Author Archive for sarah-waldeck

Email: Fear mongerer or neighborhood policing’s best friend?

posted by Sarah Waldeck

Last week I received at least twenty different emails forwarding the same story about a house in my town that was almost burglarized.  A man with a rake who appeared to be looking for work knocked on a front door and realized it was open.  He went to the sidewalk and consulted with his friends.  The owner, who was in the house, locked the door.  After the men returned to the front door and found it locked, they tried to open a back door and then a basement window.  The owner called 911 and the police caught one of the men.  Not exactly high drama, but plenty scary for the owner inside the house.

Each email contained the same information: soliciting is illegal and police want residents to report all solicitors because these individuals might be casing houses.

Almost every email also contained either a subtle or not-so-subtle ratcheting up of the fear.  Some emails lamented that our blocks weren’t safe.  Others warned that criminals need money for the holidays.  One advised that we consider this story as our children start to get older and move around the town without parents.  Another suggested that we watch the movie “Taken” because it would make us rethink letting students travel to Europe.

The upside is that I now know that soliciting is illegal and that the police want me to report it.  I’m also being more careful about locking my doors, a good habit in any event. 

But here’s the downside to this email flurry.   I am discomforted as I move about my town and house in a way that I have never been before.  This is true even though I know about the availability heuristic, i.e., the tendency to think events are more probable if we can recall such an event occurring.  I also know how bad humans are at processing information about low-risk occurrences.   Email  only exacerbates this faulty reasoning.  The Rakeman story is significantly more available to me than it would have been had I heard about it once or twice through old-fashioned word-of-mouth.

Many would argue that discomfort is good.  They are probably right, to a point.  But here is what I would have said if I had allowed myself to respond to all those emails:  Lock your doors.  Be smart.  And relax, because you are a lot safer than you think you are.

  November 17, 2009 at 12:10 pm   Posted in: Behavioral Law and Economics   Print This Post   One Comment

Introducing Michael Zimmer

posted by Sarah Waldeck

I’m so pleased to welcome Michael Zimmer as a Concurring Opinions guest for the month of November.   Mike is a widely recognized scholar in the areas of employment discrimination law, labor and employment law and constitutional law.  He is also co-author of one of the first and still the leading employment discrimination casebooks as well as co-author of the first casebook on international and comparative employment law.

Mike is a professor of law at Loyola University Chicago.  He received his A.B. and J.D. from Marquette University, where he was Editor in Chief of the Marquette Law Review.  He also holds an LL.M from Columbia University, where he was named a James Kent Fellow. Following law school, he clerked for the Honorable Thomas E. Fairchild of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and then served as an associate at Foley & Lardner in Milwaukee.

He began his law school teaching career at the University of South Carolina and he has taught at a number of law schools, most recently as a visiting professor of law at Northwestern University. He joined the Seton Hall University School of Law in 1978, served as Associate Dean from 1990 to 1994 and was on the faculty until 2008.

Welcome, Mike!

  October 31, 2009 at 6:36 pm   Posted in: Administrative Announcements   Print This Post   No Comments

Throwback to 2007

posted by Sarah Waldeck

On the heels of posts about television legal dramas by Jonathan Siegel and Jon Ip, consider The Good Wife, now airing on CBS.  (I haven’t yet watched this week’s episode, so no spoilers here.)  The show is mostly about a wife dealing with the very public revelation that her elected-official husband frequented prostitutes.  This storyline is good and the reason I’m still watching.  But Alicia is an associate at a Chicago law firm and quite a bit of the show takes place there.

I’d been trying to figure out why The Good Wife feels so dated, even though Alicia’s family is a victim of the 24-hour news cycle and her kids are extremely wired.  Then it hit me—the law firm is way too pre-2008.  The associates are given a stern lecture about needing to increase billable hours.  Where’s the angst about the viability of billable hours and the future of the law firm business model?  Moreover, doesn’t the lecture mean that the firm has excess work and is just lacking someone who will step up and do it?  There’s a passing reference to the firm hiring more associates than it will need over the long term, but where are the rescinded offers and the cancelled summer program?   The writers need to start reading Above the Law and borrowing liberally.

Granted, television rarely provides a realistic look at how law firms really work.  (See Ally McBeal.)  I do hope, however, that The Good Wife doesn’t inspire too many would-be law students.  These attorneys are way, way too comfortable.

