Author: Jeremy Paul
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New Voices at SCOTUSblog
SCOTUSblog yesterday announced a new blog titled The Interim Docket Blog co-authored by well-known law professors, Harvard’s Jack Goldsmith, the University of Chicago’s William Baude, and Washington University’s Daniel Epps. This comes roughly 8 months after Dispatch Media purchased SCOTUSblog from its founders, Tom Goldstein and Amy Howe (the site’s pre-eminent analyst). You can find
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Legal History Awards
University of Miami Professor of Law and Dean’s Distinguished Scholar, Kunal M. Parker has been awarded the John Phillip Reed Book Award by the American Society for Legal History, for his monograph The Turn to Process: American Legal, Political, and Economic Thought, 1870–1970 (Cambridge University Press, 2024). The full list of this year’s awards is here: https://aslh.net/aslh-book-prize-winners-2025/
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Ranking of On-line and Flex JD Programs
University Magazine has released it’s ranking of the nation’s online and Flex JD Programs. You can find it here. universitymagazine.ca/best-online-law-schools-america Of course, I was delighted to see Northeastern at number one.
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Book of the Week
This one’s a couple of years old, but it’s so well done, I couldn’t skip it. For a profound diagnosis of what ails America and the West, I suggest The Twilight of the American State by Pierre Schlag, University Distinguished Professor and Byron R. White Professor of Law at the University of Colorado. You can
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Truth to Power
University of Alabama Law Professor, Joyce Vance, claps back at our President. Her words, linked below, need no embellishment. But for our purposes it’s worth noting that “Quiet Piggy” is simply unacceptable language from persons in leadership speaking to journalists seeking to discern the facts. And such demeaning talk thwarts our efforts as legal educators
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To AI or Not to AI
In his recent article, Solving Professors’ Dilemmas about Prohibiting or Promoting Student AI Use, John Lande, Isidor Loeb Professor of Law, Emeritus at the University of Missouri has tackled a topic on the minds of many of us teaching students for whom AI will play a large role in their careers. Should we slow them
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FTC declares ABA Accreditation Monopoly
Reuters, FTC says ABA is a ‘law school accreditation monopoly’ by Karen Sloan | December 4, 2025 Dec 2 (Reuters) – The U.S. Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday called the American Bar Association’s accreditation of law schools a “monopoly” that increases the cost of a law degree and limits the supply of new lawyers. The
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Book of the Week
Robert Hockett, Edward Cornell Professor of Law at Cornell Law School has penned an exciting new book offering the rarest commodity in our profession: an insightful new approach to topics we thought we already understood. The book, A Republic of Producers, is due out this January from Yale University Press and is receiving stellar pre-publication
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How to Think About Homework
Suffolk Law School Professor Jennifer Ciarimboli offers some thought-provoking ideas about whether law faculty are thinking properly about how much homework to assign. Obviously, there are pros and cons to different approaches. But there can’t be any debate that this is a topic worthy of our attention. You can find her work here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5533701&dgcid=ejournal_htmlemail_legal%3Aeducation%3Aejournal_abstractlink I
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Are our Playing Fields Level?
