special considerations—the offended person might naturally or normally be expected to feel resentment. Then let us consider what sorts of special considerations might be expected to modify or mollify this feeling or remove it altogether. . . . I think they can be roughly divided into two kinds. To the first group belong all those which might give occasion for the employment of such expressions as ‘He didn’t mean to’, ‘He hadn’t realized’, ‘He didn’t know’; and also all those which might give occasion for the use of the phrase ‘He couldn’t help it’, when this is supported by such phrases as ‘He was pushed’, ‘He had to do it’, ‘It was the only way’, ‘They left him no alternative’, etc.

***

The second group of considerations is very different. I shall take them in two subgroups of which the first is far less important than the second. In connection with the first subgroup we may think of such statements as ‘He wasn’t himself’, ‘He has been under very great strain recently’, ‘He was acting under post-hypnotic suggestion’; in connection with the second, we may think of ‘He’s only a child’, ‘He’s a hopeless schizophrenic’, ‘His mind has been systematically perverted’, ‘That’s purely compulsive behaviour on his part’. Such pleas as these do, as pleas of my first general group do not, invite us to suspend our ordinary reactive attitudes towards the agent, either at the time of his action or all the time. They do not invite us to see the agent’s action in a way consistent with the full retention of ordinary inter-personal attitudes and merely inconsistent with one particular attitude. . . . The second and more important subgroup of cases allows that the circumstances were normal, but presents the agent as psychologically abnormal—or as morally undeveloped. The agent was himself; but he is warped or deranged, neurotic or just a child. When we see someone in such a light as this, all our reactive attitudes tend to be profoundly modified.

In other words, there is an interaction between culture, law, and science in the attribution of responsibility. We as a society are free to develop our own account of responsibility, which ideally of course should conform to scientific understandings of the mind, but is by no means dictated by the present state of science. As Charles Tilly helpfully reminds us, there are lots of different kinds of explanations, and they are often wrapped up in the kinds of normative judgments we usually consider alien to science.

Posted by Frank_Pasquale at 01:56 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Fiction for Truth About Law Firms

The academics and the message boards can only tell us so much about law firms. Lost illusion is the undisclosed title of every novel, so surely the fictionalists have something to add. But if you’re not up for the latest Turow or Auchinloss, where should you turn? Chick lit has provided us with insight into the cultures of magazines, movie studios, nannies, and bounty hunters – but, though In Her Shoes makes a bow in that direction, I’m unaware of a really good law firm entrant in the genre.

Which brings us to Kermit Roosevelt’s In the Shadow of the Law and Nick Laird’s Utterly Monkey. The former – idealistic young lawyers in a powerful DC firm, and Pacey from Dawson’s Creek is working on the televised adaptation – struck me as quite authentic in the way and style of One L, though you can certainly quibble with the decision to tell the story through fifteen main characters. The latter – fish out of water Irish Proddy tries to survive Magic Circle London firm and his nogoodnik Ulster mates – is, if anything, even more writerly, though I had the same problem with it that I had with Cameron Stracher’s Double Billing, an early entrant in the genre: both match the elegant prose with a kinda grating woe-is-me-the-poor-young-associate schtick.

But these are the quibbles – I raced through the Roosevelt, and I found the Laird (fun fact!: married to Zadie Smith! she's definitely his better half, tho) quite enjoyable, too. I hope that today’s young lawyers do a bit better in firm life than their fictional counterparts. Maybe they will do so if they find the time to read some novels – as well as plenty of law review articles.

Posted by David_Zaring at 12:43 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Our Six Month Developmental Milestones

To determine whether a baby is developing normally, you compare her activities and skills to developmental milestones for that age group. Here are some six month old milestones, thanks to the Health Child Care site, along with commentary on how we're doing.

1. The baby will reach for and grasp objects, putting a lot of them in her mouth. That's us. We are happy to pick up any topic, whether or not it is appropriate for our age (or expertise), and offer our opinion. Personally, I often discover that the object in my mouth is my foot.

2. The six month-old will babble, laugh and squeal when playing and happy. You don't have to look much farther than Dan's Airline Screening Playset to see a happy, squealing blogger at work! As for babbling? What about Dan's chipper Spam Poetry post?

3. A six-month-old knows familiar faces, including her own, and will smile at herself in the mirror. Isn't that exactly what we're doing with all of today's anniversary posts? Look at that cute blog! Wait! It's us!

