We spent a fair amount of time last week in lovely Charlottesville, Virginia, where we spoke at the University of Virginia Law School (coverage of our talk appears here and here). We spent lots of quality time with UVA Law students -- at dinner, at a karaoke bar, and walking around the beautiful grounds.

One of the highlights of our trip was attending a luncheon talk by the fabulous Dahlia Lithwick, who has covered the Supreme Court for Slate for the past ten years (and who also served as a celebrity judge on ATL Idol). Despite suffering from a nasty flu, she delivered remarks that were hilarious and insightful, shedding much light upon media coverage of the Court.

Read more, after the jump.

Adam Liptak is the national legal reporter for New York Times, though he'll soon be taking over the Supreme Court beat from Linda Greenhouse.

Liptak's answering questions from readers this week, so the NYTimes has a feature on him:

He first joined The Times as a copyboy in 1984, after graduation from Yale University, where he was an editor of The Yale Daily News Magazine, with a degree in English. In addition to clerical work and fetching coffee, he assisted the reporter M.A. Farber in covering the trial of a libel suit brought by Gen. William Westmoreland against CBS.

Mr. Liptak returned to Yale for a law degree, graduating in 1988. During law school, he worked as a summer clerk in the The New York Times Company's legal department. After graduating, he spent four years at Cahill Gordon & Reindel, a New York City law firm, as a litigation associate specializing in First Amendment matters.

In 1992, he returned to The Times's legal department, spending a decade advising The Times and the company's other newspapers, television stations and new media properties on defamation, privacy, newsgathering and related issues, and he frequently litigated media and commercial cases.

In 2002, Liptak gave into the writing itch and joined the news staff. For those of you aspiring to make the jump from law to journalism, you can draw inspiration from Liptak's interesting career path.

The Times readers have lots of serious questions for Liptak, about the SCOTUS voter id ruling, the death penalty, the question of balance, etc. No gossipy questions about Biglaw vs Bigmedia salaries, or filling Linda Greenhouse's heels. Oh well, there are two days of questions left...

Talk to the Newsroom: Adam Liptak, National Legal Reporter [New York Times]

[Although legal in nature, this story is not typical ATL fare -- it's a bit too, well, substantive. But we suspect that some of you will have strong opinions on it. So we're tossing it out for discussion, in the hopes of inspiring a comment clusterf**k.]

Does the death penalty serve as an effective deterrent to murder? Up until now, we've generally subscribed to the liberal view that its deterrence value is questionable. But a fascinating article by one of our favorite legal reporters, Yale Law grad Adam Liptak -- who writes for the New York Times, no conservative hack publication -- raises some interesting questions:

For the first time in a generation, the question of whether the death penalty deters murders has captured the attention of scholars in law and economics, setting off an intense new debate about one of the central justifications for capital punishment.

According to roughly a dozen recent studies, executions save lives. For each inmate put to death, the studies say, 3 to 18 murders are prevented.

The effect is most pronounced, according to some studies, in Texas and other states that execute condemned inmates relatively often and relatively quickly.

Check out this quote:

“I personally am opposed to the death penalty,” said H. Naci Mocan, an economist at Louisiana State University and an author of a study finding that each execution saves five lives. “But my research shows that there is a deterrent effect.”

More after the jump.

* How much will various law-related search terms cost you on Google? Adam Liptak has collected some interesting examples: "Asbestos attorney" = $51.68, "Pro bono lawyer” = $2.89. [NYT via WSJ Law Blog]

* Another day, another Republican politician in a gay sex scandal. [Green Bay Press-Gazette]

* Not law-related, but interesting to those who follow the blogosphere: Vanessa Grigoriadis's detailed profile of Gawker Media. [New York Magazine]

* Blawg Review #130, presented on two attorney/mediator law blogs -- a Southern Hemisphere edition from New Zealand, and a Northern Hemisphere edition from the USA -- recognizes Blog Action Day and International Conflict Resolution Day. [mediator blah... blah... and Online Guide to Mediation, via Blawg Review]

Liberal law professors can be pretty predictable in their tastes. Volvo stationwagons. Fair trade coffee. Guns.

Guns? Yes, guns. No, not gunners -- guns. Firearms. Bang bang. The good ol' Second Amendment.

According to a very interesting NYT article, by Adam Liptak:

In March, for the first time in the nation’s history, a federal appeals court struck down a gun control law on Second Amendment grounds. Only a few decades ago, the decision would have been unimaginable.

There used to be an almost complete scholarly and judicial consensus that the Second Amendment protects only a collective right of the states to maintain militias. That consensus no longer exists — thanks largely to the work over the last 20 years of several leading liberal law professors, who have come to embrace the view that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to own guns.

In those two decades, breakneck speed by the standards of constitutional law, they have helped to reshape the debate over gun rights in the United States. Their work culminated in the March decision, Parker v. District of Columbia, and it will doubtless play a major role should the case reach the United States Supreme Court.

Legal academic debate with real-world ramifications? Wow. This truly is newsworthy.

Thoughtful blogospheric reactions from Jonathan Adler, Jack Balkin, Randy Barnett, and Michael Dorf, among others. We were most amused by Professor Dorf, who blog-slaps Liptak, before concluding his post in delightfully catty fashion:

Full disclosure: I spoke with Mr. Liptak last week and expressed skepticism (along the lines described above) about his causal claim. I guess I didn't say anything quote-worthy.

