Author Archive for miriam-cherry
Statutory Poetry
posted by Miriam Cherry
Those who are subscribers to the AALS listserve will not be surprised to see another example of Sid Delong‘s (Seattle) razor-sharp wit, but it was still a surprising amount of fun to see him take on the topic of “statutory poetry” in a short essay appearing in the Journal of Legal Education.
I had no idea that anyone could find poetry in the Model Rules of Professional Responsibility, 1.17, comment 13, yet Sid apparently has:
This Rule applies ot the sale of a law practice by representatives of a deceased, disabled, or disappeared lawyer.
Sid comments: “[D]isappeared lawyer.’ What poignancy lies in that phrase! The image triggers a flood of allusion: Judge Crater, the Chesire cat. And consider the prosodic significance of the alliterative series ‘deceased, disabled, or disappeared.’ One cannot help but wonder what additional alternatives the poet considered and rejected: dissipated, diseased, demented, despondent, depressed, degenerate, dejected, defunct.”
In the rest of the essay Sid has fun with the UCC and the bankruptcy code, noting that some of his poetry analysis “confirms what many have long suspected: Revised Article 9 was drafted not by human beings at all, but by non-English speaking robots[.]” The whole Essay is highly recommended (apparently not online except for the table of contents, but free in a faculty mailbox near you) especially if you are feeling in a mood that is either curmudgeonly or poetic (or both).
October 15, 2008 at 4:49 am
Posted in: Contract Law & Beyond, Humor
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Globalizing the Curriculum Initiative
posted by Miriam Cherry
Here at Pacific McGeorge we have embarked upon a program of integrating international and comparative law issues into all relevant law school courses — what we call the “globalizing the curriculum initiative.” The idea is to ensure that all law school graduates have some exposure to international and comparative law so that they are prepared for practice in an era of increased globalization.
The most visible part of the initiative is the Global Issues book series. These casebook supplements are designed to allow professors to introduce international and comparative law issues into traditionally domestically oriented courses. Currently, Thomson-West has published thirteen books in the series, which cover Civil Procedure, Property, Contracts, Torts, Criminal Law, Constitutional Law, Corporate Law, Legal Ethics, Employment Discrimination, Labor Law, Family Law, Tax, and my own title (with Sam Estreicher), Employment Law. The books have already had adoptions at approximately fifty schools. An additional fourteen books are under, or expected to be under, contract.
The more normative question that I’d like to ask is whether this is having an impact. At Pacific McGeorge, almost every student now receives significant exposure to international and comparative law through required courses. Less clear is how this is impacting student understanding and attitudes. We are beginning to collect some data here in-house (based on student evaluation comments). I suspect some readers have introduced international and comparative law issues into traditionally domestic classes, and may have some data on the outcome (even if only anecdotal). If so, I would certainly be interested in hearing from you in comments, and I will make sure that the Global Issues series editor, my colleague Frank Gevurtz, will receive your input.
October 13, 2008 at 4:32 pm
Posted in: International & Comparative Law
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Creative Thoughts for Promoting Faculty Scholarship
posted by Miriam Cherry
Prompted by some comments from Mike Madison (Associate Dean for Scholarship, Pitt), we are tossing around the idea of doing a daylong “scholarship retreat” here at Pacific McGeorge. The idea would be to use a day during reading period to present works-in-progress, analyze scholarship trends, and discuss the writing and submission process.
I got a little carried away, however, and started thinking about more creative activities for the day – such as a contest to come up with the most interesting title for someone’s WIP, have a couple of sentences about tackling problems in your field that could encourage a free write, and maybe some other type of game (!) to get the creativity flowing. If your school does these types of scholarship retreats, how do you use the day? Have there been any particular suggestions that seemed to work well? I’d appreciate your comments.
October 12, 2008 at 6:48 pm
Posted in: Law School (Scholarship)
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Limitations of Technology and “Right Size” Challenges
posted by Miriam Cherry
Last week, I read that a hiker had come across the remains of adventurer Steve Fossett’s airplane near Mammoth Lakes, California (full story here). What was unique in the search for the downed plane last year was the nature and extent of the search and rescue effort. Thousands of people on their computers joined together to scour pictures taken by aerial photography in hopes of saving Fossett or at least finding the crash site. This distributed search network was part of Amazon’s Mechanical Turk – which breaks down massive tasks (like scanning through thousands of aerial photographs) into small portions that can be performed by thousands of individuals, taking up only a few minutes of their time.