4. Interaction with caregivers continues to be important for six-month-olds. We're desperate for your comments and links. You do love us, right? And promise you'll never leave?

5. Feeding times are opportunities to repeat the names of foods, colors, and objects such as "spoon" and "bowl." Or to translate this into Co-op parlance, Jennifer Aniston Nude! Jennifer Aniston Nude! Jennifer Aniston Nude!

Frankly, I think we're right on target. And six months from now, I'm looking forward to having a regular sleeping schedule as well!

Posted by Dan_Filler at 11:50 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

If You Were at Temple Law Today

You could come to my colleague Craig Green's presentation on "Repressing Erie's Myth." I think it is a fascinating project, and I asked for his permission to share the abstract with our readers. It follows below the jump.

The doctrinal influence of Erie -- one the most "iconic" cases in US law -- has grown unduly large as a descriptive matter, with arguably perverse effects in areas ranging from the Alien Tort Statute, to military commission procedures, to habeas-stripping statutes. The article has three parts:

Part I seeks to scale Erie back on its own terms. Erie held that federal courts should generally apply state substantive law. That reversed a 95-year-old view of the Rules of Decision Act and held that pre-Erie tolerance for "federal general common law" was unconstitutional. Erie’s constitutional arguments are dubious, despite their eminent defenders (e.g., Ely, Friendly, Kurland, Mishkin, Pollak, Frankfurter, Brandeis, and Holmes). What's most important, however, is that -- until recently -- Erie could be seen as either (1) a case to fix a bad statutory interpretation, or (2) a cornerstone of Our Federalism, with deep significance for federal and state law, and federal and state courts. Regardless, however, Erie was not predominantly a separation of powers case concerning federal courts’ inherent limitations.

Part II explores the illegitimacy of Erie as an independent limit on federal judicial power in contexts outside diversity jurisdiction, the Rules of Decision Act, federalism, and other matters relevant to Erie and its progeny. The Court has already made one recent error applying Erie. Two others might be on the horizon.

1. Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain concerned the Alien Tort Statute of 1789. ("The district courts shall have original jurisdiction of any civil action by an alien for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States.") The question was whether, given that purely jurisdictional statute, anyone could actually sue for "violation[s] of the law of nations." Whence the cause of action? In analyzing that issue, the Supreme Court divided on particulars, but all nine Justices agreed that Erie-based skepticism about "federal common law" was analytically vital. Every commentator since Sosa has accepted that premise. I have doubts. There are few direct state/federal concerns in Sosa, and the Rules of Decision Act does not frontally pertain. Erie -- even as a mythic icon -- should not affect interpretation of the ATS, or federal courts' ability to hear private lawsuits thereunder. To be clear, my dispute isn't with Sosa's result, except insofar as it rests on Erie. There are important fights about the ATS, concerning critical values of domestic and international law. All of those values are masked, rather than illuminated, by invoking Erie’s myth.
2. Hamdan v. Rumsfeld is a pending SCt case concerning military commissions’ validity and procedural requirements. Hamdan argues that the President lacks authority to try detainees in military commissions without clearer congressional authorization. If that's wrong, it's because the President has a nonstatutory authority to hold military commissions. The Court has described a military commission as "our common-law war court. It has no statutory existence, though it is [implicitly] recognized by statute law." Erie should -- and is generally thought to -- be irrelevant in determining whether federal courts can recognize such non-statutory or quasi-statutory presidential authority. It should also be irrelevant to whether courts can apply common-law procedural limits to military commission proceedings, e.g., the right to confront witnesses or to be present at all stages of the proceeding. Hamdan argues that federal courts should, even absent statutory authorizing legislation, apply certain Geneva Convention requirements to military commissions. He could also invoke "pure" common-law fairness norms as restraints on commission procedures. Such arguments may succeed or fail on their merits. But what must be avoided is any effort to invoke iconic Erie-based norms against "federal common law."

3. The Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, by its terms, removed habeas jurisdiction for aliens held by the Defense Dept at Guantanamo Bay. The Act separately provided "exclusive jurisdiction" for such detainees to obtain review of their confinement before the DC Circuit. Bush issued the following signing statement: "[N]oting that the text and structure of [the DC Circuit review provision] do not create a private right of action to enforce Title X, the executive branch shall construe Title X not to create a private right of action." Accordingly, "the executive branch shall construe [the Act] to preclude the Federal courts from exercising subject matter jurisdiction over any existing or future action, including applications for writs of habeas corpus, described in [the Act]." Briefs will soon explain the President's position. The ATS case, Sosa -- which also concerned a purely jurisdictional statute -- will likely be debated. And Erie may again be offered up as a bulwark against any judicial review that smacks of "federal common law." That would be a mistake.

