Legal Theory Blog

Monday Calendar

Indiana University School of Law—Bloomington: First Big Ten UnTENured Conference (Day One)

1:30 - 3:30 Patents, Trademark, Intellectual Property

Discussion Host: Joshua Fairfield

Olufunmilayo (Funmi) Arewa "Diaspora and Distribution Technology, Intellectual Property and Nollywood Films"

Kevin Collins "Propertizing Thought"

Adam Mossoff "Patents as Property: Rethinking the Exclusive Right in Patent Law"

Lisa Arent "Does Liability Know No Bounds? False Advertising Under the Lanham Act"

1:30 - 3:30 pm Interdisciplinary Analyses of the Law

Discussion Host: Christiana Ochoa

Amitai Aviram "The Placebo Effect of Law: Law's Role in Manipulating Perceptions"

William Henderson "The Changing Economic Geography of the Am Law 200"

Ajay Mehrotra "From Labor to Capital: Taxation and the Changing American Conceptions of Wealth"

Ethan Stone "Historical Origins of the Corporate Income Tax"

3:45 - 5:15 pm Constitutional Law, Federalism

Discussion Host: Ajay Mehrotra

Heidi Kitrosser "A Right to Leak? First Amendment Implications in the Exposure of Classified Information"

Paul Stancil "Reviving Lochner"

David Stras "Are Senior Judges Unconstitutional?"

3:45 - 5:15 pm Race, Ethnicity and the Law

Discussion Host: William Henderson

Luis Fuentes-Rohwer "Public Opinion, Judicial Review, and Critical Elections: The Ironic Case of the Voting Rights Act"

Margareth Etienne "Taking Black Pain Seriously: A New Understanding of Racial Disparity in Sentencing"

Shayna Sigman "Race, Polygamy, & the Problem of the Welfare State"

Weekend Update

On Saturday, the Download of the Week was On Belling the Cat: Rawls & Tort as Corrective Justice by Kevin A. Kordana (Virginia Law) and David H. Tabachnick (Virginia Philosophy) and the Legal Theory Bookworm recommended  Are Judges Political?: An Empirical Analysis of the Federal Judiciary by Cass R. Sunstein, David Schkade, Lisa M. Ellman, and Andres Sawicki.  On Sunday, the Legal Theory Lexicon entry was Default Rules and Completeness and the Legal Theory Calendar previewed this week's conferences and talks.

Call for Papers: MLEA

MLEA Call for Papers

The 2006 meeting of the Midwestern Law & Economics Association will be held at the University of Kansas School of Law, Lawrence, Kansas, on October 20 & 21, 2006.

If you are interested in presenting a paper at the meeting, please send me an email  (drahozal@ku.edu) with the relevant information (title, abstract, or paper itself) no later than August 15, 2006. We'll circulate a draft program shortly thereafter.

We have reserved a block of 24 rooms at the Eldridge Hotel (http://www.eldridgehotel.com/ ), at the KU rate of $120 per night. Rooms at the Eldridge must be booked by September 19. To make reservations, call 1-800-527-0909 and ask for the MLEA room block. The Eldridge is located in downtown Lawrence; we will provide transportation from the Eldridge to the law school as needed. Other possible accomodations include the Halcyon House, a B&B which is about a 15-minute walk from the law school (http://www.thehalcyonhouse.com/); and the Circle S Ranch, just outside of Lawrence (http://www.circlesranch.com/). (If you want information on other hotel options in Lawrence, let me know.)

As customary, there is no conference fee. The law school will provide meals on Friday and breakfast and lunch on Saturday. We'll send information about events in the area as the time for the conference gets closer.