Professor Yochai Benkler has been writing about these types of collaborative networks, most recently in his book The Wealth of Networks, and I’ve recently been thinking a lot about them too, especially what they might mean for the future of work (and accordingly, traditional labor and employment law doctrine). But before getting too excited about these new forms of distributed collaboration, I have to sound a note of caution.
October 11, 2008 at 5:29 pm
Posted in: Technology
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A Taxonomy of Legal Blog Postings
posted by Miriam Cherry
They say that blogging is like bicycling, you never forget how it’s done. Actually, they don’t say that about blogging; I just made that up, and I have no idea who “they” are, (although “they” seem very influential on the subject of clichés). In any event, I want to thank Dan, Dave, et al for having me back as a guest for the month of October. So, being a regular reader/contributor both here on ConOp and over at Prawfs, didya ever notice that you can characterize the most common types of blog posts into major categories?:
* Heller Bailout Palin. (Actually sounds like a name that Palin would bestow upon a child).
*How about the use of those laptops in class? No? Don’t want to start that one up again? C’mon.
*Scholarship v. Teaching? (Yes, that old saw).
*Rigor? Anyone? Rigor Mortis?
*I need to hype my article/book.
*I need to hype someone else’s article/book.
*I need to hype a conference.
*I need to hype myself.
*I am full of hype.
*I am going to hyperventilate.
October 3, 2008 at 12:27 am
Posted in: Blogging
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Cherry Out
posted by Miriam Cherry
Well, my extended guest stay here is just about up. I’ll continue blogging about contracts topics over at ContractsProf Blog (The blog that Frank Snyder built, part of Paul Caron’s Blog Empire), and you may see me back here at some point for another guest stint. I’m bad at goodbyes, so I’ll just close by thanking everyone for having me and for making this so much fun!
June 16, 2006 at 12:46 pm
Posted in: Administrative Announcements
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Markets for Markets
posted by Miriam Cherry
Rob Rogers and I recently completed an article on the development of information markets. Our motivating question was to ask why information markets have covered certain subject areas, sometimes of minor importance (like the Michael Jackson trial), while neglecting other subject areas of greater social or monetary significance. We trace part of the answer to the choice of business model that information market entrepreneurs have chosen to employ, but part of it remains unexplained and is, we propose, a product of the random walk. The article is here.
June 15, 2006 at 12:03 pm
Posted in: Economic Analysis of Law
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Virtual Courts and Virtual Clerkships
posted by Miriam Cherry
One April Fool’s day when I was in law school, I decided to play a prank on some of my friends / fellow law students. I told them that my fiance, who was a computer scientist (but who hung around the law school quite a bit), was changing careers and had accepted a position as a “virtual clerk.” Friends had a lot of questions about this. What exactly did being a virtual clerk entail? Could you really perform your job duties without a law degree? How much technical knowledge was needed? And how exactly did you apply?
I explained that when you are a virtual clerk, you do whatever the circuit judge asks. Whether that’s typing “oyez oyez” to bring the virtual court into session, or ruling on objections as “bits” of testimony are streamed over the internet, you are not “shocked” at any request, and in fact, perform it rather robotically.
They got it, and laughed at having been taken in initially. It was an April Fool’s joke in 1998 that was full of hopelessly bad puns (sorry). But today, would such a thing really be considered that much of a joke (er, the virtual clerkship, not the bad puns)? There are all sorts of electronic media being used in courtrooms, more workers are telecommuting, and I’ve seen advertised that there are even online ADR competitions nowadays. So maybe my silly joke wasn’t really that far off the mark. Or was it?
June 14, 2006 at 6:45 pm
Posted in: Humor
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Update on Elder Law
posted by Miriam Cherry
Apropos of Eric’s last post (well, sort of), I came across this article over the AP discussing the recent trend away from nursing homes:
The New York State Health Department, which estimates that caring for seniors in home and community settings can cost up to half as much as nursing homes, is responding to the trend: State officials hope to get a federal waiver this summer that will let up to 5,000 elderly and disabled nursing home residents on Medicaid get the same care elsewhere.
Over the past several years, a majority of states have applied for similar waivers. For many seniors, the shift is welcome news.
The little old lady from Pasadena, indeed!
June 14, 2006 at 12:19 pm
Posted in: Current Events
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Qua Qua Qua
posted by Miriam Cherry
The use of “qua” has always struck me as the worst kind of legalese. It’s a convoluted, inelegant way of saying “as” or “to act in the capacity of.”