Part III suggests that Erie's (excerpted) catchphrase "there is no federal . . . common law" is superficially appealing, but ultimately misplaced as a rubric for analyzing judicial power. Still, as the proverb goes, you can't beat something with nothing. The persistent and now potentially rail-jumping myth of Erie illustrates the allure of, and perhaps need for, a general architecture for Congress-Court relations. If not Erie, what should we use? i suggest transforming Jackson's Steel Seizure Case test. That opinion, which dealt with presidential power, laid out three logical options. For a particular presidential action, Congress may have (i) authorized that action, (ii) forbidden that action, or (iii) remained effectively silent. Confronted with those three possibilities, Jackson (obviously) said that the President's power is greatest when authorized, least when forbidden, and uncertain (a "zone of twilight") in congressional silence.

Applying that approach to courts may prove (surprisingly) apt. When Congress tells courts to do something, the latter's actions are maximally legitimate. When Congress tells courts not to do something, the latter's actions are maximally dubious. And when Congress has not spoken, there is ample room for gray-shaded analysis of context, history, function, and other factors in deciding whether a federal court's "common-law" actions are legitimate. I tend to think that, with respect to military commissions and habeas-stripping, relevant contextual factors tend to legitimate judicial activity. But even for those who disagree with those results, everyone might at least concur that Erie's jurisprudential overgrowth merits trimming before it does jurisprudential mischief. Erie's myth -- which has dominated law schools for nearly seventy years -- has mutated from conventional orthodoxy into something much more dangerous. Now is the time to stop that mutation, which may oversimplify hard questions with potentially serious results.

I'm sure that Craig would welcome your comments or suggestions.

Posted by hoffman at 08:16 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

US News Rankings: A Chart of the Past Decade

Co-authored with Dan Filler.

The US News rankings have captivated legal academia. The rankings have had a tremendous effect on student decisions about which law schools to attend. They have also had an impact on which authors receive offers from law reviews (the letterhead effect) and the choices that authors make when faced with multiple publication offers. As one might expect, given that US News wants to sell magazines, schools move around the rankings to some degree. Each year the rankings produce a few new "haves" and a gang of fresh "have nots."

We have created a chart of the trends in the US News ranking for the top 25 law schools over the past decade. Below is a small version of the chart; click on it for the full-size version. More analysis is below the chart.

As the chart demonstrates, there are some bands of stability and some areas of volatility. The same six schools have occupied the top six positions for the last decade. There has been little movement in the top 15. But below the top 15, schools dance around quite substantially.

When students choose law schools, they should remain focused on the forest and not get lost in the trees. Focusing on year-to-year changes can be misleading. For example, in 2006, Wash. U. moved up five spots from 24 to 19. But a year earlier, it dropped from 20 to 24. What is the real Wash. U? Over time, one can see a dramatic change -- Wash. U was in the high twenties and early thirties until it leveled out at 25 in 2002. In another example, if one looked at GW in 1998, it was ranked 20. But at that time the 20 was an anomaly, as Wash U was 24 in 1997 and 25 in 1998. After 2004, GW has been consistenly ranked either 20 or 19. To the extent that the US News rankings have any value at all, it is evident only in long-term trends, not in yearly fluctuations.

There are other instances where the US News rankings are simply a game of musical chairs for certain groups of schools. For example, Berkeley, Virginia, and Michigan have been have engaged in a US News game of cat-and-mouse over the past decade. When one school drops, students may become crestfallen. Prospective students may shift their preferences. However, over time, the ordering of these schools appears just to shuffle around a lot, with no discernible pattern. Relying on the US News rankings to choose among these three law schools is like choosing one's hometown based on today's weather report.

Below is the full data set; click on the chart for a larger image.

UPDATE: We have corrected an error pointed out in the comments. The charts now reflect Virginia's correct 2006 ranking of #8. We also learned that a commenter at xoxohth has created even more comprehensive data charts here in Microsoft Excel format.