  October 14, 2009 at 8:05 pm   Posted in: Culture   Print This Post   2 Comments

Problem-Oriented Policing in Chicago Public Schools

posted by Sarah Waldeck

The new chief officer of Chicago public schools has a fresh strategy for preventing the killings of public school students.  Such killings occur with alarming regularity; 67 since the start of the 2007 -2008 academic year.  If this doesn’t sound bad enough, the 67 doesn’t include the hundreds of students who were shot or beaten but managed to survive.  Right now Derrion Albert—the football player and honor student who was beaten to death when he got caught between rival gangs—is dominating the headlines.  But anyone who lives in Chicago expects that we’ll soon know another name.  The violence is relentless.

Enter Ron Huberman, the new chief officer of Chicago public schools.  He has a plan to stop the killing, one that is based on an analysis of more than 500 students who were attacked.   The plan might work, provided that Chicago is able to resist its inevitable temptations. Read the rest of this post »

  October 9, 2009 at 12:29 pm   Posted in: Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure   Print This Post   No Comments

Moving the Barnes, Illustrated

posted by Sarah Waldeck

Alfred Barnes knew that a picture (or at least a painting) was worth a thousand words.

I’ve always had difficulty teaching the Barnes saga because doing so requires that I separate my unbridled enthusiasm for the place from a more scholarly discussion about the appropriate limits of deadhand control.  But it’s also difficult to explain to students what moving the Barnes means when most have never visited the foundation. 

This year, I’ll be helped along considerably by comparing these pictures of the current gallery 

with these renderings of the new facility planned for downtown Philadelphia.

 

You can see other representations of the planned gallery here, courtesy of the New York Times.

  October 8, 2009 at 12:21 pm   Posted in: Estates and Trusts   Print This Post   No Comments

Probating Not-Wills

posted by Sarah Waldeck

This semester I began using the just-released 8th edition of Dukeminier’s Wills, Trusts, and Estates.  Five weeks into the semester, I’m pleased with this latest revision, primarily because some chapters have been reorganized in ways that are much more consistent with how I actually teach the course, which means that the students spend less time hopping between cases.  One new note, however, has needled me into reconsidering the 1990 Uniform Probate Code, particularly as amended in 2008.

In the note, the casebook authors describe Stephanie Lester’s 2007 study of more than 120 Australian cases in which the court used the dispensing power, i.e., probated a document which had not been executed in compliance with the formalities because clear and convincing evidence showed that the decedent intended the document to be a will.   The casebook authors provide this summary of Lester’s work:  “[Lester] concluded that the dispensing power has continued to fare well—with one exception.  In a troubling number of cases, the court admitted a document to probate despite evidence that the document was not intended to be a will but for which there was good evidence of whom the decedent wanted to benefit.”  (For an American case of the same stripe, see In re Estate of Kuralt, where the court probated as a holographic codicil a letter stating that the ailing Kuralt would have a “lawyer visit the hospital to be sure you inherit the rest of the place in MT.”  (emphasis by Kuralt). 

My reaction to this trend is twofold: (1) if it is troubling, it’s not surprising, and (2) is it really troubling? Read the rest of this post »

  September 27, 2009 at 7:57 pm   Posted in: Estates and Trusts, Uncategorized   Print This Post   3 Comments

Symposium on Securities Regulation

posted by Sarah Waldeck

Seton Hall Law School is hosting a symposium entitled Securities Regulation and the Global Economic Crisis: What Does the Future Hold? on Friday, October 30.  Speakers include Richard Painter from the University of Minnesota, Lisa Fairfax from George Washington, Chris Brummer from Georgetown, and Joan MacLeod Heminway from the University of Tennessee. 

You can find more details here.

  September 24, 2009 at 12:38 pm   Posted in: Uncategorized   Print This Post   One Comment

The Beginning of NALP’s End?

posted by Sarah Waldeck

With 2Ls facing a notably dismal summer job market, I’m wondering whether NALP’s “general standards for the timing of offers and decisions” finally will implode. For 2L summer hiring, NALP states that firms with more than 40 lawyers “should leave . . . offers open for at least 45 days following the date of the offer letter or until December 30, whichever comes first.”  Second year students  “should not hold open more than five offers of employment at any one time.  For each offer received that places a candidate over the offer limit, the candidate should, within one week of receipt of the excess offer, release an offer. ”

This year the NALP standards will frustrate law firms and 2Ls alike.   First, consider the standards from the perspective of a prestigious-but-not-quite-as-prestigious law firm.  They know that their competitors higher up on the food chain will hire fewer 2Ls this year and that 2Ls know this as well.  If the prestigious-but-not-quite-as-prestigious law firm wanted to make a play for a top student, an exploding offer would be a darn good strategy.  Nothing like the worst economy since the Great Depression to make even stellar students appreciate a bird in hand. 