Two by Thomas

Via Philosophy Online, two new papers by Alan Thomas (King's College, London):

Consequentialism and the Subversion of Pluralism

This paper critically analyses Brad Hooker's attempt to undercut pluralism by arguing that any plausible set of prima facie duties can be derived from a more fundamental rule consequentialist principle. It is argued that this conclusion is foreshadowed by the rationalist and epistemologically realist interpretation that Hooker imposes on his chosen methodology of reflective equilibrium; he is not describing pluralism in its strongest and most plausible version and a more plausible version of pluralism is described and defended.

Liberal Republicanism and the Role of Civil Society

The political liberalism of Rawls and Larmore is presented as uniquely able to solve the problems of modern political theory. In the face of a plurality of reasonable comprehensive conceptions of the good, a legitimate liberal state can legislate solely on the basis of a modular conception of justice affirmed from within each reasonable conception. However, it is argued that this view, while restrictive, has to permit the promotion of its own pre-conditions. This demanding duty of civic restraint requires citizens who have been educated for citizen virtue in the context of associational life in civil society. This challenge to expand liberalism to cover its own preconditions at the level of a moral background culture, has usually been levelled by one kind of republican/communitarian (Charles Taylor) or so-called "ethical liberals". It can be met by the adoption of a liberal republicanism that operates within the constraints of Rawls' political liberalism but nevertheless explains and justifies why such a view must treat traditional republican themes such as active citizenship and the importance of associational life. The solution lies in treating these values as option values, in a sense that is explained.

Welcome to the Blogosphere . . .

. . . to Andrew Chin (Law, North Carolina) and his new blog, Voiceless.

Thanks to Daniel Solove of Concurring Opinions.

Borghi on Rewarding Creativity

Maurizio Borghi has posted Rewarding Creativity in Law, Economics and Literature on Ancilla Juris. Here is the abstract:

Scientific, literary and artistic products are the outcome of what in the Western world has been called, at least since the 18th century, creative human labor, or simply, creativity. Since creativity is one of the foremost faculties of the human being, it is in the common interest to protect and encourage it. The problem seems only to be how to do it. How is it possible to make laws consonant with this sound and universal tenet? What measures should be taken? But even prior to that: how can one orient himself with confidence in these questions? In a sense, since the dawn of Western culture, these questions have raised serious discussions. However, the shape these questions have taken today is something new; it is the eventual result of a “revolution” begun two and a half centuries ago that upset the way our humankind relates to works of art and thought. This paper explores the question of what does “rewarding creativity” mean today? And what did it meant before the rise of the modern world? Questioning the principles and institutions that regulate and have regulated the rewarding of creativity in Western culture, might allow us to become better aware of our present situation as regards to art, knowledge and learning – knowing full well that this situation is so puzzling that no historical analysis as such can pretend to shed a complete light on it.

Call for Papers: “An Uncomfortable Conversation on Sociobiology, Evolutionary Psychology, and Feminist Legal Theory” at Emory

An Uncomfortable Conversation on Sociobiology, Evolutionary Psychology, and Feminist Legal Theory

December 1-2, 2006
Emory University School of Law
Atlanta, Georgia

Follow this link for the call for papers.

This is the first of a planned series of workshops that will examine the implications of the increasing use of theories of sociobiology and evolutionary psychology to explain persistent inequalities between men and women. The primary aim of this initial workshop is to learn as much as possible about the diverse and confusing field often called “sociobiology” and the various ways in which it implicates diverse aspects of the feminist project.

Tentative issues include:

The relationship between evolutionary biology and economics, and between the emerging field of “Law and Evolution” and the established field of Law and Economics

A taxonomy of the field or fields – untangling the confusing profusion of labels and understanding the differences between sociobiology, evolutionary psychology, evolutionary biology, evolutionary anthropology, behavioral biology and others

Evolutionary psychology as science versus evolutionary psychology as pop culture, and how to tell the difference

Methodologies used by evolutionary psychologists and evolutionary biologists – feminist critiques and feminist uses

Talking to or talking past – can sociobiologists and feminists have a conversation?

