Law Professors

Lawyerly Lairs: Back in the Big Apple

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Edward Tuddenham Sarah Cleveland townhouse townhome mansion Above the Law blog.jpgWe’ve been so focused on nationwide associate pay raises that we’ve been neglecting New York City — where lawyers have always earned top dollar. And where they enjoy real estate spoils reflecting their high compensation, which we regularly profile for Lawyerly Lairs.
One of our favorite sources of real estate porn in the deliciously gossipy New York Observer. Here are a few recent “Manhattan Transfers” items, all of which involve lawyers:
1. Crusading Lawyer Inks Sweet $2.4 M. Deal for Harlem Townhouse

The Erin Brockovich of big-sugar class-action lawsuits has bought a stately 108-year-old townhouse on West 137th Street (at right), a leafy block near Harlem’s Strivers Row.

Lawyer Edward Tuddenham and his wife, Sarah Cleveland, a University of Texas law professor, paid $2.4 million for the five-level townhouse.

Moral of the story: If you’re a law professor with dreams of a million-dollar home, you need to marry well. Or be Feldsuk.
In addition to having a million-dollar home, Professor Cleveland is also highly attractive, a former Rhodes Scholar, and a former Supreme Court clerk (for Justice Blackmun). Could a life be any more charmed? (Although that Manhattan-Austin commute is probably a real pain…)
Update: Per this comment, and as confirmed by this press release, Professor Cleveland — who is “a fantastic teacher,” we’re told — has been snapped up by Columbia. Very nice.
2. Saint David’s Buys Headmaster Two Philip Johnson Condos for $2.99 M
The Saint David’s School, an all-boys prep school, just purchased two adjacent condos for a total of almost $3 million. These apartments will be the home of their headmaster. Who says schoolteachers can’t live well?
One of the principals in this deal is a lawyer: Willkie Farr & Gallagher partner Xavier Dieux is selling one of the two units. Presumably Mr. Dieux is trading up; he was probably living below his means in his condo at the Metropolitan.
3. Davis Polk Stays At Home
This item, reporting on Davis Polk & Wardwell’s 650,000-square-foot renewal at 450 Lexington Avenue, concerns commercial rather than residential real estate. So it may lie slightly beyond the jurisdiction of Lawyerly Lairs.
But it is interesting to see how Davis Polk is perceived by the outside world. The Observer refers to DPW as “cultivat[ing] its reputation as the Cravath, Swaine & Moore for happy people.”
Is that view of DPW accurate? Feel free to debate in the comments.

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Liberal Law Professors and Guns: An Improbable Romance

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gun pistol firearm Second Amendment Above the Law blog.jpgLiberal 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]

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Musical Chairs: Congrats to Matt Waxman

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Matthew Waxman Matt Waxman Matthew C Waxman Above the Law blog.jpgAs previously discussed, Matthew Waxman — a member of the Elect (OT 2000/Souter), and a law school classmate of ours — is headed for academia. He recently accepted an offer to join the faculty of Columbia Law School. Congratulations, Matt!
But in the meantime, Waxman is pretty busy over at the State Department. Steve Clemons of the Washington Note writes:

Policy Planning Director Stephen Krasner has now officially departed for Stanford — and “Acting Director Matthew Waxman” is in place.

Waxman is an ideas entrepreneur with character (he is one of the real insider heroes who while at DoD fought against the erosion of the Geneva Conventions on torture). He also gets strategy and knows that water wars, transnational disease transmission, environmental challenges posed by climate change dynamics, massive refugee crises, and other non-traditional problems must be dealt with as well as thinking through how a superpower manages its interests in a world where other superpowers — and even not so super powers — aren’t the overriding security challenge.

Clemons shares our high opinion of Waxman — and thinks that his appointment as Policy Planning Director should be made permanent:

[P]erhaps State should remove the “acting” from Matthew Waxman’s title and roll the dice on someone who appears to many to be a 21st century “young Yoda.” Waxman, who I have met on occasion, reminds me of a hybrid of strategic wunderkind Paul Nitze and Eisenhower acolyte Andy Goodpaster.

One senior State Department official believes that Condi Rice “wants a name” heading Policy Planning — someone “with more stature.” But this is a pivotal time in American history and foreign policy. Not a lot of what we did yesterday will be that helpful in thinking through what we need to do tomorrow. Everything needs to be rethought.