Of course, law schools might forbid a firm that violated the NALP standards from on-campus interviewing in future years.  Or law schools might look the other way, in part because schools promote themselves among prospective students by having a very long list of firms that interview on campus.  One can also imagine informal agreements not to abide by the NALP standards among  law firms in a particular region.   Only the best law schools could afford to ban them all. 

Now consider all of this from the prospective of a 2L who wants a job at, say, Cravath. In a different hiring year, she eventually would have received an offer from Cravath, although not in their first round.  This year, however, the job market is such that most of the  students who get first-round offers from Cravath never receive more than five offers, so they are able to hang onto their Cravath offers for the full 45 days.  Meanwhile, the 2L who is gunning for Cravath has to accept an offer from a different firm, because she has run up against her own 45 day deadline.   

One fair response to this last scenario is that in today’s market, no saavy student is going to hold on to an offer for 45 days; instead, the student will simply accept.  But that just highlights that NALP will become increasingly irrelevant as its standards continue to reflect what the 2L market used to look like, instead of what it looks like today.

  September 10, 2009 at 7:02 pm   Posted in: Uncategorized   Print This Post   4 Comments

Criminal Law Treasure Trove

posted by Sarah Waldeck

I’m passing on this link to a recent episode of This American Life.  It discusses the prosecution of Hermant Lakhani, who delivered what he thought was a missile to an FBI informant in Newark’s Gateway Hilton.  The episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in the prosecution of terror suspects, the entrapment defense, and juror deliberations. Co-Op readers from New Jersey might particularly appreciate the interview with gubernatorial candidate Christopher Christie, who was U.S. Attorney at the time (and is a Seton Hall Law alum).

  September 3, 2009 at 11:35 am   Posted in: Uncategorized   Print This Post   One Comment

The Asterisk Next to Your Trusts & Estates Grade

posted by Sarah Waldeck

After a summer where I encountered multiple media accounts about the off-label uses of  Adderrall and other ADHD drugs, I have a new appreciation for the conundrum of elite athletes and their fans.  Was that A+ Trusts and Estates exam just the result of pharmaceutical cognitive enhancement?  Is the student who seems particularly focused taking something?  Or (and this is worse) do the colleagues with whom I compete not share my fear of  sprouting antlers or dropping dead because of off-label use? Or (and immediacy makes this worse still) is Adderrall my route to having that paper done by the spring submission window?  If it is, what should I be considering?  That Jack Kerouac’s excessive use of Benzedrine, another mental stimulant, helped him write On the Road or that it eventually put him in the hospital with thrombophlebitis?

You can find good articles about Adderrall and other cognitive enhancers here, here and here.

  September 1, 2009 at 10:36 am   Posted in: Uncategorized   Print This Post   One Comment

Introducing Guest Blogger Kathleen Boozang

posted by Sarah Waldeck

Associate Dean and Professor Kathleen Boozang is a health law expert at Seton Hall Law School.  While much of her scholarly career has focused on nonprofit hospital governance issues, she has expanded her research and teaching more recently to explore the legal and policy issues related to the global pharmaceutical and medical device industries. Kathleen oversees Seton Hall’s Gibbons Institute of Law, Science and Technology, as well as its Center for Health & Pharmaceutical Law & Policy.  Her recent work at the Center includes a Whitepaper critiquing the practices employed by industry to promote their products to physicians, recommending, inter alia, a ban on industry gifts to physicians, and independence of continuing medical education from industry funding.

Kathleen’s most recent article is Monitoring Corporate Corruption: DOJ’s Use of Deferred Prosecution Agreements in Health Care, 35 Am. J. L. Med. 89 (2009) (with Simone Handler-Hutchinson).  Other particularly noteworthy pieces include Does Director Independence Improve Nonprofit Governance?, 75 Tenn.L Rev 83 (2007) and The Survival of Religious Hospitals in a World of Reformed Health Care, 31 Houston L. Rev. 1429 (1995).  Kathleen also blogs regularly at Health Reform Watch.

Kathleen graduated from Washington University School of Law in St. Louis, Mo. and received her L.L.M. from Yale Law School.

