* It sounds like very few protesters greeted John Yoo at Berkeley Law School. Only four were tenacious enough to get arrested. [Associated Press]

* Fen-phen lawyers sentenced to 20 and 25 years, respectively. The judge wants their sentences to deter other lawyers tempted to steal from settlement funds. [Bloomberg]

* Proskauer Rose probably likes this headline. [New York Daily News]

* Nino leads one to believe that empathy is not an important quality in a judge. [New York Times via Daily Beast]

* The 5th Circuit agrees with a Texas school district that has banned “shirts with words.” Are shirts with numbers okay? [Courthouse News Service]

* Michael Jackson’s children have lawyered up. [CNN]

* Nationwide salary cut watch: LA County judges. [Los Angeles Times]

* Why has there been no litigation surge in the recession? [National Law Journal]

Berkeley Law School professor — and former Department of Justice attorney — John Yoo published his inaugural column in the Philadelphia Inquirer on Sunday. He argues that Obama should nominate somebody FDR would have liked:

Franklin Roosevelt faced exactly this dilemma. With large majorities at his back, FDR pushed through sweeping legislative efforts to end the Great Depression (which never really worked). His only obstacle became the Supreme Court, which held several basic New Deal laws to violate the Constitution’s limits on federal powers and the economic rights of the individual. Only after FDR waged a campaign to increase the size of the court and give himself more appointments did the justices surrender. The New Deal could not have survived without judges that deferred to the legislature on economic regulation.

Obama could make a pick based solely on race or sex - though it’s not clear why the most empathetic judges are minorities or women - to please parts of his coalition. But if the president wants to secure the success of his economic, political, and national-security objectives, he should remember FDR’s example and choose a judge who believes in the right of the president and Congress, not the courts, to make the nation’s policies. If Obama shoots for empathy instead, he will give Senate Republicans yet another opportunity to rally around a unifying issue where they better represent the majority of Americans.

Wait, so now FDR’s court packing scheme was a good idea? Because it hobbled SCOTUS and forced them to defer to Roosevelt’s amazing enhancement of federal power? A conservative believes this?

Before we get too bogged down in Yoo’s argument, can somebody remind me why we care about what John Yoo has to say?

The left (over) reacts after the jump.

As we mentioned last week, U.C. Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law hired a brand consulting firm to come up with a new name for the school. The effort ended somewhat anticlimactically. Boalt paid $25,000 to Marshall Strategy Inc., which came up with this brilliant new moniker: “UC Berkeley School of Law.”

Oh well. But since we already took the time to read through hundreds of suggested new names for Boalt Hall, we’re going to conduct this reader poll anyway.

Cast your vote, after the jump.

Okay, so the folks over at TMZ.com don’t chase them around yet. But here at ATL, we adore legal celebrities — and invite you to send in your encounters with them, for our Eyes of the Law sightings column.

Last Friday, for lovers of legal boldface names from the left or the right, William & Mary School of Law was the place to be:

William and Mary Law School (and the College) had a series of speakers of today, all wedged into a very tight schedule. They included:

At noon, former Dean of UC Irvine School of Law Erwin Chemerinsky. Unfortunately, I didn’t go to his talk, so I can’t say whether he talked about the controversy.

At 1 PM, UC Berkley professor (and evil incarnate if you believe some blogs) John Yoo spoke. Yoo said in his introduction that he was being “wedged in” between “the former Dean of UC Irvine” and Stuart Taylor, who was speaking at 2 on his book on the Duke rape case, “Until Proven Innocent.”

We also had a panel on Saturday on “Judicial Modesty,” which included such leading lights as Dahlia Lithwick, Michael McConnell, Carter Phillips and Jeffrey Rosen. See here (PDF).

Quite the weekend for legal geeks! (Er. You know. If I was one of them).

Although this tipster wasn’t at the Chemerinsky talk, other ATL readers were. Check out this video, posted on the blog of the W&M chapter of the American Constitution Society. Isn’t Chemerinsky adorable?

Additional discussion of the Erwin Chemerinsky and John Yoo appearances, after the jump.