Eoin – Page 159 – cearta.ie

Law School lessons

22 October, 200722 May, 2010

| Irish Law, Legal Education, Tenure, Universities

A few weeks ago, noted US Constitutional scholar Erwin Chemerinsky (wikipedia), currently Alston & Bird Professor of Law and Professor of Political Science at Duke, was hired as the founding Dean of Donald Bren School of Law at the University of California, Irvine; then he was “unhired” (here’s Chemerinsky’s own take on that, from the LA Times); and quite quickly re-hired.

I’ve just recently discovered that Paul Caron on Tax Law Prof used this flap “to generate and publicize the best ideas about reforming legal education from some of the leading thinkers in the law school world”. He and Bill Henderson asked various legal luminaries to give 250-word answers to this question:

What is the single best idea for reforming legal education you would offer to Erwin Chemerinsky as he builds the law school at UC-Irvine?

They got forty responses, gathered together here, and well worth a read they are too (don’t just take my word for it; the Chronicle of Higher Education thinks so too (hat tip: Tax Prof Blog)).

I wonder whether any of those ideas will surface at the forthcoming (second annual) Legal Education Symposium hosted by UCC in December (already discussed here on this blog)?…

Cocktails and Shots

21 October, 20078 September, 2008

| 4 Comments

| Capital Punishment, Law, US Supreme Court

US Supreme Court The BBC are reporting today on yet another death row battle in the United States: Alabama’s fierce death row battle:

If most politicians in Alabama had their way, Tommy Arthur would have been executed more than 20 years ago. … Alabama’s governor has made it clear he wants Arthur to die as soon as possible, and that the current furore over the chemicals used to deliver the ultimate punishment is an annoying distraction.

Although many death penalty abolitionists are viewing the US Supreme Court’s decision to review the constitutionality of the existing chemical cocktail with hope, the fact is that states like Alabama guard their rights very carefully – and few more so than the right to execution.

Last Thursday, I attended an event hosted by the University of Washington and Lee‘s branch of the American Constitution Society, looking at the US Supreme Court’s term just past and at the term to come. David Bruck, of that University’s Law School talked about death penalty cases (which he described as a US Supreme Court “staple, term after term”), including what the BBC story above referred to as “the current furore over the chemicals used to deliver the ultimate punishment”.…

Supreme Court Preview

18 October, 20078 September, 2008

| No Comments

| US Supreme Court

The University of Washington and Lee‘s branch of the American Constitution Society hosted a great Supreme Court Discussion Panel, Looking Back and Moving Forward, today to recap the US Supreme Court’s 2006-2007 term and to preview its 2007-2008 term. I’ve blogged the proceedings here, here and here.

By way of bonus, here’s a link to videos of two good roundups of the Supreme Court’s last term, with equivalent video previews of the forthcoming term here (ACS) and here (Federalist Society).…

The Holocaust Memorial Lecture, 2007

18 October, 200727 January, 2009

| 1 Comment

| Conferences, Lectures, Papers and Workshops

My colleagues in the Department of History, Trinity College Dublin, the Herzog Centre for Jewish and Near Eastern Religion, Trinity College Dublin, and the Holocaust Educational Trust of Ireland (HETI) will host their annual Holocaust Memorial Lecture for 2007 on Thursday, 25 October 2007 at 7:30pm in the Emmet Theatre (Room 2037) of the Arts Building (map here), Trinity College Dublin; and all are welcome to attend.

The speaker will be Professor Jeffrey Herf, University of Maryland (pictured left), and he will speak on the topic of

The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda in Germany and the Middle East during World War Two and the Holocaust

Jeffrey Herf is Professor of History at the University of Maryland and currently a Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin. He has published extensively on the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany and on West and East Germany during the Cold War; and his most recent book, The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda During World War II and the Holocaust (Harvard University Press, 2006) (cover pictured left) examines the Nazi regime’s anti-semitism and its public defense of a policy of “exterminating” Europe’s Jews.

Further details are available from Prof John Horne, Department of History, TCD; Dr Zuleika Rodgers, Herzog Centre, TCD; and Lynn Jackson, (HETI).…

Deep Fried Oreos

17 October, 2007

| No Comments

| Media and Communications

A story that caught my eye in the New York Times a little while ago. During this year’s Great Indiana State Fair, punters could still purchase seep-fried oreos, …

… but not in trans fats!