  August 31, 2009 at 7:53 pm   Posted in: Administrative Announcements   Print This Post   No Comments

Circumcision and HIV

posted by Sarah Waldeck

Both The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) are considering whether to recommend routine infant male circumcision as a means of reducing the spread of HIV.  For me, the debate is a reminder of how the medical practice is deeply intertwined with societal norms.   One example illustrates the point:  American-born parents would dismiss as ridiculous (or worse) the suggestion that they cut off part of their infant daughter’s clitoris to help prevent HIV.

First, the science.  Clinical trials in Africa have found that circumcision reduces a heterosexual man’s risk of contracting HIV from an infected female by up to 60 percent.  It is unclear whether circumcision reduces the risk that a woman will contract HIV from an infected male and “little to no evidence” that it reduces the spread of HIV between homosexual male partners.  But if circumcision reduces the overall prevalence of HIV among heterosexual males, that might ultimately lower the risk among other populations, particularly women.   As for why circumcision status matters, most likely the foreskin tissue is more susceptible to HIV than other parts of the penis.   (You can read more about the science here.)

Circumcision opponents argue that at most circumcision reduces risk.   It does not prevent infection and no-one would suggest that circumcised males do not need condoms.    They further argue that HIV spread patterns are different in the United States than in the parts of Africa where the studies were conducted; that American and African health systems are worlds apart; and that  homosexual males are the individuals most at risk in the United States.   They can also point to studies which challenge or contradict the finding that circumcision reduces the risk of a heterosexual male contracting HIV from an infected female.  At present, however, opponents of circumcision appear to be losing the medical battle. 

All of this must be terribly frustrating for those who advocate non-circumcision.   First, they are well aware of the American medical establishment’s history of promoting circumcision as a means of combating a variety of conditions (my own favorites are the Victorian examples of bowleggedness and masturbation).   Second, in recent decades circumcision opponents have achieved some  partial victories.  The current AAP recommendations are neutral on the question whether to  circumcise infant males .  The national circumcision rate has fallen to less than 65 percent from a high of more than 80 percent, with rates far below 50 percent in a few Western states.   The cumulative result of many different policies that have the effect of discouraging circumcision—most notably, the refusal of many insurance companies to pay for the procedure—meant that non-circumcision may have been creeping, slowly, toward a tipping point.  Indeed, this post originally had a sentence about how a woman of my demographic (white, Midwestern) was statistically unlikely to ever have seen an uncircumcised penis.  But then I realized that I have seen some in recent years, in the locker room at my gym where many mothers dress their young sons.    Read the rest of this post »

  August 25, 2009 at 8:09 pm   Posted in: Culture, Sociology of Law   Print This Post   3 Comments

For-Profit Colleges

posted by Sarah Waldeck

For-profit colleges such as Devry and Kaplan are coming under increased scrutiny by federal and state governments.  According to The Wall Street Journal, the Department of Education is considering changes that might result in students at for-profit colleges having less access to federal aid.  Meanwhile, Ohio’s governor and state legislature have agreed to eliminate the scholarships of 22,500 students attending for-profit colleges.  Next year New Jersey will reduce the aid of students at these colleges by almost 40 percent.  Read the rest of this post »

  July 28, 2009 at 9:13 am   Posted in: Education   Print This Post   5 Comments

Challenge to Wisconsin’s Diploma Privilege Continues

posted by Sarah Waldeck

Yesterday the Seventh Circuit reversed the dismissal of the class action challenging Wisconsin’s diploma privilege as a violation of the commerce clause.  (I previously posted about the case here. ) A few thoughts about this latest development:

1.  I remain baffled about what benefit the plaintiffs (graduates of out-of-state law schools)  expect to receive from this suit.  They have asked for an injunctive order striking a few words from the Wisconsin Supreme Court rule on bar admission.  The result of this proposed edit is that Wisconsin would offer the diploma privilege to all graduates of ABA-accredited law schools.  But as Judge Posner pointed out in his opinion, the state could also remedy a commerce clause violation by requiring graduates of Wisconsin law schools to take the bar exam.  Does anyone really believe that Wisconsin would do anything other than what Judge Posner has suggested?  Talk about the potential for a quick race to the bottom!  Even if they are victorious, the plaintiffs will be in the same position as when they started:  they will have to take a bar exam to practice in Wisconsin (or practice in another state for five years).