One more point regarding what looking at the rankings temporally tells us. For many schools, the rankings don't change very much. And even the big changes are simply often a reflection of the fact that so many schools are tied or nearly tied; hence, a small nudge upward or downward will lead to a bigger fluctuation in rank. If people look at any given year and compare it to the year before, they might assume that there is some kind of progress for certain schools and some regress for others. But if they look at the big picture, there is lasting change for only a few schools. For example, take Berkeley. From 1997 to 2006, it was ranked 7, 10, 8, 9, 7, 10, 13, 11, and 8. So it is basically where it started, but sometimes it was a "Top 10" school and sometimes it wasn't. Of course, in the real world, Berkeley did not make a prodigal journey. If one looks at the rankings when Berkeley went from 10 to 8, she might think: "Berkeley is on the move. It's now firmly in the top 10." But a few years later, Berkeley would not only fall to 10, but would plunge as low as 13. One might be tempted to think: "Oh my, Berkeley's really plunging now. They must be doing something wrong." Now, Berkeley's back in the top 10. Should we think "progress"? No. There's no progress. Berkeley is basically where it always was -- in the top 10, where it clearly belongs in my opinion. The only change is where US News places it in the rankings. Therefore, looking at the rankings temporally suggests that one shouldn't take the US ranking changes in any one year very seriously.

Posted by Daniel Solove at 02:23 AM | Comments (13) | TrackBack

Six Months of Concurring Opinions

It’s our 50 year 25 year 10 year 1 year . . . six month anniversary (but that's a long span in blogosphere time), and today I hereby declare that all of our posts are on the house – they are entirely free. Yes – free! So visit the blog today and enjoy our great hospitality!

To mark this occasion, I thought I would link to some of the posts I wrote that are my personal favorites here at Concurring Opinions. Why am I doing this? Well, the true reason is that I'm lazy and have nothing to say right now, so why not rehash some old stuff from the archives? Anyway, if you missed any of these, you might enjoy them:

1. The Airline Screening Playset: Hours of Fun!
2. Notice of Privacy Practices
3. A Day in the Life of Blogging
4. A Translation of Gonzales's Answers at the NSA Surveillance Hearings
5. Do No Evil and Perhaps Do Some Good: Google, Privacy, and Business Records
6. Free Credit Reports: My Exciting Adventure
7. Blogging Without Tenure
8. Abolish the Bar Exam

Posted by Daniel Solove at 12:53 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Happy Birthday To Us: A Comment Thread

Today (April 4) is our sixth month anniversary as a blog. Go us!

Other folks may be writing celebratory or nostalgic entries throughout the day. I'll let this post serve as an open comment thread for readers who: (1) want to identify themselves as regulars; and/or (2) tell us a little bit about what they've liked/disliked about the blog over the last six months. It is my guess that we've somewhere between 1000-1500 regular visitors a day. Who are you and what do you do? Do you want more privacy posts? Or, being normal, do you want more posting on corporate, securities, and the like? How did you discover us? Do you wish we had moderated comments? No comments? Open comment threads?

Posted by hoffman at 12:01 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Reciprocal Criminal Discovery, Or, What Was That Story Doing In My Sunday Times?

For some reason, the New York Times featured a story in Sunday's paper about a change in Massachusett's criminal procedure rules. A little over two weeks ago, in Commonwealth v. Durham (446 Mass. 212), the state's high court ruled that under its reciprocal discovery rule, a judge could compel a defendant to turn over statements by Commonwealth witnesses if s/he hoped to use these statements to impeach the witnesses. I have a couple of comments about this story. The first is really a question: why did it appear yesterday and why was it in the Times? The decision came down on March 14 and the Boston Globe (owned by the Times) ran a story the next day. The Times story wasn't about a national trend. Although it did place the Durham case in a national context (without bothering to mention the case name), it was first and foremost about the two-week old state court decision. I thought that was odd.

What of the substance? As a public defender, I certainly would have preferred not to turn over any part of my case in advance. One of the lawyers quoted in the story suggested that having such information in advance will help witnesses lie better by preparing them for likely cross-examination questions. In some cases this will certainly happen, but I'm not sure about the efficacy of this coaching. In my experience, professional witnesses - like police - are pretty effective at modifying their testimony to address expected defects. This rule will rarely implicate police witnesses, however, because they typically refuse to give out-of-court statements to defense investigators. Lay witnesses - the people from whom defense investigators typically obtain statements - are often much less talented than police when it comes to testimony refinement.