For example, Dictionary.com lists the following quote from Judge Richard Posner: “This might be thought a decisive objection to a federal judge’s writing about this subject even if the judge writes qua academic rather than qua judge.”
Not to knock Judge Posner (who must be admired intellectually, regardless of politics), but aren’t there better ways to express this thought? Is “qua” actually adding anything here?
Anyway, as much as I can, I’d like to encourage Qua to go the way of the dinosaurs. I have declared a moratorium on qua qua qua.
June 13, 2006 at 3:45 pm
Posted in: Weird
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Why are so many NYC doormen men?
posted by Miriam Cherry
Random observation of the day. But I do teach employment law, so I am wondering.
June 12, 2006 at 8:31 pm
Posted in: Employment Law
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I’m Moving to Sacramento
posted by Miriam Cherry
So, I spent most of last week in California looking for an apartment. The good news is that apparently professors make good tenants. Bad news was that it was still a lot of work and it took longer than I thought it would. Luckily, I did have time to have a couple lunches with my new colleagues at Pacific McGeorge. And, courtesy of Susan Franck (Nebraska), I got to hear this really cool song by Oxygen that has as its chorus, “I’m moving to Sacramento.”
June 12, 2006 at 8:26 pm
Posted in: Law School
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Law Blogs in Other Countries
posted by Miriam Cherry
A reader (Anton) left a (kind) comment about how’s he enjoying what goes on here at Concurring Opinions (aw shucks, thanks!). At the same time, though, he wondered whether such law blogs were a uniquely American phenomenon. His concern – I’m paraphrasing a bit – was that in a smaller country, bloggers might be worried about some amount of professional backlash if they expressed strong political views. He also asked whether there were any law blogs – resembling this one – written by lawyers / academics in other countries. Not about international law – but about local matters. I am wondering whether some of our readers might have suggestions? If so, leave them in the comments, because I know that I’d love to check them out.
June 6, 2006 at 2:23 pm
Posted in: Blogging
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Academics Blogging / Blogging Academics
posted by Miriam Cherry
Coast to Coast on the Legal Talk Network recently was kind enough to invite me on as a guest. Here is a description of the program from their site, which is also where you can listen to the program:
Law professors’ blogs are getting a lot of attention on college campuses across the country. We all know the blog is a powerful tool. And postings reach people around the world in seconds. Tech savvy law professors have already joined the blogging craze. But the question has been raised – should those blogs be part of their “academic pursuit?” Join co-hosts and Law.com bloggers, Craig Williams and Bob Ambrogi as they turn to our experts to get their insight on the credibility of the blog and look into the debate of law professor blogs vs. law professor articles. Craig and Bob welcome Professor Susan Crawford, law professor at the Cardozo Law School, Professor Eugene Volokh, professor at UCLA Law School and founder of the blog, The Volokh Conspiracy and Professor Miriam Cherry, visiting professor at Hofstra University and blogger for ContractsProf and Concurring Opinions.
And, while I’m at it, let me just mention that Coast to Coast has a number of interesting shows on different legal topics that you can listen to on their site or that you can download to your iPod. Check it out!
p.s. The title of this post betrays my fascination with palindromes.
June 5, 2006 at 6:34 pm
Posted in: Blogging
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One Way to Stop Cheating: Jail
posted by Miriam Cherry
Chinese educators have been dealing with an outbreak of cheating via cellphones on college entrance examinations. Further, plagiarism of research papers is becoming a problem too. Apparently the Chinese government has now gotten involved:
Earlier this month, three people were arrested for selling fake exam papers over the Internet for 1,000 yuan a subject [.]
The government warned the public not to fall for the scam, noting that exam papers are state secrets and those caught leaking them face three to seven years in prison, it said.
I am generally in favor of harsh punishments against those who cheat or plagiarize their academic work. In the instances where it has happened, I have taken it personally. How dare someone cheat in *my* class?@!??$ However, in this instance, even I will admit that perhaps the punishment may not fit the crime. Aside from hard jail time, what are the best ways to keep students honest?
June 5, 2006 at 3:19 am
Posted in: Current Events
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Prediction Markets Conference
posted by Miriam Cherry
Speaking of information markets (as Dave is, below) I saw an announcement for what looks to be a great conference on the subject. So if you’re in the Chicago area on June 7, 2006, check it out!