Only in the land of the free and the home of the brave. The New York Times article (sub req’d) provided:

Yes, Deep-Fried Oreos, but Not in Trans Fats

The deep-fried Combo Plate may be a little more healthful this year at the Great Indiana State Fair. So say the fairâ€™s leaders, who, taking a step rarely seen in the realm of corn dogs and fried pickles, have banned oils with trans fats from all the fryers that line the grounds here. …

This is a slice of heaven,â€? said Ryan Howell, 31, as he cradled his Combo Plate, which, for the record, consists of one battered Snickers bar, two battered Oreos and a battered Reeseâ€™s Peanut Butter Cup â€” all deep-fried in oil that is trans-fat free, thank goodness. …

Jeremy Orme, who runs Fried Creations, the home of the Combo Plate, introduced a new item at this yearâ€™s fair: deep-fried Pepsi. He rolls out his Pepsi-based dough, dips it in a batter made with Pepsi and deep-fries it for 90 seconds.

…

To do a great right

10 October, 200712 July, 2016

| 2 Comments

| Blasphemy, Cinema, television and theatre, Freedom of Expression, Media and Communications

And I beseech you,
Wrest once the law to your authority:
To do a great right, do a little wrong,
And curb this cruel devil of his will.

The Merchant of Venice: Act 4, Scene I

I think it is rather as though Jack Straw has been seduced by Bassanio’s arguments. For, to do a great right by the gay community, he has this week chosen to do what he must regard as no more than a little wrong to the right to freedom of expression.

The UK already has legislation on incitement to racial hatred (as does Ireland, also here), it has recently extended that legislation to cover incitement to religious hatred, and just this week Straw announced the UK government’s intention to extend it further to cover incitement to hatred based on sexual orientation. …

Reforming Irish Legal Education?

9 October, 200723 June, 2011

| 3 Comments

| Competition Law, Irish Law, Legal Education, Universities

Change in the structure of legal education is in the air. It is one of the themes of the Second Legal Education Symposium which will be hosted by the Faculty of Law, University College Cork, on Friday 7 December 2007. As with last yearâ€™s symposium, this yearâ€™s will also be generously sponsored by Dillon Eustace, Solicitors.

This symposium will bring together various parties with an interest in legal education including students, teachers, researchers, practitioners, policy-makers and more – in the hope of enriching the debate and informing future decisions. The theme of the morning session will concern the undergraduate curriculum and will include a key-note address by Professor Joseph W. Singer (Harvard) describing recent (and much discussed and debated) curriculum reforms there. The afternoon session will focus on the implications of Fourth Level Ireland for Law Schools.

Harvard isnâ€™t the only US law school to think about curriculum reform; there is in fact a robust discussion of these issues ongoing at present in many US law schools, including Yale, Stanford and Vanderbilt; and another exciting change has been made by up-and-coming University of Detroit Mercy School of Law in their Law Firm Program. Nor are these the only kinds of curriculum reform being contemplated.…

If t-shirts could talk …

3 October, 200731 July, 2013

| 8 Comments

| Freedom of Expression, US Supreme Court

… they might get you in trouble. Oh, wait a minute – they do!

Say you wanted to attend a political rally to indicate your disapproval of the speaker in a way that made your position clear but did not in fact disrupt the proceedings in any way. Why not try the age-old slogan t-shirt? Well, that’s what Jeff and Nicole Rank did when they attended a Fourth of July appearance in 2004 by President Bush at the West Virginia State Capitol wearing t-shirts critical of the president (see picture, left). There the story should have ended; but it didn’t. The Ranks were promptly arrested – and handcuffed – for their troubles! But the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) represented them in a case against the White House (that didn’t seem to get nearly enough coverage at the time, though there’s a wonderful article about it in the New Republic), arguing:

Two Americans went to see their president and to express their disagreement with his policies respectfully and peacefully. They were arrested at the direction of federal officials. That is precisely what the First Amendment was adopted to prevent.

Don’t take the ACLU’s word for it; the Supreme Court of the United States has said so too, in a famous First Amendment case called Cohen v California 403 U.S.…