One lawyer suggested that this rule may result in more dismissals as prosecutors learn about the weaknesses of their cases in advance. Possibly. But even where there is no reciprocal discovery rule, many defense lawyers share these statements with trustworthy prosecutors in the hope of getting a dismissal. I'm not sure how making this discovery mandatory improves a defendant's lot.

The best argument for reciprocal discovery is that litigation usually produces the most "accurate" results when both sides are fully prepared. In the absence of reciprocal discovery, prosecutors are always at a bit of a loss regarding the weaknesses of their case (at least with respect to civilian witnesses.) If we trust prosecutors not to coach witnesses to lie, the rule seems reasonable enough. On the other hand, I have come across several aggressive prosecutors who view the process as a game rather than a truth-seeking function. In their hands, these statements will not necessarily produce greater accuracy.

In the end, sadly, this rule will have limited impact and its effects won't be those predicted in the article. Most defense lawyers have no discovery to provide the DA. They often lack the time, the will and the resources to conduct serious investigations. I fear that a reciprocal discovery rule will end up being used as an excuse for further defense sloth. Why bother investigating, some may ask, when the witness will simply be coached to testi-lie? And I wonder whether courts considering ineffective assistance claims against these attorneys will agree that this explanation renders non-investigation a legitimate defense strategy.

Interesting stuff, this, but what in the world was it doing in my Sunday Times?

Posted by Dan_Filler at 01:59 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

US News Law School Rankings: A Comparison With 1998 And 1995

Not surprisingly, there's been some discussion of the new US News rankings here, here, here, here, and here. In an effort to produce entertaining, if ultimately useless, information, I decided to dig into my US News archives to produce comparisons between the new list and some older rankings. I refer to the rankings by year of publication, so that the new rankings are 2006 (though they are marketed as 2007.)

I've tried to do three things in this post. First, I've listed the schools that experienced the greatest shifts in reputational numbers comparing the 1998 rankings to the new list. I chose 1998 because that year US News switched to a 1 - 5 scale for measuring reputations. Second, I've produced a comparison of the ranking of law schools, by academic reputation, between the 1995 rankings (the oldest material in my personal files) and the new list. In 1995, US News expressed academic reputation in terms of rank nationally, rather than absolute numbers. Third, I've compared overall US News ranking of the top 30 schools in 1995 with the new ranking.

Comparing the academic reputation numbers from 1998 and 2006 (although US News is marketing the new list as "2007 rankings", I will refer to all rankings based on year of release), no school moved more than 0.3 points up or down. Here is a list of the schools that moved up or down 0.3. Note that only only school - Michigan State, which had just acquired Detroit College of Law - moved up 0.3. The rest all dropped.

Baylor (-.3)
Case Western Reserve (-.3)
Duquesne (-.3)
Kansas (-.3)
Michigan State (+.3)
Nebraska (-.3)
Richmond (-.3)
St. Mary's (-.3)
South Dakota (-.3)
SMU (-.3)
Wayne State (-.3)
West Virginia Univ. (-.3)
Wisconsin (-.3)

What about those schools that had big overall moves - like George Mason (from second tier, unranked, to 37), Washington University in St. Louis (from 29 to 19), or the University of Toledo (from fourth tier - bottom 20 - to 93)? Mason moved up 0.2, Wash U went up 0.1, and Toledo actually dropped 0.1. Hawaii, which moved dramatically from 50 to 93 maintained exactly the same faculty repuation numbers.

The lawyer and judge reputation numbers showed more variation. Here are the top movers over that eight year span:

Michigan State (+1.0)
Widener (+.9)
Arkansas - Fayetteville (+.7)
California - Western (+.7)
South Dakota (+.7)
Creighton (+.6)
George Mason (+.6)
Houston (-.6)
Penn State - Dickinson (+.6)
Indiana - Bloomington (+.5)
Missouri - Columbia (+.5)
Missouri - Kansas City (+.5)
Ohio Northern (+.5)
William Mitchell (+.5)
Arkansas - Little Rock (+.4)
Capital (+.4)
Detroit Mercy (-.4)
Indiana- Indianapolis (+.4)
Iowa (+.4)
Mercer (+.4)
Nova Southeastern (-.4)
Ohio St. (+.4)
Oklahoma (+.4)
Pepperdine (+.4)
Richmond (+.4)
Samford - Cumberland (+.4)
Seattle (+.4)
Texas Wesleyan (+.4)
Toledo (+.4)
Tulane (+.4)
Washington Univ. in St. Louis (+.4)