Condi: Let’s not forget that Waxman is a former Supreme Court clerk. Isn’t that enough “stature” for you?
(We realize that a SCOTUS clerkship is a legal credential, and that Waxman’s current position is a policy post. But genius does not recognize such small-minded, jurisdictional limitations. Three cheers for Supreme Court clerks!)
Getting John Bolton Off of Bush’s Payroll Correlates with Improved US Foreign Policy Gains [The Washington Note]
Matthew Waxman bio [U.S. Department of State]
Earlier: Some Weekend Odds and Ends

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LSU: Practitioner Versus Professoriate

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Jack Weiss.jpg
A partner at Gibson Dunn is in the running to be the head of the LSU Law School. But shockingly, Jack Weiss, a media and entertainment lawyer in Gibson Dunn’s New York office, does not have the support of the faculty.

The LSU search committee met in closed session for an hour Thursday before publicly approving Eric Chiappinelli, associate dean at Seattle University School of Law, and Michael Krauss, law professor at George Mason University School of Law in Arlington, Va.
The third finalist named, who does not have approval from a majority of the faculty, is Jack Weiss, a New York partner for Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher, a law firm with more than 800 lawyers.

It’s not immediately obvious to us why someone with Weiss’s credentials should be unacceptable to the LSU faculty. He clerked for Warren Burger and John Minor Wisdom, and he has ties to the area, having previously been a partner at a firm in New Orleans. He certainly looks like a law school dean!
More important, isn’t practice at a large firm decent preparation for running a law school, perhaps more so than churning out seldom-read articles in solitude? We suspect that this has something to do with the hostility some law professors harbor toward people who actually practice what they teach (particularly the ones who make good money doing it).

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Ex-Law Prof Accused of Having Kiddy Porn on Laptop

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madden-small.jpg
Former Santa Clara law professor Murdaugh Stuart Madden, Jr. is facing federal child pornography charges. The San Jose Mercury News reports:

A former visiting Santa Clara University Law School instructor faces felony child pornography charges, federal prosecutors said today.
Murdaugh Stuart Madden Jr., could face 10 years in prison and $250,000 in fines if he is convicted on charges filed by the United States Attorney’s office today.
Prosecutors charge that Madden kept child pornography on Dell laptop computers he used for his work at Santa Clara and Pace University in New York.
Officials at Santa Clara refused to comment on the case, other than to say that Madden was an instructor for eight months – September 2005 through April 2006.
It is unclear how many images prosecutors allege Madden kept or how he obtained them.
According to court records, prosecutors believe that Madden received at least some of the illicit images during his time at Santa Clara.

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TortsProf Blog Gets Golfing Gizmo as Gift

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Oh, we long for the days before products liability suits took away our lawn darts and all the rest of our fun.
Professor Bill Childs, professor at Western New England School of Law and author of TortsProf Blog, has this post, about receiving as a gift from a student a “Golfing Gizmo.”

[It's a] device from the 1960s and 1970s that is the subject of the Hauter v. Zogarts case (534 P.2d 377 (Cal. 1975)) in David Owen et al.’s Products Liability and Safety casebook and possibly others. And they even found the same model and manual as is in the case, including the almost-blank-verse notation on the front: “COMPLETELY SAFE BALL WILL NOT HIT THE PLAYER.”

The device was such that you drove a golf ball attached to a cord, which of course made the golf ball come back at you. If it came back to the left, you had a slice; to the right, you had a hook. If your shot was perfect, you got zinged in the head and won a lawsuit. Perfectly safe.
The Golfing Gizmo in All Its Glory [TortsProf Blog]

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Laptops vs. Learning — Once More, With Feeling

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laptop computer web surfer Above the Law.jpgYes, we have seen Georgetown Law Professor David Cole’s recent Washington Post op-ed, complaining about students using their laptops to surf the web during class. This led him to ban laptops from his classroom.
It’s provoked lively discussion in the blogosphere. See, e.g., PrawfsBlawg; Obscure Store; WSJ Law Blog. So we’re creating this post to facilitate some comments discussion here at ATL.
(But we weren’t terribly excited to see the piece. It’s actually very similar to a New York Times op-ed that our contracts professor, Ian Ayres, wrote back in 2002.)
Laptops vs. Learning [Washington Post]
Lectures vs. Laptops [New York Times]
Laptops and law-school learning [PrawfsBlawg]
Georgetown Law Prof David Cole: “No Laptops for You!” [WSJ Law Blog]
Law professor: Why I don’t allow laptops in class [Obscure Store]