What are we fighting about? The surprising similarities of the worlds described by feminists and sociobiologists

“Law and evolution” – its various arguments, its politics, and its implications for legal feminism

Thank you to Ann Bartow for this!

Katyal

LegalTimes.com has an excellent story on Georgetown lawprof Neal Katyal: How an Overachieving Law Professor Toppled the President's Terror Tribunals.  Link courtesy of the amazing Howard Bashman.

Leiter on "The Best Law Schools for the 'Best' Jobs in Law Teaching"

Brian Leiter has an updated version of his The Best Law Schools for the "Best" Jobs in Law Teaching.  Here's a tiny taste of his results, which include a total of five groups.  No big surprises here.  Yale is by itself in the top group, followed by Harvard, Stanford, and Chicago in Group 2.

Group 1

Yale Law School

Group 2

Harvard Law School
Stanford Law School
University of Chicago Law School

Legal Theory Calendar

Monday, July 31

Indiana University School of Law—Bloomington: First Big Ten UnTENured Conference (Day One)

1:30 - 3:30 Patents, Trademark, Intellectual Property

Discussion Host: Joshua Fairfield

Olufunmilayo (Funmi) Arewa "Diaspora and Distribution Technology, Intellectual Property and Nollywood Films"

Kevin Collins "Propertizing Thought"

Adam Mossoff "Patents as Property: Rethinking the Exclusive Right in Patent Law"

Lisa Arent "Does Liability Know No Bounds? False Advertising Under the Lanham Act"

1:30 - 3:30 pm Interdisciplinary Analyses of the Law

Discussion Host: Christiana Ochoa

Amitai Aviram "The Placebo Effect of Law: Law's Role in Manipulating Perceptions"

William Henderson "The Changing Economic Geography of the Am Law 200"

Ajay Mehrotra "From Labor to Capital: Taxation and the Changing American Conceptions of Wealth"

Ethan Stone "Historical Origins of the Corporate Income Tax"

3:45 - 5:15 pm Constitutional Law, Federalism

Discussion Host: Ajay Mehrotra

Heidi Kitrosser "A Right to Leak? First Amendment Implications in the Exposure of Classified Information"

Paul Stancil "Reviving Lochner"

David Stras "Are Senior Judges Unconstitutional?"

3:45 - 5:15 pm Race, Ethnicity and the Law

Discussion Host: William Henderson

Luis Fuentes-Rohwer "Public Opinion, Judicial Review, and Critical Elections: The Ironic Case of the Voting Rights Act"

Margareth Etienne "Taking Black Pain Seriously: A New Understanding of Racial Disparity in Sentencing"

Shayna Sigman "Race, Polygamy, & the Problem of the Welfare State"

Tuesday, August 1

Indiana University School of Law—Bloomington: First Big Ten UnTENured Conference (Day Two)

10:30 - 12:15 International and Comparative Law

Discussion Host: Luis Fuentes-Rohwer

Patrick J Keenan "Is Selective Globalization Possible? Communities, Vulnerability and the New Mobility of Unwanted Activity"

Christiana Ochoa "Customary International Law: What Role for the Individual?"

Tung Yin "Carrots and Sticks: Updating and Clarifying the Geneva Convention's Regulation of Interrogation of Captured Combatants"

10:30 - 12:15 Common Law and Legislation

Discussion Host: Kevin Collins

Joshua Fairfield "The Search Interest in Contract"

Alexandra Klass "Modern Public Trust Principles: Recognizing Rights and Integrating Standards"

Glen Staszewski "Legislative Misfit and the Promise of Administrative Equity"

Kristin Hickman "Coloring Outside the Lines: Examining Treasury's (Lack of) Compliance with APA Procedural Requirements"

Wednesday, August 2

University of Cincinnati Law: Brad Mank, The Dormant Commerce Clause and Public Waste Facilities

Thursday, August 3

University of Arizona Law: John Swain, The Sourcing of Service Receipts for State Income Tax Purposes: Time to Adopt a Destination Rule