HA. Hell hath no fury like a law professor not name-checked.

(Sorry, Professor Dorf -- not everyone is as susceptible to your charms as Justice Kennedy. You may spend your entire life searching for a jurisprudential romance to match what you had with AMK at One First Street, back in the heady days of October Term 1991.)

A Liberal Case for the Individual Right to Own Guns Helps Sway the Federal Judiciary [New York Times]
Scholarship and the Second Amendment in the Courts [Dorf on Law]
How Liberals Saved the Second Amendment [Volokh Conspiracy]
Scholars and the Second Amendment [Volokh Conspiracy]
The Second Amendment is Embarrassing No More [Balkinization]

Fun news CAN break over a holiday weekend. Check out this Times article (by the indefatigable Adam Liptak, a Yale Law School alum):

A divided panel of the [exceedingly powerful] United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which will soon decide an important case concerning detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, rejected a friend-of-the-court brief submitted in the case by [seven] retired [federal] judges. Two former chief judges of the court were among those rebuffed.

The unsigned majority decision, for Judges David B. Sentelle and A. Raymond Randolph, said the brief violated a 1982 advisory opinion from a committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States, which is the administrative and policy-making body of the federal court system.

“Judges should insure that the title ‘judge’ is not used in the courtroom or in papers involved in litigation before them to designate a former judge,” the advisory opinion said.

Translation: :"Former judges, you're not such hot s***. You're nothing but lawyers with frustrated gavel fetishes."

The brief was rejected over the dissent of Judge Judith Rogers:

Judge Judith W. Rogers dissented. She said the 1982 advisory opinion was meant to address situations in which former judges acting as lawyers are referred to by the honorific title “Judge.” That practice, if allowed in court, could improperly influence juries, confuse people and make parties to lawsuits lose confidence in the judicial system.

But the situation here, with former judges submitting an appellate brief on their own behalf and with the government’s consent, is different, Judge Rogers wrote. “Indeed, denying the unopposed motion for leave to file may itself create an appearance of partiality,” she wrote.

Liptak points out that (1) Judge Sentelle and Judge Randolph, the judges in the majority, were appointed by Republicans (Reagan and Bush I, respectively); (2) Judge Rogers is a Clinton appointee; and (3) two of the former D.C. Circuit chief judges on the brief, Abner J. Mikva and Patricia M. Wald, were appointed by Carter.

So was the dissing of the brief politically motivated? Judge Mikva doesn't think so -- but ascribes the decision to even cattier reasons:

Mr. Mikva said the rejection of his brief was motivated by personal animus, not politics. “It’s not political at all,” he said in an interview. “This was clearly aimed at me.”

The judges in the majority, Mr. Mikva said, were furious with him because he opposed allowing judges to accept free trips to resorts for seminars sponsored by private groups.

“They’re so close to retirement age,” Mr. Mikva said of the judges in the majority. “They really should grow up.”

OUCH. Boy do we miss the good old days on the D.C. Circuit!

Pull up a chair, kiddies, and listen to our tale. Back when Abner Mikva was Chief Judge, from 1991 to 1994, the D.C. Circuit went through a period that judicial historians refer to as The Golden Age of Bench-Slappery.

Conservatives and liberals were at each other's throats -- almost literally. Abner Mikva didn't get along with several of his more conservative colleagues, including David Sentelle and Laurence H. Silberman. During one heated argument, Laurence Silberman reportedly said to Abner Mikva, "If you were 10 years younger, I'd be tempted to punch you in the nose.” How delicious!

Sadly, the Golden Age couldn't last forever. In 1994, Chief Judge Mikva resigned to become White House Counsel under President Bill Clinton. He was replaced by Chief Judge Harry T. Edwards.

The famously cantankerous Harry Edwards -- who once asked a lawyer at oral argument, "Counsel, are you shitting me?" -- raised hopes that the Reign of Bitchiness would continue at the D.C. Circuit. But as it turned out, Chief Judge Edwards actually emphasized collegiality during his reign. And the D.C. Circuit -- an unfathomably prestigious court, baby steps away from the Supremes -- has never been the same.

(For some excellent perspectives on the controversy over the spurned brief, check out this VC post by Jonathan Adler. In the comments, legal ethics experts such as Stephen Gillers and Steve Lubet weigh in.)

Appeals Court Rejects Brief Submitted by Ex-Judges [New York Times via How Appealing]
NYT on Judicial Amicus Brief Rejection [Volokh Conspiracy]
Court Nixes Brief Because Ex-Judges Called Themselves Judges [WSJ Law Blog]

for this thought-provoking article -- "Lawyers Debate Why Blacks Lag at Major Firms," by Adam Liptak, one of our favorite legal affairs writers -- to hit the New York Times "Most E-mailed Articles" list?

(Our prediction: By the close of business tomorrow, November 29, it will be in the top 10.)

Update: It happened even faster than we expected. The article cracked the top 10 by 9:35 AM.

We may blog about it more later. At the Federalist Society National Lawyers Convention, we attended a spirited panel discussion on law firm hiring practices and diversity, featuring Professor Richard Sander (at right). So minority lawyers and the world of Biglaw is a subject that's been on our mind lately.

In the meantime, feel free to opine in the comments.

Lawyers Debate Why Blacks Lag at Major Firms [New York Times]