We're attending the 2008 National Convention of the American Constitution Society (aka the Federalist Society of the Left, for those of you not familiar with the ACS). It's being held today and tomorrow at the Hyatt Regency here in Washington, DC. The theme of this year's conference: "Revitalizing Our Democracy: Progress and Possibilities." Read: "Welcome President Obama: It's Good To Be Back in the House!"

We may be filing some dispatches from the proceedings. We'd liveblog the panels contemporaneously, but neither the hotel wireless nor our wi-fi card worked inside the hotel's subterranean ballroom. So we will post in between sessions, when we can.

These comments -- essentially a liveblog, but posted after the fact -- will have an unpolished, stream-of-consciousness quality. Expect lots of randomness (and typos).

The first report, about the very interesting (and star-studded) plenary panel, "Law and Justice Policies in a New Administration," appears after the jump.

A pair of Volokh Conspirators, Professors James Lindgren and Randy Barnett, at last week's NYLS conference on writing about the law. Inset: Professor Cameron Stracher, who organized the symposium.

In our write-up of the NYLS conference panel on law reviews, we offered the following fashion commentary:

Professors Barnett and Stracher are both rockin' the "downtown auteur" look: black or dark blue suit, dark collarless shirt, no tie. Not bad in a vacuum, but unfortunate that they're on the same panel with the same look (except as to the color of their shirts).

Professor Barnett has taken issue with our observations. He claims that he was wearing a crewneck shirt, while Professor Stracher was wearing a turtleneck -- and that "a world of difference" exists between the two.

We pulled out our photographs of Professors Barnett and Stracher. Professor Barnett is clearly wearing a crew neck -- the same crew neck he's wearing in his website photo, it seems. But we couldn't tell the type of Professor Stracher's collar (above inset).

So we looked up Professor Ann Althouse's more detailed photograph of Professor Stracher (together with yours truly). Yep, that's a turtleneck (although a relatively short one).

We apologize to Professor Barnett, and we regret the error.

In addition, Professor Lindgren wanted to clarify his choice of a button-down shirt (for which we criticized him). He explained that he has several levels of sartorial formality, and he deliberately chose a button-down because he viewed the NYLS conference as calling for a moderate rather than extreme level of formality. Given the fairly laid-back nature of the proceedings, we can see where he's coming from.

For true legal-media-and-academia groupies, additional pictures of top legal journalists and law professor bloggers appear after the jump.

We had a blast at last week's Writing About the Law conference, at New York Law School. And we weren't the only ones. Here's a (rather belated) round-up of conference coverage from the blogosophere:

1. Social life of a blawger [Overlawyered]

As you can see from his post, Walter Olson was a social butterfly at the conference. We enjoyed sitting next to him at lunch, where we talked about -- what else? -- his famous neighbor in Chappaqua, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. Let the conversation begin!

2. Blawgers are Dirty Swingers [QuizLaw]

Dustin wasn't even at the conference, but he used Walter Olson's post as the jumping-off point for this entertaining write-up. Even Ann Althouse was amused -- despite being the subject of the line, "One night with Ann Althouse is all I ask, man. It’s all I ask."

(Back off, Dustin -- she's with us.)

3. At the "Writing About the Law" conference [Althouse]

Speaking of Professor Althouse, here's her account of the proceedings. It's a multimedia extravaganza. In addition to several photos, it includes an amusingly awkward video. Technology is swell!

4. "Writing About the Law: From Bluebook to Blogs and Beyond" at NYLS, Part I
"Writing About the Law: From Bluebook to Blogs and Beyond" at NYLS, Part II
"Writing About the Law: From Bluebook to Blogs and Beyond" at NYLS, Part III

A trio of substantive write-ups of various panels, from Lawrence Solum of Legal Theory Blog.

Despite his brilliance, the lanky Professor Solum shares our tendency towards typos. Is referring to the Duke lacrosse team rape case as "the Dukie case" a Freudian slip?

5. Ripped From The Headlines [Soloway]

Photographs from the conference (including a profile shot of us typing away on our laptop).

6. Live-Blogging the NYLS Symposium on Writing About the Law [TaxProf Blog]

A linkwrap by Professor Paul Caron (who has duly noted our comments on his shirt selection).

7. Is John McCain's website suggestive of NAZI iconography? [Volokh Conspiracy]

Professors Jim Lindgren and Randy Barnett of the Volokh Conspiracy both spoke at the conference, but haven't really blogged about it. This VC post, from Professor Lindgren, includes a brief shout-out to Professor Althouse: "It was a pleasure to see Ann Althouse at the New York Law School conference yesterday."

Here's a picture we took of these two professors, mugging for the camera:

Last week we wrote about how John Jay Osborn, a law professor and author of The Paper Chase, sniffily dismissed One L, by Scott Turow. "One L is competent," he said. "But it doesn't have a HEART."