June 1, 2006 at 11:09 pm
Posted in: Conferences
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Whistleblowers and Stereotyped Cultural Norms
posted by Miriam Cherry
I’m a little slow to weigh in on this issue, but I just received the latest edition of the ABA Journal. This month, they have a story, “Culture Clash,” by John Gibeaut describing how Sarbanes-Oxley’s whistleblower provisions are causing trouble for foreign cross-listed companies. Ideoblog and Conglomerate have already provided some commentary about the article, which begins as follows:
Americans like to elevate whistleblowers to near folk-hero status, from Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers to Sherron Watkins, who exposed the Enron Corp. financial scandal that in 2002 moved Congress to pass the fraud-busting Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Indeed, Watkins shared Time magazine’s Person of the Year honors in 2002 with World Com Inc. whistleblower Cynthia Cooper and FBI agent Collen Rowley, who accused the bureau of mishandling information on suspected hijacking plotter Zacarias Moussaoui before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Say whistleblower in Germany, however, and the term most likely conjures up memories of the Gestapo, Adolf Hitler’s secret police. In France, the term evokes images of the Vichy regime’s collaboration with the Nazis and of neighbors ratting out one another.
I think that the beginning of the article relies on some flawed cultural stereotypes of both Europeans and Americans. Be that as it may, I would question the author’s proposition that American whistleblowers enjoy some sort of elevated status. About a year and a half ago, I wrote an article about (American) whistleblowers and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. In the article, I argue that whistleblowers are not being given enough protection. Not under state employment law, and not under Sarbanes-Oxley either. Studies – cited in my article – show in graphic detail that American whistleblowers end up unemployed, broke, divorced, and depressed.
May 31, 2006 at 4:53 pm
Posted in: Civil Rights, Corporate Law, Employment Law, Securities
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Andy Warhol’s Electric Chair
posted by Miriam Cherry
My colleague Bennett Capers (Hofstra) has written a fascinating, and rather disturbing, article at the intersection of law and art. Writing about Andy Warhol’s Electric Chair paintings, he asks a series of probing questions – about who the viewer imagines in the chair, and about death as a public spectacle. In this excerpt, he talks more about presence/absence in the paintings:
In Warhol’s Electric Chair series, just as the condemned is both absent and present, so is the State – and this is comforting. Complicity is shared. No one is to blame. Our system of capital punishment thrives partly because of this (joint) presence and absence. The state is present in the very bureaucracy of execution, from the legislative decision to authorized capital punishment to the judicial sanctioning of death-authorized juries. At the same time, the state creates its own absence in diffusing authority among the cast of participants: legislators, prosecutors, jurors, trial and appellate judges, governors with their ability to grant clemency, the executioner himself. And this is what I mean by absence. To borrow from another commentator, the diffusion allows everyone to say, “I’m only doing my job. I’m just a cog in the wheel. I didn’t kill him.” The room is empty, even though it is full.
The article was recently published by the California Law Review.
Photo Credit: Andy Warhol, Electric Chair I (1971), Warhol Family Museum of Modern Art
May 31, 2006 at 4:22 pm
Posted in: Articles and Books, Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, Culture, Law and Humanities
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Gosh, Those Law Students Say the Darndest Things!
posted by Miriam Cherry
Grading this semester has been multiplied because of Hofstra’s large class size (118 students in my contracts section) and an extra class I was teaching at Touro Law Center. To console those of you who are also still grading, I offer the top funniest paper / exam lines during the time I’ve been teaching:
“Decisions are like snakes, they slip and slide next to morality and justice, changing with time.”
“The common law is like a baby. It grows and grows until someone comes along and stops it.”
“The most impotent doctrine in contracts is lack of consideration.”
And, finally, from a seminar paper that discussed women’s rights in law & literature:
“The feminist movement began climaxing in the mid-1800s, and continued building, with varying levels of excitement, until the 1960s.”
To quote humorist Dave Barry, “I am not making this up!” I realize that I may be encroaching on Reader’s Digest territory, but anyone else find some humorous exam lines?
May 30, 2006 at 6:56 pm
Posted in: Law School, Law School (Teaching)
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Extended Stay
posted by Miriam Cherry
My guest stint has been extended for a couple more weeks (thanks everyone!). You’ll see more from me on employment law, contracts, information markets, some law and literature, and other sundry and assorted topics. Don’t worry, there will be plenty more bad puns too.
May 30, 2006 at 6:54 pm
Posted in: Administrative Announcements
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