Jordan Rothman, founder of Student Debt Diaries and principal at the Rothman Law Firm, poses some tough questions in Above the Law about how law school programs designed to augment student options and boost law school revenue may inadvertently give a leg up to students with the necessary wealth to take advantage. Deans and faculty
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Book of the Week
This magisterial history by University of Michigan Professor Michelle Adams, is due out in paperback in January 2026. The Containment tells the story of how the battle to desegregate the schools was effectively derailed via the Supreme Court’s decision in Milliken v. Bradley. Readers need look no further to discover why scholarship matters. https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374250423/thecontainment/
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Academic Freedom
Five law professors with widely divergent views on politics and constitutional law have penned an op-ed in USA today arguing that universities must reject the compact proposed by the Trump Administration if they are to be true to the academic mission. Worth a read, here. https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2025-11-20/college-university-trump-law-professors-compact-opinion
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Designing Better Metrics
Fans of The Wire, the greatest television show ever, know all too well that how we measure success can ultimately corrupt how we define it. So we owe Villanova Professor Cannan a debt for his efforts to explain how current measures of scholarly impact are deeply flawed and how we might do better. Law Library
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Law Profs Weigh In
Two law professors, among others, write to the NYTimes challenging David Brooks on his column, which argues that the political left developed the rhetorical and ideological strategies now being effectively, even ruthlessly, deployed by the political right. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/15/opinion/trump-republicans-democrats-politics.html?unlocked_article_code=1.1k8.qcjt.HcNJx9C8nRUv&smid=url-share
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Book of the Week
This week, I recommend Sharing Risk by Boston College, Liberty Mutual Professor of Law, Patricia McCoy. Just out this summer, Sharing Risk offers an extraordinarily thoughtful articulation of current government policies aimed at helping ordinary Americans afford not only life’s minimal necessities but also adequate health care, owing a home, going to college, and a
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Ask Gen Z Students to Read More
“Professors Montcalm and Milburn-Knizner offer this sound, if counterintuitive, advice. TLP;DR: The Truth About Gen Z Law Students & Why They Need More, Not Less” Publication forthcoming in The Albany Law Review MEGAN MONTCALM, Thomas R. Kline School of Law of Duquesne UniversityEmail: montcalmm@duq.eduAPRIL MILBURN-KNIZNER, Thomas R. Kline School of Law of Duquesne UniversityEmail: milburnkniznera@duq.edu https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5492386&dgcid=ejournal_htmlemail_legal%3Aeducation%3Aejournal_abstractlink “They can’t read!” “They can’t write!”
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Beyond Socratic Method
Professors Rory Bahadur and Kris Franklin offer exciting new insights on how to augment student learning through structured, sequenced inquiry Designing Directed Questions: A Conceptual Blueprint 57 Pages Posted: 17 Sep 2025 Last revised: 15 Oct 2025 Rory D. Bahadur – Washburn University – School of Law Kris Franklin – New York Law School Abstract This article
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Book of the Week
One of the great legal historians of the late 20th century (and one of my favorite teachers) is out this year with a landmark contribution for the 21st. Morton J. Horwitz’s 2025 informative and insightful book The Warren Court and the Democratic Constitution builds on his earlier work using newly available documents detailing internal Court
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VAPs and Fellowships
VAPs and Fellowships differ in many ways. How long do they last? What teaching is permitted and/or expected? How absolute are bans on hiring folks from these programs onto the faculty? What is the salary? Leandra Lederman attempts here to provide a guide allowing those considering a position or advising others to sort through complexities.
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1 in 5 Law Students Lives With a Disability
New LSSSE Report Finds One in Five Law Students Lives with a Disability Law students with disabilities show strong engagement and resilience but face persistent gaps in institutional support BLOOMINGTON, Ind.—The Law School Survey of Student Engagement (LSSSE) has released its 2025 Annual Report, Disability in Law School, offering the first comprehensive look at disability among law
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Clinics Face Political Pressure
Peter Joy and Robert Kuehn have provided us with an invaluable history of outside interference into the workings of law school clinics engaged in client representation. It could not come at a more opportune time. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5442156&dgcid=ejournal_htmlemail_legal%3Aeducation%3Aejournal_abstractlink An Anthology of Interference in Law School Clinics” PETER A. JOY, Washington University in St. Louis – School of LawEmail: joy@wustl.eduROBERT
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Book of the Week
No better way to end the work week than with a recent title written by one of our law professor colleagues or just so insightful it deserves a shout out. This week’s selection, my first, was released this month and fittingly is about tax law. It’s by Boston College Law Professor Ray Madoff and sports
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Faculty Speak Out
Austin Sarat, William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College (and former visiting professor at Yale Law School), reports that the Amherst faculty, on Oct. 24, adopted the following resolution by a vote of 102-26: in light of escalating threats to democracy and the rights of citizens and non-citizens in the United States,
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Our Shared Mission
This is my first post on TaxProf Blog, and I want to start by congratulating Paul Caron for his tireless contributions to our profession in authoring this blog for so many years. My thanks, too, go to the AALS for continuing the effort and for inviting me to contribute here. Let me then use this