Joe Nocera's right about the opposition to Elizabeth Warren.

See here.

Watching STS-134 still brings tears to my eyes.

See here and here, with the links provided by our buddy Randy Morgan (that'd be our friend who is a real rocket scientist).

Watching the end of the shuttle program makes me grateful for all of the hard work and sacrifice that the good folks at NASA have provided, decade after decade.  I think about the last few lines in the movie Apollo 13,* spoken by Tom Hanks, who played Capt. Lovell:

Gene Kranz retired as Director of Flight Operations just not long ago.  And many other members of Mission Control have gone on to other things, but some are still there.  And as for me, the seven extraordinary days of Apollo 13 ... were my last in space.  I watched other men walk on the moon and return safely ... all from the confines of Mission Control and our house in Houston.  I sometimes catch myself looking up at the moon ... remembering the changes of fortune in our long voyage thinking of the thousands of people who worked to bring the three of us home.  I look up at the moon and wonder, when will we be going back?  And who will that be?

With NASA's budget in jeopardy, I wonder where that great unifying cry for scientists will come from, and whether it will be loud enough for the next generation to hear it.

Thank you, NASA, for all you've done for us--and all that you continue to do.

* Ron Howard directed Apollo 13, based on the book Lost Moon (written by Capt. Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger), and with a script written by Bill Broyles and Al Reinert.

Why boards need me (or someone like me).

See here.

In memoriam: two of our favorite people.

Both served our country with honor:  Ron Bliss and Joe Reynolds.  Always in our hearts.

Few things in life are as satisfying as watching a former student soar.

Scott Unger (former student and a long-time friend) just published this (here).  Scott's a wonderful litigator and, just as important, a person who cares deeply about ethics and professionalism.

Way to go, Scott!

I love NASA.

I still remember when we went to see the shuttle liftoff with our friends Randy and Cathleen.  So when I read this essay (here) in the Wall Street Journal, it triggered those memories. 

Chicken, meet egg.

The ABA Journal is reporting (here) USNWR's reaction to being blamed, at least in part, for the frenzy to buy high UGPA and LSAT scores with merit scholarships.  Last Sunday, the New York Times reported (here) that many of the students who received merit scholarships didn't retain those scholarships after the first year.  The consequences of losing a merit scholarship at an expensive school can be dire. 

It's true that the USNWR rankings don't cause students to lose their scholarships.  (The cause is a combination of a scholarship's requirements, the grading curve, and the individual student's abilities--as well as any particular personal crisis that the student might be having during the first year.) 

It's equally true that schools are buying "high-numbers" students as a way to improve their rankings, given how much UGPA and LSAT figures can drive the rankings (here) and how few other ways there are to game the system.   It's really difficult to affect the peer and lawyers/judges rankings (notwithstanding all of the glossy brochures that we all get in the fall); in this economic environment, placing students in real jobs at graduation is also really difficult.  Bar passage isn't a large enough factor in the rankings.  What does that leave?  Ah, yes:  "the numbers."

I can't remember a time before the rankings.  (I can't remember a lot of things, though, so I'm not worried about this particular lapse in my memory.)  At some earlier point, didn't we select our students based on our predictions of the applicants' success in our schools?  We used UGPAs and LSATs for those predictions, but we also used non-numerical predictors of academic success.  Schools may still use those, but they sure do pay attention to how "the numbers" are going to look at matriculation.

No matter how we admitted students before, "the numbers" and the USNWR rankings are now officially a chicken-egg problem.

A very happy mention of my buddy David Polyansky in the L.A. Times

See here, especially the last few lines.

Seriously?

I'm always disappointed when law students go ballistic over a downward move in the USNWR rankings (see, e.g., here, discussing Emory's brouhaha).  I know, I know:  the higher-ranked the school, the easier it is to get a foot in the door at BigLaw firms.  I get that, and the fact that the USNWR rankings matter so much to BigLaw is a big flaw in the BigLaw recruiting process.  So shame on those BigLaw firms that only look at GPA cutoffs and rankings.  They're missing out on some stellar people who don't fit the traditional BigLaw profile but who would do wonderful work for them.

But let's face it:  USNWR is a magazine.  It sends out surveys to a very small sample size (for you non-statistics geeks, that means that the surveys aren't providing very reliable information), and those surveys count for way too much of the final scores.  The rest of the scores are based on criteria that are too easily manipulated.

So basing one's view of one's law school on the scoring system that a magazine uses to sell issues is a bit like caring that one's speakers go to 11.

If the dean at Emory resigned just because of the rankings, that's a sad commentary on the misplaced importance that people place on this single way of viewing the array of ABA-accredited law schools.  On the other hand, I know from first-hand experience how much fun it is to transition back to a faculty after having been a dean.  So, welcome back to the life of a law professor, David.  You'll enjoy it.

More useful info on our propensity for cognitive errors.

In today's New York Times (here).

OK, the video is fake--but it's still funny.

See here.

Welcome back to Stanford, Bob Gordon!

Brian Leiter breaks the news here.  Bob was one of my professors, and it's nice to hear that he's coming home.

I sure wish I could go to this conference.

See here and here.  Hat tip to TaxProf Blog.

What bothers me about law students (and lawyers) who post anonymously on blogs.

When I take breaks from my work, I often check out blogs.  There's a relatively new blog that covers law in Las Vegas.  It frequently has stories about Boyd Law School and the people who work there.