Some take-aways:
1. Lesser known schools acquired by big-name universities enjoy a big bump from practitioners.
2. There is far more volatility in lawyer/judge reputation numbers. And quite the opposite of academic reputation, almost all the lawyer/judge reputation movement is upward.
3. Not surprisingly, there is far more volatility among regional law schools than the national programs. There are probably two reasons for this. First, since the top national schools receive numbers close to 5, it would be nearly impossible for them to increase reputational numbers much. And because most of these schools are widely known and respected, they are more likely to be viewed positively by any random selection of voters. On the other hand, there will probably be more variance from voting pool to voting pool with respect to less known regional schools. Think of it this way: virtually every voter in any randomly selected pool has heard of Harvard and knows it's good; many voters have never heard of Washburn Law and those that have are less likely to have a consistent impression of its quality.
4. Somebody forgot to survey lawyers and judges in Arkansas and Missouri back in 1998.

Finally, here are the 2006/1995 comparisons. Although the 1995 rankings didn't provide absolute numbers representing school reputation, they discussed school reputation in terms of their overall rank nationally. Using that data, I've compared the 1995 and 2006 rankings of the top 30 schools by reputation among academics. I cribbed Brian Leiter's restatement of the U.S. News list of law schools in order of reputation among academics. Note the remarkable stasis. All the top 30 are identical, except for the recent addition of W&L and the drop-out of Hastings. Note also how the new system tends to overstate small differences by using absolute values rather than clusters. The final chart is side by side overall rankings in 2006 versus 1995. It pretty much speaks for itself.

2006 RANKING OF LAW SCHOOLS BY ACADEMIC REPUTATION	1995 RANKING OF LAW SCHOOLS BY ACADEMIC REPUTATION
1. Harvard University (4.9)	1. Columbia
1. Yale University (4.9)	1. Harvard
3. Stanford University (4.8)	1. Michigan
4. Columbia University (4.7)	1. Stanford
4. University of Chicago (4.7)	1. Yale
6. New York University (4.6)	1. University of Chicago
6. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (4.6)	7. NYU
8. University of California, Berkeley (4.5)	7. UC Berkeley
8. University of Virginia (4.5)	7. Virginia
10. University of Pennsylvania (4.4)	10. Cornell
11. Cornell University (4.2)	10. Duke
11. Duke University (4.2)	10. Northwestern
11. Georgetown University (4.2)	10. Pennsylvania
14. Northwestern University (4.1)	10. Texas
14. University of Texas, Austin (4.1)	15. Georgetown
16. University of California, Los Angeles (4.0)	16. None Listed
17. University of Southern California (3.8)	17. Minnesota
17. Vanderbilt University (3.8)	17. North Carolina
19. University of Minnesota, Twin Cities (3.6)	17. Vanderbilt
19. University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (3.6)	17. Wisconsin
21. George Washington University (3.5)	21. Iowa
21. University of Iowa (3.5)	21. Southern California
21. University of Wisconsin, Madison (3.5)	23. Illinois
21. Washington University, St. Louis (3.5)	23. UC Hastings
25. Boston University (3.4)	25. Boston College
25. Emory University (3.4)	25. Boston University
25. University of California, Davis (3.4)	25. Emory
25. University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (3.4)	25. George Washington
25. Washington & Lee University (3.4)	25. UC Davis
30. Boston College (3.3)	25. Univ. of Washington
30. College of William & Mary (3.3)
30. University of California, Hastings (3.3)
30. University of Notre Dame (3.3)

2006 OVERALL RANKING OF LAW SCHOOLS	1995 OVERALL RANKING OF LAW SCHOOLS
1. Yale	1. Yale
2. Stanford	2. Harvard
3. Harvard	2. Stanford
4. Columbia	4. Chicago
4. NYU	5. Columbia
6. Chicago	6. NYU
7. Pennsylvania	7. Virginia
8. UC Berkeley	8. UC Berkeley
8. Michigan	8. Michigan
10. Virginia	8. Duke
11. Duke	11. Pennsylvania
12. Northwestern	11. Northwestern
13. Cornell	13. Georgetown
14. Georgetown	14. Cornell
15. UCLA	15. University of Southern California
16. Texas	16. Vanderbilt
17. University of Southern California	17.