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Kiwi Camara: We Are Still Confused

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Kiwi Camara KAD Camara Above the Law blog.jpgWe recently blogged about Kiwi Camara — the young, brilliant, controversial legal scholar — and his mysteriously disappeared job offer from George Mason University School of Law. Camara is a legal Doogie Howser who was 16 when he entered Harvard Law School. At HLS, he caused an uproar after dropping the N-bomb in a group outline. He has apologized repeatedly and profusely for that mistake; but it continues to dog him, years later.
The Washington Post originally broke the story about Camara’s GMU appointment falling through. But their story may have been erroneous, at least in one respect. The Post reported:

At George Mason’s law school, the faculty had authorized [Dean Daniel] Polsby to hire Camara as an assistant professor, but the dean wanted to first see what students, alumni and others thought. He scheduled a town hall meeting for last night, but the meeting was nixed after Camara’s application was withdrawn.

We contacted Camara for comment. He explained:

I was never instructed to withdraw my application, and I never did so. My candidacy was ended by George Mason…

Also, there was a week’s lapse between my job talk and when the faculty voted me an offer (to be precise, voted to authorize the dean to extend an offer). Surely they would have investigated before, rather than after, voting me an offer — and especially before going public and thereby triggering the recent media coverage.

Indeed. This is all very strange.
More discussion, including an interesting mini-scoop from Camara, after the jump.

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “Kiwi Camara: We Are Still Confused”

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Kiwi Camara and GMU Law: Maybe They Found This Video?

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Kiwi Camara KAD Camara Above the Law blog.jpgYesterday we issued a request for information about what really happened between controversial legal scholar Kiwi Camara and George Mason University School of Law. GMU was on the verge of hiring Camara, until something weird happened.
Today one of you emailed us the video clip below, and asked: “Could it be because of this video?”
Seriously, we’re pretty sure this video — a promotional spot for the debate team Camara coaches, and NOT a homemade sex video — had no impact upon Camara’s job search. But it’s still weirdly amusing. And we don’t think that Camara, of all people, should be caught on camera saying “Yo whassup!” in an accent reminiscent of the “jive talk” scene from Airplane.

 
   

 

 

    

 

          
From the description of the clip on Google Video: “Kiwi Camara, Mountain View/Los Altos Debate squad coach acts a little weird…”                

Kiwi Camara Acts A Little Weird [Google Video]
Earlier: Kiwi Camara and GMU Law: What Happened Here?

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Kiwi Camara and GMU Law: What Happened Here?

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Kiwi Camara KAD Camara Above the Law blog.jpgToday’s Washington Post has an update on controversial legal scholar Kiwi Camara (at right). Camara, you may recall, is the legal Doogie Howser who was 16 when he entered Harvard Law School. At HLS, he caused an uproar after dropping the N-bomb in a group outline. (That’s the Cliffs Notes version; Google him for more.)
From the Post:

Camara, a native Filipino who grew up in Hawaii and enrolled at Harvard Law School at age 16, had been on track to become an assistant professor at George Mason University’s law school. But his candidacy was derailed after the law school’s dean, Daniel D. Polsby, publicized the possible appointment so he could hear what students had to say before making a final decision.

But Camara’s appointment wasn’t scuttled because of the town hall meeting. That meeting never took place:

At George Mason’s law school, the faculty had authorized Polsby to hire Camara as an assistant professor, but the dean wanted to first see what students, alumni and others thought. He scheduled a town hall meeting for last night, but the meeting was nixed after Camara’s application was withdrawn.

Why was Camara’s application withdrawn? Did it have anything to do with his controversial past? A tipster tells us no:

It has come to my attention that the derailment of Kiwi Camara’s appointment as associate professor at GMU did not occur because of his checkered past. Rather, there appears to be an independent reason, but insiders have refused to reveal what that is. I am not sure if it is worth soliciting info on this from the abovethelaw readership, but I thought I would pass it on to you.

Yes, it is worth soliciting info on this. If you know what REALLY happened with respect to Kiwi Camara and GMU, please email us (subject line: “Kiwi Camara”). Thanks.
P.S. Take a spin through Camara’s official website, which is a trifle self-important and/or oddly amusing in places.
Racist Writing as a Teen Haunted GMU Candidate [Washington Post]
K.A.D. Camara [official website]
Kiwi Camara [Wikipedia]

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