Little on Being a Reporter for a Law Project

Rory Little has published an article titled, "The Role of Reporter for a Law Project," 38 Hastings Con. L. Q. 747 (2011), which reflects on his experience as Reporter for an ABA Task Force proposing revisions to the Criminal Justice Standards for the Prosecution and Defense Functions. In the course of his ruminations, Rory relates valuable advice he received from Geoff Hazard, Director Emeritus of the American Law Institute, and offers some opinions about how a reporter ideally ought to function.

Marcus on the Balkanized American Legal Profession

Rick Marcus has published a chapter in The Landscape of the Legal Professions in Europe and the USA: Continuity and Change (Intersentia 2011). His chapter is titled, "The Balkanized American Legal Profession."

Obasogie Wins Franklin Prize

Osagie Obasogie has been honored with the Law and Society Association’s inaugural John Hope Franklin Prize for his article “Do Blind People See Race?” Social, Legal, and Theoretical Considerations” in Law & Society Review 44:3-4 (2010).

The John Hope Franklin Prize was established by the Law and Society Association to recognize exceptional scholarship in an article published within the previous two years on the subject of race, racism, and the law. Obasogie was presented with the award on June 4th at the Law and Society Association’s 2011 Annual Meeting in San Francisco.

Here is the abstract:

Although the meaning, significance, and definition of race have been debated for centuries, one thread of thought unifies almost all of the many diverging perspectives: a largely unquestioned belief that race is self-evident and visually obvious, defined largely by skin color, facial features, and other visual cues. This suggests that ‘‘seeing race’’ is an experience largely unmediated by broader social forces; we simply know it when we see it. It also suggests that those who cannot see are likely to have a diminished understanding of race. But is this empirically accurate?
I examine these questions by interviewing people who have been totally blind since birth about race and compare their responses to sighted individuals. I not only find that blind people have as significant an understanding of race as anyone else and that they understand race visually, but that this visual understanding of race stems from interpersonal and institutional socializations that profoundly shape their racial perceptions. These findings highlight how race and racial thinking are encoded into individuals through iterative social practices that train people to think a certain way about the world around them. In short, these practices are so strong that even blind people, in a conceptual sense, ‘‘see’’ race. Rather than being self-evident, these interviews draw attention to how race becomes visually salient through constitutive social practices that give rise to visual understandings of racial difference for blind and sighted people alike. This article concludes with a discussion of these findings’ significance for understanding the role of race in law and society.

Download a pdf of the full article.

Congratulations Osagie!

Shanske on California v. Amazon

Darien Shanske has posted a blog item on Zocalo about how states are now attempting to tax online retailers. Here's the link: http://zocalopublicsquare.org/thepublicsquare/2011/05/30/amazon-wars/read/nexus/.

Lambert on Citizens United and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Fred Lambert has delivered a symposium keynote address, to be published in the Hastings Business Law Journal, called "Citizens United After the Sino-American War: Zen and the Magic of Constitutional Interpretation." Here's a hint: the article takes place in 2018, Hastings no longer exists, Ash Bhagwat, David Faigman and Calvin Massey are voting members of the U.S. Supreme Court, and John Leshy is the non-voting Chief Justice. You'll just have to read it for yourself.

Keitner on Dominique Strauss-Kahn

Chimene Keitner has posted an item called, "Why Has DSK Not Asserted Immunity? Because He Can't," to the blog Opinio Juris. Here's the link: http://opiniojuris.org/2011/05/17/why-has-dsk-not-yet-asserted-immunity-because-he-can%E2%80%99t/

Obasogie on Race and Low-Sodium Diets

Osagie Obasogie has published an op-ed on Slate titled, "Black Salt: Should the Government Single Out African-Americans for Low Sodium Diets?" Here's the link: http://www.slate.com/id/2291513/pagenum/all/

Izumi on the Illusion of Mediator Neutrality

Carol Izumi has published an article called "Implicit Bias and the Illusion of Mediator Neutrality,' 34 Wash. U. J. L. & Pol. 71 (2010). Carol concludes: "The veneer of neutrality is stripped away by research findings that show convincingly that mediators fall far short of the ethical duty to treat parties impartially and without bias. Under current conditions, we are failing to meet our articulated goals and the expectations of the parties. Surely, it is naive to think we can completely eliminate bias in mediation. It is equally certain that nondiscrimination in mediation is attainable only with more deliberate, informed, and self-concsious practices by mediators."

