Paul L. Caron
Dean
Pepperdine Caruso
School of Law
Legal Education
-
Is the Recession Sucking the Joy Out of Faculty Life?
Inside Higher Ed: Next Budget Victim? Joy: Step away from that copy machine, and don’t even think about serving lunch at that next faculty meeting. Oh, and that class you love with 20 students? Double it. On second thought, couldn’t you just triple it? Welcome to the world of higher education in the thick of…
-
This Won’t Help Arizona State in the U.S. News Rankings
The Daily Show With Jon Stewart M – Th 11p / 10c Arizona State Snubs Obama thedailyshow.com Daily ShowFull Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor
-
“Florida No Longer Has Any First Tier Law Schools”
From the Miami Daily Business Review: The University of Miami School of Law showed the only improvement out of four South Florida law schools on U.S. News & World Report’s annual list of the nation’s best law schools. The school’s ranking of 71 represents an 11-place jump in a year. The Nova Southeastern Shepard Broad…
-
Top Universities Cut Their Ph.D. Programs
Inside Higher Ed reports today that many top universities — Chicago, Columbia, Emory, Harvard, MIT, Northwestern, Princeton — are shrinking their Ph.D. programs because of economic pressures: [T]he shifts could be significant, as they involve doctoral programs that are influential in the world of graduate education and that produce new Ph.D.'s who tend to fare better than…
-
Scalia on the U.S. New Rankings: “You Can’t Make a Sow’s Ear Out of a Silk Purse”
New York Times: On the Bench and Off, the Eminently Quotable Justice Scalia, by Adam Liptak: After giving a talk on administrative law at American University Washington College of Law on April 24, Justice Scalia took a few questions. One was from a student who wanted to know what she had to do to become…
-
Cheating Scandal Erupts at Syracuse Following Biden’s Graduation Speech
Following Vice-President Joe Biden's commencement address at Syracuse University on Sunday, a cheating scandal has erupted at the law school — bringing to mind Biden's plagiarism as a Syracuse 1L thirty-four years ago. According to the New York Times, the Syracuse faculty voted to give Biden an "F" grade after he ''used five pages from a published law review…
-
Motivating Faculty Dandelion Pickers
Michael Madison (Pittsburgh), The Law School Faculty as a Commons: In a comment on my last post, Jacqui Lipton asked about the greatest challenge that I’ve faced as Research Dean at Pitt. The short answer is that it is relatively easy to design, implement, and manage objective, observable dimensions of the faculty’s research and scholarship…
-
Lederman Wins Teaching Award at Indiana
Leandra Lederman (Indiana-Bloomingon) has won the Trustees Teaching Award: Trustees Awards recognize excellence in teaching, and are awarded by a committee that reviews student and faculty nominations.
-
TaxProf Blog Weekend Roundup
Saturday: Buchanan: Stasis in Tax Policy Law School Party Rankings CTJ: Obama's International Tax Proposals IRS Releases 2006 Corporate Tax Data Sunday: Goodbye, Class of 2009 Top 5 Tax Paper Downloads President Obama at Last Night's White House Correspondents' Dinner ABA Tax Section May Meeting IRS Releases 2008 State Tax Data
-
Goodbye, Class of 2009
The University of Cincinnati College of Law sent off the Class of 2009 into the world today at our graduation ceremony. They are our 176th graduating class, making us the fourth-oldest conitnuously operating law school in the country. It is always a reflective day for the faculty, as we watch with pride as each of…
-
Law School Party Rankings
SubtleDig has released the Law School Party Rankings, which attempt to measure the “quality of life” of the Top 100 (102 with ties) law schools in the 2010 U.S. News Rankings. Here are the Top 10 and Bottom 10 (“where fun goes to die“) party law schools: Party School Rank School U.S. News Overall…
-
U.S. News to Correct Data, Not Rankings, of Brooklyn, Hawaii, and Nebraska
As promised, Robert Morse, Director of Data Research at U.S. News, has responded to allegations of incorrect data being used in the 2010 U.S. News Law School Rankings of Brooklyn, Hawaii, and Nebraska in Updates to Some Grad School Data: A few schools have told us that they made errors reporting some of their data that were used in…
-
Results of 2009 Paul Faherty Tax Writing Competition