Now a prominent blogger has come to Turow's defense. In this Times Select column, grande blogress diva Ann Althouse defends Turow -- and, in the words of a tipster, "cattily trashes John Jay Osborn, author of the Paper Chase, for his suggestion that law profs not teach via the Socratic method in order to make students 'happier.'"

Money quote, comparing Osborn's "The Paper Chase" to Turow's "One L":

I preferred the memoir [of One L], the account of an ordinary man as he encounters some interesting, fallible human beings who did the work that both Osborn and I do now.

Though none of the law professors I know are much at all like Kingsfield, Osborn chided us law professors for making our students so unhappy: stop calling on them; listen only to volunteers; don’t dictate how they should think; let them tell their own stories.

Law should connect to the real world. But that doesn’t mean we ought to devote our classes to the personal expression of law students. The cases we read for class are always based on factual disputes that arose in real life....

So law is not abstract unless one makes the mistake of turning it into an abstraction. We law professors tend to worry about seeming like Professor Kingsfield. But we ought to worry less about that prospect and more about preserving and respecting our own tradition of teaching from the cases.

The students who come into our law schools are adults who have decided that they are ready to spend a tremendous amount of time and money preparing to enter a profession. We show the greatest respect for their individual autonomy if we deny ourselves the comfort of trying to make them happy and teach them what they came to learn: how to think like lawyers.

Good stuff (even it it's not as catty as we had hoped). It's worth noting that Professor Althouse, whose own excellent blog is less academic than many other law professor blogs, is not opposed to "personal expression." It's just that she believes, and rightly so, that there's a time and place for everything.

P.S. Random aside: Professor Osborn's daughter, Meredith, is a Harvard Law grad now clerking on the Ninth Circuit.

P.P.S. We had the pleasure of meeting Professor Althouse at the NYLS conference last week (see photo at right).

More photographs from the conference, of superior quality, are available at Althouse and Soloway.

‘A Skull Full of Mush’ [Times Select]
At the "Writing About the Law" conference [Althouse]
Ripped From the Headlines [Soloway]

Earlier: John Osborn to Scott Turow: "Game On, Bitch"

Oops, we forgot to post our write-up of the final panel of Friday's conference at New York Law School.

Afternoon Panel (2:15-3:30): Beyond the Bluebook: The Future of Writing About the Law

"In a world increasingly dominated by blogs and online publications, does traditional legal scholarship have a future? Will legal scholars abandon the traditional law review to write for a popular audience, and if so, why? What will this brave new world look like?"

Panelists and Moderator:

* Bernard Hibbitts, Professor, University of Pittsburgh School of Law and Editor in Chief of Jurist.
* Rosa Brooks, Professor, Georgetown University Law Center and op-ed columnist, Los Angeles Times.
* Jack Balkin, Professor, Yale Law School and Founder and Director of the Information Society Project.
* Lawrence B. Solum, Professor, University of Illinois College of Law and author of Legal Theory Blog.
* Rodger Citron (Moderator), Assistant Professor of Law, Touro Law Center.

For those of you who are interested -- which, we realize, is probably a small, wonky group -- a brief discussion appears after the jump.

We're at the next panel of the day at the New York Law School conference on legal writing.

Morning Panel #2 (11:00–12:15): Lost in Translation? Writing About the Law for a Non-Legal Audience

"Writing about law for a lay audience poses its own unique challenges. What is lost and what is gained by having to translate complex legal concepts into concise news reporting, incisive commentary or compelling drama?"

Panelists and Moderator:

* Adam Cohen, editorial board member, The New York Times.
* Jamie Heller, Deputy Managing Editor, The Wall Street Journal Online.
* Richard Sweren, writer and co-executive producer, Law & Order.
* Dahlia Lithwick, Supreme Court reporter, Slate.
* Brandt Goldstein (Moderator), Visiting Associate Professor of Law, New York Law School.

Discussion after the jump.

Right now we're in the audience for this panel at the NYLS conference on writing about the law:

Morning Panel #1 (9:30-10:45): Just Cite It! The Traditional Law Review Structure

Law reviews have been attacked as irrelevant and their student editors criticized as incompetent, yet legal scholars still need to publish in law reviews to get and keep their jobs. What role does the traditional law review play, what role should it play, and should it be continued?

Panelists and Moderator:

* James Lindgren, Professor, Northwestern University School of Law and Cofounder of the section on Scholarship of the Association of American Law Schools.

* Randy E. Barnett, Professor, Georgetown University Law Center and senior fellow at the Cato Institute and the Goldwater Institute.

* Ann Althouse, Professor, University of Wisconsin School of Law and author and blogger.

* Paul Caron, Professor, University of Cincinnati School of Law and Publisher and Editor of TaxProf Blog

* Cameron Stracher (Moderator), Codirector, Program in Law & Journalism and Publisher, New York Law School Law Review.

Commentary after the jump.