It's not the stories I mind.*  It's some of the comments that people post that bother me--and not because of the text of the comments.  What bothers me is that the comments are posted anonymously.   Some of those comments are posted by people who appear to have a connection to Boyd. 

Here's what I don't get:  no one forces anyone to post anything on a blog.  Posting on a blog isn't a course requirement.  One doesn't have to write blog posts to get admitted to the bar, or to stay in good standing with the bar.  Blog posts are voluntary acts. 

Because posting is voluntary, I consider anonymous posting to be mobbing behavior.  I consider anonymous posting by law-trained people to be particularly repugnant.

Lawyers have to sign their names to their work.  They sign pleadings.  (And, in federal court, they're signing those pleadings with an understanding that Rule 11 applies to them.)  Even transactional lawyers create drafts that they forward to the other side under their own names.  For better or worse, what a lawyer does is inextricably linked to his or her reputation.

What of those lawyers who are posting their thoughts about judges, and doing so anonymously?  I suppose that they're posting anonymously because they're afraid of running afoul of ethics rules like this one (Nevada Rule of Professional Conduct 8.2):

    Judicial and Legal Officials.

      (a) A lawyer shall not make a statement that the lawyer knows to be false or with reckless disregard as to its truth or falsity concerning the qualifications or integrity of a judge, adjudicatory officer or public legal officer, or of a candidate for election or appointment to judicial or legal office.

If a lawyer posts that a judge is biased or incompetent, he or she had better be able to back that allegation up with facts. 

There are mechanisms for communicating to the public that a judge is biased or incompetent.  There are surveys about judges' abilities.  There are disciplinary proceedings that someone can initiate.  (Whether those disciplinary proceedings actually work is another matter.)  Some of these mechanisms even allow anonymity to provide protection for those trying to seek change (e.g., voting an elected judge out of office).  So, for lawyers who are worried about retaliation for complaining about judges, there are legitimate outlets for their complaints.  (There are also mechanisms that lawyers can use when they have serious problems with other lawyers, such as rules requiring reporting of known and serious misconduct.  For example, there's Rule 8.3.  Again, I'm not convinced that this particular mechanism is effective, but it does exist.)

Most law students are lawyers in training.  If they have problems with something occurring in law school, they have their own mechanisms for communicating those problems--even some mechanisms that can protect them from any feared retaliation.  If they have a problem with someone's teaching, they can fill out course evaluations, which are anonymous.  (I know, I know:  students evaluating tenured professors often believe that their evaluations fall on deaf ears, because the administration may have little power to correct the problems raised by those evaluations.**)  If they have problems with an administration's policies, they have ways of communicating those problems in a group, or through a representative.

But I believe that most fears of retaliation are overblown, and I also believe that people who resort to anonymous posting on blogs to express their concerns are cowards.  Again, posting a comment is a voluntary act.  If someone feels so strongly about something that he's compelled to post a comment, he should have the courage to sign his name to that posting.  If he's a law student preparing to become a lawyer, he had better get used to signing his name to his work.

Anonymous postings also lack credibility.  It's hard for me to take seriously an anonymous comment, precisely because I don't have the opportunity to consider the source of the comment.

How strongly do I feel about anonymous posts?  Well, after I publish this post, I'll be posting links to it on this other blog.  And, of course, those links will identify me.  I have no problem with that.

* OK, I'm bothered by the fact that the authors of the blog prefer to remain anonymous themselves, but that's their choice as the blog's creators.  They're acting as aggregators of information, and perhaps they fear those types of unjustified lawsuits that confuse the aggregators of information with the actual information that others post on their site.

** In fact, administrations do have the ability to deal with egregious misbehavior by even the most senior, tenured professor.  The administration will have to run through more hoops, but it's possible to discipline such misbehavior.  First, though, the administration needs to know about the behavior, which means that people have to come forward with credible complaints.

Wonderful article on social networking and legal ethics--from a soon-to-be-graduate of Boyd Law.

You can read Derrick Harris's article here.

In the "good news" category....

Jeff & I heard that our Law School Survival Manual will be available on Kindle soon (here).

It's all about the incentives.

See this morning's New York Times story in the Dealbook section (here).  The easy part is realizing that incentives will almost always dictate behavior.  The hard part is figuring out how to put the right incentives in place.  That's why I liked Steven Davidoff's story so much.

Glenn Reynolds is absolutely right about lowering the drinking age.

See his op-ed in the Wall Street Journal (here). 

Of all the places to display one of the retired space shuttles . . . .

Houston would seem to be the no-brainer, obvious choice, right?  After all, the Johnson Space Center is where all of the action in the space program began.

But no:  LA is getting one.  New York City is getting one.  DC is getting one.  The Kennedy Space Center down in Florida is getting one.  But not Houston (here).

It makes sense for the Kennedy Space Center to get one.  And DC has the Smithsonian, so that decision makes sense.  But LA and NYC?  Not so much.

Seems like politics at its worst to me.

Seriously???

I fear for our profession when we allow behavior like this (here) to occur and we don't call "shenanigans" when we see it.

To me, it's simple.  We shouldn't let our egos get in the way of behaving like professionals.  Sure, lawyers and financial advisors work hard.  But so do people who get paid only a fraction of what lawyers and financial advisors make, and we don't read too many articles about them puffing up their chests over pizza.

We can behave better than this Wall Street Journal article indicates, and we should.