In December, I wrote a piece for the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, entitled “When Cronyism Met Political Correctness at the University of Texas,” on an embarrassing lawsuit against my alma mater, the University of Texas, arising from irregularities in the administration’s han…
Month: February 2018
One-Sided Loser Pays Is the Worst of Both Worlds
The dirty secret of the legal profession is that the legal system is designed for lawyers. Take litigation, for example. The procedural rules—liberal pleading requirements, broad rights to pre-trial discovery, potential certification of class actions—make it possible for plaintiffs’ lawyers…
Paging Professor Kingsfield
Most Americans have a hazy conception (if that) of what goes on in law schools. They may recall the crusty character played by John Houseman (who won an Oscar for the role) in the 1973 movie, Paper Chase, and assume that the fictional Professor Charles W. Kingsfield is typical of law professors t…
Symposium on Justice Scalia
Shortly after Justice Scalia’s untimely demise, Law and Liberty put together a symposium in which I was honored to appear. Some of the other contributors were Ralph Rossum, Hadley Arkes, Mike Ramsey, and Gerald Russello. My contribution focused on Justice Scalia’s cultural conservati…
What Happened to the Contract Clause?
Supreme Court justices are often accused of inventing constitutional rights not supported by the Constitution’s text or the understanding of the Framers, but judicial dereliction sometimes runs in the opposite direction. The Court has allowed certain rights, including some expressly set for…
More Lawyers or More Justice?
Two law professors, Benjamin Barton from the University of Tennessee and Stephanos Bibas (formerly at Penn and now on the Third Circuit) wrote a thoughtful book on criminal justice reform, Rebooting Justice, which I reviewed for Law and Liberty. Read about it here.
The Evolution of Robert Bork
The late, great Robert Bork is usually remembered as an advocate of judicial restraint. This is certainly the position he took in his famous 1971 article in the Indiana Law Journal, “Neutral Principles and Some First Amendment Problems,” and thereafter, but it turns out that earlier …