2. Judge Posner referred to the diploma privilege as favoring the economic interests of Wisconsin law schools, because prospective students who want to practice in Wisconsin have an incentive to attend the University of Wisconsin-Madison or Marquette.  This is undoubtedly true in theory, but I wonder how many applicants this incentive actually yields.   First, how many people dream of practicing law in Wisconsin who don’t already have a connection to the state?  I suspect that most people who plan to practice in Wisconsin are already living there or grew up there and would like to return.  This would make an application to Madison or Marquette likely in any event (particularly an application to Madison, which offers an in-state tuition discount).   Second, prospective law students tend to be extraordinarily optimistic about their potential for academic success and, by extension, their ability to pass a bar exam.  The exam is also more than three years removed from the decision about where to attend law school.  While the diploma privilege may occasionally tip the scale, I suspect most applicants make their decision based on more immediate factors:  prestige, physical plant, cost,  location, etc.  I doubt that the diploma privilege attracts many additional applicants to Wisconsin law schools or discourages many applicants who would like to eventually practice in Wisconsin from attending an out-of-state school.

3.  As the case returns to the district court, the most important question is whether the state can prove that Madison and Marquette offer courses that teach Wisconsin law and are therefore different than courses offered at other ABA-approved law schools.  At oral argument, Judges Posner and Wood were quite skeptical that the state would be able to offer this proof.  (Gordon Smith, a former Madison professor, blogged about this here.)  While I cannot speak about Marquette or about the current state of affairs at Madison, I am confident that 12 years ago (when I was a law student) Madison would have been able to satisfy the court.  Were my antitrust or federal courts courses different than what was offered at other schools?  No.  But in the courses that were necessary to qualify for the diploma privilege, I learned a lot of Wisconsin law, even when my professors chose to use national textbooks instead of their own materials.  Gordon Smith wrote that the faculty at Madison have “an unusually strong attachment to the home state’s law.”  When I was a student, I would have described it a bit differently:  I thought the faculty perceived itself as having an obligation to teach Wisconsin law because it knew that students who remained in the state would not take the bar exam.

  July 10, 2009 at 5:40 am   Posted in: Constitutional Law, Law School   Print This Post   9 Comments

Christmas in July

posted by Sarah Waldeck

If you ever wanted a figure to illustrate the inefficiencies of gift-giving, here it is:  According to the Wall Street Journal, Americans annually spend about $65 billion in gift cards, of which $6.8 billion are never redeemed.

  July 8, 2009 at 8:43 am   Posted in: Culture   Print This Post   3 Comments

Use Those Quarters for Laundry

posted by Sarah Waldeck

 

Last week, a toll road outside Denver and another outside Dallas went cashless.  Drivers on E-470  and the President George Bush Turnpike will have to attach transponders to their cars or pay a fee when their bill arrives in the mail.   The move toward cashless toll roads has been a long time coming, as Professor Erik Lillquist and I discuss in this article about the ways in which government encourages the use of new technologies.  In Denver, for instance, 30% of drivers used transponders when they were first introduced in 1991; by 2009, 75% of drivers used them.

Electronic tolling has been a win for both drivers and toll authorities.  Drivers with transponders enjoy a quicker ride, while the authorities who run the toll roads save on labor costs.  Electronic tolling also reduces vehicle emissions and accidents in the vicinity of tolling stations. 

For the last decade or more, the challenge for tolling authorities has been convincing drivers to incur the hassle costs of obtaining a transponder and establishing an account from which tolls can be deducted.  As an incentive for participation, authorities offered the ability to zoom through tolling stations and, in some instances, lower tolls for electronic customers.  Now electronic tolling has apparently reached the tipping point.  In addition to the roads outside of Denver and Dallas, the Miami-Dade Expressway Authority is converting five of its expressways  to electronic-only tolling.  The highway that  will connect Prince George’s and Montgomery counties will also be cashless.

Drivers had better enjoy the convenience of electronic tolling, as the days of lower tolls for electronic customers are apparently over.  The Wall Street Journal is reporting that some researchers expect tolls on electronic-only roads to be higher than on roads that offer a cash option.  Amy Finkelstein, a professor at MIT, suggests that electronic tolling results in tolls that are 20 to 40 percent higher than they would otherwise be.   Apparently it’s easier for authorities to raise rates when the toll is just automatically deducted from the driver’s account than when the driver has to toss coins into a hamper or feed dollars into a cash reader.

So drivers should beware.  The moment of payment may be intangible, but the money deducted from their accounts is real.

  July 8, 2009 at 8:35 am   Posted in: Technology, Uncategorized   Print This Post   2 Comments

Supreme Court Highlights

posted by Sarah Waldeck

A practicing attorney I know has been asked to make a CLE presentation on the ten most important Supreme Court cases from the 2008-2009  term.  I’m wondering what cases CoOp readers would put on the list.  Please comment!