Results of the 2009 Paul Faherty Tax Writing Competition among 23 students from 10 law schools (Case Western, Cincinnati, Georgetown, Hofstra, Illinois, John Marshall, Loyola-Chicago, Oregon, Santa Clara, Virginia): First Prize ($3,000): The 5% University Endowment Spending Requirement: Analysis and Alternative Proposals, by Sonja R. Pollack (Hofstra) Honorable Mention: Where is My Monet? Museums and Donors Lose…
-
How to Fix the “Broken Windows” of Law School Faculties
A 1982 Atlantic Monthly magazine article, Broken Windows, spawned a book and its own Wikipedia entry: Consider a building with a few broken windows. If the windows are not repaired, the tendency is for vandals to break a few more windows. Eventually, they may even break into the building, and if it's unoccupied, perhaps become squatters or light…
-
More on the Death of Erik Bluemel
Following up on yesterday's post on the tragic death of Erik Bluemel: the University of Denver has issued this press release: DU’s Sturm College of Law community is mourning the loss of Assistant Professor Erik Bluemel, who died May 6 from injuries suffered in what authorities are investigating as a bicycle accident. … “We have all lost a…
-
Beyer, Hatfield Win Teaching Awards at Texas Tech
Gerry W. Beyer (left) and Michael Hatfield (right) swept the 2009 Texas Tech Professor of the Year Awards: Prof. Beyer was selected the 2009 Outstanding First Yirst Professor of the Year by vote of the 1L students. (He also received the 2007 Outstanding Professor of the Year Award by vote of 1L, 2L, and 3L students.)…
-
Death of Erik Bluemel
I am sorry to bring you the tragic news that Erik Bluemel, a 32-year old first-year assistant professor at Denver University School of Law, is on life support and is not expected to survive as a result of injuries suffered in an incident on a Denver bike path. The Denver Post has more of the horrible details. From…
-
Majority of FIU Faculty Vote U.S. Attorney “Not Acceptable” as Dean
From the South Florida Sun Sentinel: In a poll taken Monday, a slight majority of the law school's 26 faculty members deemed Alex Acosta [U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida] "not acceptable" for the post. The faculty gave its most favorable recommendations to two out-of-town candidates with superior academic chops — Jose Roberto Juarez Jr.,…
-
Taylor Wins Teaching Award at St. Thomas
Scott Taylor has been named Professor of the Year at the University of Saint Thomas. From the press release: The 3L class also selects its Professor of the Year, who hoods each graduate as they walk on the stage. For the second time Professor Scott Taylor has been chosen. Professor Taylor’s scholarship is wide ranging…
-
Law School Commencement Speakers
Akron: Betty Sutton (Member, U.S. House of Representatives) Alabama: Richard Shelby (Member, U.S. Senate) Albany: Jonathan Lippman (Chief Judge. New York Court of Appeals) American: Seth Waxman (Partner, Wilmer Hale) Arkansas-Fayetteville: William Sutton (Partner, Friday, Eldredge & Clark) Ave Maria: Adam Cardinal Maida (Archbishop Emeritus, Detroit) Baltimore: Ted Turner (Founder, CNN) Baylor: Harriet O'Neill (Justice, Texas…
-
Chemerinsky: What Is the Purpose of Legal Scholarship?
Erwin Chemerinsky (Dean, UC-Irvine) has published Why Write?, 107 Mich. L. Rev. 881 (2009). Here is the abstract: What is the purpose of legal scholarship? The foreword to the University of Michigan Law Review's book review issue provides an excellent occasion for addressing this question. This in turn requires considering who are the audiences for…
-
Tax: “The Top of the Pecking Order”
The ever-interesting Al Brophy (North Carolina) blogs What Gender is Trusts and Estates?, which notes that Trusts and Estates is a "girl class" – disproportionately taught by women — and a "low prestige subject." Two tax comments: On the former point, I previously noted that Female Tax Profs Do Better in the SSRN Rankings Than…
-
Multitasking Does Not Work
Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life, by Winifred Gallagher: In Rapt, acclaimed behavioral science writer Winifred Gallagher makes the radical argument that the quality of your life largely depends on what you choose to pay attention to and how you choose to do it. … Gallagher looks beyond sound bites on our proliferating BlackBerries and…