Marcus on Looking at the Merits in Class Certification

Rick Marcus has published an article called "Reviving Judicial Gatekeeping of Aggregation: Scrutinizing the Merits on Class Certification," 79 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 324 (2011). Rick notes that scrutiny of the merits during the decision about whether to certify a class has been making a comeback. The 1974 case of Eisen v. Carlisle & Jaquelin disapproved such scrutiny, but the 2003 Amendments to Rule 23 have in part brought it back. Rick ultimately views this as something of a "back to basics" development, saying that "In a number of ways, Eisen has seemed a wrong turn in class action law . . . ." While Rick views the development generally positively, he warns that "it nonetheless comes with potential consequences that may unnerve some," most prominently that "there will be even more settlement-class than litigation-class certifications."

Lefstin on Robinson and the Essence of Patent Law

Jeffrey Lefstin has delivered the inaugural Dean William Callyhan Robinson Lecture at the Columbus School of Law, Catholic University. This distinguished lectureship in intellectual property was created to honor William Robinson, the author of patent law's most influential work. The lecture was called "William Callyhan Robinson and the Essence of Patent Law," and here is the abstract: Professor Lefstin explores how Robinson -- originally an Episcopalian minister -- came to Catholicism and to patent law. Surprisingly, the two were intertwined in Robinson's thought, and both Robinson's Catholicism and his system of patent law were products of the unique milieu of late 19th Century America. Paradoxically, the cornerstone of Robinson's system of patent law --- his "essence of the invention" -- was both the most influential, and the most forgotten, aspect of his monumental work. Professor Lefstin examines how Robinson's concept shaped the patent law of the 20th Century, and how renewed attention to his concept might serve the patent law of the 21st.

Hazard on the Moral Position of Advocates

Geoff Hazard has co-authored an article with Professor Dana Remus (University of New Hampshire) called, "Advocacy Revalued," 159 U. Pa. L. Rev. 751 (2011). Here is the abstract:

A central and ongoing debate among legall ethics scholars addresses the moral positioning of adversarial advocacy. Most participants in this debate focus on the structure of our legal system and the constituent role of the lawyer-advocate. Many are highly critical, arguing that the core structure of adversarial advocacy is the root cause of many instances of lawyer misconduct. In this Article, we argue that these scholars' focuses are misguided. Through reflection on Artistotle's treatise, Rhetoric, we defend advocacy in our legal system's litigation process as ethically positive and as pivotal to fair and effective dispute resolution. We recognize that advocacy can, and sometimes does, involve improper and unethical use of adversarial techniques, but we demonstrate that these are problems of practice and not of structure and should be addressed as such.

Little on SCOTUS Criminal Law Cases

The American Bar Association has now created a webpage for Rory Little's thumbnail analyses of all United States Supreme Court decisions related to criminal law or criminal procedure. The link is here: http://americanbar.org/groups/criminal_justice/resources/casesummaries.html. It is also now on my list of "Blogs With Hastings Participants."

Wu's Tribute to Judge Denny Chin

Frank Wu has published an essay titled, "Justice Through Pragmatism and Process: A Tribute to Judge Denny Chin," 79 Fordham L. Rev. 1497 (2011).

Symposium on Keitner's "Rights Beyond Borders"

Chimene Keitner's article on "Rights Beyond Borders" is the subject of an online symposium at the Opinio Juris blog today -- here are the individual URLs.

http://opiniojuris.org/2011/03/08/yjil-online-symposium/http://opiniojuris.org/2011/03/08/rights-beyond-borders/http://opiniojuris.org/2011/03/08/a-comment-on-rights-beyond-borders/http://opiniojuris.org/2011/03/08/a-comment-on-rights-beyond-borders/http://opiniojuris.org/2011/03/08/a-comment-on-rights-beyond-borders/

Gray on Managing California's Water

Brian Gray and a group of co-authors have published a book called, Managing California's Water: From Conflict to Reconciliation (Public Policy Institute of California, 2011). The book's authors propose moving away from the current strategy: taking desperate action to save one species at a time under the federal and state Endangered Species Acts. Instead, they argue that a broader approach is more promising: creating better conditions for many species and addressing the multiple causes of ecosystem decline.

The book is available in bookstores, on Amazon in hard copy or Kindle, and on Google Books. There also is a link in the text below to the book and executive summary on PPIC's web site.