  June 28, 2009 at 8:48 pm   Posted in: Uncategorized   Print This Post   6 Comments

Why Hollywood Needs To Save Newspapers

posted by Sarah Waldeck

 

To prepare for a trip to Harry Potter: The Exhibition (now at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry), my daughter and I had a Harry Potter movie marathon.   It left me wondering:  if newspapers really do die, how are filmmakers going to quickly summarize events and move on to the next part of the plot?   Those images of the Daily Prophet would lose all their punch if they were scrolling across a computer.  Kind of like what would have happened to Raiders of the Lost Ark if Spielberg had to use MapQuest to show us where Indy was heading next .  . .  .

  June 16, 2009 at 11:46 am   Posted in: Culture   Print This Post   4 Comments

Preserving Need-Blind Admissions

posted by Sarah Waldeck

Back in December, Charles Murray of the American Enterprise Institute called on President Obama to argue against the pro forma use of the bachelor’s degree as a job qualification.  Murray did not discount the value of broadening one’s horizons or of exploring subjects for their general interest.  But he argued that it was inappropriate to keep “the bachelor’s degree as the measure of job preparedness, as the minimal requirement to get your foot in the door for vast numbers of jobs that don’t really require a B.A. or B.S.”    This is particularly true, Murray wrote, when most 18-year-olds are not from wealthy families, are not attracted to academics, and “want to learn how to get a satisfying job that also pays well.”    As an alternative to the  bachelor’s degree, Murray recommended certification tests which would vary in form depending on the job. 

When I read Murray’s opinion piece, I thought his argument had intuitive appeal.  Most of us know people who are quite successful despite never having gone to college.  Most of us also know individuals who would have preferred a certification route to their current career, if that had been a viable option.   But I was troubled by the class implications of Murray’s proposal.  A bachelor’s degree will continue to have economic and social cachet for some time to come; parents with a tradition of higher education are most likely to push their children towards college despite a certification option; and certification is likely to become one more method of separating the haves from the have-nots.

I was reminded of the haves and have-nots when I read a recent New York Times article about Reed College dropping more than 100 financially-needy students from its admit list and substituting students who could afford the $50,000 yearly cost.  At least for now, Reed has determined that this is a better approach than spending more of its endowment or selling some of its real estate. 

One of the most interesting aspects of the Reed story is that Colin Diver, Reed’s president, is openly expressing frustratation about  the “country-club” investments that colleges make in order to attract students.   As the Times reports,

“The catering to consumer tastes — I keep trying to say, we are in the education business,” Mr. Diver said, describing the pressure to keep up with wealthier colleges and expressing a frustration rarely voiced publicly by college presidents. “The whole principle behind higher education is, we know something that you don’t. Therefore, we shouldn’t cater to them.”

But no college president wants to be first to make major changes in the college experience; Reed, for example, is not abandoning plans for a new performing arts center. “If we’re going to change our ways, we’re really going to need to be pushed,” Mr. Diver said, referring to colleges generally. “It’s not going to well up from within.”

So who could provide the push?  One possibility is donors, particularly significant ones.   Too often big donors gravitate towards buildings and other facilities with naming rights; these same sort of projects fuel what the Times referred to as an “academic arms race reliant on tuition increases and fund-raising.”   Colleges could help foster this change by making the naming rights that come with, say, need-based scholarships as attractive and public as those that come with buildings.  This suggestion may verge on change welling up from within, but if the prospect of axing poor but qualified students isn’t enough, it’s not clear what will be.

  June 16, 2009 at 11:22 am   Posted in: Education   Print This Post   One Comment

Summer Reading

posted by Sarah Waldeck

This is just a quick post to urge property professors to add Jeff Benedict’s Little Pink House to their summer reading lists.  The book, which Dahlia Lithwick and Ilya Somin thoroughly reviewed a while back, is a law-lite acocunt of the conflict between Suzette Kelo and the City of New London, Connecticut.  Benedict clearly sides with Kelo early in the book, so I found myself reading Little Pink House with a very large grain of salt.  But it’s still a great beach book for property profs, primarily because it’s chockfull of details that many are unlikely to have read elsewhere.  There’s no question that my class on the meaning of public use will be better for having read this book.

  June 3, 2009 at 1:29 pm   Posted in: Book Reviews, Property Law   Print This Post   One Comment

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